totwtt Hmvemtg ptatg THE GIFT OF &v..&A..J&ciJl A...ftaaSjuJL A3ft.fi0.78 IS-Jvl} IX. Cornell University Library PN 4724.C97 3 1924 027 224 819 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027224819 /-/ WRITING OF TOpAY WRITING OF TODAY MODELS OF JOURNALISTIC PROSE Selected and Discussed by J. W. CUNLIFFE, D.Lit. Professor of English and Associate Director of The School of Journalism, Columbia University and GERHARD R. LOMER, Ph.D. Instructor in English, The School of Journalism, Columbia' University NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1915 e.v, Copyright, 1915, by The Century Co. Published, August, 1915 PREFACE Why does the teaching of English composition, to which modern schools and colleges give so much time and energy, yield unsatisfactory results ? The main reason is, in our judgment, that it seems to be out of touch with reality; the pupil sees in his appointed tasks no connection with his life as it is or as it is likely to be. Accordingly he treats his themes as intellectual ' stunts ' that have to be gone through simply because they are part of the course, and he fails to apply in his every day speech and writing the lessons he has learnt in the classroom. This sense of artificiality is partly due to the subjects he is asked to write about and the literary models set before him for imitation. Stevenson acknowledges that he ' played the sedulous ape ' to Hazlitt, Lamb, Sir Thomas Browne, Montaigne, and other great writers of prose, but it does not follow that the average American youth can learn to write by the study of Newman, Pater, and Stevenson, even when their essays are elaborately analyzed and interpreted for him. He finds the subjects outside of his everyday interests and the mode of treatment altogether beyond his reach. The result is lassitude and discour- agement. Enterprising teachers have striven to overcome these difficulties by setting exercises on subjects of immediate interest and by the use of current periodicals as models of style. The present volume is an effort in the same direction, with the additional advantage of carefully selected examples, classified for ease of reference under general headings, with such comments on the separate types as seem likely to be of advantage in class room instruction or private study. The technique of news reporting having been adequately discussed in more than one recent text book, we have given the space at our disposal to those forms of newspaper and magazine writing which offer more opportunity for individual treatment. A youth who cannot be sent out to gather news may be interested in the discussion of some present day issue, and willing to observe how the masters of the craft exercise their art. The first step in the problem is to win the student's attention and good will. With this in mind we have endeavored to choose papers which from their subject or mode of presentation are likely to attract and stimulate intelligent young people. To disregard the element of literary charm would be even more absurd than to offer the youthful mind the subtleties of the skilled dialectician or the last refinements of a mannered style. We wish to acknowledge most gratefully the generosity with which authors and publishers have granted us permission to reprint. Some of the articles PREFACE have been already republished in book form, and in such cases we have adopted the revised text when the author has requested it; in the other cases, the original form of the article as it appeared in newspaper or magazine has been retained, save for an occasional correction, again at the author's request. The complete text of the selections is reprinted, except in a very few instances, where omissions are indicated by asterisks. Where the author's name is given below the title in square brackets, the article was originally published anonymously, and the name of the writer is now added by authority. Our first aim has been to select examples likely to be of service to the young student of the art of writing; but the volume will, we hope, also interest the general public as an illustration of the variety and excellence of the articles published day by day in the newspapers and periodicals of the United States and Great Britain. CONTENTS I II in IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII A. Descriptive Articles Impressions of Palestine James Bryce National Geographic 'Magazine, March, 1915. In. and Near Athens Robert Hichens . Century Magazine, April, 1913. The Black Fog Herman Scheffauer Atlantic Monthly, February, 1908. The City That Was Will Irwin . . Sun, New York, April 21, 1906. The Street Simeon Strunsky Atlantic Monthly, February, 1914. Coney Island at Night James Huneker . New York Herald, August 19, 1906. The New York Public Library . . . . A. C. David . . Architectural Record, September, 1910. The Tallest Office Building in the World Scientific American, March 8, 19 13. Motorizing America Bronson Batchelor Independent, March 1, 1915. Edison Lessens Submarine Peril New York Times, April 18, 1915. The Wright Brothers Aeroplane .... Orville and Wilbur Wright 52 Century Magazine, September, 1908. PAGE 3 17 20 26 32 33 41 44 49 The Miracle of the Movie W. P. Lawson . Harper's Weekly, January 2, 1915. 58 B. Narrative Articles I II III IV V VI VII VIII Harold Bride's Story of the Sinking of the Titanic .... New York Times, April 28, 1912. Telling the Tale of the Titanic .... Alex. McD. Stoddart Independent, May z, 1912. A Letter Written After the Messina Disaster McClure's Magazine, May, 1909. How I Found the South Pole Roald Amundsen Hearst's 'Magazine, November, 1912. The Death of Captain Scott E. R. G. R. Evans New York Times, February n, 1913. The Conquering of Mt. McKinley . . . Belmore Browne Hearst's Magazine, December, 1912. My First Flight H. G. Wells . . American Magazine, December, 1912. The Horrors of Louvain Richard Harding Davis New York Tribune, August 31, 1914. vii 63 66 74 78 83 85 92 94 CONTENTS IX The Fall of Antwerp Arthur Ruhl 96 Collier's, November 14, 1914. X A Night in a Russian Outpost 106 Evening Post, New York, April 14, 1915. XI Saving 27,000 Lives in One State .... Charles Frederick Carter . 107 Technical World, February, 1912. I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X Bismarck C. Personal Sketches and Interviews Evening Post, New York, April 1, 1915. Benedict XV — Political Pope . * . . Salvatore Cortesi . . Independent, October 12, 191 4. Taft and Roosevelt: a Composite Study . . Francis E. Leupp . Atlantic Monthly, November, 1910. Henry James's First Interview .... Preston Lockwood . . New York Times, March 21, 1915. Barrie at Bay: Which Was Brown? New York Times, October 1, 1914. Joseph Pulitzer : Reminiscences of a Secretary Alleyne Ireland . Metropolitan, October, 1913 — February, 1914. Colonel William Rockhill Nelson Editor, Publisher, and Journalist, April 17, 1915. Norman Hapgood Philip Littell . . . New Republic, December 12, 1914. The Builder of the Canal Farnham Bishop World's Work, August, 1912. Maude Adams Frederic Dean . Good Housekeeping, May, 1913. 114 117 120 124 128 130 I36 140 142 I48 I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X D. Expository and Editorial Articles The Editorial Writer's Opportunity . . . Arthur Brisbane New York Evening Journal, November 12, 1912. My Ideal of the True University .... Woodrow Wilson Delineator, November, 1909. France A. Clutton Brock Times, London, Eng., October 2, 1914. To the Rescue, America ! j hn Galsworthy Published December 24, 1914. Unemployment : a Problem and a Program . Frederic C. Howe Century Magazine, April, 1915. The Problem of Living Things .... John Burroughs Independent, October 2, 1913. Bequeathed Energy Nati, Typhus, War's Drea John Dewey's Philoso ation, London, Eng., February 13, 1913. Typhus, War's Dread Ally, Beaten . . . Van Buren Thorne New York Times, April 18, 1915. Randolph S. Bourne ew Republic, March 13, 1915. What Should Be a Man's Object in Life? . Arthur Brisbane . Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers, N. Y., 1906. 153 155 l6l i6 3 165 170 174 176 180 182 CONTENTS ix XI The Antarctic Disaster 184 Times, London, Eng., February u, 1913. XII The Sinking of the Lusitania 185 - World, New York, May 8, 1915. XIII German Feeling Toward America 186 Springfield Daily Republican, May 17, 1915. XIV A Soldier and a Bullet 187 Life, May 13, 1915. XV War Babies 188 Chicago Tribune, April 30, 1915. XVI Why America Does n't Make Dyes . . . A. B. Macdonald . . .189 Kansas City Star, April 27, 1915. XVII A Bulldog, Not a Pug 190 News and Courier, Charleston, May 19, 191 5. XVIII The End of an Odyssey 191 Manchester Guardian, Eng., April 26, 1915. XIX Swarming of the Japanese Hive 191 Los Angeles Times, May 7, 1915. XX Insurance for Everybody 19 2 Saturday Evening Post, May 1, 1915. XXI The Feeble-minded 19 2 Indianapolis News, April 30, 1915. XXII Stonehenge in the Market 193 Manchester Guardian, Eng., May 29, 1915. E. Humorous and Occasional Articles I The Devil and the Deep Sea Stephen B. Leacock . . 194 University Magazine, December, 191 0. II Mark Twain as Our Emissary George Ade 199 Century Magazine, December, 1910. III System versus Slippers George Burwell Dutton . 201 Unpopular Review, April, 1915. IV The Humanized Professor 206 New York Times, September 22, 1914. V The Oldest Living Graduate 207 Sun, New York, January 30, 1901. VI Sleeping Outdoors Frederick Lewis Allen . 208 Century Magazine, November, 1913. VII The Servantless Cottage Ralph Bergengren . . .211 Atlantic Monthly, June, 1914. VIII On Keeping a Barometer 214 Independent, October 19, 1914. IX Hairpins ...... . • • 214 Sun, New York, May ig, 1902. X The Improved Baby . •-,••• 2I 5 Sun, New York, September 2, 1903. XI The Porter's Tip ... . . 216 Chicago Tribune, May 9, 19 15. XII The Straw Breakfast •■••••, 2l6 Louisville Courter- Journal, May z, 1915. XIII What to Tell an Editor 217 Punch, January 14, 1914. CONTENTS F. Controversial Articles and Letters I The Case for Equality George Bernard Shaw . . 218 Metropolitan, December, 1913. II The Case for Inequality Lincoln Steffens . . . 226 Metropolitan, February, 1914. III Socialism Theodore Roosevelt . . 229 Outlook, March 20 and 27, 1909. IV The Justice and Desirability of Woman Suffrage 236 Independent, April 5, 1915. V The Business of Being a Woman .... Ida M. Tarbell .... 238 American Magazine, March, 1912. VI An Open Letter on the War Situation . . Claud Schuster .... 243 New York Times, April 18, 1915. VII A German Declaration R. Eucken and E. Haeckel 249 New York Times, September 10, 1914. VIII A German View of the Future .... Wilhelm Ostwald . . . 249 New York Times, September 21, 1914. IX The Last Spring of the Old Lion .... George Bernard Shaw . . 250 New Statesman, London, Eng., December 12, 19 14. X Bernard Shaw and the War George W. Kirchwey . .253 Nation, London, Eng., February 13, 1915. XI The War and the Way Out G. Lowes Dickinson . . 255 Atlantic Monthly, April, 1915. XII Organizations for Peace Theodore Roosevelt . . 262 Chicago Herald, April 16, 1915. XIII Serbian Atrocities George Macaulay Trevelyan 264 New York Times, May 22, 1915. G. Literary Criticism I The Greek Gift to Civilization Samuel Lee Wolff . . . 265 Nation, New York, April 7, 1910. II Ulysses Grant 270 Times, London, Eng., January 2, 1915. III Mr. Bryan's Speeches Philip Littell .... 272 New Republic, December 5, 1914. IV Parnell Francis Hackett . . . 274 New Republic, December 5, 1914. V George Meredith Oliver Elton .... 276 Tribune, London, Eng., January 17, 1906. VI John Synge Stuart P. Sherman . . .283 Evening Post, New York, January n, 1913. VII George Bernard Shaw : Harlequin or Patriot ? John Palmer 289 Century Magazine, March, 191 5. VIII Tolstoy's Religion Edward A. Thurber . . 301 Open Court, January, 1914. IX Russian Novelists and English 307 Nation, New York, February 25, 1915. "' X Hugh Walpole and the Novel H. W. Boynton .... 309 Evening Post, New York, April 24, 19 15. CONTENTS XI XII XIII XIV XV Mrs. Wharton's World Robert Herrick . New Republic, February 13, 1915. 3" The Salamander 314 Times, London, Eng., April 2, 1915. The Salamander 314 Punch, April 21, 1915. Wife and No Wife 315 Evening Post, New York, April 24, 191 5. Shocking Revelations 315 Nation, London, Eng., February 13, 1915. H. Dramatic Criticism I Writing Plays Arnold Bennett . . Metropolitan, July, 1913. II The Irish Drama William Butler Yeats Twentieth Century Magazine, November, 191 1. III Granville Barker's Production of A Midsummer Night's Dream Times, London, Eng., February 7, 1914. IV A Preface to A Midsummer Night's Dream. Granville Barker New York Times, February 17, 1915. V Concerning David Belasco .' W. P. Eaton American Magazine, January, 1913. VI How I wrote Within the Law Bayard Veiller . Metropolitan, June, 1913. VII ' Typically American ' Francis Hackett New Republic, November 14, 1914. VIII On Trial at the Lyric Theatre Times, London, Eng., April 30, 1915. IX Fanny's First Play W. S. Cather . . McClure's Magazine, March, 1913. X Rosy Rapture at the Duke of York's Illustrated London News, March 27, 1915. 317 323 326 327 330 334 338 34° 34i 342 I. Musical Criticism I Camille Saint-Saens Evening Post, New York, May is, i9'S- II ' Boris Godounoff ' Kurt Schindler . North American Review, February, 19:3. III World Premiere of ' Madame Sans-Gene ' . W. J. Henderson Sun, New York, January 26, 191 5. IV Gilbert and Sullivan H. E. Krehbiel . New York Tribune, May 23, 1915. V Boston Symphony Rehearsal Philip Hale . . Boston Herald, October 17, 1914. VI Miss Hinkle with The Boston Symphony . Philip Hale . . Boston Herald, December 19, 1914- 343 345 352 356 361 362 xii CONTENTS J. Art Criticism I The P. R. B 364 Times, London, Eng., December 8, 1905. II Fallacies of the Futurists and New Thinking . Gilbert K. Chesterton . . 367 New York Morning American, March 14, 1915. III The Hudson-Fulton Exhibition .... Frank Fowler .... 369 Scribner's Magazine, November, 1909. IV Pittsburgh International Exhibition, 1914 . W. H. de B. Nelson . . 373 International Studio, June, 1914. V An American Salon of Humorists .... Louis Baury 376 Bookman, January, 1915. VI The War in Art 382 Times, London, Eng., May 7, 1915. VII Leon Bakst's Designs Gerald C. Siordet . . . 383 International Studio, November, 1913. VIII The American Art Collector 385 Press, Philadelphia, May 4, 1915. IX The Garden as a Means of Artistic Expression Thomas H. Mawson . . 386 Studio Year Book of Decorative Art, 1913. WRITING OF TODAY WRITING OF TODAY A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES The essential merits of descriptive writing are (1) accuracy; (2) clearness; (3) vivid- ness. The first depends upon the writer's power of observation, the last upon his power of presentation, and the second on both. A good piece of description should put the ordinary reader in a position to see things not merely with his own eyes, but with the keener eyes of the skilled observer. It is therefore necessary that young people who are learning to write should be trained to observe, and that they should cultivate their faculties of observation by practice. The ambitious student should look with understanding eyes upon the district in which he lives and the country through which he travels. Whether his home is in a great city or in a country town, in a village or on a farm, the place has individual characteristics which he should not fail to note, salient features which the majority of the inhabitants pass with unseeing eyes. It is a useful exercise for him to endeavor to put down in writing his impressions of what he has seen, and to compare his efforts with those of the craftsmen whose work is included in this section. If he has traveled, abroad or in his own country, let him compare the record of his memories with Viscount Bryce's account of Palestine. If he has lived almost continuously in one place, let him strive to emulate Mr. Will Irwin's description of San Francisco. The result will probably be somewhat disheartening, but it will be salutary if it convinces him that his undertaking involves qualities in addition to the skill of the ready writer. This last is of obvious importance, and there is no need to stress it. The young student is more likely to overlook the importance of an orderly arrange- ment of his material and the selection for his picture of those features, which, presented in due proportion, will give the impression he is seeking to convey. The ability to do these things is seldom innate, and often needs to be cultivated by assiduous practice, but the task is not an impossible one, granted a sufficient degree of native intelligence to start with, and an education which has enabled the student to master the rudiments of English composition. At first, he can only admire from a distance the vivid color with which Mr. Hichens recalls the beauty of Athens or the skill and power with which Mr. Huneker reproduces 'the experi- ences of a summer night at Coney Island. If he realizes appreciatively that the thing is done, he may come to understand how, and, according to his own capacity, and in his own way,' learn to describe for others life as he sees it himself — but he must first see it. The same principles apply to the description of a building or a ship, a bridge or a canal, a manufacturing process or a scientific discovery. These may appear simpler on account of their limited scope, but they demand perhaps greater skill on account of their restricted in- terest and they present special difficulties from the technical knowledge which is often required. In dealing with them the student should be careful not to try to describe what he does not understand, and he should also avoid attempting to take his readers beyond the limits of their comprehension. In such descriptions the main virtues are simplicity and clearness, and the various examples here presented have been chosen from that point of view. j has been; and this is natural, for none has excited so keen an interest for so long IMPRESSIONS OF PALESTINE a time and in so many nations. As we have all at some time or other TAMES BRYCE 5 read much about the country, it may well be thought that nothing now remains to [National Geographic Magazine, Washington, D. C. fog said about Palestine, except by arche- - Copyright, .pis. By special perm.ssion.] O l ogists> whose explorations of the sites No country has been so often described of ancient cities are always bringing or so minutely described by travelers of io fresh facts to light. But if all of us have all sorts of tastes and interest as Palestine read a good deal about the Holy Land, 3 WRITING OF TODAY most of us have also forgotten a good and deserve to be recorded in the annals deal, and our ideas of the country — ideas of mankind. To history, however, I shall colored by sentiments of reverence and ro- return later. mance — are often vague and not always correct 5 feeling palestines smallness It may therefore be worth while to set Nor is it only that Palestine is really down in a plain and brief way the salient a small country. The traveler constantly impressions which the country makes on feels as he moves about that it is a small a Western traveler who passes quickly country. From the heights a few miles through it. The broad impressions are 10 north of Jerusalem he sees, looking north- the things that remain in memory when ward, a far-off summit carrying snow for most of the details have vanished, and eight months in the year. It is Hermon, broad impressions are just what an elab- nearly 10,000 feet high — Hermon, whose orate description sometimes fails to con- fountains feed the rivers of Damascus. vey, because they are smothered under an 15 But Hermon is outside the territory of infinitude of details. Israel altogether, standing in the land of the Syrians; so, too, it is of Lebanon. A SMALL COUNTRY We are apt tQ th j nk of that mountain Palestine is a tiny little country, mass as within the country, because it Though the traveler's handbooks prepare 20 also is frequently mentioned in the Psalms him to find it small, it surprises him by and the Prophets; but the two ranges of being smaller than he expected. Taking Lebanon also rise beyond the frontiers of it as the region between the Mediterra- Israel, lying, between the Syrians of nean on the west and the Jordan and Damascus and the Phoenicians of the Dead Sea on the east, from the spurs of 25 West. Lebanon and Hermon on the north to the Perhaps it is because the maps from desert at Beersheba on the south, it is which children used to learn Bible geog- only no miles long and from 50 to 60 raphy were on a large scale that most of broad — that is to say, it is smaller than us have failed to realize how narrow were New Jersey, whose area is 7500 square 30 the limits within which took place all miles. those great doings that fill the books of Of this region large parts did not really Samuel and Kings. Just in the same way belong to ancient Israel. Their hold on the classical scholar who visits Greece is the southern and northern districts was surprised to find that so small a territory but slight, while in the southwest a wide 35 sufficed for so many striking incidents and rich plain along the Mediterranean and for the careers of so many famous was occupied by the warlike Philistines, men. who were sometimes more than a match for the Hebrew armies. Israel had, in little natural wealth fact, little more than the hill country, 40 Palestine is a country poor in any nat- which lay between the Jordan on the east ural resources. There are practically no and the maritime plain on the west, minerals, no coal, no iron, no copper, no King David, in the days of his power, silver, though recently some oil wells looked down from the hill cities of Ben- have been discovered in the Jordan Val- jamin, just north of Jerusalem, upon 45 ley. Neither are there any large forests, Philistine enemies only twenty-five miles and though the land may have been better off, on the one side, and looked across the wooded in the days of Joshua than it is Jordan to Moabite enemies about as far now, there is little reason to think that off, on the other. the woods were of trees sufficiently large Nearly all the events in the history of 5o to constitute a source of wealth. A corn- Israel that are recorded in the Old Testa- paratively small area is fit for tillage, ment happened within a territory no big- To an Arab tribe that had wandered ger than the State of Connecticut, whose through a barren wilderness for forty area is 4800 square miles; and into weary years, Canaan may well have hardly any other country has there been 55 seemed a delightful possession ; but many crowded from the days of Abraham till a county in Iowa, many a department in our own so much history — that is to say France, could raise more grain or wine so many events that have been recorded than all the Holy Land. A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES for the rest of the year all is gray or plain of esdraelon brown _ The grass j g withere d away or is There is one stretch of fertile, level land scorched brown, and scarcely any foliage 20 miles long and from 3 to 6 miles wide is seen on the tops or upper slopes of the — the Plain of Esdraelon. But with this 5 rolling hills. It is only in some of the exception it is only in the bottoms and on valleys that one finds villages nestling the lower slopes of a few valleys, chiefly among olive groves and orchards where in the territory of Ephraim from Bethel plum and peach and almond blossoms northward and along the shores of the make spring lovely. Bay of Acre, that one sees cornfields and 10 Arid indeed is the land. The traveler olive yards and orchards. Little wine is says with the Psalmist: 'My soul longs now grown. in a dry, parched land, wherein no water Such wealth as the country has consists is.' Wells are few, springs still fewer, in its pastures, and the expression ' a and of brooks there are practically none, land flowing with milk and honey ' ap- 15 for the stony channels at the bottom of propriately describes the best it has to the glens have no water except after a offer, for sheep and goats can thrive on winter rainstorm. There may probably the thin herbage that covers the hills, have been a more copious rainfall twenty and the numerous aromatic plants furnish or thirty centuries ago, when more wood plenty 1 of excellent food for the bees ; but 20 clothed the hillsides, and the country it is nearly all thin pasture, for the land would then have been more pleasing to is dry and the soil mostly shallow. The Northern eyes, to which mountains are sheep and goats vastly outnumber the ■ dear because rills make music and green oxen. Woody Bashan, on the east side boughs wave in the wind, of Jordan, is still the region where one 25 must look for the strong bulls. THE RIVER kishon To this general description there are seen through a golden haze certain exceptions which must not be for- Palestine is not a beautiful country, gotten. The high ridge of Mount Car- The classical scholar finds charms every- 30 mel rises grandly from the sea, and onits where in Greece, a land consecrated to - land side breaks down in bold declivities him by the genius of poets and philoso- and deep glens upon the valley through phers, although a great part of Greece is which the Kishon, an almost perennial painfully dry and bare. So, too, the trav- stream, finds its way to the Bay of Acre, eler who brings a mind suffused by rever- 35 Here, upon the slopes of a long ridge, on ence and piety to spots hallowed by the other side of the Kishon, there is a religious associations sees the landscapes wildering forest of ancient holm-oaks, all of the Holy Land through a golden haze the more beautiful because it is the one that makes them lovely. But the scenery considerable stretch of natural wood in of the Holy Land, taken as a whole ( for 40 the whole country west of Jordan, there are exceptions presently to be no- On the other side of that river the ticed), is inferior, both in form and in slopes of the plateau which runs eastward color, to that of northern and middle into the desert, the Bashan and Gilead of Italy, to that of Norway and Scotland, to the Old Testament, have also patches of that of the coasts of Asia Minor, to that 45 woodland left, and in the canyons that cut of many parts of California and Wash- deep through these slopes there is many ington. a picturesque scene where the brooks, The hills are flat-topped ridges, with a Jabbok and Yarmuk, leap in tiny water- monotonous skyline, very few of them falls from ledge to ledge of the cliffs, showing any distinctive shape. Not a peak 50 These are the only brooks in all the coun- anywhere, and Tabor the only summit rec- try, these and the Kishon, which itself ognizable by its form. They are all com- is reduced in late summer to a line of posed of gray or reddish-gray limestone, pools, bare of wood, and often too stony for tillage. Between the stones or piles of 55 VIEW FR0M TAB0E rock there are low shrubs, and in the few Of the wider views there are two that weeks of spring masses of brilliant flow- ought to be noted. One is beautiful. It ers give rich hues to the landscape; but is the prospect from the top of Mount WRITING OF TODAY Tabor, a few miles east of Nazareth, yet the slopes of the hills, sometimes oyer the wide plain of Esdraelon, spe- falling abruptly, sometimes in soft and cially charming in April, when the green graceful lines, have a pleasing variety, of the upspringing wheat and barley and from several points a glimpse may be contrasts with the rich red of the strips 5 caught of the snowy top of Hermon ris- of newly plowed land that lie between. ing beyond the nearer ranges. A great The other is grand and solemn. From sadness broods over the silent waters, the Mount of Olives, and indeed from the The cities that decked it like a necklace higher parts of Jerusalem itself, one looks have, all but Tiberias, vanished so utterly across the deep hollow where the Jordan, 10 that archeologists dispute over their sites, a little below Jericho, pours its turbid There is little cultivation, and where half waters into the Dead Sea, and sees be- a million of people are said to have lived yond this hollow the long, step.p wall of at the beginning of our era, not 5000 are the mountains of Moab. now to be found. Many a devastating These mountains are the edge of the 15 war and the misgovernment of fourteen great plateau, 3000 feet higher than the centuries have done their fatal work. Dead Sea, which extends into the Great Desert of Northern Arabia. Among Palestine summed up them is conspicuous the projecting ridge If Palestine is not a land of natural of Nebo, or Pisgah, from which Moses 20 wealth nor a land of natural beauty, what looked out upon that Promised Land is it? What are the impressions which which he was not permitted to enter, the traveler who tries to see it exactly as These mountains are the background of it is carries away with him? Roughly every eastward view from the heights of summed up, they are these : stones, caves, Judea. Always impressive, they become 25 tombs, ruins, battle-fields, sites hallowed weirdly beautiful toward sunset, when the by traditions — all bathed in an atmo- level light turns their stern gray to ex- sphere of legend and marvel, quisite purples and a tender lilac that Never was there a country, not being an deepens into violet as the night begins to absolute desert, so stony. The hillsides fall. 30 seem one mass of loose rocks, larger or smaller. The olive yards and vineyards PROSPECTS THAT PLEASE are fulI of stones _ Eyen the cornfieWs In eastern Galilee also there are noble (except in the alluvial soil of the plain of prospects of distant Hermon; nor is there Esdraelon and along the sandy coast) seem any coast scenery anywhere finer than 35 to have more pebbles than earth, so that that of the seaward slopes of Lebanon one wonders how crops so good as one behind Sidon and Beirut. But Hermon sometimes sees can spring up. Caves are and Lebanon (as already remarked) lie everywhere, for limestone is the prevailing outside Palestine and would need a de- rock, and it is the rock in which the per- scription to themselves. Damascus, seen 4° eolation of rain makes clefts and hollows from the heights above, its glittering and caverns most frequent, white embosomed in orchards, is a marvel of beauty — a pearl set in emeralds, say historic caves the Muslims. Petra, far off in the Ara- Many of the incidents of Bible history bian Desert to the south, is a marvel of 45 are associated with caverns, from the cave wild grandeur, with its deep, dark gorges of Machpelah, at Hebron, where Abraham and towering crags ; but these also lie out- buried Sarah and in which he is supposed side Palestine. to have been himself interred, down to the „ IIP „_,, „„ „„„ sepulchre hewn in rock in which the body THE SEA OF GALILEE ^ of Christ wag ^ and oyer which ^ Though not comparable in beauty either Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built to the lakes of Britain or to those that lie by Helena, the mother of the Emperor among the Alps, or to Lake George in Constantine. New York and Lake Tahoe in California, Tradition points out many other sacred the Sea of Galilee has a quiet charm of 55 caves. It places the Annunciation by the its own. Angel Gabriel to the Virgin at Nazareth % The shores are bare of wood and the in one cavern and the birth of Christ at encircling mountains show no bold peaks; Bethlehem in another, and assigns others A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES to Samson, to David, to Elijah, and to various prophets. All over the country religious memorials one finds tombs hewn in the solid rocks But there are other memorials of the and pillars or piles of stone marking a past that have lived on into the present, burial place. Many of these rock tombs 5 In no country are there so many shrines may be the work of races that dwelt here of ancient worship, so many spots held before Israel came. In a rocky land, sacred — some sacred to Jews, some to where natural cavities are common, this Christians, some to Mussulmans. Neither becomes the obvious mode of interment, has any other country spots that still draw Thus here, as in Egypt, one seems to be in 10 a multitude of pilgrims, not even Belgium a land rather of the dead than of the liv- and Lombardy, each a profusion of bat- ing, tlefields. It is a land of ancient strife and The impression of melancholy which seldom-interrupted slaughter, this brooding shadow of death gives is Before Israel came, the tribes of Canaan heightened by the abundance of ruins. 15 warred with one another, and against From very early times men built here in those tribes Israel had to fight for its life, stone because there were, even then, few Along its western border ran the great large trees, and though the dwellings of line of march from Egypt to northern the poor were mostly of sun-baked mud Syria and Mesopotamia, the highway of and have long since vanished, the ease a> war trodden by the armies of Assyria and with which the limestone could be quar- Babylon when they passed south to attack ried and used for building made those who Egypt, and by the armies of Egypt when sought defense surround even small towns the great Pharaohs, Rameses, Thothmes, with walls, whose foundations at least and Necho, led them north against As- have remained. The larger among the 25 syria. surviving ruins date from Roman or from In later days the Seleucid kings of Crusading times. These are still numer- Babylon and Antioch had fight after fight ous, though Muslim vandalism and the for the possession of the country with the habit of finding in the old erections ma- Egyptian Ptolemies. Then appeared the terial for new have left comparatively 3° legions of Rome, first under Pompey, then little of architectural interest. many a campaign to quell the revolt of the Jews. Still later came those fiercest ene- greco-roman ruins m i es of Rome> the Sassanid kings of Per- The best preserved remains are those of sia, whose great invasion of a. d. 614 laid the Greco-Roman towns east of the Jor- 35 waste Jerusalem and spread ruin over the dan, and these cities, singularly good land, specimens of the work of their age, are being rapidly destroyed by the Circassians THE ARAB invasion whom the Turks have placed in that re- Just after that invasion the Arabs, then gion. Be the ruins great or small, they 40 in the first flush of their swift conquest, are so numerous that in the course of a descended on the enfeebled province and day's ride one is everywhere sure to pass set up that Muslim rule which has often far more of them than the traveler could changed hands from race to race and dy- find in even those parts of Europe that nasty to dynasty, but has never disap- have been longest inhabited, and of many 45 peared. When the Mohammedan princes the ancient names are lost. had fought among themselves for four One is amazed at the energy the Cru- centuries they were suddenly attacked by saders showed in building castles, not a a host of Crusaders from western Europe, few of them large and all of them solid and the soil of Palestine was drenched strongholds, as well as churches. But 50 afresh with blood. The chronicle of more none of the fortresses are perfect, and of recent wars, which includes Napoleon's the churches only four or five have been irruption, stopped at Acre in 1799, comes spared sufficiently to show their beauty, down to the Egyptian invasion in the days Several, among these the most beautiful of Mehemet Ali. and best preserved, have been turned into 55 From the top of Mount Tabor one looks mosques. Of these ruins few are cared down on six famous battlefields — the first, for except by the archeologist and the his- that of the victory of Deborah and Barak torian. over Sisera, commemorated in the oldest 8 WRITING OF TODAY of Hebrew war songs (Judges, Chapters he looks down on the rocky gorge in which IV-V), and the latest, that of the victory St. Sabas, himself a historical character, of the French over the Turks in 1799. famous and influential in the sixth cen- And in this plain, near the spot where tury, dwelt in a cave where a friendly lion Barak overcame Sisera and Pharaoh 5 came to bear him company; and from Je- Necho overcame Josiah, is to be fought rusalem he can note the spot at which the the mysterious Armageddon (Revelation, host of Israel passed dry-shod over Jordan, Chapter XVI). following the Ark of the Covenant, and near which Elisha made the iron swim and dominion of the past I0 turne( i bitter waters to sweet. Thence, Caves and tombs, ruins and battlefields, too, he can descry, far off among the blue and ancient seats of worship are the vis- hills of Moab, the mountain top to which ible signs of that dominion of the past, Balaam was brought to curse Israel, and overweighting and almost effacing the where ' the dumb ass, speaking with man's present, which one feels constantly and 15 voice, forbade the madness of the prophet ' everywhere in. Palestine. For us English- (Numbers, Chapter XX; II Peter, Chap- speaking men and women, who read the ter I). Bible in our youth and followed the stream of history down through antiquity WILD Muslim legends and the Middle Ages, no country is so 20 These scenes of marvel, all passing be- steeped in historical associations. fore the eye in a single afternoon, are but It could not be otherwise, for in no a few examples of the beliefs associated other country (save Egypt) did history with ancient sites over the length and begin so early; none has seen such an un- breadth of the country. All sorts of leg- ending clash of races and creeds ; none 25 ends have sprung up among Muslims, as has been the theater of so many events well as Jews and Christians, the Muslim touching the mind of so large a part of legends being indeed the wildest. For mankind. The interest which Nature, nearly every incident mentioned in the taken alone, fails to give is given in un- Old or New Testament a local site has equaled profusion by history, and by leg- 30 been found, often one highly improbable, end even more than by history. perhaps plainly impossible, which never- theless the devout are ready to accept. THE ATMOSPHERE OF LEGEND AND MARVEL The process Q f site . finding had begun The Holy Land is steeped also in an before the days of the Empress Helena, atmosphere of legend and marvel. As the 35 and it goes on still. (Quite recently the traveler steps ashore at Jaffa he is shown Muslims have begun to honor a cave at the the rock to which Andromeda was chained base of Mount Carmel, which they hold to when Perseus rescued her from the sea have sheltered Elijah.) Nothing is more monster. (It is the only Greek story lo- natural, for the number of pilgrims goes calized on these shores.) Till recent 40 on increasing with the increased ease and years he was also shown the remains of cheapness of transportation, and sites have the ribs of another sea monster, the ' great to be found for the pilgrims, fish ' that swallowed and disgorged the prophet Jonah, whose tomb he will see on christian pilgrims the coast near Sidon. When he proceeds 45 The Roman Catholics come chiefly from toward Jerusalem he passes Lydda, the France, but they are few compared with birthplace of St. George, where that youth- the multitude of Russians, nearly all sim- ful hero slew the dragon. A little farther pie peasants, ready to kiss the stones of comes the spot where another young cham- every spot which they are told that the pion, Samson, the Danite, had in earlier 50 presence of the Virgin or a saint has hal- days killed a thousand Philistines with lowed, the jaw-bone of an ass. To accommodate these pilgrim swarms, Still farther along the railway line he is for besides the Catholics and the Ortho- pointed to the opening of the Valley of dox, the other ancient churches of the Ajalon, where, according to the Book of 55 East, such as the Armenians, the Copts, Joshua, the sun and moon stood still while and the Abyssinians, are also represented, Israel pursued their enemies. An hour countless monasteries and hospices have later, as the train approaches Jerusalem, been erected at and around Jerusalem, a. uiisuKir i IVE ARTICLES Bethlehem, Nazareth, and other sacred answered separately for the two divisions spots; and thus the aspect of these places of the Bible. has been so modernized that it is all the more difficult to realize what they were Israel's neighbors like in ancient days. 5 On the Old Testament the traveler gets Jews have come in large numbers ; they an abundance of fresh light from visiting have settled in farm colonies; they have the spots it mentions. The history of built up almost a new quarter on the north Israel from the time of Joshua — indeed, side of old Jerusalem. But even they are from the time of Abraham — stands out not so much in evidence as the Christian k> vividly. One realizes the position of the pilgrims. The pilgrim is now, especially chosen people in the midst of hostile at the times of festival, the dominant f ea- tribes — some tribes close to them : the ture of Palestine. It is the only country, Philistines at the western part of the Ju- save Egypt, perhaps even more than dean hills ; the Tyrians almost within sight Egypt, to which men flock for the sake of 15 of Carmel, to the north ; Amalek in the the past; and it is here that the philo- desert to the south, raiding as far as sophic student can best learn to appreci- Hebron; Moab and the Beni Amnion on ate the part which tradition and marvel the plateau that lies beyond Jordan to the have played in molding the minds and east, while the Syrian kingdom of Ben- stimulating the religious fervor of man- 20 hadad and Hazael threatens from behind kind. the ridges of Galilee. One sees the track alone which the what Palestine might be hosts of Egypt and Assyria marched. One Under a better government — a govern- feels the breath of the desert upon the ment which should give honest adminis- 25 prophets, for the desert comes into Pales- tration, repress brigandage, diffuse educa- tine itself. . One traverses- it descending tion, irrigate the now desolate, because from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea. It lies sun-scorched, vajley of the lower Jordan in bare, brown cliffs above the gardens by water drawn from the upper course of of Jericho. One understands what the the river — Palestine might become a 30 foe of Israel meant when he said that the prosperous and even populous country and gods of Israel were gods of the hills, and have its place in the civilization of the his own gods of the valleys, present. The inhabitants, mostly Muslims, are a H0W NEAR WAS END0E ! strong and often handsome race, natu- 35 One sees how near to the Gilboan rally equal to the races of Southern Eu- Mountains was Endor, where Saul went to rope ; but as Palestine stands to-day, it is consult the witch the night before the a land of the past, a land of memories — fatal battle (I Samuel, Chapter XXVIII), memories of religion, but chiefly of reli- and how near also the wall of Bethshan, gious war, and always rather of war than 40 to which the Philistines fixed his body and of peace. The only work ever done in it that of the gallant Jonathan. Samaria, for peace was done by the preaching, the stronghold of Omri, and long after- nineteen centuries ago, of One whose ward of Herod, frowns upon the plain be- teaching His followers have never put in neath, and at Jezreel the slope is seen up practice. *5 which Jehu drove his steeds so furiously The strife of Israel against the Amor- to the slaughter of Jezebel (II Kings, ites and of the Crusaders against the Mus- Chapter IX). lims pale to insignificance compared with One can feel it all to be real. Elijah the conflict between five great nations to- runs before the chariot of Ahab while the day who bear the Christian name, and 50 thunder is pealing above, and Naaman is some of whom are claiming the Almighty bathing in Jordan on his way back to Da- as their special patron and protector. mascus from the visit to Elisha. The his- Of one other kind of impression some- torical books of the Old Testament are so thing remains to be said. Does travel in full of references to localities that one the Holy Land give a clearer comprehen- 55 uses them almost as a handbook. Na- sion of the narratives of the Old and New poleon, they say, had them read aloud to Testament? Does it give a livelier sense him in the evenings in his camp on the of their reality ? This question must be Syrian expedition of 1799. io WRITING OF TODAY And though the aspect of things, has real because they are placed in this par- been greatly changed since those days by ticular part of the East, the disappearance of ancient forests, the introduction of some new trees and new THE actual and the ideal kinds of buildings, not to speak of two 5 All this makes the traveler realize railways and a few macadamized roads, afresh and from a new side that while still the natural features of hill and val- the Old Testament is about and for Israel, ley remain, and there is much in the ways as well as composed in the land of Israel, and customs of the people that remains the the Gospel, though the narrative is placed same. The shepherd leads the same life, 10 in the land and the preaching was de- except that he has no longer to fear the livered to the people of Israel, is addressed lion, who has long since vanished, nor the to the world. bear, who survives only in the recesses of The Old Testament books, or at least the northern hills. the legal and historical books, are con- 15 cerned with one people, with the words new testament Palestine and deeds of its k ; ngs and prophets and When one turns to the New Testament, warriors, whereas the New Testament is how great is the difference. Except as concerned with the inner life of all man- regards Jerusalem and the Sea of Galilee, kind. The one is of the concrete, the there are scarcely any references to locali- *> other of the abstract ; the one of the ties in the Gospel narratives, and in those actual, the other of the ideal. The actual few references little or nothing turns is rooted in time and place; the ideal is upon the features of the place. independent of both. It is only in parts of We can identify some of the spots where the poetical and prophetic books that the miracles are related, such as Nain and 25 teaching becomes ideal and universal, like Cana of Galilee, but the events are not that of the New Testament, connected with any special feature of the It ought perhaps to be added that the locality. Journeys are mentioned, but not incidents of Chronicles in the Old Testa- the route along which Christ passed, ex- ment belong (except, of course, when the cept Sychar, in the Samaritan territory, 30 element of marvel comes in) to what may where was Jacob's well, one of the few be called normal history, and can there- sacred spots which can be positively iden- fore be realized just as easily as we real- tified. (The Crusaders erected a church ize the wars of the Crusaders and the over it which is now being restored by deeds of Sultan Saladin. Franciscan monks.) The cities round the 35 Sea of Galilee have, all except Tiberias, THE G0SPEL AND Palestine vanished from the earth, and the sites of We picture to ourselves the battle of most of them are doubtful. Saul and the Philistines at Gilboa as we The town now called Nazareth has been picture the battle of Napoleon against the accepted for many centuries as the home 4° Turks, a few miles farther north. It is of Christ's parents, but the evidence to much harder to fit the Gospel with the prove it so is by no means clear, and it is framework of Jerusalem or Galilee, be- hard to identify the cliff on which the city cause its contents are unlike anything else was built. The Mount of Olives, in par- in history. An Indian Mussulman scholar ticular, and the height on its slope, where 45 or a thoughtful Buddhist from Japan Christ, following the path from Bethany, might not feel this, but it is hard for a looked down on Jerusalem, and the tern- European or American Christian not to pie in all its beauty, are the spots at which feel it. one seems to get into the closest touch Whether these explanations be true or with the Gospel narrative; and it is just 50 not, it is the fact that to some travelers here that the scene has been most changed the sight of the places that are mentioned by new buildings, high walls, villas and in the Gospel seems to bring no further convents and chapels. Even the scenic comprehension of its meaning, no height- conditions and whatever we may call ' the ened emotion, except that which the setting ' of the parables belong rather to 55 thought that they are looking upon the the eastern world than to Palestine. You very hills, perhaps treading the very paths do not feel the incidents to be the more that were trodden by the feet of Christ and A. DiibCKlJ-llVE ARTICLES the Apostles, naturally arouses. The nar- can help feeling the glamour of the coun- rative remains to them in just the same try. The colors of distant hills, seen at ideal, non-local atmosphere which sur- morn or even through this clear, keen air, rounded it in their childhood. It still be- seem rich and sad with pathos of ages of longs to the realm of the abstract, to the 5 human effort and human passion. The world of the soul rather than to the world imagination is always trying to body forth of physical nature. It is robed not in the the men and women who lived beneath noonday glare of Palestine, as they see these skies, the heroes of war and the it to-day, nor even in the rich purple which saints of suffering, the nameless poets, and her sunsets shed upon the far-off hills, but 10 the prophets who live on in their burning in a celestial light that never was on sea words, and to give them visible form and or land. life ™„t,-„ t „ TT ™™>„ Imagination always fails, but it never TYPICAL PILGRIM S VIEWPOINT degists S from thg J^^ ^ though ; t These persons, however, mostly Protes- 15 cannot visualize the scenes, it feels the tants, are the few exceptions. The typical constant presence of these shadowy fig- pilgrim, be he or she a Roman Catholic ures.. In them, shadowy as they are, in Legitimist from France or an unlettered the twilight of far-off ages, the primal peasant from Russia, accepts everything forces of humanity were embodied — in and is edified by everything. The Virgin 20 them its passionate aspirations seem to and the saints have always been so real to have their earliest, simplest, and most these devout persons, the sense of their moving expression, reality heightened by constant prayers be- fore the Catholic image or the Russian icon, that it is natural for the pilgrim to 25 think of them as dwelling in the very spots II which the guide points out, and the mar- velous parts of the legends present to them J N AND NEAR ATHENS no difficulty. The French Catholic has probably been 3° ROBERT HICHENS on a pilgrimage to Lourdes and drawn rr „ ,, . . .. „ ■ . , health from the holy spring in its sacred lCnlury Maga * me ' Apn1 ' I9 ' 3 " By * em ™°^ cavern. The Russian peasant has near his What Greece is like in spring, I do not home some wonder-working picture. The know, when rains have fallen round world to him is still full of religious mira- 35 Athens and the country is green, when the cles, and Palestine is but the land in which white dust perhaps does not whirl through the figures who consecrate the spots are Constitution Square and over the garden the most sacred of all those whom Christi- about the Zappeion, when the intensity of anity knows. To him to die in it is happi- the sun is not fierce on the road to the ness, for death is the portal to heaven. 40 bare Acropolis, and the guardians of the Nowhere else does one see a faith so Parthenon, in their long coats the color touching in its simplicity. of a dervish's hat, do not fall asleep in the patches of shade cast on the hot a romantic journey ground by Doric columns. I was there To all travelers who have anything of 45 at the end of the summer, and many said poetry in their hearts, be they pilgrims or to me, ' You should come in spring, when tourists, or critical archeologists and his- it is green.' torians, there is, and there will always be, Greece must be very different then, but an inexpressible romance in this journey, can it be much more beautiful? Palestine is preeminently the Land of the 50 Disembark at the Piraeus at dawn, take Past — a land whose very air is charged a carriage, and drive by Phalerum, the with the human emotions and the memo- bathing-place of the Athenians, to Athens ries of human action, reaching far back at the end of the summer, and though for into the dim twilight of prehistoric cen- just six months no rain has fallen, you turies. 55 will enter a bath of dew. The road is No one who is in any degree susceptible dry and dusty, but there is no wind, and to the impressions of nature or of history the dust lies still. The atmosphere is mar- ^ WRITING OF TODAY velously clear, as it is, say, at Ismailia in lerum, bare of trees, a little cockney of the early morning. The Hellenes, when aspect, any exceptional beauty in this bay ? they are talking quite naturally, if they When you have bathed there a few times, speak of Europe, always speak of it as a when you have walked along the shore in continent in which Greece is not included. 5 the quiet evening, breathing the exquisite They talk of ' going to Europe.' They air, when you have dined in a cafe of old say to the English stranger, ' You come to Phalerum built out into the sea, and come us fresh from Europe.' And as you drive back by boat through the silver of a moon toward Athens you understand. to the little tram station whence you re- This country is part of the East, al- 10 turn to Athens, you will probably find though the Greeks were the people who that there is. And from what other bay saved Europe from being dominated by can you see the temple of the Parthenon the races of Asia. All about you — you as you see it from the bay of Phalerum ? have not yet reached Phalerum — you see You have your first vision of it now, as country that looks like the beginning of a 15 you look away from the sea, lifted very desert, that holds a fascination of the des- high on its great rock of the Acropolis as ert. The few trees stand up like carved on a throne. Though far off, neverthe- things. The small, Eastern-looking less its majesty is essentially the same, houses, many of them with flat roofs, casts the same tremendous influence upon earth-colored, white, or tinted with mauve 2° you here as it does when you stand at the «.nd pale colors, scattered casually and ap- very feet of its mighty columns. At once parently without any plan over the abso- you know, not because of the legend of lutely bare and tawny ground, look from greatness attaching to it, or because of the a distance as if they, too, were carved, as historical associations clinging about it, if they were actually a part of the sub- 25 but simply because of the feeling in your stance of their environment, not imposed own soul roused by its white silhouette in upon it by an outside force. The moving this morning hour, that the soul of Greece figure of a man, wearing the white fusta- — eternal majesty, supreme greatness, di- nelle, has the strange beauty of an Arab vine calm, and that remoteness from moving alone in the vast sands. And yet 30 which, perhaps, no perfect thing, either there is something here that is certainly God-made or, because of God's breath in not of Europe, but that is not wholly of him, man-made, is wholly exempt — is the East — something very delicate, very lifted high before you under the cloudless pure, very sensitive, very individual,, free heaven of dawn. from the Eastern drowsiness, from the 35 You may even realize at once and for- heavy Eastern perfume which disposes ever, as you send on your carriage and the soul of man to inertia. stand for a while quite alone on the sands, It is the exquisite, vital, one might al- gazing, that to you the soul of Greece most say intellectual, freshness of Greece must always seem to be Doric. From which, between Europe and Asia, pre- 40 afar the Doric conquers. serves its eternal dewdrops — those dew- The ancient Hellenes, divided, at en- drops which still make it the land of the mity, incessantly warring among them- early morning. selves, were united in one sentiment : they Your carriage turns to the right, and in called all the rest of the nations ' bar- a moment you are driving along the shore 45 barians.' The Parthenon gives them rea- of a sea without wave or even ripple. In son. ' Unintelligible folk ' to this day the distance, across the purple water, is must acknowledge it, using the word ' bar- the calm mountain of the island of barian ' strictly in our modern sense. JEgina. Over there, along the curve of But the sun is higher, the morning the sandy bay, are the clustering houses 50 draws on ; you must be gone to Athens, of old Phalerum. This is new Phalerum, Down the long, straight, new road, be- with its wooden bath-houses, its one great tween rows of pepper-trees, passing a lit- hotel, its kiosks and cafes, its shadeless tie church which marks the spot where a plage, deserted now except for one old miscreant tried to assassinate King gentleman who, like almost every Greek 55 George, and always through beautiful, all over the country, is at this moment bare country like the desert, you drive, reading a newspaper in the sun. And presently you see a few houses, like Is there any special charm in new Pha- the houses of a quiet village; a few great A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 13 Corinthian columns rising up in a lonely Greek art the crown of wild olive, so we place beyond an arch tawny with old gold ; must give it surely also to the scenery of a public garden looking new but pleasant Greece. It is a loveliness of outline, of — not unlike a desert garden at the edge color, and above all of light, of the Suez Canal, — with a white statue 5 Almost everywhere in Greece you see (it is the statue of Byron) before it; then mountains, range upon range, closing a long, thick tangle of trees stretching far, about you or, more often, melting away and separated from the road and a line of into far distances, into outlines of shad- large apartment-houses only by an old and ows and dreams. Almost everywhere, or slight wooden paling ; a big square with a 10 so it seemed to me, you look upon the sea. garden sunken below the level you are on, And as the outlines of the mountains of and on your right a huge, bare white Greece are nearly always divinely calm, so building rather like a barracks. You are the colors of the seas of Greece are magi- in' Athens, and you have seen already the cally deep and radiant and varied. Arid Olympieion, the Arch of Hadrian, the 15 over mountains and seas fall changing Zappeion garden, Constitution Square, and wonders of light, giving to outline eternal the garden and the palace of the king. meanings, to color the depth of a soul. Coming to Athens for the first time by When you stand upon the Acropolis you this route, it is difficult to believe one is see not only ruins which, taking every- in the famous capital, even though one has 20 thing into consideration, are perhaps the seen the Acropolis. And I never quite most wonderful in the world, but also one lost the feeling there that I was in a de- of the most beautiful views of the world, lightful village, containing a cheery, bus- It is asserted as a fact by authorities that tling life, some fine modern buildings, and the ancient Greeks had little or no feeling many wonders of the past. Yet Athens is 25 for beauty of landscape. One famous large and is continually growing. One of writer on things Greek states that ' a fine the best and most complete views of it is view as such had little attraction for obtained from the terrace near the Acrop- them,' that is, the Greeks. It is very diffi- olis Museum, behind the Parthenon, cult for those who are familiar with the Other fine views can be had from Lyca- 30 sites the Greeks selected for their great bettus, the solitary and fierce-looking hill temples and theaters, such as the rock of against whose rocks the town seems al- the Acropolis, the heights at Sunium and most to surge, like a wave striving to over- at Argos, the hill at Taormina in Sicily, whelm it, and from that other hill, imme- etc., to feel assured of this, however lack- diately facing the Acropolis, on which 35 ing in allusion to the beauty of nature; stands the monument of Philopappos. unless in connection with supposed ani- It is easy to ascend to the summit of the mating intelligences, Greek literature may Acropolis, even in the fierce heat of a sum- be. It is almost impossible to believe it as mer day. A stroll up a curving road, the you stand on the Acropolis, mounting of some steps, and you are there, 4° All Athens lies beneath you, pale, al- five hundred and ten feet only above the most white, with hints of mauve and yel- level of the sea. But on account of the low, gray and brown, with its dominating solitary situation of the plateau of rock on palace, its tiny Byzantine churches, its which the temples are grouped and of its tiled and flat roofs, its solitary cypress- precipitous sides, it seems very much 45 trees and gardens. Lycabettus stands out, higher than it is. Whenever I stood on small, but bold, almost defiant. Beyond, the summit of the Acropolis I felt as if I and on every side, stretches the calm plain were on the peak of a mountain, as if from of Attica. That winding river of dust there one must be able to see all the king- marks the Via Sacra, along which the doms of the world and the glory of them. 50 great processions used to pass to Eleusis What one does see is marvelously, by the water. There are the dark groves almost ineffably beautiful. Herodotus of Academe, a place of rest in a bare land, called this land, with its stony soil and its The marble quarries gleam white on the multitudes of bare mountains, the ' rugged long flanks of Mount Pentelicus, and the nurse of liberty.' Though rugged, and 55 great range of Parnes leads on to JEga- often naked, nevertheless its loveliness — leos. Near you are the Hill of the and that soft word must be used — is so Nymphs, with its observatory; the rocky great and so pure that, as we give to plateau from which the apostle Paul spoke 14 WRITING OF TODAY of Christ to the doubting Athenians; the lions, its golden oil-jars, its Athene Par- new plantation at the foot of Philopappos thenos of gold and ivory, the mere naked which surrounds the so-called ■' Prison of shell of what it once was, is stupendous. Socrates.' Honey- famed Hymettus, gray No memory of the gigantic ruins of and patient, stretches toward the sea — 5 Egypt, however familiarly known, can live toward the shining Saronic Gulf and the in the mind, can make even the puniest bay of Phalerum. And there, beyond fight for existence, before this Doric front Phalerum, are the Piraeus and Salamis. of Pentelic marble, simple, even plain, but Mount Elias rules over the midmost isle still in its devastation supreme. The size of iEgina. Beneath the height of Sunium, 10 is great, but one has seen far greater where the Temple of Poseidon still lifts ruins. The fluted columns, lifted up on blanched columns above the passing mari- the marble stylobate which has been trod- ners who have no care for the sea-god's den by the feet of Pericles and Phidias, glory, lies the islet of Gaidaronisi, and the are huge in girth, and rise to a height of mountains of Megara and of Argolis lie 15 between thirty and forty feet. The archi- like dreaming shadows in the sunlight, trave above their plain capitals, with its Very pure, very perfect, is this great view, projecting molding, is tremendously mas- Nature here seems purged of all excesses, sive. The walls of the cella, or sanctuary and even nature in certain places can look of the temple, where they still remain, are almost theatrical, though never in Greece. 20 immense. But now, where dimness The sea shines with gold, is decked with reigned, — for in the days when the tem- marvelous purple, glimmers afar with sil- pie was complete no light could enter it ver, fades into the color of shadow. The except through the doorway, — the sun- shapes of the mountains are as serene as light has full possession. And from what the shapes of Greek statues. Though 25 was once a hidden place the passing trav- bare, these mountains are not savage, are eler can look out over land and sea. not desolate or sad. Nor is there here Some learned men have called the Par- any suggestion of that ' oppressive beauty ' thenon severe. It is wonderfully simple, against which the American painter-poet so simple that it is not easy to say exactly Frederic Crowninshield cries out in a re- 3° why it produces such an overpowering im- cent poem — of that beauty which weighs pression of sublimity and grandeur. But upon, rather than releases, the heart of it is not severe, for in severity there man. is something repellent, something that From this view you turn to behold the frowns. It seems to me that the impres- ' Parthenon. A writer who loved Greece 35 sion created by the Parthenon as a build- more than all other countries, who was ing is akin to that created by the Sphinx steeped in Greek knowledge, and who was as a statue. It suggests — seems actually deeply learned in archeology, has left it to send out like an atmosphere — a tre- on record that on his first visit to the mendous calm, far beyond the limits of Acropolis he was aware of a feeling of 4° any severity. disappointment. His heart bled over the The whole of the Parthenon, except the ravages wrought by man in this sacred foundations, is of Pentelic marble. And place — that Turkish powder-magazine in this marble is so beautiful a substance now the Parthenon which a shell from Vene- after centuries of exposure on a bare tians blew up, the stolen lions which saw 45 height to the fires of the sun, to the sea- Italy, the marbles carried to an English winds and the rains of winter, that it is museum, the statues by Phidias which impossible to wish it gilded, and painted clumsy workmen destroyed. with blue and crimson. From below in But so incomparably noble, so majesti- the plain, and from a long distance, the cally grand is this sublime ruin, that the 50 temple looks very pale in color, often in- first near view of it must surely fill many deed white. But when you stand on the hearts with an awe which can leave no Acropolis, you find that the marble holds room for any other feeling. It is incom- many hues, among others pale yellow, plete, but not the impression it creates. cocoa color, honey color, and old gold. I The Parthenon, as it exists to-day, shat- 55 have seen the columns at noonday, when tered, almost entirely roofless, deprived of they were bathed by the rays of the sun, its gilding and color, its glorious statues, glow with something of the luster of am- its elaborate and wonderful friezes, its ber, and look almost transparent. I have A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES IS seen them, when evening was falling, look stands on a jutting bastion just outside the almost black. Propylaea, and has been rebuilt from the The temple, which is approached original materials, which were dug up out through the colossal marble Propylaea, or of masses of accumulated rubbish. It is state entrance, with Doric colonnades and 5 Ionic, has a colonnade, is made of Pentelic steps of marble and black and deep-blue marble, and was once adorned with a se- Eleusinian stone, is placed on the very ries of winged victories in bas-relief, summit of the Acropolis, at the top of a Ionic like the Temple of Nike, but slope, now covered with fragments of ruin, much larger, the Erechtheum stands be- spattered blocks of stone and marble, sec- 10 yond the Propylaa, and not far from the tions of columns, slabs which once formed Parthenon, at the edge of the precipice parts of altars, and broken bits of painted beneath which lies the greater part of ceiling, but which was once a place of Athens. A marvelously personal element shrines and of splendid statues, among attaches to it and makes it unique, giving them the great statue of Athena Proma- 15 it a charm which sets it apart from all chos, in armor, and holding the lance other buildings. To find this you must go whose glittering point was visible from to the southwest, to the beautiful Porch of the sea. The columns are all fluted, and the Caryatids, which looks toward the all taper gradually as they rise to the Parthenon. architrave. And the flutes narrow as they 20 There are six of these caryatids, or maid- draw nearer and nearer to the capitals of ens, standing upon a high parapet of mar- the columns. The architrave was once ble and supporting a marble roof. Five hung with wreaths and decorated with of them are white, and one is a sort of shields. The famous frieze of the cella, yellowish black in color, as if she had once which represented in marble a great pro- 25 been black, but, having been singled out cession, and which ran round the external from her fellows, had been kissed for so wall of the sanctuary, is now in pieces, many years by the rays of the sun that her some of which are in the British Museum, original hue had become changed, bright- and some in Athens. A portion of this ened by his fires. Four of the maidens frieze may still be seen on the west front 3° stand in a line. Two stand behind, on of the temple. The cella had a ceiling of each side of the portico. They wear flow- painted wood. On one of its inner walls ing draperies, their hair flows down over I saw traces of red Byzantine figures, one their shoulders, and they support their apparently a figure of the Virgin. These burden of marble with a sort of exquisite date from the period when the Parthenon 35 submissiveness, like maidens choosing to was used as a Christian church, and was perform a grateful and an easy task that dedicated to Mary the mother of God, be- brings with it no loss of self-respect, fore it became a mosque, and, later, a I once saw a great English actress play Turkish powder-magazine. The white the part of a slave girl. By her imagina- marble floor, which is composed of great 40 tive genius she succeeded in being more blocks perfectly fitted together, and with- than a slave: she became a poem of slav- out any joining substance, contrasts ery. Everything ugly in slavery was elim- strongly with the warm hues of the inner inated from her performance. Only the flutes of the Doric columns. Here and beauty of devoted service, the willing ser- there in the marble walls may be seen 45 vice of love, — and slaves have been de- fragments of red and of yellow brick. voted to their masters, — was shown in her From within the Parthenon, looking out face, her gestures, her attitudes. Much of between the columns, you can see magnifi- what she imagined and reproduced is sug- cent views of country and sea. gested by these matchlessly tender and Two other temples form part of the 50 touching figures ; so soft that it is almost Acropolis, with the Propylaea and the Par- incredible that they are made of marble, thenorj, the Temple of Athene Nike and so strong that no burden, surely, would be the Erechtheum. They are absolutely dif- too great for their simple, yet almost di- ferent from the profoundly masculine Par- vine, courage. They are watchers, these thenon, and almost resemble two beautiful 55 maidens, not alertly, but calmly watchful female attendants upon it, accentuating by of something far beyond our seeing. They their delicate grace its majesty. are alive, but with a restrained life such The Temple of Nike is very small. It as we are not worthy to know, neither 16 WRITING OF TODAY fully human nor completely divine. They saw many Greek soldiers, wearied out have something of our wistfulness and with preparations for the Balkan war something also of that attainment toward against Turkey, which was declared while which we strive. They are full of that I was in Athens, sleeping on the wooden strange and eternal beauty that is in all 5 seats, or even stretched out at full-length the greatest things of Greece, from which on the light, yellow soil. For there is no the momentary is banished, in which the grass there. Beyond the Olympieion there perpetual is enshrined. Contemplation of is a stone trough in which I never saw one them only seems to make more deep their drop of water. This trough is the river- simplicity, more patient their strength, and » bed of the famous Ilissus ! more touching their endurance. Retire- The columns are very splendid, im- ment from them does not lessen, but al- mense in height, singularly beautiful in most increases, the enchantment of their color, — they are made of Pentelic marble, very quiet, very delicate spell. Even when — and with Corinthian capitals, nobly their faces can no longer be distinguished 15 carved. Those which are grouped closely and only their outlines can be seen, they together are raised on a platform of stone, do not lose one ray of their soft and ten- But there are two isolated columns which der vitality. They are among the eternal look even grander and more colossal than things in art, lifting up more than marble, those which are united by a heavy archi- setting free from bondage, if only for a 20 trave. The temple of which they are the moment, many that are slaves by their sub- remnant was erected in the reign of Ha- mission. drian to the glory of Zeus, and was one of About two years ago this temple was the most gigantic buildings in the world, carefully cleaned, and it is very white, and From the Zappeion garden you can see looks almost like a lovely new building 25 in the distance the snow-white marble not yet completed. Here and there the Stadium where the modern Olympic and white surface is stained with the glorious Pan-Hellenic games take place. It is gi- golden hue which beautifies the Parthe- gantic. When full, it can hold over fifty non, the Propylaea, the Odeum of Hero- thousand people. The seats, the staircases, des, the Temple of Theseus, the Arch of 30 the pavements are all of dazzling-white Hadrian, and the Olympieion. The in- marble, and as there is of course no roof, terior of the temple is full of scattered the effect of this vastness of white, under blocks of marble. In the midst of them, a bright-blue sky, and bathed in golden and as it were faithfully protected by fires, is almost blinding. All round the them, I found a tiny tree carefully and 35 Stadium cypress-trees have been planted, solemnly growing, with an air of self- and their dark-green heads rise above respect. Above the doorway of the north the outer walls, like long lines of spear- front is some very beautiful and delicate heads guarding a sacred inclosure. Two carving. This temple was once adorned comfortable arm-chairs for the king and with a frieze of Eleusinian stone and with 40 queen face two stela? of marble and the white marble sculpture. Its Ionic columns far-off entrance. The earthen track where are finely carved, and look almost the sports take place is divided from the strangely slender, if you come to them im- spectators by a marble barrier about five mediately after you have been among the feet high, and till you descend into it, columns of the Parthenon. Majesty and 45 it looks small, though it is really very charm are supremely expressed in these large. The entrance is a propylaeum. It two temples, the Erechtheum and the Par- is a great pity that immediately outside thenon, the smaller of which is on a lower this splendid building the hideous pano- level than the greater. One thinks again rama should be allowed to remain, cheap, of the happy slave who loves her mas- 50 vulgar, dusty, and despicable. I could not ter. help saying this to a Greek acquaintance. The group of magnificent, gold-colored He thoroughly agreed with me, but told Greco-Roman columns which is called me that the Athenians were very fond of the Olympieion stands in splendid isola- their panorama. tion on a bare terrace at the edge of the 55 In a straight line with the beautiful charming Zappeion garden. In this gar- Arch of Hadrian, and not far off, is the den, full of firs and pepper-trees, acacias, small and terribly defaced, but very grace- palms, convolvulus, and pink oleanders, I ful, Monument of Lysicrates, a circular A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES W chamber of marble, with small Corinthian city like a flood; within the streets, within columns, an architrave, and a frieze. It the houses, and within the lungs of all its is surrounded by a railing, and stands denizens, it lies intrenched and pitiless, rather forlornly in the midst of modern The chimneys pour forth their smoke, but houses. 5 the leaden air oppresses and repels it, and The Temple of Theseus, or more prop- it sinks to the ground, making the dark- erly of Hercules, on the other side of the ness denser. The gloom seems to have town, is a beautifully preserved building, risen from the shores of those streams of lovely in color, very simple, very complete, wailing and lamentation, baleful Acheron It is small, and is strictly Doric and very 10 and Cocytus environing Tartarus, where massive. Many people have called it tre- the thin shades cluster and move, like those mendously impressive, and have even com- who are now pent in this city on the pared it with the Parthenon. It seems to Thames. me that to do this is to exaggerate, to com- The darkness is not black, but of a deep pare the very much less with the very 15 brown. It is as though one walked at the much greater. There really is something bottom of a muddy sea. The farther wall severe in great massiveness combined with of this chamber is almost invisible — at small proportions, and I find this temple, ten o'clock in the morning. Above this noble though it is, severe. dreadful pall that hides his rays, the life- Athens contains several very handsome 20 giving sun, bursting with useless fire, now modern buildings, and one that I think beats upon the surface of the sea of really beautiful, especially on a day of shadow, but his baffled light is repelled or fierce sunshine or by moonlight. This is smothered in the misty deeps. Difficult the Academy, which stands in the broad is it for him who walks in an unlifted and airy University Street, at whose 25 night to believe that the sun still shines, mouth are the two cafes which Athenians Let us forth into the streets so still and call ' the Dardanelles.' It is in a line sorrowful. With our hands we grope our with the university and the national lu- way past garden-railings, feeling with ad- brary, is made of pure white marble from venturous foot for the steps or curbs. A Pentelicus, and is very delicately and dis- 30 glowing patch appears above us ; it seems creetly adorned with a little bright gold, incredibly far away. We put forth our the brilliance of which seems to add to the hand and touch the dank iron of a lamp- virginal luster of the marble. The cen- post. Not even fire and light avail against tral section is flanked by two tall and slen- the almighty fog. Footsteps resound der detached columns crowned with stat- 35 about us, but they are the footsteps of ues. Ionic colonnades relieve the classical ghosts, for one beholds no body. Now simplicity of the faqade, with some marble and then some human being brushes by — and terra-cotta groups of statuary. The a woman, announced, perhaps, by rustling general effect is very calm, pure, and dig- skirts or by some perfume cast from her nified, and very satisfying. The Atheni- 4° clothes ; perhaps a man, declared by the ans are proud, and with reason, of this thud of a cane on the flagstones or the beautiful building, which they owe to the dull glow of a cigar. generosity of one of their countrymen. Upon the main thoroughfares, a weird ,,. £ # # * * and muffled pandemonium prevails. From 45 out the heart of the yellow-reddish murk HI resounds the beat of horses' hoofs; now and then a spark flies close from their THE BLACK FOG i ron shoes. Hoarse warning cries are heard from everywhere, and sometimes, HERMAN SCHEFFAUER 5° where the fog for a moment is thinned, exaggerated shapes and monstrous figures [Atlantic Monthly, February, 1908. By permission loom Up and creep along, great trucks, of author and publisher.] ^^ afld omnibuses with l ante rns lit and The black fog has come. Over all the the drivers leading the horses. Then city it lies intact and deep. An absolute 55 again strange man-shaped spots appear, midnight reigns. Almost material, almost like demons come from infernal corridors ; tangible, almost massive, seems this en- they swell out of the darkness surrounded velope of sulphurous gloom. It invests the by faint red haloes. These are pedestri- 18 WRITING OF TODAY ans preceded by link-boys, bearing their parent stain out of the dunnest blankness flaming torches to guide their patrons on of the fog. One might imagine it the their way. The lofty and powerful electric vision of a cyclopean tomb of some long- arc-lights, so keenly radiant when the air buried Gesar lifted up out of the vistas is clear, now sputter dismally, invisible 5 of fading time. save at a few yards. From directly below A great policeman stands before us not the iron standards, the fierce white arc is a yard away, yet ghostly and insubstantial dimmed to the luminosity of a red-hot em- to the eye. To him there comes a little ber. Before some of the railway stations girl, terror-stricken and in tears, who, wave great gasoline flambeaux, and fires 10 straying from her mother, has been swal- in iron cressets struggle with the fog — lowed up in the mists, like beacons before the sea-castle of some ' I 've lost my mother, where is my medieval robber-lord. The detonators, mother ? ' she cries. placed upon the railway tracks in place ' Where do you live, little girl ? ' asks of light signals, incessantly rend the air. 15 the tall specter of the constable. The curbs are cumbered with useless hack- ' I live in Fulham, sir,' she replies, ney and hansom cabs, the horses unhar- ' Please, sir, which is the way to Fulham?' nessed, the drivers disconsolate. The The policeman points into the darkening crawling omnibuses, blundering along the wastes. indistinguishable streets, often meet or 20 ' You cannot find it now,' he says. ' Bet- mount upon the sidewalks amidst cries ter wait here, then come to the station and wild confusion, and there they remain, with me.' like ships becalmed at night. Those huge ' Where are you, little girl ? ' says a Behemoths and cars of Juggernaut, the voice, and a bent figure with outstretched gigantic, double-decked motor-omnibuses, 25 hands emerges through the walls of ob- with their two lurid yellow eyes and little scurity. ' Where are you ? I '11 show you sparks of red and green, stand trembling the way to Fulham. Come with me.' and snorting with impatience, immersed • It is an old man ; his beard is white as and obliterated in the fog. Universal snow; a placard glimmers faintly on his night enthralls the world-metropolis ; its 30 breast. He is blind. The little maid currents of commerce stagnate in its veins, places her hand in his ; they make two its mighty plans and purposes are frus- steps and the next instant are effaced in trated or delayed, and this central heart the fog. Only the blind know the way of the trade of the whole earth is stand- through this city that is blind, ing still in a dark paralysis. 35 Does the sun still move on overhead Onward into the night, into the mists, and the hours with him, or are time and into the unknown ! We see not and are the earth standing still ? After a long not seen. We pass and repass, all of us time we at last wander along the Strand, shrouded in the all-enveloping gloom, which is smitten with an unusual silence, along the daily walks where life roared in 4° The close current of its traffic is stayed the sunlight of yesterday; we pass, — lov- and disorganized; its thousands of pedes- ers may almost touch each other, each un- trians have shrunk to hundreds groping known to each, wives may pass their hus- through the choking miasma and the chan- bands and mothers their sons, mortal nels of tenebrous smoke, enemies may walk side by side and feel 45 How in the blindness that encompasses no stir of rage, the outcast and pariah may 'them do these dark-flitting shapes of men jostle with the peer of golden millions, for and women hurry on ! They are as shad- all are blind, helplessly blind ! Eerie is ows lost and dissolved in night. They are this fog-life ; London lies beneath its spec- the searchers and the symbols of the never- tral pall like a doomed state whose hope 5° ending quest for light, for happiness, for and whose daylight are wrecked by the peace. Something of the same feeling thick shadows of war or insurrection. comes upon me as once came upon me Swiftly we move along beside a stone when I walked through the empty streets wall surmounted by an iron rail which of the dead Pompeii and only my footfall serves as a guide. We recoil as a vast 55 echoed on its sunswept stones. Here each apparition looms up before us and our is by and to himself complete, a little ani- hands touch its cold, graven sides. It is mated fire in the heart, a little light in the the Marble Arch, rising like a pale trans- brain, in the veins a little warm red blood A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 19 that keeps the breathing mechanism astir ,fog that overpowers it. Few of the thou- so long as the fire burns. Out of the sands pressing along the paves have seen darkness they came, in darkness they it, and had their eyes beheld it for a walk, into the darkness they shall space, this apparition of the sign of human go. The Black Fog, like Death it- 5 love, it would but have called forth ideas self, is a great leveler. All these beings of the olden agony or a slight, subcon- are but phantoms to the eye, phantoms of scious tremble of reverence in those of re- human lives, dusky moths storm-driven to ligious blood. We repeat again the eternal and fro on the gusts of existence, each on interrogations : What is Truth ? and — its own quest, which is that dream of the 10 Where may Peace be found ? unattainable that will not come to pass. Is it here, perchance, where we now Now we are close to Saint Paul's stand, upon the cold stone arches of Lon- Churchyard. Here the mausolean night is don Bridge, above the ghostly rushing lifted for a space, and out of the blankness Thames whose clashing waves lap and of an umber-tinted vast swells forth a 15 swish against the stolid stone ? Whence vague and mystic bulk of gray, a shadow comes or goes this river, plunging out of Without shading or relief. It is the im- darkness into darkness, broad and vast mense cupola of the cathedral rising like with the mystery of existence, and the con- a mountain above the streets. The sun stant cry of ever-recurrent life? Down does battle with the flying mists about the 20 from the hills to the sea, we say, up from dome and melts them to a dull and sullen the sea to the cloud, then down to the hills * gold, wherein the star of day hangs like a again, and again onward to the sea. It is quivering globe of blood. It is a spec- the known and visible obedience to some tacle of soft yet somber sublimity, such as iron law. But seldom we venture to only the towering imaginations of a 25 pierce beneath the surfaces of semblance, Turner, a Dore, or a John Martin, ex- lest we alight upon truths unknown, hor- pressed by brushes of opulent wealth and rors negative to Hope, and see the old daring power, could conceive or execute, guides through life, blind and decrepit The drifting scud grows thinner and ever now, fall dead at our feet, or lest, cower- thinner in the upper air, and unfolds to 30 ing in our creeds, we fear, like savages him who gazes upward from the deep in the storm-swept woods, that the hand streets the gilded symbol of Christianity that lifts the veil will be withered by glowing softly in the golden haze, invested some bolt from the furious heavens, with a mild irradiance from the feeble Mantled in the palls of this everlasting ig- light of the sun. There it lifts and 35 norance, we stalk upon the highways of gleams above the shadows like the sweet life like shadows drowned in shadow, smile of the gentle Galilean whose sorrow Upon this ignorance the human heart and burthen it was and whose symbol it builds its dreams as with inspiration, and has remained. Below rolls the world, draws hope from the very truth that this swart-black with its crime and misery ; 4° life seems so ill a recompense for all that above, the titanic cross stretches wide its tears and torments the baffled mind, adrift golden arms as with an imploring appeal on the desert seas of mere conjecture, from the Son of Man to the Love of Man. Yet all nature about us is content, and the Pillars and cornices and angles of carven sojourn in the sunshine of all other liv- stone emerge faintly from the turbid chaos, 45 ing things is full of beauty and joy. But like dim suggestions in a dream, or half- to-day the city mourns in sackcloth and heard whispers out of midnight, all under ashes. the towering rood throbbing to the sky. Darkly the waters gurgle through this It is high noon ; a burst of bells suddenly murky night-in-day. Perhaps Peace is breaks forth from the gossamer towers, a 50 there, Upon their bosom or within their clanging chorus, loud, vibrant, and me- depths, to be borne onward in some oar- tallic. These violent voices are the chimes less, rudderless boat, past the muffled thun- that utter every day with their iron der of the metropolis, past fields filled with tongues the beloved national hymn, ' God the mystery of things that live and grow Save the King.' Now the strong glooms 55 and die, past the river's mouth where its darken about the dome once more; the lips of land speak a great farewell, out luster fades, and the great cross blurs into the wastes of the infinite sea. Lov- dimly back into the crowding ocean of ingly its breast would open and merge 20 WRITING OF TODAY one again into the elements of its mighty Ocean. Behind it is the ocean; but the vase, to be formed anew in the unceasing greater part of the town fronts on two ferment of processes of creation. sides on San Francisco Bay, a body of Over the bridge the breathing specters water always tinged with gold from the move; below, indistinct and long-drawn 5 great washings of the mountain, usually shapes fare by, silent and immense, past overhung with a haze, and of magnificent all the pride of the city, — bearing what color changes. Across the Bay to the burthens? steered by what ghostly helms- north lies Mount Tamalpais, about 3000 man? So the barge of dolor must cross feet high, and so close that ferries from the lamenting currents of the infernal 10 the waterfront take one in less than half river. The shadow of another boat, with an hour to the little towns of Sausalito sweeps groaning in their locks, glides by and Belvidere, at its foot. beneath. Within its ribs lie piled Tamalpais is a wooded mountain, with \iru 1 l j- •> , , -n j c ample slopes, and from it on the north What merchandise? whence, whither, and for I5 str ^ tch a ^ ay ridges of forest land; the PerchanS'it is a fate-appointed hearse, ° ut P osts of the g r . eat Nor i!? f : rn woods t of Bearing away to some mysterious tomb Sequoia sempervirens. This mountain Or Limbo of the scornful universe and the mountainous country to the south The joy, the peace, the life-hope, the abor- bring the real forest closer to San Fran- tions 20 cisco than to any other American city. Of all things good which should have been Within the last few years men have killed our portions deer on the slopes of Tamalpais and But have been strangled by that Citys looked down to see the cable cars crawl . curse - ing up the hills of San Francisco to the 25 south. In the suburbs coyotes still stole in and robbed hen roosts by night. The •*■ » people lived much out of doors. There is TUT? PTTV THAT WAS n ° tim6 ° f the y ^ T ' eXC6pt * Sh ° rt part injl uiI lnAi W/vo of the rainy season, when the weather T 30 keeps one from the fields. The slopes of WILL IKWIN Tamalpais are crowded with little villas [This is a recast of a newspaper article of the dotted through the woods, and these minor same title published in the 5mm, April 21, 1906, estates run tar up into the redwood coun- three days after the Visitation came upon San f rv Thp rlppn <~nvp<; nf "Rplvirlprp stipl- Francisco. It is here reprinted by permission of trv - * " e oeep COves 01 £SeiViaere, snel the Sun and of Mr. b. w. Huebsch, who repub- 35 tered by the wind from 1 amalpais, held I'S^^^ir^i^^H 11 }, b «tPrS m i Two omit " a colony of ' arks ' or houseboats, where ted passages are indicated by asterisks.] ,-;... , , ...' ., people lived in the rather disagreeable The old San Francisco is dead. The summer months, coming over to business gayest, lightest hearted, most pleasure lov- every day by ferry. Everything there in- ing city of the Western Continent, and in 40 vites out of doors. many ways the most interesting and ro- The climate of California is peculiar; mantic, is a horde of refugees living among it is hard to give an impression of it. In ruins. It may rebuild; it probably will; the region about San Francisco, all the but those who have known that peculiar forces of nature work on their own laws, city by the Golden Gate, have caught its 45 There is no thunder and lightning ; there flavor of the Arabian Nights, feel that it is no snow, except a flurry once in five can never be the same. It is as though a or six years ; there are perhaps half a pretty, frivolous woman had passed dozen nights in the winter when the ther- through a great tragedy. She survives, mometer drops low enough so that in the but she is sobered and different. If it 50 morning there is a little film of ice on ex- rises out of the ashes it must be a modern posed water. Neither is there any hot city, much like other cities and without weather. Yet most Easterners remaining its old atmosphere. in San Francisco for a few days remem- San Francisco lay on a series of hills ber that they were always chilly, and the lowlands between. These hills 55 * * * * * " * are really the end of the Coast Range of So much for the strange climate, which mountains, which stretch southward be- invites out of doors and which has played tween the interior valleys and the Pacific its part in making the character of the A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 21 people. The externals of the city are — The hills are steep beyond conception, or were, for they are no more — just as Where Vallejo Street ran up Russian Hill curious. One usually entered San Fran- it progressed for four blocks by regular cisco by way of the Bay. Across its yel- steps like a flight of stairs. It is unneces- low flood, covered with the fleets from the 5 sary to say that no teams ever came up strange seas of the Pacific, San Fran- this street or any other like it, and grass cisco presented itself in a hill panorama, grew long among the paving stones until Probably no other city of the world, ex- the Italians who live thereabouts took ad- cepting perhaps Naples, could be so viewed vantage of this herbage to pasture a cow at first sight. It rose above the passenger, 10 or two. At the end of four blocks, the as he reached dockage, in a succession of pavers had given it up and the last stage, hill terraces. At one side was Telegraph to the summit was a winding path. On Hill, the end of the peninsula, a height so the very top, a colony of artists lived in abrupt that it had a one hundred and fifty little villas of houses whose windows got foot sheer cliff on its seaward frontage. 15 the whole panorama of the bay. Luckily Further along lay Nob Hill, crowned with for these people, a cable car scaled the hill the Mark Hopkins mansion, which had on the other side, so that it was not much the effect of a citadel, and in later years of a climb to home. by the great, white Fairmount. Further With these hills, with the strangeness along was Russian Hill, the highest point. 20 of the architecture and with the green- Below was the business district, whose gray tinge over everything, the city fell low site caused all the trouble. always into vistas and pictures, a setting Except for the modern buildings, the for the romance which hung over every- fruit of the last ten years, the town pre- thing, which has always hung over life in sented at first sight a disreputable ap- 25 San Francisco since the padres came and pearance. Most of the buildings were low gathered the Indians about Mission Do- and of wood. In the middle period of the lores. '70's, when a great part of San Francisco And it was a city of romance and a gate- was building, the newly-rich perpetrated way to adventure. It opened out on the some atrocious architecture. In that time, 3° mysterious Pacific, the untamed ocean ; too, every one put bow windows on his and through the Golden Gate entered house to catch all of the morning sunlight China, Japan, the South Sea Islands, that was coming through the fog; and Lower California, the west coast of Cen- those little houses, with bow windows and tral America, Australia. There was a fancy work all down their fronts, were 35 sprinkling, too, of Alaska and Siberia, characteristic of the middle class residence From his windows on Russian Hill one districts. saw always something strange and sug- Then the Italians, who tumbled over gestive creeping through the mists of the Telegraph Hill, had built as they listed Bay. It would be a South Sea Island brig, and with little regard for streets, and their 40 bringing in copra, to take out cottons and houses hung crazily on a side hill which idols ; a Chinese junk after sharks' livers ; was little less than a precipice. The Chi- an old whaler, which seemed to drip oil, nese, although they occupied an abandoned home from a year of cruising in the business district, had remade their dwell- Arctic. Even the tramp windjammers ings Chinese fashion, and the Mexicans 45 were deep-chested craft, capable of round- and Spaniards had added to their houses ing the Horn or of circumnavigating those little balconies without which life the globe; and they came in streaked is not life to a Spaniard. and picturesque from their long voyag- Yet the most characteristic thing after ing. all was the coloring. The sea fog had a 50 In the orange colored dawn which al- trick of painting every exposed object a ways comes through the mists of that Bay, sea gray which had a tinge of dull green the fishing fleet would crawl in under tri- in it. This, under the leaden sky of a angular lateen sails; for the fishermen of San Francisco morning, had a depressing San Francisco Bay are all Neapolitans effect on first sight and afterward became 55 who have brought their customs and sail a delight to the eye. For the color was with lateen rigs stained an orange brown soft, gentle and infinitely attractive in and shaped, when the wind fills them, like mass. the ear of a horse. WRITING OF TODAY Along the waterfront the people of these Since then some of the peculiar character craft met. ' The smelting pot of the of the old plaza has gone, races,' Stevenson called it; and this was The Barbary Coast was a loud bit of always the city of his soul. There were hell. No one knows who coined the black Gilbert Islanders, almost indistin- 5 name. The place was simply three blocks guishable from negroes; lighter Kanakas of solid dance halls, there for the delight from Hawaii or Samoa; Lascars in tur- of the sailors of the world. On a fine bans; thickset Russian sailors; wild Chi- busy night every door blared loud dance nese with unbraided hair; Italian fisher- music from orchestras, steam pianos and men in tam o' shanters, loud shirts and 10 gramaphones, and the cumulative effect of blue sashes; Greeks, Alaska Indians, little the sound which reached the street was bay Spanish-Americans, together with chaos and pandemonium. Almost any- men of all the European races. These thing might be happening behind the came in and out from among the queer swinging doors. For a fine and pictur- craft, to lose themselves in the disrep- 15 esque bundle of names characteristic of the utable, tumble-down, but always mysteri- place, a police story of three or four years ous shanties and small saloons. In the ago is typical. Hell broke out in the Eye back rooms of these saloons South Sea Wink Dance Hall. The trouble was Island traders and captains, fresh from started by a sailor known as Kanaka Pete, the lands of romance, whaling masters, *> who lived in the What Cheer House, over people who were trying to get up treasure a woman known as Iodoform Kate, expeditions, filibusters, Alaskan miners, Kanaka Pete chased the man he had used to meet and trade adventures. marked to the Little Silver Dollar, where There was another element, less pic- he halted and punctured him. The by- turesque and equally characteristic, along 25 product of his gun made some holes in the the waterfront. San Francisco was the front of the Eye Wink, which were back eddy of European civilization — one proudly kept as souvenirs, and were prob- end of the world. The drifters came ably there until it went out in the fire, there and stopped, lingered a while to live This was low life, the lowest of the low. by their wits in a country where living 30 Until the last decade almost anything after a fashion has always been marvel- except the commonplace and the expected ously cheap. These people haunted the might happen to a man on the waterfront, waterfront and the Barbary Coast by night, The cheerful industry of shanghaing was and lay by day on the grass in Ports- reduced to a science. A citizen taking a mouth Square. 35 drink in one of the saloons which hung The square, the old plaza about which out over the water might be dropped the city was built, Spanish fashion, had through the floor into a boat, or he might seen many things. There in the first burst drink with a stranger and wake in the of the early days the vigilance Committee forecastle of a whaler bound for the Arc- used to hold its hangings. There, in the 40 tic. Such an incident is the basis of Frank time of the sand lot troubles, Dennis Norris's novel, Moran of the Lady Letty, Kearney, who nearly pulled the town and although the novel draws it pretty down about his ears, used to make his ora- strong, it is not exaggerated. Ten years tions which set the unruly to rioting. In ago the police, the Sailors' Union, and the later years Chinatown lay on one side of 45 foreign consuls, working together, stopped it and the Latin quarter and the ' Barbary all this. Coast ' on the other. Kearney Street, a wilder and stranger On this square the drifters lay all day Bowery, was the main thoroughfare of long and told strange yarns. Stevenson these people. An exiled Californian, lounged there with them in his time and 50 mourning over the city of his heart, has learned the things which he wove into said: The Wrecker and his South Sea sto- ' In a half an hour of Kearney Street I ries; and now in the center of the square could raise a dozen men for any wild ad- there stands the beautiful Stevenson mon- venture, from pulling down a statue to ument. In later years the authorities put 55 searching for the Cocos Island treasure.' up a municipal building on one side of this This is hardly an exaggeration. It was square and prevented the loungers, for de- the Rialto of the desperate, Street of the cency's sake, from lying on the grass. Adventurers. A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 23 These are a few of the elements which Heredity began it; climate has carried it made the city strange and gave it the on. All things that grow in California glamour of romance which has so strongly tend to become large, plump, luscious, attracted such men as Stevenson, Frank Fruit trees, grown from, cuttings of East- Norris, and Kipling. This life of the 5 ern stock, produce fruit larger and finer, if floating population lay apart from the reg- coarser in flavor, than that of the parent ular life of the city, which was distinctive tree. As the fruits grow, so the children in itself. grow. A normal, healthy, Californian The Californian is the second gener- woman plays out-of-doors from babyhood ation of a picked and mixed ancestry. 10 to old age. The mixed stock has given The merry, the adventurous, often the des- her that regularity of features which goes perate, always the brave, deserted the with a blend of bloods; the climate has South and New England in 1849 to rush perfected and rounded her figure; out-of- around the Horn or to try the perils of doors exercise from earliest youth has the plains. They found there a land al- 15 given her a deep bosom; the cosmetic ready grown old in the hands of the mists have made her complexion soft and Spaniards — younger sons of hidalgo and brilliant. At the University of California, many of them of the best blood of Spain, where the student body is nearly all native, To a great extent the pioneers intermar- the gymnasium measurements show that ried with Spanish women ; in fact, except 20 the girls are a little more than two inches for a proud little colony here and there, taller than their sisters of Vassar and the old, aristocratic Spanish blood is sunk Michigan. in that of the conquering race. Then The greatest beauty-show on the conti- there was an influx of intellectual French nent was the Saturday afternoon matinee people, largely overlooked in the histories 25 parade in San Francisco. Women in so- of the early days ; and this Latin leaven called ' society ' took no part in this func- has had its influence. tion. It belonged to the middle class, but Brought up in a bountiful country, the ' upper classes ' have no monopoly of where no one really has to work very beauty anywhere in the world. It had hard to live, nurtured on adventure, scion 30 grown to be independent of the matinees, of a free and merry stock, the real, native From two o'clock to haltpast five, a solid Californian is a distinctive type; as far procession of Dianas, Hebes, and Junos from the Easterner in psychology as the passed and repassed along the five blocks extreme Southerner is from the Yankee, between Market and Powell and Sutter He is easy going, witty, hospitable, lov- 35 and Kearney — the ' line ' of San Fran- able, inclined to be unmoral rather than cisco slang. Along the open-front cigar immoral in his personal habits, and easy stores, characteristic of the town, gilded to meet and to know. youth of the cocktail route gathered in Above all there is an art sense all knots to watch them. There was some- through the populace which sets it off 40 thing Latin in the spirit of this ceremony from any other population of the country. — it resembled church parade in Buenos This sense is almost Latin in its strength, Ayres. Latin, too, were the gay costumes and the Californian owes it to the leaven of the women, who dressed brightly in ac- of Latin blood. The true Californian lin- cord with the city and the climate. This gers in the north; for southern California 45 gaiety of costume was the first thing has been built up by ' lungers ' from the which the Eastern woman noticed — and East and Middle West and is Eastern in disapproved. Give her a year, and she, character and feeling. too, would be caught by the infection of Almost has the Californian developed a daring dress, racial physiology. He tends to size, to 50 In this parade of tall, deep bosomed, smooth symmetry of limb and trunk, to gleaming women, one caught the type and an erect, free carriage ; and the beauty of longed, sometimes, for the sight of a more his women is not a myth. The pioneers ethereal beauty — for the suggestion of were all men of good body; they had to soul within which belongs to a New Eng- be to live and leave descendants. The 55 land woman on whom a hard soil has be- bones of the weaklings who started for stowed a grudged beauty — for the mo- El Dorado in 1849 lie on the_ plains or in bility, the fire, which belongs to the the hill-cemeteries of the mining camps. Frenchwoman. The second generation of 24 WRITING OF TODAY ^__ France was in this crowd, it is true; but This restaurant life, however, does not climate and exercise had grown above express exactly the careless, pleasure-lov- their spiritual charm a cover of brilliant ing character of the people. In great part flesh. It was the beauty of Greece. their pleasures were simple, inexpensive, With such a people, life was always 5 and out of doors. No people were fonder gay. If the fairly Parisian gaiety did not of expeditions into the country, of picnics display itself on the streets, except in the — which might be brought off at almost matinee parade, it was because the winds any season of the year — and of long tours made open-air cafes disagreeable at all in the great mountains and forests. . seasons of the year. The life careless I0 Hospitality was nearly a vice. As in went on indoors or in the hundreds of the early mining days, if they liked the pretty estates — ' ranches ' the Californians stranger the people took him in. At the called them — which fringe the city. first meeting the San Francisco man had San Francisco was famous for its res- him put up at the club; at the second, he taurants and cafes. Probably they were 15 invited him home to dinner. As long as lacking at the top ; probably the very best, the stranger stayed he was being invited for people who do not care how they spend to week end parties at ranches, to little their money, was not to be had. But they dinners in this or that restaurant and to gave the best fare on earth, for the price, the houses of his new acquaintances, until at a dollar, seventy-five cents, a half a dol- 20 his engagements grew beyond hope of ful- lar, or even fifteen cents. filment. Perhaps there was rather too If one should tell exactly what could much of this kind of thing. At the end of be had at Coppa's for fifty cents or at a fortnight a visitor with a pleasant smile the Fashion for, say thirty-five, no New and a good story left the place a wreck. Yorker who has not been there would be- 25 This tendency ran through all grades of lieve it. The San Francisco French din- society — except, perhaps, the sporting ner and the San Francisco free lunch were people who kept the tracks and the fighting as the Public Library to Boston or the game alive These also met the stranger stockyards to Chicago. A number of — and also took him in. causes contributed to this. The country 30 Centers of man hospitality were the all about produced everything that a cook clubs, especially the famous Bohemian and needs and that in abundance — the bay the Family. The latter was an off-shoot of was an almost untapped fishing pound, the the Bohemian ; and it had been growing fruit farms came up to the very edge of fast and vying with the older organiza- the town, and the surrounding country 35 tion for the honor of entertaining pleasing produced in abundance fine meats, game, and distinguished visitors, all cereals, and all vegetables. The Bohemian Club, whose real founder But the chefs who came from France is said to have been the late Henry in the early days and stayed because they George, was formed in the '70's by news- liked this land of plenty were the head 40 paper writers and men working in the and front of it. They passed on their art arts or interested in them. It had grown to other Frenchmen or to the clever Chi- to a membership of 750. It still kept for nese. Most of the French chefs at the its nucleus painters, writers, musicians, biggest restaurants were born in Canton, and actors, amateur and professional. China. Later the Italians, learning of this 45 They were a gay group of men, and hos- country where good food is appreciated, pitality was their avocation. Yet the came and brought their own style, thing which set this club off from all Householders always dined out one or two others in the world was the midsummer nights of the week, and boarding houses High Jinks. were scarce, for the unattached preferred 50 The club owns a fine tract of redwood the restaurants. forest fifty miles north of San Francisco ****** on the Russian River. There are two The city never went to bed. There was varieties of big trees in California : the no closing law, so that the saloons kept Sequoia gigantea, and the Sequoia sem- open nights and Sundays at their own 55 pervirens. The great trees of the Mari- sweet will. Most of the cafes elected to posa grove belong to the gigantea species, remain open until two o'clock in the morn- The sempervirens, however, reaches the ing at least. diameter of sixteen feet, and some of the A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 25 greatest trees of this species are in the has heard who ever heard of San Fran- Bohemian Club grove. It lies in a cleft of cisco. A district six blocks long and two the mountains; and up one hillside there blocks wide, housed 30,000 Chinese when runs a natural out of doors stage of re- the quarter was full. The dwellings were markable acoustic properties. 5 old business blocks of the early days; but In August the whole Bohemian Club, the Chinese had added to them, had rebuilt or such as could get away from business, them, had run out their own balconies and went up to this grove and camped out entrances, and had given the quarter that for two weeks. On the last night they feeling of huddled irregularity which put on the Jinks proper, a great spectacle 10 makes all Chinese built dwellings fall natu- in praise of the forest with poetic words, rally into pictures. Not only this; they music, and effects done by the club. In had burrowed to a depth of a story or two late years this has been practically a under the ground, and through this ran masque or an opera. It cost about $10,- passages in which the Chinese transacted 000. It took the spare time of scores of 15 their dark and devious affairs — as the men for weeks; yet these 750 business smuggling of opium, the traffic in slave men, professional men, artists, newspaper girls, and the settlement of their difficul- workers, struggled for the honor of help- ties. ing out on the Jinks ; and the whole thing In the last five years there was less of was done naturally and with reverence. 20 this underground life than formerly, for It would not be possible anywhere else in the Board of Health had a cleanup some this country; the thing which made it time ago; but it was still possible to go possible was the art spirit which is in the from one end of Chinatown to the other Californian. • It runs in the blood. through secret underground passages. Who 's Who in America is long on the 25 The tourist, who always included China- arts and on learning and comparatively town in his itinerary, saw little of the real weak in business and the professions, quarter. The guides gave him a show by Now some one who has taken the trouble actors hired for his benefit. In reality the has found that more persons mentioned in place amounted to a great deal in a finan- Who 's Who by the thousand of the popu- 30 cial way. There were clothing and cigar lation were born in Massachusetts, than in factories of importance, and much of the any other State ; but that Massachusetts is Pacific rice, tea, and silk importing was crowded closely by California, with the in the hands of the merchants, who num- rest nowhere. The institutions of learn- bered several millionaires. Mainly, how- ing in Massachusetts account for her pre- 35 ever, it was a Tenderloin for the house eminence ; the art spirit does it for Cali- servants of the city — for the San Fran- fornia. The really big men nurtured on cisco Chinaman was seldom a laundry- California influence are few, perhaps ; but man ; he was too much in demand at fancy she has sent out an amazing number of prices as a servant. good workers in painting, in authorship, 40 The Chinese lived their own lives in in music, and especially in acting. their own way and settled their own quar- ' High society ' in San Francisco had rels with the revolvers of their highbind- settled down from the rather wild spirit ers. There were two theaters in the quar- of the middle period; it had come to be _ ter, a number of rich joss houses, three there a good deal as it is elsewhere. 45 newspapers, and a Chinese telephone ex- There was much wealth; and the hills of change. There is a race feeling against the western addition were growing up the Chinese among the working people of with fine mansions. Outside of the city, at San Francisco, and no white man, except Burlingame, there was a fine country club the very lowest outcasts, lived in the centering a region of country estates 50 quarter. which stretched out to Menlo Park. This On the slopes of Telegraph Hill dwelt club had a good polo team, which played the Mexicans and Spanish, in low houses, every year with teams of Englishmen from which they had transformed by balconies southern California and even with teams into a semblance of Spain. Above, and from Honolulu. 55 streaming over the hill, were the Italians. The foreign quarters are worth an arti- The tenement quarter of San Francisco cle in themselves. Chief of these was, of shone by contrast with those of Chicago course, Chinatown, of which every one and New York, for while these people 26 WRITING OF TODAY lived in old and humble houses they had ting diagonally across the street traffic, room to breathe and an eminence for light By virtue of the law governing right- and air. Their shanties clung to the side angled triangles I thus save as much as of the hill or hung on the very edge of the fifty feet and one-fifth of a minute of precipice overlooking the Bay, on the verge 5 time. In the course of a year this saving of which a wall kept their babies from amounts to sixty minutes, which may be falling. The effect was picturesque, and profitably spent over a two-reel presenta- this hill was the delight of painters. It tion of The Moonshiner's Bride, supple- was all more like Italy than anything in mented by an intimate picture of Lumber- the Italian quarter of New York and Chi- 10 ing in Saskatchewan. But with the com- cago — the very climate and surround- ing of warm weather my habits change, ings, the wine country close at hand, the It grows more difficult to plunge into the Bay for their lateen boats, helped them. murk of the Subway. Over by the ocean and surrounded by A foretaste of the languor of June is cemeteries in which there are no more 15 in the air. The turnstile storm-doors in burials, there is an eminence which is our office building, which have been put topped by two peaks and which the Span- aside for brief periods during the first de- ish of the early days named after the ceptiye approaches of spring, only to come breasts of a woman. The unpoetic Amer- back triumphant from Elba, have been icans had renamed it Twin Peaks. At its 20 definitely removed. The steel-workers foot was Mission Dolores, the last mission pace their girders twenty floors high al- planted by the Spanish padres in their most in mid-season form, and their pneu- march up the coast, and from these hills matic hammers scold and chatter through the Spanish looked for the first time upon the sultry hours. The soda-fountains are the golden bay. 25 bright with new compounds whose names Many years ago some one set up at the ingeniously reflect the world's progress summit of this peak a sixty foot cross of from day to day in politics, science, and timber. Once a high wind blew it down, the arts. From my window I can see the and the women of the Fair family then long black steamships pushing down to had it restored so firmly that it would re- 30 the sea, and they raise vague speculations sist anything. It has risen for fifty years in my mind about the cost of living in the above the gay, careless, luxuriant, and vicinity of Sorrento and Fontainebleau. lovable city, in full view from every emi- On such a day I am reminded of my phy- nence and from every valley. It stands sician's orders, issued last December, to to-night, above the desolation of ruins. 35 walk a mile every afternoon on leaving The bonny, merry city — the good, gray my office. So I stroll up Broadway with city — O that one who has mingled the the intention of taking my train farther wine of her bounding life with the wine up-town, at Fourteenth Street, of his youth should live to write the obitu- The doctor did not say stroll. He said ary of Old San Francisco ! 40 a brisk walk with head erect, chest thrown out, diaphragm well contracted, and a gen- eral aspect of money in the bank. But here enters human perversity. The only v place where I am in the mood to walk „ 45 after the prescribed military fashion is in ltlh, blKiLHl the open country. Just where by all ac- studying the love i y texts ^Atlantic Monthly, February. ,9,4. Republished ™ hit * NatU1 "f haS .A et down in th f mo ^ in BeUhazzar Court (Henry Holt and Co.), 1914. 50 type-iorms selected from her inexhaustible Hsh P e r rs] ed by permission o£ the author and pub - fonts,— in the minion of ripening berries, in the nonpareil of crawling insect life, It is two short blocks from my office the agate of tendril and filament, and the near Park Row to the Subway station 12-point diamond of the dust, — ■ there I where I take the express for Belshazzar 55 stride along and see little. Court. Eight months in the year it is my And in the city, where I should swing endeavor to traverse _ this distance as along briskly, I lounge. What is there quickly as I can. This is done by cut- on Broadway to linger over? On Broad- A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 27 way, Nature has used her biggest, fattest of proprietary medicine bottles in the type-forms. Tall, flat, building fronts, drug shops are of paper. ' Why/ said brazen with many windows and ribbed Williams, 'even the jewelry sold in the with commercial gilt lettering six feet Japanese auction stores is not genuine, high; shrieking proclamations of auction 5 and the sellers are not Japanese.' sales written in letters of fire on vast can- This bustling mart of commerce, as the vasses ; railway posters in scarlet and blue generation after the Civil War used to and green ; rotatory barber-poles striving say, is only a world of illusion. Artificial at the national colors and producing ver- flowers, artificial fruits, artificial limbs, tigo ; banners, escutcheons, crests, in all 1° tobacco, rubber, silks, woolens, straws, the primary colors — surely none of these gold, silver. The young men and women things needs poring over. And I know who manipulate razors and elastic cords them with my eyes closed. I know the are real, but not always. Williams and I windows where lithe youths in gymnasium once stood for a long while and gazed at dress demonstrate the virtue of home ex- 15 a young woman posing in a drug-shop ercises; the windows where other young window, and argued whether she was men do nothing but put on and take off alive. Ultimately she winked and Wil- patent reversible near-linen collars ; where liams gloated over me, But how do I young women deftly roll cigarettes ; where know her wink was real ? At any rate other young women whittle at sticks with 20 the great mass of human life in the win- miraculously stropped razors. I know dows is artificial. The ladies who smile these things by heart, yet I linger over out of charming morning costumes are them in flagrantly unhygienic attitudes, obviously of lining and plaster. Their my shoulders bent forward and my chest smug herculean husbands in pajamas pre- and diaphragm in a position precisely the 25 serve their equanimity in the severest win- reverse of that prescribed by the doctor. ter weather only because of their wire- Perhaps the thing that makes me lin- and-plaster constitution. The baby repos- ger before these familiar sights is the odd ing in its beribboned crib is china and circumstance that in Broadway's shop- excelsior. Illusion everywhere, windows Nature is almost never herself, 3° But the Broadway crowd is real. You but is either supernatural or artificial, only have to buffet it for five minutes to Nature, for instance, never intended that feel, in eyes and arms and shoulders, how razors should cut wood and remain sharp ; real it is. When I was a boy and was that linen collars should keep on getting taken to the circus it was always an amaz- cleaner the longer they are worn ; that 35 ing thing to me that there should be so glass should not break ; that ink should not many people in the street moving in a di- stain; that gauze should not tear; that an rection away from the circus. Something object worth five dollars should sell for of this sensation still besets me whenever $1.39; but all these things happen in we go down in the Subway from Belshaz- Broadway windows. Williams, whom I 4° zar Court to hear Caruso. The presence meet now and then, who sometimes turns of all the other people on our train is sim- and walks up with me to Fourteenth pie enough. They are all on their way to Street, pointed out to me the other day hear Caruso. But what of the crowds in how strange a thing it was that the one the trains that flash by in the opposite street which has become a synonym for 45 direction ? It is not a question of feeling ' real life ' to all good suburban Ameri- sorry for them. I try to understand and cans is not real at all, but is crowded I fail. But on Broadway on a late sum- either with miracles or with imitations. mer afternoon the obverse is true. The The windows on Broadway glow with natural thing is that the living tide as it wax fruits and with flowers of muslin and 50 presses south shall beat me back, halt me, taffeta drawn by bounteous Nature from eddy around me. I know that there are her storehouses in Parisian garret work- people moving north with me, but I am shops. Broadw-ay's ostrich feathers have not acutely aware of them. This onrush been plucked in East Side tenements, of faces converges on me alone. It is I The huge cigars in the tobacconist's win- 55 against half the world, dows are of wood. The enormous bottles And then suddenly out of the surge of of champagne in the saloons are of card- faces one leaps out at me. It is Williams, board, and empty. The tall scaffoldings whose doctor has told him that the surest 28 WRITING OF TODAY way of fighting down the lust for tobacco hour ago, as I was watching the long, is to walk down from his office to the black steamers bound for Sorrento and ferry every afternoon. Williams and I Fontainebleau, the monotony of one's salute each other after the fashion of treadmill work, the flat unprofitableness Broadway, which is to exchange greetings 5 of scribbling endlessly on sheets of paper, backward over the shoulder. This is the had become almost a nausea. But Wil- first step in an elaborate minuet. Because Hams will know nothing of this from me. we have passed each other before recog- Why should he ? He may have been sit- nition came, our hands fly out backward, ting up all night with a sick child. At this Now we whirl half around, so that I who i° very moment the thought of the little have been moving north face the west, parched lips, the moan, the unseeing eyes, while Williams, who has been traveling may be tearing at his entrails; but he in south, now looks east. Our clasped hands turn gives me the good word, and many strain at each other as we stand there others after that, and we pass on. poised for flight after the first greeting. 15 But sometimes I doubt. This splendid A quarter of a minute perhaps, and we optimism of people on Broadway, in the have said good-by. Subway, and in the shops and offices — is But if the critical quarter of a minute it really a sign of high spiritual courage, passes, there ensues a change of geo- or is it just lack of sensibility? Do we graphical position which corresponds to a 20 find it easy to keep a stiff upper lip, to change of soul within us. I suddenly say buck up, to never say die, because we are to myself that there are plenty of trains brave men, or simply because we lack the to be had at Fourteenth Street. Williams sensitiveness and the imagination to react recalls that another boat will leave Bat- to pain ? It may be even worse than that, tery Place shortly after the one he is 25 It may be part of our commercial gift for bound for. So the tension of our out- window-dressing, for putting up a good stretched arms relaxes. I, who have been front. facing west, complete the half circle and Sometimes I feel that Williams has no swing south. Williams veers due north, right to be walking down Broadway on and we two men stand face to face. The 30 business when there is a stricken child at beat and clamor of the crowd fall away home. The world cannot possibly need from us like a well-trained stage mob. him at that moment as much as his own We are in Broadway, but not of it. flesh and blood does. It is not courage ; ' Well, what 's the good word ? ' says it is brutish indifference. At such times Williams. 35 1 am tempted to dismiss as mythical all When two men meet on Broadway the this fine talk about feelings that run deep spirit of optimism strikes fire. We begin beneath the surface, and bruised hearts by asking each other what the good word that ache under the smile. If a man is. We take it for granted that neither really suffers he will show it. If a man of us has anything but a chronicle of vie- 4° cultivates the habit of not showing emo- tory and courage to relate. What other tion he will end by having none to show, word but the good word is tolerable in How much of Broadway's optimism is — the lexicon of living, upstanding men? But here I am paraphrasing William Failure is only for the dead. Surrender is James's Principles of Psychology, which for the man with yellow in his nature. 45 the reader can just as well consult for So Williams and I pay our acknowledg- himself in the latest revised edition of ments to this best of possible worlds. I 1907. give Williams the good word. I make no Also, I am exaggerating. Most likely allusion to the fact that I have spent a Williams's children are all in perfect miserable night in communion with neu- 50 health, and my envelope from the editor ralgia; how can that possibly concern has brought a check instead of a rejec- him ? Another manuscript came back this tion slip. It is on such occasions that morning from an editor who regretted that Williams and I, after shaking hands the his is the most unintelligent body of read- way a locomotive takes on water on the ers in the country. The third cook in 55 run, wheel around, halt, and proceed to three weeks left us last night after mak- buy something at the rate of two for a ing vigorous reflections on my wife's good quarter. If any one is ever inclined to nature and my own appearance. Only an doubt the spirit of American fraternity, it A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 29 is only necessary to recall the number of coat. At odd moments during the day the commodities for men that sell two for thought of doctor's bills, rent bills, school twenty-five cents. In theory, the two bills, has insisted on receiving attention, cigars which Williams and I buy for twen- At the end of the day, laden with parcels ty-five cents are worth fifteen cents apiece. 5 from the market, from the hardware As a matter of fact they are probably ten- store, from the seedman, you are bound cent cigars. But the shopkeeper is wel- for the ferry to catch the 5.43, when you come to his extra nickel. It is a small meet Smith, who, having passed the good price to pay for the seal of comradeship word, sends you on your way with the that stamps his pair of cigars selling for a "> injunction to be good — not to play rou-- single quarter. Two men who have con- lette, not to open wine, not to turkey-trot, eluded a business deal in which each has not to joy-ride, not to haunt the stage door, commendably tried to get the better of the Be good, O simple, humorous, average other may call for twenty-five cent per- suburban American ! fectos or for half-dollar Dreadnoughts. I « I take back that word suburban. The understand there are such. But friends Sunday Supplement has given it a mean- sitting down together will always demand ing which is not mine. I am speaking cigars that go for a round sum, two for a only of the suburban in spirit, of a sim- quarter or three for fifty (if the editor's plicity, a meekness which is of the soul check is what it ought to be). 20 only. Outwardly there is nothing subur- When people speak of the want of real ban about the crowd on lower Broadway, comradeship among women, I sometimes The man in the street is not at all the wonder if one of the reasons may not be diminutive, apologetic creature with side that the prices which women are accus- whiskers whom Mr. F. B. Opper brought tomed to pay are individualistic instead of 25 forth and named Common People, who fraternal. The soda fountains and the begat the Strap-Hanger, who begat the street cars do not dispense goods at the Rent-Payer, and the Ultimate Consumer, rate of two items for a single coin. It is The crowd on lower Broadway is alert and infinitely worse in the department stores, well set up. Yes, though one hates to do Treating a friend to something that costs 30 it, I must say ' clean-cut.' The men on $2.79 is inconceivable. But I have really the sidewalk are young, limber, sharp- wandered from my point. faced, almost insolent young men. There ' Well, 1 be good,' says Williams, and are not very many old men in the crowd, rushes off to catch his boat. though I see any number of gray-haired The point I wish to make is that on 35 young men. Seldom do you detect the Broadway people pay tribute to the prin- traditional signs of age, the sagging lines ciple of goodness that rules this world, of the face, the relaxed abdominal con- both in the way they greet and in the tour, the tamed spirit. The young, the way they part. We salute by asking each young-old, the old-young, but rarely quite other what the good word is. When we 40 the old. say good-by we enjoin each other to be I am speaking only of externals, good. The humorous assumption is that Clean-cut, eager faces are very frequently gay devils like Williams and me need to disappointing. A very ordinary mind may be constantly warned against straying off be working behind that clear sweep of into the primrose paths that run out of 45 brow and nose and chin. I have known Broadway. the shock of young men who look like Simple, humorous, average American kings of Wall Street and speak like shoe man ! You have left your suburban couch clerks. They are shoe clerks. But the in time to walk half a mile to the station appearance is there, that athletic carriage and catch the 7.59 for the city. You have 50 which is helped out by our triumphant, read your morning paper; discussed the ready-made clothing. I suppose I ought weather, the tariff, and the prospects for to detest the tailor's tricks which iron out lettuce with your neighbor; and made the all ages and all stations into a uniformity office only a minute late. You have been of padded shoulders and trim waistlines fastened to your desk from nine o'clock to 55 and hips. I imagine I ought to despise five, with half an hour for lunch, which our habit of wearing elegant shoddy where you have eaten in a clamorous, overheated the European chooses honest, clumsy restaurant while you watched your hat and woolens. But I am concerned only with 30 WRITING OF TODAY externals, and in outward appearances a alluring lines, gives her the high privilege Broadway crowd beats the world. Ms- of charm — and neurosis, thetically we simply are in a class by our- Williams and I pause at the Subway en- selves when compared with the English- trances and watch the earth suck in the man and the Teuton in their skimpy, ill-cut 5 crowd. It lets itself be swallowed up with garments. Let the British and German meek good-nature. Our amazing good- ambassadors at Washington do their nature! Political philosophers have de- worst. This is my firm belief and I will plored the fact. They have urged us to maintain it against the world. The truth be quicker-tempered, more resentful of must out. Ruat ccelum. Ich kann nicht 1° being stepped upon, more inclined to write anders. J'y suis, j'y reste. letters to the editor. I agree that only in Williams laughs at my lyrical outbursts, that way can we be rid of political bosses, But I am not yet through. I still have to of brutal policemen, of ticket-speculators, speak of the women in the crowd. What of taxicab extortioners, of insolent wait- an infinitely finer thing is a woman than 15 ers, of janitors, of indecent congestion in a man of her class ! To see this for your- travel, of unheated cars in the winter and self you have only to walk up Broadway barred-up windows in summer. I am at until the southward-bearing stream breaks heart with the social philosophers. But off and the tide begins to run from west then I am not typical of the crowd, to east. You have passed out of the com- 20 When my neighbor's elbow injects itself mercial district into the region of fac- into the small of my back, I twist around tories. It is well on toward dark, and the and glower at him. I forget that his el- barracks that go by the unlovely name of bow is the innocent mechanical result of a loft buildings, are pouring out their bat- whole series of elbows and backs extend- talions of needle-workers. The crowd has 25 ing the length of the car, to where the become a mass. The nervous pace of first cause operates in the form of a sta- lower Broadway slackens to the steady, tion-guard's shoulder ramming the human patient tramp of a host. It is an army of cattle into their stalls. In the faces about women, with here and there a flying de- me there is no resentment. Instead of tachment of the male. 3° smashing windows, instead of raising bar- On the faces of the men the day's toil ricades in the Subway and hanging the has written its record even as on the train-guards with their own lanterns about women, but in a much coarser hand. Fa- their necks, the crowd sways and bends to tigue has beaten down the soul of these the lurching of the train, and young men into brutish indifference, but in the 35 voices call out cheerfully, ' Plenty of room women it has drawn fine the flesh only to ahead.' make it more eloquent of the soul. In- Horribly good-natured ! We have taken stead of listlessness, there is wistfulness. a phrase which is the badge of our shame Instead of vacuity you read mystery. In- and turned it into a jest. Plenty of room nate grace rises above the vulgarity of the 40 ahead ! If this were a squat, ill-formed dress. Cheap, tawdry blouse and imita- proletarian race obviously predestined to tion willow-plume walk shoulder to shoul- subjection, one might understand. But der with the shoddy coat of the male, that a crowd of trim, well-cut, self-reliant copying Fifth Avenue as fifty cents may Americans, sharp-featured, alert, insolent attain to five dollars. But the men's 45 as I have called them, that they should shoddy is merely a horror, whereas woman submit is a puzzle. Perhaps it is because transfigures and subtilizes the cheap ma- of the fierce democracy of it all. The terial. The spirit of grace which is the crush, the enforced intimacies of physical birthright of her sex cannot be killed — contact, the feeling that a man's natural not even by the presence of her best young 50 condition is to push and be pushed, to man in Sunday clothes. She is finer by shove ahead when the opportunity offers the heritage of her sex, and America has and to take it like a man when no chance accentuated her title. This America presents itself — that is equality. A seat which drains her youthful vigor with over- in the Subway is like the prizes of life for work, which takes from her cheeks the 55 which men have fought in these United color she has brought from her Slavic or States. You struggle, you win or lose. Italian peasant home, makes restitution If the other man wins there is no envy; by remolding her in more delicate, more admiration rather, provided he has not A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 31 shouldered and elbowed out of reason, these grotesque creations have become a That godlike freedom from envy is passing reality to millions of readers. It is no today, and perhaps the good nature of the longer a question of humor, it is a vice, crowd in the Subway will pass. I see The Desperate Desmonds, the Newly- signs of the approaching change. People 5 weds, and the Dingbats, have acquired a do not call out, ' Plenty of room ahead,' horrible fascination. Otherwise I cannot so frequently as they used to. see why readers of the funny page should Good-natured when dangling from the appear to be memorizing pages from strap in the Subway, good-natured in Euclid. front of baseball bulletins on Park Row, 10 This by way of anticipation. What the good'-natured in the face of so much op- doctor has said of exercise being a habit pression and injustice, where is the sup- which grows easy with time is true. It is posed cruelty of the ' mob ' ? I am ready the first five minutes of walking that are to affirm on oath that the mob is not vin- wearisome. I find myself strolling past dictive, that it is not cruel. It may be a 15 Fourteenth Street, where I was to take bit sharp-tongued, fickle, a bit mischievous, my train for Belshazzar Court. Never but in the heart of the crowd there is no mind, Forty-second Street will do as well, evil passion. The evil comes from the I am now on a different Broadway. The leaders, the demagogues, the professional crowd is no longer north and south, but distorters of right thinking and right feel- 20 flows in every direction. It is churned up ing. The crowd in the bleachers is not at every corner and spreads itself across the clamorous, brute mob of tradition, the squares and open places. Its appear- I have watched faces in the bleachers and ance has changed. It is no longer a fac- in the grand-stand and seen little of that tory population. Women still predomi- fury which is supposed to animate the fan. 25 nate, but they are the women of the pro- For the most part he sits there with folded fessions and trades which center about arms, thin-lipped, eager, but after all con- Madison Square — business women of in- scious that there are other things in life dependent standing, women from the mag- besides baseball. No, it is the leaders, the azine offices, the publishing houses, the baseball editors, the cartoonists, the hu- 30 insurance offices. You detect the bachelor morists, the professional stimulators of girl in the current which sets in toward ' local pride,' with their exaggerated gloat- the home quarters of the undomesticated, ings over a game won, their poisonous the little Bohemias, the foreign eating- attacks upon a losing team, who are re- places whose fixed table d'hote prices flash sponsible. It is these demagogues who 35 out in illumined signs from the side drill the crowd in the gospel of loving only streets. Still farther north and the crowd a winner — but if I keep on I shall be in becomes tinged with the current of that politics before I know it. Broadway which the outside world knows If you see in the homeward crowd in best. The idlers begin to mingle with the the Subway a face over which the pall of 40 workers, men in English clothes with depression has settled, that face very likely canes, women with plumes and jeweled is bent over the comic pictures in the even- reticules. You catch the first heart-beat ing paper. I cannot recall seeing any one of Little Old New York, smile over these long serials of humorous The first stirrings of this gayer Broad- adventure which run from day to day and 45 way die down as quickly almost as they from year to year. I have seen readers manifested themselves. The idlers 'and turn mechanically to these lurid comics those who minister to them have heard and pore over them, foreheads puckered the call of the dinner hour and have van- into a frown, lips unconsciously spelling ished, into hotel doors, into shabbier quar- out the long legends which issue in the 50 ters by no means in keeping with the cut form of little balloons and lozenges from of their garments and their apparent in- that amazing portrait gallery of dwarfs, difference to useful employment. Soon giants, shrilling viragos and their diminu- the street is almost empty. It is not a tive husbands, devil-children, quadrupeds, beautiful Broadway in this garish interval insects, — ■ an entire zoology. If any stim- 55 between the last of the matinee and shop- ulus rises from these pages, to the puzzled ping crowd and the vanguard of the night brain, the effect is not visible. I imagine crowd. The monster electric sign-boards that by dint of repetition through the years have not begun to gleam and flash and 32 WRITING OF TODAY revolve and confound the eye and the senses. At night the electric Niagara VI hides the squalid fronts of ugly brick, the T Tr-tj'r dark doorways, the clutter of fire-escapes, CONEY ISLAND AT NlUtil the rickety wooden hoardings. Not an 5 ttttxttjitud imperial street this Broadway at 6.30 of JAMES HUNEK.hR a summer's afternoon. Cheap jewelry ., .„„„„,. T „ T „„, t,.-,,,, ; , , ,. . ., , r u INew York Herald, August 10, 1906. Repub- shops, Cheap tobacconists shops, Cheap lisfeeci in New Cosmopolis (Chas. Scribner'a • haberdasheries, cheap restaurants, grimy Sons) 1915. Reprinted by permission of the aus i-.li r ■ j i • 1 i thor and publishers.] little newspaper agencies and ticket- 10 * offices, and ' demonstration ; stores for It was the hottest night of the summer patent foods, patent waters, patent razors, at Coney Island. All day a steaming cur- O Gay White Way, you are far from tain of mist hid the sun from the eyes of gay in the fast-fading light, before the men and women and children; yet proved magic hand of Edison wipes the wrinkles 15 no shield against the blasting heat. Hu- from your face and galvanizes you into midity and not the sun-rays had been the hectic vitality ; far from alluring with your enemy. And when a claret-colored disk . tinsel shop-windows, with your puffy- showed dully through the nacreous vapors faced, unshaven men leaning against door- just before setting, we knew that the posts and chewing pessimistic toothpicks, 20 night would bring little respite from the your sharp-eyed newsboys wise with the horror of the waking hours. It was a wisdom of the Tenderloin, and your itiner- time to try men's nerves. The average ant women whose eyes wander from side obligations of life had faded into the abyss to side. It is not in this guise that you of general indifference, one that had ab- draw the hearts of millions to yourself, O 25 sorbed the exactions of daily behavior — dingy, Gay White Way, O Via Lobsteria politeness, order, sobriety, and decency. Dolorosa ! Add a few notches upward on the ther- Well, when a man begins to moralize it mometer, and mankind soon reverts to the is time to go home. I have walked farther habits and conditions of his primitive an- than I intended, and I am soft from lack 30 cestors. The ape, the tiger, and the jackal of exercise, and tired. The romance of in all of us come to the surface with the crowd has disappeared. Romance shocking rapidity. We are, in a reason- cannot survive that short passage of Long- able analysis, the victims of our environ- acre Square, where the art of the theater ment, the slaves of temperature. Heat and of the picture-postcard flourish in an 35 and cold have produced the African and atmosphere impregnated with gasoline, the Laplander. At Coney Island during a As I glance into the windows of the auto- torrid spell we are very near the soil; we mobile salesrooms and catch my own re- cast to the winds modesty, prudence, and flection in the enamel of Babylonian dignity. Then, life is worth living only limousines I find myself thinking all at 4° when stripped to the skin, once of the children at home. They ex- Three seasons had I passed without a pand and fill up the horizon. Broadway visit to this astonishing bedlam, yet I disappears. I smile into the face of a found the place well-nigh unrecognizable, painted promenader, but how is she to Knowing old Coney Island, the magnitude know that it is not at her I smile but at 45 of its changes did not so much amaze and the sudden recollection of what the baby terrify me. One should never be amazed said at the breakfast-table that morning? in America. After an hour's hasty sur- Like all good New Yorkers when they vey, Atlantic City seemed a normal spot, enter the Subway, I proceed to choke up Broad stretches of board walk, long, all my senses against contact with the ex- 50 sweeping beaches, space to turn about — ternal world, and thus resolving myself these and other items might be added, into a state of coma, I dip down into the But at Coney Island the cramped positions bowels of the earth, whence in due time one must assume to stand or move, the I am spewed out two short blocks from fierce warfare of humanity as it forces its Belshazzar Court. 55 way along the streets or into the crazy shows — surely conceived by madmen for madmen — the indescribable and hideous symphony of noise running the gamut A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 33 from shrill steam-whistles to the diapa- through streets that are a bewildering sonic roar of machinery; decidedly the muddle of many nations, many architec- entire place produced the sensation of tures ; deeds of Western violence and rob- abnormality, of horrible joys grabbed at bery, illustrated with a realism that is by a savage horde of barbarians, incapable 5 positively enthralling ; Japanese and Irish, of repose even in their moments of leisure. Germans and Indians, Hindus and Italians, Some one has said that the Englishman cats and girls and ponies and — the list takes his pleasures sadly ; then we must sets whirring the wheels of the biggest of take ours by rude assault. All Coney dictionaries. Island reminded me of a disturbed ant- 10 In Dreamland there is a white tower heap, the human ants ferocious in their that might rear itself in Seville and cause efforts to make confusion thrice con- no comment. 1 Hemming it about are founded, to heap up horrors of sound and walls of monstrosities — laughable, shock- of sight. ing, sinister, and desperately depressing. There must be in every one, no matter 15 In the center flying boats cleave the air ; how phlegmatic, a residuum of energy from the top of a crimson lighthouse flat, which may boil over when some exciting sled-like barges plunge down a liquid rail- event knocks at the door of our being. It road, while from every cavern issue is, psychologists assure us, the play-in- screams of tortured and delighted humans stinct of the animal in us that delights in 20 and the hoarse barking of men with mega- games innocent and dangerous. If forty phones. They assault your ears with their thousand people assemble to see a game of invitations, protestations, and blasphemies, baseball, how many more would gather You are conjured to ' go to Hell-gate ' ; with feverish gaiety if there were a surety you are singled out by some brawny indi- of the umpire's death at every game ? 25 vidual with threatening intonations and The Romans daily witnessed men and bade enter the animal show where a lion women destroyed in the arena of their cir- or a tiger is warranted to claw a keeper at cus — witnessed it with a satisfaction ses- least once a day. The glare is appalling, thetic and profound. The reason was n6t the sky a metallic blue, the sun a slayer, that they were less civilized than the mod- 30 And then the innumerable distractions erns, but only more frank. Their play- of the animated walks, the dwarfs and the instinct was more fully developed and the dogs, the horses and the miniature rail- classical world was not hampered by our way. Inside the various buildings you moral prejudices. may see the cosmos in the act of forma- As cruelty is proscribed among highly 35 tion, or San Francisco destroyed by fire civilized nations to-day — the game of life and quake ; the end of life, organic and being so vilely cruel that the arena with inorganic, is displayed for a modest pit- its bulls and tigers is unnecessary — our tance; you may sleigh in Switzerland or play-instinct finds vent in a species of take a lulling ride in Venetian gondolas, diversion that must not be examined too 40 But nothing is real. Doubtless the crowd closely, as it verges perilously on idiocy, would be disappointed by a glimpse of the Coney Island is only another name for real Venice, the real Switzerland, the real topsyturvydom. There the true becomes hell, the real heaven. Everything is the the grotesque, the vision of a maniac. reflection of a cracked mirror held in the Else why those nerve-racking entertain- 45 hand of the clever showman, who, know- ments, ends of the world, creations, hells, ing us as children of a larger growth, com- heavens, fantastic trips to ugly lands, pan- pounds his mess, bizarre and ridiculous, oramas of sheer madness, flights through accordingly. There is little need to pon- tile air in boats, through water in sleds, der the whys and wherefores of our aber- on the earth in toy trains ! Unreality is 50 rancy; Once en masse, humanity sheds its as greedily craved by the mob as alcohol civilization and becomes half child, half by the dipsomaniac; indeed, the jumbled savage. In the theaters the gentlest are nightmares of a morphine eater are ac- swayed by a sort of mob mania and de- tually realized at Luna Park. Every light in scenes of cruelty and bloodshed — angle reveals some new horror. Me- 55 though at home the sight of a canary with chanical waterfalls, with women and chil- a broken wing sets stirring in us tender dren racing around curving, tumbling sympathy. A crowd seldom reasons. It floods; elephants tramping ponderously iThis was so before fire destroyed the place. 34 WRITING OF TODAY will lynch an innocent man or glorify a candy, flapjacks, green corn, and again scamp politician with equal facility, beer, rule the appetites of the multitude. Hence the monstrous debauch of the fancy After seeing the aerial magic of that great at Coney Island, where New York chases pyrotechnic artist Pain, a man who could, its chimera of pleasure. 5 if he so desired, create a new species of Nevertheless, with all its perversion, its art, and his nocturnes of jeweled fire, you oblique image of life, is Coney Island wonder why the entire beach is not called much madder than the Stock Exchange, Fire Island. The view of Luna Park from the prize-ring, roller-skating, a fashionable Sheepshead Bay suggests a cemetery of cotillion, a political mass-meeting, or some 10 fire, the tombs, turrets, and towers, illumi- theatrical performances? Again I must nated, and mortuary shafts of flame. At bid you to remember that everything is Dreamland the little lighthouse is a scarlet relative ; that the morals of one age are incandescence. The big building stands a the crimes of another ; that I am, compara- dazzling apparition for men on ships and tively speaking, a stranger to our summer 15 steamers out at sea. Everything is fretted cities and perhaps not peculiarly well with fire. Fire delicately etches some fitted to judge of such an astounding insti- fairy structure; fire outlines an Oriental tution as Coney Island. gateway; fire runs like a musical scale The madness converges below Brighton, through many octaves, the_ darkness reaching its apex on Surf Avenue, jammed 2° crowding it, the mist blurring it. Fire is with pleasure-seekers, fringed by ' fakers ' the god of Coney Island after sundown, and their utterly abominable wares. Far- and fire was its god this night, the hottest ther up the beach order reigns, men and of the summer. women are clothed in their right mind, At ten o'clock the crowds had not walk, talk, and act rationally. At the 25 abated. Noise still reigned over the Bow- Oriental dignity prevails. Few people are ery, and the cafes, restaurants, dens, and to be seen. The place slumbers. You shows were full of gabbling, eating, drink- feel that in such a hotel you may live as ing, cursing, and laughing folk. I had you wish. Manhattan, no longer queen intended to return either to my hotel or of the beaches, has its interest. The bath- 30 to New York, but the heat pinioned my ing attracts. The wide porches and the will. In company with thousands, I dining couples are pleasing to see. A strolled the beach near the Boulevard, theater there is for those to whom the An amiable policeman told me that few ocean is not a stimulating spectacle. Walk people would go back to the city, that, hot farther. We reach Brighton. There the 35 as it was at Coney, the East Side was pot begins to bubble. A smaller Coney more stifling. The sight of cars coming confronts you. You pass on. Stopping down crowded at eleven o'clock and re- before what was once Anton Seidl's music turning half-full at midnight determined pavilion, you indulge, more sadly than sen- my plan of action. I went to my hotel, timentally, in memories of those evenings, 4° put on a sweater and a cap, changed a bill over two decades ago, when the sound of into silver, and with a stick for company the waves formed a background for the I returned to the West End. There were dead master's music-making — Beethoven more people than before, though it was and Wagner and Liszt. nearly one o'clock and the lights were be- Instead of Briinhilde and her sisters' 45 ginning to dim. I searched for the wild ride, we hear the wooden horse friendly policeman, but instead found a orchestrion screeching ' Meet Me at the surly one, who warned me that it would Church.' Move on? Has public musical be a risk to venture upon the beach if I taste moved with the years ? Meet me at had a watch or money. I longed for a the madhouse ! We reach the Boulevard 5° Josiah Flynt who would pilot me through and note its agreeable vastness. The sun this jungle of humanity. The heat was has set and the world is become suddenly depressing and mosquitoes made us miser- afire, able. They knew me for a fresh comer Then Coney Island, with its vulgarity, and exacted a sorry toll from my hands, its babble and tumult, is a glorified city of 55 neck, and face. I wavered in my resolu- flame. But don't go too near it; your tion to spend the night on the beach. I wings will easily singe on the broad ave- had left my rake at home, and as I am nue where beer, sausage, fruit, pop-corn, not a socialist I could not emulate the A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 35 performances of the ' white mice,' as the and women, battered, bleary, drunk or East Side names the good, well-dressed tired, dragged their weary paces, regard- young men and women of means who ing each other as do wolves, ready to make sociological calls on them, note- spring. We all felt like sticky August books in their hands, curiosity in their 5 salt. Reaching the beach again, I was eyes, and burning enthusiasm in their too fatigued to walk farther. I propped hearts. my head against the wooden pillar of an All the lights of the pleasure palaces old bath-house and my eyes began to were extinguished. Across at Riccadon- droop. I heard without a quiver of inter- nal there was still a light, and peering 10 est the sudden scream of a woman fol- over the Brighton pavilion there was a lowed by ominous bass laughter. Some pillar of luminosity that looked a cross one plucked a banjo. Dogs barked. A between a corn-cob and a thermometer hymn rose on the hot air. Around me it afire. I sat down on the sand. I would was like a battle-field of the slain. A stay out the night. And then I began to 15 curious drone was in the air ; it was the look about me. In Hyde Park, London, I monster breathing. A muggy moon shone had seen hundreds of vagabonds huddled intermittently over us, its bleached rays in the grass, their clothes mere rags, their painting in one ghastly tone the upturned attitudes those of death, but nothing in faces of the sleepers. The stale, sour, England or America can match what 1 20 rank smell of wretched .mankind poisoned saw this particular night. While the the atmosphere, thick with sultry vapors, poorer classes predominated, there was I wished myself home, little suggestion of abject pauperism. Then a gentle voice said — the accent Many seemed gay. The white dresses of was slightly foreign: the women and children relieved the som- 25 ' What a sight the poor make in the ber masses of black men, who, though moonlight ! ' I did not turn, but answered coatless for the most part, made black that I had thought that same thing. The splotches on the sand. In serried array voice proceeded. It was not strong, they lay; there was no order in their po- though a resonant baritone: sition, yet a short distance away they 30 ' You are alone, good sir ; but look at gave the impression of an army at rest, my brood, and don't wonder at people The entire beach was thick with humanity, dying without asking the world's permis- At close range it resolved itself in groups, sion.' sweethearts in pairs, families of three or I half arose, expecting that it was a four, six or seven, planted close together. 35 beggar who addressed me. A child began With care, hesitation, and difficulty I navi- whimpering. I saw a woman on her side gated around these islets of flesh and holding with relaxed grasp this crying in- blood. Sometimes I stumbled over a foot fant — the wail was hardly perceptible or an arm. Once I kicked a head, and I above the swish of the surf. Near her was cursed many times and vigorously 40 were two older children. The man who cursed. But I persisted. Like the ' white had spoken to me was sitting, his head mice,' I was there to see. Policemen plunged almost between his knees, his plodded through the crowds, and if there skinny hands supporting his head. He was undue hilarity warned the offenders was exceedingly poor, wearing only a in a low voice. But it was impossible for 45 ragged shirt and trousers. His head was such a large body of people to be more large and curly with thick hair. He could orderly, more decent. I determined to not have been more than forty. When he prowl down the lower beach, between the lifted his head his eyes in the moonshine Boulevard and Sea Gate. were like two red cinders. A wild beast — My sporting instinct came to the sur- 50 and with a gentle, even cultivated, voice, face. Here was game. Not in the imme- I went over to him. The child still morial mob, joking and snoring, shrieking moaned as the fingers of the exhausted and buzzing, would I find what I sought, woman opened farther. I forgot sociology I tried to pass under the bathing-houses, and wondered if here was a case of starva- but so densely packed were the paths that 55 tion — a hungry family in all the Gar- I was threatened by a dozen harsh voices, gantuan feast of Coney Island. The idea So I pursued a safer way, down Surf Ave- was horrible, nue. It was still filled with people — men ' What 's the matter, Batiushka ? ' I 36 WRITING OF TODAY _^____ asked, adopting a familiar form of Rus- ciates your interest at such a time. (Oh, sian salutation. He fell on his knees. what smiling villains are we all!) ' Brother,' he panted, ' are you a Rus- ' I live in an alley near Oliver Street, sian? A Jew? Help us. We have not Usually we go to the recreation pier near eaten since yesterday morning.' I confess 5 Peck Slip, but the child was so sick that I shuddered. I confess also that I did n't I came down here last night.' believe him. A man, a Jewish man with ' Last night ? ' a family, in New York and starving ! ' Yes, I pawned my coat to get the car New York, with its rich charitable insti- fare.' tutions ! And this fellow tried to make 10 This is a truthful report of the man's me think that he needed food; that his conversation. He was out of work — wife and children needed food! I had sickness — and he had pawned, piece by eaten my dinner at the Manhattan, and I piece, bit by bit, everything in the house, enjoyed that selfish credulity which an His wife went to the pawnhouse, while he, able-bodied gourmand feels when he is 15 scarcely able to hold up his head, watched approached by some one who has tasted the baby. The children lived in the no food for days. streets, feeding at the garbage cans, thank- And this miserable being came nearer ful for such a chance. Is this exaggera- to me, feebly, supplicatingly. His eyes tion? If you think so, then you don't were like red dots in the head of a fam- 20 know your own city. Such things happen ished animal. His hot breath issued as- every day. The neighbors were kind, es- from an open grave. The child sobbed pecially the Irish. But they, too, could louder, and the mother, half awake, scarcely boast more than one meal a day. clutched it. She sat up. The other two Hyman coughed ; he evidently was marked children arose, alarmed, silent. It was 25 for the death of a consumptive. Yet he too much for my pampered nerves. Bid- fought on. The charities were available ding the man remain where he was, I ran — for a time. But funds ran low ; public across the beach to the Bowery and into interest also ran low. The Levins found a little saloon full of half-drunken, vicious themselves within five days of rent time people. Ten minutes later we sat at an 30 in their room, a musty, dirty garret. Life improvised supper of pretzels, cold fish, from heat and insufficient food became and beer. I knew this family would n't intolerable, and, half crazed with fever, touch anything else. Starvation itself on that hot Monday, they contrived to would not force them to break their tribal reach the seashore. With only a few law. I have an idea that I was thirsty 35 pennies, yet they were happier ; they could myself, for I enjoyed the flat beer, and I at least breathe fresh air, see the water, enjoyed the subdued ferocity with which But so forbidding was the appearance of the family ate and drank. The baby did this unhappy family that they were warned not stir. It had fallen asleep. The off the board walk and frightened away mother, a worn-out woman, still young, 40 from the crowd of pleasure-seekers. We mechanically put the food into her mouth, do not care to see these death's-heads at not looking at us, not speaking to the our feasts. Finally they found refuge un- two girls. She was numbed by hunger der the bathhouse, and there I met them, and heat. Worse remains. When the dawn came ' See here, what 's your name ? ' I asked. 45 up softly like the vanguard of an army ' My name,' he stammered, ' is Hy- without banners I shook the sleeping Hy- man.' man. I awoke the woman. I had heard ' I mean your family name,' I de- queer sounds in the throat of the child, manded ; ' Hyman is your first name.' noises like water slowly dripping into a He gave me a keen glance. Then he 50 well. Why should I go on ? The child quietly replied : ' You are right. My full was dead, and I was not surprised. Nor name is Hyman Levin.' were the parents. They made no outcry, ' Have you a home ? ' I pursued. I felt but covered the little thing with the moth- my importance. I was playing the role of er's old pelisse. Stunned by their cumu- benefactor, and what philanthropist, great 55 lative misfortunes, this death was accepted or small, does not desire the worth of his with the fatalism of a Russian. I told a money? Besides, it is good policy to policeman the story, and a half-hour later cross-examine a starving man. He appre- the entire family was carted away with A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 37 the promise that they would be given food told the story plainly. I realized of how and shelter. little account to people in such awful There was a bitter taste in my mouth, straits is the clangor of contending po- If a poor devil of a tramp or a working litical parties. Of what interest to a man, man had met me then I should not have 5 his belly pinched by starvation, whether been able to look either one in the eye. one Jack in office is ousted by another Oh, how cheap is charity! The silver I Jack who desires the place; whether this spent did not relieve the Levins. They one is president, that one is governor ? A had scarcely bade me good-by, so op- flare of fireworks, a river of beer, on the pressed were they by their sorrow, their 10 East Side for a night, and the people are shame. They must have hated me. The forgotten by their masters. It has been man was not ignorant. His English be- so always; for eternity it will endure, trayed a reader. He had conversed well Does not Campanella's sonnet sing : about Gorky and Tolstoy, had read Karl , . Marx, and knew the names of all his saints 15 3£ e p , e °P le ls a P east of ™ nd \ bral j\. of anarchy. A socialist? I do not know. That taows^not its own strength, and there- I only know that your bookish theories go Loaded w'itlTw'ood and stone ; to smash when you hear a man s voice thrill with anguish A pauper, you say, j ' ' ^ things b ^ ' earth ' and a lazy good-for-nothing ? Ay, perhaps 20 Heaven • he was — perhaps they all are ; but drunk- But this it k nows notj and if one arise ard, thief, even murderer, must they To tell this truth it kills him unforgiven. starve ? Anarchs and infidels ? So were the Americans of 1776, according to the Grunting, growling, spitting, coughing, English. 25 the huge army of thousands began in Remember what Richard Jeffries wrote : maelstrom fashion to move cityward. ' Food and drink, roof and clothes are the Some stopped at the half-way house of inalienable right of every child born into whisky; many breakfasted, but the main the light. If the world does not provide body made a dash for the cars. The night it freely — not as a grudging gift, but as 30 had been a trying one, the new day did a right, as j& son of the house sits down to not promise ; yet it was a new day, and breakfast — then is the world mad. . . . with it a flock of fresh hopes was born. I verily believe that the earth in one year The crowd seemed rested; in its eyes was produces enough food to last for thirty, the lust of life, and it was absolutely good- Why, then, have we not enough ? ... It 35 humored. I heard a vague tale about a is not the pauper — oh, inexpressibly man-hunt during the night — how a thief wicked word ! — it is the well-to-do who had been chased with stones and clubs are the criminal classes.' Grant Allen until, reaching Sea Gate, he had boldly said that all men are born free and un- plunged into the water and disappeared, equal. True. But should they be allowed 40 His hawk-like features, the color of clay to want for bread? from fright, had impressed the old man Don't ask me the remedy. I am neither who related the story. In return I told a professional prophet nor a socialist, the Levins' heart-breaking tale, and he Don't throw socialism at my head, did not appear much interested. What Ready-made prophylactics smell sus- 45 signified to all those strong, bustling men piciously. The ' dismal science ' scares and women the death of a tiny girl baby me. Before the fatal words ' unearned — dead and hardly clad in a wisp of black- increment ' I retreat. And the socialist's ened canvas ? conception of the state approaches singu- ' Better dead ! ' The mobs thickened, larly close to the old conception of mon- 50 Policemen fought them into line. The hot archy. I know that there are many sun arose, in company with the penetrat- Levins in New York, of many nationali- ing odors of bad coffee and greasy crullers, ties. Starve in New York, the abundant Another day's labor was arrived. Soon city, where ' God 's in the world to-day ' ? would appear the first detachment of Impossible ! cry the sentimentalists. 1 55 women and children sick from the night didn't believe it, either, until I met the in the city. Soon would be heard the Levins. That adventure has cured me of howling of the fakers : ' Go to Hell, go all foolish optimistic boasting. I have to Hell-gate ! ' 38 WRITING OF TODAY I felt that I had been very near it, that tant building erected since the American I had seen a new Coney Island. I went architectural revival began. A little con- home, after this, the most miserable night sideration will show that the foregoing of my life — miserable because my nerves claim is not in any way excessive. In' were out of gear. I was once more the 5 the first place, in any modern American normal, selfish man, thinking of his bed, city the public library is the institution of his breakfast. I had, of course, quite which is most representative of the as- forgotten the Levins. pirations of the community. The City Hall and the County Court House have 10 become less representative of popular as- YII pirations than they should be, because our local governments and our local courts THE NEW YORK PUBLIC have deservedly suffered a good deal in LIBRARY popular estimation, and the churches are 15 the spiritual habitations merely of only A. C. DAVID fragments of the community. But the typical American aspiration is embodied in [Architectural Record, September, 1910. the word ' education ' ; and of all the or- y permission.] gans of education, the one which belongs An architectural commentator cannot 2° to the whole community is the public li- well approach such a building as the New brary. Partly owing to the generosity of York Public Library without a feeling of a single individual, they have been built grave responsibility. In attempting to in enormous numbers all over the country; put some sort of an estimate upon it, he and almost universally they have assumed is confronted both by a large and impor- »5 an institutional character. The old idea tant public edifice, and by a formidable of the library as a secluded room, in which array of incidental, but imposing, claims a few scholars could browse at leisure to consideration. The building is not among dusty volumes, has given way to merely spacious and important, but it is the idea that it is essentially a vehicle of the most important building erected, since 30 popular education — one which should be the American architectural revival began, in some measure supported, by public in the largest city in the country. It has funds and managed chiefly for the purpose been designed by a firm of architects who, of giving the widest possible circulation according to general consent, stand at the to its accumulated and accumulating store head of their profession. The library 35 of books. building they have presented to New York The American public library, conse- is undeniably popular. It has already quently, has, like all institutional build- taken its place in the public mind as a ings, usually been designed for the pur- building of which every New Yorker may pose of imposing itself upon the public, be proud, and this opinion of the building 40 It has not attempted to solicit patronage is shared by the architectural profession by a suggestion of studious detachment, of the country. Of course, it does not It has announced to the public from please everybody; but if American archi- some colonnaded portico that it was a tects in good standing were asked to name great educational institution, and that the the one building which embodied most of 45 public must, for its own good, come in and what was good in contemporary American get educated ; and the designers have never architecture, the New York Public Li- felt it necessary to invite patronage by re- brary would be the choice of a handsome taining in the building any flavor of do- majority. In criticizing it, consequently, mesticity, which in Europe has always a merely individual judgment, no matter 50 been associated with such edifices, how well considered it might be, would at The public libraries in the smaller the present time scarcely count. It is far American cities, whose dimensions were more important to understand exactly why not well adapted to monumental treatment, the building meets with such widespread have suffered from being treated too much popular and professional approval. 55 as educational institutions and not enough Perhaps some justification may be merely as the shell of a reading-room and needed for the statement that the New a book-stack. But in the larger cities, York Public Library is the most impor- whose libraries are large, well equipped A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 39 and fully capable of becoming valuable certain important ingredients of a perfect agencies for the dissemination of knowl- plan or a perfect design, or both, are sacri- edge and ideas among a large number of ficed. The consequence is that the finest people, the institutional idea has a much achievements of the American architec- better chance of effective architectural ex- 5 tural revival are not to be found in monu- pression. Such was particularly the case mental buildings; and edifices such as the with the New York Public Library. No Columbia College Library and the Penn- other library in the country represented sylvania Station in New York, which are such a combination of private and pub- most imposing and effective as a matter of lie endowment. The collection itself was 10 pure architectural form, are usually waste- the result of the generosity of three pri- ful in plan. vate donors, while the site for the new In the case of a library, the difficulties building and its cost was supplied by the which the necessities of the plan impose city ; and the city had been even more upon the architect are harder to solve even generous than Messrs. Astor, Lenox and 15 than they are in the case of a courthouse Tilden. It had given a site in the heart or a state capitol. The chief requirements of the city, whose market value at the are a spacious and perfectly lighted read- present time must be between $7,000,000 ing-room, an arrangement of the stacks, so and $8,000,000; and it had erected on this that the books are easily accessible and site an edifice almost regardless of ex- 20 their titles easily read, and a large number pense. No public library in the world, of small apartments for particular pur- unless it be that of Boston, occupies such poses of all kinds, ranging from galleries a superb site, and on no other library to small rooms for special collections of building has anything like as much money books. It is a well-known fact that in been lavished. It is, consequently, a veri- 25 such buildings as the Columbia, the Bos- table institution — the result both of indi- ton and the Congressional libraries, these vidual and of public aspiration and of in- practical requirements have been met only dividual and public sacrifices, and one in a very inferior manner; and while we which, when completed, will constitute a have never seen the building, we under- most efficient piece of machinery for con- 30 stand that they are being most completely verting a collection of books into a means satisfied in the new library which has been of popular instruction. The building be- built for the University of California, comes the most important building of its Messrs. Carrere & Hastings have al- kind in the country, because it will provide ways been most conscientious about ar- a fitting habitation for the most useful ex- 35 ranging the plans of their buildings so as isting library in the largest American city, to meet every reasonable practical require- There is one difficulty, however, which ment; and the New York Public Library confronts almost every American archi- is no exception to the rule. Its arrange- tect who has to design a monumental pub- ments for storing and handling the books lie building. The really great monumen- 40 are said to be entirely satisfactory to the tal buildings have usually been simple in management of the library. The main plan. They have been built usually reading-room is one of the most spacious around a comparatively few rooms of con- rooms in the world — beautifully propor- siderable area and height, which were also tioned, lighted by a series of windows on capable of large and simple treatment, and 45 both the long sides of the room, and en- whose dimensions could be adapted to the tirely accessible to the stacks. To have scale of the exterior. But in all Amer- obtained a room of these dimensions, so ican monumental buildings, except, per- excellently adapted to its purpose in every haps, tombs, the plan is necessarily very respect, was a great triumph for the archi- complicated. A few large rooms are re- 50 tects. The smaller rooms, also, particu- quired, together with a multitude of in- larly those like the gallery, whose prac- significant ones ; and these rooms are re- tical requirements are severe, are also ad- quired for certain practical purposes, which mirably planned for their purposes, makes good lighting and a certain arrange- These rooms have been supplied with a ment essential. A conflict almost cer- 55 good light by avoiding anything like a tainly ensues between the plan and the de- heavy colonnade on the faqade ; and while sign; and this conflict almost inevitably most of them (all of them except those results in a compromise, in which either situated on the corners) obtain light from 40 WRITING OF TODAY only one direction, the light is, in all ex- of pure architectural form. It is designed cept a few cases, all that is needed. The rather to face on the avenue of a city, and corridors, which run parallel to the outer not to seem out of place on such a site, lines of the building between two rows of It is essentially and frankly an instance of rooms, one lighted from the street and 5 street architecture; and as an instance of the other from a court, have to be arti- street architecture it is distinguished in ficially lighted, but that is as it should its appearance rather than imposing. Not, be. indeed, that it is lacking in dignity. The It is an interesting fact, however, that facade on Fifth Avenue has poise, as well the superbly dimensioned reading-room — 10 as distinction ; character, as well as good an apartment 395 feet long, over 75 feet manners. But still it does not insist upon wide and 50 feet high — has practically no its own peculiar importance, as every salient effect on the exterior of the build- monumental building must do. It is con- ing. It stretches along the rear of the tent with a somewhat humbler role, but structure, and this facade is very plainly 15 one which is probably more appropriate, treated, without any pretence to architec- It looks ingratiating rather than impos- tural effect. It is, indeed, designed ing, and that is probably one reason for frankly as the rear of a structure which is its popularity. It is intended for popular not meant to be looked at except on the rather than for official use, and the build- other sides. Any attempt, consequently, 20 ing issues to the people an invitation to at monumental treatment has been aban- enter rather than a command, doned. The building is designed to be From a strictly architectural point of seen from Fifth Avenue and from the view, there are many criticisms which can side streets. The rear, on Bryant Park, be passed upon the design. The niches and merely takes care of itself ; and one of the 25 fountains on either side of the entrance largest apartments in any edifice in the — the one monumental feature of the United States is practically concealed, so building — are a not very happy and ap- far as any positive exterior result is con- propriate device to ornament the stretches cerned. of blank wall which flank the entrance The striking fact mentioned in the pre- 30 porch. The treatment of the two ends of ceding paragraph is a sufficient charac- the facade is weak. The scale of the en- terization of the purpose of the architects. gaged colonnade looks too contracted. They recognized that they could not plan The fact has not been sufficiently consid- a room of the required dimensions and ered in the design that one sees the build- light it properly without destroying its 35 ing not when one is walking west through value as the primary motive of a monu- Forty-first Street, but when one is walk- mental building; and in obedience to their ing up or down Fifth Avenue. But bletn- settled policy of being loyal primarily to ishes such as those mentioned are not of the needs of the plan, they deliberately sufficient importance seriously to attenu- sacrificed the monumental to the practical 40 ate the fundamental impressiveness and at- aspect of the edifice. What is more, they tractiveness of the facade. The architects sacrificed the architectural effect of the have succeeded in making the library suf- interior of the reading-room to the con- ficiently imposing and dignified in charac- venience of the management in the han- ter to satisfy the prevailing idea that a dling of the books. This superb apartment 45 library is a great educational institution, is cut in two by an elaborate wooden while, at the same time, they have awak- screen, from which the books contained in ened popular interest by making it look the stacks are to be distributed; and it is, like a pleasant place to enter and use. consequently, almost impossible to get the And this is a great triumph, because there full architectural effect of the reading- 50 is a real and sometimes an apparently ir- room, except from some point along the reconcilable conflict between the monu- balcony. mental and practical aspects of such build- The New York Public Library is not, ings. then, intended to be a great monumental The final judgment on the New York building, which would look almost as well 55 Public Library will be, consequently, that from one point of view as another, and it is not a great monument, because con- which would be fundamentally an example siderations of architectural form have in A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 41 several conspicuous instances been delib- VTTT erately subordinated to the needs of the VI 11 plan. In this respect it resembles the new THE TALLEST OFFICE BUILD- Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The ttvt/~ tat ttjt? wi"\t?t ri building is at bottom a compromise be- 5 ING IN THK WORLD tween two groups of partly antagonistic [Scientific American, March 8, 1913. demands, and a compromise can hardly By P ermisslon -l ever become a consummate example of For the present at least the tallest of- architectural form. But, on the other fice building in the world will be found hand, Messrs. Carrere & Hastings have, as 10 n the western side of City Hall Park, in so many other cases, made their com- where the towering Woolworth Building promise successful. Faithful as they lifts its glittering steel-and-terra-cotta have been to the fundamental requirement structure through a sheer height of 785 of adapting the building to its purpose as feet above the sidewalk. This is not only a library, they have also succeeded in 15 the loftiest office building, but, if we ex- making it look well ; and they have sue- cept the Eiffel Tower, it is the tallest struc- ceeded in making it look well partly be- ture of any kind as yet erected by man. cause the design is appropriate to its Two other notable buildings in this city function as a building in which books are vie with the Woolworth tower in altitude, stored, read and distributed. A merely 20 its nearest competitor being the Metro- monumental library always appears some- politan tower at Madison Square with, a what forbidding and remote. The New total height of just over 700 feet, and York Public Library looks attractive, and the Singer tower, built like the Woolworth so far as a large building can, even inti- structure, on Broadway, and only a few mate. And ,in this respect it differs from 25 city blocks to the south of it, which has the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which, a total height above the sidewalk of 612 excellently planned as it may be, presents feet. Mention should also be made of a dull and rigid architectural mask to the that remarkable structure on the opposite public. side of City Hall Park, the New Municipal The popularity of the New York Public 30 Building; the top of the bronze figure with Library has, consequently, been well which it is now being crowned will be 560 earned. The public has reason to like it, feet above the sidewalk, because it offers them a smiling coun- As the eye ranges up through the multi- tenance; and the welcome it gives is tudinous stories of the Woolworth Build- merely the outward and visible sign of an 35 ing to the pyramidal structure at its top, inward grace. When people enter they the question arises as to what is the will find a building which has been in- limit of height to which a habitable build- geniously and carefully adapted to their ing can be carried. The answer can use. Professional architects like it, be- be found in a certain restriction laid cause they recognize the skill, the good 4° down by the Building Code of New taste and the abundant resources of which York City, which states that on a rock the building, as a whole, is the result; foundation the load may reach but not and while many of them doubtless cherish exceed fifteen tons to the square foot, a secret thought that they would have It will surprise some of our readers to done it better, they are obliged to recog- 45 learn that on this basis, it would be pos- nize that in order to have done it better sible on a* plot of ground 200 feet square they would have been obliged to exhibit to erect an office building 2000 feet in a high degree of architectural intelligence, height, and to build it, moreover, so that In the realism of its plan and in the mix- it would be perfectly secure against the ture of dignity and distinction in the de- 5° fiercest hurricane, and, because of its elas- sign, the New York Public Library is typ- ticity, even against the altogether improb- ical of that which is best in the contem- able event of an earthquake shock, porary American architectural movement; and New York is fortunate, indeed, that S0ME dimensions and quantities such a statement can be made of the most 55 The Woolworth Building is taller than important public building erected in the it looks. To reach its lowest foundation, city during several generations. we must go down in one place to a depth 42 WRITING OF TODAY of 120 feet beneath the sidewalk — for 5000 tons is carried at a center of a that was the depth to which it was neces- girder, 8 feet deep, 6 feet 9 inches wide, sary to sink the pneumatic caisson in that and 23 feet long, which itself weighs over particular spot before the solid rock of 100 tons. Ordinarily between the piers Manhattan Island was reached. This 5 and the foot of the columns is a grillage would make the total height of the build- of several tiers of 24-inch I-beams, ing from lowest foundation to summit 905 Naturally, the columns in a building of feet. Just here, while touching on the this height ran up enormous' dimensions question of dimensions and quantities, we and weights in the lower stories. Usu- may state that the building contains 23,- 10 ally they were built in two story lengths, 000 tons of structural steel, 17,000,000 and were of entirely inclosed box-section, common brick, 7500 tons of terra cotta, consisting usually of two channels with 1,800,000 square feet of floor tiles, 1,800,- cover plates on both flanges. The largest 000 square feet of partition tiles, and 2500 column measures 34 inches by 30 inches, square feet of cut stone. 15 and its cross-sectional area is 660 square The construction of the foundation, etc., inches ; that is to say, the metal in it, if involved 60,000 yards excavation, the use compressed into a solid square bar, would of 24,000 yards of concrete, 300 tons of measure 25 inches on each side. It is easy reinforcement steel and 350 tons of steel to understand from these dimensions that sheet-piling. Finally, the building which, 20 the total weight of the structural steel with its furniture, etc., will weigh more reaches 23,000 tons, than 1 2 5,000 tons, will have cost, when complete, some $12,000,000. T0 RESIST WIND fissure The building covers a plot 155 feet by When it is borne in mind that the 200 feet. It is U-shaped in plan, with two 25 storms which sweep across Manhattan Is- wings, 60 by 95 feet, facing on Barclay land, chiefly from the west and southwest, Street and Park Place. The shorter side rise at times to cyclonic force and blow of the plot is that on Broadway. There at a velocity of between eighty and ninety are thirty stories in the main building, miles an hour, it can be understood read- the roof of which stands 400 feet above 30 ily that special provision had to be made, the street. From the center of the Broad- in designing so lofty a tower, to safeguard way facade and flush with it, rises a tower it against overturning or against failure in measuring 85 by 86 feet, which extends for its steel frame, due to the enormous bend- an additional 25 stories above the roof, ing stresses engendered. It is considered The building is carried on 66 concrete 35 that for a building of this magnitude it is piers, sunk through gravel, sand and hard- sufficient to estimate the average wind pan, everywhere to solid rock, which was pressure, at maximum velocity, as thirty found at an average depth of about 80 feet pounds upon every square foot of surface below the ground-water level. These exposed. If we disregard the shelter af- foundation piers are of solid concrete. 40 forded by the low buildings at its base, we The majority are circular and vary in di- find that the total wind pressure from top ameter from 8 to 19 feet. A few of them of tower to sidewalk over the whole sur- are of rectangular cross-section. face facing a westerly wind is 1300 tons, Until the hardpan was reached, the and this pressure may be considered as sinking of the caissons was quickly and 45 concentrated at a level of say about 300 rapidly done, and one, 6y 2 feet in diam- feet above the sidewalk. It is evident, eter, went down 80 feet in less than a sin- at once, that in order adequately to take gle day. care of this wind-load, special features had to be introduced into the design of the erecting the steel frame 5o steel f ramewor k. The inclined steel raft- Although the vertical axes of the ma- ers of the spire-like roof of the tower jority of the columns coincide with the take care of the horizontal thrust of the axes of the concrete piers below them, this wind. Below the roof at the forty-second is not always the case. Several of the floor, the wind stresses are provided for columns are supported upon two piers, the 55 by the wall girders and the columns, which piers being spanned by girders with the are connected by deep gusset plates at their columns resting at about their center. intersection. From the forty-second to Thus, in one column the load of nearly the twenty-eighth floors, deep wall gird- A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 43 ers, made especially heavy for the purpose, were also reported to the office of the en- are connected to the columns by double gineering and inspection division of the knee-braces. From the twenty-eighth insurance company, and written copies floor to the street, heavy solid plates of were then sent to the contractors, steel, or ' portals ' as they are called, are 5 Patent scaffolds were used for the brick- constructed on the two sides and top of laying throughout the work, and these each opening or panel in the steel work, were covered, so far as possible, with It was these portals that gave an appear- substantial wire-mesh roofs, to protect the ance of enormous width to the columns be- men at work upon the platforms from fore they were closed in by the terra 10 tools and materials that might fall from cotta and stone work. On the Broadway above. The sides of all the scaffold plat- front the portal girders are double as far forms were also protected by guard rails up as the fourth floor, and they are no and by wire-mesh screens. Substantial less than four feet in depth. , bridges for the protection of pedestrians 15 and others were built over the sidewalks, FIREPROOF CONSTRUCTION ^ ^^ wfire ffiade gtout enQUgh tQ „_ The floors of the basement and first sist the impact of any material that might story are built of reinforced concrete fall upon them. Platforms twenty feet slabs, and the floors above of hollow terra wide were also built out from the building cotta. The structural steel is protected 20 at four different heights, to catch any ma- against fire by a coating of concrete not terial that might fall, and prevent it from less than one, inch in thickness, or else by descending into the street. Wire-mesh three inches of terra cotta. Wood as a screens were arranged along their outer material of construction is entirely ex- edges to give still further security, eluded ; the windows, the trim, the doors, 25 All the hoisting apparatus was exam- are of pressed steel, and furthermore, the ined frequently and thoroughly by expert exterior windows where exposed are elevator inspectors; employees were not glazed with wire glass. In addition to the allowed to ride on material hoists, and twenty-six elevators there are four wide the maximum number of persons" who stairways. A description of the installa- 30 might be permitted to ride on a passenger tion of steam heat, ventilation apparatus, hoist was definitely specified in each case, plumbing, drainage, gas and electric light, All hoists, whether used for the transpor- pneumatic service, etc., would make a long tation of men or of materials, were covered story in itself. overhead, to prevent accidents from fall- The building was commenced in Sep- 35 ing objects. The hoist openings were ef- tember, 1910, and it is to-day practically fectively fenced, and were guarded by ready for occupation. The rate at which rails where the materials were loaded or the building was carried up is shown in unloaded. Openings in the floors were the accompanying set of illustrations, thoroughly guarded by rails or fences or which were taken from a lofty building on 4° otherwise. All stairways, whether tem- the opposite side of City Hall Park. porary or permanent, were required to be rail-guarded. Proper lighting was insisted SAFEGUARDING THE WORKMEN AND THE upon> part i cu l ar l y at wo rk places, along public gangways and passages, and at every other An interesting feature of the construe- 45 important point. Warning signs were put tion of the Woolworth Building was the up at all dangerous places. Laborers en- fact that the advanced ideas that underlie gaged in cutting concrete and other sim- modern liability insurance were exempli- ilar substances were obliged to use chisels fied in an interesting manner, the inspec- fitted with protective handles, so that their tion service rendered during the work be- 50 own hands would not be injured if the ing particularly worthy of note. The strikers should miss the heads of the chis- insurance company that carried the liabil- els. An effective watch was kept for ity kept two inspectors on duty continu- nails and other similar sharp metal points ously, and immediately upon noting a con- projecting from the woodwork or from dition which was likely to result in an ac- 55 loose planks or boards or elsewhere, cident, they notified the proper foreman These are prolific sources of injury, and or superintendent, and saw that the danger the men were required to remove them at was removed. Their recommendations once. First-aid cabinets were also pro- 44 WRITING OF TODAY vided, at the suggestion of the liability in- in the car a sheer distance of 539 feet, and spectors. in that interval the elevator will attain It will be apparent that the comparative a maximum velocity of two miles a min- freedom from accident that characterized ute — that fall will be made in less than the erection of the Woolworth Building 5 six seconds ; and the remaining 137 feet of was not the result of chance, but that it confined air will be counted upon to over- was the logical outcome of the practical come that momentum and to stop the car system of inspection that was adopted. progressively. For the test, the ordinary cables will be detached, and a single rope a remarkable elevator test I0 w j th a tr ip pe r, subject to Mr. Ellithorpe's The express elevators of the Woolworth control, will be substituted. Building have a vertical travel of 676 feet, By means of a large number of gauges, and Mr. F. T. Ellithorpe, who is responsi- which will be fitted for the first time in ble for the safety system provided for the tests of this sort, records will be taken of twenty-eight elevators, will make that 15 the air pressures at each stage of the drop sheer drop to demonstrate that his appara- within the limits of the air cushion, and tus is equal to the maximum stress to engineers are much interested in the data which it may by possible mishap be sub- which will be obtained in this way. jected in service. What is technically It is interesting to note that as the fall- known as an ' air cushion ' will first check 20 ing distance is four times the stopping in- the car and then bring it to a gentle halt, terval, Mr. Ellithorpe will, during the lat- From the bottom of each shaft upward for ter interval, have his weight increased a distance of 137 feet the passageway is fourfold. Some time ago, during a test enclosed, forming the envelope of the so- of this sort, the occupant of the car was called ' cushion.' Of course, there are 25 seated in a chair. When his weight was doors at each floor, but these are closed increased by the retardation of the car, mechanically as the elevators pass onward, the chair was crushed, and the passenger The broad essential is that the surrounding was fatally injured by a splinter, casing shall be substantially air tight and Our thanks are due to Mr. Cass Gilbert, that there shall be no escape for the air 30 the architect ; W. Gunvald Aus, the except upward past the sides of the de- structural engineer ; and the Thompson- scending vehicle. For the major part of Starrett Company, the contractors, for its travel down this inclosed shaft, the courtesies rendered during the prepara- space between the elevator and the eh- tion of this article, velope is just enough to permit the in- 35 creasingly compressed air to gradually slow up the car and finally to bring it to a standstill. IX The falling elevator is substantially a r-r-T. t/-> * loosely-fitting piston, but even so, it would 4° MOTORIZING AMERICA be stopped with a violent jar after enter- _ ing the inclosed shaft if some provision BRONSON BATCHELOR were not made for regulating the initial rT . ,. , „ „, . . ,, „„„,„:„„ i ... * _ , *> . . . [Independent, March c, 1915. By permission.] compression of the confined air. A jar of this sort would be enough to throw the 45 A little more than a decade ago men occupants to the floor of the elevator, and discovered for a second time in history might easily be the means of breaking their how much of the world lay outside the bones, if not hurting them more gravely, narrow confines of their everyday lives. But the air pressure will be controlled by Just as communities and peoples had automatic valves. The designer has two 50 brought home to them, with the coming other ways of regulating the air pressure, of the locomotive a century before, the which are illustrated herewith. isolation of the little world in which they Mr. Ellithorpe has already dropped more had previously dwelt, so now more acutely than 300 feet without injury, and the car than ever before men realized the close- has been so gently restrained and halted 55 ness with which for ages their individual that water was not spilled from a brim- inter-relations had been restricted. They ming tumbler. In the test in the Wool- grew impatient of the halting, crowded worth Building, Mr. Ellithorpe will drop street-cars, by which their homes were A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 45 connected with their businesses or their trades. Motor cars have almost replaced pleasures. They grew intolerant of the Grand Rapids furniture as the trade-mark painful slowness of the horse, though it of the State. had been man's faithful servitor for cen- If the story of Pennsylvania is the his- turies. The flat-dweller became discon- 5 tory of steel, then the later chapters of . tented with the closeness of the city from Michigan's annals are the story of the au- which he could only escape by horse or by tomobile. Pittsburgh has been called the rail, and the farmer began to grow restive ' city of a thousand millionaires ' — made at his own isolation. by steel ; Detroit differs from Pittsburgh It was the automobile that brought the 10 in that its millionaires are still in the mak- new vision of the widening horizons of ing. life. With the discovery began a new Now when men first discovered that the revolution: the motorization of America, horse was an antiquated institution, and Today one person out of every eighty proceeded to retire it over-night, as it in the United States possesses an auto- 15 were, to the place where all antiquated mobile. things belong, they did it neither from a This year nearly 500,000 motor cars, sudden inspiration nor from a dawning with a value exceeding $450,000,000, will sense of reason. Economic revolutions as be produced in America. a rule do not happen that way. Some do Familiar as we are with tremendous fig- 20 occasionally, such as the sewing machine, ures, with the severing of continents and the telephone, the electric light, which had the leveling of mountains, more marvelous advantages that could not be overlooked, still has been the creation during the past They were simple, they were cheap, and decade and a half of the vast industry their uses were almost imperative, which is the outgrowth of that coughing, 25 Not so with the automobile, the pur- wheezing, rattling contraption that twenty chase price of which alone was equal to years ago set forth on an adventure at the cost of a fair-sized house and lot. the perilous rate of seven miles an hour ! The motor car revolution has been due What a far cry it is from New York's not so much to economic utility as to other first automobile demonstration in 1896 30 causes ; not to the machine so much as when the Park Commissioner, ' for fear to the daring methods which the makers it might scare the horses,' forbade to the pursued in manufacture and salesman- strange vehicle the right to go through ship. Central Park ! And the triumph they have achieved is Yet to-day involved in the making of 35 but another tribute to the genius of the those vehicles is invested millions of dol- American business man. Nowhere else in lars, estimated variously at from two hun- the world is the automobile so generally dred million dollars up — pouring in so used as in the United States; the Amer- rapidly that the manufacturers themselves ican car, like farming machinery, adding scarcely know what the amount is. In ten 40 machines, and any number of articles', has years, from one hundred and fiftieth in the become the standard the world over, list of American industries, the manufac- Where the American manufacturer sur- ture of motor cars has risen to a position passed his European competitor is that he among the first dozen, and to leadership in saw in the automobile something more at least one state. 45 than a luxury, a plaything for the very Not many years ago Michigan was rich. In every class except the poorest, largely an agricultural State; Detroit lit- he visioned it as the necessity, while in tie more than a huge, sprawling, mid- Europe, except where the American lower- Western town. Now the Wolverine priced car has begun to compete, it is still State produces "no less than 75 per cent. 50 the extravagance for the few. It is of that half a million cars. In De- American daring that has made the motor troit are to be found a large proportion car democratic and useful. of the world's most efficient and scientific That the men in charge of the develop- factories, running night and day in their ment of the automobile were men of effort to put an impatient earth on pneu- 55 genius is proved by two things. And matic-tired wheels. Twenty-two per cent, those things were the two ideas of adver- of the industrial workers of Michigan are tising and large scale production — with employed in the automobile and allied which the inventors of the automobile WRITING OF TODAY must share the credit for the Aladdin-like $3000 and $6000 a year ; 1,500,000 families development of this newest of the Big had incomes between $1800 and $3000 a Businesses. year; 2,138,000 families had incomes be- Manufacturers as a rule are keen-eyed, tween $1200 and $1800 a' year, long-headed gentlemen who pride them- 5 Then instead of conducting motor fash- selves on knowing what the public wants, ion shops with a dozen different models and then providing it. But the makers of some of these makers decided to concen- automobiles were a little keener than the trate their entire energy on one design, rest and they went a step further. They That design was to be the best and cheap- were not content merely to satisfy a public 10 et in the world for the money. The lower demand; they wanted to create it. they could bring the price of their prod- So they set about to show the public uct, they calculated, the more of the in- what a good thing the motor car was. come groups of America would become Theirs was an expensive commodity, which potential purchasers of motor cars. As was looked upon as luxury's last word, 15 the next step began the study how to lessen and its normal growth they knew would be costs of production without cheapening the slow and hazardous. The automobile quality. First the unessentials were elim- companies began to talk its comforts and inated : not an ounce of excess weight over advantages, they began to preach the au- the strength required, nor two bolts where tomobile as a necessity. By advertise- 20 one would do ; not even was there a con- ments alluding to the great out-of-doors cession to ornament when it was at the or the mystery of unseen places, by the expense of utility. In the factory every- romance of the race and endurance con- thing was planned from the same scien- tests, they succeeded in creating a demand tine viewpoint of maximum efficiency for motor cars.* Factories sprung up like 25 from given effort. Statistics best tell the mushrooms over night. story of the revolution in production which Automobile manufacturers were among followed, the first to appreciate the psychology of From 1896 to 1904 the number of cars modern advertising. They were among produced had reached only 12,000 an- the first to set aside regularly a portion 30 nually, but in the next year alone, the of their earnings, amounting today to be- number almost doubled, with 22,500. By tween 4 and 7 per cent, of the gross reve- 1907 the production had touched 39,000; nue, to the stimulation and development in 1908 it was 50,000, with a second hun- of the markets which the printed word dred per cent, jump the next year to 108,- made potential. 35 000. The figures of the following years But to the second idea more than to the sound almost like a fairy tale : 173,000 in first has the present motor saturation been 1910; 200,000 in 191 1; 340,000 in 1912; due. 430,000 in 1913, culminating with the half Certain of the more far-seeing manufac- million of the past year, turers began to perceive that the markets 40 A like expansion has followed in the they were then cultivating had their lim- number of producers. To-day there are its. They saw that at the prices for which some four hundred and fifty American cars were selling, and with the tendency factories engaged in making a score of toward the still more luxurious machine, different varieties of gasoline and electric, the people who could afford to buy them 45 pleasure and commercial motor cars. By would soon be supplied. far the greater number — two hundred One of the manufacturers, pursuing this and forty-five — are building gasoline ve- idea, was curious to know how many per- hides for business, where competition has sons there were in the United States who not yet weeded out the weak. In the older could afford automobiles. He wanted to 50 and more fully developed touring car field know definitely how large the motor mar- no less than one hundred and sixteen well ket was. The figures he found ran some- established trade-marks coupled with con- thing like this. That 7000 families had in- stantly decreasing margins of profit unite comes over $60,000 a year; 40,000 fam- to discourage the formation of new com- ilies had incomes between $15,000 and 55 panies. Future progress will largely show $60,000 a year ; 253,000 families had in- the concentration of present numbers more comes between $6000 and $15,000 a year; than the addition of new competitors. 700,000 families had incomes between Another valuable lesson afforded to the A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 47 world by the automobile industry has been At another plant, in Cleveland, powerful the keen race for the reduction of pro- machines mill out of solid steel wheels duction costs. Within five years -the aver- for the heaviest motor trucks. From the age price of the motor car has dropped 900 pound casting they cut, in two and a from nearly $3000 to less than $1000, and 5 half hours, 250 pounds of excess material, in every way each year's product is the machining at the same time both sides of superior of those that have gone before, the wheel, the edges of all the spokes, the The explanation is scientific industry. center and bores of the hub, even to cut- in the automobile industry more than ting the threads for the ball-bearings and in others, the scientist has had full con- 10 the dust caps. In the automobile indus- trol of both the product and the plant. No try, for the heaviest part of the work, man longer is there room here for the hit-and- is now largely a supervisory intelligence, miss methods masqueraded for so many The general organization of the motor years under the name of Yankee shrewd- factories is no less remarkable. The mere ness ; no longer any scorning of ' scien- 15 ability to turn out, complete, an average tific methods,' long synonymous in popu- of a thousand cars a day, means organiza- lar estimation with near-sighted eyes and tion, needless to say, which- eliminates the absent-minded professors. Modern auto- second and expedites every possible op- mobile manufacture is scientific and- — ■ eration. what has not always followed the intro- 20 The departments in one factory, for in- duction of economics in manufacture — stance, have been arranged not in any ar- it is the consumer who has largely had the bitrary way, but as the particular part benefit. For factory buildings modern in made in each contributed to the completed every detail of light and air, for maximum car. Thus literally, as well as in the ad- efficiency in men and machines, for its 25 vertising literature, raw material goes in wage level and the loyalty and morale of at one end and comes out at the other a its workers, the automobile industry finished product. comes close — very close — to being the One manufacturer, with an aerial mono- best in America. railway, likewise has effected as much of The use of machinery and labor-saving 30 a revolution in the shop as the automo- devices has always been one of the main bile he makes has helped effect in the characteristics of American industry. If world. Instead of trundling material anything it is of their machines that our from department to department, or from manufacturers have been proudest. Here, floor to floor, in the time-honored and ar- too, has the motor builder surpassed him- 35 chaic way, he installed throughout his self. More nearly does a modern auto- shop a miniature railway system trans- mobile plant resemble a huge experimental porting its burdens over to workmen and laboratory than a factory. And the tens machines, thus saving both minutes and of thousands of cars which are the annual valuable floor space. output of any one of many American com- 40 The complicated operation of assembling panies suggest rather the product of these a car has been reduced to these simple giant perfected frankensteins than that of elements : human hands. Over a pair of ' horses ' a rear axle is Watch, for instance, a gang of these ma- laid, to which the side frames are added, chines in one of the large Detroit fac- 45 followed by the front axle. Wheels, with tories, set and controlled by a single hand, their tires already inflated, are then ap- engaged in stamping out cylinder heads plied and the frame rolls to where an en- for engines fifteen at a time, as though gine is fitted into position. At the third no more than copper cents, milling at the advance the dashboard and steering gear same operation the top and two sides of 50 are bolted fast ; at the next stop the radia- each casting. Or, in another of the lab- tor; then the gasoline tank is mounted oratory-shops, follow the work of a huge filled with fuel. multiple drilling machine, which is the The same efficiency obtains even to the successor of twelve operators and as many testing of the mechanism. The engine is drills. It bores in the frame sides of a 55 cranked by pressing the rear wheels of motor car at one operation all the holes the car to revolving pulleys in the floor, necessary for the assembling of the body A rubber hose connected with the exhaust and the chassis. pipe carries the gases outside the building. 48 WRITING OF TODAY A lever is thrown, and off through the greater radius of action, capable of longer door starts the chassis, wrenching itself hours of service, and requiring but a small loose from the hose as it goes. After a part of the same housing space, the motor trial around the testing ground, the car truck is the horse's superior in every par- returns to another point in the factory 5 ticular. where down an inclined chute from an A big metropolitan dairy company well upper floor the body slides and is clamped demonstrates this efficiency by doing with rapidly to the chassis by men who have six ten-ton trucks the work for which it become experts in this one simple opera- formerly employed a hundred horses. In- tion. 10 stead of half-day service from its teams, In less than a minute after a car has the company by using two shifts of driv- left any one position, another has taken its ers, now gets twenty hours' work out of place. each of its motors. During the remain- It still remains to apply the motor car ing four hours the trucks are overhauled in commerce. Exploited as a toy, a huge 15 and made ready for the next day's task. plaything, as it were, for grown-ups, it During the blizzard which last winter tied must now be made to do the work of the up all the horse and surface car transpor- nation. tation in New York City these trucks re- Thus when a conservative dealer or mained steadily in operation, stockholder gets alarmed at the present 20 A Chicago coal dealer with one five-ton rate of automobile production and foresees truck has been able to haul as high as two the exhaustion of markets and closing of hundred and thirty-four tons of coal in a factories, it is to the future of the com- day. Thirty tons was his best day's rec- mercial car that the optimistic manufac- ord with a three-horse truck. By using turer points. And the immensity of this 25 motor cars an express company in another future he sees in that but a scant thirty city has reduced the average cost of its thousand of last year's half million cars parcel delivery from 11.68 cents each to went into business use. the record figure of 3.16 cents. So eco- In every field where the horse is em- nomical and reliable has this form of de- ployed our enthusiastic maker knows that 30 livery proved that one of the largest ex- his truck has proved its superior economy press companies of Philadelphia and one and utility. He points as proof of his con- of the largest of the New York department tention to the scores of businesses to-day stores have not a single horse in serv- where it is already indispensable. And in ice. replacing the horses alone he sees a future 35 The one hundred and ten motor cars of market for more than three million trucks, another New York store last year did no After that, or along with it, if the con- less than 75 per cent, of its delivery servative stockholder is still intractable, business, distributing in the city and there is the export trade, now only in its surrounding country more than 3,375,000 beginnings, to be counted. 40 packages. Horses are still used by the From exports of $150,000 in 1910 the company, but in a lessened degree yearly, total has risen to more than $33,000,000 while their radius of action has constantly the past year, excluding the immense num- shortened. Formerly, to serve its sub- bers of war automobiles we are supplying urban customers, the store sent its de- to Europe. With any one of a dozen 45 livery wagon once a week by relays of American companies exceeding in a month horses to the outlying towns. Now, no the entire year's output of the largest for- horse vehicle goes above Sixtieth Street, eign factory, an optimistic maker visions and instead of weekly, the towns and' their a whole world supplied with American au- outlying districts are served daily from tomobiles. 5° their delivery sub-stations, while increased And the motor truck already promises territory has been brought under the to fulfil its expectations. Its growth thus store's influence. far has exceeded even the corresponding In the estimation of the motor truck period in the elder branch of the industry, manufacturer one truck on the average In the department store, dairy, coal and ex- 55 can displace four horses. If he did not press delivery business, the horse is in a he would feel that he was making a poor fair way of soon being altogether elim- product. Every horse is to him a direct inated. Cheaper to maintain, with a challenge. And the census reminds him A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 49 that there are in the country still some Although the submarine has been stead- twenty-five millions of the animals. ily developed during the past fifteen years Wherefore, if a motor maker gets the by countless inventions increasing its ef- ' blues ' — which conceivably may happen ficiency as a fighting machine, little good if the accustomed orders from Zanzibar, 5 has been accomplished in making it habit- Siam, Terra del Fuego, or any other far able. Great sums have been spent to se- corner of the earth fail to show up in the cure an adequate ventilation of the vessel morning's mail ; which may happen if some when submerged. The heated air of the year his engineers fail to bring out a sin- engine room and the exhaled air of the gle new feature for his next model ; which 10 crew have been drawn off, filtered, oxy- may happen if he is compelled to forego genated, cooled, and returned to the in- his annual custom of doubling the plant's terior, but even this intricate process has capacity — in any one of these contin- failed to rid the boat of poisonous gases, gencies, I repeat, all the aforesaid manu- Mr. Edison has attempted since 1910 to facturer has to do to be blissfully happy 15 improve these conditions by getting at the is to think of those twenty-five million exact source of trouble — the batteries, horses against which it is his duty to wage Secretary Daniels of the navy gave the unceasing war. public the first intimation that Mr. Edison was lending his genius toward the subma- 20 rine when he said last December, before X the House Naval Committee: EDISON LESSENS SUBMARINE Submarines have given us more trouble PERIL than anything else in the navy. Submarines are fickle — getting out of order any time — [New York Times, April 18, 1915. By permission.] 2S and we have yet to find a successful type of battery and engine. The lead casings around The announcement made last week that the battery are liable to be eaten out by the Thomas A. Edison had perfected a bat- sulphuric acid in the batteries. Then the tery which is to be submitted to drastic steel surrounding the lead is eaten through tests in the newest of American subma- 30 an 4 the s * h w ? te r, ir . om the . submerging rine craft now building, the L-8, at the ***! S. ets « and chlorine gas is generated, Pnrtcrnmith N H Navv Yard is the first whlch ls very dangerous to the crew. . . . hortsmcmtn, JN hi., JNavy Yard is the nrst Mr _ Edison oses t0 use an a i kaline solu . authontative information that the inventor tion in the cells of his battery and thus elim . is interested in solving the health and inate the danger to the lead casings and the power problems of underwater fighting 35 steel partitions. machines. Much has been said connecting Mr. Ed- So imminent, indeed, is the danger to ison with the submarine by officials in life from these lead-sulphuric acid bat- Washington and elsewhere, but until last teries now in use in all our submarines week the inventor himself steadily de- 4° that an ex-navy officer, when asked re- clined to say a word. Now the announce- cently if he would volunteer his services ment has been made by Miller Reese in the event of hostilities, said: Hutchison, Mr. Edison's chief engineer ' That would depend entirely upon the and personal representative, that a supe- nature of the duty. If I could be reason- rior style of submarine storage battery has 45 ably sure either of complete annihilation been evolved. or absolute safety, I would go. The prob- So it may be said that Edison, the man ability of " passing out " does not worry opposed to war and its implements, has me, but I do draw the line on becoming an perfected a battery which will not only invalid or a cripple — a burden to myself make the submarine habitable by prevent- 50 and family for the remainder of my days.' ing asphyxiation of a crew in the event No other problem of the submarine has of a prolonged enforced submersion, but so persistently asserted itself as the bat- will practically double the strategic effi- tery. If the battery is not in good work- ciency of a submarine craft by providing it ing order, the submarine cannot be op- with a storage battery which will extend 55 erated beneath the surface. The battery the undersea cruising range to 150 miles, is the heart of a submarine, just as the the present radius being less than 100 periscope is the eye. When running on miles. the surface the vessel is propelled by an So WRITING OF TODAY ordinary gasoline engine, and running inspection was held, which disclosed the thus, with the conning tower open and fact that the acid had eaten its. way to the the ventilators at work, air is forced into gasoline tank and that the batteries were the boat, which, mixing with the gasoline, flooded with gasoline. Had the vessel engenders the necessary combustion to run 5 been under way at the time it would have the ship. But when submerged the boat taken but a single spark to ignite the must necessarily be sealed. Access to the gasoline and cause an explosion, outside air is accordingly shut off, and All these dangers are at once done away the ordinary gasoline, engine cannot be with by Mr. Edison's new battery. It not used. At this time, therefore, an entirely » only prevents asphyxiation, but it acts as different source of power is called into a disinfectant because of the affinity of its use, namely, electric motors, deriving their solution — potash — for carbonic acid gas. energy from electric storage batteries. There is enough potash solution in the bat- Only last year the submarine E-2 was teries alone, says Mr. Hutchison, to purify running from Newport News to New York 15 the air for one hundred days or more, when the commander smelled the familiar It is a fact of peculiar significance that odor of chlorine. This gas is to the Mr. Edison's first visit aboard a warship commander of a submarine exactly what occurred in December last at the Brooklyn fire-damp is to a miner. Instantly the Navy Yard, when he visited the battle- commander gave orders for the tanks zo ship New York in company with Rear Ad- to be emptied, that the submarine might miral Fletcher and Secretary Daniels. At rise. Upon reaching the surface — and this particular time one of the inventor's luckily enough the sea was calm — the new batteries was being put to a severe hatches were opened and the crew ordered test in the basement of the Administration on deck. Despite the despatch of these 25 Building. The battery was placed on a relief measures the gas had got in its specially designed cradle and was rocked deadly work, and two of the crew had to and fro, in imitation of the rolling mo- hemorrhages from the lungs. A call by tion of a submarine. When Mr. Edison wireless was sent out and the boat was saw the battery going through its rolling towed back to port, where an examination 30 motions he turned to the man in charge of the ship's batteries revealed a typical of the test. condition of affairs. ' Make her rock faster ! ' he shouted. In the type of battery employed on the ' Give her a big tip. Bump her. Do any- E-2, a type employed on all our subma- thing you want with her. I 've tried ev- rines, sheets of lead are suspended in sul- 35 erything and you can't faze her ! ' phuric acid, within a hard rubber jar, Shortly thereafter Secretary Daniels hence the name lead-sulphuric acid bat- announced from Washington that Mr. teries. These jars are in a compartment Edison was busy with his new battery surrounded on all sides by the ship's main for the submarine. ballast tanks into which salt water is ad- 4° Before the inventor allowed his battery mitted and expelled. Once this sea water to be sent to the navy yard, or before he is mixed with sulphuric acid, hydrochloric even considered the manufacture of it, he acid fumes are formed. When the salt sent it to Mr. Bachmann, the General Su- water finds its way to the interior of a lead perintendent of the laboratories, with storage battery and combines with the ma- 45 these instructions : terial on the lead plates, chlorine gas- Mount ^ . apparatus. No one of the deadliest known gases - is gen- cushioning whatsoever between the cell and erated. _ ,,',,, cage. Run the apparatus continuously until This is exactly what had happened on the cell has been raised three quarters of an the E-2. By some means, a slight crack, 50 inch and dropped on a solid block two million perhaps, or unusual strain, sulphuric acid times. had escaped from one of the jars, and, at- 2 - There must be no sediment in the bot- tacking the steel of the ballast tank, had tom °\ the can after th; s test and the cell eaten through, so that when the tank was F 1 " 31 have as Sr eat electrical capacity as rilled the battery itself was flooded. 55 e ° r |' „„ „„n .„ 1 .„..„ij . • . . , m. . J t ,, . 3- oecure cell to truck and project truck The dangers from chlorine gas are even against a brick or stone abutment five hun- yet more serious. Just before the subma- dred times at a speed of fifteen miles an rine D-l was going out for a cruise an hour at moment of impact. A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 51 His battery met these tests as easily as of potash — and surprising as it may seem, it met the one later on at the navy yard, the potash is a preservative of all the ele- The navy officials found out, as did the ments entering into the combination ; thus inventor himself, that ' you can't faze her.' the battery elements do not destroy each But to go back still further. The new 5 other. Sulphuric acid attacks steel ; pot- submarine storage battery is an adaptation ash preserves it. The acid battery is a of the commercial type of Edison battery generator of noxious and, at times, deadly now in world-wide use. It cost him seven fumes. The Edison battery is fumeproof, years of labor and the expenditure of over gasproof — a hermetically sealed contain- $2,000,000 to perfect this battery. He 10 ing can making it so. Even if the potash started with the idea well fixed in mind gases could escape they would do no harm, that nature could certainly afford one more Potash is an excellent disinfectant. Mr. reaction for the production of electric cur- Edison has explained this as follows : rent without the use of dangerous acids. The enormous, almost unsurmountable, de- 15 When a storage battery is charged, hydro- tail which had to be carried through is al- gen gas forms on the negative plates and most beyond belief. Over 50,000 separate ? xy £ en * gas 0I i th ? P 031 ^; These & ases > experiments were made anl the results of TJ^TJ! sXi^nt^ng %hter each carefully tabulated and plotted as than air, float away. Being formed in and curves betore the final battery was evolved. 20 subsequently passing through the electrolytes The curve sheets alone, if placed end to these minute bubbles convey each a small end, would be sixteen miles long, or they quantity of whatever chemical the solution is would cover two acres of ground. composed of; if they are formed in a lead- After innumerable experiments he at sulphuric acid type battery, sulphuric acid is last struck upon a reaction, which, al- 25 th f lr carg0 L lf ln u a ",, Edls . on battery potash, though it appeared weak at the beginning, oi Tl£Zy^ C oZ mtTco'ntact "SS was very promising. This one reaction an object they either remain until evaporat i on was followed with most intense persistency disintegrates them and deposits their charge for fully three years, before even the first of acid or alkali, or they burst and accom- unimproved type of nickel-iron-alkaline 30 plish the same result. The gas vent of a battery was produced. Any storage bat- lead type cell is open and the bubbles may tery consists of a positive and a negative therefore pass through freely and away. The plate submerged in a jar in a liquid known vent of the L Edlson cel1 ls a c^k valve. To as the electrolyte. Its value is dependent get out > * he gases .^ J & ,s Y - u y 4.1. r / it. a. «.i_ 1 i I it.- „. pressure formed within the otherwise her- upor 1 the fact that the elements of this 35 ^ eticalIy sealed conta ining can. If these combination are changed chemically by po tash gases were allowed to get out they passing a current through them, but in wou ld do no harm, for they purify the air. such a way that the attempts of nature to bring back these elements to their original No better proof of the healthfulness of condition produces electricity. 4° the Edison battery is afforded than at the The greater the surface presented by West Orange works, where several thou- the plates, the greater the current pro- sand cells are charged and recharged with duced. The positive plate of the Edison hundreds of workmen around them. The cell is composed of vertical rows of thin, executive offices of the plant, and in fact, perforated steel tubes, filled with nickel 45 Mr. Edison's library, are but a few yards hydrate, these tubes being supported by a from the storage battery building. Not very light steel frame. The electrolyte is so with lead-sulphuric acid batteries, a solution of potash. At this point it can however. They are manufactured as far be said that the' Edison battery differs away from the main works as possible, and from all other batteries ; in fact, it is the 50 powerful electric fans are used to remove only battery the elements of which are not the fumes. attacked by the solution in which they are Navy specifications covering the installa- submerged when left standing in a charged tion of lead-acid batteries stipulate lead- or discharged condition for an indefinite lined rooms to retain them, and lead-lined period. 55 ventilating pipes with specially constructed The battery, stated simply and con- and installed motors to operate the ex- cisely, is composed of but four things — haust fans. In specifications covering the nickel, iron oxide, and steel, in a solution installation of Edison's new battery no 52 WRITING OF TODAY mention need be made of lead-lined rooms which formed two screws, driven in oppo- or exhaust fans. site directions by rubber bands under tor- Of all fears which beset the submarine sion. A toy so delicate lasted only a short volunteer chlorine gas is the greatest, time in the hands of small boys, but its Five months after an inhalation of this 5 memory was abiding, deadly gas a cold may develop into pneu- Several years later we began building monia; the lungs seldom gain their previ- these helicopteres for ourselves, making ous healthy condition. If Mr. Edison's each one larger than that preceding. But, battery ' comes up to scratch,' as they say to our astonishment, we found that the in the navy, it will solve those two great 10 larger the ' bat,' the less it flew. We did problems of life and power which, up to not know that a machine having only the present time, have made the submergi- twice the linear dimensions of another ble as dangerous in peace as in war, and would require eight times the power. We as perilous to its crew as to its enemy, finally became discouraged, and returned It will not only stimulate enlistment, but 15 to kite-flying, a sport to which we had it will make American underwater craft devoted so much attention that we were the safest and most powerful fighting unit regarded as experts. But as we became in the world. older, we had to give up this fascinating Several weeks ago the electrical class of sport as unbecoming to boys of our ages. the Brooklyn Navy Yard visited Mr. Edi- 20 It was not till the news of the sad death son's plant. During their visit he gave of Lilienthal reached America in the sum- them a talk on his new battery. mer of 1896 that we again gave more than ' Keep it clean, and give it water,' said passing attention to the subject of flying. he, ' and at the end of four years it will We then studied with great interest Cha- give its full capacity.' 25 nute's Progress in Flying Machines, Lang- ' Four years ?' they asked in wonder. ley's Experiments in Aerodynamics, the ' Yes,' replied Mr. Edison, ' four years, Aeronautical Annuals of 1905, 1906, and eight years ; it will outwear the submarine 1907, and several pamphlets published by itself.' the Smithsonian Institution, especially ar- 30 tides by Lilienthal and extracts from Mouillard's Empire of the Air. The XI larger works gave us a good understanding of the nature of the flying problem, and THE WRIGHT BROTHERS the difficulties in past attempts to solve it, AEROPLANE 35 while Mouillard and Lilienthal, the great missionaries of the flying cause, infected ORVILLE AND WILBUR WRIGHT us with their own unquenchable enthusi- asm, and transformed idle curiosity into [Century Magazme, % September, 1908. the active zeal of workers. 1 40 In the field of aviation there were two Though the subject of aerial navigation schools. The first, represented by such is generally considered new, it has occu- men as Professor Langley and Sir Hiram pied the minds of men more or less from Maxim, gave chief attention to power the earliest ages. Our" personal interest flight; the second, represented by Lilien- in it dates from our childhood days. Late 45 thai, Mouillard, and Chanute, to soaring in the autumn of 1878, our father came flight. Our sympathies were with the lat- into the house one evening with some ob- ter school, partly from impatience at the ject partly concealed in his hands, and wasteful extravagance of mounting deli- before we could see what it was, he tossed cate and costly machinery on wings which it into the air. Instead of falling to the 50 no one knew how to manage, and partly, floor, as we expected, it flew across the no doubt, from the extraordinary charm room till it struck the ceiling, where it and enthusiasm with which the apostles of fluttered awhile, and finally sank to the soaring flight set forth the beauties of sail- floor. It was a little toy, known to scien- ing through the air on fixed wings, deriv- tists as a ' helicoptere,' but which we, with 55 ing the motive power from the wind itself, sublime disregard for science, at once The balancing of a flyer may seem, at dubbed a ' bat.' It was a light frame of first thought, to be a very simple matter, cork and bamboo, covered with paper, yet almost every experimenter had found A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 53 in this- the one point which he could not method seemed to us incapable of expan- satisfactorily master. Many different sion to meet large conditions, because the methods were tried. Some experimenters weight to be moved and the distance of placed the center of gravity far below the possible motion were limited, while the wings, in the belief that the weight would 5 disturbing forces steadily increased, both naturally seek to remain at the lowest with wing area and with wind velocity, point. It was true, that, like the pendu- In order to meet the needs of large ma- lum, it tended to seek the lowest point; chinas, we wished to employ some system but also, like the pendulum, it tended to whereby the operator could vary at will oscillate in a manner destructive of all 10 the inclination of different parts of the stability. A more satisfactory system, es- wings, and thus obtain from the wind pecially for lateral balance, was that of forces to restore the balance which the arranging the wings in the shape of a wind itself had disturbed. This could broad V, to form a dihedral angle, with easily be done by using wings capable of the center low and the wing-tips elevated. 15 being warped, and by supplementary ad- In theory this was a-n automatic system, justable surfaces in the shape of rudders, but in practice it had two serious defects : As the forces obtainable for control would first, it tended to keep the machine oscil- necessarily increase in the same ratio as lating; and, second, its usefulness was re- the disturbing forces, the method seemed stricted to calm air. 20 capable of expansion to an almost unlim- In a slightly modified form the same ited extent. A happy device was discov- system was applied to the fore-and-aft ered whereby the apparently rigid system balance. The main aeroplane was set at of superposed surfaces, invented by Wen- a positive angle, and a horizontal tail at a ham, and improved by Stringfellow and negative angle, while the center of grav- 25 Chanute, could be warped in a most un- ity was placed far forward. As in the expected way, so that the aeroplanes could case of lateral control, there was a tend- be presented on the right and left sides at ency to constant undulation, and the very different angles to the wind. This, with forces which caused a restoration of bal- an adjustable, horizontal front rudder, ance in calms, caused a disturbance of the 30 formed the main feature of our first glider, balance in winds. Notwithstanding the The period from 1885 to 1900 was one known limitations of this principle, it had of unexampled activity in aeronautics, and been embodied in almost every prominent for a time there was high hope that the flying-machine which had been built. age of flying was at hand. But Maxim, After considering the practical effect of 35 after spending $100,000, abandoned the the dihedral principle, we reached the con- work ; the Ader machine, built at the ex- clusion that a flyer founded upon it might pense of the French Government, was a be of interest from a scientific point of failure; Lilienthal and Pilcher were killed view, but could be of no value in a prac- in experiments; and Chanute and many tical way. We therefore resolved to try a 40 others, from one cause or another, had fundamentally different principle. We relaxed their efforts, though it subse- would arrange the machine so that it i. -a r The last signals from the Titanic were sinking off Newfoundland, he said 45 heard by the virginian at I2 . 27 A . M . briefly to one. The wireless operator on the Virginian And to another : Write me a story of says these signals were blurred and ended the Titanic, the new White Star liner, abruptly, on her maiden trip, telling of her mishap with the New York at the start.' 50 Paragraph by paragraph the cable ed- And to another : ' Write me a story of itor was sending the story to the com- Captain E. J. Smith.' posing room. What was going on Then to a reporter, sitting idly about: upstairs every one knew. They were 'Get your hat and coat quick; go down side-tracking everything else and the to the White Star Line office and tele- 55 copy-cutter in the composing room was phone all you can get about the Titanic sending out the story in 'takes,' as they sinking off Newfoundland.' are called, of a single paragraph to each Then to another reporter : ' Get the compositor. His blue pencil marked each 68 WRITING OF TODAY individual piece of copy with a letter and self went from desk to desk overlooking number, so that when the dozen or so the work. men setting up the story had their work 'Time's up/ said the city editor, but finished the story might be put together before he finished the cable editor cried consecutively. 5 to the boy: 'Let the two-column head ' Tell the operator,' said the cable ed- stand and tell them to add this head ' : itor again to the office boy, 'to duplicate that despatch I gave him to our Halifax Titanic Smkmg man. Get his name out of the corre- in Mid-Ocean; Hit spondents' book.' .0 Great Iceber S- 'Who wrote that story of the "Car- And t0 this was added: mania in the Icefield " ? ' said the night city editor to the copy reader who ' han- At 12.27 this Morning Blurred Signals by died' the homecoming of the Carmania, Wireless Told of Women Being Put Off in which arrived Sunday night, and the 15 Lifeboats — Three Liners Rushing to Aid of story of which was already in the mail J3°° Imperiled Passengers and Crew of 860 edition of the paper before him. The Men - copy reader told him. He called the re- , Did we catch ft? , asked the caMe ed _ porter to nis desk. _ . f he , standing at the composing Take that story,' said the night city 20 roQm tube ■> & r & editor, 'and give us a column on it. « w did „ he said triumphantI Dont rewrite the story Add para- , 0ne big n f ' & ^ ^ said graphs here and there to show the vast th it ^ ^ , We , ■ ' in ' t 2Q extent of the ice field. Make it straight L , * ft • ith s a c s let / ; copy, so that nothing in that story will 25 > v * have to be reset. You have just thirty ^he enthusiasm was catchm fire . minutes to catch the edition. Write it Throughout the office it was a be( f lam of 1 ' i tr\ I' i- *. x .1 ni noise — clicking typewriters, clicking tele- Get the passenger lists of the Olym- h instrum s ent Y and te 'i e phone bells pic and the Baltic, was the assignment 30 ^ added t & whistle £ f the tubes given to another reporter all alert wait- ^ ^ frQm h d room he mg for their names to be called, every ; rQ ^ / s room ± stereQ _ man awake at the switch £ f ^ th / business ^ the lat . In the meantime the story from the A y . ., . • -c , .,' , , Montreal man was heinsr ticked off and « ter ' ha0 P llv > not ln use - But throughout Montreal man was being ticked oil, and 35 the office men worked; nobody shouted, on another wire Halifax was coming to ,„ „. ,- , , ' J a „. . j.j; & no one lost his head, men were flushed, 1 ,e Men ' said the citv editor • we have but the C ° o1 ' Calm - deliberate wa y in Men, said the city editor we have hi h h managing editor smoked his lust five minutes left to make the city. • , , , & , & . ,- .. J T ., , ,. 1., } cigar helped much to relieve the ten- Jam it down tight. t°sion Already the three cuts had been made, ,4,, _,. , ., ,, .^ , the telegraph editor was handling the . f Three-fifteen, men, said the city ed- Montreal story, his assistant the Halifax * tor ' admomshingly. Every line must end, and the cable editor was still editing be JiP \3-^. Five minutes more the Associated Press bulletins and writ- 45 . Tb( ; ^y editor walked rapidly from ing a new head to tell the rest of the ae , A J° aeslc - ., iU . ,, u ... story the additional details brought. The , ^U U P> said the night city editor, White Star Line man had a list of names a " d tbree , mm t ut . e . s to the good, of passengers of the Titanic and found {* th * hl S table s t° od * e «ty editor, that they numbered 1300 and carried a 50 cable ed "° r ' m & Cltv editor and man- crew of 860 aglng edltor - They were lookm S over In the meantime the proofs of all the £ e completed headline that should tell Titanic matter that had been set were the storv t0 the world - Tt read: coming to the desk of the managing ed- (Across three colmnns-) itor, in charge over all, but giving his 55 New Liner Titanic Hits An Iceberg; special attention to the editorial matter. Sinking by the Bow at Midnight; All his suggestions went through the city Women Put off in Lifeboats; editor and on down the line, but he him- Last Wireless at 12.27 a.m. Blurred. B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 69 (Single column.) As he handed it over he remarked to Allan Liner Virginian his chief : ' Practically nothing new on Now feeding Toward the disaster; all the passengers were taken e lg inip. g j n lifeboats and are now on their way Baltic to the Rescue, Too. 5 to Halifax, says Franklin of the White The Olympic Also Rushing to Star Line. By the way, I had a letter Give Aid — Other Ships from Hitchens to-day. He 's at St. Within Call. John's. Don't you think it would be a Carmania Dodged Bergs. & ood P lan to send him over to Halifax Reports French Liner Niagara I0 even if Jt does break up his vacation ? ' Injured and Several Ships 'Yes; and tell him to get a private Caught. wire when he reaches there.' _._.., . . 'Get this off quick,' he said, and he %rSent A F ^icS-an B dW § ^ g D^ ny , *£** the following telegrams to his as- in New York Tomorrow l5 Slstant - Better ha ve the boy take them to the Marconi Wireless himself — 27 Mishap at very Start. Narrowly Escaped William Street,' he added. Collision with the American Liner These were the Marconigrams — in New York when Leaving Port. duplicate to W. T. Stead, Major Archi- ■That will hold 'em, I guess/ said the 2obald Butt and J ac 1 ues teller city editor, and the head went upstairs. pi ease send wireless exclusive Titanic The men waited about and talked and sinking; your own rates. smoked. Bulletins came in, but with no important details. Going to press at 3.20 25 ^ was signed by different names, not meant a wide circulation. At 4.30 the by the paper, because these men were Associated Press sent ' Good-night/ but known to the individuals and were at that hour the presses had been run- friends. To Butt's telegram was left off ning uninterruptedly for almost an hour. ' Your own rates ' and it was signed by On Monday morning, at twelve o'clock, 3° the name of the Washington correspond- the city editor was at his desk half an ent, a personal friend of many years' hour earlier than usual. His assistant standing. already had read the morning papers ' Skipper wants to talk to you,' said and the first editions of the afternoon the assistant to the city editor, and he papers, known as the ' bulldog edition,' 35 pushed the bracket 'phone that both used which is really the morning papers re- toward his chief. ' Skipper ' is the title written, with just a new angle on the in this office, and usually in all other news. In a poker way, the ' bulldog ' offices, that is given to the ship news man. goes the morning paper one better. ' ' He says Franklin is not telling the ' We got out a corker this morning/ 40 truth, he believes, about the Titanic. said the assistant city editor, although he Write this name and address down,' said himself had been fast asleep and knew the city editor, ' and rush this despatch : ' nothing and did nothing until he picked up his morning paper at the railway sta- Can you get me the truth, for private lo- tion, for assistant city editors, having day 45 formation, about the Titanic? jobs, can live in the suburbs. But be- , fore noon the assistant city editor had dug The despatch was sent to the head of out of the morning papers such events as °" e T of Canada s great railways, would take place during the day as the . Meanwhile the city editor was penis- city editor might care to ' cover/ the 50 m S. the schedule of suggestions of his 'beats' the other papers had, the treat- assistant, to which he added his own, in ment of a story that was so different j 110 ™ .^ lan P»ag e - This 1S what it from the others as the city editor might looked like: be interested in, and anything that might Scenes ^ white Staf office Burnet interest him generally, all of the clippings 55 Passenger List .".'.'.'.'.'.'.Howard clasped together and the schedule neatly First Steamer to Use Wireless Horry typewritten telling in a line the time, the Cape Race a Graveyard Wall place and the thing. Description of Titanic Lynah 70 WRITING OF TODAY Titanic Accident Insurance and Losses the only ones saved are practically women .. , ., „ Glover and children.' Noted Men and Women on Board ...Griffen And then was begun the story telling Skippers Warned of Ice Peril Bush the world Tuesday morning of the Ti- Kimpton an iceberg, 866 being rescued by the Careers of Millet, Harris, Ismay, Butt, Stead, Carpathia, with probably 1250 perish- Futrelle, Straus, Astor, Hays, Guggenheim ing in the sea; with Ismay safe, and and Moore Brewster probably Butt, Astor, Smith, Stead, Gug- Northern Ice Packs Break up Early 10 genheim, Millet, Harris, Futrelle, Straus , _, . , Elmendorf an( j others less prominent sinking with Arctic Glaciers the Cause Whitten t ±.„ Tttnvir Bulkheads at Fault Moors Liners That Have Paid Toll Bromiley ,,,, ., -, ... „ „ A t. „ Modern Safety Devices McDonald , When th . e clt y e( ? ltor arnved on _ Tu . es " 15 day morning, again at noon, showing And so the morning work was started, practically no wear of the eighteen-hour The other local news, however, must stretch he had gone through, he recalled not be neglected, and there was no disap- Hitchens, now in Halifax, telling him to pointment when, in looking over the as- 'never mind' and proceed on his vaca- signment book, it was found that, at least » tion, etc., for the Carpathia, ' the hos- for the present, the following men were pital ship,' was bound for New York out of it : where everything would center. No reply came from Butt, Stead or Hoe Book Sale Wilson Futrelle. Naturally. But what both- Gaynor Says He Is His Own Boss . . . Poinier z5 ere d the city editor was that the offer X ha f'^I amt ^ to ] )eTe 1 ?* ed »--^-,V- : %' own made by wireless to the wireless man Clark Offers Fund for Big Art Gallery. Ferris aboard the Car p athia brought no re- s ^ m oZu^L% or it^ -■:::::££& ^™> r *™* ™ ans 7% to r the Her $150,000 Suit Off; Luke Marries . .Riker message to Captain Rostrom, of the Car- Ask Receiver for Manhattan Securities Co. 3° pathia, not a word from any passenger Graham of the three women who, it had been sug- gested to him, might be able ' to write the And so the staff separated, all to turn story.' in by five o'clock, when the copy readers The ship news man was sent early to should begin their work, the stories as- 35 find out about the Carpathia, when she signed to them earlier in the day. The would arrive, what men would board her, organization must never go to pieces, no what and when the revenue cutter would matter how big the news, the paper leave, how many men each paper might must always take care of the other news, be permitted to have on board, and ar- no matter how greatly it is overshad- 40 rangements on the pier. This, some of owed. it for publication and some of it for office ' My God ! ' said the city editor, as he information, was hard to get because read a despatch at seven o'clock that night, ' everything up in the air,' he reported, 'the skipper's right. The White Star Tuesday brought by wireless the passen- Line and Franklin have lied to us.' 45 ger list, but not a scrap of information. ' Here,' he said, calling to Burnet to Nevertheless there were half a dozen come to his desk, ' go back to the White pages to fill, and this is the way the city Star Line and tell Franklin he is a liar! editor mapped out his story for certain The Titanic sank at 2.20 this morning things were evident: That the Titanic and not more than 700 were taken off in 5° knew of the ice ahead (because she was the boats. Tell it to him with my com- warned by the America) ; Astor, Straus, pliments, too.' Stead and Butt were given up for lost; Every one looked up, for the voice of there were not enough lifeboats; the Ti- the city editor was pitched high and he tanic was not ' unsinkable ' ; these were was angry clear through. ' Here 's a pri- 55 ' leads,' and so the staff got busy again, vate despatch,' he said, ' I have just re- There were the old stories to be cov- ceived from a friend in Canada, who says ered again : the scenes at the White Star that the Titanic went down at 2.20 and Line offices, Titanic accident, and life B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 71 insurance of men and women lost, and the newspapers and those desiring to stop these additional stories that the news re- publicity. The newspapers won, and ports suggested: Criticism of the north- Secretary Nagel received instructions ern route; young Astor to send ship to from the President to see that at least seek his father ; customs men to pass the 5 reporters were permitted to tell the world Carpathia without delay; American regu- what had happened. Every newspaper lations compared with British regulations would have been glad to have assigned as to lifeboat capacity; big Atlantic twenty- four reporters to interview sur- liners that are now lacking in lifeboats; vivors, but at last it was decided that the sea patrol suggested for the ice-region ; 10 press associations should be represented vessels not built that will not sink; scout by six men each, the morning newspapers cruisers rushed to scene of wreck; care by four men each, and the evening news- of survivors when they arrive; steerage papers by two men each. Photographers survivors to find aid; sea traffic not hurt were barred. Admission to the pier only by the disaster ; facts about those on the *5 was given. Previous to this newspapers Titanic; people from afar off coming to were given a number of pier passes; New York ; Congress likely to say ' more these, however, were canceled, and spe- lifeboats ' ; triumph for wireless and why cial tickets of the number quoted were to was false news given out Monday night, take their place. when it was known that the Titanic 20 foundered at 2.20 a.m. Monday. How Thursday's paper was got out Tuesday midnight came. This query is merely a repetition of Tuesday. The was handed to the city editor : great story was Thursday night, when ' Have story that wreck was caused by the Carpathia should arrive. For the high speed and panic,' wired St. John cor- 25 Carpathia absolutely refused to give out respondent. ' Shall I send ? ' anything by wireless which should tell ' Wire " Let it come," ' said the city in advance what had happened on that editor. Sunday midnight and when 1595 men, Five hundred words came. The city women and children perished off New- editor read it carefully, balanced it in the 30 f oundland. The whole of America scales, as it were, and then, reluctantly, wanted to know, the whole civilized as if still in doubt, he said to the telegraph world wanted information, but this is editor: what the Associated Press had to send to ' Doublelead it ; across two columns ; its clients, the newspapers of America : put a four-column head on it and say in 35 the head that the tale is discredited.' We . «ave no assurance that we will get The city editor was taking no chances. a , n 7 wireless news from the Carpathia, as a j Tir j j :„~ t,—,.. „!,<- o;„ this vessel studiously refuses to answer all And so Wednesday morning brought six, queries _ Eyen Pre / dent Taft > s requests for seven and eight pages of the Titanic mat- informat i onj addressed to the Carpathia, have ter when the only news was the list of v> t, eerl ignored.' passengers reported by wireless. How the city editor laid his plans to Wednesday — another day with no get the Carpathia's story of the Titanic news and with the plan of many en- disaster, with only four men to go on gaged to thwart the newspapers and keep 45 the pier, is interesting. First, as near what news of the disaster they could to the pier as he could get it, he arranged from leaking out. The Carpathia, it was for four private wires, direct wires, that figured, would be in late Thursday night would lead into the editorial rooms, or possibly Friday morning. Absolutely These four wires were for the four men, no news was received, even her position 50 the main men on whom he depended to being six, eight and ten hours behind. It get the great story of the Titanic's was definitely stated, however, that no foundering. They were picked men, no newspaper man would be permitted to better, probably, than the rest, but luck board the vessel on her way up New is always on the side of the man who is York Bay, or at her pier in the Hudson 55 a worker and is alert. In the office were River. Quick work was required and the four men, with typewriters, with an in- aid of President Taft, Mayor Gaynor and strument held in place to the ear. Secretary McVeagh was sought both by Whether the Carpathia got in at nine 72 WRITING OF TODAY o'clock, or ten, or eleven, ,or twelve, or game to get through the lines. We have even one, the story would, must, be told, established four telephones, which are di- Time alone would give more opportunity rect wires between this office and the build- as to whether the story could be told in ing on the northeast corner of Fourteenth two, four, six, eight, ten or twelve pages. 5 Street and Eleventh Avenue. The Carpathia docked at 9.35 o'clock, but ' The four special passes which I have that is getting ahead of the story. already given out will admit within the Where the four private telephones were pier lines. The pier passes, which the installed was the headquarters of the staff, customs people say now are not good, I Two blocks away, out of the way of the 10 have already given out. You may be great crowd that should gather, were au- able to break through lines here and there, tomobiles stationed to carry men to the but at any rate your police cards will be office, the men who should write the ad- recognized. As you know, the main vance stories of the crowds, the ambu- story is the arrival of the Carpathia, lances and other aid, the scenes on the 15 and the tales told by survivors and pas- pier, before the Carpathia came in. sengers who witnessed the rescues. The The moment the Carpathia docked the men with the special pier passes will get real story would begin. Before six the story of the four officers who were o'clock that night the four pier passes saved and particularly the story of the were distributed to the four men selected ; 20 second Marconi operator who came the additional pier passes that were said through alive. It may be another Jack to be of no use were also passed out, Binns story and it may not, but we've and in addition every member of the staff got to get it. Also the story of the wire- had his police card, which permits the re- less operator of the Carpathia must be porter to go within the police lines. *5 had. These men ought to have thrilling At six o'clock that night sixteen men stories. Captain Rostrom's story should gathered around the city editor. By tele- tell from the time he turned his vessel phone or otherwise the men who were toward the Titanic till he reached the to gather the story were told to report pier. Bruce Ismay must be seen. He promptly. They did. These sixteen men 30 will give out a formal statement. It were the flying squadron, upon whom won't be worth the paper it is written devolved the great task of the night, on, but we'll print whatever he says. Outside the group, as it were, was the Ask him how he came to be saved when managing editor, who ordinarily is in Astor, Butt, Straus and Guggenheim went entire charge of the paper. The night 35 down. That 's the story we want — no city editor, who is at the head of men statement. who edit the reporters' copy, was near 'Mr. Burnet will see the second Mar- him. And near by were the telegraph coni wireless man; and, if possible, the and cable editors, whose Titanic work first officer. was practically finished, their work hav- 4° ' Mr. Howard will see the wireless man ing been done on the nights when news of the Carpathia and if possible the see- really did come. Near by stood the four ond officer. men who were assigned to take the sto- 'Mr. Horry will see Ismay and the ries over the telephone and write them third officer, if possible, on the typewriting machines. Other 45 ' Mr. Wall will see Captain Rostrom members of the staff stood by to hear how and incidentally ask him why Taft's mes- 'the chief,' as the city editor is some- sage was ignored, times called, intended to outline the story. ' In charge of the story will be Mr. He began in a leisurely tone, as if tell- Burnet; you may have to ignore some of ing a story. And this is what he said: 50 these assignments; you men on the ground 'When the Carpathia docks to-night will be the better judge. If you want which, as closely as I can figure it, will me, I '11 be right here at my telephone.' be between 9 and 9.15, there will probably All the men were listening intently, for be thirty thousand people held back by the an unusual scene like this is rarely wit- police. The arrangements may go to 55nessed in a newspaper office, pieces ; but I imagine Waldo's men will not ' You four men upon whom I am de- let the crowd break loose. But whatever pending for the main story will see as happens, you will be up against a stiff many survivors as you can; get as many B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 73 stories as you can and don't be afraid of survivors told their story, find out how duplicating. I '11 take care of that. Astor, Steadj Straus, Millet, Harris, Butt, ' Every man will get survivors' stories ; Futrelle, Guggenheim and Smith died. I repeat, don't be afraid of duplicating. Get every one to tell any story of heroism I '11 take care of that. 5 or cowardice he or she witnessed. Find ' Mr. Lynah will write the story on the out how the crew acted and the panic in arrival of the ship at the pier and in- the steerage, if there was one. terviews with survivors. ' The men who do the theaters will first ' Mr. Glover will write the story of the send their stories over the telephone Senate committee that is on its way here, io from the headquarters. If there is any and which will arrive at eight o'clock, and jam on telephone we have arranged for interviews with survivors. three more wires at Twenty-third Street ' Mr. Griffen will write the story of the and Eleventh Avenue, the building on the tugs that will go out to intercept the southwest corner. But I don't expect any Carpathia and interviews. 15 great jam. Then these men will do the ' Mr. Bush will write the story of the hotels and telephone their story from relief extended to survivors and get in- whichever hotel they are in. The oper- terviews. ator has been instructed to use every ' Mr. Payne will write the story of the switch except one for the Titanic story, crowd at the Battery and then follow the 20 so there will be lots of wires, with men boat to the pier and get interviews. at each end to take stories. But it will ' Mr. Kimpton will write the story of help if the stories can come over the four the distribution of the money sent by the special wires, stock exchange, and get interviews. ' The way the telephones will be cared 'Mr. Brewster will write the story of 25 for is this: When a man comes into the autos and get interviews. headquarters, he will be told which tele- ' Mr. Elmendorf will get the story of phone to use, so that the men at this end the crowds that will not get near the of the wire will not be interrupted. That scene, and get interviews. is to say, over one wire will come the ' Mr. Whitten will see Franklin and 30 story of the arrival of the Carpathia. get what the White Star Line has to say, ' Over another wire will come the story and get interviews. of the wreck of the Titanic. ' Mr. Moors will get interviews and ' Over a third telephone will come the then cover the hotels on Broadway be- story of the rescue work by the Carpa- tween Twenty-seventh Street and Thirty- 35 thia. fourth Street. ' And over the fourth will come the ' Mr. Bromiley will get interviews and story of survivors, cover the hotels between Thirty-fourth 'As soon as a man gets into the office Street and Forty-fifth Street. he will write down the name of the per- ' Mr. McDonald will get interviews and 40 son he has interviewed. This list will be cover the Fifth Avenue hotels, from the posted over each wire. If a reporter Holland House to the Plaza, and includ- sees that the man he has interviewed is ing the Ritz-Carlton. already posted, pass up the story.' 'The autos for the men who are doing The city editor stopped talking, these hotels will be parked at Eighteenth 45 * Are there any questions ? ' he asked. Street and Eleventh Avenue. The chauf- ' Have I made it clear what each man feurs of these machines will have a piece is to do?' of white paper in their hats and will ' You 're the goods ! ' said the youngest take instructions from any man who pre- of the group, marveling at this master sents his police card. Mr. Payne, who 5o mind that could see the whole scene long will do the Battery first, will find his ma- before it should be put into cold type and chine at the door. placed before a million readers. ' In getting the story of survivors and ' Then go to it ! ' said the city editor, of those on the Carpathia to whom the 55 74 WRITING OF TODAY calm. I thought, T will open the bal- *■*■*■ cony door.' I could not do it; the ceil- A LETTER WRITTEN AFTER ™\ ^ £^^ntot mndowa. Im- THE MESSINA DISASTER 5 possible to get them open. I was suf- ,„„,,, . „ „ . . focating. The air was charged with thick WcClures Magazvne, May, 1909. By perm. SS1 on.] dust ^^ stopped respiration. I found I had gone to Messina on the 26th, to the door. Behind me came the Levis,' visit my friends, the Levis. I spent the with a little girl, Melina, who habitually day of the 27th with them, visiting the 10 spent the day and sometimes the night city, a most beautiful one. Toward even- at their house. On the right there had ing a heavy thunder-storm came up, and been, in its time, a balcony. The stair- we went home, where Madame Gina Levi way, the house, were in ruins; the other was seized with sudden illness. The doc- wing of the house, too, was in ruins, tor was called in. We spent the first 15 We all jumped from the balcony. We part of the night around her bed, tending were on the second story; the heaped de- her, trying to quiet her in her nervous bris diminished the height of our jump, paroxysms. Finally we went to bed. I fell. It was dark ; it was white all I, lying on a cot near her, had no more around ; beyond that, nothing. Ruins and than a few minutes' unconsciousness at a 20 the cries of the dying. Cries, cries, time; I would doze, wake up, toss, cry shrieks. Who was shrieking? We could out ; I would speak to her, in the effort to not see. Had the heavens fallen ? What soothe her. At last, after a terrifying had happened? My lips were tight shut dream, which I do not remember, I in a spasm of agony. I ran. Where was started up, broad awake. The others 25 I running ? Perhaps it was not I run- were all up, standing about my sick ning, but the earth running under my friend's bed. Impelled by some myste- feet. rious force I jumped out of bed; I seized Then everything stood still, and for a a dress and hurriedly put it on. Madame moment there was silence. Then what Levi said to me, ' Put on your shoes and 30 was it ? The cries began anew, the stockings.' I sat on the edge of the bed shrieking, the mad attempts at flight. I and put them on. Who would have be- said over the names of all those I love; lieved that in that moment, by that act, I I cried them out aloud to the heavens, was saving my life? choking with the bloody froth that ran We could already hear the tinkling, out 35 from my mouth and nostrils. I said them in the street, of the goat-bells. The serv- all over, the names of those, living and ant-girl opened the window ; she bought dead, whom I love ; and my wits came milk. At that instant I was seized with back, and I did not lose them again until a strange dizziness and violent nausea, the moment when I found myself on the The servant-girl offered me a cup of cof- 40 train for Catania. fee. I went into the room where Gina I thought, ' Now I am going to escape was lying, and took the coffee. At the from this ! ' But I did not know the last swallow, I felt myself lifted from the way. floor to the ceiling. The ceiling dipped, I found a man and said to him, ' Where the bed rose, and the horrible shaking be- 45 are we ? ' gan. We were tossed up and down for ' In Piazza Spirito Santo,' he answered, several seconds ; then the earthquake ' Can we escape ? ' changed its motion, hurled the sick woman ' Stay where you are. We are blocked, from her bed, clove the walls, and the We are safe here as long as God pleases.' downfall began. 50 And the earthquake began again. The I heard a sound as if of countless paper houses finished crumbling; they showered tearing, stuff burning with crackling and forth furniture, mirrors, wounded men, explosions, and a deafening roar, a ter- dead bodies. Yells and infernal panic, rifle crashing. They were balconies fall- All suddenly caved in. We dropped face ing, steeples, chimneys, towers crumbling. 55 downward, and lay awaiting death. But I remember clearly that I was clutching before long we got up again, and in the my coffee-cup, trying to set it safely on dense dust found one another. Melina the washstand, demented already, but was trembling in the Professor's arms. B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 75 .What joy, in all that anguish, to ascer- had been able to escape; she slept in a tain that we were all there — what joy! small chamber which I imagined was safe. And joy over what? There were two And there passed before my eyes all hundred of us, injured and whole, in the beloved faces 'that I shall never see that small space. At our right was a 5 again, never again ! ' I said, convent, the walls of which had dropped How, from what profound abysms of in, but whose front, still standing, was a the soul, was faith born again in me? I menace to us. At our left was a house, felt that some one had worked that miracle burst open fanwise, ready to fall at the for my sake, and I knelt down before the next shock. Behind us the church of the 10 church, which no longer was there, but Spirito Santo, tilting forward, with a whose door stood sealed and intact, still great triangular crack down its faqade. guarding its mystery. What did I say? Before us the houses of the Porta Im- For whom did I pray? For myself, for periale, in fragments ; broken and torn Bruno, for my dear ones far away ? I do bodies dumped into the square among 15 not remember ; I know that while I was gravel, blood* and wreckage. 'Let us praying two priests passed by. One had stay where we are,' we said, ' all close an august, aged face, haggard with grief, clasped together, let us wait.' For what ? He looked at me ; I told him everything in For death ? a look. He spoke over me the blessing for A light broke above us, beyond the 20 those about to die. He went about among ruins which we could dimly distinguish, the dying — how many of them ! He because an occasional street-lamp, impos- blessed them, and went his way through sible as it seems, had remained alight, the wreckage with his companipn, who ' The dawn ! The dawn ! ' we shouted, was weeping, to bless other dead, calmly, No ; it was Messina burning. 25 without haste, walking under the toppling Then we were seized with desperate walls, and we saw him no more, madness to flee. But whither? Oh, to When I rose to my feet I felt light, the sea, to be drowned in it, to be buried rested, strong, well, ready for everything, in the depths of the sea ! But fire, to die We began to work for the injured. What by fire ? Oh, God, what anguish ! I 30 endless numbers of them ! What slaugh- dumbly gazed at the heavens. I had ter, what mutilations, what horrors ! A never seen them of so deep a purple-blue ; woman was delivered of twins there in the and how many stars were falling! A square: one was dead, one alive; she died shower of stars, thick and shining. A later, of hemorrhage, benediction upon the ruins? Behind a 35 A father, almost completely naked, tore house, whose front wall alone was stand- his face with his nails, desperate at having ing, the sky opened, somewhat suddenly, left his children behind among the ruins, and there poured down light, cold and Meanwhile the miracles of life-saving pallid, like moonlight. Daybreak ! Day- had begun. Two children- slid down a break ! ' Adduma ! Adduma ! ' they cried, 4° table, placed slantwise, between a stump of mad with the desire for light. house and a heap of rubbish; then came And never was the sun so worshiped, the mother, then the father last. When so prayed to, so invoked, as in that tragic he had reached the bottom, he saw that hour. Day broke, but, alas ! what a scene two were still missing. What weeping, of sorrow it brought into view ! 45 what shrieks ! Oh, God, and who could We looked at one another, to make sure comfort them? There were some stand- it was ourselves, to make sure we were ing by who had no one, no one left. Lit- alive. We were white with mortar ; we tie children, totally naked, or with nothing looked like ghosts, with hugely dilated on but a little shirt, all blood, all mud; eyes staring like madmen's. Oh, the 50 girls and women, gone quite mad, calling dreadful ruin on every hand, the desola- out strange pet names and terms of en- tion, the horror ! I believed that Catania dearment: ' Catil! Vita! [My breath! too had been destroyed. I supposed that My life!] Catuzza e mamma bedda!' the disaster came to us from .ZEtna, and Meant for whom ? Alas ! for sons, hus- I prayed that Bruno, my husband, who 55 bands, scattered, dismembered, or perhaps was there, might have died at once, with- still alive beneath huge mountains of out knowing, without seeing. I made the masonry, reflection that possibly Erminia, my maid, I saw a father searching among the 76 WRITING OF TODAY wreckage for his children. He pulled out Horrible ! Horrible ! All the most bestial, one of them, dead. One of them, whose instincts, swarming up from the dregs of head only projected from the horrible rub- the soul, all the unbridled appetites, every bish-heap, cried, ' Papa, papa, sete aio, sete baseness, every cowardice ! But I saw aio!' [I am thirsty! I am thirsty!] 5 likewise what treasures of self-renuncia- And there was no water. The father bent tion, sacrifice, human brotherliness, gen- over the dying child and gave him his erosity, what heroism, are in the depths of saliva and all his soul in a kiss. The son the human soul, closed his eyes and died. A young man, whom I shall never for- The earthquake continued. The walls 10 get, a cripple, with only one leg, clam- continued falling, mountains on top of bering with a crutch among the ruins, mountains of stone and plaster. Preci- saved scores of people. Untiringly he pices gaped and engulfed the surviving, searched among the wreckage, he brought who had hoped perhaps to reach safety, back to us everything he could find; he All that had been left standing after the 15 took bits of chocolate out of his mouth to first horrible, unending shock now went to put into the mouths, forevef- open, of the pieces. crying children. The instinct of life, however, love of A marvel, in truth, was the forethought that miserable gift which misfortune had of this man. Where did he unearth a left us, sprang up again within us, and we 20 crate of apples? He hid them, he de- bethought us, poor wretches ! that night fended them from the violence of the would be coming on; we bethought us of greedy; and through the night he went the morrow. We rummaged among the among the huts, distributing quarters of ruins in search of food; we tested the apple to each one of us in his turn, with earth, and trusted it, poor fools, to uphold 25 calculating parsimony, with implacable the tables which were to shelter us during justice. I shall remember him as long as the night that was closing down — last, I live, that fragment of a man among the immeasurable calamity. We made a hut. fragments of a city. He explored the And suddenly, as if a malign breath of ruined city in every direction, to find a insanity had overturned their reasons, — 30 way of escape, to open a road for us. We whilst, all equally unhappy, all equally could see him hanging like a mountain poor, naked, wounded, weeping, we were goat over the edge of frightful precipices, awaiting death, — a small band of men, for At night he never rested, unless it were a loaf of bread found among the broken to make a pillow of himself for those who masonry, wrenched bars from an iron gate 35 did not know where to lay their heads, and began whirling them among the crowd, amid the mire, the blood, and the ruin, to kill. Where could we flee ? The name of this hero is Salvatore Stel- Two or three dropped down, felled ; they lario. What became of him when the afterward died. That horrible danger anguished fight for the preservation passed, too. Some went searching among 40 of life had ceased, and we saw the fire the ruins for bread, food, clothing, all that close at hand, after a night spent under could keep off death — death which we the rain, dreadful scourge, amid continual notwithstanding were calling upon to come earthquakes, the horrors of darkness, cold, quickly, and which came not. Ah, the sav- fear, the ever fainter moaning of the age scenes over a chunk of bread, over a 45 hurt ? They told me he sought safety in sup of putrid water, gathered as it dripped the direction of the railway. Perhaps I from the ruins, yellow, fetid, which was shall see him again. drunken after the dying had refused to There is another whom I remember for taste it. What struggles for a nut, for a unparalleled self-control and equanimity chocolate drop (a ruined sweet-shop had 50 — Nicola Sclepis, who could impose quiet been found, which saved us by a few bot- by a gesture, who wore a look of fatalism, ties, a few pots of preserve), for a bone yet had words of encouragement, of hope, gnawed by dogs, picked out of the refuse, Cold, apparently unfeeling, he could stop for a mouthful of anything that could keep a frenzied mob by a shout ; he could smile us from starvation ! I saw what the hu- 55 while others were inquiring breathlessly, man brute is like when, all restraint re- ' When, where, how are we doomed to moved, all shame cast off, every' law for- die ? ' Oh, how well I remember him ! gotten, he stands forth without disguise. I supposed him a skeptic; I thought him B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 77 heartless. Later, I saw him clasp his jured would ask for a mattress, a pillow, friends to his breast; I saw tears filling and water, water, water! And we had his eyes while I told him my last will and nothing to give them but a few nuts, an testament of love for those who would apple, a morsel of bread. And those who come to look for me. 1 Shall I ever forget 5 had fractured jaws, teeth which they spat him? He was saved, I know. He could out with bloody foam, or injuries to their not die ; I felt that, and for that reason throats, they merely must die of hunger ! intrusted my last messages to him. He We heard a whistle or two in the dis- listened to me, serious, kind. He bade me tance. We supposed it must be some not to move, when I wanted to go and try 10 steamer coming to help us ; but no one to find some way out of that horrible in- came. The thought crossed my mind that closure ; he prevented me by a look. Men a dirigible balloon might have gotten like Nicola Sclepis are rare indeed. One cognizance of the condition of Messina, possessed of such moral strength and cour- but that hope, too, was vain. We spent age is worthy, truly, of the name of hero. 15 another night in the mud; at daybreak the Evening came on again; it grew dark rain stopped. As soon as the first light early: the light shrank away from the appeared in the sky, there reawakened in horrors of the catastrophe. all the mad desire to flee. Whither, in I had eaten a handful of oats, found I what direction, with what hope? do not remember where. I had an egg 20 On this side the conflagration, on that, which a lady had refused. As I was eat- mountains of masonry. The sea had with- ing it, a woman came running, crying that drawn. The steamers would take on no she had no more milk for her baby. I put more ; people had killed one another to get out the egg which I had so nearly swal- aboard. Where could we go ? But go we lowed ; she caught it in her hands and fed 25 must. it to her infant. Water had been found ; I had in a little hand-bag, saved I know it was yellow, thick ; it tasted, alas ! of de- not how, my provisions for the days that cay, of death, of putrefaction : but I drank must pass before help came, or death, it. I was mad with thirst, with hunger. Two walnuts, a few filberts, a nibbled bit I had in my hands a jar of marmalade, but 30 of nougat, and a chocolate watch, such as succeeded in no more than touching my we buy for children, which was presented lips with it. I distributed it among the to me by a little boy whom I do not re- injured, feeding them with a hollow cane, member. He handed it to me unasked, split in two. And so came the evening, and ran away. I had with me my rail- and the rain fell, and for hours and hours 35 way-book. I placed it in the bosom of earthquake and rain and weeping; sighs my dress, thinking that perhaps by means of the dying, howls of desperate grief, of it I might be identified when they found Oh, that tragic night ! How we wept and my body. That was my great preoccupa- how we prayed ! Some were seen barbar- tion — to be found, to be identified, to ously beating themselves, to punish them- 40 shorten the anxiety of my husband, who selves for being alive while their beloved was perhaps already looking for me, des- were dead; and we wept in chorus, and perate, among the ruins, sang in chorus. Nicola Sclepis told me to follow him I remember those lamentable chants : the and his caravan, headed for the mouti- passion of Jesus sung in Sicilian dialect, 45 tains ; he offered me his house, all he had, the sorrows of Mary, the praises of the — at Santa Lucia, I think it was. There Child Jesus, — all the Christian legends, all I would certainly have been out of danger, the songs of infancy.- And it rained, it but I would have had to wait to send rained, and the earth continued to shake, news. implacably, and the day was slow in com- 50 I hesitated for an instant. Then I re- ing. fleeted that by way of the sea I would Oh, what eternal, what cruel waiting ! soonest reach Catania. Death was per- When we were worn out with praying, haps lying in wait for me in that direc- there was deathly silence ; but every little tion ; but go I must, and I went. My com- while a groan would bring us back to 55 panions followed me a short way, then dreadful consciousness, and we would we separated. start up and begin rushing about. But to I lost my reason again, and I do not what purpose, for whose sake? The in- know where I went. I was quite alone, 78 WRITING OF TODAY alone among the ruins, the dead, the fallen roomy caverns we had excavated in the houses. Where was I? Near the ceme- ice barrier and connected directly with tery, they told me. Some told me near the hut, gave us space sufficient for our the sea, others near the railroad ; they did workshops ; we did not need to use our not understand what I said. Some who 5 hut to work in. were crazy, some who were dazed, some We were amply supplied with provi- who were wicked, misdirected me, sent me sions. Seven hundred yards from the hut vainly wandering among the ruins, alone, was our chief store, containing enough for forsaken, desperate. several years. We had killed and laid by I reached a place where the ruins had 10 120,000 lbs. of seal meat, enough for our- caught fire; I was forced to turn back, selves and our dogs for our whole stay. That had been a street, the handsomest in Fuel and light we had in abundance, the Messina; now the houses had fallen in, best Welsh coal and dryest Norwegian and the dead lay under them. Walking birchwood. Barrel upon barrel of petro- was easy there ; but I could not bear to 15 leum lay in our cellars, step on the wreckage; I knew of the hu- All was thoroughly provided for, and we man flesh throbbing beneath it; I caught could apply ourselves to our winter work glimpses of clothing, scraps of black. Oh, without a care, the horror of it ! The winter work consisted in preparing I ran, I fell, I picked myself up ; it be- 20 our outfit and getting everything ready for gan to rain again, but there were no more our march to the South. Our tours in the earthquakes. I came to an open place, months of February, March and April, to Perhaps there had once been a church. I form depots in latitude 80, 81 and 82 de- shall never know. grees, had taught us that we must make In the middle, a bronze Christ, maimed, 25 many alterations in our outfit. This had wept, with his head bowed toward the been prepared in Christiania, at a time right. In front of him a taper was burn- when I only knew the Barrier by descrip- ing. There were before me three roads, tion, and I had had the things made as I took the one toward which the Christ massive and strong as possible. The Bar- was looking. Some one told me that was 30 rier plains, we had now become acquainted the right road. But what a road! How with, did not in any way require this many crumbled houses, what destruction ! heavy equipment. On the contrary, they I reached a place that was all like a needed the lightest gear. To obtain this, marsh. I walked into it nearly to my the work was distributed amongst the knees. When I came out I could no 35 members of the expedition, in such wise, longer walk: my clothes clung to me. I that the special abilities of the various thought of taking them off, then I went members were utilized to the utmost and down on my hands and knees, and crawled the best guarantees for good workmanship along like an animal. . . . obtained. 40 Thus, Bjaaland, ski and sledge maker, was set to make the necessary parts for IV four new sledges, weighing about fifty pounds apiece. The original sledges HOW I FOUND THE SOUTH weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. POLE 45Wisting and Hanssen, both good sailors and the latter an experienced polar ex- ROALD AMUNDSEN plorer, had to fasten the parts together as strongly as could be done. Stub- IHearst's Magazine, November, 1912. berud, a carpenter and joiner by trade, y permissions ^ was ass jg ne( j t jj e une nviable task of re- On April 21 the sun disappeared. The ducing the weight of our sledge provi- longest night any man had known in the sion boxes. The packing of sledge pro- Antarctic regions had begun. Old cam- visions was a matter of the very utmost paigners as we were, everything was well importance. Space was small and needs prepared for it. There was the hut, stout 55 great, so quite an exceptional amount of and strong. No storm, no matter how it thought and attention had to be devoted to blew, could hurt it. Light and warm it the subject. This was intrusted to Johan- was inside, dry and airy. • The large, sen. Praesterud was occupied with the B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 70 scientific arrangements for the expedition : that is a great advantage on such a long pendulum and astronomical observations, expedition. Thus, each had his hands full and the We used the Swedish ' Primus,' which winter set in. excels all such cooking lamps. It is easy Now a word about our supplies and 5 to handle and never fails as long as one equipment. The tent which we took with is reasonably careful with it. We used us was a double one. The inner was the merely quite an ordinary pot to cook in. actual tent, made of white linen cloth, On the first part of the journey we used such as is used for feather beds, pillows, double sleeping bags. The outer one of etc. This was thin and quite light. Over 10 the skin of reindeer buck. The inner one of this was an outer covering of thin red light skin of reindeer doe or reindeer calf, material, that had at one time 'adorned our Both had the hairy side in. Outside the bunks at Framheim in the shape of bed two, we had a cover of light linen cloth, curtains, but as we considered it more use- somewhat longer than the bags. This ful as a polar tent, all the curtains were 15 cover was always kept on, both in the tent requisitioned and transformed by Wist- and on the march. In the tent, it pro- ing's able hand. We had much comfort tected the bags from damp, while on the from this double tent, it being unusually march it kept the driven snow entirely warm and at the same time dark. And a out. tent should be dark on such an expedition, 20 Our foot-coverings had necessitated so that one may get the eyes rested after much consideration, and were of the very the long march on the white snow. It best. The great thing for us was to corn- was, moreover, easy to put up, had an ex- bine sufficient rigidity with softness, ceedingly good shape, like a snow hut or They must be soft, to keep our feet warm, beehive, thus not offering any flat surfaces 2$ but stiff if our skis were to sit firmly. I to the wind. The floor of the tent was used the following myself: outside of all, sewn in with the sides. I have always a boot, the sole of which was of solid found that the best patent. If one for- leather, the outer covering strong, green, gets anything in the morning, one finds it wind-proof cloth. Inside these, I had a again in the evening when erecting the 30 pair of reindeerskin boots. As for stock- tent. The tent had but one pole, of light, ings : next the foot I wore a little woolen strong bamboo. The door was of the sock lined with ' sennegrass ' (a kind of usual bag shape, and absolutely wind soft grass used by Laplanders in their tight. moccasins). I wore this sock, not so Our provisions were not rich in varie- 35 much for warmth as to keep the senne- ties of courses, but were the most nourish- grass in position. Then a stocking of ing and most concentrated obtainable, dog's hair. Then an ordinary woolen They consisted of pemmican, biscuits, stocking, and then two pairs of gabardine chocolate, and dried milk. The pemmican stockings. With these, my feet were was made in Norway and was somewhat 4° never cold. different from that which is generally Otherwise we were lightly clad with light used, being mixed with oatmeal and vege- clothing under gabardine outer garments, tables as well as meat and fat. The bis- Our fur clothing, which we took for use cuits were made expressly, and possessed on the plateau, we never had much use a very high degree of nourishment. They 45 for. As long as we had them, we used consisted of oatmeal, milkmeal or dried them under our sleeping-bags at night, milk and sugar. The chocolate was an Of snow-spectacles, several kinds were ordinary kind. The milkmeal proved a used — each thought he had discovered splendid thing, and as much as possible the best. Personally, I used a pair of or- should be taken on all such expeditions. 50 dinary spectacles with light yellow glass. It is light, packs well and keeps good It may seem unheard of, to go on an under all circumstances. . We brought expedition of 1500 miles in these sur- dried new milk with us, the manufacturer roundings, with only a pair of ordinary assuring us it would keep through the unprotected spectacles, in which the light tropics we had to traverse. Despite the 55 can enter everywhere — but I did it, and, treatment it received it kept perfectly good what is more, without so much as suffer- the whole time. We could make our- ing once from snow blindness. That selves a cup of new milk at any time, and speaks for the excellence of the glass in 8o WRITING OF TODAY them. Dr. Schantz, in Berlin, is the in- ranging from 60 to 75 degrees below zero ; ventor. By a process the glasses have the dogs suffered greatly at night and undergone, they are able to keep out the three of the men had frozen heels. We injurious rays. had to be satisfied with reaching the On my hands, I used, from our winter 5 depot, at 80 degrees, that we had built quarters to the Pole and back, a pair of five months before, leaving stores there ordinary walking woolen mittens with the and returning to ' Framheim.' four fingers together in one compartment. -This trip, however, taught us much. I One pair lasted the whole way. saw we could without risk divide our- Our sledges were of the ordinary Nan- 10 selves into two parties and thus accom- sen pattern, but of unusually light build, plish more work. It was then determined 'Two were shod with steel, the others not. that one party, under Lieutenant Praest- All four had spare runners. The sledges erud, should go to King Edward's Land were as strong on our return as when we and do what they could there, while we set out. Our provision boxes were made 15 others should follow the main plan — the of ash, and had only a round opening on march to the South. top, into which a lid of aluminum fitted, The time was now spent in ' healing just as into ordinary milk cans. These heels ' and in sewing our outfit. I do not were attached to the sledges with fixed think any one will ever get an outfit that wire fastenings in such a way that it was 20 does n't want something done to it. If we not necessary to undo them to get into the were out one day, we had work enough on boxes. Thus we avoided unloading and our things to keep us busy for a week, reloading every evening and morning, The heels began to mend a little in Oc- which is no pleasurable work in cold tober, and the prospects of getting away weather. These lids also afforded protec- 25 again approached. tion from the dogs stealing, — but, as a One great advantage we all, both men matter of fact, the dogs never did at- and dogs, gained by this delay was, that tempt to attack the provision boxes. Our we all were well fed on fresh seal meat, dog harness was also somewhat of a new Before our departure spring had come, the kind and brilliantly proved its superiority. 30 first signs of which is that the seals come It was a combination of Alaskan and up and lie on the ice. In our neighbor- Greenland harness, very easy on our dogs, hood they were not allowed to remain long Of instruments: we had two sextants, before they were shot and subsequently three artificial horizons, two of glass, one eaten. of mercury. We also used a theodolite on 35 At length the 20th of October arrived the shorter journeys, but I fancied I could — time seems long to those who wait, work with quicker and greater accuracy The weather, was a little uncertain in the with a sextant. We had also a hypsom- morning — squally. But at 8.30 o'clock it eter, and an aneroid to determine heights, cleared from the east with a light breeze, and four ordinary thermometers. We 4° and off we went. There were five of us : carried a little sledge medicine chest pre- Hanssen, Wisting, Hassel, Bjaaland, and sented by Boroughs, Wellcome & Co. It myself, with four sledges and fifty-two was splendid in every way. We had also dogs — thirteen to each sledge. As we some extra bandages, a pair of dentist's had all our provisions at 80 degrees, the forceps, and a beard-clipping machine. 45 sledges were very light and we went along On August 23 all was ready, and at at a gallop. We did twenty miles a day noon we drove our laden sledges up to the those days, reaching our depot at 80 de- starting place on the other side of the grees at 1.30 p.m., on the 23d of October, bay, about three miles from our establish- in the densest fog. This gave us con- ment, ' Framheim.' We had won in our 50 vincing proof of the accuracy of our corn- race with the sun, which reappeared on passes and of our distance meters, the following day. Owing to the low After leaving the depot of October, we temperature, 50 to 70 degrees below zero, made fifteen miles a day, giving the dogs a Fahrenheit, we were obliged to wait some chance to eat their fill at the depots. Soon days. At last, on September 8, at 12.30 55 we began erecting snow beacons to serve noon, we were able to get off. to guide us on returning. Such a beacon The journey that followed I shall pass was somewhat more than a man's height, over quickly. It was terrifically cold, built of about sixty blocks of hard snow B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES cut from the surface. We put up about The 17th of November was a red-letter 150, necessitating 9000 blocks. At first day. We climbed an undulating ridge of one was built every seventh and eighth ice 300 feet high and then descended to mile — subsequently every fifth — and at the ' beach.' We encamped here at 85.5 last, near the Pole, every second mile. In 5 degrees and prepared' for the next stage, each of these beacons a note was left We five pedestrians were about to be stating the number of the beacon, its posi- transformed into Alpine climbers, tion, the direction and distance of the The story of the ascent to the plateau nearest beacon. In this manner we al- is one of almost constant adventure, of ways kept a control of our march. 10 narrow escapes from death, from falling into crevices in the glaciers or off of bleak, mountain climbing slippery precipices. At times the faces of On the morning of the gth of November, the men were swollen almost beyond rec- when we got outside our tent, we found ognition in the merciless Antarctic gales, the air clear, and on examining the patches '5 Once men and dogs suffered from the heat of cloud, which were still in the same with a blazing sun and the temperature at place, we saw they were the tops of huge 15 degrees above zero. We were con- mountains. This sight wrought in us stantly sacrificing the dogs — once we had quite a curious sensation. There we had, to despatch twenty-four of our brave, before us, the mighty continent covered 20 four-footed comrades at one time. Sev- with ice and snow and barring our way to eral times we camped over 9000 feet above the Pole. the sea. At times we traversed snow It must be the southern portion of the bridges, eerie and dangerous, at others chain of mountains Shackleton has marked polished, wind-swept ice. But at last we on his chart, which runs in a southeasterly 25 forced our way and reached the level direction from Beardmore Glacier. From plateau. our winter quarters we had followed the I shall never forget the day we reached meridian as closely as we were able, and Shackleton's Farthest South. It was my now found ourselves about 200 miles east turn to be pioneer. Hassel and I took from that glacier, which Shackleton as- 30 turns. It is tiresome work thus going on cended to the plateau. in front. No one to talk to, nothing to I was much surprised when I returned see. The plain spreads out in all direc- to the outer world, to find that people im- tions till it loses itself in the horizon. I agined we would make use of the same had now gone on for a couple of hours ascent. I cannot imagine what could have 35 and was deeply immersed in my own created such an idea. It had never en- thoughts, when I was aroused by ringing tered my mind or the minds of my com- cheers, panions. Never during the whole of the long winter, never during the whole of our shackleton outstripped sledge journeys, had any one of us for a 40 I turned sharp round and remained still, moment thought of such a thing. We had The scene was so engrossing that all de- come there to compete for the Pole, cer- scription fails. The Norwegian flag — tainly. But we intended to find a way for my own dear country's flag — unfolded ourselves. itself from the foremost sledge and flut- We established depots built of hard, 45 tered in the gentle southerly breeze — snow at 83, 84 and 85 degrees and left pro- 88.23 degrees had been passed, visions at each. The land unfolded itself We gathered round the flag and pressed more and more as we advanced, and dis- one another's hands. It was a wonder- played the most magnificent scenery. fully solemn moment. It may well be be- Some mountains were more bare than 50 lieved that we sent him who had reached snow-covered. Thus, that part of the thus far, and his faithful, brave com- mighty 'Fridtjof Nansen's ' mountain, panions, a thought full of admiration and which faced the Barrier, was almost en- respect for their manly courage and the tirely bare. It stood like a dark, dreary perseverance they displayed during their sentinel, guarding the entrance to the mys- 55 long, severe struggle. There will ever be tic regions. Its head was capped by a honor and renown for what Sir Ernest magnificent dazzlingly white, glittering Shackleton has accomplished, helmet at an elevation of 15,000 feet. The rest of the journey was exhausting 82 WRITING OF TODAY because of the altitude, but we made good sel, and Bjaaland started off just after speed. midnight and were back again at 10 a.m. On the nth of December we were at Meanwhile Hanssen and I had commenced 89.15 degrees. Dead reckoning and ob- a series of observations for each hour, servation again agreed exactly. We were 5 We began at 6 a.m., Framheim time, and nearing our goal with rapid strides. The finished at 7 p.m. These observations next three days were spent under precisely gave us 89.55 degrees, and the meridian by the same conditions as the previous ones, our compasses in N. W. J4 W. to S. E. J4 Temperature continued even, at about E. I had not contemplated, after this, — 15 degrees, and the sun was out the 10 spending any more time here. The Pole whole time. On the 12th, by reckoning had been ringed and the beacon set up. and observation, 89.30 degrees. On the That ought to be sufficient. But I saw 13th, the observation at noon gave 89.37 that my companions would like to try to degrees. That evening we pitched our get some observations from the very Pole tent at 89.45 degrees by reckoning. 15 itself. So, as we had food enough and And then came The Great Day. Per- the weather was fine, we resolved to make sonally, perhaps, I slept less soundly that the experiment. Next morning, instead of night and was more eager to get off in turning our faces homeward, as I really the morning than usual, but otherwise we would have preferred, we continued our felt much the same as we generally did. 20 march in the direction of the meridian. We had now seen so much of this high Before setting out, we left one of our plateau, that we were sure its appearance sledges on the spot. We set it on end to would not alter. The only thing that make it more easily seen. We also left brought our blood to circulate a little more one of our distance meters. We now tried rapidly than it was wont, was the thought, 25 to march these five miles as straight as which often occurred to us and made us possible, and that we succeeded can best strain our eyes southward across the end- be understood from the fact that when we less plain : ' Are we the first to get here, reached the end we found the sledge we or not ? ' After ten o'clock there came a had left exactly in the meridian, change in the sky, and it blew a little from 3° We now made ourselves as comfortable the southeast, so we did not get the merid- as possible. Built up a substantial snow ian that day. At 3 p.m., the distance meters pillar for the artificial horizon, and set to announced that our goal was reached. work at once with the observations. For twenty-five hours we took the altitude of AT THE SOUTH POLE 35 the sun> each hour . There wefe four of We had got our silk flag ready in the us, well accustomed to use a sextant. The morning. We gathered around it now, sun's motion was very uneven. The at- each man took hold, and together we mosphere must have been greatly dis- planted it here — at the same time naming turbed. For hours the sun could maintain the plateau, on which the Pole is situated, 4° exactly the same altitude, then make a ' King Haakon the Seventh's Wilds.' little jump and again stop still. On the We had reached the Pole with three 7th of December at noon, Framheim time, sledges and seventeen dogs. we had finished. We had done all that As soon as the business was all over, we could be accomplished with our instru- went into our tent for our feast. It was 45 ments. For safety's sake, we went yet not a very grand meal ; a small piece of another four and a half miles in the direc- seal meat for each. Then we had a chat tion of the meridian. Here we erected a and a little nap. The sun had long since small tent we had brought with us, with a shone clear again, and we intended to take flag and a pennant on top. ' Polheim ' it a midnight observation. So at 11.30 p.m. 50 was christened, and it will, probably, if the we turned out and took the altitude. The weather is always as we found it, remain result gave us 89.56 degrees. This was there long. good enough. We had probably of late In the tent we left some letters, a few got a little off the meridian, which made clothes and a sextant, an artificial glass us four miles short. But that was of no 55 horizon and a hypsometer. At 7.30 p.m., importance. In order to make certain, I Framheim time, we left Polheim. How sent three men out to encircle the spot often we turned and sent it a last fare- with a radius of ten miles. Wisting, Has- well, it is not easy to tell. B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 83 their records, hard pressed as they were. V From these papers the following infor- _.._, __ A „,„ „„ ^ 1T ,rr,AT-» T mation was gleaned: — THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN 5 The first death was that of Seaman Ed- SCOTT gar Evans, petty officer of the Royal Navy, official number 160,225, who died on Feb- LIEUT. E. R. G. R. EVANS, R.N. ruary 17 at the foot of the Beardmore „._,.„. „ Glacier. His death was accelerated by a INew York T^Vf^l^^l.-Covyr^t.n^^^ of ^ brain sustamed while traveling over the rough ice some time Christchurch, New Zealand, February before. 10.— Capt. Robert F. Scott's Antarctic Capi. L. E. G. Oates of the Sixth Innis- ship, the Terra Nova, on January 18, this killen Dragoons was the next lost. His year, arrived at Cape Evans, the base on 15 feet and hands had been badly frostbit- McMurdo Sound, where it was to meet the ten from exposure on the march. Al- explorers on their return from the expedi- though he struggled on heroically, on tion in search of the South Pole and bring March 16 his comrades knew that his end them back, if they were ready. It was was approaching. He had borne his in- learned from the shore party found at this 20 tense suffering for weeks without corn- base that Captain Scott and the four men plaint, and he did not give up hope to the with him had reached the Pole on January very end. 18, 1912, but all had perished on the return journey, about the end of March. Their ' 0ATES WENT 0UT T0 DIE bodies were not found until a searching 25 Captain Scott wrote in his diary this party discovered them on November 12, tribute to Captain Oates: nearly eight months after the disaster. ' He was a brave soul. He" slept through Captain Scott, Dr. Edward A. Wilson, the night, hoping not to wake, but he chief of the scientific staff, and Lieut. H. awoke in the morning. It was blowing a R. Bowers had made their way back to 30 blizzard. Oates said, " I am just going within 155 miles of Cape Evans, when they outside and may be some time." He went were caught in a blizzard and were over- out into the blizzard, and we have not come about March 29. They were then seen him since.' within eleven miles of One Ton Depot, Another passage read : ' We knew that where they would have found shelter and 35 Oates was walking to his death, but, supplies. though we tried to dissuade him, we knew * % # % * % it was the act of a brave man and an Eng- lish gentleman.' the search party's journey n March 16 Oates was really unable The search party left Cape Evans after 40 to travel, but the others could not leave the winter on October 30 last. The party, him and he would not hold them back, which was organized by Surgeon Atkin- After his gallant death, Scott, Wilson, and son, consisted of two divisions, Atkinson Bowers pushed on northward when the ab- taking the dog teams with Garrard and normally bad weather would permit them Demetri, and Mr. Wright being in charge 45 to proceed. They were forced to camp of a party including Nelson, Gran, Lash-' on March 1, in latitude 79° 40' S., longi- ley, Crean, Williamson, Keohane, and tude 169 23' E., eleven miles south of Hooper, with seven Indian mules. They the big depot at One Ton Camp, were provisioned for three months, as they This refuge they never reached, owing expected an extended search. 50 to a blizzard, which is known from the One Ton Camp was found in order, and records of the party at Cape Evans to all provisioned. have lasted nine days, overtaking them. Proceeding along the old southern route, Their food and fuel gave out and they suc- Wright's party sighted Captain Scott's tent cumbed to exposure, on November 12. Within it were found 55 In Captain Scott's diary, Surgeon Atkin- the bodies of Captain Scott, Dr. Wilson, son found the following, which is quoted and Lieutenant Bowers. They had saved verbatim: 84 WRITING OF TODAY shortage of fuel in our depots for which I cannot account, and finally, but for the storm which has fallen on us within eleven miles of MESSAGE TO THE PUBLIC the depQt a( . which we hoped t0 secure our final The causes of the disaster are not due to 5 supplies. Surely misfortune could scarcely faulty organization, but to misfortune in all have exceeded this last blow. We arrived risks which had to be undertaken. within eleven miles of our old One Ton 1. The loss of the pony transport in March, Camp with fuel for one last meal and food 1911, obliged me to start later than I had in- for two days. For four days we have been tended, and obliged the limits of stuff trans- 10 unable to leave the tent — the gale howling ported to be narrowed. about us. We are weak, writing is difficult, 2. The weather throughout the outward but for my own sake I do not regret this journey, and especially the long gale in 83 S., journey, which has shown that Englishmen stopped us. can endure hardships, help one another, and 3. The soft snow in lower reaches of gla- 15 meet death with as great a fortitude as ever cier again reduced pace. in the past. We took risks, we knew we We fought these untoward events with a took them; things have come out against us, will and conquered, but it cut into our pro- and therefore we have no cause for corn- vision reserve. plaint, but bow to the will of Providence, Every detail of our food supplies, clothing, 20 determined still to do our best to the last, and depots made on the interior ice-sheet But if we have been willing to give our lives and over that long stretch of 700 miles to to this enterprise, which is for the honor of the Pole and back, worked out to perfection. our country, I appeal to our countrymen to The advance party would have returned to see that those who depend on us are properly the glacier in fine form and with surplus of 25 cared for. food, but for the astonishing failure of the Had we lived, I should have had a tale to man whom we had least expected to fail, tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage Edgar Evans was thought the strongest man of my companions which would have stirred of the party. the heart of every Englishman. These rough The Beardmore Glacier is not difficult in 30 notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, fine weather, but on our return we did not but surely, surely, a great rich country like get a single completely fine day; this with ours will see that those who are dependent a sick companion enormously increased our on us are properly provided for. anxieties. (Signed) R. Scott. As I have said elsewhere we got into 35 March 25, 1912. frightfully rough ice and Edgar Evans re- ~ »,,. , .• „_..,.„. ceived a concussion of the brain -he died a S u ur g e ° n u A tklns ° n a " d „ h s $*& natural death, but left us a shaken party with gathered the records and effects of the the season unduly advanced. dead men and read the burial service over But all the facts above enumerated were their bodies and erected a cairn and cross as nothing to the surprise which awaited us 4° to their memory over the inner tent in on the Barrier. I maintain that our ar- which they buried them. A record of the rangements for returning were quite ade- finding of their bodies was left attached to quate, and that no one in the world would the cross. have expected the temperatures and surfaces The party then searched for twenty which we encountered at this time of the n & endeavoring to discover the year. On the summit in lat. 85 , 86 we had , . : r ', ■ n . t*. „ ».. t„..„A -20°, -30°. On the Barrier in lat. 82°, 10,000 %** of Captain Oates It was not found feet lower, we had -30 in the day, -47° at but another cairn and record were left night pretty regularly, with continuous head ln the vicinity to his memory. wind during our day marches. It is clear It should here most certainly be noted that these circumstances come on very sud- 50 that the southern party nobly stood by denly, and our wreck is certainly due to this their sick companions to the end, and in sudden advent of severe weather, which does spite of their distressing condition they not seem to have any satisfactory cause, had retained every record and thirty-five I do not think human beings ever came pounds of geological specimens which through such a month as we have come „ „„j *„ l„ * -a. * *. • ~*.:c through, and we should have got through in * P r ? ved *° be of , th ? S re ?, test scientific spite of the weather but for the sickening of value. This emphasizes the nature of a second companion, Captain Oates, and for a their journey. B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 85 town on the southern side of the Alaskan VI Range. As Cook's Inlet is closed to navi- gation during the winter, we began our THE CONQUERING OF MT. journey at Seward, more than four hun- McKINLEY 5 dred miles from the northern side of McKinley, and over the greater part of BELMORE BROWNE . this distance we broke our own trail through the silent, snow-smothered wilder- [Hearst's Magazine, December, 1912. npco By permission.] ue "- k> Our party was composed of four men: There is only one workmanlike way to Professor Parker, Arthur Aten, Merl La reach the northern face of Mt. McKinley Voy, and the writer. All our supplies — in the winter time with dog sleds. were drawn by two dog teams, and the Professor Herschel C. Parker' and the greater part of our freight was a dead writer had exhausted every other promis- 15 weight as we could not use it until we ing approach. In 1906 we had studied the reached the mountain. Every mile that western and southwestern ridges, and in we advanced cost us at least five extra 1910 we had explored the excessively miles of travel, as we made an aver- rugged glaciers and mountains of the age of three relays during the entire southern approach. During the latter ex- 20 trip. plorations we had tried the mountain at Nothing that I know of can approach several different points between the south- the fascination of traveling with dog 'western, southern, and southeastern ridges, teams through the Alaskan wilderness in and on one of these attempts we reached the winter time, and our search for an our highest altitude of 10,300 feet. The 25 unknown pass added tremendously to the problem of telling whether or not any excitement of our journey, particular route to the summit of this Space will not permit of the recounting great peak is feasible, is far more simple of our adventures in breaking through the than one would suppose. For Mt. McKin- range, suffice it to say that we were seven- ley rises to such a high altitude that un- 30 teen days without seeing any vegetation, less the climbers find a route where they and were a rough looking crew when we can camp and transport their food and reached the north side. By our journey shelter, their efforts would fail at the be- we added a new glacier to the southern ginning. slope of the range and tied on a glacier Almost every high mountain in the 35 system some sixty miles in extent to the world rises from a high base. In South northeastern face of Mt. McKinley. America, for instance, the actual climb- We arrived at the base of Mt. McKin- ing of a 20,000 foot peak generally be- ley on April 25, after nearly three months gins at an altitude of 16,000 feet or over, of continuous travel. We had studied the Whereas Mt. McKinley rises from a base 4 o country carefully as we advanced, and I of from four to five thousand feet, leaving had made a long reconnaissance trip 15,000 feet of snow and ice to be nego- ahead, locating a camping spot, and find- tiated. This fact makes Mt. McKinley ing a route to the glacier that forms a the highest peak in the world above the roadway to the eastern face of the big line of perpetual snow. 45 mountain. This route led through a deep No possible route to the summit existed gash that we called ' Glacier Pass,' which on any of the slopes seen by Professor lay at the head of the valley in which our Parker and the writer in 1906 and 1910. base camp was located. Going up this We decided, therefore, to make a third pass I came to a large glacier which, to attack from the northeastern side of the 50 my surprise, I found to be the Muldrow big peak. Glacier. We were actuated by two especial mo- This glacier was put on the map in 1902 tives: the ascent of Mt. McKinley, and by Alfred H. Brooks and D. L. Reakburn the crossing and exploration of the rugged of the United States Geological Survey, and unknown portion of the Alaskan 55 who mapped it for a distance of about ten Range lying just east of Mt. McKinley. miles from its snout. From the rugged To accomplish both ends we were forced mountains where I was standing I could to begin our travels at some seacoast see the glacier from a point near its snout 86 WRITING OF TODAY to where its two large branches drained bound in our little tent. We were dum- the ice and snow from Mt. McKinley. founded by the turn the weather had The main branch headed at the base of taken; all the mountains that were prac- the eastern cliffs, but the second branch tically free of their winter mantles in came from the basin between McKinley's 5 May were now buried deep in snow, two peaks. We spoke of the glacier that We could n't understand it, but since fell from the ' big basin ; as ' McKinley then we have found that the bad weather Glacier.' was general, and old settlers in the low- On the 29th of April Professor Parker, lands told us later that they had never Merl La Voy, and the writer began our 10 seen so stormy a summer, advance on the mountain. Arthur Aten On the following day, paradoxical as it remained at base camp to look out for may seem, we were held by good weather, our dogs and belongings, and to read the for the sun blazing down on the masses of barometer. Our advance was really a re- new snow that clung to the cliffs made it connaissance as we took one dog team and 15 dangerous to venture near. Even where heavily loaded sleds. we were camped — some 400 yards from Following the ' McKinley Glacier ' we the base of the cliffs — we did not feel any reached the cliffs of McKinley at an alti- too secure, although there was a low mo- tude of 11,000 feet. One glance at the raine to guard us. northeast ridge convinced us that it was 20 The temperature on this day was the climbable. It now became necessary to highest recorded by us while we were on return to base camp to leave the dogs with the ice. It was 46 degrees in the sun at Aten, as there was no way of feeding them 1 p.m., and 26 degrees in the shade ! while we were on the big mountain. Be- About noon a great avalanche fell, throw- fore leaving we cached a sled loaded 25 ing a snow cloud about 1000 feet high, with about 300 pounds of mountain food It was so close to us that we had to lower and equipment, against our return. We our tent or the tremendous wind caused by reached base camp after an absence of two the falling snow, would have done us weeks. damage. The avalanche swept across the On our arrival we were beset by vil- 3° part of the serac we had to cross and was lainous weather. The ' bad spell ' lasted finally stopped by the large crevasses, for about three weeks, and then La Voy The thunder of snowslides was continuous cut his knee badly while trying to photo- during the day. graph a caribou. We could take these , Our enforced wait had lowered our food misadventures philosophically, however, as 35 supply and after the sun had settled the we were confident that the lengthening snow, La Voy and I snowshoed six miles days would improve the climbing condi- to a cache we had made in Glacier Pass tions on the big mountain. and returned with alcohol, pemmican, June 4 dawned partly clear and the hardtack, and sugar, barometer as well as La Voy's knee was 40 Our second ascent of the glacier was promising, so we got our mountain equip- accomplished without any unusual adven- ment in order, and the night of June 5 tures. La Voy hurt his ' game ' knee by found us camped at the base of the first falling into a crevasse, but our being roped serac on McKinley Glacier. Aten had averted a tragedy. Avalanches fell regu- given us a hand with a dog team and in- 45 larly but where we had to pass under the tended to return at once to base camp, but cliffs, we chose the safest time of day — we were pretty well played out by the long either early morning or late evening. The tramp and he stayed with us all night, trail breaking was excessively hard work, sharing my wolf robe. The next morn- and our eyes suffered accordingly, as the ing we awoke to find a heavy snowstorm 50 glare on the snow made us snow-blind; but raging and we were forced to give up all liberal doses of eye ' dope ' allowed us to thought of traveling. Aten, fearing that continue. his trail would soon be covered, started Our sled was reached on June 13, and immediately after breakfast. Lying full a great weight was taken from our minds, length on the light sled, he whistled to the 55 Besides a liberal supply of food and fuel, eager dogs and shot away into the gray we recovered many luxuries, such as cari- mist. On the 6th, 7th, and 8th of June bou and mountain sheep skins to sleep on, the storm continued and we lay storm- and some pocket editions of well-known a. jMAKKAiiVE ARTICLES 87 authors, and a pocket chessboard made life This entry expresses the optimism with more worth living. which we planned the ascent of the ridge. We were now at an altitude of 11,000 As a matter of fact it took us four days feet. The average cloud level was below to reach the edge of the big basin at an al- us, and while we still had storms to con- 5 titude of 15,150 feet. Once we were tend with, we suffered less from delays forced to return to the Coll Camp for than we had on the lower glaciers. On ten days' rations, as we were beginning to June 14 we packed all our duffle to the realize the difficulties that confronted us. base of the northeast ridge. Just above Our actual climbing time between our Coll us the ridge was broken by a low coll, and 10 Camp at 11,000 feet and our 'Fifteen above us a steep but climbable snow slope Thousand Camp,' was fifteen hours of con- led to the top. stant toil. It required seven hours of the While we were relaying up our packs, hardest labor to climb to our ' Ridge great masses of mist came rolling over the Camp ' at 13,600 feet, and eight hours range from the south. The lowlands on 15 climbing from the ' Ridge Camp ' to the the north were soon covered with as dense ' Fifteen Thousand Camp.' While relay - a mass of clouds as I have ever seen, that ing, after the steps were made we climbed rose higher and higher until we were en- faster. Deep, soft snow lying at a danger- veloped in mist and snow. We dug a deep ous angle was the principal cause of our hole for our tent, and shoveled the blocks 20 slow time. of snow into a wall, so that we were well On the 24th of June we had packed our sheltered. The storm continued for two complete equipment to 15,150 feet, and we days and we lay in our fur bags listening were glad to find a level spot in the lee of to the howling of the wind and the sound some great granite slabs where we could of snow slithering across our frozen tent. 25 pitch our tent. We were now on the very Late on the afternoon of June 16, it edge of the ' Big Basin ' and from our tent cleared a little and we moved up the gla- door we could see the ice seracing down cier to the point where we could climb the between Mt. McKinley's two peaks. Be- ridge. Removing our snowshoes, we tween the seracs lay smooth snow slopes, toiled upward, pounding big foot holes as 3° and all we had to do to enter the basin was we went. We found a fairly flat place to make an easy ' traverse ' under the cliffs near the top of the ridge that with a lit- of the northeast ridge, tie shoveling would make a good camp I went through an experience at this site. camp that gave us all the deepest cause The view from the coll was beyond 35 for worry. Both Professor Parker and words ! We looked straight down into a La Voy had had difficulty in digesting our grim amphitheater; the walls were as pemmican. They thought that the pem- savage as I have ever seen. About a mican was not good, and I scoffed at the thousand feet below us lay a floor of cold idea until we reached the 15,000-foot camp gray clouds that hid the bottom of the 40 and then I was attacked by severe cramps, great hollow, and as we looked a shaft of Now pemmican was the foundation on sunlight broke through the western peaks, which we had builded our hopes of reach- and turned the clouds to fire. ing the summit, and if we found that we On June 17 we relayed all our belong- could not use it at high altitudes, we ings 800 feet in the air to the top of the 45 would be in a serious predicament. We coll. Our altitude was 11,800 feet and the decided to cook it at our next camp in the ' Coll Camp,' as we called it, was our hope that it would be more digestible, climbing base during our attack on Mt. During the night the wind began to moan McKinley. We shoveled far into the snow among the rocks, and soon a gale was and set the tent back so that it was ab- 50 shrieking down between the two peaks, solutely protected from any gale. I re- Mingled with the rattle of the gale we organized our outfit, and found that we heard the lash of wind-driven snow, had ample rations for one month. When we awoke next morning, the snow On June 18 I made the following entry was still falling and as we lay blissfully in my diary : ' It looks as if it will be a 55 dozing in our fur bags, avalanches began good day to-morrow, and if it is, we will to roar down into the glacial amphithea- try to take a load of food and necessities ters below us, until the very mountain up to the big basin between the two peaks.' seemed to tremble, and the sound swelled 88 WRITING OF TODAY ^__ to the steady rumble of thunder. We were arid we were forced to zigzag and chop stormbound all day. steps. June 26 dawned clear, and when night Not a single difficulty confronted us. had come we were camped, bag and bag- In places we encountered soft snow that gage, in the center of the ' Big Basin,' 5 kept us from making better time, but the at an altitude of 16,000 feet. A serac difficult climbing was all behind us on the about 800 feet high broke across the ba- lower ridge. We reached the top of the sin above us, but on its northern end ridge in about two hours and a half. Ac- we could see good slopes of avalanche cording to our two barometers, we were snow that promised an easy route to the 10 now at an elevation of 18,250 feet. This top. placed our climbing at about 400 feet an The temperature inside of our tent at hour. The altitude was in part respon- 8.30 p.m. was- 5 degrees below zero. Our sible for our slow progress, but I feel that vitality was low on account of the alti- our light diet of raisins, sugar and hard- tude and we suffered severely from the 15 tack was as important a factor ; for while cold, and got little sleep. On June 27 we it was our rule to climb slowly but steadily, advanced in two relays to an altitude of I know that if we had been well fed, we 17,150 feet. This camp was situated about could have made faster time with the halfway up the ' big basin ' in a flat that same expense of energy, lay between the two seracs. 20 At the point where we reached the sum- The last and highest serac rose about mit of the ridge we wound back and forth 800 feet above us, but it came principally between great blocks of granite. As a from the south peak, and there was an keen wind was blowing from the south we easy route that led around the north end munched our second breakfast in the lee to the very top of the ' Big Basin.' The 25 of the rocks. The views looking down main northeast ridge rose directly south of from this ridge were beyond words. We our camp, and while its side was steep in could see the whole eastern sweep of the places, we saw that we could reach the great Alaskan Range spread out like a top easily and follow it to the final summit map below us. On the northern side of of the south peak. We all got thoroughly 30 the range there was not one cloud. The chilled while making camp, but the ther- tangled mountain chains blended into the mometer only registered 8 degrees below rolling foothills, which in turn melted into zero — a great improvement over our last the dim blue of the timbered lowlands camp. that rolled away to the northward, grow- On June 28 we rested and reorganized. 35 ing bluer and bluer until they were lost It blew a gale all day and we devoted our- at the end of the world, selves to preparing for the final climb. On the humid south side, a sea of clouds The clouds were all below us and a clear was rolling against the main range like sunset in the evening promised a good surf on a rocky shore. The clouds rose climbing day. Professor Parker boiled a 40 as we watched. At one point a cloud hypsometer as a check on our aneroids, would break through between two guard- The temperature at 3.45 p.m. in the sun, ing peaks; beyond, a serpentine mass was 8 degrees by one thermometer and 9 would creep northward along a glacier degrees by another. We ate sparingly of gap in the range ; soon every pass was pemmican pudding. 45 filled with cloud battalions that joined At 6.30 on the morning of June 29 we forces on the northern side, and swept started for the summit. It was a wonder- downward like a triumphant army over the ful morning, clear and cold; the great northern foothills. It was a striking and snow slopes of the two peaks were still in impressive illustration of the war that shadow and the only sound was the grat- 50 the elements are constantly waging along ing of our ice creepers on the hard crust, the Alaskan Range. As it was light all night we did not give On the southern side hang the humid a thought to the speed we should make, clouds of the Pacific Slope ; on the north but plodded slowly and steadily upward, is the clear, dry climate of the interior, Our course was directly up the side of the 55 while between, like a giant earthwork northeast ridge. About 200 feet above between two hostile armies, stands the camp we crossed a little bench, but from Alaskan Range. From our eerie we could there on to the top, the grade was steep look down onto our 1910 battleground. B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 89 Through deep blue chasms in the clouds small bergschrund, or crack, that marked the well-remembered contours of the the shoulder of the ridge. I advanced to rugged peaks that we had explored in the lee of this point and as I rose above that eventful summer seemed like the faces it I was met by a frozen gale that drove of old friends. As we advanced upward 5 the breath from my body — I could n't along the arete we noticed that we were face it. Quickly returning to my com- short of breath, but the altitude did ,not panions I told them that we could do affect us in any other way. At a little nothing at present on the summit. We less than 19,000 feet we got our first near were in a dangerous place. The summit view of the summit. The rocks ended and 10 of the mountain was a horseshoe-shaped the ridge broadened into the first swell of ridge about one-third of a mile in length, the final summit. While climbing the with the opening facing east. It was un- ridge the wind had increased, and now the ev.en on top and from clear views that we southern sky had darkened and the wind had obtained from below, we knew that was blowing a small gale. Ahead of us 15 there was a hummock or small dome ris- was a round dome some 300 feet in alti- ing from the northern bend of the horse- tude that we must climb before reaching shoe summit. This small dome is, in all the snow of the final summit. The foot- probability, the highest point on Mt. Mc- ing was good and we made better time. Kinley. Now we were stormbound on the By the time we had reached the foot of 20 northern end of the horseshoe curve, the summit, the wind was laden with dry where the mountain fell away to join the snow, and from this point upward every northeast ridge. According to our travel- landmark was wiped out and we faced an ing time we were 250 feet above the point ever-increasing blizzard. We had taken where Professor Parker's 20,000-foot ba- caref ul bearings, however, and as long as 25 rometer had ceased to register, we were going uphill we had no fear as On reaching 19,000 feet my barometer far as our ability to reach the final ridge had agreed within 100 feet with Profes- was concerned. But several other facts sor Parker's. But as we rose higher my did worry us. When I ended my turn of instrument — probably due to false com- step chopping at 20,000 feet I found that 30 pensation — had dropped with great ra- my hands were beginning to freeze. La pidity to 11,200 feet, or the same altitude Voy's and my hands had become coated as our camp between the two peaks ! From with ice in the making of steps, and from then until I returned to our 17,000-foot using the axes our leather-covered mittens camp it was useless, but on the following had, in turn, become covered. The storm 35 day it regained its composure and reg- was so severe and the cold so pitiless that istered the same as Professor Parker's. I was actually afraid to get new mittens Professor Parker's barometer behaved out of my ruck-sack for fear that my with absolute regularity throughout, and hands would be frozen during the opera- as we knew that the final summit rose tion. In the lashing sheets of dry snow 4° about 200 feet above us, the summit, ac- I could no longer see La Voy, and Parker cording to our calculations, would be 20,- who was only twenty feet ahead, was a 450 feet above sea level, dim blur. Realizing our desperate posi- The United States Government places tion, I concentrated my mind on getting the summit — by triangulation — at 20,- blood back into my hands. During the 45 300 feet, a small difference indeed. On process we were rising slowly foot by leaving from, and returning to, our base foot as La Voy finished the steps. At camp, both our barometers and a third times I could no longer see Parker, and that Aten had read twice daily during our I had to feel for the steps with my ice absence, closely agreed; and furthermore, creepers. At last I heard La Voy's hail 50 all three agreed closely with Brooks' con- above the roar of the wind, and knew that tour lines. my turn to chop had come. Professor On returning to my companions, we held Parker advanced to the steps where La a council of war. While we could prob- Voy stood, and when I joined them we ably have reached the summit in a half- stood braced against the storm and talked 55 hour in clear weather, we were afraid to the situation over. Our hard work had face the present gale. With our glasses come to an end; for just above me- I covered with ice and fearing to remove could see between the clouds of snow a them on account of the cold, we were 90 WRITING OF TODAY helpless, and could not see each other even a level spot above the first swell above when only separated by a few feet. The the ridge, and a half-hour later we saw fact that our steps were completely wiped dim rock shapes through the storm and out added to our concern, for we realized realized that the ridge was found, how difficult it would be to find the nar- 5 With thankful hearts we halted to lee- row ridge where it joined the smooth ward of the highest rocks to rest, and as dome a thousand feet below us. After we continued downward to our camp the looking over our position, we decided to ridge protected us from the gale. Soon take the odds offered and try to ride out after our return the wind began to mod- the storm. 10 erate but the tourmente on the summit Having once decided on this course we continued for some hours, set to work and soon chopped a small The following day dawned as clear as shelter in the hard snow. Our hopes were crystal, and all day long the summit stood soon blasted, however, for after a few clear cut against the sky. We could not minutes of inaction we began to feel the 15 climb, however, for our moccasins, gloves, numbing effect of the cold. The gale was and outer clothing were impregnated with driving the dry snow into every seam and ice dust of the storm, and all day long we pore of our clothing, and the heat of our kept our alcohol stove going and dried bodies was turning the snow to ice. Our our duffle. We spent hours talking of the parkas were becoming stiff and the wol- 20 causes of mountain storms, and we all verine fur on our parkahoods was frozen held fast to the theory that it was the stiff from the moisture of our breath ; our effect of the sun on the atmosphere that mittens were hard with ice, and we held caused the sudden savage gales that lashed our ice axes with difficulty. Our posi- the peaks until night dispelled them. Act- tion was an unique one as I do not believe 25 ing on this theory, we determined that our there is a parallel case in the history of next attempt would be made before the mountaineering. Had Mt. McKinley's sun had had a chance to warm the lower summit been a peak we would have swung strata of air. to the leeward snow slopes and claimed a Our inability to eat pemmican was a first ascent. As it was, we were on the 30 tremendous blow to us. It was not alone summit's edge and but for the extent and the weakening effect of our light diet that formations of this ' ridge-summit ' we worried us, as added to this was the great should have claimed the first ascent. We waste of energy from having packed a were in the position of a ship that had food we could not eat, to a height of 17,- traveled thousands of miles to reach a cer- 35 000 feet, where everything in the food line tain city and had then been fog-bound at was worth its weight in gold. Under our the harbor's mouth. This much remains restricted diet we found that we were re- to console us : as far as the climbing was duced to four days' rations, whereas if concerned we conquered Mt. McKinley — we had been able to eat pemmican, we pos- and when some day a party stands on the 40 sibly could have remained in the big basin highest snow they will have followed our a week longer. During our day of rest trail to the last dome. If it were not for La Voy and I suffered acutely from snow- this thought we would have to try again, blindness, but thanks to a liberal supply of The storm had now grown to a point boracic acid and zinc sulphate, we got where to face it required all our strength. 45 our eyes into fair condition for our second As I felt the cold creeping upward from attempt to reach the summit, my numbed hands and feet, I knew that Professor Parker was not affected by it was dangerous to remain on the peak an this painful malady, although his snow instant longer, so I yelled to Parker and glasses gave less protection than the type La Voy that we must get off the peak and 50 La Voy and I used. We attributed all our get off quickly and that I would lead, eye trouble to step chopping and trail The descent through the storm was the breaking, as in this work a man has noth- most exciting experience of my life, ing of a dark color on which to rest his Everything depended on our finding and eyes, and, what is worse, he is forced to following the steps we had chopped, and 55 keep his eyes focused on the white, glaring the only way I could find them was by surface of the snow, feeling for the soft spots in the snow. On the first of July we arose at After what seemed hours, we arrived at 1.30 a.m. The, weather as far as I could B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 91 tell by looking down from the big basin came taut. We organized at the Coll and on to the northern foothills, was beauti- at 8.30 that night we were camped among fully clear. Not a cloud was visible and some crevasses at the head of the big from the tent door the distant land, 15,- serac. We came down easily as far as the 000 feet below me stretched away like a 5 traveling was concerned, but our long great blue sea. We left camp at 3 a.m. absence had made a great difference in the and in two hours and a half we had snow, and great crevasses had appeared in climbed to 18,250 feet, and put the most all directions. These and a heavy fog difficult part of the ascent behind us. kept us busy until finally the fog won and On reaching the top of the ridge, we 10 we made camp, looked down onto a dense mass of clouds We were greatly worried about the se- that were sweeping up from the Susitua racs below us as we feared that some of Valley. Without waiting to rest, we the bergschrunds might have opened and turned and made the best speed we could blocked our path, but we finally wormed up the ridge. As we advanced the clouds 15 our way through, and after traveling all came rolling after us, until at 19,500 feet night, we reached ' Glacier Pass.' we were enveloped in a cold wind-driven I will never forget the joy we felt at mist that stopped our progress. Just be- having earth and rock beneath our feet, fore the wind caught us, we stopped above It was the first time in twenty-eight days the last rocks at the base of the final peak, 20 that our feet had rested on anything but and we could trace our wind-blown steps snow and ice. On the 4th of July, we to a point just below the little bergschrund staggered down the snow-filled pass on our on the edge of the crest where we had way to base camp. La Voy and I were tried to weather the storm two days before, carrying packs of over eighty pounds, and From where we stood we estimated that 25 in our weakened condition we made rough the north peak rose about 500 feet above weather of it. But the joy of smelling us. As far as we could tell, the south green grass and flowers, and resting our peak was only 500 feet higher than the aching eyes on the green mountain pas- north peak. tures repaid us for all our work. Where Now we were stormbound again. We 30 the snow melted into crystal streams, we held on for more than an hour walking entered the green lowlands and a herd of back and forth to fight the frost, and then, fifty caribou welcomed us to their coun- as the roar of the wind grew louder, we try. The sun was going down in a sea of turned without a word, and fought our crimson when we neared our base camp, way back over the ground we had given 35 As we stumbled on, overcome with ex- so much to gain. We left a minimum ther- citement, I kept wondering if Aten was mometer in a crack on the western side safe, for much can happen in twenty-eight of the highest boulder of the northeast wilderness days. ridge. On reaching camp, we held an in- Above our camp on a round hill stood a ventory, and finding that we did not have 40 large rock that overlooked the surround- enough food to allow of another attempt ing country, and as we strained our eyes on the peak, we took time by the forelock, ahead, we saw a figure against the sky, and descended to our 15,000- foot camp, then a -smaller shape — a dog, appeared, We left our high camp after lunch, and it and our yells echoed down the valley ! presented a lonesome sight as we turned 45 We were a happy crew that night ! our faces toward the lowlands. We de- For several days we ate and rested, en- scended in about three hours and our old joying to the full the'beauties of our wil- trail still held. The following day we derness home. But as the tender caribou reached our ' Coll Camp ' after some try- meat brought back our strength, we began ing experiences. I was snow-blind again, 50 to long for the trail again, and on a sunny and while leading I broke through a snow morning, we sadly bade good-by to our old cornice on a knife-edge arete, but sunk camp and turned our faces northward — my ax into the snow before the rope be- toward the Yukon. 92 WRITING OF TODAY tinguished Cambridge mathematician pro- VII duced to show that a flying-machine was bound to pitch fearfully, that as it flew MY FIRST FLIGHT on its pitching must increase, until up 5 went its nose, down went its tail, and H. G. WELLS it fell like a knife. We exaggerated every possibility of instability. We imagined [American Magazine, December, 1912. t j, at w hen the aeroplane was n't ' kicking y permission.] ^ ahind and afore ' it would be heeling Hitherto my only flights have been 10 over to the lightest side wind. A sneeze flights of imagination, but this morning 1 might upset it. We contrasted our poor I flew. I spent about ten or fifteen min- human equipment with the instinctive bal- utes in the air ; we went out to sea, soared ance of a bird, which has had ten million up, came back over the land, circled higher, years of evolution by way of a start. . . . planed steeply down to the water, and 15 (The waterplane in which I soared over I landed with the conviction that I had Eastbourne this morning with Mr. Gra- had only the foretaste of a great store of hame White was* as steady as a motor- hitherto, unsuspected pleasures. At the car running on asphalt.) first chance I will go up again, and I will Then we went on from those anticipa- go higher and further. 20 tions of swaying insecurity to speculations This experience has restored all the about the psychological and physiological keenness of my ancient interest in flying, effects of flying. Most people who look which had become a little fagged and down from the top of a cliff or high tower flat by too much hearing and reading feel some slight qualms of dread, many about the thing and not enough partici- 25 feel a quite sickening dread. Even if men pation. Fifteen years ago, in the days struggled high into the air, we asked, of Langley and Lilienthal, I was one of would n't they be smitten up there by such the few journalists who believed and a lonely and reeling dismay as to lose all wrote that flying was possible — it affected self-control? And, above all, wouldn't my reputation unfavorably, and produced 30 the pitching and tossing make them quite in the few discouraged pioneers of those horribly seasick? days a quite touching gratitude. Over I have always been a little haunted my mantel as I write hangs a very blurred by that last dread. It gave a little under- and bad but interesting photograph that tow of funk to the mood of lively curiosity Professor Langley sent me thirteen years 35 with which I got aboard the waterplane ago. It shows the flight of the first this morning — that sort of faint, thin piece of human machinery heavier than funk that so readily invades one on the air that ever kept itself up for any verge of any new experience; when one length of time. It was a model, a little tries one's first dive, for example, or affair that would not have lifted a cat ; 40 pushes off for the first time down an ice- it went up in a spiral and came down un- run. I thought I should very probably be smashed, bringing back, like Noah's dove, seasick — or, to be more precise, airsick; the promise of tremendous things. I thought also that I might be very giddy, and that I might get thoroughly cold and some exploded prophecies 45 uncomfortable. None of those things hap- That was only thirteen years ago, and pened. it is amusing to recall how cautiously I am still in a state of amazement at even we out-and-out believers did our the smooth steadfastness of the motion, prophesying. I was quite a desperate fel- There is nothing on earth to compare with low; I said outright that in my lifetime 50 that, unless — and that I can't judge — it we should see men flying. But I quali- is an ice-yacht traveling on perfect ice. fied that by repeating that for many The finest motor-car in the world on the years to come it would be an enterprise best road would be a joggling, quivering only for quite fantastic daring and skill, thing beside it. We conjured up stupendous difficulties 55 To begin with, we went out to sea before and risks. I was deeply impressed and the wind, and the plane would not readily greatly discouraged by a paper a dis- rise. We went with an undulating move- 1 Friday, August 2, 1912. ment, leaping with a light splashing pat B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 93 upon the water, from wave to wave, in coasting a hill on a bicycle. It was n't Then we came about into the wind, and a tithe of the thrill of those three descents rose ; and looking over I saw that there one gets on the great mountain railway in were no longer those periodic flashes of the White City. There one gets a dis- white foam. I was flying. And it was 5 agreeable quiver up one's backbone from . „ „ „, the wheels, and a real sense of falling. AS STILL AND STEADY AS DREAMING j t ; g qu j te pecuHar tQ fly j ng ^ Qn % Jg I watched the widening distance be- incredulous of any collision. Some time tween our floats and the waves. It was n't ago I was in a motor-car that ran over by any means a windless day — there was 10 and killed a small dog, and this wretched a brisk fluctuating breeze blowing out of little incident has left an open wound upon the north over the downs. It seemed my nerves. I am never quite happy in hardly to affect our flight at all. a car now; I can't help keeping an appre- And as for the giddiness of looking hensive eye ahead. But you fly with an down, one does not feel it at all. It is 15 exhilarating assurance that you cannot difficult to explain why this should be possibly run over anything or run into so, but it is so. I suppose in such matters anything — except the land or the sea, I am neither exceptionally steady-headed, and even those large essentials seem a nor is my head exceptionally given to beautifully safe distance away, swimming. I can stand on the edge of 20 cliffs of a thousand feet or so and look THE N0ISE 0F THE propeller down, but I can never bring myself right I had heard a great deal of talk about up to the edge, nor crane over to look the deafening uproar of the engine. I to the very bottom. I should want to lie counted a headache among my chances, down to do that. And the other day I 25 There again reason reinforced conjecture, was on that Belvedere place at the top When in the early morning Mr. Travers of the Rotterdam skyscraper, a rather high came from Brighton in this Farman in wind was blowing, and one looks down which I flew, I could hear the hum of the through the chinks between the boards one great insect when it still seemed abreast stands on upon the heads of the people 30 of Beachey Head, and a good two miles in the streets below ; I did n't like it. But away. If one can hear a thing at two I looked directly down on a little fleet of miles, how much the more will one not fishing-boats over which we passed, and hear it at a distance of two yards. , But on the crowds assembling on the beach, at the risk of seeming too contented for and on the bathers who stared up at us 35 anything I will assert I heard that noise from the breaking surf with an entirely no more than one hears the drone of an agreeable exaltation. And Eastbourne in electric ventilator upon one's table. It the early morning sunshine had all the was only when I came to speak to Mr. brightly detailed littleness of a town Grahame White, or he to me, that I dis- viewed from high up on the side of a great 40 covered that our voices had become al- mountain. most infinitesimally small. THAT GOING-DOWN SENSATION WE SHALL ALL BE FLYING When Mr. Grahame White told me we And so it was that I went up into the were going to plane down, I will confess 45 air at Eastbourne with the impression I tightened my hold on the sides of the that flying was still an uncomfortable, car, and prepared for something like the experimental, and slightly heroic thing to down-going sensation of a switchback rail- do, and came down to the cheerful gather- way on a larger scale. Just for a moment ing crowd upon the sands again with the there was that familiar feeling of some- 50 knowledge that it is a thing achieved for thing pressing one's heart up towards one's every one. # It will get much cheaper no shoulders and one's lower jaw up into its doubt, and much swifter, and be improved socket, and of grinding one's lower teeth in a dozen ways, — we must get self-start- against the upper, and then it passed. The ing engines, for example, for both our nose of the car and all the machine was 55 aeroplanes and motor-cars, — but it is slanting downward, we were gliding available to-day for any one who can reach quickly down, and yet there was no feel- it. An invalid lady of seventy could have ing that one rushed, not even as one rushes enjoyed all that I did if only one could 94 WRITING OF TODAY have got her into the passenger's seat. A slight hill, a plowed fieTd, the streets of Getting there was a little difficult, it is a town, create riotous, rolling, invisible true; the waterplane was out in the surf, streams and cataracts of air, that catch and I was carried to it on a boatman's the aviator unawares, make him drop dis- back, and then had to clamber carefully 5 concertingly, try his nerve. With a pow- through the wires, but that is a matter of erful enough engine he climbs at once detail. again, but these sudden downfalls are the This flying is indeed so certain to be- least pleasant and most dangerous expe- come a general experience that I am sure rience in aviation. They exact a tiring that this description will in a few years 10 vigilance. Over lake or sea, in sunshine, seem almost as quaint as if I had set my- within sight of land — this is the perfect self to record the fears and sensations of way of the flying tourist. Gladly would I my First Ride in a Wheeled Vehicle, have set out for France this morning m- And I suspect that learning to control a stead of returning- to Eastbourne. And Farman waterplane now is probably not 15 then coasted round to Spain and into the much more difficult than, let us say, twice Mediterranean. And so by leisurely stages the difficulty in learning the control and to India. And the East Indies. . . . management of a motor bicycle. I cannot I find my study unattractive to-day. understand the sort of young man who won't learn how to do it if he gets half a 20 chance. VIII The development of these waterplanes is an important step towards the huge THE HORRORS OF LOUVAIN and swarming popularization of flying which is now certainly imminent. We 25 RICHARD HARDING DAVIS ancient survivors of those who believed in and wrote about flying before there l New York Tribune, August 31, 1914. n ■ j i 1 ij- By permission.] was any flying, used to make a great fuss about the dangers and difficulties of London, August 30. — I left Brussels on landing and getting up. We wrote with 30 Thursday afternoon and have just arrived vast gravity about ' starting rails ' and in London. For two hours on Thursday ' landing stages,' and it is still true that night I was in what for six hundred years landing an aeroplane, except upon a well- had been the City of Louvain. The Ger- known and quite level expanse, is a risky mans were burning it, and to hide their and uncomfortable business. But getting 35 work kept us locked in the railroad ear- up and landing upon fairly smooth water riages. But the story was written against is easier than getting into bed. This the sky, was told to us by German soldiers alone is likely to determine the aeroplane incoherent with excesses; and we could routes along the line of the world's coast- read it in the faces of women and chil- lines and lake groups and water-ways. 40 dren being led to concentration camps and The airmen will go to and fro over of citizens on their way to be shot, water as the midges do. Wherever there The Germans sentenced Louvain on is a square mile of water the waterplanes Wednesday to become a wilderness, and will come and go like hornets at the mouth with the German system and love of of their nest. But there are much 45 thoroughness they left Louvain an empty, stronger reasons than this convenience for blackened shell. The reason for this ap- keeping over water. Over water the air, peal to the torch and the execution of non- it seems, lies in great level expanses ; even combatants, as given to me on Thursday when there are gales it moves in great morning by General von Lutwitz, military uniform masses, like the swift still rush 50 governor of Brussels, was this : On Wed- of a deep river. The airman, in Mr. Gra- nesday while the German military com- hame White's phrase, can go to sleep on mander of the troops in Louvain was at it. the Hotel de Ville talking to the burgo- But over the land, and for thousands master a son of the burgomaster with an of feet up into the sky, the air is more 55 automatic pistol shot the chief of staff and irregular than a torrent among rocks ; it German staff surgeons, is — if only we could see it — a waving, Lutwitz claims this was the signal for whirling, eddying, flamboyant confusion, the civil guard, in civilian clothes on roofs, B. WAKKAllV-t AKllU^fc-S 95 to fire upon the German soldiers in the open square below. He said also the Bel- compared with united states in gians had quick-firing guns, brought from Mexico Antwerp. As for a week the Germans No one defends the sniper. But because had occupied Louvain and closely guarded 5 ignorant Mexicans when their city was in- all approaches, the story that there was vaded fired upon our sailors, we did not any gunrunning is absurd. destroy Vera Cruz. Even had we bom- Fifty Germans were killed and wounded, barded Vera Cruz, money could have re- For that, said Lutwitz, Louvain must be stored it. Money can never restore Lou- wiped out. So in pantomime with his fist 10 vain. Great architects and artists, dead he swept the papers across his table. these six hundred years, made it beautiful, ' The Hotel de Ville,' he added, ' was a and their handiwork belonged to the world, beautiful building; it is a pity it must be With torch and dynamite the Germans destroyed.' have turned these masterpieces into ashes, 15 and all the Kaiser's horses and all his men EDUCATED MANY AMERICAN PRIESTS canno( . bring them ba( ; k again . Ten days ago I was in Louvain when it When by troop train we reached Lou- was occupied by Belgian troops and King vain, the entire heart of the city was de- Albert and his staff. The city dates from stroyed and fire had reached the Boule- the eleventh century and the population 20 vard Tirlemont, which faces the railroad was 42,000. The< citizens were brewers, station. The night was windless, and the lacemakers and manufacturers of orna- sparks rose in steady, leisurely pillars, fall- ments for churches. The university once ing back into the furnace from which they was the most celebrated in European cities, sprang. In their work the soldiers were and still is, or was, headquarters of the 25 moving from the heart of the city to the Jesuits. outskirts, street by street, from house to In the Louvain college many priests now house, in America have been educated, and ten In each building, so German soldiers told days ago over the great yellow walls of the me, they began at the first floor, and when college, I saw hanging two American 30 that was burning steadily passed to the flags. I found the city clean, sleepy and one next. There were no exceptions — pretty, with narrow, twisting streets and whether it was a store, chapel or private smart shops and cafes set in flower gar- residence it was destroyed. The occu- dens of the houses, with red roofs, green pants had been warned to go, and in each shutters and white walls. 35 deserted shop or house the furniture was Over those that faced south had been piled, the torch was stuck under it, and trained pear trees, their branches heavy into the air went the savings of years, with fruit spread out against the walls souvenirs of children, of parents, heir- like branches of candelabra. The Town looms that had passed from generation to Hall was very old a*nd very beautiful, an 4° generation. example of Gothic architecture, in detail The people had time only to fill a pillow- and design more celebrated even than the case and fly. Some were not so fortunate, Town Hall of Bruges or Brussels. It was and by thousands, like flocks of sheep, they five hundred years old, and lately had been were rounded up and marched through the repaired with great taste and at great cost. 45 night to concentration camps. We were Opposite was the Church of St. Pierre, not allowed to speak to any citizen of dating from the fifteenth century, a very Louvain, but the Germans crowded the noble building, with many chapels filled windows, boastful, gloating, eager to in- with carvings of the time of the Renais- terpret. sance in wood, stone and iron. In the uni- 50 versity were 150,000 volumes. WAR 0N THE senseless Near it was the bronze statue of Father We were free to move from one end of Damien, priest of the leper colony in the the train to the other, and in the two hours South Pacific, of which Robert Louis during which it circled the burning city Stevenson wrote. All these buildings now 55 war was before us in its most hateful as- are empty, exploded cartridges. Statues, pect. pictures, carvings, parchments, archives — In other wars I have watched men on all are gone. one hilltop, without haste, without heat r 96 WRITING OF TODAY fire at men on another hill, and in conse- were halted, and among them were quence on both sides good men were marched a line of men. They well knew wasted. But in those fights there were no their fellow townsmen. These were on women or children, and the shells struck their way to be shot. And better to point only vacant stretches of veldt or unin- 5 the moral an officer halted both proces- habited mountainsides. sions and, climbing to a cart, explained At Louvain it was war upon the defense- why the men were to die. He warned less, war upon churches, colleges, shops of others not to bring down upon themselves milliners and lacemakers; war brought to a like vengeance. the bedside and the fireside ; against 1° As those being led to spend the night in women harvesting in the fields, against the fields looked across to those marked children in wooden shoes at play in the for death they saw old friends, neighbors streets. of long standing, men of their own house- At Louvain that night the Germans were hold. The officer bellowing at them from like men after an orgy. 15 the cart was illuminated by the headlights There were fifty English prisoners, erect of an automobile. He looked like an actor and soldierly. In the ocean of gray the held in a spotlight on a darkened stage, little patch of khaki looked pitifully lonely, It was all like a scene upon the stage, but they regarded the men who had out- so unreal, so inhuman, you felt it could not numbered but not defeated them with calm 20 be true that the curtain of fire, purring but uncurious eyes. In one way I was and crackling and sending up hot sparks glad to see them there. Later they will to meet the kind, calm stars, was only a bear witness as to how the enemy makes a painted backdrop ; that the reports of rifles wilderness and calls it war. It was a most from the dark rooms came from blank car- weird picture. 25 tridges, and that these trembling shop- On the high ground rose the broken keepers and peasants ringed in bayonets spires of the Church of St. Pierre and the would not in a few minutes really die, but Hotel de Ville, and descending like steps that they themselves and their homes were row beneath row of houses, roofless would be restored to their wives and chil- with windows like blind eyes. The fire 30 dren. had reached the last row of houses, those You felt it was only a nightmare, cruel on the Boulevard de Jodigne. Some of and uncivilized. And then you remem- these were already cold, but others sent bered that the German Emperor has told up steady, straight columns of flame. In us what it is. It is his Holy War. others at the third and fourth stories the 35 window curtains still hung, flowers still filled the window boxes, while on the first IX floor the torch had just passed and the flames were leaping. Fire had destroyed THE FALL OF ANTWERP the electric plant, but at times the flames 40 made the station so light that you could ARTHUR RUHL see the second hand of your watch, and again all was darkness, lit Only by Candles. • [Collier's, November 14, 1914.— Copyright. J J By permission.] men to be shot marched past 45 The storm which was to burst over Ant- You could tell when an officer passed by werp the following night was gathering the electric torch he carried strapped to fast when we arrived on Tuesday morning, his chest. In the darkness the gray uni- Army motor trucks loaded with dismantled forms filled the station with ah army of aeroplanes and the less essential impedi- ghosts. You distinguished men only when 50 menta screamed through the streets bound pipes hanging from their teeth glowed red away from, not toward, the front. The or their bayonets flashed. Queen, that afternoon, was seen in the Outside the station in the public square Hotel St. Antoine receiving the good-bys the people of Louvain passed in an unend- of various friends. Consuls suddenly ing procession, women bareheaded, weep- 55 locked their doors and fled. And the can- ing, men carrying the children asleep on non, rumbling along the eastern horizon their shoulders, all hemmed in by the as they had rumbled, nearer and nearer, shadowy army of gray wolves. Once they for a fortnight, were now beyond the outer r>. j.N/\i^JXrt.ii v n. nuiiL-biij 97 line of forts and within striking distance tanned like an Indian squaw with work in of the town. the fields, yet with a fine, well-made face, That night, an hour or two after mid- pushing a groaning wheelbarrow. A strap night, in my hotel by the water front, went from the handles over her shoulders, I awoke to the steady clatter of hoofs on 5 and, stopping now and then to ask the cobblestones and the rumble of wheels, news, she would slip off this harness, gos- I went to the window, on the narrow side sip for a time, then push on again. That street, black as all streets had been in afternoon under my window there was a Antwerp since the night that the Zeppe- tall wagon, a sort of hay wagon, in which lin threw its first bombs, and looked out. 10 there were twenty-two little tow-headed It was a moonlight night, clear and cold, children, none more than eight or ten, and and there along the Quai St. Michael, at several almost babies in arms. By the side the end of the street, was an army in re- of the wagon a man, evidently father of treat. They were Belgians, battered and some of them, stood buttering the end of a worn out with their unbroken weeks of 15 huge round loaf of bread and cutting off hopeless fighting ; cavalrymen on their tired slice after slice, which the older children horses, artillerymen, heads sunk on their broke and distributed to the little ones, chests, drowsing on their lurching cais- Two cows were tied to the back of the sons; the patient little foot soldiers, rifles wagon and the man's wife squatted there slung across their shoulders, scuffling along 20 milking them. All along the quay and in in their heavy overcoats. the streets leading into it were people like In the dark shadow of the tall old this — harmless, helpless, hard-working houses a few people came out and stood people, going they knew not where. The there watching silently and, as one felt, entrance to the bridge was soon choked. in a sort of despair. All night long men 25 One went away and returned an hour later were marching by — and in London they and found the same people waiting almost were still reading that it was but a ' dem- in the same spot, and, with that wonderful onstration ' the Germans were engaged in calm and patience of theirs, feeding their — down the quay and across the pontoon children or giving a little of their precious bridge — the only way over the Scheldt — 30 hay to the horses, quietly waiting their over to the Tete de Flandre and the road turn while the cannon which had driven to Ghent. They were strung along the them from their homes kept on thundering street next morning, boots mud-covered, behind them. mud-stained, intrenching shovels hanging That afternoon I walked uptown to their belts, faces unshaven for weeks 35 through the shuttered, silent streets — just as they had come from the trenches ; silent but for that incessant rumbling in yet still patient and cheerful, with that un- the southeast and the occasional honking shakable Flemish good cheer. Perhaps, flight of some military automobile — to after all, it was not a retreat; they might two of the hospitals. In one, a British be swinging round to the south and St. 40 hospital on the Boulevard Leopold, the Nicholas to attack the German flank. . . . doctor in charge was absent for the mo- But before they had crossed, another ment, and there was no one to answer my army, a civilian army, flowed down on and offer of occasional help if an outsider over the quay. For a week people had could be of use. As I sat waiting a tall, been leaving Antwerp, now the general 45 brisk Englishwoman, in nurse's uniform, flight began. From villages to the east came up and asked what I wanted. I told and southeast, from the city itself, people her. came pouring down. In wagons drawn by ' Oh,' she said, and in her crisp English huge Belgian draft horses, in carts pulled voice, without further ado, ' will you help by the captivating Belgian work dogs, 50 me with a leg ? ' panting mightily and digging their paws She led the way into her ward, and there into the slippery cobbles; on foot, leading we contrived between us to bandage and little children and carrying babies and slip a board and pillow under a fractured dolls and canaries and great bundles of thigh. Between whispers of ' Courage ! clothes and household things wrapped in 55 Courage ! ' to the Belgian soldier, she said sheets, they surged toward that one nar- that she was the wife of a British general row bridge and the crowded ferryboats. I and had two sons in the army, and a third saw one old woman, gray-haired and — ' Poor boy ! ' she murmured, more to him 98 WRITING OF TUUAI than to me — on one of the ships in the North Sea. I arranged to come back next THE FLYING DEATH morning to help with the lifting, and went It was almost exactly midnight that I on to another hospital in the Rue Nerviens, found myself listening, half awake, to the to find that little English lady who crossed 5 familiar sound of distant cannon. One with us in the Ostend boat in August on had come to think of it, almost, as nothing the way to her sister's hospital in Ant- but a sound ; and to listen with a detached werp. and not unpleasant interest as a man tucked comfortably in bed follows a roll cheerful losers I0 f thunder to its end or listens to the fall Here in the quiet wards she had been of rain, working while the Germans swept down It struck me suddenly that there was on Paris and were rolled back again, and something new about this sound; I sat up while the little nation which she and her in bed to listen, and at that instant a far- sister loved so well was being clubbed to 15 off, sullen ' Boom ! ' was followed by a its knees. Louvain, Liege, Malines, Na- crash as if lightning had struck a house mur — chapters in all the long, pitiless a little way down the street. As I hurried story were lying there in the narrow iron to the window there came another far-off beds. There were men with faces chewed detonation, a curious wailing whistle swept by shrapnel, men burned in the explosion 20 across the sky, and over behind the roofs of the powder magazine at Fort Waelhem, to the left there was another crash, when the attack on Antwerp began — One after another they came, at inter- dragged out from the underground passage vals of half a minute, or screaming on in which the garrison had sought mo- each other's heels as if racing to their mentary refuge and where most of them 25 goal. And then the crash or, if farther were killed, burned, and blackened. One away, muffled explosion as another roof strong, good-looking young fellow, able to toppled in, or cornice dropped off, as a eat and live apparently, was shot through house made of canvas drops to pieces in a the temples and blind in both eyes. It play. was the hour for carrying those well, 30 The effect of those unearthly wails, sud- enough to stand it out into the court and denly singing in across country in the dead giving them their afternoon's airing and of night from six — eight — ten miles smoke. One had lost an arm, another, a away — heaven knows where — was, as whimsical young Belgian, had only the the Germans intended it to be, tremendous, stump of a left leg. When we started to 35 It was not easy to describe nor to be im- lift him back into his bed, he said he had agined by those who had not lived in that a better way than that. So he put his threatened city — the last Belgian strong- arms round my neck and showed me hold — and felt that vast, unseen power how to take him by the back and the well rolling nearer and nearer. And now, all leg. 40 at once, it was here, materialized, de- ' Bon!' he said, and again 'Bon!' when moniacal, a flying death, swooping across I let him down, and then reaching out and the dark into your very room, patting me on the back, ' Bon ! ' he smiled It was like one of those dreams in which again. you cannot stir from your tracks, and That night, behind drawn curtains which 4S meanwhile 'Boom! . . . Tzee-ee-ee-ee!' admitted no light to the street, we dined — is this one meant for you ? peacefully and well, and, except for this Already there was a patter of feet in unwonted seclusion, just outside which the dark, and people with white bundles on were the black streets and still the endless their backs went stumbling by toward the procession of carts and wagons and shiver- 50 river and the bridge. Motors came honk- ing people, one might have forgotten, in ing down from the inner streets, and the that cheerfully lighted room, that we were quay, which had begun to clear by this not in times of peace. We even loitered time, was again jammed. I threw on some over a grate fire before going to bed, and clothes, hurried to the street. A rank talked in drowsy and almost indifferent 55 smell of kerosene hung in the air ; pres- fashion of whether it was absolutely sure ently a petrol shell burst to the southward,' that the Germans were trying to take the lighting up the sky for an instant like the town. flare from a blast furnace, and a few mo- B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 99 ments later there showed over the roofs an enemy miles away, who lay back at his the flames of the first fire. ease and swept them with ■ shrapnel. I Although we could hear the wail of asked them how things were going, and shells flying across their wide parabola they said not very well. They could only both into the town and out from the first 5 wait until the German aeroplanes had ring of forts, few burst in our part of the given the range and the trenches became city that night, and we walked up as far as too hot, then fall back, dig themselves in, the cathedral without seeing anything but and play the same game over again, black and silent streets. Every one in the hotel was up and dressed by this time. 10 toward the cannon Some were for leaving at once ; one f am- Following them was a hospital-service ily, piloted by the comfortable Belgian motor car, driven by a Belgian soldier and servants — far cooler than any one else — in charge of a clean-cut, soldierlike- went to the cellar, some gathered about appearing young British officer. It was the grate in the writing room to watch 15 his present duty to motor from trench to the night out; the rest of us went back to trench across the zone of fire, with the bed. London bus trailing behind, and pick up wounded. It was n't a particularly pleas- pouring out of Antwerp ant j ob> he said) j er king his head toward There was n't much sleep for any one 20 the distant firing, and frankly he was n't that night. The bombardment kept on un- keen about it. We talked for some time, til morning, lulled slightly as if the enemy every one talked to every one else in Ant- might be taking breakfast, then it con- werp that morning, and when he started tinued into the next day. And now the out again I asked him to give me a lift to city — a busy city of near 400,000 people 25 the edge of town. — emptied itself in earnest. Citizens and Quickly we raced through the Place de soldiers, field guns, motor trucks, wheel- Meir and the deserted streets of the politer barrows, dogcarts, hayricks, baby car- part of Antwerp, where, the night before, riages, droves of people on foot, all flow- most of the shells had fallen. We went ing down to the Scheldt, the ferries, and 30 crackling over broken glass, past gaping the bridge. They poured into coal barges, cornices and holes in the pavement, five filling the yawning black holes as Africans feet across and three feet deep, and once used to fill slave ships, into launches and passed a house quietly burning away with tugs, and along the roads leading down none'to so much as w?tch the fire. The the river and southwestward toward Os- 35 city wall, along which are the first line tend. of forts, drew near, then the tunnel pass- One thought with a shudder of what ing under it, and we went through without would happen if the Germans dropped a pausing and on down the road to Malines. few of their high-explosive shells into that We were beyond the town now, bowling helpless mob, and it is only fair to remem- 4° rapidly out into the flat Belgian country, ber that they did not, although retreating and clinging there to the running board Belgian soldiers were a part of it, and one with the October wind blowing quite of the German aeroplanes, a mere speck through a thin flannel suit, it suddenly against the blue, was looking calmly down came over me that things had moved very overhead. Nor did they touch the cathe- 45 fast in the last five minutes, and that all at dral, and their agreement not to shell any once, in some unexpected fashion, all that of the buildings previously pointed out on elaborate barrier of laisses-passers, sauf a map delivered to them through the conduits, and so on, had been swept aside, American Legation seemed to be observed, and, quite as if it were the most ordinary Down through that mass of fugitives 50 thing in the world, I was spinning out to pushed a London motor-bus ambulance that almost mythical ' front.' with several wounded British soldiers, one , of them sitting upright, supporting with THE gunners chorus his right hand a left arm, the biceps, bound Front, indeed ! It was two fronts, in a blood-soaked tourniquet, half torn 55 There was an explosion just behind us, a away. They had come in from the hideous noise overhead, as if the whole trenches, where their comrades were now zenith had somehow been ripped across waiting, with their helpless little rifles, for like a tightly stretched piece of silk, and ioo WRITING OF TODAY a shell from the Belgian fort under which trenches could only wait there, rifle in we had just passed went hurtling down hand, for an enemy that would not come, long aisles of air — further — further — while a captive balloon a mile or two away to end in a faint detonation miles away. to the eastward and an aeroplane sailing Out of sight in front of us, there was 5 far overhead gave the ranges, and they an answering thud, and — ' Tzee-ee-ee-er- waited for the shrapnel to burst. The r-r-BONG!' — a German shell had gone trenches were narrow and shoulder deep, over us and burst behind the Belgian fort, very like trenches for gas or water pipes, Under this gigantic antiphony the motor and reasonably safe except when a shell car raced along, curiously small and ir- 10 burst directly overhead. One had struck relevant on that empty country road. that morning just on the inner rim of the We passed great holes freshly made — trench, blown out one of those craterlike craters five or six feet across and three holes, and discharged all its shrapnel back- feet deep, neatly blown out of the mac- ward across the trench and into one of adam, then a dead horse. There, were 15 the heavy timbers supporting a bomb-proof plenty of dead horses along the roads in roof. A raincoat hanging to a nail in this France, but they had been so for days, timber was literally shot to shreds. This one's blood was not yet dry, and the ' That 's where I was standing,' said the shell that had torn the great rip in its young lieutenant in command, pointing chest must have struck here this morning. 20 with a dry smile to a spot not more than a We turned into the avenue of trees lead- yard away from where the shell had burst, ing up to an empty chateau, a field hos- Half a dozen young fellows, crouched pital until a few hours before. Mattresses there in the bombproof, looked out at us and bandages littered the deserted room, and grinned. They were brand-new sol- and an electric chandelier was still burn- 25 diers, some of them boys from the Lon- ing. The young officer pointed to some don streets who had answered the thrill- trenches in the garden. ' I had those dug ing posters and signs, ' Your King and to put the wounded in in case we had to Country Need You,' and been sent on this hold the place,' he said. ' It was getting ill-fated expedition for their first sight of pretty hot.' 30 war. The London papers are talking about it as I am writing this — how this while the shells burst handful of 9000 men, part of them recruits There was nothing here now, however, who scarcely knew one end of a rifle from and, followed by the London bus with its another, were flung across the Channel on obedient enlisted men doing duty as am- 35 Sunday night and rushed up to the front bulance orderlies, we motored a mile or so to be shot at and rushed back again. I further on to the nearest trench. It was did not know this then, but wondered if in an orchard beside a brick farmhouse this was what they had dreamed of — with a vista in front of barbed-wire en- squatting helplessly in a ditch until an- tanglement and a carefully cleaned firing 40 other order came to retire — when they field stretching out to a village and trees swung through the London streets singing about half a mile away. They had looked ' It 's a long, long way to Tipperary ' two very interesting and difficult, those barbed- months ago. wire mazes and suburbs, ruthlessly swept of trees and houses, when I had seen the 4 5 WHAT A PICNIC IT WAS Belgians preparing for the siege six weeks Yet not one of the youngest and the before, and they were to be of about as greenest showed the least nervousness as much practical use now as pictures on a they waited there in that melancholy little wall. orchard under the incessant scream of There are, it will be recalled, three lines 50 shells. That unshakable British coolness, of forts about Antwerp — the inner one, part sheer pluck, part a sort of lack of corresponding to the city's wall; a middle imagination, perhaps, or at least of one a few miles further out, where the ' nerves,' left them as calm and casual as British now were, and the outer line, if they were but drilling on the turf of which the enemy had already passed. 55 Hyde Park. And with it persisted that Their artillery was hidden far over behind almost equally unshakable sense of class, the horizon trees, and the British marines that touching confidence in one's superiors and naval reserve men who manned these — the young clerk's or mechanic's inborn B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 101 conviction that whatever that smart, clean- that the enemy were making a persistent cut, imperturbable young officer does and effort to clear them out, but they were in says must inevitably be right — at least the zone of fire, their range was known, that if he is cool and serene you must, if and there was no telling when that distant the skies fall, be. cool and serene too. 5 boom thudded across the fields whether We met one young fellow as we walked that particular shell might be intended for through an empty lateral leading to a them or for somebody's house in town, bombproof prepared for wounded, and the We could see in the distance their captive ambulance officer asked him sharply how balloon, and there were a couple of scouts, things had been going that morning. 10 the officer said, in a tower in the village, ' Oh, very well, sir,' he said with the not much more than half a mile away, most respectful good humor, though a shell He pointed to the spot across the barbed bursting just then a stone's throw beyond wire. ' We 've been trying to pick them the orchard made both of us duck our off with our rifles for the last half hour.' heads. ' A bit hot, sir, about nine o'clock, 15 but only one man hurt. They do seem to THE desire to be somewhere else know just where we are, sir ; but wait till We left them engaged in this interesting their infantry comes up — we '11 clean distraction, the little rifle snaps in all that them out right enough, sir.'' mighty thundering seeming only to accept And if he had been ordered to stay there 20 the loneliness and helplessness of their and hold the trench alone, one could im- position, and spun on down the transverse agine him saying in that same tone of road, toward another trench on the left. deference and chipper good humor : ' Yes, The progress of the motor seemed slow sir; thank you, sir,' and staying, too, till and disappointing. Not that the spot a the cows came home. 25 quarter of a mile off was at all less likely to be hit, yet one felt conscious of a grow- right at our feet j n g d es i re to be somewhere else. And We motored down the line to another though I took off my hat to keep it from trench — this one along a road with fields blowing off, I found that every time a shell in front and about a couple of hundred 30 went over I promptly put it on again, in- yards behind a clump of trees which dicating, one suspected, a decline in what masked a Belgian battery. The officer the military experts call morale. here, a tall, upstanding, gravely handsome As we bowled down the road toward a young man, with a deep, strong, slightly group of brick houses on the left, a shell humorous voice, and the air of one both 35 passed not more than fifty yards in front born to and used to command — the best of us and through the side of one of these type of navy man — came over to meet us, houses as easily as a circus rider pops rather glad, it seemed, to see some one. through a tissue-paper hoop. Almost at The ambulance officer had just started to the same instant another exploded — speak when there was a roar from the 4° where I have n't the least idea, except that clump of trees, at the same instant an the dust from it hit us in the face. The explosion directly overhead, and an ugly motor rolled smoothly along meanwhile, chunk of iron — a bit of broken casing and the Belgian soldier driving it stared as from a shrapnel shell — plunged at our imperturbably ahead of him as if he were very feet. The shell had been wrongly 45 back at Antwerp on the seat of his taxi- timed and exploded prematurely. cab. ' I say ! ' the lieutenant called out to a You get used to shells in time, it seems, Belgian officer standing not far away, and, deciding that you either are or are ' can't you telephone over to your people to not going to be hit, dismiss responsibility stop that ? That 's the third time we 've 50 'and leave it all to fate. I must admit that been nearly hit by their shrapnel this in my brief experience I was not able to morning. After all' — he turned to us arrive at this restful state. We reached with the air of apologizing somewhat for at last the city gate through which we his display of irritation — ' it 's quite an- had left Antwerp, and the motor came to a noying enough here without that, you 55 stop just at the inner edge of the passage know.' under the fort, and I said good-by to the It was, indeed, annoying — very. The young Englishman ere he started back for trenches were not under fire in the sense the trenches again. 102 WRITING OF TODAY -'Well,' he called after me as I started across the open space between the gate and work for a Samaritan the houses, a stone's throw away, ' you 've Now and then, as the shell's wail swung had an experience anyway.' over its long parabola, there came with 5 the detonation, across the roofs, the rum- discreetly zigzagging ble of f a ui ng masonry. Once I passed a I was just about to answer that un- house quietly burning, and on the pave- doubtedly I had when — ' Tzee-ee-ee-er-r ' ment were lopped-off trees. The impar- — a shell just cleared the ramparts over tiality with which those far-off gunners our heads and disappeared in the side of i° distributed their attentions was discon- a house directly in front of us with a roar certing. Peering down one of the up-and- and a geyser of dust. Neither the motor down streets before crossing it, as if a nor a guest's duty now detained me, and, shell were an automobile which you might waving him good-by, I turned at right see and dodge, you would shoot across and, angles and made with true civilian speed 15 turning into a cozy little side street, think for the shelter of a side street. to yourself that here at least they had not The shells all appeared to be coming come, and then promptly see, squarely in from a southeast direction, and in the lee front, another of those craters blown down of houses on the south side of the street through the Belgian blocks, one was reasonably protected. Keeping 20 Presently I found myself under the trees close to the house fronts and dodging — of the Boulevard Leopold, not far from rather absurdly no doubt — into doorways the British hospital, and recalled that it when that wailing whistle came up from was about time that promise was made behind, I went zigzagging through the de- good. It was time indeed, and help with serted city toward the hotel on the other 25 lifting they needed very literally. The side of town. order had just come to leave the building, It was such a progress as one might bringing the wounded and such equipment make in some fantastic nightmare — as the as they could pack into half a dozen motor hero of some eerie piece of fiction about busses and retire — just where, I did not the Last Man in the World. Street after 30 hear — in the direction of Ghent. As I street, with doors locked, shutters closed, entered the porte-cochere two poor wrecks sandbags, mattresses, or little heaps of of war were being led out by their nurses earth piled over cellar windows; streets — more men burned in the powder explo- in which the only sound was that of sion at Waelhem, their seared faces and one's own feet, where the loneliness 35 hands covered with oil and cotton just as was made more lonely by some forgotten they had been lifted from bed. dog cringing against the closed door and barking nervously as one hurried parade of the wounded past. The phrase ' whistle of shells ' had taken Here, where most of the shells had 40 on a new reality since midnight. Now one fallen the preceding night, nearly all the was to learn something of the meaning of houses were empty. Yet occasionally one those equally familiar words, ' they suc- caught sight of faces peering up from ceeded in saving their wounded, although basement windows or of some stubborn under heavy fire.' householder standing in his southern door- 45 None of the wounded could walk, none way staring into space. Once I passed dress himself; most of them in ordinary a woman bound away from, instead of to- times would have lain where they were ward, the river with her big bundle ; and for weeks. There were fractured legs not once an open carriage with a family in it yet set, men with faces half shot away, driving, with peculiarly Flemish com- somen half out of their heads, and all these posure, toward the quay, and as I hurried had to be dressed somehow, covered up, past the park, along the Avenue Van Dyck crowded into or on top of the busses and — where fresh craters made by exploding started off through a city under bombard- shells had been dug in the turf — the ment toward open country which might swans, still floating on the little lake, 55 already be occupied by the enemy, placidly dipped their white necks under Bundles of uniforms, mud-stained, water as if it were a quiet morning in blood-stained, just as they had come from May. the trenches, were dumped out of the B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 103 storeroom and distributed, hit or miss, to be carefully presented over again, but British ' Tommies ' went out as Bel- I remember calling out to her : ' Good-by, gians, Belgians in British khaki ; the man American girl ! ' as we passed in the hall whose broken leg I had lifted the day during the last minute or two, and she said before we simply bundled in his bed 5 good-by, and suddenly reached out and put blankets and set up in the corner of a her hand on my shoulder and added, ' Good bus. One healthy-looking Belgian boy, luck ! ' or ' God bless you ! ' or something on whom I was trying to pull a pair of like that. And these seemed at the mo- British trousers, seemed to have nothing ment quite the usual things to do and say. at all the matter with him, until it pres- 10 The doctor in charge and the general's ently appeared that he was speechless and wife apologized for running away, as they paralyzed in both left arm and left leg. called it, and the last I saw of the latter And while we were working, an English was as she waved back to me from the top soldier shot through the jaw and throat of a bus, with just that look of concern sat on the edge of his bed, shaking with a 15 over the desperate ride they were begin- hideous rattling cough. ning which a slightly preoccupied hostess The hospital was in a handsome stone casts over a dinner table about which are building, in ordinary times a club, per- seated a number of oddly assorted guests, haps, or a school ; a wide stone stairway The strange procession got away safely . led up the center, and above it was a 20 at last, and safely, too, so I was told glass skylight. This central well would later, across the river; but where they have been a charming place for a shell finally spent the night I never heard, to drop into, and one did drop not more than fifty feet or so away, in or close to anything but capture the rear court. A few yards down the 25 I hurried down the street and into the avenue another shell hit a cornice and sent Rue Nerviens. It must have been about a ton or so of masonry crashing down on four o'clock by that time. The bright Oc- the sidewalk. Under conditions like these tober morning had changed to a chill and the nurses kept running up and down that dismal afternoon, and up the western sky staircase during the endless hour or two 30 in the direction of the river a vast curtain in which the wounded were being dressed of greasy black smoke was rolling. The and carried on stretchers to the street, petrol tanks which stretched for half a They stood by the busses making their men mile or so along the Scheldt had been set comfortable, and when the first busses were afire. It looked at the moment as if the filled they sat in the open street on top of 35 whole city might be going, but there was them, patiently waiting, as calm and smil- no time then to think of possibilities, and ing as circus queens on their gilt chariots. I slipped down the lee side of the street The behavior of the men in the trenches to the door with the Red Cross flag. The was cool enough, but they at least were front of the hospital ' was shut tight. It fighting men and but taking the chance 40 took several pulls at the bell to bring any of war. These were civilian volunteers, one, and inside I found a Belgian family they had not even trenches to shelter them, who had left their own house for the and it took a rather unforeseen and dim- thicker ceilings of the hospital, and the cult sort of courage to leave that fairly nuns back in the wards with their nervous safe masonry building and sit smiling and 45 men. helpful on top of a motor bus during a Their servants had left that morning, wait of half an hour or so, any second of the three or four sisters in charge had which might be one's last. had to do all the cooking and housework as well as look after their patients, and no tears 5o now they were keeping calm and smiling There was an American nurse there, a to subdue as best they could the fears of tall, radiant girl, whom they called, and the Belgian wounded, who were ready to rightly, ' Morning Glory,' who had been jump out of bed, whatever their condi- introduced to me the day before because tion, rather than fall into the hands of we both belonged to that curious foreign 55 the enemy. Each one had no doubt that race of Americans. What her name was if he were not murdered outright he I have n't the least idea, and if we were to would be taken to Germany and forced meet to-morrow, doubtless we should have to fight in the east against the Russians. 104 WRITING OF TODAY Several, who knew very well what was damage was comparatively slight. Sol- going on outside, had been found by the diers were clearing the quay and setting nurses that morning out of bed and all a guard directly in front of our hotel — ready to take to the street. one of the few places in Antwerp that 5 night where one could get so much as a yet they remain crust of bread — and behind drawn cur- Lest they should hear that their com- tains as usual we made what cheer we rades in the Boulevard Leopold had been could. There were two American photog- moved, the lay sister — the English lady raphers and a correspondent who had — and I withdrew to the operating room, 10 spent the night before in the cellar of a closed the door, and in that curious retreat house, the upper story of which had been talked over the situation. No orders had wrecked by a shell; a British intelligence come to leave; in fact, they had been told officer, with the most bewildering way of to stay: They did have a man now in the hopping back and forth between a brown shape of the Belgian gentleman, and from 15 civilian suit and a spick-and-span new uni- the same source an able-bodied servant, but form, and several Belgian families hoping how long these would stay, where food to get a boat downstream in the morning. was to be found in that desolate city, when We sat round the great fire in the hall, the bombardment would cease, and what above which the architect, building for the Germans would do with them — well, 20 happier times, had had the bad grace to it was not a pleasant situation for a hand- place a skylight, and discussed the time and ful of women. But it was not of them- means of getting away. The intelligence selves she was thinking, but of their officer, not wishing to be made a prisoner, wounded and of Belgium, and of what was for getting a boat of some sort at the bo£h had suffered already and of what 25 first crack of dawn, and the photographers, might yet be in store. It was of that this who had had the roof blown off over their frail little sister talked that hopeless after- heads, heartily agreed with him. I did not noon, while the smoke in the west spread like to leave without at least a glimpse of farther up the sky, and she would now and those spiked helmets nor to desert my then pause in the middle of a syllable 30 friends in the Rue Nerviens, and yet there while a shell sang overhead, then take it was the likelihood, if one remained, of up again. being marooned indefinitely in the midst of Meanwhile the light was going, and be- the conquering army, fore it became quite dark and my hotel deserted, perhaps, as the rest of Antwerp, 35 EVEN THE British it seemed best to be getting across town. Meanwhile the flight of shells continued, I could not believe that the Germans could a dozen or more fires could be seen from treat such a place and people with any- the upper windows of the hotel, and bil- thing but consideration and told the little lows of red flame from the burning petrol nurse so. She came to the edge of the 4° tanks rolled up the southern sky. It had glass-covered court, laughingly saying I been what might be called a rather full had best run across it, and wondering day, and the wail of approaching projec- where we, who had met twice now under tiles began io get a bit on one's nerves, such curious circumstances, would meet One started at the slamming of a door, again. Then she turned back to the ward 45 took every dull thump for a distant explo- — to wait with that roomful of more or sion, and when we finally turned in, I car- less panicky men for the tramp of German ried the mattress from my room, which soldiers and the knock on the door which faced the south, over to the other side of meant that they were prisoners. the building and laid it on the floor beside , 50 another man's bed. Before a shell could FLIGHT OR THE GERMANS? reach me j t wouM haye tQ traverse at least Hurrying across town, I passed, not far three partitions and possibly him as well, from the Hotel St. Antoine, a blazing After midnight the bombardment four-story building, nearly burned out now, quieted, but shells continued to visit us and, like the other Antwerp fires, not 55 from time to time all night. All night the spreading beyond its four walls. The Belgians were retreating across the pon- cathedral was not touched, and indeed, in toon bridge, and once — it must have been spite of the noise and terror, the material about two or three o'clock — I heard a 1NAK.JR./\11 V H, /\JS. HL/l^IiO 105 sound which meant that all was over. It — to be sunk there, apparently, in mid- was the crisp tramp — different from the Stream. From the pontoon bridge, which Belgian shuffle — of British soldiers, and stubbornly refused to yield, came explosion up from the street came an English voice : after explosion, and up and down the river 'Best foot forward, boys!' and a little 5 fires sprang up, and there were other ex- farther on: 'Look alive, men; they've plosions, as the crushed Belgians, in a sort just picked up our range ! ' of rage of devastation, became their own I went to the window and watched them destroyers, tramp by — the same men we had seen that morning. The petrol fire was still '« what to think of flaming across the south, a steamer of By following the adventures of one in- some sort was burning at her wharf beside dividual I have endeavored to suggest the bridge — Napoleon's veterans retreat- what the bombardment of a modern city ing from Moscow could scarcely have left was like — what you might expect if an in- behind a more complete picture of war »5 vading army came to-morrow to New York than did those young recruits. or Chicago or San Francisco. I have only coasted along the edges of Belgium's the frenzy of retreat tragedy, and the rest of the story, of which Morning came dragging up out of that we were a part for the next two days — the dreadful night, smoky, damp, and chill. It 2 ° flight of those hundreds of thousands of was almost a London fog that lay over the homeless people — is something that can abandoned town. I had just packed up scarcely be told — you must follow it out and was walking through one of the upper in imagination into its countless uprooted, halls when there was a crash that shook disorganized lives. You must imagine old the whole building, the sound of falling 25 people struggling along over miles and glass, and out in the river a geyser of miles of country roads ; young girls, under water shot up, timbers and boards flew burdens a man might not care to bear, from the bridge, and there were dozens of tramping until they had to carry their smaller splashes as if from a shower of shoes in their hands and go barefoot to shot. I thought that the hotel was hit at 30 rest their unaccustomed feet. You must last and that the Germans, having let imagine the pathetic efforts of hundreds civilians escape over the bridge, were turn- of people to keep clean by washing in ing everything loose, determined to make wayside streams or ditches ; imagine babies an end of the business. It was, as a mat- going without milk because there was no ter of fact, the Belgians blowing up the 35 milk to be had; families shivering in damp bridge to cover their retreat. In any case hedgerows or against haystacks where it seemed useless to stay longer, and within darkness overtook them ; and you must an hour, on a tug jammed with the last imagine this not on one road, but on every refugees, we were starting downstream. road, for mile after mile over a whole Behind us, up the river, a vast curtain 4° countryside. What was to become of of lead-colored smoke from the petrol these people when their little supply of tanks had climbed up the sky and spread food was exhausted? Where could they out mushroom- wise, as smoke and ashes go? Even if back to their homes, it would sometimes spread out from a volcano, be but to lift their hats to their conquerors, This smoke, merging with the fog and 45 never to know but that the next week or the smoke from the Antwerp fires, seemed month would sweep the tide of war back to cover the whole sky. And under that over them again. sullen mantle the dark flames of the petrol Never in modern times, not in our gen- still glowed; to the left was the blazing eration at least, has the world seen any- skeleton of the ship, and on the right Ant- 50 thing like that flight — nothing so strange, werp itself, the rich, old, beautiful, com- so overwhelming, so pitiful. Arid when fortable city, all but hidden, and now and I say pitiful, you must not think of hys- then sending forth the boom of an ex- terical women, desperate, trampling men, ploding shell like a groan. tears and screams. In all those miles one A large empty German steamer, the 55 saw neither complaining nor protestation Gneisenau, marooned here since the war, — at times one might almost have thought came swinging slowly out into the river, it was some vast eccentric picnic. No, it pushed by two or three nervous little tugs was their orderliness, their thrift and kind- io6 WRITING OF TODAY ness, their unmistakable usefulness, which three organizers of an ambulance unit, made the waste and irony of it all so colos 1 In these rooms are two offices — a kitchen sal and hideous. Each family had its big and a store of provisions — and here is round loaves of bread and its pile of hay carried on the business interwoven with for the horses, the bags of pears and po- 5 the life of every day. tatoes ; the children had their little dolls, Towards the evening it becomes hot and and you would see some tired mother with stuffy in the hut from the number of per- her big bundle under one arm and some sons gathered in it, the tobacco smoke, fluffy little puppy in the other. You could and the stove on which the evening meal not associate them with forty-centimeter 10 is being cooked. So every one goes out shells or burned churches and libraries or for a walk in the road by the woods, anything but quiet homes and peaceable, There is a moon, and the evening is helpful lives. You could not be swept bright and quiet. From here can be seen along by that endless stream of ex- troops advancing, orderlies galloping to iles and retain at the end of the day 15 and fro, and a long line of field-kitchens any particular enthusiasm for the red on its way to the front stretched over the glory of war. And when we crossed the surface of the sparkling snow. Dutch border that afternoon and came on Now is a strange time, when everything a village street full of Belgian soldiers, cut along the front is quiet and the war ceases off and forced to cross the line, to be in- 20 for an hour or two ; for the men must terned here, presumably until the war was rest and eat to be able afterwards to carry over, one could not mourn very deeply on as before. their lost chances of martial glory as they At nine o'clock everything is as it was ; unslung their rifles and turned them over shrapnel bursts close by, and the heavy to the good-natured Dutch guard. They 25 boom of artillery can once more be heard, had held back that avalanche long enough, Sometimes rifle-firing will start, to con- these Belgians, and one felt as one would tinue intermittently throughout the night, to see lost children get home again or Having returned to the farm, where a some one dragged from under the wheels, lamp is burning and newly arrived papers 30 are lying on the table, we drink tea with lemon juice. A young Caucasian doctor X smokes now and then to deaden the numer- ous smells. Then we all begin to get A NIGHT IN A RUSSIAN ready to go to sleep. Some lie on their OUTPOST 35 narrow folding camp beds, some on crates which once held provisions, and the rest [Evening Po**, New York, April 14 I9I5 ._c py- simply on the beaten earth floor. The con- nght. By permission.] r <_. . - , , . . . versation is of the war, of our birthplaces, The following vivid sketch of war scenes and of the possibility of a night attack by appeared in the Russkoye Slovo : 4° the enemy. Soon all are asleep. In the The master — a small, shriveled old little hut it is warm, quiet, and snug, and man — can hardly get up from his filthy only occasionally it shakes from the force bed ; and the mistress — a wrinkled, ill old of the exploding shells. It seems that woman — weeps unceasingly. Somewhere here there is and can be no danger, far away are her children — for she does 45 Close on three o'clock we are awakened not know where they are. There is noth- by a series of shocks which by the rattling ing to eat, and she is ashamed to have to of the furniture seem to be so great that beg from the soldiers, who are so willing the flimsy hut is having great difficulty in to share with her. Besides this, there is keeping to one spot. Some one speaks ex- the ever-present terror that from the 50 citedly : ' Do you hear it ? It must be trenches, which are so very, very close, a night attack.' there may appear a German to fire the last An incessant artillery battle now begins, remainders of her once-prosperous farm. The bursts of shells come one on top of And with these two in their half of the another, they are quite close, next to us, hut, there are billeted eight orderlies ; in 55 almost upon us, right under the walls of the other half, in which there are two the hut, surely it must fall. And now we low, minute bunks like those in a ship's can hear a sound as of a person tapping cabin, there are living five doctors and persistently, untiringly, irritably at the B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 107 wall with an enormous dry hard fist. This the north, there is complete silence all is the rifle firing beginning. along our front. We hurriedly dress and go out. The day in the trenches begins. Bag- It is terrible, but wonderfully beauti- gage carts make their way along the road, ful. 5 orderlies hurry hither and thither. On Short red flames burst out one after the plain and in the woods the artillery fire another; the searchlight throws its at intervals. Some wounded are being strange, long pale beams as far as the brought in to the bandaging point, and horizon, and the screaming shrapnel falls some one says that last night there was a on the ground in bright, meteor-like 10 night attack on our trenches, but by the sparks, and in the air there is the cease- strong, well-aimed thrusts of our brave less crack of rifle fire, bursting of shells, men's bayonets it was repulsed, and clatter of shrapnel, the constant, un- tiring business of a battle. Then everything begins to quiet down, 15 XI like a storm that has exhausted its fury. But hardly have we started towards the SAVING 27,000 LIVES IN ONE hut when again ... it starts slowly, STATE quietly, far away. Then nearer, clearer, more persistently, shriller. Rifles, quick- 20 CHARLES FREDERICK CARTER firers, howitzers, all once more enter the „. , , _ , „ . . , lists. The farther away the fiercer it V« h ™°> w ° rli - Februa ^ ^. By pension.] seems. Now it becomes hard to distin- Nobody can be expected to believe that guish one sound from the other, for the a state health department worthy of the rifles and the big guns seem to make the 25 second decade of the twentieth century same amount of noise. exists in America. We have been turn- I have an unconquerable craving to go ing our streams into sewers and our lakes and see what is happening a verst or two into cesspools, scattering pollution every- away, where the battle is being fought, where, treating contagious diseases as But from the peat bog on which the hut 3° jokes, violating every law of hygiene, out- stands a fog has risen, and, in spite of raging every dictate of common sense, and the bright moon, it is impossible to see blaming Providence instead of our own anything in the damp mist. criminal incompetence for the resultant And then suddenly a drawling, low, dis- untimely deaths, with all their mournful tant roar arises, grows, approaches. I can 35 train of sorrow and suffering, for so many clearly hear amid this tornado of sounds years that the country seemed beyond the tones of many men's voices. Afar hope. away, ' A ! — a ! — a ! ' getting louder To say, therefore, that a legislature has every moment, ' Again, again ! ' Here it had the wisdom to provide a state health is quite close to me, then farther off again, 40 department with ample funds and author- from this side, then from the other. ity is to make the improbable seem pre- My heart beats with excitement and posterous. To add that the operations of agitation. I imagine — as I cannot see this properly organized and equipped anything in the cold, dank mist — that health department have reduced the an- something is approaching, that in a min- 45 nual death rate of the State enough to ute out of that darkness there may ap- save twenty-seven thousand lives in the pear foreign soldiers. And again, al- last four years is to put the finishing touch though I am encircled by a blanket of fog, to a story that only sounds fit to tell the I imagine I can see something. But that marines. Having now strained credulity is impossible. 50 to the uttermost we may as well go the Then again the long-drawn-out ' A ! — limit by naming the State that enjoys the a ! — a ! ' Now somewhat louder, more beneficent activities of an enlightened and convincing, more triumphant. But sud- efficient health department, denly everything almost at the same mo- It 's Pennsylvania ! ment grows calm. One or two more shots 55 Yes, there are some things that seem are fired by rifles and guns. . . . And by too good to be true. This is one of them, seven o'clock in the morning, ..when a Pennsylvania, the favorite hunting ground slow, dull, drowsy dawn comes up from of the muckraker and the surveyor, ac- io8 WRITING OF TODAY tually has a health department with 4000 supposed to have some political influence employees, every one of whom is holding in Pennsylvania, in them. At all events his job, not by order of the ' organization,' the bills were enacted into laws in the but solely by the saving grace of fitness form that Dr. Penrose drew them. The and industry, which is disbursing millions 5 next step was to find the right man for of dollars and receiving full value for commissioner of health, or rather to per- every nickel. And the results that the suade him to accept the position; for no four thousand have accomplished and are one had any doubt about who the right still achieving are impressive and inspir- man was. ing. 10 Unfortunately, the salary of $10,000 a Pennsylvania was no worse than its year was no inducement whatever to Dr. neighbors, but natural conditions were Samuel G. Dixon, for he is wealthy. A such that the punishment for its sanitary public office was still less to his taste, sins fell a little more harshly upon the He had taken up the practice of law in Keystone State than upon some others. 15 his younger days just for the sake of hav- The death rate from typhoid fever grew ing something to do, until he had too much to the proportions of a national scandal, to do and thus caused his health to break To be sure there was a so-called health down. Upon recovering he studied medi- department, just as there are to-day in so cine, graduated with honors from the Uni- many other States ; but it had no author- 20 versity of Pennsylvania, pursued post ity, no funds, no staff, no power to do any- graduate studies in London and Munich, thing but to issue an annual report. It then returned to practise his profession was a grim joke at the taxpayers' expense, in Philadelphia. To kill time he accepted There were also health boards in the the chair of hygiene in medicine at the cities and some of the towns ; but they 25 University of Pennsylvania, made a hobby were little, if any, better off than the state of bacteriology, became professor of bac- health department, while even the feeble teriology and microscopic technology at power they may have had did not extend the University and discovered tuberculin, beyond the boundaries of their respective a culture made from the bacilli of tubercu- municipalities. To try to safeguard the 30 losis, a year before the great Koch an- lives and health of people on one side of nounced it as a cure for consumption, an imaginary line while the people on the That it is not a cure, but is now used other side were free to lead the lives of chiefly in discovering tuberculosis in cat- hygienic anarchists or cavemen — in other tie does not reflect upon the scientific words, the lives of free-born American 35 skill or work of these men. There can be citizens, was worse than futile. no doubt about Dr. Dixon's priority of When manufacturing establishments be- discovery, for the announcement of it was gan to move out of the State because so published in a medical journal a year be- many of their employees were sick all the fore Koch made his announcement Dr. time that the plants could not be operated 4° Dixon also became president of the Acad- profitably, it was realized that something emy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, had to be done. To clean up an entire the oldest scientific body in America, a State that had been accumulating filth and member of the Philadelphia Board of foulness for generations was an under- Education, a trustee of the Wistar Insti- taking that made the fabled job of Hercu- 45 tute of Anatomy, a councilor of the Amer- les in the Augean stables seem petty; but ican Philosophical Society, a director of when there is a big task to be done a big the Zoological Society of Philadelphia, and man is always at hand to do it. an active member of a dozen other scien- Dr. Charles B. Penrose, a retired phy- tific societies at home and abroad. He sician of Philadelphia, a member of one 50 published a work on physiology and was a of Pennsylvania's prominent families, em- frequent contributor to medical and scien- bodied his ideas of what a health depart- tific journals. ment's powers should be in three bills. With such an insatiable appetite for He appeared before various legislative work, backed by so notable a career, Dr. committees to advocate his ideas, and it is 55 Dixon was obviously' the man for the just possible that he may have interested place. Being finally persuaded that he his brother, Boies Penrose, member of the need never suffer from ennui if he ac- United States Senate, who is popularly cepted the appointment, Dr. Dixon became B. 'NARRATIVE ARTICLES 109 commissioner of health of Pennsylvania of measles put out a health officer's eye in 1905. He took so much time in organ- by way of expressing their disapproval of izing his department and in preparatory his attempt to disinfect the premises, work that he was unable to spend all of While some folk thought a health de- the first appropriation of $400,000 within 5 partment was a good thing to make other the time limit, which unheard-of conduct people behave themselves, they resented caused his political friends no little any attempt to interfere with their own anxiety. Their worry proved to be super- liberty to do as they pleased. Thus, when erogatory, for when the legislature met twenty hogs died of cholera their owner in 1907 it appropriated $1,059,312 to fight 10 refused to bury them. When the depart- tuberculosis and $441,288 for the general ment of health notified him to abate the work of the department without a mur- nuisance he allowed that he would do as mur just because Dr. Dixon said he he darn pleased on his own land. It re- needed that much. quired a fine of $25 to induce him to revise After an outbreak of smallpox at 15 his opinion. Waynesboro was taken in hand by the new This was bad enough for an uneducated department, there was no lack of the pic- farmer ; but what is to be said of a manu- turesque in its activities. Some outraged facturing town which, upon being ordered citizens who found for the first time that to make certain changes in its water sup- they were no longer free to spread disease 20 ply, engaged a lawyer to fight the depart- and death at their own sweet will hanged ment's order, then sent a deputation ac- Dr. Dixon in effigy, while others de- companied by the lawyer to protest to the nounced him as a ' czar/ and a ' dictator,' commissioner. Dr. Dixon waited until and worried greatly over the peril of plac- the deputation was out of breath, then ing so much power in the hands of one 25 produced data from his own engineers, man. The commissioner's mail began to who had measured the flow of the stream be burdened with threatening letters, that supplied the town with water. The One man in the smallpox belt, whose fears intake of the water works was just above were wrought upon by the anti-vaccina- a little dam on one side of the stream while tionists until he became convinced that 30 a sewer discharged on the opposite bank, the health department was seeking to kill The engineers' measurements proved that his seven children by vaccinating them, the stream did not furnish water enough lay in wait one night to shoot Dr. Dixon, to supply the town if it had not been rein- The commissioner, by the merest chance, forced by the sewage poured into the took an unusual route home that night and 35 pond. The deputation turned pale and so escaped. The would-be assassin upon wobbled at the knees upon receiving this being discovered acknowledged that he had disquieting information. They had not intended to kill Dr. Dixon and explained another word to say. Dr. Dixon there- why. Thereupon the doctor wrote him a upon dismissed his callers with a funny kindly letter which so filled his whilom 40 story; but somehow, though the laugh enemy with remorse that he went into hys- came at the proper place, it seemed to terics in the prosecuting attorney's office, lack spontaneity and sprightliness. The Then he went home a -convert to vaccina- changes ordered were made with alacrity, tion and a faithful admirer of Dr. Dixon. These are but samples of the opposition Employees of the health department, 45 which the department encountered in al- too, found no lack of excitement. A most everything it undertook at first, stream inspector, for example, upon going However, that is only the dark side of the to examine some premises suspected of pol- story. While bills were repeatedly invo- luting a brook which emptied into a stream duced in the legislature to abolish the from which the city of Reading drew 5° department of health or to restrict its its water supply, was ordered off by the powers they all died a sudden death, irate owner, who did not propose to have Then some foolish candidates in the cam- his right to' empty his sewage where he paign of 1910 thought to make political pleased abridged. The inspector tried to capital out of the supposed opposition to pacify the farmer, but was answered with 55 the department. With fine sarcasm they a blow from a club which fractured his alleged that the next move of the health skull. On another occasion the occupants department would be to compel farmers of a house in which there had been a case to filter water for their ducks to swim in, no WRITING OF TODAY and to Pasteurize the swill for the hogs, enriching itself by a net profit of 50 per The sarcastic ones suffered the usual fate cent, per year on every $200 invested in of those who interfere in family quarrels ; saving life through its department of which is to say, both parties turned on health. The actual profit is much greater, them and rended them limb from limb, 5 for part of the appropriations have been politically speaking. In other words, the invested in permanent improvements ; and, voters did n't do a thing to them. The besides, the effect of all sanitary work is next legislature appropriated $3,657,248 cumulative. The longer the work is con- for the use of the department of health tinued the greater the benefits and the less in 191 1 and 1912, as its way of saying that 10 the average cost per life saved. Pennsylvania had entire confidence in Dr. These figures are fascinating so long as Dixon and that he might go as far as he they apply to others. But what man is liked. All this seems to bear out Dr. willing to consider his own life from the Dixon's theory that sanitary sins are com- standpoint of his economic value to so- mitted through ignorance ; and that most 15 ciety ? He wants to live, and he expects people are willing to do right when shown the State to protect his inalienable right how. . to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- Since the department of health was ness, regardless of any question of cost or created in 1905 a grand total of $8,558,048 economic value. And how is the human has been appropriated for its use up to 20 suffering and sorrow averted by the pre- the end of 1912. Never before has money vention of sickness and death to be com- been so freely spent for the conservation puted? The better way is to leave ques- of human life. The results have more tions of economic value out of consider- than justified the expenditure, for the ation and to judge the department of work of the department has been a spec- 25 health by the reductions in the sick rate tacular success. and death rate it has brought about. The decrease in the annual death rate In 1906, 56.5 persons out of every 100,- brought about by the measures initiated 000 in Pennsylvania died of typhoid fever ; by the department of health means that in 1907, 50.3; in 1908, 34.4; in 1910, 24.5. in round numbers 27,000 persons who un- 30 This means that there are now living more der former conditions would have died than 2400 persons who, had the death rate within the State within the four years of 1906 prevailed in 1910, would have died ending with 191 1 are alive today. Prof, of typhoid. In the same time the death Irving Fisher, of Yale University, one rate from pulmonary tuberculosis fell from of the foremost of American economists, 35 129.6 per 100,000 to 117.4. This means has estimated the worth to society of the the saving of about 1000 lives annually, average life lost by preventable diseases From October, 1905, when the health de- at $1700. Taking this as a basis, the eco- partment began the free distribution of nomic value of the lives saved by the diphtheria antitoxin among the poor, down Pennsylvania department of health so far 40 to December, 1910, 27,318 cases of this reaches the impressive total of $45,900,- dread disease, mostly little children, were 000. Deducting the total expenditures of treated with the life-saving serum. Sta- the department, $6,719,424 (one-half the tistics show that without antitoxin 42 out current appropriation being for the year of every 100 of these children, would prob- 1912) gives a net profit of $39,180,576,45 ably have died; but with the aid of the which is 583 per cent, on the investment. State's antitoxin the deaths were reduced Or, to figure it another way, the average to 2324, and the death rate was reduced cost of saving one life has been $199.19. to 8.50. Free antitoxin was also given Frederick Hoffman, statistician of the for immunization purposes in 20,294 cases Prudential Insurance Company, estimates 50 that had been exposed to the disease. All the average net economic value of a man, but 335 of these were absolutely protected that is, the selling value of his product against diphtheria. The actual saving of less the cost of materials, the wear of child life resulting from the State's free machinery, and the cost of living for the distribution of diphtheria antitoxin to the man and his family, at $300 a year for the 55 end of 1910 was 9152 lives. The death normal period of industrial activity, which rate from measles has been reduced from is from the fifteenth to the sixty-fifth year. 21 per 100,000 in 1906, to 11 in 1910; the On this basis the State of Pennsylvania is death rate from whooping cough has been B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES III reduced from 22 to 16, and so on through reached Pennsylvania mortuary statistics the whole long list of contagious diseases, have so improved that the United States In 1906 the Pennsylvania death rate per census bureau has found them within 1 1000 was 16.5 ; in 1908 it had dropped to per cent, of absolute accuracy. 15-7- At first glance this does not seem 5 One of the nine bureaus into which the a remarkable reduction ; but it means that department of health is divided is called had the death rate of 1906 prevailed in the division of medical inspection. It con- 1908, 5914 more persons would have died sists of a chief medical inspector with an than actually succumbed. In 1910 the office staff and a field staff made up of a death rate was 15.6. Had the 1906 rate 10 medical inspector in each county and as prevailed in that year 6898 more men, many health officers and visiting nurses as women, and children now living and pre- may be required. The county medical in- sumably in good health and spirits, would spector directs all quarantine measures, is have died. frequently called to see those sick with These splendid results have been made 15 communicable diseases, enforces the de- possible in the first place by laws which partment's regulations for the sale of milk give the commissioner of health the neces- in premises infected with diphtheria, scar- sary authority to do things, and that means let fever, typhoid and other diseases and practically unlimited power. It is made supervises the sanitary conditions of his ' The duty of the commissioner of health 20 county in general. The division of med- to protect the health of the people of the ical inspection conducts a campaign of State and to determine and to employ the sanitary education reaching dairy farms most efficient and practical means for the and public schools. Twice a year health prevention^ and suppression of disease.' officers visit all. premises which market The commissioner is given power, without 25 milk, and there are some seventy-five thou- any qualifications or restrictions, to abate sand of them. Twice a year the health nuisances. His agents are empowered to officers visit all the thirteen thousand pub- enter and examine any premises in the lie schools in the State and make full re- State. He may issue warrants for the ports on the sanitary condition of school arrest of those who disobey his rules and 30 room, grounds, outbuildings and water regulations and he can subpeena witnesses supply. and ' compel ' them to testify in any matter One of the newest tasks of the division relating to the work of his department, of medical inspection is the examination To disobey any order or regulation of the of pupils in public schools, an undertaking department of health is a misdemeanor 35 which will keep a thousand inspectors busy, punishable by fine' or imprisonment or A trial test in three counties to ascertain both. whether such an inspection was needed or The organization under which the au- not revealed the astonishing fact that more tocratic powers of the commissioner are than half the pupils were abnormal in exercised is an intricate network, the 40 some way. Numerous incipient cases of wires of which designedly cross each other contagious disease were discovered by this at so many points that there are ample means in time to prevent epidemics, checks on everything done by employees Whenever a case of contagious disease of the department and upon everything is reported the house is immediately placed that in any way may affect the public 45 under quarantine by a health officer who health. The department takes no chances, explains the necessity therefor, gives in- and nothing has been overlooked. structions for caring for the patient and For instance, many physicians thought preventing the spread of the disease and the law requiring them to report births leaves a circular of printed directions and deaths did n't mean them. After 50 couched in simple language. Librarians sixty doctors had been arrested and fined of public' libraries, school teachers and in one day in Philadelphia for neglecting Sunday school teachers are at once noti- their duty in this regard, a batch of six- fied of the quarantine that they may be teen in Scranton on another day, and large on their guard against any possible viola- batches in other cities, the doctors reached 55 tion. If the patient is too poor to pay for the unanimous conclusion that at least medical treatment the medical inspector some laws in Pennsylvania mean exactly attends the case and if necessary a visiting what they say. Since this conclusion was nurse also calls. In certain cases the wage H2 WRITING OF TODAY earner of the family is given a permit to Nanticoke, a mining town of fourteen work provided he agrees not to come in thousand inhabitants, for example, the contact with the patient or any one at- health department took charge. The tending him. If the family sells milk the source of infection was traced to a single health officer sees that an outsider attends 5 case two months earlier which had con- to the milking or that the cows are sent taminated the creek that furnished the away to be cared for. Great pains are water supply. An emergency hospital was taken to safeguard the public health with- organized, visiting nurses were sent from out interrupting the family income when- house to house to instruct in exact meth- ever that is possible and never to try to 1° ods of disinfection, the water supply was enforce a rule without first explaining the disinfected with sulphate of copper, every necessity for it. By this policy the de- premise in the entire community was vis- partment secures the cooperation that ited and revisited until it was certain that makes for effectiveness. every menace to health had been abolished When the patient recovers or dies the 15 and sewage disposal on individual estates house is thoroughly disinfected by a health was supervised. Warning placards were officer. Great stress is laid on disinfec- posted everywhere urging the boiling of tion. A horrible example discovered by water and the Pasteurizing of milk. The the department is a house that was oc- most rigid sanitary measures were en- cupied by three different families in ten 20 forced from the source of the water sup- years in which twenty cases of tubercu- ply to the ultimate disposal of sewage, losis developed. Nine died in the house, When the disease was under control the while several others have died since leav- reservoir which supplied Nanticoke and ing. All this might have been prevented other towns was emptied, cleaned and dis- by disinfecting the house after the first 25 infected. case. So strongly has the public been im- Every watershed in the State is being pressed with the importance of disinfec- gone over by employees of the division tion by the educational campaign of the of sanitary engineering. Every house is health department that they tell of one visited. Up to August I, 191 1, 34,481 farmer who walked twenty miles to get a 30 private sources of stream pollution have health officer to disinfect his house after been abated, while thousands more have a death from tuberculosis. been stopped through the moral influence Even yet, though, there are some who of this work. Eighty-nine modern sew- do not appreciate the importance of dis- age disposal plants have been built or are infection. A member of the legislature 35 under construction under plans approved made a special trip to Harrisburg to have by the department. Two hundred and the regulations regarding disinfection sus- eighty-four municipalities and private sew- pended or modified for a constituent whose erage corporations are building compre- family included an aged grandmother, hensive sewerage systems in accordance The chief medical inspector refused to re- 4° with plans approved by the department, lax the rules but he did instruct the health No town can extend its sewerage system officer to consult the convenience of the without the approval of the department householder in disinfecting and to make of health. Already eighty-six modern as many trips as might be necessary to water filtration plants have been approved do the work without causing the grand- 45 by the department, mother any discomfort. Pennsylvania has some forty thousand In the frequent typhoid epidemics the cases of tuberculosis within its borders, department either assumes control of the To stamp out this plague the department situation, drawing upon an ample emer- of health uses two and a half times as gency fund for whatever sums may be 5° much money as is spent on its other work, needed, or it cooperates with the local A tuberculosis sanitarium with a thou- health board if that body gives sufficient sand patients is maintained at Mont Alto evidences of its ability, as circumstances in the southern part of the State while two may seem to require. Some twenty-three others with a capacity of 350 each have such epidemics, some of which were of 55 just been completed. To supplement large proportions, have been handled in these sanitariums there are 115 free dis- whole or in part by the department of pensaries scattered throughout the State, health. When an epidemic broke out in where 222 medical men and no nurses a. IN t\ JVivrv j. j. v 11. rviv ± h_-.i_i.co 113 look after those who are too poor to care The commissioner sets the pace by work- for themselves. Up tp June 30, 191 1, 41,- ing an average of fourteen hours a day. 792 poor patients have received attention That means fourteen hours' work, and not at the free dispensaries. Milk and oil, four hours' work and ten hours 'out to paper handkerchiefs and sputum boxes 5 lunch,' for Dr. Dixon usually eats his which can be burned after use are pro- luncheon and his dinner at his desk. His vided by the State for tubercular patients example seems to be contagious. They who are unable to provide such things for tell a story of a health officer who worked themselves. until midnight during a smallpox epi- Free diphtheria antitoxin can be ob- ro demic, then arose at three o'clock in the tained at 656 stations throughout the State, morning to run down a ' contact ' away out tetanus antitoxin from 67 stations. The in the mountains, thus checking the fur- diphtheria remedy can be obtained in a ther spread of the epidemic, few hours at most in any part of the State, It is such a spirit as this everywhere while the tetanus antitoxin is accessible 15 in the department which is spreading the from any locality within twenty-four .gospel of health into the remotest corners hours. of darkest Pennsylvania. Perhaps in time For efficiency and enthusiasm the Penn- some of that gospel may be carried be- sylvania department of health is a wonder, ydnd the boundaries of the State. C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AND INTERVIEWS Description may be said to deal with persons or things at rest ; narration recounts events as they happen, usually in order of succession. The personal sketch may employ either or both of these methods, according as one's object is to enable the reader to realize an individual from what he has done or from what he is. The first article on our list in this section employs the former method, for we understand best what Bismarck was from what he accomplished — the achievement of the German Empire, doubtless the most significant fact of his time. Signor Cortesi's account of the Pope uses both expedients, and so does the admirably balanced esti- mate of Taft and Roosevelt by Mr. Leupp, written, it will be remembered, in 1910, before the time when both became candidates for 'the Presidency. The interview generally deals with a particular moment rather than with a succession of events — a personality rather than a life history. For the particular individuality concerned, it aims at showing ' the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.' The two inter- views from the New York Times, that with Mr. Henry James and that with Sir J. M. Barrie, are both masterpieces of craftsmanship in their presentation of those subtle and delicate differences which distinguish the speech and gesture of the exceptional man from the hosts of his fellows ; Mr. James's intellectual finesse is caught and rendered as skilfully as Sir J. M. Barrie's elusive whimsicality. Indeed it has been suggested of the latter interview that none but Barrie himself could have written it. Mr. Alleyne Ireland relies chiefly on narrative, but he is no less successful in the presenta- tion ■ of the extraordinarily vigorous and striking personality of Joseph Pulitzer. The sub- jects in the other cases hardly afford equal opportunity, but the articles are all excellent after their own manner, and afford the young student many salutary hints of what he should strive for in this kind of work — the complete effacement of himself, and the clear and vivid realiza- tion of the person whom the readers must see for themselves ' in his habit, as he lived ' so that they are endowed for the moment, all unconsciously, with the cunningly, concealed insight and sympathy of the biographer or interviewer. I tendencies, held together practically by the one mutual bond of race, based upon in- BISMARCK dustrialism .and inviting by free trade the commerce of the world. When he had {.Evening Post (New^Yorio,^ April i, 1915. By 5 fi n i s hed his work, Germany was a com- 1 pact empire, dominated by Prussian au- One hundred years ago to-day was born tocracy, single in aim, protectionist, in the man to whose influence, more than to concentrating and developing its own com- that of any other, historians trace the merce, and based upon militarism, causes of the war which is now torturing 10 What would Bismarck have done, had Europe and testing the relations of all the he been alive in the present crisis ? That great nations of the world — Bismarck, he foresaw it, and that he tried to plan the first German Imperial Chancellor, who against it, the record of his own acts and as a statesman found his nation an out- statements leaves no question. If he had stretched hand and who left it a clenched 15 been at the helm from which he was sep- fist. arated by the break with the present Em- When he began the career which ended peror, pictured in the now famous ear- in his becoming the strongest force in the toon of the London Punch, ' Dropping the state, Germany was hardly even a loose Pilot,' would he have allowed Germany confederacy of individual states, torn by 20 to steer into the dangers of antagonism conflicting interests and revolutionary with all but one of the great Powers of 114 C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AND INTERVIEWS 115 Europe ? That is the question which stu- the integrity of Denmark ; and so avoided dents of the events of to-day have repeat- a coalition of Powers against his sta,te. edly asked themselves. As a comparison Later, he brought on war with Denmark with the present diplomacy of his coun- on a charge of oppression of German sub- try, an analysis of the principles of Bis- 5 jects, unifying German sentiment behind marck is suggestive. him, gaining the alliance of Austria, and , paving the way for the annexation of the bismarck s ideals for Germany duchira by Prussia instead of Augusten- Bismarck's leading thought was that burg. Germany should be an invincible and self- 10 sufficient empire, controlled by the cen- early days and rise to power tral authority of Prussia. Immediate sat- Born at Schonhausen on April 1, 1815, isfactions and temporary gains he was al- into an old manorial family, and educated ways ready to sacrifice to this end. He at the Graue Kloster School in Berlin and stimulated and used the spirit of national 15 the University of Gottingen, Otto Edouard unity to extend and consolidate Prussian Leopold von Bismarck is first seen as an supremacy; and, it has been said that in exuberant and radical young landlord, his statecraft the new philosophy of Ger- who, after qualifying for public service in many, the doctrine of triumphant energy, 1835, developed a distaste for it, resorted was exemplified. 20 to travel and study of European countries, Nevertheless, he saw with perfect clear- then to private life and the management of ness that supremacy must be based upon his estate, and flirted with Socialism and security; and this realization shaped the liberal ideas generally. A vital change of foreign policy which he made famous. It thought as a result of the religious revival is significant to note how at every turn in 25 in the early years of the reign of Freder- the expansion of the power of his state, ick William IV developed the strong con- whenever he could control the desire of viction of the divine right of kings and his ruler and people, he avoided taking monarchy as the true expression of the from a defeated adversary territory whose Christian state which always afterward loss would provide an enduring cause for 30 distinguished him, and brought him back hatred and the spirit of revenge. It was again into public life, by this wise principle that he was able to In 1847, the year of his marriage to maintain the possibility of a natural alii- Johanna von Puttkamer, which strength- ance with Austria, even through the crisis ened his deep religious beliefs, he repre- of a decisive defeat in war. 35 sented the lower nobility of his district A second principle was the cultivation in the Estates-General at Berlin. He be- of friendly relations and alliances, even came a leader of the early monarchical apparent sacrifice to avoid bad feeling, Junkers, favoring Prussian militarism wherever this was possible. Often he op- and conservatism against the liberal trend posed a strong national sentiment to ac- 40 toward revolution and republicanism, as complish this aim ; and it was only when member for Brandenburg in the new Par- events had reached a point where he be- liament of 1849; ar >d after the quelling lieved that war with a certain nation was of revolution was a strong Prussian rep- necessary that he deliberately accepted a resentative appointed by the King in the course which would lead to hostility. His 45 restored Diet of Frankfurt. Here he dis- offer of German aid to Russia in the covered the intention of Austria to humble Polish revolt of 1863 was an example of Prussia, and accepted the idea of conflict this policy, by which he gained an advan- and the strengthening of Prussia by for- tage over France, Austria, and England, eign _ alliance. He urged alliance with and secured Russian neutrality in the con- 50 Russia in the Crimean War ; strength- flicts that were to come. Again, in 1863, ened friendship with Russia as Ambas- upon the death of King Frederick VII in sador for four years from 1858, and later Denmark, when Prince Frederick of Au- at Paris renewed the understanding of gustenburg claimed the duchies of Schles- 1857 with Napoleon, thus gaining free- wig and Holstein, hitherto attached to the 5idom for action against Austria as the Danish crown, and was strongly supported first great rival to be met. by the German nation, he refused to break Events now pushed him rapidly into the London treaty of 1852 guaranteeing power. His letter to Manteuffel in July, n6 WRITING OF TODAY 1857, showed that he felt the necessity judiciously spread. Then, in 1870, came of the coming conflict with Austria for the offer that Prince Leopold of Hohen- Prussian existence. Soon, with the sup- zollern be made king of the disrupted port of Roon as Minister of War, he Spanish nation, the enthusiasm of the gained the offices of Foreign Minister 5 German people for the proposal which and Minister-president. furnished Bismarck the popular feeling he desired, the opposition of France, and blood and iron the f amous Ems telegrams in which Boldly he began his ministry with the France demanded that the candidature phrase most closely associated with his 10 never be resumed, and in which the Ger- name, in the enunciation of the policy man King rejected the proposal. Bis- he believed inevitable for the establish- marck had already roused antipathy to ment of the empire : ' It is not by par- France by his publication of the relations liamentary speeches and majority votes with Napoleon as mediator in the settle- that these great problems will be settled, 15 ment with Austria, in which there was but by blood and iron.' The words re- an implied attempt to dictate terms, and sounded through Germany, startling the of the suggestion of aid. in South Ger- people into a new attention; and brought many in return for Luxemburg and Bel- a clanging echo from every great nation gium. The publication of the Ems tele- of Europe. From that time forth it was 20 grams was the spark which set national certain that the imperial development spirit aflame, was to be characterized by the spirit which other races have come to call the Germany an empire worship of force, and by the words which The peace with France was gained with followed the successful settlement of the 25 the King signing the agreements as ac- issue of 1871 with France: ' We must keep knowledged Emperor, rather than as the our powder dry and our sword sharp.' representative of a confederacy of Ger- The early years of his ministry were man states, and with the cession of the occupied with procuring the neutrality most of Alsace and a fifth of Lorraine of. Russia and France, and an alliance 30 and the imposition of heavy indemnities with Italy, in preparing for war with upon France. The establishment of the Austria. A cause which would unite new Imperial order of government in German sentiment in the fight he found Germany followed rapidly. Bismarck in a charge of provoking disloyal action became a prince and the first Imperial in the southern Duchies in 1866, and an- 35 chancellor, with a rooted belief in the di- nouncing full Prussian control. The vine right of the monarchy, a hatred of people were reluctant; but by delays, revolutionary forces and of the mob, and Bismarck made incensed Austria seem to a ruling passion for power for himself, provoke war. Then, after victory, he as- his party, his Prussia, his Empire, and sured south German friendship by block- 40 his people. ing his ruler's desire for invasion and His efforts to establish the union took annexation, by the granting of universal many forms. He had early recognized male suffrage and by publishing Na- the new power of the press by founding poleon's offer of an alliance in 1866 in the Kreuzseitung in 1847; and later he return for control of the Palatinate and 45 attempted to subordinate it to the ends western Hesse. In the spring he com- of the state by stern limitation of free- pleted the union of the north German dom and by laws against public agita- states ; and with the practical control of tion. both southern and northern Teutonic ac- His policy on trade was also signifi- tion, began to look toward the campaign 50 cant. Up to the great war of 1870 he to crush France. ( had been the guardian and favorite of The conflict was foreshadowed in the the free-trade party, and Germany re- refusal to countenance French rule and mained , open to the world. Afterward, the insistence on the neutralization of however, in 1878, he definitely abandoned Luxemburg in 1867, in the treaty of Lon- *5 this stand ; and began by gradual imposi- don ; and in 1868 Moltke began to formu- tion of duties to transform Germany into late his plans of campaign. Bismarck al- a protectionist state, forcing its own in- lowed the rumors of possible war to be dustries and concentrating wealth. C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AND INTERVIEWS 117 Socialism was a force he greatly office in 1896. He died at Friedrichs- feared, and he attempted to combat it by ruh on July 31, .1898. his notable experiments in identifying its His attitude toward foreign relations principles with the monarchical power of was summed up in his remark upon the state, recognizing the principle of 5 treaties that ' no people could sacrifice man's right to labor, of the duty of the its interest on the altar of fidelity to state to aid in giving it, and of the pro- treaty ; but would go only as far as suited tection of workers through insurance and its vwn interests.' However, in pursu- compensation laws. ing the opportunist policy, he was re- The church he succeeded in control- w markable for the success, which the sta- ling, after a long conflict, by legislation dent of comparisons with modern Ger- which produced a relation safeguarding man statecraft must observe, with which the rights of the state, while reconciling he always managed adroitly to make his and satisfying the ecclesiastical power. people seem to be attacked by the nation Colonization he favored upon the dis- 15 with which he had prepared war. covery of the fallacy in the theory of The inevitable fallacy to which he ap- equality for Germans in British colonies, pears to have been forced, in common It is recorded that he distrusted colonial with most of the great builders of em- enterprise, and was most concerned over pire, was the fallacy of compromise, of intact power for the Empire ; but that he 2° inability to push through an unmodified was forced by the national demand first program. into an attempt to satisfy it by favoring ' Universal suffrage is the necessary the development of colonies by private sugar coating of the conscription pill,' he enterprise, and then by circumstances is reputed to have said. He opposed the into admission of the necessity of pro- 25 Prussian love of monarchy supported by tectorates. arms to a maimed liberalism, while on the other hand he was forced to arm with dream of dreikaiseebund votes a stimulated spirit of democracy. Bismarck's great hope was for an alii- He attempted to use an efficient army as ance of Germany, Austria, and Russia; 30 the subordinate force of diplomacy, intel- and if it had been realized, it is probable ligence justifying force. Would he have that the union of natural and political had faith or fear, asks the student of to- forces would have established an impreg- day, for militarism in the ascendant, force nable position, which would have fore- justifying itself? stalled the wars which Bismarck feared 35 Let him speak, in the words of a let- for his country. Russia, however, he ter written to his wife, in final comment failed fully to gain, and he was forced upon his own career and upon his ulti- into the Triple Alliance with Austria and mate convictions regarding the world in Italy. He dreaded the Russian-French which he had tried to build an enduring alliance which followed, and desired an 40 structure : ' Peoples and individuals, understanding with England, which was folly and wisdom, war and peace — all prevented by the destruction of free- comes and goes like wave upon wave; trade good will through the protective and only the sea remains.' tariff. Thus, with the practical certainty of the ultimate action of these countries 45 against his, he turned to Turkey even as j early as 1884, and sent an agent to in- duce Abdul Hamid to arm against Rus- BTr sia, and procure his armament in Ger- BENEDICT XV— POLITICAL many. His famous break with the pres- 50 POPE ent Emperor, which ended in his resig- cATVAxnuT? ™dxt?ct nation, came over the question of the bALVAiUKii LUKitbi Russian occupation of Bulgaria which Undependent 0ctober B ^ aMonm ^ he was ready to allow on account of his fear of the Russian-French alliance, but 55 The most surprised person at the elec- which the Emperor insisted upon pre- tion of Giacomo della Chiesa as head of venting on the ground of loyalty to Aus- the Catholic Church was Benedict XV tria. The result was the dismissal from himself, for he knew his disqualifications n8 WRITING OF TODAY as well as did his colleagues, and so had is related to many well known families not contemplated the supreme dignity — of Rome and Italy. for the present. To begin with he is Although noble, the della Chiesa fani- only sixty years old, which is quite young ily is quite poor, so that the many acts for a pope, and means a probable pon- 5 of charity of Benedict XV are all the tificate of fifteen or twenty years; he has more to his credit, as they manifest a only been a cardinal three months, and large generosity, and to this he adds he was sent to his Archdiocese of Bo- faithfulness and gratitude. He un- logna, if not as a disgrace, at least to doubtedly owed the first steps in his ca- remove him from the Vatican, where, as 10 reer to Cardinal Rampolla, who took him Cardinal Rampolla's most faithful dis- to Madrid when he was nuncio there, and ciple, he was not persona grata. These had him as his substitute when he him- were the disqualifications; the qualifica- self was secretary of state, tions were less on the surface. Cer- Della Chiesa witnessed the fall of his tainly the policy of Pius X was not 15 patron, saw the sycophants drop away, looked upon with favor by many of the even friends finding too little to be got out cardinals nor was his easily influenced of it to make it worth while to visit the character considered the best for the head lonely recluse. But the loyalty and affec- of the church in a crisis, and in turning tion of della Chiesa never wavered. No to della Chiesa they found one who sup- zo matter what his cares or fatigue he paid posedly will follow Rampolla's policy, and his daily visit to Cardinal Rampolla, who is strong and firm in whatever he bringing a wave of affairs with him and does, while having a thorough knowledge brightening the declining years of his old of church affairs through his training in friend and master, while on his part re- the time of Leo XIII. 25 ceiving counsel, and, more remarkable, The new pope is small in stature even acting on it. When Cardinal Rampolla for an Italian (so much so that the tailor died, Archbishop della Chiesa was in Bo- had to be> called immediately after his logna. He rushed to Rome and showed election, to make smaller the smallest of such violent and sincere grief that the say- the three suits which are always prepared 30 ing, ' like della Chiesa's love for Ram- beforehand for the new pontiff) . He is polla,' became the symbol of fidelity at the sallow, with a thin, keen face; gesticu- Vatican. lates freely with nervous movements of So much has happened since Giacomo the hands; wears spectacles and is full della Chiesa was a comparatively young of energy and life ; and with it all has 35 man at the Vatican that looking back it the indefinable ' something ' which is seems thirty instead of fifteen years ago. popularly supposed to denote refinement It seems only the other day that I and a long line of ancestors. climbed the innumerable stairs (at that The della Chiesa is a noble family of time the only elevator in the Vatican was Genoa originally from Milan, and dates 40 forbidden to outsiders and especially to back to the time of St. Ambrose, who, journalists) leading to the Secretaryship having the temporal as well as the spir- of State in the Apostolic Palace. Once itual government of most of northern arrived one had the impression of being in Italy, created some captains, with the ob- a garret transformed into a photographer's ject of defending the church from the 45 gallery, as the corridor out of which Arian attack. Some of these captains the rooms of the office open takes its light through their acts of valor were called from a skylight. In these modest and ' Champions of the Church,' in Italian small, but historic rooms, where the cele- ' Campioni della Chiesa,' and the founder brated Consalvi worked at the time of Na- of the pope's family was one of these 50 poleon, and Cardinal Antonelli under Pius soldiers. The della Chiesa family dis- IX; where Gioacchino Pecci, the greatest tinguished themselves in the church, pope of modern times, began his career, counting two saints, a cardinal, several and where his powerful Secretary of bishops, and now a pope, but not showing State, Cardinal Rampolla, had made his great capacity in other fields. The father 55 mark, there the young Monsignor della of Benedict XV was Marquis Giuseppe, Chiesa was then supreme. Those rooms, while he has a brother who is an admiral which seem to be camped in the sky, so on the retired list of the Italian navy, and high they stand at the top of the Vatican, C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AMD lJNTKK VI EWS 119 are the same which have produced the At ten he was much the same — impatient present generation of papal diplomatists ; of control and given to fits of stormy tern- Merry del Val, perhaps the chief, who had per, which a loving mother was helpless his first mission in Canada; Sbaretti, who or careless of controlling, followed by the went to Cuba, and Ceretti, who after hav- 5 sunshine of a most attractive repentance, ing been in Washington has recently been At thirteen he turned his thoughts toward appointed to be the first apostolic delegate the church and developed a love of study to Australia, and so on. Monsignor della which has remained through life. His Chiesa was always to be found there, or mother became so. worried that on one oc- walking in the upper loggia, on which his 10 casion she presented him with a spade and own apartment opened, with the Eternal insisted upon his digging up the garden. City at his feet. Even then, over fifteen At that time he planted a palm in a pot years ago, one could scarcely call him which became his chief treasure. It grew ' young,' for he is one of those people who so great that it was eventually set out in are never young and never old, this ap- 15 the garden, and will now, of course, be the pearance being emphasized by a slight in- chief sight of his home. His father in- equality in his shoulders, the habit of sisted upon his taking his degree as a law- wearing his spectacles crooked, and using yer, which was an extreme penance to his hands continually in arranging the sash him, as his talents did not lie in that di- about his waist. I cannot say that he 20 rection, but he persevered and took a high liked newspaper men, but at a time when place in his class. The day that he re- the suave and kind Monsignor Bisleti, ceived his degree he went to his father now cardinal, had not yet risen to be and said, ' I have obeyed you about my majordomo, and his place was then occu- studies, and now wish my reward. I must pied by men like della Volpe and Cagiano 25 enter the church.' This he was allowed de Azevedo, who detested journalists, to do by his parents, but reluctantly, journalism and writers, and took no Like his predecessor, Benedict XV is trouble to conceal their feelings, Mon- most abstemious in his habits and a very signor della Chiesa seemed an anchor of early riser. Half past five or six sees him refuge. He was indeed most affable, very 30 at his altar, and at seven he has already witty and sarcastic when in a good humor, breakfasted ; at eight he is at his desk, and as he usually was, but if something had woe to the clerk who is not in his place, gone wrong, although it had nothing to It remains to be seen if Benedict XV do with the person he was receiving, he will restore the pomp of the papacy, so was one of the most brusque men that I 35 much relied upon and appreciated by Leo have ever come across. I remember that XIII, and so much reduced by Pius X. his face was entirely transformed and it His traditions and training must have seemed as though a dark, threatening cloud taught him the usefulness of pomp, while had descended upon it. We knew the his personal wishes would be for sim- signs portending the storm, and when we 40 plicity — time will tell. Time will also re- saw him thus at a distance we quickly veal his policy, of which it can now only turned and literally ran, waiting for a be said that it will not be conspicuously more propitious moment, which always Germanophile ; but he will certainly be a came, and, as is usual with men of his na- political Pope, belonging to that school of ture, the sunshine repaid for the preced- 45 churchmen who think that it is the duty ing squall. The worst time to approach of the Holy See to make itself felt in all him was in the last years of the pontifi- possible ways and directions for the good cate of Leo XIII, when the trouble with of humanity, and therefore it is impossible France began and the policy of the great to ignore the influence which the Vatican Secretary of State, to which Monsignor 50 traditionally and historically has exercised della Chiesa had contributed such strenu- over the destinies of the peoples by dealing ous labor, threatened to fail. with the different governments, Catholic Such is the man at sixty years of age. and non-Catholic alike. 120 WRITING OF TODAY partly temperamental and partly the effect HI of training, may explain some phenomena that seem to have mystified the bulk of the TAFT AND ROOSEVELT: A newspaper-reading public. COMPOSITE STUDY 5 We may set out with the assertion that both men are genuinely patriotic. Both FRANCIS E. LEUPP are highly educated, the one on technical lines, the other in general scholarship. [Atlantic Monthly, November, loio, By permis- Neither beean his public career with the sion of author and pubhsher.J ' . , & . . v „ ,,, ,.,. 10 Presidency in view. Taft s ambitions President Roosevelt regretted deeply the pointed in the direction of the Federal Su- resignation of Elihu Root as Secretary of preme Court; Roosevelt's toward diplo- War in 1903. ' As an adviser,' said he, macy, looking to the erection of the ' Root gives me just what I need — candid United States into a great World Power, opposition when he thinks I am wrong. '5 Circumstances which could not have Shall I ever find any one to take his been foreseen deflected the currents of place?' To a suggestion of Mr. Taft's their lives. Each is a living force after name he responded, ' Of course, Taft is his kind : Taft static, Roosevelt dynamic, the only man possible. I am very fond of Taft takes advantage of opportunity when him, and he will make an ideal member of 20 it comes his way, and strives to shape it the Cabinet. The only trouble with him for the public good; Roosevelt goes hunt- is,' — and he ended the sentence with his ing it, and consequently gets a larger whimsical smile and in his semi-falsetto, choice. Inertia, for Taft, means rest ; for — ' he is too much like me ! ' Roosevelt, incessant activity. Mr. Taft came, and in due course was 25 To recognize visually the temperamen- chosen by Mr. Roosevelt for his successor, tal difference between the two men, we The President pressed his candidacy on need only see them at their equestrian ex- the ground of their sympathetic agreement ercise. Mr. Taft's horse must be one on questions of policy, intimating that the which can be depended on to carry him a Taft administration would be, in effect, 30 given distance over a specified course, in only a more polished continuation of the a stated time and at a certain gait; Mr. Roosevelt administration. Mr. Taft's Roosevelt's must be one which will not popular majority therefore contained a balk at leaving the beaten trail and plung- mixture of voters who wished to see the ing into a thicket, a jumper which will re- Roosevelt administration carried through 35 fuse no bar, a mettlesome animal which a few more chapters, and of voters whom taxes continually its rider's vigilance, nothing but the promised polish reconciled Both men are laughing philosophers ; but to the threatened prolongation. Taft laughs at the world, Roosevelt with The outcome astonished both groups, it. The Taft smile has passed into a President Taft was not slow in letting it 4° proverb ; it is always there, shining even be known that the contrasts between him- through the mists of conventional sobri- self and his predecessor were going to be ety. The Roosevelt smile comes and emphasized quite as strongly as their like- goes ; it emerges from his nearsighted nesses. His reorganization of the Cab- scowl and disappears again behind it, as inet, his demand that Congress address it- 45 the sun plays with an opaque cloud, self immediately to a revision of the tar- Both men have vigorous tempers, iff, his preparations for indiscriminate When Taft gives way to his, it is to in- prosecutions under the anti-trust law, were flict a merciless lashing upon its victim, among the plainest evidences that a new for whom thereafter he has no use what- day had dawned. What one element read 50 ever. With Roosevelt it is a case of pow- in the change was a reversal and rebuke der and spark ; there is a vivid flash and of Rooseveltism ; what the opposing ele- a deafening roar, but when the smoke has ment read was the out-Roosevelting of blown away, that is the end, and the au- Roosevelt. Unbiased observers saw in it thor of the explosion of January may be- merely the spectacle of two men aiming 55 come a boon companion by June, if acci- at the same ends, but differing radically in dent have meanwhile invested him with their manner of reaching these. A brief new interest, review of their dissimilarities, which are Both men have strong wills ; Roosevelt's C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AND INTERVIEWS tai is aggressive to the verge of tyranny, Taft, shut in as he was for the first year Taft's obstinate to the point of perverse- of his presidency, knew virtually nothing ness. So marked are these characteris- of what the newspapers were saying about tics that it is not difficult to fancy what him and his official family. He never either man would do in a fateful crisis. 5 cared for such reading himself, and others Had Taft been in Stoessel's place at Port decided for him how much, and what, he Arthur, for instance, he might have should see. Those adverse opinions which starved rather than surrender; Roosevelt did get past them and reach his eye, ex- would have headed a forlorn hope and cited only his contempt, as either founded tried to cut his way through the besiegers, 10 on misinformation or instigated by the taking as many lives as he could before ' conspirators ' whom he suspected of con- giving up his own. stantly plotting harm to his administra- Their theories of administration are tion. He rarely noticed such things pub- fundamentally diverse. Mr. Taft's is the licly ; when he did, he dealt with his crit- more dignified, Mr. Roosevelt's the more 15 ics at arm's length, and in terms which, human. Mr. Taft's conception of the gov- though distinct, were fairly moderate, ernment is of a gigantic machine, its many Roosevelt, on the other hand, has al- parts so articulated as to be moved from ways kept track of the newspapers, a prac- a single source of energy ; and as engineer tice in which he has had the aid of an he confines his attention to this central 20 enormous personal acquaintance. As the distributing point. As Mr. Roosevelt sees result of a particularly abusive screed it, the government is an organization of there is apt to be a jarring of the elements live men, each engaged in doing something -till he has published to the world his opin- which, if not well done, diminishes the ef- ion of the writer, in which the neutral ficiency of the rest ; hence, when he was in 25 tints of rhetoric are conspicuous by their command of this legion, he had his eye on absence. Were -not his store of vital en- the corporals not less than on the cap- ergy inexhaustible, he would long ago tains. Technically speaking, Mr. Taft have worn himself out with the explosive follows the more orderly method when he force he puts into his retorts. His best communicates only with his Cabinet offi- 30 friends regret that he does not reserve his cers, and leaves to them the direction of artillery fire for the big foes who are their subordinates. worthy of it, instead of wasting so much Setting aside the question of orderliness, ammunition on ground-moles and jack- however, and considering rather the ac- rabbits. Besides, it loses a good deal of complishment of results, there is good 35 its potency by too frequent use. No pub- reason for thinking that a president who lie man can take up every quarrel thrust takes a personal hand in everything will at him, save at the expense of other and loom larger in history than one who sticks larger warfare. Half the calumniators of closely to a prescribed task. His exam- a really fine fellow would go unheeded by pie vitalizes the whole working force. His 40 the multitude but for the free advertising meddling may occasionally make discipline he gives them ; and one deplorable effect difficult in the higher places, but it in- of his condescension is to encourage them spires the rank and file with a sense of in- to bait him whenever they are short of dividual responsibility and encourages legitimate excitement from other sources, them to think as well as work. Only a 45 A certain kind of criticism, nevertheless, brain and body of uncommon endurance is accepted without resentment by the self- could stand such drafts, and not one presi- assertive Roosevelt. During his presi- dent in a dozen is equipped for undertak- dency he hardly ever put forth an impor- ing more than the laws demand of him. tant manifesto without first submitting it This is a beneficent provision of nature to 50 to a council in which the several elements avert chaos in our governmental affairs ; likely to be affected by it were represented, but it should not blind us to the fact that with a request that every one speak his the country's debt to some of its master- mind unreservedly. I have seen at such spirits of the past has grown out of their gatherings, clergymen, lawyers , editors, idiosyncrasies rather than their con- 55 college presidents, merchants, members of formity to rule. . the administration, and subordinates in the Volunteer criticism brings into view an- civil service. All took their host at his other variance between the two men. word, and voiced their views when called 122 WRITING OF TODAY upon. Often he made changes suggested Taft must find an affirmative sanction in by the least distinguished of his guests, the statutes and digests, or he will have but he was equally frank in holding to his none of it ; Roosevelt, in a like situation, first notions if unconvinced by argument, used to say, ' Is there any law against it ? This was his means of getting into touch 5 No ? Then go ahead ! ' with public opinion on matters which he In short, Taft interprets the Constitu- could not go out and discuss directly with tion in the light of its tenth amendment, his fellow citizens in mass. One can Roosevelt in the ligh't of its preamble, hardly imagine President Taft calling to- Both are equally sincere in their desire to gether such a miscellaneous company from 10 serve the people. Taft takes for his guide the four corners of the country, and sub- the written law, and the platform pledges mitting his judgments for their approval on which he was elected, as the latest re- or dissent. The reason is not far to seek, corded expressions of the popular will; Passing reference has been made to the Roosevelt mingles with the people them- education of the two men. In its broader 15 selves, and, if in thought and feeling they sense the term includes, not only their have run ahead of the written record, he academic studies, but their training in the also runs ahead, trusting that the formal everyday work of the world. Taft's brief expression will in due season catch up but admirable service on the bench proved with the sentiment. This leads, now and his fitness for a career there. It also fixed 20 then, to unexpected results. For example, upon him the judicial habit of thought and when he started for Africa last year the action, which is utterly unlike the execu- present ' Insurgent ' movement was un- tive habit. The former means equipoise, known, and he was still figuring as a deliberation, and carefully revised conclu- champion of Speaker Cannon; but no sions ; the latter means prompt decision 25 sooner does he return and take his bear- and swift reinforcement,- followed by the ings than he discerns in the revolt a real stroke that counts. Coming to the presi- uprising of the people, and accordingly dency, Mr. Taft moved from a somewhat throws the weight of his influence rather secluded domain in which he was at home, toward its side than toward the other, into an open one in which he was a 30 The Old-Liners denounce his action as stranger. The offices which had fallen to sheer demagogy; the Insurgents applaud Roosevelt, from the day he entered public it as true democracy, life, had, on the contrary, been legislative As for President Taft, he seems to have or executive, never judicial ; they had kept reasoned like a magistrate up to the time him constantly leading somebody and ham- 35 of Mr. Roosevelt's return, and since then mering at something, instead of calmly like an executive. Not many months analyzing evidence and formulating prin- elapsed between his exculpation of the ciples. Payne-Aldrich tariff because its accusers It is true that Taft had some experience had not proved their case beyond a rea- nominally executive, for a few years as 40 sonable doubt, and his appearance as the Governor of the Philippines, and later as sponsor for an entirely dissimilar scheme. Secretary of War; but his colonial work This is not cowardice, or mere wanton was chiefly in the way of determining tergiversation, but a sign of an awaken- rights and administering justice among a ing sense that the President sits, not on a dependent people, and in the Cabinet his 45 bench, but in a chair of state, functions were more advisory than con- Or, take the Pinchot-Ballinger contro- structive. It is not wonderful, therefore, versy as an illustration of the difference that as President he approached his prob- between judicial and executive methods, lems by the judicial rather than the execu- The new administration was like an army tive route. Indifference to criticism was 50 just put into the field to attain certain a feature of his judicial training; so was ends for the common welfare. The effec- the weighing of all the pros and cons of a tiveness of its campaign depended on the proposition before acting on it. Con- concentration, not the diffusion, of its trasted with Roosevelt's rapid despatch of energies ; yet two of the officers, having a business, this often aroused the impatience 55 disagreement, halted and undertook to set- of non-official spectators, who set down tie it by a duel. Taft's conservatism as mere stubbornness. How would Commander Roosevelt have For the best enterprise proposed tp him, handled such a situation ? He would have C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AND INTERVIEWS 123 notified the disputants that they were party politics and management; but space there to destroy the enemy, not each other ; limitations warn me that I must pass to that it was his business to lead the column, the last phase of my topic, the mutual re- not to compose personal quarrels ; and latiqns of the two men. This may be con- that, no matter what theirs was about, they 5 densed into the simple statement that there must ' drop it ' — his familiar phrase — or is not now, and has not been, any mis- one of them must go outside of the public apprehension in the mind of either as to service to' do his further fighting. Had the other. In spite of the gossips, Mr. his order been disregarded, he would sum- Taft has wasted no time in wondering marily have cut off the official head of the 10 ' where Roosevelt stands,' nor has Mr. combatant he deemed most at fault, and Roosevelt agonized over the alternative of moved along. ' going to Taft's rescue or leaving him in Commander Taft's course, equally char- the mire.' Mr. Taft has done many acteristic, was the very reverse of this, things which Mr. Roosevelt would not He patiently listened to both parties, said 15 have done, and left undone many more as pleasant things as he could to both, and which Mr. Roosevelt would have done ; but urged an investigation by Congress, very this is Mr. Taft's administration, and no much as the trial judge turns over to a one realizes the fact better than Mr. jury the issues of fact as a preliminary to Roosevelt. The ' Return from Elba ' fol- applying the law. Even Mr. Pinchot's 20 de-rol has already dissolved into the thin dismissal came not as a decision of the air from which it was conjured, and the controversy, but as an incident, the for- 'Roosevelt for 1912' hurrah still belongs ester having committed \ what the judge in the same category with the familiar was pleased to regard as contempt of abridgement of Hamlet. No American court. But for that, affairs might have 25 publicist believes more implicitly in party remained till to-day where they stood last solidarity than the ex-President; and December. when the test of the ballot-box shall have The contrast here indicated is borne out demonstrated the relative strength of the in the attitudes of the two Presidents Progressive and the Old-Style Republi- toward the bench itself. When President 30 cans, he expects to see the minority fall in, Taft looks for a new judge, he aims to with true sportsmanlike spirit, behind the find one whose past activities convey little majority, and vote the same ticket at the assurance as to his individual trend of next national election, thought on the questions of the day. Pres- Without pretending to be a prophet or ident Roosevelt, believing that a policy is 35 the son of a prophet, I will stake my all essential to all progress in government, as a political weather-observer on the and that the courts are part of the ma- proposition that, however serious may be chinery of government, preferred men their factional differences, the Republicans whose personal views on certain important will renominate President Taft in 1912 if subjects were well known. This was not 40 he wishes it. This is not a guess, but a with the purpose of influencing the courts sober thesis in the psychology of practical unduly in the direction in which he politics. The party that has elected its thought civic welfare lay, but of prevent- candidate President by vouching for him ing their being influenced in the opposite unconditionally to the American people direction, No other President has so 45 would be ashamed to confess, at the end of freely criticized the judiciary, and thereby his term, that it had misled the voters, provoked censure for himself from those Look back over the last fifty years. No who regard the courts as sacred because power under heaven, except his own dis- they hold the seals of ultimate authority ; inclination, could have prevented Lincoln's but to Mr. Roosevelt's mind they are 50 second nomination, or Grant's, or Gar- human institutions, subject to human field's, if he had lived; or Cleveland's, or shortcomings, and to be kept pure only by Harrison's, or McKinley's. As neither exposure to the candid* comment of the Johnson nor Arthur had reached the presi- people to whom they owe their existence, dency by election, and Hayes had publicly Though not strictly within the purview 55 declared that he would not stand for a sec- of this article, it might have been inter- ond term, their cases are not precedents, estine to compare the respective ideals of But, albeit Mr. Taft will be the arbiter the President and the ex-President as to of his own fortunes as regards a renomi- 124 WRITING OF TODAY nation, a reelection is of course quite an- worth my saying. Nothing is worth my other matter. That depends, not on the saying that I cannot help myself out with pride of a party, but on the satisfaction better, I hold, than even the most sug- of the people; and no prediction of the gestive young gentleman with a notebook result at the polls, two years before the 5 can help me. It may be fatuous of me, event, would be worth the paper it was but, believing myself possessed of some written on. means of expression, I feel as if I were sadly giving it away when, with the use of it urgent, I don't gratefully employ it, IV 10 but appeal instead to the art of somebody else.' HENRY JAMES'S FIRST It was impossible to be that ' somebody INTERVIEW else,' or, in other words, the person privi- leged to talk with Mr. James, to sit in PRESTON LOCKWOOD 15 presence of his fine courtesy and earnest- ness, without understanding the sacri- [New York i Times, March 2i, 1915. fice he was making, and making only be- By permission.] cause hg h&& finaUy consented tQ bdieve One of the compensations of the war, that it would help the noble work of relief which we ought to take advantage of, is z° which a group of young Americans, mostly the chance given the general public to ap- graduates of Harvard, Yale, and Prince- proach on the personal side some of the ton, are carrying on along their stretch distinguished men who have not hitherto of the fighting line in northern France, lived much in the glare of the footlights. Mr. James frankly desired his remarks Henry James has probably done this as 25 to bear only on the merits of the American little as any one; he has enjoyed for up- Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps. It ward of forty years a reputation not con- enjoys to-day the fullest measure of his fined to his own country, has published a appreciation and attention; it appeals long succession of novels, tales, and criti- deeply to his benevolent instincts, and he cal papers, and yet has apparently so de- 30 gives it sympathy and support as one who lighted in reticence as well as in expres- has long believed, and believes more than sion that he has passed his seventieth year ever, in spite of everything, at this inter- without having responsibly ' talked ' for national crisis, in the possible develop- publication or figured for it otherwise than ment of ' closer communities and finer in- pen in hand. 35 timacies ' between America and Great Shortly after the outbreak of the war Britain, between the country of his birth Mr. James found himself, to his professed and the country, as he puts it, of his great surprise, Chairman of the American ' shameless frequentation.' Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps, now There are many people who are eloquent at work in France, and to-day, at the end 40 about the war, who are authorities on the of three months of bringing himself to the part played in it by the motor ambulance point, has granted me, as a representative and who take an interest in the good rela- of the New York Times, an interview, tions of Great Britain and the United What this departure from the habit of a States ; but there is nobody who can tell lifetime means to him he expressed at the 45 us, as Mr. James can, about style and the outset. structure of sentences, and all that apper- ' I can't put/ Mr. James said, speaking tains to the aspect and value of words. with much consideration and asking that Now and then in what here follows he his punctuation as well as his words should speaks familiarly of these things for the be noted, ' my devotion and sympathy for 50 first time in his life, not by any means be- the cause of our corps more strongly than cause he jumped at the chance, but be- in permitting it thus to overcome my dread cause his native kindness, whether con- of the assault of the interviewer, whom I sciously or unconsciously, seemed so ready have deprecated, all these years, with all to humor the insisting inquirer, the force of my preference for saying my- 55 ' It is very difficult,' he said, seeking to self and without superfluous aid, without diminish the tension so often felt by a interference in the guise of encourage- journalist, even at the moment of a highly ment and cheer, anything I may think appreciated occasion, ' to break into grace- C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AND INTERVIEWS 125 ful license after so long a life of decorum ; it ought to hear about ; so that nothing therefore you must excuse me if my ego- may be said ever to happen anywhere that tism does n't run very free or my com- it does n't count on having reported to it, placency find quite the right turns.' hot and hot, as the phrase is, several times He had received me in the offices of the 5 a day. We were the first American am- corps, businesslike rooms, modern for bulance corps in the field, and we have a London, low-ceiled and sparsely furnished, record of more than four months' con- It was not by any means the sort of set- tinuous service with one of the French ting in which as a reader of Henry James armies, but the rigor of the objection to I had expected to run to earth the author 10 our taking the world into our intimate of The Golden Bowl, but the place is, confidence is not only shown by our still nevertheless, to-day, in the tension of war unbroken inability to report in lively in- time, one of the few approaches to a so- stalments, but receives also a sidelight cial resort outside his Chelsea home where from the fact that numerous like private he can be counted on. Even that delight- 15 corps maintained by donations on this ful Old World retreat. Lamb House, Rye, side of the sea are working at the front now claims little of his time. without the least commemoration of their The interviewer spoke of the waterside deeds — that is, without a word of jour- Chelsea and Mr. James's long knowledge nalistic notice. of it, but, sitting not overmuch at his ease 20 ' I hope that by the time these possibly and laying a friendly hand on the shoulder too futile remarks of mine come to such of his. tormentor, he spoke, instead, of light as may await them Mr. Norton's motor ambulances, making the point, in report of our general case may have been the interest of clearness, that the Ameri- published, and nothing would give the can Ambulance Corps of Neuilly, though 25 committee greater pleasure than that some an organization with which Richard Nor- such controlled statement on our behalf, ton's corps is in the fullest sympathy, does best proceeding from the scene of action not come within the scope of his remarks, itself, should occasionally appear. The ' I find myself chairman of our corps ideal would, of course, be that exactly the committee for no great reason that I can 30 right man, at exactly the right moment, discover save my being the oldest Ameri- should report exactly the right facts, in can resident here interested in its work; exactly the right manner, and when that at the same time that if I render a scrap happy consummation becomes possible we of help by putting on record my joy even shall doubtless revel in funds.' in the rather ineffectual connection so far 35 Mr. James had expressed himself with as " doing " anything is concerned, I such deliberation and hesitation that I was needn't say how welcome you are to my reminded of what I had heard of all the testimony. What I mainly seem to grasp, verbal alterations made by him in novels I should say, is that in regard to testifying and tales long since published ; to the at all unlimitedly by the aid of the news- 40 point, we are perhaps incorrectly told of papers, I have to reckon with a certain replacing a ' she answered ' by a ' she in- awkwardness in our position. Here definitely responded.' comes up, you see, the question of our I should, indeed, mention that on my reconciling a rather indispensable degree venturing to put to Mr. James a question of reserve as to the detail of our activity 45 or two about his theory of such changes with the general American demand for he replied that no theory could be stated, publicity at any price. There are ways in at any rate in the off-hand manner that which the close presence of war challenges I seemed to invite, without childish injus- the whole claim for publicity ; and I need tice to the various considerations by which hardly say that this general claim has 50 a writer is moved. These determinant been challenged, practically, by the present reasons differ with the context and the re- horrific complexity of things at the front, lations of parts to parts and to the total as neither the Allies themselves nor watch- sense in a way of which no a priori ac- ing neutrals have ever seen it challenged count can be given. before. The American public is, of 55 'I dare say I strike you,' he went on, course, little used to not being able to ' as rather bewilderedly weighing my hear, and hear as an absolute right, about words; but I may perhaps explain my so anything that the press may suggest that doing very much as I the other day heard 126 WRITING OF TODAY a more interesting fact explained. A dis- not famous, Mr. James, for the use of tinguished English naval expert happened dashes ? ' to say to me that the comparative non- ' Dash my fame ! ' he impatiently replied, production of airships in this country indi- ' And remember, please, that dogmatizing cated, in addition to other causes, a possi- 5 about punctuation is exactly as foolish as ble limitation of the British genius in dogmatizing about any other form of com- that direction, and then on my asking him munication with the reader. All such why that class of craft should n't be forms depend on the kind of thing one is within the compass of the greatest makers doing and the kind of effect one intends- of sea-ships, replied, after brief reflection : 10 to produce. Dashes, it seems almost " Because the airship is essentially a bad platitudinous to say, have their particular ship, and we English can't make a bad representative virtue, their quickening ship well enough." Can you pardon,' Mr. force, and, to put it roughly, strike both James asked, ' my making an application the familiar and the emphatic note, when of this to the question of one's amenabil- 15 those are the notes required, with a felic- ity or plasticity to the interview? The ity beyond either the comma or the semi- airship of the interview is for me a bad colon; though indeed a fine sense for the ship, and I can't make a bad ship well semicolon, like any sort of sense at all for enough.' the pluperfect tense and the subjunctive Catching Mr. James's words as they 20 mood, on which the whole perspective in came was not very difficult ; but there a sentence may depend, seems anything but was that in the manner of his speech that common. Does nobody ever notice the cannot be put on paper, the delicate dif- calculated use by French writers of a short ference between the word recalled and series of suggestive points in the current the word allowed to stand, the earnest- 25 of their prose ? I confess to a certain ness of the massive face and alert eye, shame for my not employing frankly that tempered by the genial ' comment of the shade of indication, a finer shade still body,' as R. L. Stevenson has it. than the dash. . . . But what on earth are Henry James does not look his seventy we talking about ? ' And the Chairman of years. He has a finely shaped head, and 30 the Corps Committee pulled himself up in a face, at once strong and serene, which deprecation of our frivolity, which I rec- the painter and the sculptor may well have ognized by acknowledging that we might liked to interpret. Indeed, in fine appre- indeed hear more about the work done ciation they have so wrought. Derwent and doing at the front by Richard Norton Wood's admirable bust, purchased from 35 and his energetic and devoted co-workers, last year's Royal Academy, shown by the Then I plunged recklessly to draw my Chantrey Fund, will be permanently victim. placed in the Tate Gallery, and those who ' May not a large part of the spirit fortunately know Sargent's fine portrait, which animates these young men be a to be exhibited in the Sargent Room at 40 healthy love of adventure ? ' I asked, the San Francisco Exhibition, will recall The question seemed to open up such its having been slashed into last year by depths that Mr. James considered a mo- the militant suffragettes, though now hap- ment and began : pily restored to such effect that no trace ' I, of course, don't personally know of the outrage remains. 45 many of our active associates, who natu- Mr. James has a mobile mouth, a rally waste very little time in London, straight nose, a forehead which has thrust But, since you ask me, I prefer to think back the hair from the top of his com- of them as moved, first and foremost, not manding head, although it is thick at the by the idea of the fun or the sport they sides over the ears, and repeats in its 50 may have, or of the good thing they may soft gray the color of his kindly eyes. Be- make of the job for themselves, but by fore taking in these physical facts one re- that of the altogether exceptional chance ceives an impression of benignity and opened to them of acting blessedly and amenity not often conveyed, even by the savingly for others, though indeed if we most distinguished. And, taking advan- 55 come to that there is no such sport in the tage of this amiability, I asked if certain world as so acting when anything in the words just used should be followed by a nature of risk or exposure is attached. dash, and even boldly added: 'Are you The horrors, the miseries, the monstrosi- C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AN D INTERVIEWS 127 ties they are in presence of are so great corps for the Allies should appeal to the surely as not to leave much of any other American public. Political, I confess, has attitude over when intelligent sympathy become for me in all this a loose and ques- has done its best. tion-begging term, but if we must resign ' Personally I feel so strongly on every- 5 ourselves to it as explaining some people's thing that the war has brought into ques- indifference, let lis use a much better one tion for the Anglo-Saxon peoples that for inviting their confidence. It will do humorous detachment or any other thin- beautifully well if givers and workers and ness or tepidity of mind on the subject helpers are moved by intelligent human affects me as vulgar impiety, not to say as 10 pity, and they are with us abundantly rank blasphemy; our whole race tension enough if they feel themselves simply became for me a sublimely conscious thing roused by, and respond to, the most awful from the moment Germany flung at us all . exhibition of physical and moral anguish her explanation of her pounce upon Bel- the world has ever faced, and which it is gium for massacre and ravage in the form 15 the strange fate of our actual generations of the most insolent, " Because I choose to see unrolled before them. We welcome to, damn you all " recorded in history. any lapse of logic that may connect inward ' The pretension to smashing world rule vagueness with outward zeal, if it be the by a single people, in virtue of a monopoly zeal of subscribers, presenters or drivers of every title, every gift and every right, 20 of cars, or both at once, stretcher-bearers, ought perhaps to confound us more by its lifters, healers,- consolers, handy Anglo- grotesqueness than to alarm us by its French interpreters (these extremely pre- energy; but never do cherished posses- cious), smoothers of the way; in short, sions, whether of the hand or of the spirit, after whatever fashion. We ask of no- become so dear to us as when overshad- 25 body any waste of moral or of theoretic owed by vociferous aggression. How can energy, nor any conviction of any sort, but one help seeing that such aggression, if that the job is inspiring and the honest, hideously successful in Europe, would, educated man a match for it. with as little loss of time as possible, pro- ' If I seem to cast doubt on any very ceed to apply itself to the American side 30 driving intelligence of the great issue as of the world, and how can one, therefore, a source of sympathy with us, I think this not feel that the Allies are fighting to the is because I have been struck, whenever I death for the soul and the purpose and the have returned to my native land, by the future that are in us, for the defense of indifference of Americans at large to the every ideal that has most guided our 35 concerns and preoccupations of Europe, growth and that most assures our unity ? This indifference has again and again ' Of course, since you ask me, my many seemed to me quite beyond measure or years of exhibited attachment to the con- description, though it may be in a degree ditions of French and of English life, with suggested by the absence throughout the whatever fond play of reflection and re- 40 many-paged American newspaper of the action may have been involved in it, make least mention of a European circumstance it inevitable that these countries should unless some not-to-be-blinked war or revo- peculiarly appeal to me at the hour of lution, or earthquake, or other cataclysm their peril, their need and their heroism, has happened to apply the lash to curi- and I am glad to declare that, though I 45 osity. The most comprehensive journal- had supposed I knew what that attachment istic formula that I have found myself, was, I find I have any number of things under that observation, reading into the more to learn about it. English life, general case, is the principle that the first wound up to the heroic pitch, is at pres- duty of the truly appealing sheet in a ent most immediately before me, and I can 50 given community is to teach every indi- scarcely tell you what a privilege I feel it vidual reached by it — every man, woman to share the inspiration and see further and child — to count on appearing there, revealed the character of this decent and in their habit as they live, if they will only dauntless people. wait for their turn. ' However, I am indeed as far as you 55 ' However,' he continued, ' my point is may suppose from assuming that what you simply my plea for patience with our en- speak to me of as the " political " bias is terprise even at the times when we can't the only ground on which the work of our send home sensational figures. " They 128 WRITING OF TODAY also serve who only stand and wait," and irrelevance. All I want is to invite the the essence of our utility, as of that of public, as unblushingly as possible, to take any ambulance corps, is just to be there, all the interest in us it can; which may be on any and every contingency, including helped by knowing that our bankers are the blessed contingency of a temporary 5 Messrs. Brown Brothers & Co., 59 Wall drop in the supply of the wounded turned Street, New York City, and that checks out and taken on — since such compara- should be made payable to the American tive intermissions occur. Ask our friends, Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps.' I beg you, to rid themselves of the image of our working on schedule time or on 10 guarantee of a maximum delivery ; we are y dependent on the humors of battle, on incalculable rushes and lapses, on violent tja-dt>tt? at* dav. \nTTJiru outbreaks of energy which rage and pass w A "c\,?nWNr? and are expressly designed to bewilder. 15 WAb .dKUWiM . It is not for the poor wounded to oblige rM v . „. ,-.„,. u „ . . n , , . K , , , ' p, [New York lwnes, October i, 1914. By permission.] us by making us showy, but for us to let them count on our open arms and open lap As our reporter entered Sir James Bar- as troubled children count on those of their rie's hotel room by one door, the next door mother. It is now to be said, moreover, 20 softly closed. , I was alone (writes our that our opportunity of service threatens reporter). I sprang into the corridor and inordinately to grow ; such things may any had just time to see him fling himself day begin to occur at the front as will down the elevator. Then I understood make what we have up to now been able to what he had meant when he said on the do mere child's play, though some of our 25 telephone that he would be ready for me help has been rendered when casualties at 10.30. were occurring at the rate, say, of 5000 I returned thoughtfully to the room, in twenty minutes, which ought, on the where I found myself no longer alone, whole, to satisfy us. In face of such Sir James Barrie's 'man' was there; a enormous facts of destruction — ' 30 stolid Londoner, name of Brown, who Here Mr. James broke off as if these told me he was visiting America for the facts were, in their horror, too many and first time. too much for him. But after another mo- ' Sir James is very sorry, but has been ment he explained his pause. called away,' he assured me without mov- ' One finds it in the midst of all this as 35 ing a muscle. Then he added: ' But this hard to apply one's words as to endure is the pipe,' and he placed a pipe of the one's thoughts. The war has used up largest size on the table, words ; they have weakened, they have ' The pipe he smokes ? ' I asked, deteriorated like motor car tires; they Brown is evidently a very truthful man, have, like millions of other things, been 40 for he hesitated. ' That is the interview more overstrained and knocked about and pipe,' he explained. ' When we decided voided of the happy semblance during the to come to America Sir James said he last six months than in all the long ages would have to be interviewed, and that it before, and we are now confronted with would be wise to bring something with us a depreciation of all our terms, or, other- 45 for the interviewers to take notice of. wise speaking, with a loss of expression So he told me to buy the biggest pipe I through increase of limpness, that may could find, and he practised holding it in well make us wonder what ghosts will be his mouth in his cabin on the way across, left to walk.' He is very pleased with the way the gen- This sounded rather desperate, yet the 50 tlemen of the press have taken notice of incorrigible interviewer, conscious of the it.' wane of his only chance, ventured to ' So that is not the pipe he really glance at the possibility of a word or two smokes ? ' I said, perceiving I was on the on the subject of Mr. James's present verge of a grand discovery. ' I suppose literary intentions. But the kindly hand 55 he actually smokes an ordinary small pipe.' here again was raised, and the mild voice Again Brown hesitated, but again truth became impatient. prevailed. ' Pardon my not touching on any such ' He does not smoke any pipe,' he said, C. iMSKSUJNAL, isJili'l"C±liiS AJN1J IJNTliK VIEWS 120 nor cigars, nor cigarettes; he never James discovered that he was the Kaiser smokes at all ; he just puts that one in his Reduced to Life Size. After that Sir mouth to help the interviewers.' James liked to sit with him and talk to ' It has the appearance of having been him. smoked ? ' I pointed out. 5 Sir James is a great admirer of the 'I blackened it for him,' the faithful Kaiser, though he has not, like Mr. Car- fellow replied. negie, had the pleasure of meeting him in ' But he has written a book in praise of society. When he read in the papers on My Lady Nicotine.' arriving here that the Kaiser had wept ' So 1 have heard,' Brown said guard- 10 over the destruction of Louvain, he told edly. ' I think that was when he was hard Brown a story. It was of a friend who up and had to write what people wanted ; had gone to an oculist to be cured of some but he never could abide smoking himself, disease in one eye. . Years afterward he Years after he wrote the book he read it; heard that the oculist's son had been killed he had quite forgotten it, and he was so 15 in some Indian war, and he called on the attracted by what it said about the de- oculist to commiserate with him. lights of tobacco that he tried a cigarette. ' You cured my eye,' he said to him, But it was no good'; the mere smell dis- ' and when I read of your loss I wept for gusted him.' you, sir ; I wept for you with that eye.' ' Odd, that he should forget his own 20 ' Sir James,' Brown explained, ' is of a book,' I said. very sympathetic nature, and he wondered 'He forgets them all,' said Brown, which eye it was that the Kaiser wept 'There is this Peter Pan foolishness, for with.' instance. I have heard people talking to I asked Brown what his own views him about that play and mentioning parts 25 were about the war, and before replying in it they liked, and he tried to edge them he pulled a paper from his pocket and off the subject; they think it is his shy- scanned it. 'We are strictly neutral,' he ness, but I know it is because he has for- then replied. gotten the bits they are speaking about. ' Is that what is written on the paper ? ' Before strangers call on him I have seen 30 I asked. He admitted that Sir James had him reading one of his owh books hur- written out for him the correct replies to riedly, so as to be able to talk about it if possible questions. ' Why was he neu- that is their wish. But he gets mixed up, tral?' I asked, and he again found the and thinks that the little minister was reply on the piece of paper : ' Because it married to Wendy.' 35 is the President's wish.' ' Almost looks as if he had n't written So anxious, I discovered, is Sir James his own works,' I said. to follow the President's bidding that he 'Almost,' Brown admitted uncomfort- has enjoined Brown to be neutral on all ably. other subjects besides the war; to express I asked a leading question. ' You don't 40 no preference on matters of food, for in- suppose,' I said, ' that any one writes them stance, and always to eat oysters and for him? Such things have been. You clams alternately, so that there can be no don't write them for him by any chance, ill-feeling. Also to walk in the middle of just as you blackened the pipe, you know ? ' the streets lest he should seem to be favor- Brown assured me stolidly that he did 45 ing either sidewalk, and to be very cau- not. Suddenly, whether to get away from tious about admitting that one building in a troublesome subject I cannot say, he New York is higher than another. I as- vouchsafed me a startling piece of infor- sured him that the Woolworth Building mation. ' The German Kaiser was on our was the highest, but he replied politely, boat coming across,' he said. 50 ' that he was sure the President would ' Sure ? ' I asked, wetting my pencil. prefer him to remain neutral.' I naturally He told me he had Sir James's word asked if Sir James had given him any for it. There was on board, it seems, a further instructions as to proper behavior very small, shrunken gentleman with a in America, and it seems that he had done pronounced waist and tiny, turned-up mus- 55 so. They amount, I gather, to this, that tache, who strutted along the deck trying Americans have a sense of humor which to look fierce and got in the other passen- they employ, when they can, to the visi- gers' way to their annoyance until Sir tor's undoing. 130 WRITING OF TODAY ' When we reach New York,' Sir James smart use of their pocket combs, they seems to have told Brown in effect, ' we would cut no end of a dash among the shall be met by reporters who will pre- nursemaids. tend that America is eager to be instructed As for the pipe, I was informed that by us as to the causes and progress of the 5 it had now done its work, and I could take war; then, if we are fools enough to think it away as a keepsake. I took it, but that America cannot make up its mind wondered afterward at Brown's thinking for itself, we shall fall into the trap and he had the right to give it me. preach to them, and all the time they are A disquieting feeling has since come taking down our observations they will be 10 over me that perhaps it was Sir James I saying to themselves, " Pompous asses." had been interviewing all the time, and ' It is a sort of game between us and Brown who had escaped down the ele- the reporters. Our aim is to make them vator. think we are bigger than we are, and theirs is to make us smaller than we are; 15 yT and any chance we have of succeeding is to hold our tongues while they will prob- JOSEPH PULITZER: REM- ably succeed 11 they make us jabber. J „_..__„. __, . Above all, oh, Brown, if you write to the IJNlbUiJNCiib Uf A papers giving your views of why we are 20 SECRETARY at war — and if you don't you will be the i-wtt? rom a*t^ only person who hasn't — don't be lured ALLEYNE IRELAND into slinging vulgar abuse at our op- rReprinted by courtesy of the Metropolitan.) ponents, lest America takes you for an- other university professor.' 25 Before I had time to examine my sur- There is, I learned, only one person in roundings Mr. Pulitzer entered the room America about whom it is impossible, even on the arm of the majordomo. My first, in Sir James's opinion, to preserve a neu- swift impression was of a man very tall tral attitude. This is the German Ambas- and thin, with a noble head, a roughly sador, whose splendid work for England 30 pointed reddish beard streaked with gray, day by day and in every paper and to all jet black hair; swept back from the fore- reporters cannot, Sir James thinks, be too head and lightly touched here and there cordially recognized. Brown has been with silvery white. One eye was dull and told to look upon the German Ambassador half-closed, the other was of a deep, bril- as England's greatest asset in America 35 liant blue, which, so far from suggesting just now, and to hope heartily that he will blindness, created the instant effect of a be long spared to carry on his admirable searching, eaglelike glance. The out- work, stretched hand was large, strong, nervous, Lastly, it was pleasant to find that full of character, ending in well-shaped Brown has not a spark of sympathy with 40 and immaculately kept nails, those who say that, because Germany has A high-pitched voice, clear, penetrating, destroyed art treasures in Belgium and and vibrant, gave out the strange chal- France the Allies should retaliate with lenge : ' Well, here you see before you similar rudeness if they reach Berlin. He the miserable wreck who is to be your holds that if for any reason best known 45 host ; you must make the best you can of to themselves (such as the wish for him. Give me your arm in to dinner.' a sunnier location) the Hohenzollerns I may complete here a description of should by and by vacate their present resi- Mr. Pulitzer's appearance, founded upon dence, a nice villa should be provided for months of close personal association with them, and that all the ancestral statues in 50 him. The head was splendidly modeled, the Sieges-Allee should be conveyed to it the forehead high, the brows prominent intact, and perhaps put up in the back and arched; the ears were large, the nose garden. There the Junkers could drop was long and hooked; the mouth, almost in of an evening, on the way home from concealed by the mustache, was firm and their offices, and chat pleasantly of old 55 thin-lipped ; the length of the face was times. Brown thinks they should be al- much emphasized by the flowing beard and lowed to retain all their iron crosses, and by the way in which the hair was brushed even given some more, with which, after back from the forehead. The skin was C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AND INTERVIEWS 131 of a clear, healthy pink, like a young girl's ; from French's Hotel in New York for the but in moments of intense excitement the lack of fifty cents with which to pay for color would deepen to a dark, ruddy flush, his bed. Twenty years later he bought and after a succession of sleepless nights, French's Hotel, pulled it down, and erected or under the strain of continued worry, it 5 in its place the Pulitzer Building, at that would turn a dull, lifeless gray. time one of the largest business buildings I have never seen a face which varied in New York, where he housed the World. so much in expression. Not only was What lay between these two events may there a marked difference at all times be- be summed up in a few words. At the tween one side and the other, due partly 10 close of the Civil War Mr. Pulitzer went to the contrast between the two eyes and to St. Louis, and in 1868, after being in partly to a loss of flexibility in the mus- various occupations, he became a reporter cles of the right side, but almost from on the Westliche Post. In less than ten moment to moment the general appearance years he was editor and part proprietor, of the face moved between a lively, genial 15 His amazing energy, his passionate inter- animation, a cruel and wolflike scowl, and est in politics, his rare gift of terse- and a heavy and hopeless dejection. No face forcible expression, and his striking per- was capable of showing greater tender- son.ality carried him over' or through all ness; none could assume a more forbid- obstacles, ding expression of anger and contempt. 2° After he had purchased the St. Louis The well-known Sargent portrait is a Dispatch, amalgamated it with the Post, remarkable revelation of the complex na- and made the Post-Dispatch a profitable ture of its subject. It discloses the deep business enterprise and a power to be reek- affection, the keen intelligence, the wide oned with in national and state politics, sympathy, the tireless energy, the deli- 25 he felt the need of a wider field in which cate sensitiveness, the tearing impatience, to manceuver the forces of his character the cold tyranny, and the flaming scorn by and his intellect. which his character was so erratically He came to New York in 1883 and pur- dominated. It is a noble and pathetic chased the World from Jay Gould. At monument to the suffering which had been 30 that time the World had a circulation of imposed for a quarter of a century upon less than twelve thousand copies a day, and the intense and arbitrary spirit of this was practically bankrupt. From this time extraordinary man. forward Mr. Pulitzer concentrated his every faculty on building up the paper. Pulitzer the immigrant 35 He was scoffed at, ridiculed, and abused The account which I am to give of Mr. by the most powerful editors of the old Pulitzer's daily life during the months school. They were to learn, not without immediately preceding his death would be bitterness and wounds, that opposition was unintelligible to all but the very few who the one fuel of all others which best fed knew him in recent years if it were not 4° the triple flame of his courage, his tenac- prefaced by a brief biographical note. ity, and his resourcefulness. Joseph Pulitzer was born in the village Four years of unremitting toil produced of Mako, near Buda Pesth, in Hungary, two results. The World reached a circu- on April 10, 1847. His father was a Jew, lation of 200,000 copies a day and -took his mother a Christian. At the age of 45 its place in the front rank of the Ameri- sixteen he emigrated to the United States, can press as a journal of force and ability, He landed without friends, without and Joseph Pulitzer left New York, a corn- money, unable to speak a word of English, plete nervous wreck, to face in solitude the He enlisted immediately in the First New knowledge that he would never read print York (Lincoln) Cavalry Regiment, a regi- 50 again and that within a few years he ment chiefly composed of Germans and in would be totally blind, which German was the prevailing tongue. Joseph Pulitzer as I knew him, twenty- Within a year the Civil War ended, and four years after he had been driven from Pulitzer found himself, in common with active life by the sudden and final collapse hundreds of thousands of others, out of 55 of his health, was a man who could be employment at a time when employment judged by no common standards. His was most difficult to secure. At this time feelings, his temper, his point of view had he was so poor that he was turned away been warped by years of suffering. His i3 2 WRITING OF TODAY health and his comfort were at the mercy structions to them, my letters written from of a thousand contingencies. day to day, my cables; and you will see Had his spirit been broken by his trials, that accuracy, accuracy, accuracy, is the had his intellectual power weakened under first, the most urgent, the most constant the load of his affliction, had his burning 5 demand I have made on them, interest in affairs cooled to a point where ' I do not say that the World is the only he could have been content to turn his back paper which takes extraordinary pains to upon life's conflict, he might have found be accurate; on the contrary, I think that some happiness, or at least some measure almost every paper in America tries to be of repose akin to that with which age cpn- 10 accurate. I will go further than that, soles us for the loss of youth. But his There is not a paper of any importance greatest misfortune was that all the active published in French, German, or English, forces of his personality survived to the whether it is printed in Europe or in last in their full vigor, inflicting upon him America, which I have not studied for the curse of an impatience which nothing 15 weeks or months, and some of them I could appease, of a discontent which knew have read steadily for a quarter of a cen- no amelioration. tury ; and I tell you this, Mr. Ireland, after * * * * * * * years of experience, after having com- This somewhat cynical outburst [as to parisons made by the hundred, from time the accuracy of the New York papers] 20 to time, of different versions of the same brought down upon me an overwhelming event, that the press of America as a whole torrent of protest from Mr. Pulitzer. has a higher standard of accuracy than ' My God ! ' he cried. ' I would not have the European press as a whole. I will go believed it possible that any one could further than that. I will say that, line for show such a complete ignorance of Ameri- 25 line, the American newspapers actually can character, of the high sense of duty attain a higher standard of news accuracy which in the main animates American than the European newspapers ; and I will journalism, of the foundations of integrity go further than that and say that although' on which almost every successful paper in there are in Europe a few newspapers, and the United States has been founded. You 3° they are chiefly English, which are as ac- do not know what it costs me to try and curate as the best newspapers in America, keep the World up to a high standard of there are no newspapers in America which accuracy — the money, the time, the are so habitually, so criminally stuffed thought, the praise, the blame, the con- with fake news as the worst of the Euro- stant watchfulness. I do not say that the 35 pean papers.' World never makes a mistake in its news Mr. Pulitzer paused and asked me if columns. I wish I could say it. there was a glass of water on the table — ' What I say is that there are not half we were seated in his library — and after a dozen papers in the United States which I had handed it to him, and he had drained tamper with the news, which publish what 40 it nearly to the bottom at one gulp, he re- they know to be false. But if I thought sumed his lecture. I give it in consider- that I had done no better than that I would able detail, because it was the longest be ashamed to own a paper. It is not speech he ever addressed to me, because he enough to refrain from publishing fake subsequently made me write it out from news, it is not enough to take ordinary 45 memory and then read it to him, and be- care to avoid the mistakes which arise cause it was one of the few occasions dur- from the ignorance, the carelessness, the ing my intercourse with him on which I stupidity of one or more of the many men was persuaded beyond a doubt that he who handle the news before it gets into spoke with perfect frankness, without al- print ; you have got to do much more than 50 lowing his words to be influenced by any that ; you have got to make every one con- outside considerations, nected with the paper — your editors, your , reporters, your correspondents, your re- J - p - s newspaper creed write men, your proofreaders — believe ' As a matter of fact,' he continued, ' the ,that accuracy is to a newspaper what vir- 55 criticisms you hear about the American tue is to a woman. press are founded on a dislike for our ' When you go to New York ask any of headlines and for the prominence we give the men in the dome to show you my in- to crime, to corruption in office, and to C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AND INTERVIEWS 133 sensational topics generally; the charge of vertising, and advertising means money, inaccuracy is just thrown in to make it and money means independence. If I look worse. I do not believe that one per- caught any man on the World suppressing son in a thousand who attacks the Ameri- news because one of our advertisers ob- can press for being inaccurate has ever 5 jected to having it printed I would dis- taken the trouble to investigate the facts. miss him immediately ; I would n't care ' Now about this matter of sensational- who he was. ism : a newspaper should be scrupulously ' What a newspaper needs in its news, accurate; it should be clean; it should in its headlines, and on its editorial page avoid everything salacious or suggestive, 10 is terseness, humor, descriptive power, everything that could offend good taste or satire, originality, good literary style, lower the moral tone of its readers; but clever condensation, and accuracy, accu- within these limits it is the duty of a news- racy, accuracy.' paper to print the news. When I speak of Mr. Pulitzer made this confession of good taste and of good moral tone I do not 15 faith with the warmth generated by an mean the kind of good taste which is of- unshakable faith. He spoke, as he al- fended by every reference to the unpleas- ways spoke when he was excited, with ant things of life; I do not mean the kind vigor, emphasis, and ample gesture. of morality which refuses to recognize the When he came to an end and asked for an- existence of immorality — that type of 20 other glass of water I found nothing to moral hypocrite has done more to check say. It would have been as impertinent of the moral progress of humanity than all me to agree with him as to differ from him. the immoral people put together. What I After all, I had to remember that he mean is the kind of good taste which de- had taken over the World when its circu- mands that frankness should be linked 25 lation was less than 15,000 copies a day; with decency ; the kind of moral tone that he had been for thirty years and still which is braced and not relaxed when it is was its dominating spirit and the final au- brought face to face with vice. thority on every matter concerning its pol- ' Some people try and make you believe icy, its style, and its contents ; that he had that a newspaper should not devote its 30 seen its morning circulation go up to well space to long and dramatic accounts of over 350,000 copies a day ; that at times he murders, railroad wrecks, fires, lynch- had taken his stand boldly against popular ings, political corruption, embezzlements, clamor, as when he kept up for months a frauds, graft, divorces, what you will. I bitter attack against the American action tell you they are wrong, and I believe that 35 in the Venezuelan boundary dispute, and if' they thought the thing out they would at times had incurred the hostility of see that they are wrong. powerful moneyed interests, as when he ' We are a democracy, and there is only forced the Cleveland administration to sell one way to get a democracy on its feet in to the public on competitive bids a bond the matter of its individual, its social, its 40 issue which it had arranged to sell pri- municipal, its state, its national conduct, vately, at considerably below market value, and that is by keeping the public informed to a great banking house, about what is going on. There is not a Before leaving the subject of news- crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a papers I may describe the method by which trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a 45 Mr. Pulitzer kept in touch with the news vice, which does not live by secrecy. Get and put himself in the position to main- these things out in the open, describe them, tain a critical supervision over the World. attack them, ridicule them in the press, and An elaborate organization was em- sooner or later public opinion will sweep ployed for this purpose. I will explain them away. 5° it as it worked when we were on the 'Publicity may not be the only thing yacht, but the system was maintained at that is needed, but it is the one thing with- all times, whether we were cruising or out which all other agencies will fail. If a were at Cap Martin, at Bar Harbor, at newspaper is to be of real service to the Wiesbaden, or elsewhere, merely a few public, it must have a big circulation, first 55 minor details being changed to meet local because its news and its comment must' conditions. reach the largest possible number of peo- In the Pulitzer Building, Park Row, pie, second, because circulation means ad- New York, there were collected each day 134 WRITING OF TODAY several copies of each of the morning The final reading of the news served to papers, including the World, and some of give me from ten to twenty small topics the evening papers. These were mailed of what Mr. Pulitzer called ' human inter- daily to Mr. Pulitzer according to cabled est,' to be used as subjects of conversa- instructions as to our whereabouts. In 5 tion as occasion demanded. As a rule I addition to this a gentleman connected cut these items out of the paper and put with the World, who had long experience them in the left-hand pocket of my coat, of Mr. Pulitzer's requirements, cut from for when we walked together J. P. always all the New York papers, and from a num- took my right arm, and my left hand was, ber of other papers from every part of the to therefore, free to dip into my reservoir of United States, every article that he consid- cuttings whenever conversation flagged ered Mr. Pulitzer ought to see, whether and I needed a new subject, ^because of its subject, its tenor, or its The cuttings covered every imaginable v style. These clippings were mailed by the topic — small cases in the magistrates' hundred on almost every fast steamer sail- 15 courts, eccentric entertainments at New- ing for Europe. In order that there might port, the deaths of centenarians, dinners be the greatest economy of time in read- to visiting authors in New York, accounts ing them, the essential matter in each clip- of performing animals, infant prodigies, ping was marked. new inventions, additions to the Metropoli- 20 tan Museum, announcements of new plays, heading the ' world ' to J. p. anecdotes about prominent men and So far as the World was concerned, a women, instances of foolish extravagance copy of each issue was sent, with the among the rich, and so on. names of the writers written across each ****** editorial, big news story or special article. 25 On rare occasions he talked of his early As we went from port to port we got the Says, telling us in a charmingly simple and principal French, German, Austrian, and unaffected manner of the tragic and hu- Italian papers, and the World bureau in morous episodes with which his youth had London kept us supplied with the English been crowded. Of the former I recall a dailies and weeklies. 30 striking description of a period during Whenever we picked up a batch of which he filled two positions in St. Louis, American papers, each of the secretaries one involving eight hours' work during got a set and immediately began to read the day, the other eight hours during the it. My own method of reading was night. Four of the remaining eight were adopted after much advice from Mr. 35 devoted to studying English. Pulitzer and after consultation with the His first connection with journalism more experienced members of the staff, arose out of an experience which he re- and I do not suppose it differed materially lated with a wealth of detail which from that followed by the others. showed how deeply it had been burned I read the World first, going over the 40 into his memory. ' big ' stories carefully and with enough When he first arrived in St. Louis he concentration to give me a very fair idea soon found himself at the end of his re- of the facts. Then I read the articles in sources, and was faced with the absolute the other papers covering the same ground, impossibility of securing work in that city, noting any important differences in the 45 In company with forty other men he ap- various accounts. This task resolved it- plied at the office of a general agent who self in practice into mastering in consid- had advertised for hands to go down the erable detail about half a dozen articles — Mississippi arid take up well-paid posts on a political situation,_ a murder, a railroad a Louisiana sugar plantation. The agent wreck, a fire, a strike, an important ad- 50 demanded a fee of five dollars from each dress by a college president, for example applicant, and by pooling their resources — and getting a clear impression of the the members of this wretched band man- treatment of each item in each paper. aged to meet the charge. The same night With this done, and with a few notes they were taken on board a steamer which scribbled on a card to help my memory, I 55 immediately started down river. At three turned to the editorial pages, reading each ' o'clock in the morning they were landed editorial with the closest attention and on the river bank about forty miles below making more notes. St. Louis, at a spot where there was C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AND INTERVIEWS 135 neither house, road, nor clearing. Before to keep my seat, to preserve the precise the marooned party had time to realize its distance from J. P. which saved me from plight the steamer had disappeared. touching his stirrup and yet allowed me A council of war was held, and it was to speak without raising my voice, and to decided that they should tramp back to 5 leave enough of my mind unoccupied to St. Louis and put a summary termination remember my" material and to present it to the agent's career by storming his office without betraying the discomfort of my and murdering him. Whether or not this position. reckless program would have been carried During these rides, and especially when out it is impossible to say, for when, three 10 we were walking our horses along a quiet, days later, the ragged army arrived in the shady stretch of road, J. P. sometimes be- city, worn out with fatigue and half-dead came reminiscent. On one of these occa- from hunger, the agent was found to have sions he told me the story of how he lost decamped. his sight. As I wrote it down as soon as A reporter happened to pick up the 15 we got back to the house, I can tell it al- story, and by mere chance met Pulitzer most in his own words, and induced him to write out in German We had been discussing the possibility the tale of his experiences. This account of his writing an autobiography, and he created such an impression on the mind of said, throwing his head back and smiling the editor through whose hands it passed 20 reflectively : that Pulitzer was offered, and accepted ' Well, I sometimes wish it could be with the greatest misgivings, as he sol- done. It would make an interesting book ; emnly assured us, a position as reporter but I do not think I shall ever do it. My on the Westliche Post. God ! I work from morning to night as The event proved that there had been 25 it is. When would I get the time ? ' no grounds for J. P.'s modest doubts. Then, suddenly changing his mood : ' It After he had been some time on the paper won't do any harm for you to make a few things went so badly that two reporters notes now and then, and some day, per- had to be got rid of. The editor kept haps, we might go through them and see Pulitzer on the staff, because he felt that 30 if there is anything worth preserving, if any one was destined to force him out Has any one ever told you how I lost my of the editorial chair it was not a young, sight? No? Well, it was in November, uneducated foreigner, who could hardly 1887. The World had been conducting a mumble half a dozen words of English, vigorous campaign against municipal cor- The editor was mistaken. Within a few 35 ruption — a campaign which ended in the years J. P. not only supplanted him, but arrest of a financier who had bought the became half proprietor of the paper. votes of aldermen in order to get a street ****** railroad franchise.' It was not only in regard to mental ac- At this point he paused. His jaws set, complishments, however, that J. P. pur- 4° and his expression became stern, almost sued his plan of educating everybody fierce, as he added : ' The man died in around him. He insisted, among other jail of a broken heart, and I — and I — ' things, that I should learn to ride, not He took a deep breath and continued as because there was any lack of people who though he were reciting an experience could ride with him, but because by means 45 which he had heard related of some of application I could add a new item to stranger. the list of things I could do. After a 'I was, of course, violently attacked, and dozen lessons from a groom I progressed it was a period of terrible strain for me. so far that, having acquired the ability to What with anxiety and overwork I began stay more or less in the saddle while the 50 to suffer from insomnia, and that soon horse trotted, Mr. Pulitzer frequently took produced a bad condition of my nerves, me riding with him. One morning I went down to the World We always rode three abreast, a groom and called for the editorials which were on J. P.'s right and myself on his left, and ready for me to go over. I always read conversation had to be kept up the whole 55 every line of editorial copy. When I time. This presented no peculiar difficul- picked up the sheets I was astonished to ties when the horses were walking, but find that I could hardly see the writing, let when they trotted I found it no easy task alone read it. I thought it was probably 136 WRITING OF TODAY due to indigestion or to some other tem- was sitting by Mr. Pulitzer's bedside. He porary cause and said nothing about it. was evidently suffering a good deal of The next morning on my way downtown I pain, for he turned from side to side and called in at an oculist's. He examined my once or twice got out of bed and sat in an eyes and then ordered me to go home 5 easy chair. and remain in bed in a darkened room for I tried several books, but finally settled six weeks. At the end of that time he down to read Macaulay's essay on Hallam. examined me again, told me that I had I read steadily until about five o'clock, and ruptured a blood vessel in one of my eyes, J. P. listened attentively, interrupting me and ordered me to stop work entirely and 10 from time to time with a direction to go to take six months' rest in California. back and read over a passage. ' That was the beginning of the end. About half-past five he began to suffer Whatever my trouble had been at first, it severely, and he sent for the yacht's doc- developed into separation of the retina in tor, who did what was possible for him. both eyes. From the day on which I first 15 At a few minutes after six J. P. said : consulted the oculist up to the present time, ' Now, Mr. Ireland, you 'd better go and about twenty- four years, I have only been get some sleep ; we will finish that this three times in the World building. Most afternoon. Good-by, I 'm much obliged to people think I 'm dead, or living in Europe you. Ask Mr. Schmidt to come to me. in complete retirement. Now go on and 20 Go, now, and have a good rest, and forget give me the morning's news. I 've had all about me.' practically nothing, so you can just run I slept till noon. When I came on deck over it briefly, item by item.' I found that everything was going on ****** much as usual. One of the secretaries On October 25, 1911, we put in to the 25 was with J. P.; the others were at work harbor of Charleston, S. C. There was over the day'.s papers, the usual business of receiving mail, news- At lunch we spoke of J. P. One man papers, and so on, for J. P., after five days said that he seemed a little worse than at sea, was eager to pick up the thread of usual ; another that he had seen him much current happenings. 3° worse a score, of times. On the following day Mr. Lathan, editor Suddenly the massive door at the for- of the Charleston Courier, lunched on the ward end of the saloon opened. I turned yacht. He and Mr. Pulitzer had an ani- in my seat and saw the towering figure of mated discussion about the possibilities of the head butler framed in the doorway, a Democratic victory in 1912. I had 35 1 faced his impassive glance and received never seen J. P. in a more genial mood or the full shock of his calm but incredible in higher spirits. announcement : ' Mr. Pulitzer is dead.' Whether it was due to the excitement of receiving a visitor whose conversation was so stimulating I do not know, but on Fri- 40 VII day, October 27, J. P. was feeling so much out of sorts that he did not appear on WILLIAM ROCKHILL NELSON deck. On Saturday he remained below only because Brocklebank, who always lEditor and Publishe^ and^Journalist, April 17, kept the closest watch over his health, per- 45 suaded him to have a good rest before re- ' William Rockhill Nelson was a Titan suming the ordinary routine. J. P. was among the newspapermen of America. In anxious to take up some business matters the largest sense he was mindful of the re- with Henderson, but Brocklebank induced sponsibility of his position. He knew that him to give up the idea. 50 the fathers of the republic had taken At three o'clock in the morning of Sun- large chances in granting freedom to the day, October 29, Brocklebank came to my press ; that they were not ignorant of the cabin and, without making any explana- menace of a licentious journalism; but, tion, said : though they might have agreed fully with ' Mr. Pulitzer wishes you to come and 55 Franklin that strict justice required that read to him.' the freedom of the club should go with I put on a dressing-gown, gathered up liberty of the editor, after all, the merit of half a dozen books, and in five minutes I unrestrained discussion was undeniable in C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AND INTERVIEWS 137 a self-governing people and therefore they He had accumulated a fortune of $200,- gave to men of his craft, unique privilege. 000 in the building and contracting busi- All this, not only claimed his attention, but ness in Indiana and had lost it, saving mastered his whole course of conduct. nothing from the wreck but a half inter- ' His contempt for the editorial pander 5 est in the Fort Wayne Sentinel. For two was limitless. He gave no heed to popu- years after his fortune was swept away he lar clamor, if it represented a temporary edited that paper and then he saw that his emotion opposed to his conviction of en- future work was to be journalism. But during good. He was quite willing to find he wanted a wider field, and, although he himself in a minority, or, indeed, to sub- 10 had only a few thousand dollars from the ject himself to widespread criticism, if he sale of his half interest in the Sentinel, he felt himself in the right. He had no care began casting about for a new location, for the comfort of living at peace with his He scrutinized the whole wide western neighbors, if it meant that he could not field with an estimating and prophetic eye live at peace with himself. He was a 15 and decided upon Kansas City, which was dauntless soldier for the public welfare. then a muddy pioneer town without a ' As one who knew him intimately for pavement on one of its streets and with more than a quarter of a century, who en- only a few plank sidewalks, joyed his confidence, listened to his hopes The two old and established newspapers, and fears and was stimulated by his un- 20 the Times and the Journal, were morning wavering devotion to duty, when, all the papers. They sold for five cents a copy, while, there was neither bluster nor parade Mr. Nelson started an evening paper in a in anything he did, but only a set jaw, a little upstairs room and sold it for two quiet defiance of rascality, and a persistent cents on the streets and delivered it to sub- contest against corroding conservatism, I 25 scribers for ten cents a week, regard his passing as a supreme public calamity. For, there is none quite like PAPERS S0LD F0R A NICKEL him left in the newspaper field of today.' There were few pennies in this city then. — Melville E. Stone, General Manager of The nickel was almost the smallest coin the Associated Press. 3° in use. People were in the habit of paying five cents for a newspaper and they were William Rockhill Nelson, editor and hard to break of that habit. They would owner of the Kansas City (Mo.) Star, one hand the newsboy a nickel and walk on. of the foremost journalists of the Middle Mr. Nelson gave orders that every news- West, died at his home in that city on the 35 boy must insist on giving change. To morning of April 13, of uremic poisoning, make that easy he imported from the mint He had been ill since last December. His a keg of pennies for his newsboys. He death caused profound sorrow throughout wanted to impress upon the people that for the city, State, and nation. President Wil- the old price of one newspaper they could son on being informed of Colonel Nelson's 40 get two of his and have a penny left over, death immediately sent to Mrs. Nelson the The circulation of the new paper grew following telegram: but the more it increased the more money ' May I not express my deep sympathy he lost, because the advertising was not with you in the loss of your husband. The coming to it yet, and he was hard pushed whole country will mourn the loss of a 45 to make both ends meet. The paper had great editor and citizen.' a circulation of 3000 within a week. It During his illness Colonel Nelson gath- soon grew to 10,000. The capacity of his ered the members of his staff at his bed- new press was pushed to its utmost. It side each week for consultation. At the was a hard struggle for four years. Then last meeting he discussed the fight for hon- 5o he was able to buy a new perfecting press est elections and told his men to keep it up and his future was assured, no matter what happened. The part the Star has played in Kansas City is the history of Kansas City. That mr. nelson s career Kansas City has become great, that it has It was not by chance that William R. 55 become known the country over as a place Nelson selected Kansas City as the place of opportunity and achievement, that its in which he would found a newspaper, squalid ugliness has been transformed into He was forty years old when he did that, transcendent beauty — all this it owes 138 WRITING OF TODAY more to the courage, the loyalty, the enter- under the stimulus of poverty of resources prise and constant endeavor of the Star which prevented him from attempting to than it does to any other agency, and it compete with established newspapers in owes the Star to Mr. Nelson. We do not furnishing telegraphic correspondence, recall an instance in the history of the 5 ' I had to find a substitute for news,' cities of the Republic where any single he said. ' I discovered it in reprint. It community stands as much indebted for occurred to me that people wanted first to its upbuilding to the civic patriotism of be entertained. The world was full of in- one man as Kansas City does to Mr. Nel- teresting books and magazine articles that son. 10 were at our disposal. I felt that Plato and Beginning with its very first issue, the Carlyle and Emerson might be just as good Star was active in asserting its citizenship correspondents as the fellows who are and endeavoring to promote the welfare sending the other papers reports of dog of the community. Its first campaign was fights in San Francisco.' for traversable streets. To city streets 15 So, while the Star was accumulating re- alone the Star has devoted more space, sources to build up its news service — for more actual area of argument, protest, in- nothing short of the best in news' would formation and appeal than to any other satisfy Mr. Nelson — it developed its de- subject, partment of interesting material reprinted In its first year the Star began its long, 20 or adapted from books and magazines, long struggle for public parks, which This department has been extended to a finally triumphed so splendidly. It de- degree that is unique in American jour- manded better city water, and got it. It nalism. was always demanding better things for Matter that the conventional newspaper its townsmen. It fought for dollar gas, 25 regards as ' filler,' to be stuck in when and got it. It began a fight against the news failed, Mr. Nelson considered as lottery sharks that infested this town in highly important. the early days, and ran them out of the ' The men are pretty apt to find some- city. It exposed and attacked the home thing of interest to them in the news on cooperative companies that were defraud- 30 the dullest day,' he would say. ' But ing the poor and put them out of business ; women are n't interested in politics or it went after the 10 per cent, a month sports. We are going to furnish them loan sharks and eliminated them ; it fought good reading, no matter how dull they may the fortune-telling frauds and the quack find the news.' doctors. In all of those fights against 35 As the news came, Mr. Nelson devoted, those particular evils it was a pioneer. It himself to building up the news depart- was the first newspaper in this country to ments. He was impatient of the tradi- bar medical quacks from its advertising tional ways of handling material, columns and to attack them in its news ' Don't get the professional point of columns. It was the first daily newspaper 40 view,' he would warn his news men. ' A to refuse beer and whisky advertisements Washington correspondent is apt to get to in any of its editions. thinking he is a statesman. He imagines Its campaign for the betterment of liv- the folks back home are interested in the ing conditions, and for things that meant details of congressional affairs. They are the advancement of the city have been too 45 a whole lot more interested in a fuss be- numerous to mention. Mr. Nelson some- tween the wives of two cabinet members, times attributed his success in newspaper or in some new development in farming work to the fact that he did not get into that a congressman from Kansas can tell it until he was forty years old. By this them about.' he meant that he was not hampered by tra- 50 He had no patience with perfunctory ditions, but brought to the work the fresh work of any sort, or with adherence to viewpoint of the outsider. precedents. If news worth while was in At the time the Star was established the sight he would throw all the resources of conventional newspaper was in a rut. the paper into getting it. But if he felt Pulitzer had not yet gone to New York to 55 that something else than news was of most stir up the dry bones there. Newspapers public interest, then that was the thing were chiefly the chroniclers of routine that concerned him. news. Mr. Nelson attacked the problem ' I don't enjoy traveling in the well- C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AND INTERVIEWS 139 trodden path,' he would say. ' The Star price. A few years later he bought the should pioneer.' Kansas City Times and made it the morn- If a poem of Rudyard Kipling, or a ing edition of the Star, still without in- story by Sam Blythe was the most in- creasing the price. teresting thing'that had come into the of- 5 The last innovation was one of the great fice that day, his instructions were to ' play pioneering achievements of American it up' on the first page. journalism. Thirteen papers a week, de- livered everywhere, for ten cents; but the stuck to his own methods outcome justified Mr. Nelson's confidence. He had the greatest scorn for the sug- ,0 The same attitude was apparent in the gestion that some other newspaper handled founding of the Weekly Kansas City Star. material in another way. ' What the It was founded, not to make money, but other fellow does does n't interest me,' he to make a contribution to American farm would say. ' Newspapers that are edited life. with a view to attracting attention from '5 ' I took pencil and paper,' Mr. Nelson other newspapers are failures. We are said, ' and figured that we could afford to running the Star for our readers, not for print a four-page farm weekly for twen- other newspapers.' ty-five cents a year. Nobody else had ever The advent of yellow journalism never done it. But I felt it was possible, that disturbed him, and he made no conces- 20 we were in a position to do it, and that sions to it in the way of big headlines, or we ought to do it.' comic supplements. His was one of the few newspapers in America that failed to adopted readable type be influenced by the new movement. He Mr. Nelson's ideals of giving the reader believed the movement was vulgar and 25 the most possible for his money showed bad. Over and over he declared he would in all the details of his management. He quit the business before he would get out felt, for example, that the size of type used a shoddy, vulgar paper. in newspapers was trying on the eyes. So One night a few years ago there was he discarded it and had the Star set in a meeting of managing editors and pub- 3° larger type. With the larger, brevier type, lishers of a group of the most important he used first a style of type face that he newspapers in the United States. He felt was exceedingly artistic. After two gave them a dinner at his home. They or three years he decided that it was not asked him for a little talk as they sat at quite as legible as a blacker type, so he the table after the dessert. 35 threw the handsome type away and or- ' Well, gentlemen,' he said, ' I have one dered the other, comment to make about American news- For a. long time he would not use illus- papers. The great bulk of them are al- trations in the Star because he felt a news- lowing Mr. Hearst to edit them. They paper could not do them well, and he never are copying his papers. Maybe Mr. 4° was for doing anything he could not do Hearst had to do what he did to attract well. But finally he decided on the use attention. But so long as I have anything of line drawings. Other newspapers to say about it, Mr. Hearst is n't going to gradually adopted the mechanical form of edit the Kansas City Star.' reproduction of photographs known as 45 half tones. This process was vastly gave good measure cheaper than the one the Star was using, It was a sacred principle with him to but Mr. Nelson would not consider it, for give his readers more for their money two reasons : In the first place the half than they could possibly buy anywhere tone is likely to smear and blur in the else on earth. The question with him 50 rapid printing, and in the second place a never was what he could make out of the mechanical reproduction never interested Star, but how much he could afford to give him. nis readers The Star was established, as I have THE ' STAR ' HIS passion said, as an afternoon newspaper at ten 55 A young artist once brought him a cents a week. When he felt that he could painstaking copy of a photograph he had afford to increase the service he added the made. Mr. Nelson spoke kindly to the Sunday morning paper at no increase in young man and then said: 140 WRITING OF TODAY ' The great fault with your work is something that you consider a virtue. VIII You have simply copied the photograph. You haven't put any life or spirit into NORMAN HAPGOOD it.' 5 The Star was a passion with him. PHILIP LITTELL Nothing hurt him so much as to see it do things in a commonplace way. Nothing W ew *«*»«£ SSfo^Ind 1 pubfisher.f y perm,ss!on delighted him so much as a piece of work that showed distinction in treatment. 10 Logic, an elementary course given Three years ago he wrote his associates twenty-eight years ago by Professor from his summer home in Magnolia, Mas- Royce, that was the setting in which I sachusetts : first saw Norman Hapgood. Of course we ' I 'm afraid I am wearying you by were n't acquainted then, having been in writing so much about details of the pa- 15 the same class at Harvard for only two per. But the Star is my life.' years. The shape of his head was strik- All his life Mr. Nelson was a builder, ing, but not so striking as his expression. He built scores of houses, and he once In a flock of students who looked dutifully remarked that he supposed that every year attentive or bored or conscientiously acute, for fifty years he must have built at least 20 Hapgood's expression was egregious. He two miles of rock road. looked amused. You would have guessed ' Building houses,' he once said, ' is the he found the detection of fallacy about the greatest fun in the world.' He was his most amusing game he had ever played, own architect, although in the more im- and you would have been right. In those portant buildings he relied on professional 25 days he liked logic quite as well as base- architects to work out the proportions and ball. None of his contemporaries could the details. split the hair with nicer hand. As a nice Things that were simple, substantial and yet humorously ruthless detective of fal- well proportioned especially appealed to lacy he gained his earliest reputation at him. He could not endure anything 3° Harvard. shoddy. Five or six years later I had my second , good look at him. Although the law was the star s new home not his first c hoice, he was one of the best He got his inspiration for the present two or three men in his class at the Har- bor building from the McLean home in 35 vard Law School, and had emerged in a Washington. Taking an early morning Chicago law office. I don't know how his walk with a member of the staff he mind lived its life by day. His real men- stopped and looked over the tapestry brick tal life began after dinner, when he and home, in the style of the Italian renais- his friends would start an evening-long sance. 4° talk about Maletesta, or when he would ' That 's what we want for our new stretch himself on a sofa, in his board- building,' he said. ing-house bedroom, and read French for He entrusted the designing of the hours on end — Madame du Deffand, building to an architect who worked out Merimee, Stendhal. At this epoch he used an adaptation of the McLean home under 45 to write in the Yellow Book, among other Mr. Nelson's supervision. things about ennui, of which he has all his life had no first-hand knowledge. These oak hall his residence essays, with the slightly later articles on Mr. Nelson's home, Oak Hall, stands Balfour, Rosebery, and John Morley which within grounds some thirty acres in ex- 50 appeared in the Contemporary Review, tent, in the center of the best residence were more ' written ' than anything he section of Kansas City. He designed and has done in the last ten years. There was supervised its construction. a time when it irritated him to be told He had a great stock farm in this county that they were also written better. Even with a real farm house, a low rambling 55 now, though the subject does n't interest one-story building surrounded with a him, you can make him a little tired by white picket fence. His summer home asking why he no longer writes as he was at Magnolia Beach, Massachusetts. wrote then. In this period his interest be- C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AND INTERVIEWS 141 gan its significant shift from books to print, Hapgood has gone everywhere, met men, from past to present, from the split- everybody, served on committees, made table hair to the big brush. speeches, copiously conferred. His sub- To his next, his early New York period, jects are what every one is talking about belong those solid, acute, documented 5 or what every one is on the point of talk- lives of Lincoln and Washington which ing about. It is in talk and in the news scarcely read like the improvisations they of the day that he gets the topics which really were. They tell you more about serve him best. . His mind seizes these Lincoln and Washington than about the topics and does things to them. It digs evolution of Norman Hapgood. For docu- 10 into them until it strikes a layer of help- ments upon Hapgood as he then was you ful truth, which must not lie too far be- had better consult the dramatic criticism low the surface to be exposed to average he contributed to the old Commercial Ad- eyes. Unconsciously he has almost ceased vertiser, now the Globe. He had almost to believe that a truth can be important if all the qualifications of a dramatic critic 15 four or five hundred words cannot make except taste. There was a healthy pug- it clear to the average. According to nacity in his articles. Plays and acting Walter Pater, the first requisite of a good and management and the theatrical trust prose style is a complicated subject matter gave him things to say which he cared to grapple with. The first requisite of a prodigiously to get said. He made his 20 good journalistic style is a subject matter readers care, made them realize the im- which Norman Hapgood can make clear portance of taking sides, of taking the to you before you get off your suburban right side. Among managers he discrim- train. inated the sheep from the goats. He be- The second requisite is punch, which is labored the goats until some of them tried 25 most accurately known by counting those to butt him off his job. Then he came who feel it. A few steps toward knowl- back at them harder than ever, without edge of it may nevertheless be taken along ever losing his temper. His manner of other ways. Punch is something which writing could not help changing. Once Arthur Brisbane has, and Sam Adams you might have supposed his aim was to 3° and Dean Swift, and which Walter Bage- make subtleties clear to the subtle. Now hot and Max Beerbohm have n't. So far he began to write as if he wanted the deaf I can follow Hapgood, at a respectful dis- to hear. By taking sides, and by wishing tance, not understanding very well, get- other people to take sides, he was learning ting a little muddled. Beyond this point to talk at a mark, his audience. At the 35 I am lost, though I cling to the guiding end of this period he was ready for the doctrine that there can be no punch with- rest of his life work. Henceforth he out emotion, that light without heat would address his contemporaries through does n't interest our readers, that dry light a megaphone. makes dry reading. His association with Collier's started 4° Adherents of this creed, confined to mat- from an accident. F. P. Dunne, who was ter which punch and repetition can make writing the Collier editorials, happened to clear and interesting to an audience of sev- be going away for a week or so, and asked eral hundred thousand, are further re- Hapgood to fill in. The owners of the stricted by the fear of getting in wrong, of paper liked his work . so well that later, 45 occupying positions that cannot be de- when Dunne wanted to resign, they cabled fended. It is one of Hapgood's superi- an offer of his place to Hapgood, who was orities to most journalists that he has then sunning himself on the Italian Ri- felt these restrictions less than they, viera, writing a few meditative essays that that he _ has been free to choose so he has never been willing to print. 5° many things to fight for and to fight. Since that spring morning in 1903 when against. His courage has often put him he sat down to his desk at Collier's, in exposed positions, which he has de- he has renounced meditation. For the fended so stoutly, and from which he last ten years his thinking has been rapid has made such destructive sorties, that his and controversial. Believing that too 55 readers have come over to his side. much of our editorial writing has been Armed with the goods, which he certainly done by men who do nothing except sit had on Secretary Ballinger and President at desks, and who read nothing except Taft, Hapgood literally did not care how 142 WRITING OF TODAY many enemies he made. His moral ardor graphs beginning ' Whistler is dead ' or led him even into boring many readers not ' McKim is dead,' and reading like plaster so morally ardent, but he lost neither head casts of an emotion. His queer prefer- nor heart nor patience. He gained his ences in verse, for example, which irritate end. His successful campaign was a sky- 5 one in print, because they there sound as high warning to men who wanted their if he thought them important, are in talk friends to grab our national resources, only the quaint idiosyncrasies which give He put an inferior Secretary of the In- him feature. terior out of business. It was a solid In Hapgood's talk even President Wil- piece of work that Hapgood did for con- 10 son seems like a man of this world. His servation in Collier's. And he did it, such loyalty to the President is ubiquitous and are the pleasant oddities of journalism, combative as it is in print, but it doesn't without ever mastering, as a scholar mas- make me dislike that image of him, half ters all the diseases of Greek verbs, all saint and half trustee and all great man, the ins and outs of the Glavis-Ballinger- 15 which forms itself in my mind as I read Pinchot row. Harper's Weekly. When Hapgood is Both as an editorial writer and as a talking instead of writing, he doesn't im- maker of speeches he is most damaging pose trusting the President upon me as a when he retorts. In his answers to op- disagreeable duty, ponents the old dialectician refines the 20 worshiper of punch. When he is talking to a friend this old dialectician is still very IX much alive. And in talk his interest is almost as dirigible as of old. At the end THE BUILDER OF THE CANAL of a long summer afternoon, walking home 25 parwttam mqwnp from a ball game, he is quite ready to MRNHAM BISHOP choose, from the men and women of all [World's Work, August, 1912. By permission of epochs, the dozen who would be most author and Polisher.] agreeable together at dinner. He has unconsciously on his part, un- - i.- * 4 A A ■ *„ii, Lr.„ ~i„ ™„.,,-i re consciously on the part of others, his uiflu- his_ taste. And in talk you are secure 55 ence ig pervasive . y N in expr ^ ss ; ng t his against anything resembling his printed op i n ; on of Colonel Goethals, do I for a enormities — his disquisitions on break- moment wish to depreciate, much less to fast or Shakespeare, his obituary para- ignore, the zeal and fidelity shown by the C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AND INTERVIEWS 143 heads _ of departments in the present Canal 'Some day in September, 1913, I expect organization. Gorgas, Hodges, Gaillard, De- to go over to Colon and take the Panama vol, Rousseau, Bishop, one and all, so far R a ii roa d steamer that happens to be at the as my brief stay afforded me opportunities dock th d t her through the Canal, of reaching an opinion, were stamped by the r T( . ,, .£ ,„„? T '11 ~;™ it- same die. Of some, of course, I saw but lit- 5 If ™ e &*; a11 the wa ? acro * s > .} ll ^ * tie; others I did not meet at all; but indi- ?", ,° e news P a P ers :, and lf we don *' cations of the influence of Goethals were, I I H keep quiet about it. thought, perceptible everywhere. Quiet, re- This failed to satisfy one visitor, who, served, unassuming, known to every one en- after entering the Chairman's modest of- gaged on the work, but noticed, as he quietly 10 fice with great pomp and circumstance, de- moved around, by no one, he gave the im- Hvered the following oration in a voice pression_ of conscious because innate but t h a t was distinctly heard at Bas Obispo, unobtrusive force. He was a natural diplo- ; n it f the noon blasting in the Cut: mat as well as an educated engineer; and, < £• 1 1 r *u 1 ~ a: i*r u whether dealing with labor conditions or . Col ° nel Goethals, my office in Wash- Latin- American officials and races, the Pan- « mgton is, as you probably know, the cen- ama situation of today stands in quite as ter of the diplomatic life of the capital, much need of a skilful diplomat as of a All the diplomats come there almost daily, trained engineer. and they constantly say to me, " You know the Canal will never be finished ; the slides If such be the case, then the local de- 20 and-ah, this and that will prevent it from mand for diplomacy must be great indeed, ever being used." Now, Colonel, what But though the Chief Engineer were to would you advise me to say to them ? ' combine the wiles of Machiavelli with the With a twinkle in his eye, and the ready virtues of Mr. Bryce, it would seem as if smile they know so well on the Isthmus, he had more than enough engineering on 25 the Colonel replied instantly, hand to keep him from exercising them. ' I would n't say anything.' He has to dig a deep artificial canon nine miles long; and build a dozen huge locks, nipping a 'spickety' revolution each containing more solid concrete than Colonel Goethals has much diplomatic there is stone in the great Pyramid of 30 work constantly thrust upon him. Panama Cheops. In these locks must be erected City is the capital of a free and inde- forty-seven pairs of steel gates, each as pendent republic and our Government tall and as broad as a six-story office maintains there a legation of the first building; and to move the elaborate ma- class. The native officials and politicians, chinery that will open and close these 35 however, persist in taking their troubles gates and tow ships through the locks, the to the chairman of the Isthmian Canal Chagres River has been turned into the Commission, who is also the Governor of concrete-lined spillway of the Gatun the Canal Zone, instead of to the Amer- Dam, where it will drive, with all the ican minister. This is a presidential year force of its once-dreaded floods, the tur- 40 in Panama as well as in the United bines of the electric power-plant. The States, and early in the spring the repre- United States Government has increased sentatives of each party came running to the width of the locks, originally 95 feet, Colonel Goethals to warn him that the to no, and their length from 950 to 1000 wicked men on the other side were trying feet; has added half as much again to the 45 to stir up riot and revolution. The Col- 200-foot channel through the Cut, and has onel smiled on them paternally, ordered $14,000,000 worth of fortifications ' Well, if there should be any disturb- — all to be done without delay or an in- ance, you know we have a regiment here.' crease of force. Instead of throwing up ' Oh, no, no, no, Seiior Gobernador ! It his hands in despair at these huge addi- 50 will not come to that ! ' tions to his task, Colonel Goethals wel- Colonel Goethals and the commander of corned them as needed improvements, that regiment were presently made the And when some one asked him whether members of a committee, under the chair- these things and the 18,000,000 cubic yards manship of the American minister, to of earth and rock brought into the Cut by 55 supervise the registration and voting, slides would delay the opening of the Canal ' Before the Americans came,' the head until after January I, 1915, the Colonel of the Liberals assured me, 'it was not replied : the man who had the most votes who was 144 WRITING OF TODAY elected. It was the man who had the most out Saturday morning. About half -past rifles and machetes.' Refereeing a presi- seven Friday evening, a member of the dential campaign and teaching Central union called the Colonel up on the tele- Americans to vote with ballots instead of phone and asked for his decision. He banana-knives are among the interesting 5 got it. minor duties of the Chief Engineer. 'Call up the penitentiary and they'll A far more serious affair than any num- tell you my decision. Jones is still there ; ber of Spickety revolutions was the threat- and every man that fails to report at seven ened strike of the American railroad men to-morrow morning goes out of the serv- in 1911. Every shovelful of dirt that 10 ice.' comes out of the Cut is hauled, on the There was no walk-out Saturday morn- average, ten miles by rail before it is ing. At a ball game the next week, the finally disposed of. An elaborate network man who had telephoned came up to bat of tracks (the skilful arrangement of and a voice from the bleachers yelled: which is a monument to the practical 15 ' Hello, Bill ! You here ? Thought you knowledge of railroading possessed by and the rest were goin' up north to live Colonel Goethals's predecessor, Mr. John under the Con-sti-too-tion ! ' F. Stevens), hundreds of locomotives, and Bill struck out. thousands of cars are required that the dirt may be carried away as fast as the 20 liked by everybody big steam-shovels can dig it. Then there Do the free-born American citizens in is the Panama Railroad, with its heavy the Canal Zone actually ' enjoy ' this stern passenger and commercial freight traffic, military despotism more than ' the protec- which must not be interrupted, though tion of the Constitution, a jury trial, tran- the line is being changed from a double 25 quility, and the pursuit of happiness ' ? track running through the rapidly filling They certainly behaved as if they did on bed of Gatun Lake to the new permanent a certain occasion when a very distin- single track on higher ground. Finally guished visitor came to the Isthmus and there are the labor trains, that are kept the Colonel stepped forward, as chairman as busy carrying the men back and forth 30 of the mass-meeting that had been called from their work to their quarters as the in the visitor's honor, to introduce him. traction system of a small city. Without A large majority of the five or six thou- railroads, work on the canal would be con- sand American employees had crowded fined to dredging at the two entrances. into the old machine-shop that had been One dark night in August, 1910, an en- 35 cleared and decorated for the meeting and, gineer whom we may call Jones heard two at the sight of that familiar white figure torpedoes explode under his locomotive standing at the edge of the platform, they but, instead of stopping, kept on and exploded like a stampeded National Con- crashed into the rear of a freight train, vention. It was fully five minutes before killing the conductor. Jones was found 40 the cheering stopped and the Colonel was guilty of involuntary manslaughter by the able to introduce the speaker of the even- Supreme Court of the Canal Zone and was ing. The very distinguished visitor arose sentenced to one year in the penitentiary, and was received with a little polite hand- At a somewhat excited mass-meeting of clapping. engineers and trainmen, it was resolved 45 Colonel Goethals is a fighter and. he will that unless Jones was immediately re- fight a trust as readily as he will fight a leased they would resign and return to the labor union. Whole cargoes of tainted United States, where they could ' enjoy meat have been shipped back by the Com- the protection of the Constitution, a jury missary, because the Beef Trust's goods trial, tranquility, and the pursuit of hap- 50 were not up to sample. Thousands of piness.' square yards of screening were condemned Colonel Goethals was then on his way and left unpaid for, as soon as it was dis- back from a visit to Washington, and the covered that the Copper Trust had put in acting chairman persuaded the men to so much iron that they were rapidly fall- postpone action until he reached the 55 ing to pieces with rust. Colonel Goethals Isthmus. He arrived on a Thursday and, is determined that no contractors shall be- unless Jones was released by six o'clock come rich by supplying the Panama Canal Friday afternoon, the men were to walk with rotten food and shoddy material, as C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AND INTERVIEWS 145 so many did in the days of the De Lesseps For no amount of success as an en- Company, gineer and administrator can quite com- pensate this true West Pointer for the the squarest boss ' l oss of his own c h sen trade of war. ' He 's the squarest boss I ever worked 5 Though he has under his command an for,' said a gray-headed member of the army of forty thousand men, with all the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, as efficiency of the German army and none we sat on the platform at Culebra station of its stiffness, and a love for their leader and listened to the hymns the Jamaican like that of the Old Guard for the Little Negroes were shouting in the red and black 10 Corporal, still he cannot help envying the tin chapel across the tracks. 'And I've youngest 'shavetail' who ever led a naif- worked for 'em all, from Jim Hill to a company in pursuit of a gang of Moro out- bunch of Spicketies in Guatemala. I 've laws. For he has never seen active serv- been at it twenty-five years, and I 've ice. Entering West Point in 1876 on the never seen better railroading than they 've 15 appointment of the then famous ' Sunset ' got right here on the Isthmus.' Cox, Colonel Goethals has spent all the The man in the cab speaks that way of thirty-two years since his graduation in the President of the Panama Railroad; building irrigation works in the West and the Republic of Panama is glad to be coast-fortifications in the East, as in- nursed by the Governor of the Canal 20 structor in engineering at the Military Zone; and Congressmen have almost Academy, as Chief Engineer of the First ceased asking the Chairman of the Isth- Army Corps during the war with Spain, mian Canal Commission unimportant ques- and as Chairman and Chief Engineer of tions in an important manner, because, as the Isthmian Canal Commission. Surely one M. C. plaintively declared, the Col- 25 this has been better service for a man of onel, though invariably courteous, ' al- his brain-power than endlessly shouting, ways makes us feel like a lot of darned ' Squads right ! Squads left ! ' on a dusty fools.' parade ground, or doing dare-devil police The most absolute despot in the world, work in Mindanao. He is changing the he can command the removal of a moun- 30 whole map of the world : a change that tain from the landscape, or of a man from promises to be far more permanent and his dominions, or of a salt-cellar from that profound than any brought about by a man's table. As an engineer, he could mere conqueror. And yet Colonel Goe- earn a millionaire's income whenever he thals cannot help an almost boyish feeling chose to go into private employ. As a 35 of discontent because, while his classmates judge, he is spoken of with Solomon and and a whole generation of younger men, Daniel and Haroun al Raschid. He has to say nothing of untrained civilians like received honorary degrees from Harvard Wood and Funston and Roosevelt, have and Yale and Columbia and he has been had their chances to lead charges and win invited to lunch by the Emperor of Ger- 40 hard-fought actions, he has been a mere many (where, instead of kissing the hand peace-soldier, of the Empress, he innocently shook it). Distinguished foreign visitors have as- Who never set a squadron in the field, sured him that in their countries such Nor the division of a battle knew, work as his would be rewarded by a title 45 of nobility and high rank in the army. A S0LDIER without a uniform Even the praise-grudging American ad- He has not worn his uniform since he mits that ' about the only thing you can came to Panama in 1907 (and when he say against that man Goethals is that he is does take it out of moth-balls at the end handing down a mighty tough name for 50 of the job he will not have to let out the posterity to pronounce.' Success and sword-belt by a single hole). They waste fame and power are his ; and yet, when very little time "on the Isthmus changing discussing the remote possibility of a revo- uniforms and turning out the guard. All lutionary outbreak in Panama City, he the military smartness you will find there, sighed wistfully and said, ' The 10th In- 55 outside the camps of the Marines and the fantry would be sent in to put it down — 10th Infantry, is the exclusive property of and I could n't march in at the head of the Zone Police. To see one of those big them.' bronzed soldier-policemen on mounted pa- 146 WRITING OF TODAY trol is to wish that Frederic Remington dock that is to be built there — when Con- could have lived to have painted him. The gress gives the word. The rising waters trooper's right hand flies up to salute a of Gatun Lake are fast backing up to the white-haired man in baggy duck trousers, machine shops at Gorgona, which cannot a black alpaca coat, and an ugly little 5 be removed to their permanent site near straw hat — and you realize that the latter the dry-dock until Congress gets through is the more soldierly figure of the two. In playing presidential year politics. The spite of civilian clothes and more than construction force is rapidly breaking up, thirty years' absence from drill, Colonel but the operating force cannot be organ- Goethals is no shapeless desk-chair war- 10 ized ; and hundreds of trained men, as rior, but a man to inspire the words of eager to stay with their chief as he is sorry Bret Harte's priest : to lose them, have had to go north. In the meantime, a few concrete Now, by the firm grip of the hand on the wharves are being built at Balboa; and, at bridle, , , ,, i 5 the other end of the Canal, the beautiful By the straight line from the heel to the 3 , , ,, . . „„,,',.„ ( - . f , a shoulder avenue of palms that used to fringe the By the curt speech — nay, nay, no offense, water-front of Cristobal' is being left far son, inland, as an elaborate system of docks is You are a soldier. being pushed out into Limon Bay. Eight 20 powerful electric cranes have been or- The only misleading thing about that dered to handle freight at Balboa, where quotation is the first line, for, though the hundreds of acres of land have been made Colonel keeps an exceedingly firm ' hand by filling in swamps and tidal flats with on the bridle ' of the whole canal organiza- earth and rock from the Cut. When this tion, no one ever sees him in a McClellan 25 land is finally covered with docks and saddle. His trusty steed is a swift and warehouses, it should bring in a very comfortable motor-car mounted on flanged pretty rental to the United States Gov- wheels and looking more like a taxicab ernment, which owns every inch of it. gone railroading than anything else in the Here at Balboa, Colonel Goethals plans world. It is painted the regulation bilious 30 to concentrate all the equipment of the yellow of Panama Railroad passenger present Commissary and Quartermaster's coaches, and you can scare a shirker out Departments : a cold-storage plant that can of a wet-season's growth by yelling, ' Here freeze a thousand carcasses of beef or a comes the Yellow Peril ! ' But as likely thousand gallons of ice-cream ; a bakery as not the 'Yellow Peril' (also known as 35 equipped with automatic bread, .pie, and the ' Brain Wagon ') is running empty, be- cake machines ; a completely-stocked gen- cause the Colonel has dropped off to take eral store; and a laundry that could re- a short-cut to a steam shovel or a bunch ceive an in-coming ship's linen and deliver of compressed-air drills, or a new drainage it to her by the Panama Railroad before ditch, or something else that has interested 40 she reached the other end of the Canal. him. Presently he will come along The Government would then, with its dry- perched on top of a loaded dirt-train docks and machine-shops, with its own ('dirt' means anything from mud to 10- coal-bunkers and lighters, and with the ton lumps of trap) ; or walking at a good, handy tanks and pipe-line of the Union swinging pace over rough construction 45 Oil Company of California, be able to sup- tracks and slippery fragments of splin- ply any ship that passed through the Canal tered rock. A morning stroll with Colonel with anything from a seabiscuit to a new Goethals in the Culebra Cut is fully equal propeller shaft. And some day this peace- to a walk with Colonel Roosevelt in Rock ful, profitable trade might save us more Creek Park. 5° than could be counted in time or dollars, There are ninety-nine busy steam shov- when a fleet of transports came through els on the Isthmus and one idle one, and with empty bunkers, or a battered dread- the Colonel would rejoice more over put- nought limped into Balboa shipyards, to ting that one to work than over the ninety- be sent back to the fighting line, and-nine that are safe in the fold. That 55 Colonel Goethals is thinking of all those idle steam shovel is standing back of Sosa things — but most of all of that idle steam- Hill, near Balboa, at the Pacific entrance shovel behind Sosa Hill, of the Canal, ready to dig the great dry The operating force (about 2500 men C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AND INTERVIEWS 147 with their wives and families) will live at the tramp ship. Any attempt to raise Balboa in a model town to be built en- rates unduly could easily be upset by the tirely of reinforced cement. Here also Government's chartering a number of will be barracks for a battalion of marines, tramps and running them as public freight- who may be needed to keep drunken 5 ers between the ports affected until the stevedores and sailors from breaking up rates came down. This would be more the toy police force of Panama City. The economical than the proposed plan of turn- main body of the garrison which the War ing the existing Panama Railroad Steam- Department wishes to keep permanently on ship Line into a permanent Government- the Isthmus, two brigades of infantry, a 10 owned line between Atlantic and Pacific regiment of cavalry, and a battalion of ports. Such a line would probably not field artillery, besides enough coast artil- pay, and should not be made a charge on lerymen to man the heavy fortifications on the Canal.' either side, will be quartered at a place When I asked his opinion of the scheme just across the Canal from the present 15 to use the Panama Railroad and Canal town of Culebra. Ten years from now, equipment, after it is no longer needed on the empty concrete shell of the unfinished the Isthmus, for building Government Catholic church may serve to point out to railroads in Alaska, Colonel Goethals re- the tourist the site of Old Culebra, as the plied : gaunt stone tower of San Jerome does that 20 ' Its advisability must be determined by of Old Panama. Colonel Goethals says: two things: the cost of transfer and the ' All our present towns are mere tem- character of the roads to be built. If porary construction camps, and practically what are contemplated are comparatively all the houses in them will be falling to short, isolated lines running from the coast pieces by the time the Canal is finished. 25 to the coal-fields, then our 5-foot gauge As for settling an American colony in the equipment would probably do well enough. Canal Zone, there will be very little farm- But if the Government is going in for rail- ing land left outside of what must be cov- road building there on a large scale, there ered by the lake or taken for military pur- would be no economy in anything but new poses ; and the best of that is already held 30 and standard gage equipment. As for by native and Chinese market-gardeners, transferring the organization from Pan- with whom our people could not hope to ama to Alaska, there will be none left to compete. Americans wishing to buy transfer.' farms in Panama will find more room and The place to see Colonel Goethals at his better land in the Province of Chiriqui. 35 best is from a certain chair in his private The Canal Zone should be made a military office at Culebra, between eight and eleven reservation, like Sandy Hook. Our pri- on Sunday morning. Here, at a flat- mary purpose in building the Canal was topped desk and with a tin of cigarettes not commercial but military : to make sure before him, the Colonel sits in most in- that no battleship of ours would ever have 4° formal state, and every man or woman to sail round South America, as the Ore- who has a grievance can come and state it gon did, in time of war.' to the Man at the Top. From his deci- Colonel Goethals naturally prefers the sions there is no appeal, except to the sort of tolls that would bring the greatest President of the United States. M. Jus- volume of business to the Canal, that 45 serand, the French Ambassador, after wit- would enable it to pay the largest direct nessing one of these Sunday morning in- revenue to the Government. He favors terviews, compared it to St. Louis's court a toll slightly lower than that of Suez, and of justice beneath the oak at Vincennes. absolutely uniform, regardless of flag or In quick succession the cases pass owner, except to American ships plying 50 through. A Colon banker wants the priv- between our coast ports, if that trade is ilege of handling ships' drafts for Canal kept closed to foreign vessels. His idea tolls, and is referred to the Treasury De- of the way to keep down freight rates is partment. An engineer's wife wants a beautifully simple, but imagine the angry ' Type 17 ' house in Corozal, because the protests that would go up from every 55 baby cannot stand a flat. Could n't the American railroad and shipowner if it Colonel see the district quartermaster were put into effect : about it, before they go up on leave, Tues- 'The determining factor in all rates is day? The Colonel promises. If the 148 WRITING OF TODAY Spanish War Veterans get free trans- ' Mrs. was sent up on the ship be- portation on the special train, Memorial fore you.' Day, are the Kangaroos, who are em- The man took his hat and left without a ployees, to be crowded out by the ioth In- word. fantry, who are not? Let a committee of 5 The last visitor of the morning is Big all the fraternal orders appear next Sun- Bill Morrison, the Socialist blacksmith day to talk it over. When a man has from Gorgona, and he comes, not with a been brought down from the States as a kick, but with an invitation. The boys in locomotive hostler, but has got a run the the shops are going to give a banquet, to day he hit the Isthmus, why has n't he i celebrate the breaking-up of the old camp, drawn an engineer's pay for the first and they want the Colonel to be there, month? He shall get it, if the records of ' Can I get such a breakfast next morn- the Division Office bear him out. A man's ing as I had at Mrs. Morrison's in 1907? brother has been terribly injured by the That was the best I ever had on the Isth- relocation of the Panama Railroad, but 15 mus.' has been told that he cannot sue for dam- ' Sure ! ' ages, because that work is being done by ' Then I '11 come.' He passes over the the Isthmian Canal Commission, which is cigarettes and the two sit down as ami- the United States Government. The cably as if there were not a shoulder-strap Colonel will report favorably on it if their 20 or a red flag in the world. Congressman will introduce a special bill ' Colonel, did you see much of Socialism — the only remedy. The best nurse in when you were in Germany ? ' Colon Hospital has resigned after a tiff ' The Kaiser told me he was going to with the head nurse, and the doctors want stamp it all out.' her back. Can the Colonel get her to 25 ' Bismarck tried that, you know.' apologize for the sake of discipline ? ' Now look here, Morrison, you must n't He '11 try. say we have Socialism down here. Intro- No matter how sudden the change of duce the franchise, and we 'd go to pieces, subject, the Colonel always seems to know It's a despotism; and that's the best form the rules of a man's division, or shop, or 30 of government' union, by heart. He never has to look 'It is,' agrees the big Socialist, with a them up in a pamphlet ; though the touch laugh ; ' if you 've got a good despot.' of a button will bring it, together with the The last visitor is gone and Colonel written record of any man in the service. Goethals tilts wearily back in his desk- And almost invariably he winds up the 35 chair. The cigarette-box is empty ; for the interview with a good, hearty laugh, in last three hours he has been nervously which the visitor joins. Even the little lighting . cigarettes and throwing them gray-haired woman who begged for pro- away half-smoked. There are very many tection from a drunken husband, ' He wrinkles in his face and the white curls knows he must n't hurt me, Colonel, since 40 are growing thin about his temples, but you wrote him that letter, but he 's got his smile is still patient and unwearied, into a fuss with another woman now,' Looking over his spectacles at the inter- ceased sobbing and went out almost smiling viewer in the corner, the Colonel says, when the Colonel said, ' I '11 speak to him.' ' Do you know, sometimes this gets to For that office is famous also for inter- 45 be a blamed old grind ? ' views of another sort, that do not end in laughter. One stalwart Westerner, who distinguished himself at San Juan Hill but X neglected his work on the Isthmus, col- lapsed into a chair when he reached the 50 MAUDE ADAMS outer office and after five minutes said tremulously, ' I guess my knees will hold FREDERIC DEAN me up now.' A man who had been caught in an intrigue with another man's wife was [Good Housekeeping Magazine, May, 1913. told curtly to take his annual leave at once 55 By P e ™'^™-3 and resign as soon as it expired. When The dominant motif of Maude Adams' he furiously demanded an explanation, life is minding her own business. She's Colonel Goethals said simply, an actress, and holds to the old-fashioned C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AND INTERVIEWS 149 notion that her place is behind the foot- She cares as little for equal suffrage as lights, and not on Fifth Avenue; that she she does for dinner gowns, and she appears to better advantage in the breeches could n't tell the names of the box-holders of Peter Pan than in smart Parisian at the Metropolitan Opera House if her frocks; and she prefers a romp with her 5 hope of heaven depended upon its correct big St. Bernard, Meta, down at Sandy- recital. garth Farm, to the most select social func- But with every detail of her art she is tion. on delightfully intimate terms, and, curi- So far, she has rigidly adhered to the ously enough, it is the mechanism of the mode of living she set for herself when 10 stage — the intricacies of the stage carpen- she first began to hide behind her art and ter and scenic artist — that interest her foreswore all temptations to be dragged most and upon which is peculiarly well in- into prominence save upon her mimic formed. Gordon Craig is no more of an stage. enthusiast upon the subject of stage-light- Miss Adams is never seen on the street, 15 ing than is she. Miss Adams once sent to in the park, or in the shops. Her name is Vienna for a color effect that was used in never mentioned among ' those present ' one play at one performance. This open- at matinees, professional women's league air presentation of Schiller's play was a bazaars, actors' fund benefits or the many fair example of Miss Adams' industry and other gatherings to which stage folk flock. 20 endurance. When she first inspected the Since she was graduated from John Drew's stadium, two weeks before the perform- company, she has never attended one of his ance, she discovered that the architect had premiers, and she never enters a theater provided no means of lighting the amphi- other than the one in which she is at the theater and had made no arrangements for time playing. 25 water. She immediately installed her own Yes ; once last season she went to the electric plant and tapped the nearby water New Amsterdam. Mr. Frohman had seen mains with smaller pipes for her tem- The Pink Lady and was sure the princi- porary theater. Then she began rehear- pal comedy character would please her. sals, working sixteen hours a day, coach- Miss Adams promptly bought a seat in the 30 ing the supernumeraries, teaching the sol- gallery and enjoyed the play with the other diers how to ride their mounts, giving gods — who, unluckily for them, had no .orders to the electricians, and instructing inkling of her identity. the herders in charge of the sheep used in A color scheme of dull gray or black is the spectacle, almost invariably adhered to by Miss 35 At midnight on the eve of the perform- Adams when on the street. Over her ance, she was still directing the prelimi- head she sometimes throws a shawl, but naries of the morrow's exhibition. Chaos prefers a little round cap, and her entire reigned. That a performance would be get-up is distinctly severe. Her style in attempted within twenty-four hours and dress has hardly altered since 1900; she 40 concluded without a serious mishap, was knows absolutely nothing of the prevail- incredible; those who saw that first per- ing modes ; and the sheath gown and pan- formance remember one that was almost nier skirt are unknown quantities in the flawless. And Joan, who had apparently algebra of her wardrobe; and, as for given no heed to her own lines or stage jewelry, if she possesses any, she seldom, 45 business, was the calmest figure in the pag- if ever, wears it. eant. The one woman from whom Miss An incident happened in connection with Adams accepts invitations is Mrs. Thomas the performance before the Yale students Hastings, the architect's wife. Mrs. that is worth repeating here. Miss Adams Hastings is the president of the Ladies' 50 is diffident to a degree. When she was a Four-in-hand Driving Club and was the very young lady, she suffered so keenly first to teach Miss Adams to drive and en- from embarrassment that she has made it courage her in riding — a delight to which one of the tenets of her creed to put at she still clings. In Mrs. Hastings' home, ease similarly afflicted young persons at Miss Adams often dines, stipulating, how- 55 any cost. The president of the Yale Uni- ever, that none but the immediate family versity Dramatic Club was invited to call are to be present. And here her social ac- upon Miss Adams to arrange preliminary tivities end. details of the play selected. As he was 15° WRITING OF TODAY ushered into the reception room, he stum- that they are old, destitute players and ac- bled over furniture, blushed purple, and quaintances of her childhood, with a whispered ' How are you ? ' sank The members of Miss Adams' compa- into a seat. Miss Adams smiled in spite nies are genuinely fond of her, and, once of herself, but promptly answered, ' I hope 5 a new production is safely launched, she that I am half as well as you look ' ; and is the meekest member of the organization, before long the two were chatting like old and is never above accepting advice and friends. suggestions from the others; the source Miss Adams is preeminently a kind of the suggestion is seemingly of no con- woman. Every one associated with her 10 sequence to her, if only it have value. The receives the same cheerful greeting and no man who hauls the baggage into the thea- one in trouble need ask for her aid ; it is ter may with safety offer counsel ; the call- theirs before the request can be formu- boy runs no risk in commenting adversely lated. There used to be an old door- on the dramatic effect of a certain scene; keeper, at the stage entrance of the Em- 15 and should the second violin suggest to pire Theater, who was as well known to Miss Adams that her dress in the last act the passers-in and out as is Mayor Gaynor did not harmonize with the color scheme to the newspaper boys who frequent New of the back-drop, she would thank him and York's City Hall. One day he was taken cheerfully take the matter under serious sick and his place was filled by another. 20 advisement. Miss Adams learned that the old chap had Business pertaining to her productions lost his position and made a hurried search is transacted in Miss Adams' own office, in for him, tracing him, at last, to an East the Empire Theater building in New York. Side tenement. It was long after mid- No name is on the door, and but a few night when she found him. He was very 25 of the daily passers-by suspect the iden- ill and was being taken care of by his tity of the occupant of this particular faithful wife as best she, could. Doctors suite. Here she selects the members of and nurses were immediately summoned her company, gives orders to scenic ar- and every possible comfort provided; tists and costumers and attends to the and the next morning, and the next, 30 thousand and one details that go to make and the next came Lady Bountiful — and up the daily routine of preparation, every day, until the sufferer died, a month Until recently Miss Adams occupied a later. house in the city. She still holds title to For sixteen years, Robert Eberle was in the property, but it is down on Sandygarth Charles Frohman's employ as business 35 Farm, Ronkonkoma, Long Island, that manager. He was a man who has spent she really lives — until the hot weather his life in theatricals ; he was a favorite drives her up to her bungalow in the in the Frohman household and was given Catskills. Sandygarth may with perfect one of the first positions at the beginning propriety be called an estate. It meas- of each season. Last year he was sent 4° ures well up in the hundreds of acres — out as acting manager of the Passers-By some cultivated and some not; some company. Late in the season, he was wooded and some threaded with tiny taken ill and left in a hospital in South streams. Sandygarth Farm is the real Bend, Indiana. Miss Adams was playing theater of Miss Adams' day dreams. A in the West at the time, and hearing of Mr. 45 kennel of St. Bernards and English sheep Eberle's illness — though several hundred dogs is personally looked after by the mis- miles from the hospital — left her com- tress of the place, whose constant compan- pany on Saturday night, went to South ion is the rough-coated Meta. Bend, spent Sunday at the sick man's bed- The most interesting room in the house side, and, leaving orders for the best of 50 is the library, simply furnished with Eng- medical treatment, returned to her work lish and old Dutch solidity. Around the just in time to dress for her part on Mon- walls stand bookcases, shoulder high. The day night. A considerable share of Miss decorations are mainly souvenirs of Miss Adams' income is pledged to private char- Adams' jaunts in Europe and northern Af- ity. Somewhere among her papers there 55 rica. In one corner is a Damascus blade, is a list of pensioners which only her eyes polished with its own history ; on a shelf have seen. No one has learned more opposite the entrance, squats a grinning about these recipients of her bounty than Egyptian idol; worked on the wall, is an C. PERSONAL SKETCHES AND INTERVIEWS 151 illuminated detail of medieval fresco from Paradise and Dora in Men and a Florentine chapel; above the books, run- Women — it is always the character rep- ning around the room, is a series of etch- resented that stands out with cameo dar- ings, showing points of interest in a tour ity; each one is an individual portrait, recently taken by the hostess through 5 painted with distinction, understanding, Egypt and the East. In the music-room effect; each canvas is touched with her is a self-playing piano with music rolls of own personality, as if she were unwilling Puccini and Debussy as well as those of to leave it without the familiar ' M. A. ' Wagner and Beethoven. Miss Adams in the lower right-hand corner, plays both the piano and the harp and 10 It is the fashion to speak of Bernhardt strums occasionally on the guitar. She as ' divinely inspired,' of Duse as ' mag- goes to concerts when she can — choosing netic,' of Nazimova as ' intense,' and of a classical program ; in art she prefers the others to similar purpose — each after her sober stand-bys to ultra modern, bizarre kind; and, no doubt, the fashion is right, color effects. 15 Every actress who has visited America, Whenever Miss Adams goes abroad — from Ristori to Billie Burke, has had her whether to Chicago or to Cairo — she is individual mannerisms, and, by whatever attended by her secretary, the faithful name they are called, either tricks of Miss Boynton, who has been in her service speech, or of dress, or of movement, these long — so long that she has become a true 20 mannerisms constitute the individuality of companion, a companion who is consulted her who possesses — or is possessed by — upon every momentous question of cos- them. By their mannerisms, then, shall ye tume or farm produce ; who is present at know them. the trial of every stage effect and is the Miss Adams possesses a personality that companion of every country drive ; a true 25 is startlingly sensible and sincere, but it is helpmeet in the small things of life as well her capacity for portraiture, the gift of re- as in the large. ceiving and assimilating and representing From this glimpse of Maude Adams, the individual character, the craftsman's sense woman, it is plain that she has clipped of material and the craftsman's delight in away the non-essentials ; that she clearly 3° the use of it — plus the mannerisms of the distinguishes between the fictitious and the Woman — that give her portraits a rank real; that, lover of nature that she is, she with those of Thackeray and Raeburn; is enabled to bring a freshness and spon- with Maeterlinck's Melisande and the Car- taneity to her stage concepts, endow them men of Bresler-Gianoli ; with the best of richly and fully with the sunshine and the 35 Cissy Loftus' mimicries of yesterday and perfume of her meadows and her hills; the truest Scot in Harry Lauder's reper- that, as a lover of mankind, her ambitions toire of today. Paradoxically, her ex- cannot be small, nor her triumphs petty; clusiveness has made her the best known that, by pursuing the true things in actress on the American stage. True, we life, her art cannot but be intelligent 40 of the street know nothing of Maude in its aims and well-rounded in its Adams' mode of living; what she has for results ; and, that, by brushing away dinner, what she reads, or whether she pre- trivialities and centering upon the things fers dumb-bells or punching-bag. But, we of true importance she has adapted and do know that she eats well, reads the best especially prepared herself for the work 45 books and exercises with some potent of stage portraiture — for it is in stage body-builder — else her voice would be portraiture that Maude Adams the actress less musical, the interpretations of her excels. * lines would be less illuminating, her char- In the long list of characters she has acters less convincing as living person- paraded upon her platform of mimicry, 50 ages. from Lady Babbie to Peter Pan, as the From that eventful night at the Salt Duke in L'Aiglon, as Joan of Arc and Lake City Theater, when, nine months Rosalind; in Quality Street and What old, Maude Adams was borne bawling to Every Woman Knows; even before her the center of the stage as the chief per- starring days, as Jessie in The Bauble 55 sonage in The Lost Child, up to her recent Shop and Suzanne Blondet in- The reappearance as Peter Pan; when, as a Masked Ball — to say nothing of the still child of seven she played in J. K. Emmet's earlier successes of Nell in The Lost Frits; and, later, when the girl of nine- 152 WRITING OF TODAY teen surprised friend and critic in The Masked Ball; when she stormed the cita- del of stardom as Lady Babbie and since, in whatever character she has been seen, it has been the player and not the play that has left the impression. And, by her very absence from the public thorough- fare, she has made her entrance upon the stage of more consequence, possessed it with an element of mystery that has lent additional enchantment to her portrayals. Richard Wagner weaved the patterns of his most compelling harmonies while tramping the hills with his faithful four- footed friend as his only companion; Maude Adams perfects and polishes her Maggie Wylies and Phoebe Throssells, her Peters and her Chanticlers, wandering 5 through the woods and over the fields of Ronkonkoma with her shaggy-haired Meta by her side, reincarnating her puppets into persons, persons that live and live fully and richly ; persons of wit and fun, of fine io humanity and enchanting grace; persons whose perfected presentment upon the Em- pire stage are the results of greater things dreamed and done in secret down at Sandygarth Farm. D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES The previous sections have dealt mainly with persons and things; expository and editorial articles present, or should present, ideas. The editorial writer must first ' catch his hare,' no matter how much skill he may display in the cooking. The best articles of this type are the outcome of strong feeling or profound conviction, for the layman's notion of the hired swashbucklers of the press is, in the main, simply a popular delusion. Dr. Charles R. Miller, for many years editor-in-chief of the New York Times, said in answer to questions put to him by the Senate Committee on the Ship Purchase Bill on March 15, 1915: 'The men who write these opinions believe them. Nobody in the Times office is ever asked to write what he does not believe.' This is true of every large and well-conducted newspaper office, in which the editorial council is a long-established institution, and a decision on an important public issue is carefully discussed so that the resulting article is the product of more brains than one. ' Every newspaper that enjoys continuity of existence and management ' (again to quote Dr. Miller's evidence) ' has a certain body of principles. They are called the policy of the paper. Those are the principles and beliefs that guide its expression of opinion. . . . The managers and editorial writers are the persons responsible for the expression of opinion. They are men. They have neither haloes nor horns. They form their opinions just as other men form their opinions, by observation and reflection and information. When it comes to a specific public measure they express in their own opinions, which they write, the opinions of the paper. The opinions and policy of one paper differ from those of another. Some are for high tariff, and some are for low tariff. Some papers are radical, and some are con- servative. But each paper has a body of principles that guides its utterances.' The man who writes over his own signature enjoys greater freedom, because he carries less responsibility, his opinion being merely a personal one ; but he too is under the necessity of clear and original thinking before he can write anything worth while. After that, his task, if not easy, is at least half done. The articles selected for this section show an extraor- dinary variety of subject and treatment, but they are all alike in this — that the writer has something to say and knows how to say it. Such consummate masters of the art of ex- pression as Mr. Arthur Brisbane and Mr. Clutton Brock • — to take one American and one English example — have, very definite ideas to present as well as admirable phrases to convey their meaning. Mr. Woodrow Wilson's article on the ideal university is as remarkable for its orderly arrangement and skilful statement as are the historic despatches he has composed since as President of the United States in a momentous crisis of the national life. The am- bitious student will do well to ponder these great examples and strive to catch something of the qualities that give them distinction — intellectual insight, emotional sympathy, a firm grasp on great principles, and the power of using words to set forth precisely and forcefully the thesis the writer has in mind or the cause he has at heart. I studying journalism under Dr. Talcott Williams, at Columbia University. Here THE EDITORIAL WRITER'S is an outline of what might be said, among OPPORTUNITY other things, on this subject: 5 Writing for a newspaper is merely talk- [ARTHUR BRISBANE] ing wholesale. Instead of talking to one man, or a hundred at one time, we talk INew York Evening Journal, November 12, 1912. through newspapers to five millions Or By permission.] ° r r " v more. We have been asked to express an 10 The editorial writer's opportunity is the opinion as to ' the opportunity ' of the edi- opportunity to say something, torial writer, for the benefit of young men It is the greatest and most generally 153 154 WRITING OF TODAY neglected opportunity in the world, importance, otherwise the seconds could Young men who intend to write editorials not be counted. might learn by heart Boileau's lines: It exaggerates, in comparison with the , a slow moving hour-hand. But it does not Ma pensee au grand jour partout s offre et ,, exag g erate) considering the needs of the 'Et mongers, bien ou mal, dit toujours individual reader. auelque chose ' ' J For if the newspaper is the second-hand 'in the clock of history,' the individual is Particularly the last line, which means : the second-hand in the clock of humanity. io The nation is the minute-hand, and the My verse, good or bad, always says some- race is the hour-hand. £• The journalistic second-hand in its The editorial writer's opportunity is the rapid, exaggerated talking keeps pace chance to say something. Many writers with that human second-hand, the individ- neglect that opportunity. « ual, in his enforced concentration on the The newspaper is many things in our little things that happen in his little life, life. It is the principal literature of the An editorial can do four important American people, and, therefore, ' good or things : bad,' it is highly important to the country. Teach, Among other things, the newspaper's 20 Attack, editorial column takes the place of the Defend, public square at Athens, where one man Praise, could talk to all the citizens. Teaching is the most important and the The writer of the editorials is the talker most difficult, in the public square of today. He can, if 25 Attacking is the easiest and the most he chooses, do as much for this age as the unpleasant, although sometimes necessary. Greek with the voice, instead of the pen or The defending of good causes, of the typewriter or phonograph, did in his age. weak against the strong, of the new idea The best description of newspaper work, against ridicule, is important and usually and a very early expression also of foolish 3<> neglected by editorial writers, misunderstanding of newspaper work, may Praise also is neglected, except in a be found in one short quotation from partizan sense without meaning. Schopenhauer's essay, ' Some Forms of The newspaper is not as Schopenhauer Literature ' : says, ' a shadow on the wall,' although „. . ,, . , . . ., 35 many a newspaper is a mere shadow of The newspaper is the second-hand in the h f „ w , ra .' eV, n ii1H h P clock of history; and it is not only made of wnat a news P a P e . r sn °uld °e. baser metal than those which point to the A newspaper is a mirror reflecting the minute and the hour, but it seldom goes right public a mirror more or less defective, — if it 's wrong, the clock is wrong. but still a mirror. The papers of the dif- The so-called leading article is the chorus 4° f erent nations reflect the nations more or to the drama of passing events. less accurately. And the paper that the Exaggeration of every kind is as essential individual holds in his hand reflects that to journalism as it is to the dramatic art, for individual more or less accurately, the object of journalism is to make events go Some m i rrors and some newspapers are as far as possAle. Tnus it is that all jour- d interesting old relics, al- nahsts are, in the very nature of their call- f, , .. , s , " »*-"»-■=, ing, alarmists; and this is their way of giving though they have ceased to reflect any- interest to what they write. Herein they are tnln £ - , , , like little dogs — if anything stirs they im- And some newspapers startle the unac- mediately set up a shrill bark. customed public with the accuracy of the Therefore, let us carefully regulate the at- 50 reflection shown, and the public takes time tention to be paid to this trumpet of _ danger, to get used to it. so that it may not disturb our digestion. The newspaper does about what the Let us recognize that a newspaper is at best blic d it is the public not the news - but a magnifying glass, and very often merely that setg ^ * a shadow on the wall. 55 Tf yfm haye ^ newspaper ;„ the The newspaper, it is true, is the United States giving first place to the re- ' second-hand ' on the face of the clock of suit of a contest between eighteen men history. It must exaggerate each second's playing baseball and accomplishing nothing D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 155 useful in a ' championship series,' you may He was the 'yellow journalist' of the be sure that the public is concentrated on church. that game. He was more successful than the re- If you have newspapers devoting space spectable clergymen, because he deserved to the secret, pre-arranged murder of a 5 to be more successful ! gambler by other gamblers instigated by First have something to say. Then say a police officer, you may know that the it so that people will see it, read it, under- public' s mind is concentrated on that crime stand it, and believe it. and not on the proceedings of some scien- Those are the four things ; the reader tine convention. 10 must see, he must read, he must under- The opportunity for the editorial writer stand, he must believe, is the greatest opportunity that exists. If you want to write an editorial defend- For men have developed as men only since ing Moses against the attack of Rabbi language gave to the individual the power Hirsch, who denounces some of Moses's to transfer his thought complete to the 15 teachings, you can put almost any kind of brain of another. a heading on your editorial. The power to transfer your thought and If you head it ' Analysis of the Diatetic make it effective is the greatest power, ex- Teachings of the Ancients,' 90 per cepting the exceptional power to discover cent, of those that ' see ' the heading won't new scientific truth. 20 read. It is possible for the editorial writer You can write the same editorial, head now to talk to at least five millions every it, ' Be Kind to Poor Moses, He Had No day. That actually happens. Icebox,' and 90 per cent, of those that With our newspaper machinery as it see will read, exists it will be possible to talk to the 25 /„ entire reading public every day. No power can be greater than that. The ed- II itorial writer's power is the power of sug- gestion and the power of repetition — very MY IDEAL OF THE TRUE great forces. 30 UNIVERSITY The opportunity of the editorial writer is wasted usually. It is true that nearly WOODROW WILSON always the so-called ' leading article ' or editorial 'is the chorus of the drama of IDeKneator, November, 1909 By permission of j. > ti j_ j.1 ^ • . 1 author and publisher.] passing events. But that is not always 35 true and it will be true less and less as the The word ' university ' means, in our newspapers and newspaper readers realize modern usage, so many different things their duty and opportunity. that almost every time one employs it it The newspapers are like the churches, seems necessary to define it. Nowhere has There are eminently respectable preachers 4° it so many meanings as in America, where that say nothing and less numerous preach- institutions of all kinds display it in the Vt-ers that say something. titles they bestow upon themselves. ~ In the days of slavery the Episcopal -School, college, and university are readily Church in New Jersey rejected a picture enough distinguishable, in fact, by those offered as a frontispiece for a prayer book, 45 who take the pains to look into the scope because it showed kneeling at the feet of and methods of their teachings; but they Christ, with the widow and the orphan, a are quite indistinguishable, oftentimes, in black slave in chains. The good religious name. They are as likely as not all to gentlemen said that such a picture might bear the same title. be misconstrued as an attack on slavery 50 But practice is always the best definer ; and stir up hard feeling. Those good gen- and practice is slowly working out for us tlemen were ' the conservative press ' of in America a sufficiently definite idea of their church. what a university is. It is not the same At about the same time Henry Ward idea that has been worked out in England Beecher, in his church in Brooklyn, put up 55 or Germany or France. American uni- a runaway slave girl in the pulpit and sold versities will probably, when worked out her at public auction, the proceeds to be to the logical fulfilment of their natural devoted to the work of freeing the slaves, development, show a type distinct from all 156 WRITING OF TODAY others. They will be distinctive of what thorough introduction of the student to America has thought out and done in the the life of America and of the modern field of higher education. Those which world, the completion of the task under- are already far advanced in their develop- taken by the grammar and high schools ment even now exhibit an individual and 5 of equipping him for the full duties of characteristic organization. citizenship. It is with that idea that I The American university as we now see have said that the college stands at the it consists of many parts. At its heart heart of the American university. The stands the college, the school of general college stands for liberal training. Its training. Above and around the college 10 object is discipline and enlightenment, stand the graduate and technical schools, The average thoughtful American does in which special studies are prosecuted and not want his son narrowed in all his gifts preparation is given for particular profes- and thinking to a particular occupation, sions and occupations. Technical and pro- He wishes him to be made free of the fessional schools are not a necessary part 15 world in which men think about and un- of a university, but they are generally derstand many things, and to know and to benefited by close association with a uni- handle himself in it. He desires a train- versity; and the university itself is un- ing for him that will give him a con- mistakably benefited and quickened by the siderable degree of elasticity and adapt- transmission of its energy into them and 20 ability, and fit him to turn in any direc- the reaction of their standards and ob- tion he chooses. jects upon it. As a rule the larger uni- For men do not live in ruts in Amer- versities of the countries have law ica. They do not always or of necessity schools, divinity schools and medical follow the callings their fathers followed schools under their care and direction ; 25 before them. They are ready to move and training for these, the ' learned,' pro- this way or that as interest or occasion fessions has long been considered a nat- suggests. Versatility, adaptability, a ural part of their work. Schools of me- wide range of powers, a quick and easy chanical, electrical and civil engineering variation of careers, men excelling in have of late years become as numerous 30 businesses for which they never had any and as necessary as the schools which special preparation — these are among prepare for the older professions, and the most characteristic marks of Amer- they have naturally in most cases grown ican life, its elasticity and variety, the up in connection with universities because rapid shifting of parts, the serviceability their processes are the processes of sci- 35 of the same men for many different ence, and the modern university is, among things, and the quick intelligence of men other things, a school of pure science, of many different kinds in the common with laboratories and teachers indispen- undertakings of politics and in public af- sable to the engineer. But the spirit of fairs of all kinds. If the American col- technical schools has not always been the 40 lege were to become a vocational school, spirit of learning. They have often been preparing only for particular callings, it intensely and very frankly utilitarian, and would be thoroughly un-American. It pure science has looked at them askance, would be serving special, not general, They are proper parts of a university needs, and seeking to create a country of only when pure science is of the essence 45 specialized men without versatility or gen- of their teaching, the spirit of pure sci- eral capacity. ence the spirit of all their studies. It is The college of the ideal American uni- only of recent years we have seen versity, therefore, is a place intended for thoughtful engineers coming to recognize general intellectual discipline and enlight- this fact, preach this change of spirit ; 50 enment ; and not for intellectual discipline it is only of recent years, therefore, that and enlightenment only, but also for moral technical schools have begun to be thor- and spiritual discipline and enlightenment, oughly and truly assimilated into the uni- America is great, not by reason of her versity organization. skill, but by reason of her spirit — her There is an ideal of everything Amer- 55 spirit of general serviceableness and in- ican, and the ideal at the heart of the telligence. That is the reason why it American university is intellectual train- is necessary to keep her colleges under ing, the .awakening of the whole man, the constant examination and criticism. If D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 157 we do not, they may forget their own introduced to them only by sample. He true function, which is to supply America can be, and should be, given a thorough and the professions with enlightened grounding in mathematics, in his own men. language and in some language not his I have described the university as a 5 own, in one of the fundamental physical place with a college at its heart, but with and natural sciences, in the general con- graduate schools and professional schools ceptions of philosophy, in the outlines of standing about and around the college, history, and in the elements of correct The difficulty about thus associating teach- political thinking ;. and it is very desirable ing of different kinds, is that the spirit 10 that he should go beneath the surface in of the graduate and professional schools some one of these subjects, study it with should not be the same spirit as that of more than ordinary attention and thor- the college, and that there are certain oughness, and find in it, if he can, some dangers of infection to which the college independence of judgment and inquiry, and schools of advanced and professional 15 Students in a modern college can not all study are both alike exposed by the asso- follow the same road, and it is not de- lation. Look, first, at the danger to the sirable that they should do so. Besides college. It is in danger of getting the the thorough drill in a few fundamental point of view of the graduate and profes- subjects which they should all have, they sional schools, the point of view of those 20 should be encouraged to make the spe- who prosecute study very intensively cial, individual choices of particular fields along special lines. Their object, if they of study which will give them an oppor- be thorough, is technical scholarship, tunity to develop special gifts and apti- That should not be the object of the col- tudes and which will call out their powers lege. Its studies, as America has con- 25 of initiative and enable them to discover ceived the college (and I am sure she themselves. The college should be a has conceived it rightly), are not prose- place of various studies, alive with a great cuted with a view to scholarship. Schol- many different interests, arship can not be had at the age of The common discipline should come twenty-one, at the age at which young- 30 from very hard work, from the inexorable sters graduate from college. They may requirements that every student should by that time have been made to see the perform every task set him, whether gen- way, the arduous way, to scholarship and eral or special, whether of his own choice to desire to travel it ; but they can not or exacted by the general scheme of study have traveled it. It is a long road. A 35 prescribed for all, with care and thorough- lifetime is consumed before one reaches ness. The spirit of work should pervade the quiet inn at the end of it. The ob- the place — honest, diligent, painstaking ject of the college is a much simpler one, work. Otherwise it would certainly be no and yet no less great. It is to give in- proper place of preparation for the stren- tellectual discipline and impart the spirit 4° uous, exacting life of America in our day. of learning. Its ' liberalizing ' influences should be got We have misconceived and misused the from its life even more than from its college as an instrument of American life studies. Special studies become liberal when we have organized and used it as when those who are pursuing them asso- a place of special preparation for par- 45 ciate constantly and familiarly with those ticular tasks and callings. It is for lib-, who are pursuing other studies — studies eral training, for general discipline, for of many kinds, pursued from many points that preliminary general enlightenment of view. The real enlightenments of life which every man should have who enters come not from tasks or from books so modern life with any intelligent hope or 50 much as from free intercourse with other purpose of leadership and achievement, persons who, in spite of you, inform and By a liberal training I do not mean one stimulate you, and make you realize how which vainly seeks to introduce under- big and various the world is, how many graduates to every subject of modern things there are in it to think about, and learning. That would, of course, be im- 55 how necessary it is to think about the possible. There are too many of them, subjects you are specially interested in in At best the pupil can, within the four their right relations to many, many others, years at the disposal of the college, be if you would think of them correctly and 158 WRITING OF TODAY get to the bottom of what you are trying very formal and empty things ; recitations to do. generally prove very dull and unreward- The ideal college, therefore, should be ing. It is in conversation and natural in- a community, a place of close, natural, in- tercourse with scholars chiefly that you timate association, not only of the young 5 find how lively knowledge is, how it ties men who are its pupils and novices in va- into everything that is interesting and im- rious lines of study, but also of young men portant, how intimate a part it is of every- with older men, with maturer men, with thing that is ' practical ' and connected veterans and professionals in the great with the world. Men are not always made undertaking of learning, of teachers with 10 thoughtful by books ; but they are gen- pupils, outside the classroom as well as erally made thoughtful by association with inside of it. No one is successfully edu- men who think. cated within the walls of any particular The present and most pressing problem classroom or laboratory or museum; and of our university authorities is to bring no amount of association, however close 15 about this vital association for the benefit and familiar and delightful, between mere of the novices of the university world, the beginners can ever produce the sort of en- undergraduates. Classroom methods are lightenment which the lad gets when he thorough enough ; competent scholars al- first begins to catch the infection of learn- ready lecture and set tasks and superin- ing. The trouble with most of our col- 20 tend their performance ; but the life of the leges nowadays is that the faculty of the average undergraduate outside the class- college live one life and the undergradu- room and other stated appointments with ates quite a different one. They are not his instructors is not very much affected members of the same community; they by his studies; is almost entirely disso- constitute two communities. The life of 25 ciated from intellectual interests, the undergraduate is riot touched with the It is too freely and exclusively given personal influence of the teacher: life over to athletics and amusements. Ath- among the teachers is not touched by the letics are in themselves wholesome, and personal impressions which should come are necessary to every normal youth, from frequent and intimate contact with 30 They give him vigor and should give him undergraduates. The teacher does not the spirit of the sportsman — should keep often enough know what the undergrad- him out of many things of a very de- uate is thinking about or what models he moralizing sort which he would be inclined is forming his life upon, and the under- to do if he did not spend his energy out- graduate does not know how human a fel- 35 of-doors and in the gymnasium. Amuse- low the teacher is, how delightfully he can ment, too, is necessary. All work and no talk, outside the classroom, of the subjects play makes Jack not only a dull boy, but he is most interested in, how many in- a very unserviceable boy, with no spirit, teresting things both his life and his stud- no capacity to vary his occupations or to ies illustrate and make attractive. This 4° make the most of himself, separation need not exist, and, in the col- But athletics and amusement ought lege of the ideal university, would not never to become absorbing occupations, exis*t. even with youngsters. They should be di- It is perfectly possible to organize the versions merely, by which the strain of life of our colleges in such a way that 4$ work is relieved, the powers refreshed and students and teachers alike will take part given spontaneous play. The only way in in it; in such a way that a perfectly nat- which they can be given proper subordi- ural daily intercourse will be established nation is to associate them with things between them ; and it is only by such an not only more important, but quite as nat- organization that they can be given real 50 ural and interesting. Knowledge, study, vitality as places of serious training, be intellectual effort, will seem to undergrad- made communities in which youngsters uates more important than athletics and will come fully to realize how interesting amusement and just as natural only when intellectual work is, how vital, how im- older men, themselves vital and interest- portant, how closely associated with all 55 ing and companionable, are thrown into modern achievement — only by such an or- close daily association with them. The ganization that study can be made to seem spirit of learning can be conveyed only by part of life itself. Lectures often seem contagion, by personal contact. The as- D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 159 sociation of studies and persons is the them, as their support and feeder, but also proper prescription. alongside of them; would be necessary if Turn from the college, which lies at the they did not exist ; furnishes the only in- heart of the university, to the graduate traduction our young men desire or need and professional schools which lie about 5 to the wider fields of action and ex- the college and are built upon it, and you perience which lie beyond it. It is, first are discussing an entirely different mat- of all and chiefly, a general fitting school ter, looking for different principles and for life. Its social organization and in- methods. Their right relationship to the fluence are almost as important as its college, moreover, is a very difficult ques- 10 classrooms. It is not a subordinate tion to determine. Both the college and school, but the chief, the central school of the high school are trying to do two things the university. For the professional at once — two things not entirely consis- schools it is, at the same time, an indis- tent with each other. The majority of pu- pensable foundation. That profession is pils in the high school — the very large 15 clearly impoverished which does not draw majority — do not intend to carry their to its special studies men bred to under- studies any further. They must get all the stand life and the broader relations of schooling they are going to get before they their profession in some thorough school leave the high school. They must be of general training. In these higher given the best training, the completest 20 schools the atmosphere is changed ; an- awakening within the field of knowledge other set of objects lies before the stu- that the school can give them, for that is dent; his mind has already begun to cen- to be their final preparation for life. A ter upon tasks which fill the rest of his small minority, however, must be prepared life. He can not, there, seek the things to enter college. Majority and minority 25 that will connect him with the more gen- must be handled, in some circumstances in eral fields of learning and experience, different ways, and it is very hard indeed What is called the graduate school in to arrange the courses of study in a way our universities is not, strictly, a profes- that will be suitable for both. The high sional school. As a matter of fact most school is clearly justified in shaping its 3° of its pupils will be found to be looking policy and its methods to the needs, first forward to the profession of teaching ; but of all, of the majority. Exceptional ar- graduate schools of the higher type do not rangements must be made, if possible, for keep that profession in mind. Their ob- the minority. ject is to train scholars whether in the Similarly, in the college the great ma- 35 field of literature, or science, or philos- jority of the undergraduates mean to go ophy, or in the apparently more practical at once from their courses there into some field of politics. They carry the college active practical pursuit ; do not mean to go process a stage farther and seek to induct on to more advanced university studies, their students into the precise, exacting A minority, on the other hand — a larger 4° methods of scholarship. They not only minority than in the schools — do intend carry the college process farther, they to go further, will enter the graduate also alter it. Their students are thrown schools to become teachers and investi- more upon their own resources in their gators, or the technical and professional studies, are expected to enter on re- schools for some calling for which a spe- 45 searches of their own, strike out into in- cial training is necessary. The difficulty dependent lines of inquiry, stand upon of the college is to arrange courses and their own feet in every investigation, come adopt methods which will serve both these out of their novitiate and gain a certain classes. It does so, generally, by offering degree of mastery in their chosen field, a much larger choice of studies than it is 50 their professors being little more than possible or desirable to offer. But the ma- their guides and critics. They are not jority must determine its chief character- taught how to teach ; there is no prof es- istics and adaptations. Its chief object sional tone in the life of the school. They must be general preparation, general train- are taught how to learn, thoroughly and ing, an all-round awakening. 55 independently, and to make scholars of It isevident, therefore, that the college, themselves, while it should be the foundation of the Schools of medicine, law and theology, professional schools, not only stands below on the other hand, while also, when upon i6o WRITING OF TODAY a proper plane, schools of scholarship, are tors, ministers, lawyers, would all alike be professional schools, and have in all their made, first of all citizens of the modern instruction the professional point of view, intellectual and social world — first of all, Their object is not only to introduce their university men, with a broad outlook on students to the mastery of certain subjects, 5 the various knowledge of the world, and as the graduate school does, but also to then experts in a great practical profes- prepare them for the ' practice ' of a par- sion, which they would understand all the ticular profession. They devote a great better because they had first been grounded deal of attention to practical method — to in science and in the other great bodies of the ways in which the knowledge acquired 10 knowledge which are the foundations of is to be used in dealing with diseases, with all practice. That is the service the uni- disputes between men over their legal versity owes the professional schools as- rights, and with the needs and interests of sociated with it. The parts should be vi- men who should be helped with spiritual tally united from end to end. guidance. They are frankly and of neces- 15 The professional schoofs, in their turn, sity professional. The spirit of the doc- do the university this distinct and very tor's or of the lawyer's office, of the pulpit great service, that they keep it in con- and of the pastor's study, pervades them, scious association with the practical They school their men for particular tasks, world, its necessities and its problems, complicated and different, and seek to 20 Through them it better understands what guide them by many practical maxims. knowledge, what kind of men, what schol- Similarly, the technical schools are pro- arship, what morals, what action, will best fessional schools, their objects practical, serve the age for whose enlightenment definite, utilitarian. Their students must and assistance it exists. Our universities not only know science and have their feet 25 should be ' ideal ' chiefly in this — that solidly upon the footing of exact knowl- they serve the intellectual needs of the edge, but must acquire a very thorough age, not in one thing, not in any one way mastery of methods, a definite skill and only, but all around the circle, with a practice, readiness and precision in a score various and universal adaptation to their of mechanical processes which make them 30 age and generation. America can never a sort of master-workmen. The practical dispense with the enlightenment of gen- air of the shop pervades such schools, as eral study, and should wish to have as the practical air of the office pervades the many of her young men as possible sub- law school. They are intent upon busi- jected to its influences. She should de- ness, and conscious all the time that they 35 mand that her professional schools be must make ready for it. grounded in such studies in order that her In the professional schools of an ideal professional men may see something more university nothing of this practical spirit than individual interest in what they do. would be abated, for such schools are, one It is best, therefore, that professional and all, intensely and immediately prac- 40 schools should be closely associated with tical in their objects and must have prac- universities, a part of their vital organi- tice always in mind if they would be truly zation, intimate parts of their system of serviceable; but there would always lie study. That very association and inclu- back of their work, by close association sion should make them more thorough in with the studies of the university in pure 45 their particular practical tasks. They science and in all the great subjects which should be the better schools of technical underlie law and theology, the impulse and training. The ideal university is rounded the informing spirit of disinterested in- out by them, and their roots are enriched quiry, of study which has no utilitarian by her fertile soil of catholic knowledge object, but seeks only the truth. The 5o and inquiry. The ideal university would spirit of graduate study, and of under- consist of all these parts, associated in graduate, too, would be carried over into this spirit, maintained always in this re- all professional work, and engineers, doc- lationship. D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 161 j-r-r in the past of silly wrangles and mis- understandings, and now we know that FRANfF our desire * s fulfilled. "^ ^ For behind all those misunderstandings, \A CLUTTON BROCK1 5 anc * m s P* te °^ tne differences of char- acter between us, there was always an {Times (London, England) Literary Supplement, understanding which showed itself in the October 2,1914. Reproduced by permission of the courtesies of Fontenoy and a hundred Times, of the author, and of Messrs. Methuen and ., , ... ■,„,. i. _, ... ~. . Co., who have republished this article with others Other battles. When Sir Philip Sidney by Mr Ciutton-Brock in book form under the title i spoke of France as that sweet enemy, he Thoughts on the War.] _f j i_ x ..lt^i-ij-i-j! made a phrase for the English feeling of Among all the sorrows of this war there centuries past and centuries to be. We is one joy for us in it: that it has made us quarreled bitterly and long; but it was brothers with the French as no two na- like a man and woman who know that tions have ever been brothers before. 15 some day their love will be confessed and There has come to us, after ages of con- are angry with each other for the quar- flict, a kind of millennium of friendship; rels that delay the confession. We called and in that we feel there is a hope for the each other ridiculous, and knew that we world that outweighs all our fears, even were talking nonsense; indeed, as in all at the height of the world-wide calamity. 20 quarrels without real hatred, we made There were days and days, during the charges against each other that were the swift German advance, when we feared opposite of the truth. We said that the that the French armies were no match for French were frivolous ; and they said that the German, that Germany would be con- we were gloomy. Now they see the quered on the seas and from her eastern 25 gaiety of our soldiers and we see the deep frontier, that after the war France would seriousness of all France at this crisis of remain a Power only through the support her fate. She, of all the nations at war, is of her Allies. For that fear we must now fighting with the least help from illusion, ask forgiveness ; but at least we can plead with the least sense of glory and romance, in excuse that it was unselfish and free 30 To her the German invasion is like a pes- from all national vanity. If, in spite of tilence; to defeat it is merely a necessity ultimate victory, France had lost her high of her existence; and in defeating it she place among the nations, we should have is showing the courage of doctors and felt that the victory itself was an irrepar- nurses, that courage which is furthest re- able loss for the world. And now we may 35 moved from animal instinct and most se- speak frankly of that fear because, how- cure from panic reaction. There is no ever unfounded it was, it reveals the na- sign in France now of the passionate ture of the friendship between France and hopes of the revolutionary wars ; 1870 is England. between them and her ; she has learnt, like That is also revealed in the praise which 4° no other nation in Europe, the great les- the French have given to our army, son of defeat, which is not to mix material There is no people that can praise as they dreams with spiritual ; she has passed be- can; for they enjoy praising others as yond illusions, yet her spirit is as high as much as some nations enjoy praising if it were drunk with all the illusions of themselves, and they lose all the reserve 45 Germany. of egotism in the pleasure of praising well. And that is why we admire her as we But in this case they have praised so gen- have never admired a nation before. We erously because there was a great kindli- ourselves are an old and experienced peo- ness behind their praise, because they, like pie, who have, we hope, outlived gaudy us, feel that this war means a new broth- so and dangerous dreams ; but we have not erhood stronger than all the hatreds it been tested like the French, and we do may provoke, a brotherhood not only not know whether we or any other nation of war but of the peace that is to come could endure the test they have endured, after it. That welcome of English sol- It is not merely that they have survived diers in the villages of France, with food 55 and kept their strength. It is that they and wine and flowers, is only a foretaste have a kind of strength new to nations, of what is to be in both countries in a such as we see in beautiful women who happier time. It is what we have desired have endured great sorrows and outlived 162 WRITING OF TODAY all the triumphs and passions of their France is still the chief treasury of all youth, who smile where once they laughed ; that these conscious barbarians would de- and yet they are more beautiful than ever, stroy. They know that while she stands and seem to live with a purpose that is unbroken there is a spirit in her that will not only their own, but belongs to the S make their Kultur seem unlovely to all the whole of life. So now we feel that world. They know that in her, as in France is fighting not merely for her own Athens long ago, thought remains pas- honor and her own beautiful country, still sionate and disinterested and free. Their less for a triumph over an arrogant rival, thought is German and exercised for Ger- but for what she means to all the world ; w man ends, like their army ; but hers can and that now she means far more than forget France in the universe, and for that ever in the past. reason her armies and ours will fight for This quarrel, as even the Germans con- it as if the universe were at stake. Many fess, was not made by her. She saw it forms has that thought taken, passing gathering, and she was as quiet as if she 15 through disguises and errors, mocking at hoped to escape war by submission. The itself, mocking at the holiest things; and chance of revenge was offered as it had yet there has always been the holiness of never been offered in forty years ; yet she freedom in it. The French blasphemer did not stir to grasp it. Her enemy gave has never blasphemed against the idea of every provocation, yet she stayed as still 20 truth even when he mistook falsehood for as if she were spiritless ; and all the while it. In the Terror he said there was no she was the proudest nation on the earth, God, because he believed there was none, so proud that she did not need to threaten but he never said that France was God or boast. Then came the first failure, and so that he might encourage her to conquer she took it as if she had expected nothing 25 the world. Voltaire was an imp of de- better. She had to make war in a man- struction perhaps, but with what a divine ner wholly contrary to her nature and lightning of laughter would he have struck genius, and she made it as if patience, not the Teutonic Antichrist, and how the ever- fire, were the main strength of her soul, lasting soul of France would have risen Yet behind the new patience the old fire 30 in him if he could have seen her most persisted ; and the furia francese is only sacred church, the visible sign of her faith waiting for its chance. The Germans be- and her genius, ruined by the German lieve that they have determined all the guns. Was there ever a stupidity so conditions of modern war, and, indeed, of worthy of his scorn as this attempt to all modern competition between the na- 35 bombard the spirit ? For, though the tem- tions, to suit their own national character, pie is ruined, the faith remains ; and, It is their age, they think, an age in which whatever war the Germans may make the qualities of the old peoples, England upon the glory of the past, it is the glory and France, are obsolete. They make of the future that France fights for. war after their own pattern, and we have 40 Whatever wounds she suffers now she is only to suffer it as long as we can. But suffering for all mankind ; and now, more France has learnt what she needs from than ever before in her history, are those Germany so that she may fight the Ger- words become true which one poet who man idea as well as the German armies; loved her gave to her in the Litany of and when the German armies were 45 Nations crying to the earth : — checked before Paris there was an equal check to the German idea. Then the I am s he that was thy sign and standard- world, which was holding its breath, knew bearer, that the old nations, the old faith and Thy voice and cry; mind and conscience of Europe, were still 50 She that washed thee with her blood and left standing fast and that science had not tnee fairer, utterly betrayed them all to the new bar- . ,, lhe j[ am ? am . 1 \, . . , .. „„ u« : _. t : u t „4. t ~~a :„ Are not these the hands that raised thee bansm Twice before at Tours and m faUen an(J fed th the Catalauman fields, there has been such These hands defiled? a fight upon the soil of France and now 55 Am not I thy tongue that spake, thine eye for the third time it is the heavy fate and that led thee, the glory of France to be the guardian Not I thy child? nation. That is not an accident, for D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 163 huge burying ground. Always between I * the ruined houses we could see graves. _„_ Graves, graves, graves. In some would TO THE RESCUE, AMERICA! be stuck g a bayonet with a Belgian sol- tawm riicwADTOv 5 dier's cap upon it. Above others rough JOHN GALSWORTHY whhe crosses rudely inscri bed, "To the Wy permission of the Commission for Relief in memory of a Belgian Soldier." On One Belgium, which distributed this appeal for pubiica- grave was a chads shoe; poor little mark tion^in American newspapers on December 24, f J ts pare nts' grief. Graves, graves. .10 Orphans, orphans. A country devastated ; A nation hungry. Seven millions on its trees felled in rows to make way for the edge of famine in winter. The world bullets ; its crops long gone to seed, stand- has seen some black sights in its time ; has ing up leanly ; dead things in rows like it ever seen a blacker than this spectacle markers in a miniature cemetery.' of Belgium starving? 15 From Malines: America, you are a great country. 'In the name of His Excellency Car- America, without flattery you are the dinal Mercier, I beg leave to ask you for humane country. Save this little nation; strong assistance. ... In the city of Ma- this little, brave, starving nation. lines alone 12,000 mouths have to be fed A London slum-child prayed : ' O, 20 every day. The children come to the Ger- Lord, if ye ever felt yer 'd like to 'elp a man soldiers and tear the bread from their feller, now 's yer chance, O Lord.' Now hands. . . . There is hardly a single la- is your chance, America. We in England borer who can find any work to gain his have done something ; we will do as much daily bread. Everything is lacking — we as we can ; but the scythe of sacrifice 25 are in want of potatoes, peas, beans, grain, sweeps in all our fields. Funds are many ; flour, wheat and bacon.' the war long and desperate. No more From the Burgomaster of Wetteren: foodstuffs may be sent forth from this ' Wetteren is inhabited by over 17,000 country, or from Holland. people. . . . About 11,000 workmen and But from somewhere foodstuffs must 30 numerous families of militiamen are with- be sent, for the Belgians are starving, out resources.' You in America are already doing much ; From the Mayor of Hamme : you have given sympathy, and time, and 'For some time our (town) committee money. But the dimensions of this catas- has had daily to distribute soup, bread, trophe are terrible. Eight hundred thou- 35 potatoes and milk for more than 5000 sand to a million pounds a month — by men. Flour is hardly to be obtained. . . . expert estimate — are wanted to keep The stock of meat and corn in Hamme starvation from these seven million peo- will not last till the end of this month.' pie. Let me quote from official sources From the American Consul at Ant- some evidence of the appalling situa- 40 werp : tion : ' I have been called upon by the Mayor of St. Nicholas, imploring me to hasten, if orphans, orphans; graves, graves possible, such assistance as the American From the report of Theodore Waters, people could and would render, as they secretary of the Christian Herald: 45 had over 20,000 people without bread and ' I do not want this to be a history of without work in their little town, and no the trip through Belgium, but only to re- means of providing them. ... In the coal call some impressions of the people's need, district near Charleroi a number of poor Women of refinement herded with women people, maddened with hunger, attacked a of the street, both dressing and undress- 50 German military train laden with provi- ing in sight of all the men ; a woman with sions.' nine children mothering her fatherless From Captain J. F. Lucey, representa- brood in the same room — these sights tive at Rotterdam of the Commission for were bad enough. But I drove through Relief in Belgium: ruined villages all the way from Antwerp 55 ' The total amount of supply so far to Brussels and I could liken it to nothing available is entirely insufficient to meet but going to a funeral through a long the immediate and urgent needs of the cemetery. Indeed, the country was one people. . . . Reports and requests for as- 164 WRITING OF TODAY sistance are pouring in. . . . The districts thankful even to any one who will give of Liege, Namur, Dinant, are entirely out them a meal. . . . Altogether it is the sad- of grain, flour, salt, peas and beans. A dest place you can imagine. Shops closed, deputation has arrived from Terhaegen every one out of work and nothing but and states that for three weeks they have 5 beggars and distress on all sides. Coal is had only potatoes to eat.' not to be had for love or money.' From members of the Town Council at Namur and Liege: THE amount of food needed ' We are now threatened by famine. . . . The amount of food required to deal We have suffered enough ; at least let this 10 with all this terrible distress is thus sum- misfortune be spared us. . . . To sum up marized in a declaration signed on Novem- the situation, an industrial population of ber 2d, 1914, by the Spanish and Amer- high efficiency is entirely out of work and ican Ministers in Brussels: cannot earn its food. It has no reserves ' We declare that the statement of M. any more in food or savings, and a rescue 15 Francqui (Director of the Societe Gen- is immediately and urgently needed. . . . erale de Belgique), based on a careful You may rest assured that in spite of cir- estimate made by authorities entirely fa- cumstances our population is full of cour- miliar with their own country and its age and worthy of all the sympathy that present material needs, is that the mini- the Americans and other nations can 20 mum monthly requirements of the Bel- show.' gian population are 60,000 tons of grain, From the account of an American eye 15,000 tons of maize and 3000 tons of rice witness, Mr. Jarvis Bell, who went through and peas. This estimate is accurate and from London to Brussels with the first wholly reasonable, is made by conservative shipload of food : ' If you could only see 25 and practical men of affairs, and may be the gruesome surroundings in which they accepted as an expression of the needs of are struggling for existence. . . . Give the population.' each Belgian peasant $1000 and ten acres . To meet these requirements the Com- of land and then he could do little to keep mission for Relief in Belgium, whose chief himself alive. He has, in many districts, 3° offices are 3, London Wall Buildings, Lon- no home in which to sleep, no seed to sow don, have now completed their organiza- with, no implements to work with, no tion in the United States ' on a basis ade- transport with which to reach a market, quate for the emergency of sending into and no heart to struggle against the impos- Belgium about one million pounds' worth sible. No war ever produced such com- 35 of food every month.' plete and tragic paralysis as we saw in Sufficient funds have been secured to many parts of Belgium. . . . We met few enable the commission to supply vessels to Belgian men; 80 per cent, of the people in take cargoes of relief donated in any part these country districts are women and chil- of the world, free of all cost, to Rotter- dren; we saw them eating green vege- 40 dam, and to distribute the food in Bel- tables, beets and apples; they have little gium. Offices have been opened at 71 else. There were thousands of children, Broadway, New York, under the charge all afraid to laugh.' of prominent American business men who, From the account of another American like the other members of the Commission, eye witness, Mr. Millard Shaler, who went 45 are practically giving all their time to this from London to Brussels on behalf of the work of philanthropy. Commission for Relief in Belgium : ' Be- tween Antwerp and Malines the destruc- WHAT THE Germans do tion of habitation in every town and ham- Finally, the following document records let was practically universal. Families 50 the official permit from Baron von der were living in partially burned buildings, Goltz, the German Governor of Belgium, or in improvised structures. The suffer- to the American Minister in Brussels : ' I ing is intense, and food supplies do not welcome with lively satisfaction the un- exist.' dertaking of the Comite de Secours et From the letter of an Englishwoman 55 d'Alimentation, and do not hesitate for- living in Brussels: 'There is a terrible mally and distinctly to give assurance that amount of poverty, sadness and distress foodstuffs of all kinds imported by the here; people without any resources, and committee under Your Excellency's pat- D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 165 ronage, for the use of the civil populace Eight hundred thousand to a million in Belgium, shall be kept exclusively for pounds a month are needed to keep that the use of the Belgian populace ; that these clutch from the throat of Belgium, foodstuffs shall hereafter be exempt from Give, America, give ! Raise the greatest requisition by the military authorities, and 5 monument to Pity ever built. Let it be a finally that they shall remain entirely at star in the sky of all your future that you the disposition of the committee.' The rescued from this miserable fate the old, machinery of distribution is thus com- the little ones, the strong, of a whole na- plete. tion whose only sin was that it stood firm 10 to serve mankind. Let it be a golden the blackest case in history memory that you succored and uplifted Such is the record. them, keep the breath in their bodies and If there be in all history so black, so in their souls faith living; faith that hu- pitiful a case, I do not know it. A na- manity, the sweet humanity which alone tion's life torn up — not by the roots as 15 can warm and sanctify our lives, is not a yet, for faith and fortitude remain — but spent and driven ghost, but still flesh and mown off level with the ground. Belgium blood, and a comrade in the dark, is deflowered, and done to living death; If you ever felt you'd like to help a f el- Belgium is starving. low, now 's your chance, America. If the hands of pity be not extended 20 swiftly, the shame of this must forever haunt the dreams of all mankind. If Bel- gium be left to starve, how shall the world * CT ^£y^a«^t1n b d^rous.« UNEMPLOYMENT: A PROBLEM You stand for humanity as no country AND A PROGRAM has ever yet stood. You alone, of all the nations fortunate enough to be outside the FREDERIC C. HOWE ring of this mad war, have wealth and r _ . . . ., . . n . a ., s , t-1 .f it- 1 (Century Magazme, April, 1915. By permission.] strength for a task like this. You alone 30 can keep the flame of hope alive, the pulse What can be done to relieve the prob- of life beating in this starving nation. lem of unemployment and its attendant The world looks to you, America ; looks waste is a question that is agitating offi- to you to do justice to your own great cials and voluntary agencies in nearly heart. You have already lifted this bur- 35 every city in the United States. Every den of good deeds from the ground ; shoul- winter sees a seasonal rise in the number der it as you alone know how, with that of unemployed, and every year an increase fine, fierce energy of yours. See this work in the apparent unemployable. Bread- of rescue through — and all the world lines gather upon the streets ; private char- shall bless you. 40 ity is wholly inadequate to meet the situa- tion ; while up to the present time munici- will America raise a monument of pa j authorities have ignored the problem PITY ? as not one for official action. Out of these No words have eloquence to voice the conditions I. W. W. agitations have arisen misery and peril of that little country. 45 in many cities, with forcible assaults upon Words are an insult. There is, there can churches and other institutions. In the be no American, of what origin soever, winter of 1914 the Excise Commissioner who has not suffered, thinking of Belgium of New York said that there were be- — thinking of that charred land. Restora- tween 60,000 and 100,000 homeless men tion will come. But to restore, needs must 50 and women in that city who found shelter that the nation shall not have died first of on winter nights either in the rear rooms sheer cold and hunger. of saloons or in lodging-houses where Famine is a very simple thing. First liquor is sold. Here thousands of men will go the old men and women ; then the were found sleeping on the floor or in children — cold and hungry children — 55 chairs ; and when the agents of the com- young birds with gaping beaks. And the mission closed the saloons, the men were strong last. Yes, famine is a very sim- driven to the streets. Only a few of our pie thing, with its stark and icy clutch. cities have provided municipal lodging- 166 WRITING OF TODAY houses, and in most cases the self-respect- from choice. The laws of our States re- ing worker refuses to patronize them be- fleet this point of view. They specifically cause he is immediately classed with the declared a man out of employment to be vagrant and the tramp. None of our a vagrant, subject to arrest and imprison- cities has consciously organized public 5 ment for his worklessness. In the city of work in order to care for those thrown New York a man who applies for lodging out of employment by seasonal conditions at the municipal lodging-house oftener or hard times; and in most instances au- than seven times in a month is subject to thorities have refused to consider unem- arrest and imprisonment in the workhouse, ployment as a problem of public concern. 10 The law and the public opinion behind On the other hand, labor organizations the law have not kept pace with the are voicing a demand for work rather changed industrial conditions, with the than for charity ; they are insisting that a passing of domestic industry and the corn- man has a right to use his hands and his ing of the machine, with the great aggre- brain for his own maintenance rather than 15 gations of capital which employ tens of be left dependent upon soup kitchens or thousands of men, and the closing of the other philanthropic agencies. There is a mills of which leaves them without other growing feeling among social agencies opportunity for employment. In addition that not only as a matter of justice, but the great West, which for centuries drew as a means of community protection as 20 the restless and discontented to its bosom, well, unemployment is a social problem, is now inclosed, and as a consequence in- and that something must be done by the creasing population has been thrown back community itself to meet it. upon the cities. The surplus population Is there any escape from this impasse? surrounds the mill and the factory; it has Is our economic philosophy to be ' Every 25 gone to the mines, where it stands ready man for himself, and the devil take the to take the jobs of those inside, and by hindmost ' ? Is it true that a man has a virtue of its hunger depresses the wage- ' right ' to work, or a ' right ' to public scale of those already employed. In every maintenance if work is not provided? Is city there is always a residuum of work- there justice in the claim that the worker 30 less men driven by hunger and fear, and has a ' right ' to be cared for by other increased to portentous proportions dur- means than that offered by the accidental ing periods of industrial depression such benevolence of other persons more fortu- as recently have periodically afflicted the nate than himself? Or has the man out country. of employment no ' rights ' at all ? Is he 35 It is this change in the structure of so- of necessity a vicarious sacrifice to modern ciety and the passing of the opportunity industry? of an earlier age that have made unem- The decision as to the right and justice ployment a social rather than an individual of the worker's claims will determine the problem. Labor is helpless under present- policy we ultimately adopt. We shall 4° day conditions. It no longer owns the either leave the worker to his own re- tools with which it works. And labor sources, shall turn him over to organized protests that organized charity is an in- charity, or accept unemployment as a so- adequate recognition of the situation. It cial burden to be carried in some manner says that it is an arrogant assumption for by society, as a community burden like 45 one class to determine the personal wor- education, police, and health protection. thiness of another class, when the worthi- There is a historical explanation of the ness or unworthiness of that class is the attitude we have heretofore assumed to- result of industrial conditions which the ward this subject — an explanation born worker cannot control. Furthermore, la- of the laissez-faire philosophy of America, 50 bor is beginning to assert : ' We are here ; and the very general equality of oppor- we came into the world through no choice tunity which has prevailed up to very re- of our own ; we have given the best of our cent times. And because of these condi- years to society, and society has not even tions we have viewed worklessness and given us a living wage in return. And poverty as casual or accidental. It was 55 we protest that society has no right to use isolated and personal. The assumption us in good times and to slough us off in was that any one who wanted work could bad times, or to turn us over to self-or- find it, and that a workless man was such ganized charitable societies supported by D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 167 another class, which assumes the right to right to ignore the claims of its weaker determine upon such inconclusive evidence members. He said : ' I do not think that ' as its agents find whether we shall re- doctrines like those of hisses faire, laisses ceive aid or be permitted to starve.' alter, " pure Manchesterdom in politics," Labor says further : ' Capital keeps its 5 " He who is not strong enough to stand machines in repair during bad times, it must be knocked down and trodden to the pays interest on its borrowed capital, it ground," " To him that hath shall be given, insures and maintains its factories, and and from him that hath not shall be taken bears the burden of depreciation and de- away even that which he hath " — that doc- cay whether times are good or bad. La- 10 trines like, these should be applied in the bor is merely a part of the industrial or- state, and especially in a monarchial, pa- ganism, and industry or society should ternally governed state. On the other care for the human cogs in the industrial hand, I believe that those who profess machine just as it cares for its inanimate horror at the intervention of the state for investments. This being true, society has 15 the protection of the weak lay themselves no right to shift the cost and misery of open to the suspicion that they are de- unemployment to the shoulders of the sirous of using their strength for the bene- weak and defenseless, who are least able fit of a portion, for the oppression of the to bear it and who, under existing condi- rest, and that they will be chagrined as tions, have no power to make work, to 20 soon as this design is disturbed by any acquire modern tools, or in any other way action of the government.' to control the industry which they serve.' These statements were made thirty This is the new note in the problem of years ago. During the intervening years unemployment. It is heard in the con- Germany has worked out a thoroughgoing ferences of social workers, and is begin- 25 program for the protection of the work- ning to find expression in official action as ing-classes — ■ a program that has since be- well, come the model of all Europe. It has Strangely enough, most of the coun- been copied by Denmark, Switzerland, tries of Europe have already accepted in and Great Britain, and to a considerable part or in whole these new claims of la- 30 extent in Latin countries as well. It is a bor; and to an increasing extent either policy that educates the child and cares society or industry has undertaken to shift for its health ; that inspects mills, mines, the costs of unemployment to the com- factories, and conditions of employment; munity itself. Nowhere is the function of that protects the worker from accident charitable relief intrusted to private agen- 35 and disease ; and through insurance shifts cies, and in most of the countries it is, to the employers, the employees, and the and for generations has been, recognized state the cost of accident, sickness, old as a necessary public function. And many age, and invalidity. In some Continental of the countries have gone much further cities, and now in Great Britain and Den- and evolved a comprehensive unemploy- 4° mark, the hazards of non-employment are ment and social program. As long ago as borne by the community through social 1884, Bismarck proclaimed that man has insurance, just as are the other hazards of a ' right to work,' which was only another the working-classes. The state itself has form of expressing the right to live. In a become the guardian of the poor, just as speech in the Reichstag he said, ' Give the 45 was the church in medieval times. Public working-man a right to work as long as protection has been substituted for private he has health, assure him care when he is aid. Instead of charity, there is a begin- sick, assure him maintenance when he is ning of justice. Human labor is recog- old.' At another time he said, ' Yes, I nized as part of a vast industrial organ- acknowledge unconditionally the right to 50 ism, to be protected and preserved as an work, and I will stand up for it as long asset of the highest value to the state. as I am in this place.' Continuing, he To begin with, there is a labor ex- said of the workless man that ' The change in every city of importance in Ger- healthy workman desirous of work is en- many. There were 323 such exchanges titled to say to the state, "Give me 55 in 1911, through which over 1,000,000 work." ' positions were filled. These employment In a similar vein Bismarck protested agencies have largely supplanted private against the assumption that society had a agencies. They are supported partly by 168 WRITING OF TODAY public, partly by private, funds. Every dexes, where the names of the men and local agency is connected with a central the opportunities of employment are en- agency, which acts as a clearing-house for rolled and classified. When a request the entire state, and through periodic re- comes for an employee, men are called ports from all over the country it places 5 forward in the order of their registration, the jobless man in connection with the and are advised of the opportunity, the manless job. During the summer months wages, and the conditions of employment, seasonal employment is found upon the Married men are given the preference farms. over unmarried ones. No fees are re- Griindlichkeit characterizes the German 10 quired in most of the German exchanges, Empire, and the labor exchanges are although in Berlin a registration fee of thorough. They study each individual five cents is charged. applicant, and fit him to the job for which The number of positions filled through he is suited. In this way the agencies these exchanges has increased with great command the respect of the employer as 15 rapidity. Of the 323 exchanges in the well as of the employee. And the build- empire, 267 agencies reported 731,848 po- ings in which the exchanges are housed sitions filled in 1909, 877,000 positions are in keeping with the seriousness with filled in 1910, and 1,000,005 m 1911- which the problem is treated. The ex- The employment agency does not create changes are not located in the basement of 20 work where no work exists. It is not a a dilapidated building, as is common in complete solution of the unemployment this country. They are not treated as a problem, it cannot cope with the effects of catch basin for the spoilsman. Rather, severe industrial depressions; but it does the employees are highly trained, socially put' the jobless man in the manless job minded men, deeply interested in the prob- 25 with the minimum loss of time to the em- lem. The labor exchange of Berlin, the ployer and the employee. It performs a largest in the empire, occupies a handsome sifting process by which the right man four-story building on Gormann-strasse, gets into the right place. It prevents ex- which opens upon two streets. It con- ploitation by private employment agencies, tains every provision for the service which 30 which are often impelled by the commis- it renders. There are public baths in the sions they receive to send to an employer basement. In another part is a medical men unfitted for the particular job. In dispensary, where the men are inspected addition — and this is most important — by physicians detailed for the purpose, the agencies preserve the health, cleanli- Food is supplied at a low cost, while cob- 35 ness, and character of the worker ; they biers and tailors repair the shoes and the improve his efficiency; and in normal clothes of the waiting workmen for an times materially reduce the extent of non- insignificant charge. In the main hall, employment. which accommodates from twelve hun- But the labor exchange is only one of dred to fifteen hundred persons, men sit 40 many contributions made by Germany to at their ease, with a glass of beer before the solution of this problem. Cities make them, or play at games of checkers, domi- elaborate provision for the temporary care noes, or cards. The whole institution of the wandering or homeless worker, suggests a working-men's club. It is in- Germany seems to recognize that it is to formal, comfortable, and inviting. And 45 the advantage of industry that men should the surprising thing about the men in be willing to go from place to place, to these exchanges is their cleanliness, dig- adjust themselves to the nation's need; nity, and freedom from that haunting fear that this is an advantage to the state ; and common among the workless men upon that a man should not be arrested as a the streets of America. Everything possi- 50 vagrant when in search of a job. And to ble is done to maintain the worker in a meet this situation municipal lodging- condition of efficiency and to protect his houses, or Herbergen, are maintained by self-respect from impairment. over five hundred communities. These In the Berlin exchange there are sepa- lodge over 2,000,000 persons a year in rate registers for the skilled and unskilled 55 20,000 beds, of whom the majority pay workers, and another exchange for for their lodging either in money or in women. At one end of the great hall is work. These municipal lodging-houses a clearing-office, with complete card-in- are dignified, clean, and carry no sugges- D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 169 tion of charity. Like the labor exchange, labor colonies open to those who have lost they are part of the machinery of the state their grip through drink or other causes, for the adjustment of men to their proper There are upward of forty of these colo- jobs. They are a recognition, too, of the nies in the empire. They are not penal uncertainty of industry and the inability 5 colonies, to which men are sent, but are of the individual man to control his place purely voluntary. Men come and go as of employment. they will. Over 10,000 persons make use In order to secure admission to the of these colonies every year. The work Herb erg en, the worker must produce a is exclusively agricultural, and for the passport showing where he has been at 10 most part attracts the unskilled worker, work. For twelve cents he receives lodg- The colonies are located on cheap land, ing and breakfast, or he can work four which is brought under cultivation by the hours for them. The work is of a simple labor of the men, who produce potatoes, sort, such as chopping wood. vegetables, and similar products for their These lodging-houses are usually con- 15 own consumption. A large per cent, of ducted in the same building with, or the men who come to the colonies have closely adjacent to, the labor exchanges, been in jail, but strangely enough, there They usually contain branches of the mu- is virtually no insubordination and no dif- nicipal savings-banks, in which the la- ficulty in preserving discipline, borer can place his funds. In some cities 20 These are some of the means employed a regular registry of houses, apartments, to prevent waste, to keep the produc- ahd rooms is maintained with full descrip- ing power of the nation up to its highest tive matter, so that the workman can find state of efficiency, and to protect the a place of residence with the least possible worker. delay. Through this house registry he 25 Of even greater service are the laws quickly finds in proximity to his work a for social insurance, through which the domicile suited to his purse. worker is protected from accident, sick- Through these various agencies tramp- ness, invalidity, and old age. These, too, dom has virtually disappeared in Ger- are part of Bismarck's program. Insur- many. This is particularly true of the 30 ance against sickness is provided for all south, in the industrial districts along the industrial employees, as is insurance Rhine. against accident. Even agriculture and Many cities supplement these agencies household service are covered. Virtually by providing distress or emergency work all employees whose salaries exceed $500 during the winter months or in times of 35 a year are protected by these means depression. Public improvements are pro- against the vicissitudes of industry. The jected, streets are built, parks are laid employer is bound to provide insurance out, contracts for paving and sewering against accident when he opens his fac- are set in motion, so as to provide em- tory, and he pays its entire cost. The ployment when most needed. And in or- 40 sickness insurance, on the other hand, is der to check men from coming to the city paid for by the employees, the employer, to secure this relief, the contracts provide and the state, the contribution of the em- that only resident citizens shall be em- ployee being deducted by the emplo5'er ployed. Few, if any, cities have recog- when the wages are paid. Old-age in- nized the declaration of Bismarck that a 45 surance is also provided, part of the fund man has a ' right to work.' Distress being contributed by the state, but the work is rather an official appreciation of bulk of it by the employers and employees the terrible waste involved in unemploy- in equal parts. The benefits from these ment — the waste to society and the waste funds are paid without litigation. They to the worker as well. For unemploy- 50 are looked upon as a matter of right rather ment sacrifices not only the individual than of charity. man, but frequently destroys the family, Colossal sums are collected every year and throws the mother and children upon from these sources. The total income in the community for relief. Considerations 1909 amounted to $214,856,000, of which of economy as well as ultimate industrial 55 the employers contributed $98,312,000 and efficiency unite with humanity in these the employees $81,414,000. The disburse- provisions for the care of the unemployed, ments for the year amounted to $167,592,- Supplementing these other agencies are 000. In addition to this, free medical 170 WRITING OF TODAY services, the attendance of nurses, and they came. What was it in the first in- hospital treatment are provided. To this stance that gathered their elements from extent is the maintenance of the disquali- the earth and built them up into such won- fied worker assumed by the state, and to derf ul mechanisms ? If we say it was na- an even greater extent than the amount 5 ture, do we mean by nature a physical of money involved are the efficiency, well- force or an immaterial principle? Did being, and moral quality of the empire the earth itself bring forth a man, or did subserved. something breathe upon the inert clay, This is by no means a complete enumer- and it became a living spirit ? ation of the protective measures which m Such inquiries bring us at once face to European countries have adopted to shift face with the question of the nature and the costs of industry from the individual origin of life — a question which is the to the community. Denmark and Great source of a good deal of mental activity Britain have evolved a public insurance in our time, both among scientific men and against unemployment, so that the costs 15 philosophers. of hard times and seasonal unemployment As life is a physical phenomenon, ap- are shifted from the individual to the pearing in a concrete physical world, it group, or from the individual to society is, to that extent, within the domain of itself. This is the most advanced legisla- physical science, and appeals to the scien- tive step taken by any country. It in- 20 tific mind. Physical science is at home volves an official recognition of the fact only in the experimental, the verifiable, that the old individualism of an earlier Its domain ends where that of philosophy day has passed away, and that the individ- begins. It cannot go behind visible phe- ual alonje should not be required to suffer nomena and ask 'Why?' or 'Whither?' from social conditions which have passed 25 This is the province of philosophy. It is beyond his power to control. America re- incompetent to discuss' the question of the mains almost the only advanced nation origin of life from no life, or of something that continues to ignore the fact that con- from nothing, because here its method of ditions of an earlier age have long since verification cannot be applied. Science is passed away. Social thought still treats 30 held by the biogenetic law — iife only the worker as a free man, able to turn his from antecedent life. Until it can bring hand to employment if he wills, when in about the reaction called life in its labora- reality the land has been closed against tories, it is tethered by this law. In order him, the tools of employment are in other to make a start at all, it is compelled to hands, and the industrial system is wholly 35 assume the potentiality of life in matter beyond his control. We have not yet be- itself, as most recent bio-physicists do, gun to organize, to provide means for and to regard its advent into this world as clearance in industry such as the banks a natural and not a miraculous event — have maintained for a generation, we have as natural as the birth of a baby, inscru- not recognized the necessity for housing 40 table as are the mysteries that lie back of the itinerant worker, nor have we ac- it. cepted the social obligation to shift to so- So far as life involves a psychic prin- ciety the costs of sickness, accident, inva- ciple or force, it is beyond the scope of lidity, and old age, all incidents of mod- positive science, and falls within the do- ern industry and all a proper charge 45 main of philosophy, against society itself. THE ORIGIN OF LIFE VT The question of how life arose in a * *■ universe of dead matter is just as baffling TWIT PttCYRT KM OK T TVTNP 5 ° A , 1 ues t ion to the ordinary mind, as how mh ■ PKU ^ J r'^ Vb LIVlJNLr the universe itself arose. If we assume THINGS that the germs of life drifted to us from TOWN RTTRRnTTf-HS °,_ ther s P heres > Propelled by the rays of JOHN tSUKKOUljHb the surlj or some other ce i est i a i agency, [Independent, October 2 , , 9 ,j. By permission.] 55 f Certain modern scientific philosophers have assumed, we have only removed the All living bodies, when life leaves mystery farther away from us. If we as- them, go back to the earth from whence sume that it came by spontaneous gen- D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 171 eration, as Haeckel and others assume, close to lines of scientific research as these then we are only cutting a knot which we lines lead him through the maze of the cannot untie. The god of spontaneous primordial elements of matter, from elec- generation is as miraculous as any other tron to atom, from atom to molecule, from god. We cannot break the causal se- 5 molecule to colloids, and so up to the bor- quence with a miracle. I'f something der of the living world. His analysis of came from nothing, then there is not only the processes of molecular physics as they the end of the problem, but also the end appear in the organism, leads him to rec- of our boasted science. ognize and to name a new force, or a new Science is at home in discussing all the 10 manifestation of force, which he hesitates material manifestations of life — the parts to call vital, because of the associations of played by colloids and ferments, by fluids this term with a pre-scientific age, but and gases, and all the organic compounds, which he calls ' biotic energy.' and by mechanical and chemical princi- ples; it may analyze and tabulate all life 15 THE ENERGY 0F LIFE processes, and show the living body as a Biotic energy is peculiar to living most wonderful and cotaplex piece of bodies, and ' there are precisely the same mechanism, but before the question of the criteria for its existence,' says Professor origin of life itself it stands dumb, and, Moore, ' as for the existence of any one when speaking through such a man as 20 of the inorganic energy types, viz., a set Tyndall, it also stands humble and rever- of discrete phenomena; and its nature is ent. After Tyndall had, to his own satis- as mysterious to us as the cause of any faction, reduced all like phenomena to one of these inorganic forms about which mechanical attraction and repulsion, he also we know so little, stood with uncovered head before what 25 ' It is biotic energy which guides the he called the ' mystery and miracle of vi- development of the ovum, which regulates tality.' The mystery and miracle lie in the exchanges of the cell, and causes such the fact that in the organic world the phenomena as nerve impulse, muscular same elements combine with results so contraction, and gland secretion, and it is different from those of the inorganic 30 a form of energy which arises in colloidal world. Something seems to have inspired structures, just as magnetism appears in them with a new purpose. In the inor- iron, or radio-activity in uranium or ganic world, the primary elements go their radium, and in its manifestations it under- ceaseless round from compound to com- goes exchanges with other forms of pound, from solid to fluid or gaseous, and 35 energy, in the same manner as these do back again, forming the world of inert among one another.' matter as we know it, but in the organic Like Professor Henderson, of Harvard, world the same elements form thousands whose volume on The Fitness of the En- of new combinations unknown to them be- vironment has lately appeared, Professor fore, and thus give rise to the myriad 4° Moore concedes to the vitalists about all forms of life that inhabit the earth. they claim — namely, that there is some The much debated question of the na- form of force or manifestation of energy ture and origin of life has lately found peculiar to living bodies, and one that can- an interesting exponent in Prof. Benjamin not be adequately described in terms of Moore, of the University of Liverpool. 45 physics and chemistry. Professor Moore His volume on the subject in the 'Home says this biotic energy 'arises in colloidal University Library ' is very readable, and, structures,' and so far as bio-chemistry in many respects, convincing. At least, can make out, arises spontaneously and so far as it is the word of exact science gives rise to that marvelous bit of mechan- on the subject it is convincing; so far as 50 ism, the cell. In the cell appears 'a form it is speculative, or philosophical, it is or of energy unknown outside life processes is not convincing, according to the type which leads the mazy dance of life from of mind of the reader. Prof&ssor Moore point to point, each new development fur- is not a bald mechanist or materialist like nish'mg a starting point for the next one.' Professor Loeb, or Ernest Haeckel, nor is 55 It not only leads the dance along our own he an idealist or spiritualist, like Henri line of descent from our remote ancestors Bergson or Sir Oliver Lodge. He may — it leads the dance along the long road be called a scientific vitalist. He keeps of evolution from the first unicellular form 172 WRITING OF TODAY in the dim paleozoic seas to the complex phenomena presented and name or verify and highly specialized forms of our own the underlying mystery. Only philosophy day. can do this. And Professor Moore turns The secret of this life force, or biotic philosopher when he says there is beauty energy, according to Professor Moore, is 5 and design in it all, ' and an eternal pur- in the keeping of matter itself. The steps pose which is ever progressing.' or stages from the depths of matter by which life arose, lead up from that im- bergson s creative evolution aginary something, the electron to the in- Bergson sets forth his views of evolu- organic colloids, or to the crystallo-col- 10 tion in terms of literature and philosophy, loids, which are the threshold of life, each Professor Moore embodies similar views stage showing some new transformation in his volume, set forth in terms of molec- of energy. There must be an all-potent ular science. Both make evolution a crea- energy transformation before we can get tive and a continuous process. Bergson chemical energy out of physical energy, 15 lays the emphasis upon the cosmic spirit and then biotic energy out of chemical interacting with matter. Professor Moore energy. This transformation of inorganic lays the emphasis upon the indwelling po- energy into life energy cannot be traced tencies of matter itself (probably the same or repeated in the laboratory, yet science spirit conceived of in different terms), believes the secret will sometime be in its 20 Professor Moore philosophizes as truly as hands. It is here that the materialistic does Bergson when he says ' there must philosophers, such as Professors Moore exist a whole world of living creatures and Loeb, differ from the spiritualistic which the microscope has never shown us, philosophers, such as Bergson, Sir Oliver leading up to the bacteria and the proto- Lodge, Professor Thompson, and others. 25 zoa. The brink of life lies not at the pro- duction of protozoa and bacteria, which more than mechanism are highly deve loped inhabitants of our Professor Moore has no sympathy with world, but away down among the colloids, those narrow mechanistic views that see and the beginning of life was not a fortu- in the life processes ' no problems save 30 itous event occurring millions of years ago those of chemistry and physics.' ' Each and never again repeated, but one which link in the living chain may be physico- in its primordial stages keeps on repeat- chemical, but the chain as a whole, and ing itself all the time in our generation, its purpose, is something else.' He draws So that if all intelligent creatures were by an analogy from the production of music 35 some holocaust destroyed, up out of the in which purely physical factors are con- depths in process of millions of years, in- cerned; the laws of harmonics account telligent beings would once more emerge.' for all; but back of all is something that This passage shows what a speculative is not mechanical and chemical — there is leap or a flight the scientific mind is at the mind of the composer, and the per- 40 times compelled to take when it ventures formers, and the auditors, and something beyond the bounds of positive methods. It that takes cognizance of the whole effect, is good philosophy, I hope, but we cannot A complete human philosophy cannot be call it science. Thrilled with cosmic emo- built upon physical science alone. _ He tion, Walt Whitman made a similar daring thinks the evolution of life from inert 45 assertion : matter is of the same type as the evolu- tion of one form of matter from another, There is no stoppage, and never can be stop- or the evolution of one form of energy page, from another — a mystery, to be sure, but If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or little more startling in the one case than 50 u P°n their surfaces, were this moment in the other. ' The fundamental mystery reduced back to a pallid float, it would lies in the existence of Jose entity or Wg XuT^brS^^pun where we things which we call matter and energy, now stand out of the play and interaction of which And sure i y g0 ' as much fartherj and then far . all life phenomena have arisen. Organic 55 t her and farther. evolution is a series of energy exchanges and transformations from lower to higher, Evolution is creative, whether it works but science is powerless to go behind the in matter as Bergson describes, or D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 173 whether its path lies up through electrons pear, and more and more complex com- and atoms and molecules, as Professor pounds are formed as the cooling process Moore describes. There is something that progresses. creates and makes matter plastic to its 'This note cannot be too strongly will. Whether we call matter ' the living 5 sounded that as matter is allowed ca- garment of God,' as Goethe did, or a pacity for assuming complex forms, those reservoir of creative energy, as Tyndall complex forms appear. As soon as oxides and his school did, and as Professor Moore can be there, oxides appear ; when tem- still does, we are paying homage to a perature admits of carbonates, then car- power that is super-material. Life came 10 Donates are forthwith formed. These are to our earth, says Professor Moore, experiments which any chemist can today through a ' well regulated orderly develop- repeat in a crucible. And on a cooling ment,' and it ' comes to every mother earth planet, as soon as temperature will admit of the universe in the maturity of her the presence of life, then life appears, as creation when the conditions arrive within 15 the evidence of geology shows us.' When suitable limits.' That no intelligent beings we speak of the beginning of life, it is appeared upon the earth for millions upon not clear just what we mean. The unit millions of years, that for whole geologic of all organized bodies is the cell, but the ages there was no creature upon the earth cell is itself an organized body, and must with more brains than a snail possesses, 20 have organic matter to feed upon. Hence shows the almost infinitely slow progress the cell is only a more complex form of of development, and that there has been more primitive living matter. As we go no arbitrary or high-handed exercise of down the scale toward the inorganic, can creative power. The universe is not run we find the point where the living and the on principles of modern business efficiency, 25 non-living meet and become one? 'Life and man is at the head of living forms, had to surge a long way up from the depths not by the fiat of some omnipotent power, before a green plant cell came into being.' some superman, but as the result of the When the green plant cell was found, life operation of forces that balk at no delay, was fairly launched. This plant cell, in or waste, or failure, and that are depend- 30 the form of chlorophyll, by the aid of ent upon the infinitely slow ripening and water and the trace of carbon dioxide in amelioration of both cosmic and terrestrial the air, began to store up the solar energy conditions. in fruit and grain and woody tissue, and thus furnish power to run all forms of the transition to life 35 yf e machinery. We do not get rid of God by any such The materialists or naturalists are right dictum, but we get rid of the anthropo- in urging that we live in a much more morphic views which we have so long been wonderful universe than we have ever im- wont to read into the processes of nature, agined, and that in matter itself sleep We dehumanize the universe, but we do 40 potencies and possibilities not dreamt of not render it the less grand and mysteri- in our philosophy. The world of com- ous. Professor Le Dantec says, ' Life is plex though invisible activities which sci- only a surface accident in the history of ence reveals all about us, the solar and the thermic evolution of the globe,' and stellar energies raining upon us from Professor Moore points out to us how life 45 above, the terrestrial energies and in- came to a cooling planet as soon as the fiuences playing through us from below, temperature became low enough for cer- the transformations and transmutations tain chemical combinations to appear, taking place on every hand, the terrible There must first be oxides and saline com- alertness and potency of the world of in- pounds, there must be carbonates of cal- 5" ert matter as revealed by a flash of light- cium and magnesium, and the like. As the ning, the mysteries of chemical affinity, temperature falls, more and more complex of magnetism, of radio-activity, all point compounds, such as life requires, appear; to deep beneath deep in matter itself. It till, in due time, carbon dioxide and water is little wonder that men who dwell ha- are at hand, and life can make a start. At 55 bitually upon these things and are sat- the white heat of some of the fixed stars, urated with the spirit and traditions of the primary chemical elements are not yet laboratory investigation, should believe evolved; but more and more elements ap- that in some way matter itself holds the 174 WRITING OF TODAY mystery of the origin of life. On the so many generations of special exercise other hand, a different type of mind, the or idleness added together would produce mere imaginative, artistic and religious an heritable quality — as though a thou- type, recoils from the materialistic view, sand times nothing would make something The sun is the source of all terrestrial 5 — but we must not think that somatic energy, but the different forms that en- modifications acquired by one generation ergy takes — in the plant, in the animal, can be handed to the next, in the brain of man — this type of mind A somewhat destructive interpretation is bound to ask questions about that, reconciles most of us to this hard prohibi- Gravity pulls matter down; life lifts itmtion. Almost the only malcontent is Pro- up ; chemical forces pull it to pieces ; vital fessor Henslow, who, in the realm of forces draw it together and organize it; botany, refuses to give up the right of a the winds and the waters dissolve and parent to bequeath something of its indi- scatter it; vegetation recaptures it and in- vidual experience. And now, from tegrates and gives it new qualities. At 15 America, comes a new protagonist who, every turn, minds like that of Sir Oliver for all he says of them, may never have Lodge are compelled to think of life as heard of Weismann, Mendel, or even Dar- a principle or force doing something with win, but who puts in a claim for somatic matter. The physico-chemical forces will inheritance, and backs it with substantial not do in the hands of man what they do 20 credentials. Mr. Caspar L. Redfield's in the hands of Nature. Such minds, book is called Dynamic Evolution (Put- therefore, feel justified in thinking that nam). His message is that the breeder something which we call ' the hands of for specific quality, whether in a trotter, Nature,' plays a part — some principle or a milker, or a setter, must be careful to force which the hands of men do not 25 have sires and dams at their highest dy- hold. namic development. The surplus energy that is theirs will then pass to their prog- eny, and give them a better start in life VII than the parent had. The significance of 30 his claim does not yet appear. Some of BEQUEATHED ENERGY the surplus energy of the sire comes from growth, and is racial. By all means, says [Nation (London, England), February 13, 1915. every school, breed only from mature par- By permission.] ents Tha( . . g dementarv w i s d m. But If there is one pitfall more than an- 35 Mr. Redfield asserts that the energy that other against which the young Darwinian comes from work also can be inherited. is warned by his teachers, it is that of Does that matter? Have we denied that supposing for one moment that an ac- the energetic blacksmith will not have an quired character can be inherited. How- energetic son? But, says Mr. Redfield, ever lustily the blacksmith may swing his 4° you cannot have energy without location hammer, till his own muscles swell like and direction, and in whatever organ loaves, his son will not thereby be more work has put the energy, in that organ than normally developed. And so, when will it be inherited. He could scarcely a race of pigeons produces, generation go nearer to saying that the blacksmith's after generation, more and more expert 45 son will inherit unusual biceps, tumblers, the diligence applied by a par- Excessive use would soon thin out the ticular bird to the art does not give an word ' energy ' into an empty name. It extra advance to his progeny. It is only seems apt enough, however, to explain a symptom of the progress of the tumbl- the quality that distinguishes the Amer- ing habit, long ago determined by the de- 50 ican trotter. A hundred years ago, there parture in that direction of a germ cell, was not a horse in the world that could Conversely, the first dodo that neglected trot a mile in three minutes. Now, the its flying-exercise did not thereby con- record has shrunk to two minutes, demn its chicks to a weakness of wing ' Whence came this increase in amount of likely to go further if it was not checked. 55 available energy?' asks Mr. Redfield. It was the environment that had affected ' You can't get something out of nothing.' the germ cell of the first lazy dodo. We The usual reply to the question is that are allowed to believe, perhaps, that ever when trotting came into fashion, enor- D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 175 mous numbers of the trotting strain were thirty-three performers apiece, and ninety- produced, and by continual selection six full brothers of the same horses with- among these great numbers, swifter and out records sired ten performers apiece, swifter animals were found. The 3.10 Not content with that, he examines the trotter was the best of, say, a hundred of 5 history of those non-record sires, and its contemporaries, the 2.30 trotter the finds that some of them were trained best of a thousand, and the 2.10 trotter the though not raced, and that these had a best of twenty thousand. By multiplying better average of performer progeny than the numbers, we have given greater scope the others. In other words, he shows by to the tendency to vary. 10 individual cases, and from large masses Mr. Redfield seems to have a better re- of fact, that a horse that has been prac- ply than that. The method of the tised for speed is more likely to have breeders of trotting horses has been, from speedy offspring than another horse of the one cause and another, perfectly free selfsame blood that has not been practised, from the fallacy of inherited acquired 15 The energy it has acquired by work is characters. One horse is trained and handed on, and endows the foal in the raced, and another of the same family organs that acquired it in the parent, kept for reproducing. So long as the In a recent book, Professor Arthur right blood is obtained, owners prefer to Thompson especially warned us against send their mares, not to the champion 20 believing that the setter could bequeath himself, even if he be available, but to a the skill it had itself acquired. The set- brother or uncle or nephew. But line ter is one of Mr. Redfield's object lessons, after line has falsified the hopes of its Laverack began with a ' stray pair he backers, and time after time the cham- purchased from a neighbor,' and in forty pion trotter of its day has sprung from 25 years had ' the best setters in the world.' a neglected pedigree. Whenever that has He simply bred in and in, working one happened, it has been possible to point pair of dogs in the field till they were old, at one or both of the factors of superior then breeding another pair from them, dynamic development in the immediate an- The results were so astonishing that ex- cestors of the new champion. Those two 30 perts would not believe that his methods factors are time and work. A horse may were correctly stated, the age at which acquire his energy speedily on the race- his dogs bred (six, seven, or eight years) track, or in the course of more years of being as great a stumbling-block as the a normal, healthy life. Thus, of the fifty- fact that he never took in new blood. De- eight sires of stallions able to do the mile 35 scendants of these dogs, crossed with in two minutes and ten seconds, forty-five those of Llewellin, founded the American with records averaged nearly ten years of strain about 1870, and an examination of age, and thirteen without records aver- the pedigrees of the six champion Amer- aged nearly fourteen years of age. ican setters of to-day proves that their . The reader will see that, in spite of 4° lines of descent are ' through the dogs what we have said, champions do become which were trained and ran for prizes in . the sires of champions, and that in con- field trials,' and the average time between siderable numbers. That is just the point, the generations is over six years. There are twenty or thirty thousand reg- Younger sires than that, however good istered trotters, and it is estimated that 45 they were, have been eliminated as ances- only 5 per cent, of these are bred from tors, except one which was trained for parents with records. There are only a field trials ' at a very early age.' hundred and eighty capable of trotting a That is, in part, the case presented by mile in two minutes and ten seconds this searcher of pedigrees. It may be that or under, and of these, 67 per cent. 50 its hostility to the doctrine of somatic were by sires with records. In one of his unteachableness is modified by the state- tables, Mr. Redfield compares the respec- ment that this dynamic inheritance mainly tive progeny of full brothers. It can, follows the same line as does secondary perhaps, be understood that a non-record sexual character. Thus, the energy of the horse will sire more foals than his record 55 dam does not go as available energy to brother. Those that reach the class of her son, but reappears in the daughters of performers are compared, with the result the next generation. In its simplest that eighty-eight horses with records sired terms, it means that the young but thor- t7&" WRITING OF TODAY oughly adult father gives to his son no ucts of the labor of one so young. Dr. more than the racial inheritance and pos- Harry Plotz of the Pathological Labora- sibilities that he himself received. In a tory of Mount Sinai Hospital in this city few years' time he is another being, and is not yet twenty-five years old. He looks therefore another father. Circumstances 5 younger. It was strange, indeed, to listen have led to the greater exercise of some to a youth unravel intricate problems of ^set of muscles, some function of the brain, bacteriology in the presence of a gather- or to responsiveness of the nerves to some ing of distinguished pathologists at the certain stimulus. These exercises have Academy of Medicine on Wednesday induced an accretion of energy some- 10 evening last. where, and something passes in the same The discovery of the protective vaccine direction to the son. Perhaps this is a against typhus was made public at the very volatile part of one's inheritance. If same meeting at which the young bac- not closely followed up, perhaps it soon teriologist told of the experimental la- vanishes. In a state of nature, whatever 15 bors of himself and his co-workers in iso- one receives is usually made the most of. lating the bacillus of typhus fever. It may be that a woodpecker that has While there has been no opportunity dealt with particularly hard trees cannot to demonstrate the efficiency of the vac- hand on his acquired skill. But it may be cine in the presence of the disease itself, that he can hand on the increase of dy- 20 Dr. Plotz and his co-workers recommend namic power stored in his neck muscles, its employment. And, in this connection, and that may make an unusual wood- a high compliment already has been paid pecker of his son. to the young discoverer: Dr. Hans Zinsser, the eminent professor of bac- 25 teriology of Columbia University, had himself inoculated with the protective vac- VIII cine before sailing on April 3 on his _,,_.__.__.._„ ,,,■ . T-,,,-, ___._ perilous mission as a member of the TYPHUS, WARS DREAD American Red Cross Sanitary Commis- ALLY, BEATEN 30 sion to cope with the epidemics of typhus in Serbia and Austria-Hungary. VAN BUREN THORNE, M.D. The devotion of an entire evening by „ , „. . ., „ „ . . , the New York Pathological Society (of {New York Times. April 18, 1915. By permission.] i_- i_ -n r t t_ aa. • which Professor Zinsser, by the way, is The announcement of the discovery of 35 president) to the consideration of typhus a protective vaccine against typhus fever, fever, and particularly as to its origin, the dreadful scourge that dogs the heels with Dr. Plotz as the central figure, can- of war, following closely upon the con- not be regarded in any other light than firmation of the germ origin of the disease as a distinct triumph for the Mount by repeated demonstrations of a distinct 40 Sinai bacteriologist. ■ causative agent visible under the micro- The first announcement of his discov- scope, is but another instance of the ac- ery of the causative agent of typhus ap- curacy of modern laboratory methods and peared in the New York Times on May the continual progress of medical science. 12, 1914. It was stated in the article that The concrete view of these achieve- 45 he would make public his discovery on ments is that they could not have oc- the following day in a paper he was to curred at a more opportune moment in read before the Association of American the history of the world. The stricken Physicians at Atlantic City. It was fur- countries of Europe, already devastated ther made known in the Times that Dr. by the wrath of man, are cowering be- 50 Plotz had determined as the result of the neath the brooding shadow of disease ; isolation of the germ that it was also the and science, represented by the best and causative factor of the acute infectious bravest of its exponents, is rushing from ailment known as Brill's disease, which the four quarters of the earth the cumu- Dr. Nathan E. Brill of this city had lative resources of a thousand labora- 55 classed as a distinctive malady. Dr. tories to wage a war with Death. Plotz maintained that Brill's disease was The marvel of these two laboratory in reality typhus fever of a mild type, achievements is that they are the prod- Dr. Plotz was present at the Atlantic D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 177 City meeting, but his paper was not in- clinical course) from the virulent and corporated in the program. Neither was dreaded malady known as ' European epi- he called upon to address the gathering, demic typhus,' which already is said to No public reference was made by any have claimed 65,000 victims in Serbia, physician present to typhus fever or its 5 among them two heroic American physi- origin. When the writer of this article, cians, and threatens to overrun the war- who was present at the meeting, inquired ring nations on the Continent, as well as of one of the officers of the association their neutral neighbors, whether or not Dr. Plotz was to be in- If Dr. Plotz's findings relative to the vited to read his paper, the officer replied 10 identity of European epidemic typhus and in the most emphatic manner : Brill's disease are correct, and this is now 'No such subject as the discovery of vouched for by high authority, then we the typhus germ is to be discussed here.' have typhus fever right here in New Privately, the writer was informed by York, and have had sporadic cases for various physicians present that the young 15 years. But the hygienic excellence of the bacteriologist, just a year out of college, systems of sanitation devised by the local was not to read his paper for the simple health officers have ever prevented it from reason that the news of his discovery had becoming a menace to the community, first been announced in a lay journal, And it is now some twenty-six or twenty- namely, the New York Times. 20 eight years since a case of European ty- It is fitting to emphasize here, how- phus has had an opportunity to spread ever, the fact that Dr. Plotz did not fur- contagion in this city, thanks to the watch- nish the news of his discovery to the fulness of the health officers of the port Times, nor was he aware that this news- of New York. paper was in possession of the news un- 25 It is true, however, that this ominous til he saw it in print. infection does sometimes reach our out- The meeting at the academy on Wed- posts at quarantine, as Dr. Plotz related nesday evening was the first public occa- in his paper, for it was this very cir- sion, therefore, on which Dr. Plotz had an cumstance that enabled him to start an opportunity to discuss his work in the 3° investigation into the origin of the dis- presence of a body of physicians best ease. He learned of the presence of ty- calculated to appraise its value. He was phus patients removed from ships to the acclaimed by them as a scientific investi- isolation hospitals in the lower bay from gator of the first order. Dr. Joseph O'Connell, health officer of Following his failure to be called upon 35 the port, who permitted him to obtain at Atlantic City, Dr. Plotz prepared a blood specimens from these patients, brief preliminary paper, written in tech- Dr. Plotz had formed an opinion as to nical terms, in which he announced the the probable cause of typhus before sub- isolation of an organism which occurred mitting the blood of typhus patients to in typhus fever patients and which he 4° laboratory tests. This opinion was based believed to be the causative factor of the on various theoretical considerations and disease. He also obtained the same or- on previous investigations. He con- ganism from patients suffering from sidered it advisable to begin his search by Brill's disease. This paper appeared in looking for a so-called anaerobic organism the issue of the Journal of the Ameri- & as the causative agent of the acute infec- can Medical Association, published on tious disease of unknown origin known May 16, 1914. as Brill's disease, and which owed, its dif- The young scientist's paper of Wednes- ferentiation from other fevers, especially day proved to be an elaboration of his short-term typhoid fevers, to the keen preliminary report, and contained a wealth 5o clinical insight of Dr. Brill. An anaer- of highly technical detail embodying the obic organism is one which thrives best precise methods of isolating and culti- or thrives only when deprived of oxygen vating pathogenic bacteria. or air. After identifying the typhus germ as He used the anaerobic methods in ex- the agent of Brill's disease, he discarded 55 amining the blood of six cases of Brill's the term ' Brill's disease,' referring to it disease, and isolated the same kind of thereafter as endemic typhus as distin- bacillus from five of the six. He ascribes guished (and distinguishable by its milder his failure in the sixth instance to the 178 WRITING OF TODAY fact that the blood was not taken from Subjected to microscopical examination, the patient until after the crisis of the the agent was seen to be a small bacillus; disease had passed. Subsequent investi- pleomorphic, or occurring in more than gation disclosed the fact that the bacillus one form, varying from nine-tenths to is present in the blood when the fever 5 1.93 microns in length, the breadth be- is at its height, but disappears after the ing from one-fifth to three-fifths of the crisis. length. Other investigators have isolated va- When first isolated, Dr. Plotz says in rious micro-organisms from cases of ty- his paper, the organism grows only anaer- phus and Brill's disease, but none of them 10 obically, or without air or oxygen, but resembled that obtained by Dr. Plotz nor after a time it can be grown aerobically, were they constantly present. The Plotz or in the presence of air. bacillus is constant both in its presence During the febrile period of the dis- and appearance. ease, the organism was yielded from the It is also true that in recent years 15 blood in 100 per cent, of typhus fever other investigators have declared that cases. The blood of thirty-seven patients Brill's disease is probably a mild or modi- suffering from the endemic type, hereto- fied typhus. Some two or three years fore known as Brill's disease, the cul- ago a discussion was carried on between tures of which were examined at various two or three medical officers of the 20 times, yielded the bacillus in 53 per cent. United States Government and Dr. Brill of cases. relative to the nature of the disease, the From a pure culture of the bacillus, Federal physicians maintaining that it was inoculations were made into the perito- typhus fever. neal cavities of two guinea pigs. The in- In accordance with the same belief and 25 cubation period of the infection proved after having isolated the bacillus from to be from twenty-four to forty-eight the cases of Brill's disease, Dr. Plotz took hours, for within that period there was a specimens of blood from half a dozen pa- rise of temperature, which remained high tients suffering from European epidemic for four or five days, and which dropped typhus in the hospitals at quarantine, the 30 rapidly by crisis. patients having been removed from trans- This clinical picture corresponded ex- atlantic vessels, and subjected the blood actly with the result obtained in guinea to bacteriological tests in the Mount Sinai pigs inoculated with the blood of typhus laboratories. His co-workers were Dr. fever patients, with the single exception George Baehr, like himself a graduate of 35 that the incubation period is shorter, the College of Physicians and Surgeons It was proved also that serum from a of Columbia University, and Dr. Peter K. convalescing typhus fever patient had Olitzky, a graduate of .the Medical Col- bactericidal action against the organism lege of Cornell University. obtained from both Brill's disease and From all of the typhus cases Dr. Plotz 40 European epidemic typhus, was able to recover a micro-organism ap- This paragraph ended Dr. Plotz's pre- parently identical with that isolated from liminary report: the cases of Brill's disease. ' In a later communication it is pro- In order to check up or verify this posed to consider the cultural character- discovery, the blood of 198 control cases 45 istics of the organism, its agglutination (that is, cases in which typhus fever or reactions, the further results of animal Brill's .disease were not present, but in experiments, and cross-immunity tests, which other diseases such as influenza At the same time the results of studies were diagnosed) was treated and exam- forming a basis for a possible vaccine ined in exactly the same manner, but 50 prophylaxis and comparative studies of the bacillus was not found in any speci- other organisms described by various au- men. thors as being found in typhus fever will The evidence indicated that the virus be reported.' was present in the blood during the fe- This promised elaboration was given brile period of the disease, that it was 55 in detail on Wednesday evening, and the non-filterable and hence most likely of vaccine prophylaxis hinted at in the microscopic size, and that it was of bac- earlier communication resulted in the terial rather than of protozoal origin, journey of Professor Zinsser and his D.' EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 179 fellow-scientists to the stricken fields of numbers are crowded together under in- Europe after inoculation with an agent sanitary conditions. It is the invariable which it is hoped will prove effective sequel of prolonged warfare where large against the acquisition of the infection. numbers are wounded. Those who sailed with Professor Zins- 5 The disease has broken out under vari- ser on the expedition, financed by the Red ous conditions other than warfare as an Cross and the Rockefeller Foundation, are epidemic — for example, in prisons, on Dr. Thomas W. Jackson of Philadelphia, shipboard, and in hospitals. Hence it has Dr. Andrew W. Sellarde, Dr. George C. been called prison or jail fever, hospital Shattuck, and Dr. Francis B. Grinnell of 10 fever, and ship's fever. It has also been the Harvard Medical School; Dr. F. W. known as spotted fever. Caldwell, Hobart D. Brink, W. S. Stand- Clinically, typhus is marked by a high ifer, and Luis de la Pena. temperature, great mental and physical The two latter were members of the depression, and skin eruptions. It lasts for staff of General William C. Gorgas in the 15 about two weeks. There are no specific sanitary campaign in the Panama Canal lesions, except enlargement of the spleen. Zone. Dr. Nicolle, the French expert on It seems to be disappearing in those cen- typhus, has been invited to cooperate with ters where municipal hygiene is making the commission. steady advances. The members of the expedition will 20 Dr. Plotz received a real ovation at the meet in Saloniki, and proceed to the dis- conclusion of his paper on Wednesday tricts of Austria-Hungary which are evening from the 250 or more physicians stricken with epidemics of typhus, cholera, assembled. He ended by announcing that and other contagious diseases. Dr. William H. Welch, the distinguished When the Rockefeller expedition was 25 head of the medical department of Johns projected Dr. Richard P. Strong, Profes- Hopkins University, had christened the sor of Tropical Diseases at the Harvard newly discovered germ of typhus. It is Medical School, was appointed leader, called bacillus typhii exanthematici. He is already in Europe. More recently, Among those present were some of the however, announcement has been made 30 world's foremost medical investigators, that General Gorgas, Surgeon General of and following the reading of two papers the United States Army, the world's fore- bearing on Dr. Plotz's discoveries by his most sanitarian, is to proceed to Serbia to co-workers, Dr. Olitzky and Dr. Baehr, assume charge of the commission. he was the recipient of public congratu- Prior to the announcement of the pro- 35 lations from them. The first one called posal to have General Gorgas take charge upon to express his opinion of the work of the work, he stated that he believed was Dr. Hideyo Noguchi, a famous labo- the commission would win the fight ratory worker, attached to the staff of the against disease in Serbia. He character- Rockefeller Institute for Medical Re- ized the expedition as the most efficient 40 search. ever organized in the history of modern 'I believe it must now appear to any sanitation. person,' said Dr. Noguchi, ' that the or- Dr. Samuel Taylor Darling, the bac- ganism has been isolated. I congratulate teriologist who was associated with Gen- the three physicians on solving the prob- eral Gorgas in the Canal Zone, arrived 45 lem of the cause of one of the most mys- here from Colon on Tuesday. It is re- terious diseases of which we know any- ported that he will accompany his former thing.' chief to Serbia. He went to South Africa Dr. William Hallock Park, noted as a in 1913 with General Gorgas when the bacteriologist, and head of the bacterio- latter was invited to go there by the Rand 50 logical department of the board of health mine owners to see what could be done to of this city, said : lessen the mortality among miners. ' Dr. Plotz had the mind and the will to Now, as to the disease typhus fever do this work, and he has carried it to a itself. 'The fact has been established that successful conclusion.' the infection is communicated from one to 55 Dr. Nathan E. Brill, the discoverer of another by a carrier, namely, the body Brill's disease, ungrudgingly admitted that louse. Hence it is that the disease be- at last it had been demonstrated beyond comes epidemic in places where large question that Brill's disease and typhus i8o WRITING OF TODAY are identical, differing only in degree of severity. IX ' This discovery is a particular gratifi- cation to me,' said he warmly. 'This is JOHN DEWEY'S PHILOSOPHY the first work which has established the 5 absolute identity of the two types of the RANDOLPH S. BOURNE disease. ' I lone ago admitted that they were re- l N "« Republic, March 13, 1915. By permission of 1 i j 1. ^ t j. j j j 1 it ■ 1. j i author and publisher.] lated, but I contended that this had not been established by the work of Anderson 10 Nothing is more symbolic of Professor and Goldberger. I admitted the relation- Dewey's democratic attitude towards life ship, but denied the identity — which is than the disintegrated array of his pub- now established beyond dispute. I doubt, lished writings. Where the neatly uni- however, the statement that the louse is form works of William James are to be the only means of communicating the dis- 15 found in every public library, you must ease from one to another.' hunt long and far for the best things of ' I congratulate these gentlemen,' said the man who, since the other's death, is Dr. Samuel J. Meltzer of the Rockefeller the most significant thinker in America. Institute, famous in many fields of medi- Pamphlets and reports of obscure educa- cal research, 'not only on the way in 20 tional societies; school journals, univer- which they carried on their investigations, sity monographs and philosophical jour- but on the manner in which they have pre- nals, limited to the pedant few ; these are sented them to us.' the burial-places of much of this intensely ' Mention has been made of the fact alive, futuristic philosophy. For the best that a vaccine has been made,' said Dr. 25 educational essays one had to look until F. S. Mandelbaum of the Mount Sinai very recently to a little compilation made Hospital staff. ' Some of the members of by an unknown London house. The ' Edu- the commission on the way to fight typhus cational Creed,' in style and conciseness in Serbia, and others who intend to go, and spirit the most admirably popular of have already been inoculated with the vac- 30 all his writings, is, I think, still lost in an cine — of course, without any guarantee out-of-print cheap bulletin in some in- of its efficacy. They came to us and nocuous series for elementary teachers, asked to be inoculated.' ' School and Society,' with some of the Dr. E. Libman, also of the Mount Sinai wisest words ever set to paper, frightens staff, interjected a touch of the romance 35 one away with its infantile cover and its of science into his remarks. university chaperonage. Only some het- ' This discovery was no chance observa- erogeneous essays, brilliant but not hold- tion,' he said. ' Plotz was worried about ing the exact kernel of his thought, and Brill's disease when a student. He took his ' How We Think,' in which is shown the position at Mount Sinai after gradua- 4° that scientific method is simply a sub- tion on purpose to find out the cause of limely well-ordered copy of our own best Brill's disease. He found the organism and most fruitful habits of thought, have the first time he tried for it.' been launched in forms that would reach Dr. Plotz, whose discoveries may miti- a wide public. No man, I think, with gate the menace of typhus, was born in 45 such universally important things to say Paterson, New Jersey, in 1890. He at- on almost every social and intellectual ac- tended the schools in Newark, and for a tivity of the day, was ever published in time was a pupil at the Boys' High School forms more ingeniously contrived to in Brooklyn. Later he entered Columbia thwart the interest of the prospective University and took a combination course 5° public. which gave him his academic degree from Professor Dewey's thought is inacces- Columbia College and his medical degree sible because he has always carried his from the College of Physicians and Sur- simplicity of manner, his dread of show geons. He was graduated in 1913, at the or self-advertisement, almost to the point head of his class. Upon his graduation 55 of extravagance. In all his psychology he took a competitive examination for there is no place for the psychology of pathological interne at Mount Sinai Hos- prestige. His democracy seems almost to pital, and was first among 200 contestants, take that extreme form of refusing to D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 181 bring one's self or one's ideas to the at- our mental life was a receiving and com- tention of others. On the college* campus bining and storing of certain dead inert or in the lecture-room he seems positively sensations and ideas of which words were to efface himself. The uncertainty of his the true symbols. silver-gray hair and drooping mustache, 5 Professor Dewey's fundamental thesis of his voice, of his clothes, suggests that has been that thinking is not like this, he has almost studied the technique of , The mind is not a looking-glass, reflect- protective coloration. It will do you no ing the world for its private contempla- good to hear him lecture. His sentences, tion, nor a logijc-machine for building up flowing and exact and lucid when read, 10 truth, but a tool by which we adjust our- you will find strung in long festoons of selves to the situations in which life puts obscurity between pauses for the awaited us. Reason is not a divinely appointed right word. The whole business of im- guide to eternal truth, but a practical in- pressing yourself on other people, of get- strument by which we solve problems, ting yourself over to the people who want 15 Words are not invariable symbols for in- to and ought to have you, has simply variable things, but clues to meanings, never come into his ultra-democratic mind. We think in meanings, not in words, and This incapacity of imagining his own a meaning is simply a sign-post pointing distinction has put him in the paradoxical towards our doing something or feeling situation of a revolutionist with an innate 20 something or both. The words are the contempt for propaganda. His philosophy handles by which we take hold of these of ' instrumentalism ' has an edge on it meanings which our intercourse with peo- that would slash up the habits of pie and things presents to us. Our life thought, the custo'ms and institutions in is a constant reaction to a world which is which our society has been living for cen- 25 constantly stimulating us. We are in turies. He allies himself personally with situations where we must do something, every democratic movement, yet will not and it is for the purpose of guiding this preach. As we discover in the essay on doing from the point of view of what has Maeterlinck, where he shows himself poet happened or what is likely to happen, that as well as philosopher, his tolerant democ- 30 we think. We are not bundles of thoughts racy loves all human values, and finds and feelings so much as bundles of atti- nothing so intolerable as artificial in- tudes or tendencies. We act usually be- equality. He hates nothing so much as fore we " perceive ' ; the perception is only the preacher who tells others how bad important as it enables us to act again, they are and what they must do to re- 35 We remember what we use, and we learn form. Yet his philosophy is a great ser- what we occupy ourselves with. Our mon, challenging in every line, in spite minds are simply the tools with which we of his discreet style, our mechanical habits forge out our life. of thought, our mechanical habits of If we are to live worthily and hap- education, our mechanical morality. A 40 pily, it is not necessary that we should prophet dressed in the clothes of a profes- ' be ' anything or ' know ' anything, so sor of logic, he seems almost to feel much as that we should be able to meet shame that he has seen the implications the situation in which developing life of democracy more clearly than anybody places us, and express our capacities in else in the great would-be democratic so- 45 our activity. Our social problem as well ciety about him, and so been forced into as our personal problem is to understand the unwelcome task of teaching it. what we are doing. This is almost the Orthodox philosophical thinking has whole law and the prophets. In the ideal usually gone along on the comfortable home we should have learned as chil- assumption that words always have the so dren, through social converse and the same meaning, and that they stand for household occupations and solution of the real things, that logic is the science of problems which our curiosity and our thinking correctly, that reason is eternal, work brought us, how to adjust ourselves that if you can only get your ideas con- to the demands of life. But the home can sistent you have then a true picture of 55 no longer effect this and the school must what you are trying to interpret. We step in. But the school is only really edu- have taken for granted the old view, cative if it is helping the child to under- which goes back to Aristotle's logic, that stand the social situations in which he 182 WRITING OF TODAY finds and is to find himself, and to regu- and groups with certain principles which, late his impulses so that he can control however much they may once have been these situations. The ideal school would solutions of genuine problems and inter- be an embryonic community life, where pretations of genuine situations, are now the child would sense the occupations and 5 mere caked and frozen barricades to ac- interests of the larger society into which tivity and understanding, he is to enter and so have his curiosity Professor Dewey has given us a whole and practical skill awakened to meet and new language of meanings. After read- conquer them. ing him, you can see nothing again in the In its larger social implications, Pro- 10 old terms. And when I see college presi- fessor Dewey's philosophy challenges the dents and publicists who have cultivated whole machinery of our world of right the arts of prestige, expressing their views and wrong, law and order, property and on every question of the day in the old religion, the old techniques by which so- caked and frozen language, thinking along ciety is still being managed and regu- 15 the old lazy channels, I feel a savage in- lated. Our institutions have been made dignation that Professor Dewey should not as scales and measures to which we bring be out in the arena of the concrete, him- our actions, rigid standards by whose self interpreting current life. I am con- codes we are judged, frameworks to whose scious of his horror of having his ideas lines we strive to mould ourselves. All 20 petrified into a system. He knows that it the revolutionary strivings of the past will do no good to have his philosophy have been away from these institutional intellectually believed unless it is also authorities towards greater freedom. But thought and lived. And he knows the in spite of all the freedom we have won, uncanny propensity of stupid men to turn society was probably never more deeply 25 even the most dynamic ideas into dogmas, unhappy than it is today. For freedom He has seen that in his school world, is not happiness; it is merely the first Meanwhile his influence goes on increas- negative step towards happiness. Happi- ing to an extent of which he is almost ness is control, and society, now intensely innocently unconscious, self-conscious of its imperfections, is still 30 very helpless towards controlling its des- tiny. Life, Professor Dewey says, is a modification of the present with reference y- to the conditions of the future, a conflict between the habits engendered in the past 35 WHAT SHOULD BE A MAN'S and the new aims and purposes, clearly _____ tt-t-o envisaged, to be woFked for. OBJECT IN LIFE? It is in showing the unity of all the [ARTHUR BRISBANE] democratic strivings, the social movement, J the_ new educational ideals, the freer 40 [New York Evening Journal. Reprinted in Ed- ethlCS, the popular revolt in politics, of all itoriafs from the Hearst Newspapers, 1906. By the aspects of the modern restless, for- P ermlsslon -J ward-looking personal and social life, and Sermons in stones are familiar, but few the applicability to all of them of scien- take the trouble to dig them out. Cer- tific method, with its hypotheses and bold 45 tainly none looks for sermons in a one-cent experimentation, that Professor Dewey evening newspaper. has been the first thinker to put the moral At the same time, will you kindly think and social goal a notch ahead. His phi- over and answer the question that heads losophy has the great advantage of mak- this column? ing nonsensical most of the writing and 50 Here we are, marooned for a few days thinking that has been done in the old on a flying ball of earth. We don't know terms. See how much of this can be how we got here. We don't know where truthfully called anything else than a we are going. We are full of beautiful ' juggling with the symbols of learning.' and satisfying faith. But we don't know. See how much of the energy of the 55 T . ... T , . u .... .... *> J . , . into this Universe, and why not knowing, moulders of opinion in politics, industry, Nor when ce, like Water, willy-nilly flowing; education, religion, morality, goes to the And out of it as Wind along the Waste, squaring up of the activity of individuals I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing. D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 183 That's the way Omar, the old tent- to forgetfulness soon. What does the maker, puts it. most powerful man in the world amount to standing at the brink of Niagara, with We drift from dinner to the theater, his solar plexus trembling? What is his thence to bed, thence to breakfast, thence 5 power compared with the force of the to work, and so on. Or, if in hard luck, wind or the energy of one small wave we struggle and wail, ' cursing our day,' or sweeping along the shore ? more frequently cursing society. The power which man can build up We rarely stop to think what it is all within himself, for himself, is nothing, about, or what we are here for. 10 Only the dull reasoning of gratified ego- tism can make it seem worth while. We know the pig's object in life. It has been beautifully and permanently out- Then what is worth while? Let us look lined in Carlyle's 'pig catechism.' The at some of the men who have come and pig's life object is to get fat and keep 15 gone, and whose lives inspire us. Take fat — to get his full share of swill and a few at random: as much more as he can manage to secure. Columbus, Michelangelo, Wilberforce, And his life object is worthy. By stick- Shakespeare, Galileo, Fulton, Watt, Har- ing at it he develops fat hams inside his greaves — these will do. bristles, and we know, though he does not, 20 Let us ask ourselves this question : that the production of fat hams is his des- ' Was there any one thing that distin- tiny. guished all their lives, that united all these men, active in fields so different ? ' But our human destiny is not to produce Yes. Every man among them, and fat hams. Why do so many of us live 25 every man whose life history is worth earnestly on the pig basis? Why do we the telling, did something for the good of struggle savagely for money to buy our other men. kind of swill — luxury, food, etc. — and Hargreaves, the weaver, invented the cease all struggling when that money is spinning- jenny, and his invention clothes obtained? 30 and employs hundreds of millions. Is fear of poverty and dependence the Galileo perfected the telescope, spread only emotion that should move us? out before man's intellect the grandeur Are we here merely to stay here and of the universe. Wilberforce helped to eat here? awaken man's conscience. He freed mil- A great German scientist, very learned 35 lions of slaves. Columbus gave a home to and about as imaginative as a wart hog, great nations. We thrive today because declares that the human face is merely an of his noble courage. Michelangelo and extension and elaboration of the alimen- Shakespeare stirred human genius to new tary canal — that the beauty of expression, efforts, and fed the human mind — a task the marvelous qualities of a noble human 40 more worthy than the feeding of the hu- face, are merely indirect results of the man stomach. We ride in Fulton's steam- alimentary canal's strivings to satisfy its boats, and Watt's engine pulls us along. wants. Men who are truly great have done That is a hideous conception, is it not? good to their fellow-man. And the But it is no more unworthy than the aver- 45 greatest Soul ever born on earth came to age human life, and the average existence urge but one thing upon humanity, ' Love has much to justify the German's specu- one another.' lations. What shall we strive for? Money? Get money if you can. Get power if Get a thousand millions. Your day will 50 you can. Then, if you want to be more come, and in due course the graveyard rat than the ten thousand million unknown will gnaw as calmly at your bump of ac- mingled in the dust beneath you, see what quisitiveness as at the mean coat of the good you can do with your money and pauper. your power. Then, shall we strive for power? 55 If you are one of the many millions The names of the first great kings of who have not and can't get money or the world are forgotten, and the names of power, see what good you can do without all those whose power we envy will drift either. 184 WRITING OF TODAY _____ You can help carry a load for an old miles from a place which the company man. You can encourage and help a poor had named One Ton Depot, and 155 miles devil trying to reform. You can set a from the base of the expedition. It is good example to children. You can stick possible for us in this temperate clime to to the men with whom you work, fight- 5 realize something of the horror, the ter- ing honestly for their welfare. ror, the irresistible vehemence of an Ant- Time was when the ablest man would arctic blizzard if we recall the description rather kill ten men than feed a thousand which we gave on November 19 last from children. That time has gone. We do the pen of Dr. Simpson, who was for a not care much about feeding the children, 10 time lent by the Indian Government to be but we care less about killing the men. chief physicist of the expedition. He tells To that extent we have improved already, of a gale which blew continuously for six. The day will come when we shall pre- days ' at over gale strength '—more than fer helping our neighbor to robbing him — thirty-eight miles an hour, rising at dif- legally — of a million dollars. 15 f erent times to fifty-two, to sixty-six, and Do what good you can now, while it is once to eighty miles an hour ; the tempera- unusual, and have the satisfaction of being ture marking between thirty-one and a pioneer and an eccentric. thirty-five degrees below zero. We shall never know what degree of violence was 20 attained by the blizzard which was fatal XI to Captain Scott, but it may be assumed that it was as bad as this, or worse; and THE ANTARCTIC DISASTER the grim word ' want ' used by Comman- der Evans implies that supplies had run ITimes (London, England), February n, 1913. 25 ou t ; an d that the unhappy men were in no y permission.] condition to resist the appalling storm. Never since the loss of Sir John Frank- Thus ends a great and truly heroic ad- lin and his whole expedition sixty-six years venture, undertaken quite voluntarily by ago has such a disaster befallen British these officers and their followers, with the Polar explorers as that which it is our sad 30 object of settling some unsolved prob- duty to record today. For a time after lems of geography, natural history, and the arrival of the news yesterday after- other sciences. In judging Captain Scott noon, people hoped against hope, won- and his friends, let us put out of our minds dering whether the information which all the gossip which from time to time has reached New Zealand had not been mis- 35 been circulated about ' a race ' between understood, since Arctic and Antarctic him and his friendly rival, the Danish Cap- news at first is largely impregnated with tain Amundsen. That this explorer should rumor. Unhappily the confirmation which have diverted his course from the North has since come in is such as leaves no to the South Pole was an accident, and ground for hope. A despatch of Com- 4° so was the almost simultaneous arrival of mander Evans puts the terrible facts be- the Danish vessel and of the Terra Nova yond doubt. He states, very simply and in those Southern waters. As was long directly, that Captain Scott reached the since pointed out in these columns by one South Pole on January 18, 1912 — which of Captain Scott's companions, Mr. Her- it will be remembered was about a month 45bert Ponting, he never raced and never after Captain Amundsen had reached it — ■ headed ' a mere dash to the Pole.' He and that on his return towards his base went steadily forward with his scientific he and his four companions were over- exploration, and if he had not had the whelmed in a blizzard, and all perished, misfortune to lose nine of his nineteen in- The first to fall was Seaman Edgar Evans, 50 valuable ponies, he might very probably who died from concussion of the brain — have arrived first, and, what is of much how caused none can say at present — on more importance, might not have found it February 17; then, on March 17, Captain necessary to send that memorable de- Oates died of exposure ; and some twelve spatch, when the Terra Nova first came to days later, on or about March 29, the re- 55 fetch him away, ' I am staying in the Ant- maining three, Dr. Wilson, Lieutenant arctic another year in order to continue Bowers, and Captain Scott himself, died of and complete my work.' But this was not want and exposure. They were eleven to be. The small disaster happened and D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 185 it was the prelude to the greater — to dreds of helpless men, women and children that shocking catastrophe which the Eng- left to survive or drown, as luck decreed, lish race and the whole scientific world The destruction of the Lusitania makes a are lamenting today. We will not at this more dramatic appeal to the human im- moment raise the question whether the 5 agination than did the destruction of the scientific results of these arduous Polar Falaba, but both were crimes against civi- expeditions are, or are henceforth likely lization in equal degree, to be, adequate to the cost — to the cost How many American lives have been of valuable lives which may always have snuffed out in the loss of the Lusitania we to be paid. It is more consonant with 10 do not yet know. But it is no fault of the the universal feeling of the moment simply German Government that anybody escaped to add our tribute to the courage, the per- from either ship. It is no fault of the severance in the face of enormous diffi- German Government that every American culties, which every member of the ex- on board the Lusitania is not lying at the pedition has shown since the beginning, 15 bottom of the sea. two and a half years ago. Their country The German authorities claim in ex- will ever pay honor to Captain Scott, who, tenuation that fair warning was given to after a fine career as a naval officer, de- Americans by the German Embassy in voted himself with single-minded heroism Washington that the Lusitania was to be to the realization of a great ideal ; to Dr. 20 torpedoed. Murder does not become in- Wilson, surgeon, zoologist, and artist; to nocent and innocuous because the victim Captain Oates, of the Inniskillings ; to has been warned in advance that the blow Lieutenant Bowers, of the Indian Navy; would be struck if he persisted in the ex- and to Seaman Edgar Evans. For their ercise of his lawful rights, friends we feel the keenest sympathy, and 25 It may be said in respect to this warning especially for Captain Scott's young wife, that nobody believed the Germans could the distinguished sculptress, now on the or would carry out their threat. People high sea in the hope — how vain! — of thought better of them than they thought meeting her husband in New Zealand. To of themselves. And why they should have her, and to all who admired Captain Scott, 30 carried out the threat, abetted by the com- we can but recall the famous lines of plaisant indifference of the British Gov- Tennyson on Franklin, so exactly appli- ernment, is still a mystery. cable if we change one single word : What military advantage was gained by such a procedure comparable to the moral 'Not here! The white South has thy bones; 35 revu lsion against Germany that it is cer- and thou ta j n to p r0( j uce ? Wars are not won by Heroic sailor-soul, drowning neutrals or non-combatants. Art passing on thme happier voyage now i, r f ^ it _ A • 1 ,. t Toward no earthly pole!' W . e vent " re *° sa y that no sl M e ac * of this conflict has so outraged American 40 opinion or so riddled German prestige in YTT this country as the destruction of the Lusi- •"■•^ tania. The Germans have sunk the ™ largest British ship in active mercantile I lit bINKIJNG Ob itLh, service. They have destroyed a small LUSITANIA 45 quantity of munitions of war. They have r „r ,i , w v , n ™ o t. ■ ■ -, evidently killed a large number of Amer- UVorid (New York), May 8, i 9IS . By permiss.on.] .^^ ^ non . combatants . In the long The circumstances and the consequences run they might better have lost a battle. of the destruction of the Lusitania by a The military gains are trifling. The moral German submarine call for all the self- 50 losses are incalculable, restraint and self-possession that the The whole German submarine policy in American people can command. its campaign, not against British ships of Morally, the sinking of the Lusitania war but against merchantmen on the high was no worse than the sinking of the seas, is a revival of piracy — piracy or- Falaba. 55ganized, systematized and nationalized. It In each case a passenger ship carry- is piracy against neutrals as well as ing neutrals and non-combatants was de- against enemies. One day it is a British stroyed by a German submarine, and hun- passenger ship that is torpedoed. Another 186 WRITING OF TODAY day it is an American merchant ship fly- dislike is a misfortune. How does the ing the American flag which is destroyed case stand between the people of the without a word of warning. And still an- United States and the people of Germany ? other day it is a defenseless Swedish or a So far as our side is concerned the popular Norwegian or a Dutch ship that is blown 5 feeling has at all times been one of en- from the face of the waters by a German tire friendliness, mixed with a great deal torpedo. of admiration in recent years for German Modern history affords no other such efficiency and a sense of rivalry in which example of a great nation running amuck there was no jealousy or disquietude, and calling it military necessity. 1° With much of Germany's culture, the During the last century the United American of the practical sort was un- States has had more years of warfare than familiar. German music was taken for Germany. The life of this nation has granted and its recognized excellence and hung in the balance too. But we never pervasiveness commanded the respect of found it necessary to make war upon neu- 15 the American who frankly admitted it to trals, or upon non-combatants, or upon be over his head. German literature has women and children. We never found it made no great impression outside of a necessary to ignore or flout all the estab- very small circle in which its greatness lished rules of civilized warfare. We has been fully recognized. But the ma- never found it necessary to outrage the 20 terial setting of the new German kultur, moral sentiment of mankind or to defy the model cities, the theaters and concert the public opinion of civilization. halls, the striking novelties in architecture, What Germany expects to gain by her the beautiful parks and suburbs, the policy is something we cannot guess, whole imposing display of new wealth sci- What advantage will it be to her to be left 25 entifically expended, has impressed not without a friend or a well-wisher in the only the multitude of travelers, but the world ? The war cannot last forever, great reading public, to which the progress Peace will eventually come, if only through of Germany and its lessons for the United exhaustion. What will be the attitude of States have long been a staple for illus- the other nations toward Germany when 30 trated articles. Still more could Ameri- the conflict is finished? How many dec- cans appreciate the wonderful develop- ades must pass before Germany can live ment of Germany in a specialty of our down the criminal record that she is writ- own like machinery. America long ago ing for herself in the annals of history ? formed a genuine respect for the Germans It has often happened that men in their 35 as people who ' do things,' and America's desperation have become outlaws. But own confidence in its boundless resources we recall no other instance in which a is too complete for the slightest envy over great nation has deliberately elected to be- this truly remarkable development, come an outlaw. That is the tragedy of Such has been the ordinary and there- the insensate policy that the German Gov- 40 fore the significant American attitude to- ernment is pursuing, and eventually the ward Germany, the attitude of the business German people will pay a staggering price man, the ' man in the street,' the ' plain for their Government's folly — a price American ' in varying degrees of plainness, that cannot be measured even in treasure As for academic circles and the larger or blood. 45 circles which are concerned with educa- tion and kindred matters, the influence of Germany has of course been immense, XIII and for a generation paramount. To thousands of educated Americans, as to GERMAN FEELING TOWARD 50 Lord Haldane, Germany has been their AMERICA 'spiritual home.' German ideas have af- fected American education from the kin- [Springfieid Daibi r £WJ£™l Ma y '?• 'S'S- dergarten to the university, and our in- y permission. tellectual workers, like our machinists, In a time of strained relations even tra- 55 have paid homage to German thorough- ditional friendships between countries are ness and German genius, subjected to severe tension, and a standing What is the reverse of the picture? grudge or even a habit of contemptuous That an eager and friendly interest in D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 187 America as the land of new hopes and dogged energy and the dour stubbornness new possibilities was long traditional in shown in this war, the American people Germany is well known. That the mass have had a truer and fuller conception of the German people, leaving out of ac- than the German people have had of us. count the present and let us hope passing 5 Even in the most bitter and in some cases friction, entertain a kindly feeling toward unjustified protests against Germany's part America and Americans there is reason in the war there has been an underly- to believe from the testimony of many ob- ing recognition of the great qualities of servers who have known the country well, the German people, and a feeling that not But it must regretfully be said that more 10 they but the system should be held re- has been done in Germany than in this sponsible. In the present crisis it would country to mar this friendliness of spirit, greatly ease matters if the Germans For many years systematic disparage- equally appreciated America. Do they? ment of American ways and ideals has It would be a relief to think so. If there characterized a large part of the German 15 are doubts they come from a sense of press. Many papers have conducted a the long and systematic disparagement special department devoted to ridiculous of America and Americans in the Ger- and silly news or anecdotes intended to man press. If Professor Muensterburg's show the crudity and backwardness of the friendly account of us had been given United States. There are influential quar- 20 equal publicity, Germany could not fail ters in which this country is frankly dis- to comprehend that America is not merely liked, and for the propagation of such the land of the almighty dollar, and that views Germany has machinery the possi- the idealism of Woodrow Wilson repre- bilities of which the outside world has sents a real and important side of the na- lately had cause to realize. The outburst 25 tional character. On the plane of ' hu- of feeling during the Spanish War, which manity first,' Germans and Americans Americans then visiting in Germany have should be able to stand together, cause to remember, was not wholly a spon- taneous outpouring of sympathy for Spain. It must be remembered that bureaucratic 30 Germany has no special reason to love a XIV republic; for its detestation of French t-ittttj a vtt-i a bttt democracy and English liberal institutions A SOLDIER AND A BULLET one need only turn to the life of Bis- rT ., „ „ . marck. Nor is the intellectual interest of 35 lUU ' May I3, I9IS " By permlsslon - ] America in Germany fully reciprocated; A German-born American letter-writer from the German point of view we have to the Evening Post says that he has heard almost no scholarship worthy of the name, from his mother that his brother, killed in and very little culture. When practical France in February, ' died with an Amer- studies were forcing themselves into the 40 ican bullet in his heart.' He complains, German school system fifteen years ago not of his brother's death, but about they were denounced as ' American ' edu- the American bullet. ' I have another cation ; the conception of the United States brother,' he says, ' fighting for his coun- as a land of sordid money grubbers is not try's cause, a father of three little ones uncommon in Europe, but it has been more 45 waiting for his return ; is he, too, going carefully cultivated in Germany than else- to be killed by a United-States-made bul- where. In the present heat of feeling we let ? ' should not forget the real and valuable It is quite possible. The Germans came service of Professor Muensterburg in self-invited into France, and it is not for writing in German for Germans a book 50 them to be critical about the details of setting forth American ideals and idealism, the hospitalities offered them. It strained Americans are reproached, and with French resources to receive and entertain some justice, for their ignorance of for- so many visitors. The French had to get eign affairs and foreign peoples, an igno- supplies where they could, and it was quite ranee which the past year has done much 55 a scramble to get enough. They bought to dispel. Yet there is reason to think bullets, no doubt, in the open market, and that in its appraisal of the true character if they got some American bullets, why of the German people, including even the not? WRITING OF TODAY Let us hope there will always be Amer- It is fairer to say that the church was ican bullets available for countries fight- working as energetically as it could to ing against invasion and subjection by regularize relations which the authorities their powerful neighbors. knew were being formed irregularly as the The reason why the good German let- 5 result of the tremendous upheaval in hu- ter-writer's brother is dead is that he was man conditions. Considerations which a German invader fighting in France, were important in ordinary times disap- His errand was so to crush France that peared in extraordinary times, she could never again get in Germany's The philosophical may say that it was way. No doubt it was not his fault that 10 nature responding to a sudden and savage he was on that errand, but it was the Ger- attack upon her most essential process, man mind that sent him that is guilty of She made a readjustment in anticipation his death, not the American bullet that of interference with her orderly methods, killed him. She quickened the will to live and put it 15 in the form of the will to breed. Of that impulse even the philosophical would XV concede that the unmarried fathers and ...._ tj A -o T t-. c mothers would be unconscious. Their WAR BABIES consciousness would be restricted within rru . „ ., ... „ . . .20 simpler emotional bounds, but that would [Chicago Tniune, Apnl 30, 19.5. By perm.ss.on.] ^^^ ^ possibili i y of the greater War, in itself an elemental expression plan. Nature was not thrown off her ■ of human emotions, has caused a reversion balance, but made readjustments and with to hetairism which the philosophical find the consequences public policy, morals, easy to understand but which society is 25 charity, church, and nation are now con- perplexed to make room for in an ordered cerned. state of morals. The consequences of the Hitherto Great Britain has regarded reversion are babies without names. The such a subject as one far below the line, nations at war need the babies and want It was to be denied of experience, put out them and realize that neither the mother 3° of thought and kept out of conversation who has borne the child nor the child it- and counsel. Even now the English will self can be permitted to suffer what in not even approximate Magyar candor or ordinary times would be the punishment the policy of Maria Theresa and her regi- imposed for irregularity. ments of hussars, but reticence has been Europe has not returned generally to a 35 broken down. Facts are facts and it is state of promiscuous concubinage, but the impossible and impolitic to pass on the disposition to 'breed before you die' has other side of the highway with averted followed some stronger urge than that eyes. of ecclesiastical exhortation and has em- The unmarried mother has done a serv- braced more opportunities than were of- 40 ice to the state. The fact that she has fered by the specially simplified marriage outweighs the fact that she did not in- procedure arranged for those about to go tend to, and the state is concerned to see into battle. that her position is regularized, that she The Church of England has been criti- and her child are protected from the cized for adapting itself to a situation 45 shame and disgrace that would have been which threatened to withdraw the youth the punishment in ordinary times, and of the country from matrimonial possibil- that they are given protection and made ities and consequently to have a depress- what they ought to be, valuable to the ing effect upon the vital statistics of the state. nation. It was accused of provoking a 50 If nature readjusted herself to meet disregard of moral restraints and of caus- a danger, society will have to readjust ing a lapse into promiscuity by throwing itself to accept the consequences, and aside delicacy and coming out plump with then, with the normal restored, both may the declaration that England was going proceed in approved and sanctioned to lose men and would need babies. 55 ways. D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 189 product may disarrange whole processes and affect disastrously many products. XVI There are twenty-two factories in the ,„ uv AnfT-TiTo. t-^t-o ,iw business in Germany and the industry WHY AMERICA DOES N T 5 j s bound together by trade agreements MAKE DYES and cooperative arrangements. Germany fa ti n/r a^t^-ktat •, ships dyes to thirty-three countries. [A. B. MACDONALD] China takes four times as much German tb-„, „ n,m c. - a„,-i » . -a ■ ■ -1 indigo as the United States consumes. [Kansas City star, April 27, 1015. By permission.] rr-.r- • t * < r 10 This great industry has been forty- The European War brought to this five years in building up in Germany, and whole country the revelation that we were in finding its world markets. It would getting nearly all our dyes from Ger- require, probably, nearly as long for this many. For the last thirty years the dye country to duplicate it, and a tremendous industry in this country has been pro- 15 investment and loss before the success tected by a 30 per cent, tariff, and yet was realized, if it ever should be real- there is made in this country only 15 ized. per cent, of the ten million dollars' worth ' The plain underlying reason why we of dyes used here, and we made only have been unable during thirty years of seventeen of the 912 dyes used. The rest k> tariff protection to develop a coal-tar of our dyes come from Germany. color industry, while during the same pe- Then the public began asking : ' Why riod the Germans have magnificently suc- don't we make our own dyes and save ceeded, is to be found in the failure of all this money ? ' our manufacturers and capitalists to real- ' They are made by a very complex 25 ize the creative power and earning ca- chemical process, out of coal tar,' was pacity of industrial research,' says Mr. the answer. Little. ' This power and this capacity ' Coal tar ? Why, the United States have been recognized by Germany, and on produces 125 million gallons of coal tar them as corner stones her industries are annually. Why don't we use it in making 30 based.' our own dyes ? ' And then he goes on to ask why we That question has been going the should try to duplicate the German dye- rounds of the newspapers for months, plants which are already capable of meet- and some have answered it one way, and ing the demands of the whole world as some another, but one of the best an- 35 soon as peace is restored. That would swers has just been made by Arthur D. only plunge us into a commercial warfare Little of Boston, a chemist, and one of against the most strongly intrenched in- the greatest experts in dyestuffs in this dustrial position in the world, country. Rather, he suggests, we should leave He points out that the coal-tar color 4° the dye business to the Germans, and and explosives industry, as developed in consider some of the other things we Germany, is the most highly organized might do with the vast expenditure of of any industry in the world. Starting effort, money and research that would be with fewer than a dozen crude raw ma- necessary to rival the Germans in that terials derived from coal tar, it builds 45 line. up by chemical processes, requiring elab- We waste 150 million tons of wood a orate and expensive plants and the most year, a billion feet of natural gas a day, rigid scientific control of operating con- millions of tons of flax, wheat and oat ditions, twelve hundred products. The straw at every harvest. Coke ovens whole system of production depends for so flame for miles in Pennsylvania and Col- its commercial efficiency upon the close orado, wasting precious ammonia. Un- correlation and interdependence of these touched peat deposits fringe our entire many products. The industry is self-con- Atlantic seaboard. The whole South is a tained. It makes its own crudes and con- reservoir of industrial wealth, untapped verts its own wastes into raw material for 55 in any proper sense, new processes. The adjustment of the One-tenth of the research, energy and economic balance is so close that even a skill which would be required to rival the slight change in the value of some one German dye industry, if applied to the 19° WRITING OF TODAY lumber industry of the South would result ficiency of the navy may also be signifi- in the creation of a whole series of great cant. Just now it is especially important interlocking industries, each more profit- that certain people across the water able than lumbering. should be under no delusions about the ' The South would be in a position to 5 physical ability of this nation to take care dominate the paper market of the world,' of itself. We are more likely to be per- he says. ' It would transport denatured mitted to tread the path of peace that we alcohol by pipe line and tank steamer, would fain follow, if it be well known make thousands of tons a day of carbo- and thoroughly understood that to attack hydrate cattle feeds, reorganize and de- 10 us is dangerous. If the impression is cre- velop along new lines and to far better ated that we are no better able to defend purpose its languishing naval stores in- ourselves and our rights than China — an dustry, and find new opportunity on every impression which, there is reason to fear, hand. To do these things in one in- already prevails — we are apt to be shown dustry, and many things as good in other 15 scant respect ; and it was eminently desir- industries, requires only a little faith, sus- able that something should be said or tained, courageous effort, and the appre- done to offset the recent utterances of the ciation by American financiers of the National Security League, which, how- earning power of research.' ever well intended and however sincere 20 they might have been, were certainly most inopportune. This is no time to tell the American people and the world in gen- ■X-V1I eral, as the National Security League has _ TTTTT ^__ tdttc- keen telling them, that the United States A BULLDOG, NOT A PUG 25 navy J s practically worthless. r _, , . , _ , It is nothing of the kind. Mr. Dan- [Charleston News and Courier. May 10, 1915.] • 1 u . ° , 1 j lels could not make out such a good case Secretary Daniels's speech in New for the navy if he did not have truth on York at the banquet given in honor of the his side. That the navy' is not all it officers of the Atlantic fleet is for several 3° ought to be is well known and is ad- reasons a notable utterance. In a sense, mitted by nobody more frankly than by it may be said to have given the country Mr. Daniels. It needs more ships, it the best assurance which it has yet had needs faster ships, it 1 needs more men, it that the administration is not in the camp needs more auxiliaries ; but though it is of those who scoff at the idea that pre- 35 far from being what it ought to be, it is a paredness is a safeguard against war. very respectable navy nevertheless and it The country has never been able to de- would give a very good account of itself termine to what extent Mr. Bryan's paci- if it were called upon to stand the test of fist and disarmament ideas held sway at battle. Mr. Daniels does not claim per- Washington, and it has been feared that 40 fection for the navy, does not deny the they exerted an influence so strong as to existence of certain serious weaknesses; be dangerous. Certainly Mr. Daniels's but nothing could be more effective, as speech is reassuring on this score. When far as it goes, than his categorical answer he says that the country is entering upon to the specific allegations of the National an era in which the navy is going to be 45 Security League and his concise setting expanded and strengthened ' in order that forth of the facts which show that the by our very strength we may be able to navy, though not as large as it should demand the right to live at peace with all be, is in good trim for the performance the world/ one is justified in assuming of any service that may be required of that the Wilson administration has not 50 it. been infected with the Bryan nonsense It is very well that these facts should which holds that preparedness is produc- be set forth just at this time. The tive of war instead of being a safeguard householder who has a fairly large and — though of course not an infallible one thoroughly capable bulldog gains noth- — against war. 55 ing by assuring possible trespassers that That Mr. Daniels should at this time be the bulldog is really nothing but a pug at pains to proclaim the present high ef- and, besides, has no teeth. D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 191 by the Arabs of the Yemen, who have no XVIII great love for Turkish rule. The Arabs m „„ „, m „„ „„, clung to the party for three days, and left THE END OF AN ODYSSEY their mark on it in the shape of several 5 c3.Su2li.ti6S [Manchester Guardian (England), April ,6, 19.5.] The wounde d, says the Berlin message, The news from Berlin of the arrival are now in hospital at Jeddah, which pre- in Arabia of the remnants of the Emden's sumably means that the rest have got into crew is the finishing touch to an adven- touch with some sort of Turkish forces; ture well in keeping with the general his- 10 and so we come definitely to the' last of tory of the famous German commerce the Emden,' as an individual fighting unit, raider. When the Emden was caught by the Sydney off Cocos Island on November 9 she put out to meet the Sydney without vty taking on board again the landing party 15 A1A which had been put ashore to wreck the OTTr . __. , T1 . T _ „„ r^T-rt^ TiTmrrtr cable station. SWARMING OF THE JAPANESE By the time the Emden had formally HIVE surrendered and several rescues had been „ , r ■ , , , . r r. [Lot Angeles Times, May 7, 1913.] made of isolated members of her crew 20 who had taken to the water, night was Japan has nearly six tenths as great a falling, and it was too late for the Syd- population as the United States, with an ney to get into communication with the area only one twenty-fourth as large. It cable station. has twenty two times as great a popula- When she did so on the next day her 25 tion as the State of California, with an captain learned that the Emden's landing area not quite as large, and it has four party of forty men and three officers had times the population of Mexico, with an made vigorous use of the delay. They area less than one fifth of that country, had seized and provisioned a seventy-ton The population of Japan is 370 to the schooner, the Ayesha, and escaped in her 30 square mile — about four times that of the previous evening with four Maxims China — while that of the United States and a modest but useful amount of am- is 85, Mexico 18 and of California 15 to munition for them. the square mile. There was material here for a fine ad- Great Britain solved the problem of a venture after the heart of a sea-faring 35 congested population by a system of col- novelist, and it has been pretty well ful- onization beyond seas. There are eight filled in fact. The cable operators vowed British colonies in Asia, twelve in Africa, that it would be a short one, asserting that seventeen in America and nine in Aus- the Ayesha was leaking when she was tralia. France has colonies in Algeria, seized and. would take her captors to the 4° Senegal, Tunis, Cayenne, Cambodia, Co- bottom with her before they got very far. chin China, Tonquin, New Caledonia, Ta- But she did not sink — perhaps the re- hiti, Sahara and Madagascar, and Ger- sourceful crew repaired her on their voy- many has her colonies of Eastern and age — and in three weeks she was lay- Western Africa. The Netherlands have ing in stores at Padang, a straight 830 45 Borneo, Celebes, Java, New Guinea, Su- miles away, on the coast of Sumatra, matra, Surinam and the Moluccas. Por- This was on November 28, and since then, tugal has a larger population in Africa from the details given in the Berlin mes- than in Europe. Italy has Eritrea, Trip- sage, the Ayesha has made her way in oli and the Somali coast. With European four months across at least 4100 miles of 50 nations colonization is a convenience, with the Indian Ocean, reaching the Arabian Japan it is an immediate and vital neces- coast at the bottom of the Red Sea on sity. Her people 1 are not welcome in any March 27. Latin-American country except possibly Presumably the intention of her crew Mexico. There is a large tract of coun- was then to march inland to the nearest 55 try in northern China not so thickly set- center of their allies, the Turkish army, tied but that it could accommodate more But their adventures were by no means people, but if Japan gets a foothold there over, for on their way they were attacked she will have to fight for it. 192 WRITING OF TODAY On the whole the most available outlet man. It would be entirely feasible, that for Japan seems to be in West Mexico, is, for- a city, a state or a nation to m- That portion of our sister republic is more sure every employed man within its bor- sparsely populated than any other part and ders in an amount equal to his yearly freer from the ravages of banditti because 5 earnings, and at a premium of about 1 there is not much of anything portable to per cent, of the total yearly pay roll, steal. Japanese are welcome there and, An objection raised to group insurance if they go there, not to establish a Japa- is that it causes men to rely on that ex- nese colony or to retain their allegiance to pedient instead of taking out individual Japan, but to become Mexican citizens in 10 insurance, and if they are thrown out of accordance with Mexican laws, such ac- work their insurance ceases. But it is tion would not be an infraction of the answered that the group scheme, by dem- Monroe Doctrine. We could n't prevent it onstrating the advantages of insurance even if we wanted to, and it is by no to many men who might otherwise ignore means certain that we would want to. 15 it, has just the opposite effect. We hope the latter argument is true, for every man with dependents and with- XX out a fortune ought to insure his life. INSURANCE FOR EVERYBODY *> iSaturday Evening Post, May i, 1915. By per- AA1 mission.] Within three or four years group in- THE FEEBLE-MINDED surance of lives has become an im- 25 . ,. ... . . , ,. , . ., , j. vr • [Indianapolis News, April 30,1915. By permission.] portant factor in the business of life in- surance, many companies now engaging in In the last issue of the Indiana Bulletin it. Say a plant employs a thousand men. of Charities and Corrections papers read The company will insure all of them under before the Indiana Academy of Science one blanket policy, without any individual 3° are printed. These constitute a valuable application or medical examination. Gen- addition to the purpose of the Bulletin, erally the amount payable at death is one They concern themselves chiefly with dis- year's wage or salary, whatever that may cussion, from various points of view, of have been ; and the premium paid by the f eeble-mindedness and the problem it pre- employer runs from 1 to ij4 per cent. 35 sents to the state in the care that must No physical examinations are necessary, inevitably be exercised over those so con- because the mere fact that the men are ditioned, and as to what shall be done at work is sufficient proof that, as a rule, to restrict the ravages of the affliction, they are in good bodily condition ; and by In the nature of a brief resume of the insuring a thousand employed men in a 40 practical sides of the problem is the paper lump the company gets the average risk, read by Dr. Bliss, superintendent of the which is all it needs. It could afford to state school for feeble-minded youth at insure the whole adult population of a city Ft. Wayne. Incidentally, he recounted en bloc, because then also it would get the history of the subject, which began the average risk, on which its premium 45 in 1800, when a French physician tried charges are based ; in fact, experience in- unsuccessfully to educate a ' wild boy ' dicates that group insurance risks run found in the woods. The first successful above the average. The insurance ap- attempt was made in our own country at plies, of course, only to men on the pay Hartford, Connecticut, in 1836. Several roll. If a man's employment ceases his 50 feeble-minded children were there trained insurance automatically ceases with it. to some degree. A dozen years later Presumably if he becomes decrepit his Massachusetts started the first state employment will cease or his wages will school. Other States followed, and In- decline; so the company at his death will diana came into line in 1879. be required to pay less than if he had been 55 These schools were all started with the vigorous. idea that mental defect was curable. But The striking thing is the demonstrated it is now known that it is not. It is a practicability of insuring every employed condition, not a disease. Feeble-minded- D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 193 ness is a defective brain and can never its national monuments, and, even though be cured, but may be relieved. There are we are at war, to secure, if necessary by between 5000 and 6000 such persons in public subscription, the money needed for our State needing institutional care, and its rescue. On the rolling chalk of 'the only about one fourth are getting it. 5 Great Plain ' of Mr. Hardy's novels, The remainder are at large producing skirted by two of those white ribbons over their kind, and if we are to protect the which the military transport wagons will future generations of our people from have gone crunching so very noisily in the this growing burden something must be blazing sunshine of the past week — in done. io more normal Whit-weeks they would, as What to do, Dr. Bliss says, is a per- like as not, have been the wagons of the plexmg question. The best thing, he East Lancashire Territorials — stands thinks, for some years at least, is segre- Stonehenge, and Stonehenge is part of gation, to be applied not to those already the Amesbury Abbey estate. Perhaps in institutions, but to those at large. He 15 ' rescue ' is a rather invidious term to ap- approves the commission recommended by p l y to its purchase on behalf of the na- Amos Butler for investigation and report tion; for if the great monument had to be to the next legislature. He recommends i n private hands it could hardly have been also a farm of 2000 acres for boys and j n better ones than those of the late Sir men, and a smaller one for women, where 20 Edmund Antrobus. If he did startle the suitable occupations can be provided, stranger who sought it out for the first Better marriage laws also would be a time by the spectacle of a wire fence, a great help. All this would be followed by turnstile and a policeman, those unroman- registration of diseases that produce tie adjuncts were provided with the best feeble-mindedness. But, for the present, 25 intentions and with the sanction of three the farm is the thing and the doctor urges eminent antiquarian associations. (Though that the State should realize the momen- apparently necessary to the safety of the tousness of the problem that it faces and stones, they were not happy additions, undertake measures to prevent the repro- Tne y took from one forever a little of the duction of defectives and so set out on 30 str ange, hopeless beauty which Mr. Hardy the way of getting the better of a condi- had lent to the uninclosed Stonehenge in tion that now is allowed to go on de- t he c i os ing chapters of Tess of the D'Ur- Yelopmg. Certainly, there is here a con- bervilles; they went ill with the taut, dition that should be met. The State can doomed happiness which Tess snatched not ignore it and its thorough investiga- 35 from her reconciliation with Angel Clare, tion as Secretary Butler recommended an awed idyll which ended below the great would be a long step in the right direction stones when the dawn showed t he hunt- both as to state economy and humanity. erSj who < wa i ked as if trained/ closing round the sleeping girl from the shadows 40 of the trilithons.) But for sucH a relic XXII national ownership is better than the most „„,,.„..,.„„„, T ^„ T „ T ™ TTT , „, . ^^^m considerate private hands. The great STONEHENGE IN THE MARKET numbers of our New Army who must have „,,.„.. - . , j „ , made pilgrimage to the famous stones dur- IManchester Guardian, England, May 29, .915.] ^ mg ^ pagt ^ mmths ^ haye dong Between now and September next, when something to increase public interest in the Amesbury Abbey estate is to be sold, their fate. One hopes that before the sun there is plenty of time for the nation to rises on Midsummer Day in line with the make up its mind to rescue from private avenue ' some steps will have been taken ownership the oldest and most debated of 5 ° with regard to its purchase. E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES Humorous writing is much more the result of natural disposition and of point of view than of specific training and rule. The fact, however, that «very newspaper devotes space ranging in extent from a corner to a column to writing that is occasional and humorous in character, and that there are numerous weekly periodicals devoted solely to this form of writing, is sufficient evidence of a popularity as widespread as it has been perennial. Some American writers of national repute, such as Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and O. Henry, began their literary careers with obscure newspaper contributions of a humorous character. The daily paper or the monthly magazine of the majority of American colleges affords the student who has any ability or desire for humorous writing abundant opportunity to try his hand and to develop his skill. A rough distinction between Humor and Wit is perhaps desirable, though these two phases of the Comic may often be found together in the same piece of writing. Humor is largely a matter of point of view ; it is an outlook on life largely determined by temperament. Wit is manifested by a fine facility for apt speech, by the unexpected, quick-turned and appro- priate remark, by the sparkling, keen-cut saying. The former calls for broad emotional sym- pathy; the latter, for quick intellectual perception. The writer-in-training will have to be on constant guard against an insidious temptation to cheapness, coarseness, and exaggeration. Crude vulgarity of conception and tiresome repe- tition of superficial mannerisms he will have continually to strive against. Genuine humor is not a literary trick, nor is it a matter that can be reduced to a formula or recipe. It implies freshness and sincerity in point of view, and should demand real and conscious literary skill in expression, so long as this effort does not deaden that spontaneity which is one of the greatest charms of humor. For obvious reasons examples of the ubiquitous ' joke ' or humorous paragraph and the interesting but disjointed ' column ' are omitted from this section. The examples here in- cluded range from the somewhat lengthy treatment of a serious subject with a light and humorous touch, as in ' The Devil and the Deep Sea ' or ' System versus Slippers,' to the comparatively brief paragraph about so trivial a subject as ' Hairpins ' or ' The Improved Baby.' The occasional article, often humorous in character, is suggested, like the informal essay which in many respects it resembles, by some topic of passing interest, or by some sporadic idea capable of brief development. It is interesting, informal, light, and provoca- tive of thought by suggestion rather than by explicit didactic method. I three-pronged oyster fork and looking into the ashes of his smothered fire. Theology THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP will have none of him. Genial clergy of SEA ample girth, stuffed with the buttered 5 toast of a rectory tea, are preaching him STEPHEN B. LEACOCK out of existence. The fires of his mate- rial hell are replaced by the steam heat of [ u " fowi ^ a i^ ^' th °"^ be p r ^ s j 1 °- r . ] By permis " moral torture. This even the most sensi- tive of sinners faces with equanimity. So The Devil is passing out of fashion. i° the Devil's old dwelling is dismantled and After a long and honorable career he has stands by the roadside with a sign-board fallen into an ungrateful oblivion. His bearing the legend, ' Museum of Moral existence has become shadowy, his out- Torment, These Premises to Let.' In line attenuated, and his personality dis- front of it, in place of the dancing imp pleasing to a complacent generation. So 15 of earlier ages, is a poor, make-believe he stands now leaning on the handle of his thing, a jack-o'-lantern on a stick, with a 194 E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 195 turnip head and candle eyes, labeled ' De- each in his own department of learning, mon of Moral Repentance, Guaranteed with his tags, and label, and his pigeon- Worse than Actual Fire.' The poor thing hole category of proper names, precluding grins in its very harmlessness. all discussion by ordinary people. No man Now that the Devil is passing away, an 5 may speak fittingly of the soul without unappreciative generation fails to realize spending at least six weeks in a theolog- the high social function that he once per- ical college ; morality is the province of the formed. There he stood for ages a sim- moral philosopher who is prepared to pelt pie and workable basis of human moral- the intruder back over the fence with a ity ; an admirable first-hand reason for be- 10 shower of German commentaries. Igno- ing good, which needed no ulterior ranee, in its wooden shoes, shuffles around explanation. The rude peasant of the the portico of the temple of learning, stum- Middle Ages, the illiterate artisan of the bling among the litter of terminology, shop, and the long-haired hind of the The broad field of human wisdom has been fields, had no need to speculate upon the 15 cut into a multitude of little professorial problem of existence and the tangled skein rabbit warrens. In each of these a spe- of moral enquiry. The Devil took all that cialist burrows deep, scratching out a off their hands. He had either to ' be shower of terminology, head down in ,an good' or else he 'got the fork,' just as in unlovely attitude which places an inter- our time the unsuccessful comedian of 20 locutor at a grotesque conversational dis- amateur night in the vaudeville houses advantage. ' gets the hook.' • Humanity, with the May I digress a minute to show what I Devil to prod it from behind, moved stea'd- mean by the inconvenience of modern ily upwards on the path of moral devel- learning? This happened at a summer opment. Then having attained a certain 25 bjfjojjding house where I spent a portion of elevation, it turned upon its tracks, denied the season of rest, in company with a cer- that there had been any Devil, rubbed it- tain number of ordinary, ignorant people self for a moment by way of investiga- like myself. We got on well together. In tion, said that there had been no prodding, the evenings on the veranda we talked of and then fell to wandering about on the 30 nature and of its beauties, of the stars and hilltops without any fixed idea of goal or why they were so far away — we didn't direction. know their names, thank God — and such In other words, with the disappearance like simple topics of conversation, of the Devil there still remains unsolved Sometimes under the influence of a the problem of conduct, and behind it the 35 double-shotted sentimentalism sprung riddle of the universe. How are we get- from huckleberry pie and doughnuts, we ting along without the Devil ? How are even spoke of the larger issues of life, and we managing to be good without the fork ? exchanged opinions on immortality. We What is happening to our conception of used no technical terms. We knew none, goodness itself ? 40 The talk was harmless and happy. Then To begin with, let me disclaim any in- there came among us a faded man in a tention of writing of morality from the coat that had been black before it turned point of view of the technical, or profes- green, who was a Ph.D. of Oberlin Col- sional, moral philosopher. Such a person lege. The first night he sat on the ve- would settle the whole question by a few 45 randa, somebody said how beautiful the references to pragmatism, transcendental- sunset was. Then the man from Oberlin ism, and esoteric synthesis — leaving his spoke up and said : ' Yes, one could al- auditors angry but unable to retaliate, most fancy it a pre-Raphaelite conception This attitude, I am happy to say, I am with the same chiaroscuro in the atmo- quite unable to adopt. I do not know what 50 sphere.' There was a pause. That ended pragmatism is, and I do not care. I know all nature study for almost an hour. Later the word transcendental only in connection in the evening, some one who had been with advertisements for ' gents' furnish- reading a novel said in simple language ings.' If Kant, or Schopenhauer, or An- that he was sick of having the hero al- heuser Busch have already settled these 55 ways come out on top. ' Ah,' said the questions, I cannot help it. man from Oberlin, ' but does n't that pre- In any case, it is my opinion that now- cisely correspond with Nitch's idea ' (he a-days we are overridden in the specialties, meant, I suppose, Nietzsche, but he pro- 196 WRITING OF TODAY .' nounced it to rime with 'bitch') ' of the the credulity of the age which has repudi-'j dominance of man over fate ? ' Mr. Heze- ated the Devil as too difficult of belief. < kiah Smith who kept the resort looked We have, it is true, moved far away round admiringly and said, ' Ain't he a from the Devil ; but are we after all so terr? ' He certainly was. While the man 5 much better off ? Or do we, in respect of from Oberlin stayed with us, elevating the future, contain within ourselves the conversation was at an end, and a self- promise of better things? I suppose that conscious ignorance hung upon the ve- most of us would have the general idea randa like a fog. that there never was an age which dis- However, let us get back to the Devil. 10 played so high a standard of morality, or Let us notice in the first place that because at least of ordinary human decency, as our we have kicked out the Devil as an absurd own. We look back with a shudder to the and ridiculous superstition, unworthy of a blood-stained history of our ancestors ; the scientific age, we have by no means elim- fires of Smithfield with' the poor martyr inated the supernatural and the super-ra- 15 writhing about his post, frenzied and hys- tional from the current thought of our terical in the flames ; the underground cell time. I suppose there never was an age where the poor remnant of humanity more riddled with superstition, more cred- turned its haggard face to the torch of the ulous, more drunkenly addicted to thau- entering gaoler; the madhouse itself with maturgy than the present. The Devil in 20 its gibbering occupants converted into a his palmiest days was nothing to it. In . show for the idle fools of London. We despite of our vaunted material common- may well look back on it all and say that, sense, there is a perfect craving abroad at least, we are better than we were. The for belief in something beyond the com- history of our little human race would pass of the believable. 25 make but sorry reading were not its every It shows itself in every age and class, page imprinted with the fact that human Simpering Seventeen gets its fortune told ingenuity has invented no torment too on a weighing machine, and shudders with great for human fortitude to bear, luxurious horror at the prospective vil- In general decency — sympathy — we lainy of the Dark Man who is to cross her 30 have undoubtedly progressed. Our courts life. Senile Seventy gravely sits on a of law have forgotten the use of the wooden bench at a wonder-working meet- thumbkins and boot; we do not press a ing, waiting for a gentleman in a ' Tux- criminal under ' weights greater than he edo ' jacket to call up the soul of Napoleon can bear ' in order to induce him to plead; Bonaparte, and ask its opinion of Mr. Taft. 35 nor flog to ribbands the bleeding back of Here you have a small tenement, let us the malefactor dragged at the cart's tail say, on South Clark Street, Chicago, through the thoroughfares of a crowded What is it? It is the home of Nadir the city. Our public, objectionable though it Nameless, the great Hindoo astrologer, is, as it fights its way to its ball games, Who are in the front room ? Clients wait- 4° breathes peanuts and peppermint upon the ing for a revelation of the future. Where offended atmosphere, and shrieks aloud its is Nadir? He is behind a heavily draped chronic and collective hysteria, is at all curtain, worked with Indian serpents. By events better than the leering oafs of the the waiting clients Nadir is understood to Elizabethan century, who put hard-boiled be in consultation with the twin fates, Isis 45 eggs in their pockets and sat around upon and Osiris. In reality Nadir is frying po- the grass waiting for the ' burning ' to be- tatoes. Presently he will come out from gin. behind the curtain and announce that But when we have admitted that we are Osiris has spoken (that is, the potatoes are better than we were as far as the facts of now finished and on the back of the stove) 50 our moral conduct go, we may well ask as and that he is prepared to reveal hidden to the principles upon which our conduct treasure at forty cents a revelation. Mar- is based. In past ages there was the au- velous, is it not, this Hindoo astrology thoritative moral code as a guide — thou business ? And any one can be a Nadir shalt and thou shalt not — and behind it the Nameless, who cares to stain his face 55 the pains, and the penalties, and the three- blue with thimbleberry juice, wrap a red pronged oyster fork. Under that influ- turban round his forehead, and cut the rate ence, humanity, or a large part of it, of revelation to thirty-five cents. Such is slowly and painfully acquired the moral E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 197 habit. At present it goes on, as far as its It parades the Body, with a capital B, as actions are concerned, with the momentum also a thing that must be developed ; and of the old beliefs. this, not for any ulterior thing that may be But when we turn from the actions on effected by it but presumably as an end in •the surface to the ideas underneath, we 5 itself. The Monk or the Good Man of the find in our time a strange confusion of be- older day despised the body as a thing that liefs out of which is presently to be made must learn to know its betters. He spiked the New Morality. Let us look at some of it down with a hair shirt to teach it the the varied ideas manifested in the cross virtue of submission. He was of course sections of the moral tendencies of our 10 very wrong and very objectionable. But ti me - one doubts if he was much worse than his Here we have first of all the creed and modern successor who joys consciously in cult of self-development. It arrogates to the operation of his pores and his glands, itself the title of New Thought, but con- and the correct rhythmical contraction of tains in reality nothing but the Old Selfish- 15 his abdominal muscles, as if he consti- ness. According to this particular outlook tuted simply a sort of superior sewerage the goal of morality is found in fully de- system. veloping one's self. Be large, says the vo- I once knew a man called Juggins who tary of this creed, be high, be broad. He exemplified this point of view. He used gives a shilling to a starving man, not that 20 to ride a bicycle every day to train his the man may be fed but that he himself muscles and to clear his brain. He looked may be a shilling-giver. He cultivates at all the scenery that he passed to develop sympathy with the destitute for the sake of his taste for scenery. He gave to the poor being sympathetic. The whole of his vir- to develop his sympathy with poverty. He tue and his creed of conduct runs to a 25 read the Bible regularly in order to culti- cheap and easy egomania in which his vate the faculty of reading the Bible, and blind passion for himself causes him to use visited picture galleries with painful as- external people and things as mere reac- siduity in order to give himself a feeling tions upon his own personality. The im- for art. He passed through life with a moral little toad swells itself £0 the burst- 30 strained and haunted expression waiting ing point in its desire to be a moral ox. for clarity of intellect, greatness of soul, In its more ecstatic form, this creed ex- and a passion for art to descend upon him presses itself in a sort of general feeling like a flock of doves. He is now dead, of ' uplift,' or the desire for internal moral He died presumably in order to cultivate expansion. The votary is haunted by the 35 the sense of being a corpse, idea of his own elevation. He wants to No doubt, in the general scheme or pur- get into touch with nature, to swim in the pose of things the cult of self-development Greater Being, ' to tune himself,' har- and the botheration about the Body may, monize himself, and generally to perform through the actions which it induces, be on himself as on a sort of moral accordion. 40 working for a good end. It plays a part, He gets himself somehow mixed up with no doubt, in whatever is to be the general natural objects, with the sadness of au- evolution of morality, tumn, falls with the leaves and drips with And there, in that very word evolution, the dew. Were it not for the complacent we are brought face to face with another- self-sufficiency which he induces, his re- 45 of the wide-spread creeds of our day, fined morality might easily verge into sim- which seek to replace the older. This one pie idiocy. Yet, odd though it may seem, is not so much a guide to conduct as a this creed of self-development struts about theory, and a particularly cheap and easy with its head high as one of the chief one, of a general meaning and movement moral factors which have replaced the au- 5° of morality. The person of this persua- thoritative dogma of the older time. sion is willing to explain everything in The vague and hysterical desire to ' up- terms of its having been once something lift ' one's self merely for exaltation's sake else and being about to pass into something is about as effective an engine of moral further still. Evolution, as the natural progress as the effort to lift one's self in 55 scientists know it, is a plain and straight- the air by a terrific hitching up of the forward matter, not so much a theory as a breeches. view of a succession of facts taken in or- The same creed has its physical side, ganic relation. It assumes no purposes 198 WRITING OF TODAY whatever. It is not — if I may be allowed presupposes the existence of the very a professor's luxury of using a word thing it ought to prove. It starts from a which will not be understood — in any de- misconception of the biological doctrine, gree teleological. Biology has nothing to say as to what The social philosopher who adopts the 5 ought to survive and what ought not to evolutionary theory of morals is generally survive, it merely speaks of what does one who is quite in the dark as to the true survive. The burdock easily kills the conception of evolution itself. He under- violet, and the Canadian skunk lingers stands from Darwin, Huxley, and other where the humming-bird has died. In bi- great writers whom he has not read, that u ology the test of fitness to survive is the the animals have been fashioned into their fact of survival itself — nothing else. To present shape by a long process of twist- apply this doctrine to the moral field brings ing, contortion, and selection, at once la- out grotesque results. The successful borious and deserving. The giraffe burglar ought to be presented by society lengthened its neck by conscientious 15 with a nickle-plated 'jimmy,' and the stretching; the frog webbed its feet by starving cripple left to die in the ditch, perpetual swimming ; and the bird broke Everything — any phase of movement or out in feathers by unremitting flying, religion — which succeeds, is right. Any- ' Nature ' by weeding out the short giraffe, thing which does not is wrong. Every- the inadequate frog, and the top-heavy 20 thing which is, is right ; everything which bird encouraged by selection the ones most was, is right ; everything which will be, is ' fit to survive.' Hence the origin of spe- right. All we have to do is to sit still and cies, the differentiation of organs — hence, watch it come. This is moral evolution, in fact, everything. On such a basis, we might expect to find, Here, too, when the theory is taken over 25 as the general outcome of the new moral and mis-translated from pure science to code now in the making, the simple wor- the humanities, is found the explanation ship of success. This is exactly what is of all our social and moral growth. Each happening. The morality which the Devil of our religious customs is like the gi- with his oyster fork was commissioned to raffe's neck. A manifestation such as the 30 inculcate w^s essentially altruistic. Things growth of Christianity is regarded as were to be done for other people. The if humanity broke out into a new social new ideas, if you combine them in a sort organism, in the same way as the ascend- of moral amalgam — to develop one's self, ing amoeba breaks out into a stomach, to evolve, to measure things by their suc- With this, view of human relations, noth- 35 cess — weigh on the other side of the ing in the past is said to be either good or scale. So it comes about that the scale bad. Everything is a movement. Canni- begins to turn and the new morality shows balism is a sort of apprenticeship in meat- signs of exalting the old-fashioned Bad- eating. The institution of slavery is seen ness in place of the discredited Goodness, as an evolutionary stage towards free cit- 4° Hence we find saturating our contempo- izenship, and ' Uncle Tom's ' overseer is rary literature the new worship of the no longer a nigger-driver but a social force Strong Man, the easy pardon of the Un- tending towards the survival of the Booker scrupulous, the Apotheosis of the Jungle, Washington type of negro. and the Deification of the Detective. With his brain saturated with the 45 Force, brute force, is what we now turn chloroform of this social dogma, the moral to as the moral ideal, and Mastery and philosopher ceases to be able to condemn Success as the sole tests of excellence, anything at all, measures all things with a The nation cuddles its multi-millionaires, centimeter scale of his little doctrine, and cinematographs itself silly with the pic- finds them all of the same length. Where- 50 tures of its prize fighters, and even casts upon he presently desists from thought al- an eye of slantwise admiration through together, calls everything bad or good an the bars of its penitentiaries. Beside these evolution, and falls asleep with his hands things the simple Good Man of the older . folded upon his stomach murmuring ' sur- dispensation, with his worn alpaca coat vival of the fittest.' 55 and his obvious inefficiency, is nowhere. Anybody who will look at the thing can- Truly, if we go far enough with it, the didly, will see that the evolutionary ex- Devil may come to his own again, and planation of morals is meaningless, and more than his own, not merely as Head E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 199 Stoker but as what is called an End in as his personal friends. Many of them he Himself. never met. Most of them never saw him. I knew a little man called Bliggs. He All of them felt a certain relationship and worked in a railroad office, a simple, dusty, were flattered by it. Men and women in little man, harmless at home and out of it 5 all parts of our outspread domain, the men till he read of Napoleon and heard of the especially, cherished a private affection thing called a Superman. Then some- for him. They called him by his first body told him of Nitch, and he read as name, which is the surest proof of abiding much Nitch as he could understand. The fondness. Andrew Jackson was known as thing went to his head. Morals were no 10 ' Andy ' ; Abraham Lincoln was simply longer for him. He used to go home from "' Abe ' to every soldier boy ; and, as a later the office and be a Superman by the hour, instance, we have ' Teddy.' Some men curse if his dinner was late, and strut the settle down to a kinship with the shirt- length of his little home with a silly irri- sleeve contingent, even when they seem tation which he mistook for moral enfran- 15 indifferent to the favor of the plain multi- chisement. Presently he took to being a tude. Supermanin business hours, and the rail- Mark Twain never practised any of the road dismissed him. They know nothing wiles of the politician in order to be of Nitch in such crude places. It has cheered at railway stations and have often seemed to me that Bliggs typified 20 Chautauquas send for him. He did not much of the present moral movement. seem over-anxious to meet the reporters, Our poor Devil then is gone. We can- and he had a fine contempt for most of the not have him back for the whistling. For orthodox traditions cherished by the peo- generations, as yet unlearned in social pie who loved him. Probably no other philosophy, he played a useful part — a 25 American could have lived abroad for so dual part in a way, for it was his function many years without being editorially to illustrate at once the pleasures and the branded as an expatriate. In some sec- penalties of life. Merriment in the tions of our country it is safer to be an ac- scheme of things was his, and for those complice in homicide, or a stand-patter in drawn too far in pleasure and merriment, 30 politics, than it is to be an ' expatriate.' retribution and the oyster fork. When Mr. Clemens chose to take up his I can see him before me now, his long, residence in Vienna he incurred none of eager face and deep-set, brown eyes, pa- the criticism visited upon Mr. William thetic with the failure of ages — carrying Waldorf Astor. Every one hoped he with him his pack of cards, his amber 35 would have a good time and learn the Ger- flask, and his little fiddle. Let but the man language. Then when the word came door of the cottage stand open upon a win- back that he made his loafing headquarters ter night, and the Devil would blow in, in a place up an alley known as a stube, or offering his flask and fiddle, or rattling his a rathskeller, or something like that, all box of dice. 40 the women of the literary clubs, who kept So with his twin incentives of pain and his picture on the high pedestal with the pleasure he coaxed and prodded humanity candles burning in front of it, decided that on its path, till it reached the point where stube meant ' shrine.' You may be sure it repudiated him, called itself a Super- that if they can find the place they will man, and headed straight for the cliff over 45 sink a bronze memorial tablet immediately which is the deep sea. Quo vadimus? above the main faucet. Of course, the early books, such as In- nocents Abroad, Roughing It, and The II Gilded Age gave him an enormous vogue 5o in every remote community visited by MARK TWAIN AS OUR book-agents. The fact that people en- EMISSARY joyed reading these cheering volumes and preserved them in the bookcase and moved GEORGE ADE out some of the classics by E. P. Roe and r/ - , „ . t, t. t> --155 Mrs. Southworth in order to make room [Century Magazine, December, 1910. By permission.] " .. _ „ , .. ,, *"""• t^. for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain had a large following of does not fully account for the evident and admirers who came to regard themselves accepted popularity of Mark Twain. 200 WRITING OF TODAY Other men wrote books that went into the he was affecting the picturesque. He was bookcase but what one of them ever earned big enough to be different. Any special the special privilege of being hailed by privilege was his without the asking, his first name? Having earned ioo per cent, of our hom- When a man has done his work for 5 age he didn't have to strain for new ef- many years more or less under the super- fects. vising eye of the public, the public learns His devotion to the members of his a good many facts about him that are in family and the heroic performance in con- no way associated with his set and regular nection with the debts of the publishing duties as a servant of the public. Out of 10 house undoubtedly helped to strengthen the the thousand-and-one newspaper mentions general regard for him. Also, the older and private bits of gossip and whispered generation, having heard him lecture, words of inside information, even the busy could say that they had ' met ' him. Every man in the street comes to put an estimate one who sat within the soothing presence on the real human qualities of each per- 15 of the drawl, waiting to be chirked up on sonage, and sometimes these estimates are every second sentence with a half-con- surprisingly accurate, just as they are cealed stroke of drollery, was for all time often sadly out of focus. a witness to the inimitable charm of the Joseph Jefferson had a place in the pub- man and the story-teller, lie esteem quite apart from that demanded a> The knowledge of his unaffected de- by his skill as an actor. Players and mocracy became general. No doubt the readers of newspapers came to know in housewives loved him for his outspoken time that he was a kind and cheery old devotion to home-cooking. Has any one gentleman of blameless life, charitable in told in public the anecdote of his tribute his estimates of professional associates, a 25 to an humble item in the bill of fare ? It modest devotee of the fine arts, an outdoor was at a dinner party in Washington, sportsman with the enthusiasm of a boy, Senator Hearst was giving the dinner, and and the chosen associate of a good many Mark Twain was the guest of honor, eminent citizens. When they spoke of Here were two transplanted Westerners ' Joe ' Jefferson in warmth and kindness, 30 who knew more about roughing it than it was not because he played Rip Van ever appeared in a book. As the high- Winkle so beautifully, but because the priced food was being served to them, they light of his private goodness had filtered talked longingly of the old-fashioned cook- through the mystery surrounding every ery of Missouri. The Senator wondered popular actor. William H. Crane is an- 35 if there was any real corned beef and cab- other veteran of the stage who holds the bage left in the world. Mark Twain regard of the public. It knows him as a spoke up in praise of the many old-time comedian, and also it knows him as the dishes, reaching his climax when he de- kind of man we should like to invite up to clared that, in his opinion, ' Bacon would our house to meet the ' folks.' The so- 40 improve the flavor of an angel ! ' rorities throb with a feeling of sisterhood Furthermore is it not possible that much for Miss Maude Adams because the girls of the tremendous liking for Mark Twain feel sure that she is gracious and charming grew out of his success in establishing our and altogether 'nice.' credit abroad? Any American who can Mark Twain' would have stood very 45 invade Europe and command respectful at- well with the assorted grades making up tention is entitled to triumphal arches what is generally known as the ' great when he arrives home. Our dread and public ' even if he had done his work in a fear of foreign criticism are still most box and passed it out through a knothole, acute. Mrs. Trollope and Captain Mar- Any one who'knew our homely neighbors 50 ryat lacerated our feelings long ago. as he knew them and could tell about them Dickens came over to have our choicest in loving candor, so that we laughed at wild flowers strewn in his pathway and them and warmed up to them at the same then went home to scourge us until we time, simply had to be ' all right.' Being shrieked with pain. Kipling had fun with prejudiced in his favor, we knew that if 55 us, and for years after that we trembled at he wanted to wear his hair in a mop and his approach. George Bernard Shaw pep- adopt white clothing and talk with a pers away at long range and the London drawl, no one would dare to suggest that Spectator grows peevish every time it looks E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 201 out of the window and sees a drove of trying to assimilate new rules or oppose Cook tourists madly spending their them, and merely goes ahead in his own money. way, conducting himself as a human being It is a terrible shock to the simple in- possessed of the usual number of facul- lander, who has fed upon Congressional 5 ties. This odd performance may be oratory and provincial editorials, when he counted upon to excite wonder and ad- discovers that in certain European cap- miration. Benjamin Franklin tried it out itals the name ' American ' is almost a long ago and became the sensation of Eu- term of reproach. The first-time-over cit- rope. General Grant and Colonel Roose- izen from Spudville or Alfalfa Center in- 10 velt got along comfortably in all sorts of dicates his protest by wearing a flag on foreign complications merely by refusing his coat and inviting those who sit in dark- to put on disguises and to be play-actors, ness to come over and see what kind of But Mark Twain was probably the best of trams are run on the Burlington. The our emissaries. He never waved the lady, whose voice comes from a point di- 15 starry banner and at the same time he rectly between the eyes, seeks to correct all never went around begging forgiveness, erroneous impressions by going to the He knew the faults of his home people and table d'hote with fewer clothes and more he understood intimately and with a fam- jewels than any one had reason to expect, ily knowledge all of their good qualities These two are not as frequently to be seen 20 and groping intentions and half-formed as they were twenty years ago but they plans for big things in the future; but are still gleefully held up by our critics as apparently he did not think it necessary to being ' typical.' justify all of his private beliefs to men Probably they are outnumbered now- who lived five thousand miles away from adays by the apologetic kind — those who 25 Hannibal, Missouri. He had been in all approach the English accent with trem- parts of the world and had made a calm bling determination and who, after order- and unbiased estimate of the relative val- ing in French, put a finger on the printed ues of men and institutions. Probably he line so that the waiter may be in on the came to know that all had been cut from secret. 30 one piece and then trimmed variously. There are Americans who live abroad He carried with him the same placid and speak of their native land in shame- habits of life that sufficed him in Connecti- ful whispers. Another kind is an ex- cut and because he was what he pretended plainer. He becomes fretful and involved to be, the hypercritical foreigners doted in the attempt to make it clear to some 35 upon him and the Americans at home, glad Englishman with a cold and fish-like eye to flatter themselves, said, ' Why, certainly, that, as a matter of fact, the lynchings are he 's one of us.' scattered over a large territory, and Tam- many has nothing whatever to do with the United States Senate, and the million- 40 III aire does not crawl into the presence of his wife and daughters, and Morgan never SYSTEM VERSUS SLIPPERS can be king, and citizens of St. Louis are not in danger of being hooked by moose. [GEORGE BURWELL DUTTON] After he gets through the Englishman 45 says 'Really?' and the painful incident Unpopular «««™ t( A pn^ ^f^y permission of is closed. Every man is handicapped and hobbled ' The doctrine of efficiency is a modern when he gets out of his own bailiwick, offshoot of the doctrine of total depravity,' The American is at a special disadvantage 50 drawled my neighbor, in Europe. If he cannot adapt himself to I looked incredulous. I knew that was strange customs and social regulations, he the way he wanted me to look. But I thinks that he will be set down as an igno- did n't have any difficulty in conforming to ramus. If he tries to nullify or override his desires. them he may be regarded as a boor or a 55 ' Ye-es,' he continued, ' it all goes back barbarian. Once in a while an American, to the doctrine of total depravity. Man is finding himself beset by unfamiliar condi- born to sin, as — as the sparks fly up- tions, follows the simple policy of not ward,' he concluded triumphantly. WRITING OF TODAY ' Trouble, not sin, is, I think, the Biblical and the number of useless motions in- phrasing,' I interposed mildly. volved in the ordinary way of getting on a ' All amounts to the same thing. Man street-car. We find out how to carve a is born to trouble. Trouble is the result turkey with the fewest possible slashes, of sin. If there were no sin there would 5 Now, all this may be desirable and nec- be no trouble. Ergo, man is born to sin, essary. We may be so ' rushed for time,' — and so forth.' to use the expressive colloquialism, that He stopped to puff at his pipe. every energy must be conserved. Never- ' But the doctrine of efficiency? — theless, I object; I am economically de- How — ' 10 praved. I long for the looser ways of my ' I was coming to that. What does the forebears. System chafes me. It is un- doctrine of efficiency mean? Only this: yielding. Like a dress shirt, it holds me Just naturally you do a thing the wrong clamped. I prefer a dressing-gown and way. You have to struggle, to discipline slippers — blessed symbols of mild unre- yourself, to overcome your natural tenden- 15 straint. Perhaps I ought not to feel this cies, in order to do a thing the right way: way. Perhaps I ought not to object to that is, with the smallest expenditure of learning the proper method of filling my energy. You are naturally perverse, fountain-pen — that is a task, the sooner wasteful — which is, economically speak- over, the better. Perhaps I ought not to ing, sinful. You are born in economic sin, 20 object to learning the least exhausting and you live in economic sin, till 'long way of buttoning my collar — though every comes the doctrine of efficiency and right-minded man prizes the privilege of teaches you system, and so plucks you, a indignation at a recalcitrant button — and brand from the burning. It corrects your what button is recalcitrant once the ap- wastef ul ways, it teaches you how to con- 25 propriate system is mastered ? But, be all serve your energies, it makes you live an this as it may, I do protest seriously economically righteous life. The doctrine against having to learn the most efficient of efficiency is based upon an economic way of filling my pipe ! statement of the doctrine of total deprav- I was not always of this mind. Like ity. The theological doctrine says, all 30 other misguided mortals of limited vision, men are by nature sinners; the economic I was disposed to welcome the new doc- says, all men are by nature inefficient — trines. I read with avidity the proper that is, are economic sinners. Even sin method of shoveling snow. I rejoiced at is economic in this age. All men by na- finding out just what and how few motions ture do their tasks wastefully, unsyste- 35 it was necessary to go through to connect matically ; but they may be saved by adopt- a water-pipe. I was filled with indigna- ing the methods of efficiency. There : tion when I observed how wasteful of his that 's modern theology for you.' energy was my plumber — and I paying And he knocked the ashes out of his for it ! The prodigality of the man who pipe and went home. 4° carried in my coal filled me with despair. I am not certain about my neighbor's Nay, more, I made some small effort view of the doctrine of efficiency. He to apply the doctrine of efficiency to my may be right, and then again he may not. own pursuits. I am a humble teacher of But this I do know, that the preachers English in a small New England college, of the doctrine of efficiency are many — 45 1 have many themes to correct. I had and efficient. Plan and system are ex- contented myself with taking up a pen and tended to all things. One cannot take up indicating errors and corrections with red a magazine without being confronted by ink — ' squirting the red ink,' my students reproachful directions for increasing one's vulgarly called it. But this was not sys- efficiency. Busy-bodies' Magazine tells 50 tematic ; it was not efficient; it was too you of the tremendous waste of time in- natural. So I became self-conscious in volved in the present methods of peanut- my work. I studied it. I analyzed it. roasting. Dunce's Monthly proclaims Soon I found that there were certain criti- loudly the benefits to humanity that will cisms and directions that I wrote and infallibly result from adopting more effi- 55 rewrote many times daily. So I purchased cient methods of operating a hurdy-gurdy, rubber stamps. Then I found that I Diagrams and pictures stare at us from wasted much valuable time in laying hold every page. We learn the waste of energy of the right rubber stamp ; so I purchased E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 203 little hooks, and hung the rubber stamps However, my friend received no imagina- in a row, and assigned a definite hook to tive stimulus. He was blind to all that, each stamp, and memorized the positions But Spenser's ruff and Johnson's wig — of the stamps on the hooks, and 4ooked these called forth his scorn. How could upon my work, and thought it good. This 5 a man work, handicapped by such frills ? involved the expenditure of much time and I mildly pointed out that the gentlemen energy, but I was introducing system, I concerned did accomplish something of was becoming efficient. importance, but he ignored me. He went Turning my attention to other details, I up to an old print of ' The Fortune Play- found that I wasted much time — often 10 house,' of which I am decidedly fond. In two minutes — in looking for papers. So the foreground two men are loading a I had the college carpenter construct a cart with kegs. Did my friend admire case of pigeon-holes and place it beside the ancient architecture of the building? my desk. I devoted an afternoon to label- Did he appreciate the quaint garb of the ing the pigeon-holes and filing my papers. 15 men ? Did it all serve to make the past Then I spent fifteen minutes a day — by more intimate, to bring it a little nearer? this time I had a clock in my little office Not at all. His indignation was aroused, and timed my every action — fifteen min- The cart was parallel with the walk, utes a day in filing new letters and docu- Why was n't it backed up to the walk ? ments — sometimes it was only thirteen 20 Think of how much effort was wasted in minutes, roughly speaking. But I did not rolling those kegs around in the street to begrudge this time, for it meant that I the end of the cart ! He could not see was taking another step toward efficiency, the theater for the cart ! What need to relate in detail all of the I was somewhat impatient at his atti- other measures that I took for the efficient 25 tude. But after all, could he be blamed ? administration of my duties ? I installed He thought in terms of efficiency, because files for all of the themes. I moved my efficiency was his business. Others could books from my home into my little office, admire quaintness, others could dream lining the walls with shelves — where they themselves into the past, but he was an were not already lined with pigeon-holes. 30 apostle with a flaming mission : to see and I had a swinging shelf constructed for my to correct all waste of energy. And in- typewriter, and attached it to my desk, deed I had that which he could appreci- I bought a machine for sharpening pen- ate. I ushered him into my little office, cils. I introduced the latest approved There it was, in immaculate order. The pattern of a card-index file. There was 35 fresh April sunshine gleamed from the a place for everything, and everything in polished handles of the rows of rubber its place — though it took most of my time stamps. The pigeon-holes gaped, ready to to put it there. But I was introducing devour their prey in orderly fashion, efficiency into my work ; system and order Variegated inks and pencils lay on the are the first laws of efficiency; and 1 40 desk ready for use at a moment's notice, spared no labor in putting them into effect. It all looked so business-like ! To be sure, Recently, however, a slave of efficiency for a moment I recalled uneasily my neigh- visited me, and I have received a rude bor's remark, ' You can't always tell from awakening. I have discovered that I am a cat's looks how far it will jump.' But not really efficient. 45 this ' cat ' did have such an impressive ap- My friend is a man with surprised hair pearance. I felt sure it could jump far — and peering eyes. He has the appearance and efficiently. Everything had an air of of seeing everything — and he does. He preparedness, like that of a fire-engine in came with me to my recitation room one an engine-house. I expanded in anticipa- morning, and looked around in seeming 5o tion of praise. idleness while I was busy planning the My friend snorted. 'Huh! What old seating list for the new term. Then he fossils you teachers are ! You would n't began to talk. His comments irritated last a day in an efficiency shop ! ' Then me, I must admit. I am rather proud of he showed me why. The row of stamps my recitation room. Past worthies on .the 55 was not properly placed ; I had to turn wall blink in the electric light, and scenes around to reach some of them. My theme significant in literary history confront the files were so shallow that the projecting wandering eyes of the restless present, themes drooped and obscured the labels. 204 WRITING OF TODAY My clock was behind me, and I had to Why was n't the floor built higher ? crane my neck to see it. My desk was Stupid piece of inefficient planning. — not in the best light. I was dumbfounded. Why was I so high above it ? Why He continued relentlessly. My pigeon- was n't I built more efficiently ? holes were placed too high. They were 5 Red-faced and scant-breathed I arose indeed beside my desk, but I had to rise and threw the themes on my desk. My to reach them. That meant a loss, on an friend had considerately turned his back; average, of two and three-fifths seconds, but even that was eloquent. There were sixteen pigeon-holes. Per- ' Oh, hang the themes ! ' I burst out. haps I had to use each an average of three 10 ' And — and — let 's go for a walk ! ' times in the course of a day's work. My That episode was bad enough, but it friend is what he would term ' a handy was n't the worst. My friend stayed with man ' with figures. He reckoned for a me several days, and they were stirring few moments.— That meant a loss of one days for me. Ostensibly he had come for hundred and twenty-five seconds a day ! 15 a rest — nerves all frayed — wanted to ' Think of it ! ' he cried. ' One hundred vegetate for a while — thought he 'd come and twenty-five seconds ! In less than to a quiet place. Now our college com- one-tenth of the time you waste here a munity is quiet, in all conscience. They man could run a hundred yards, and — ' tell the story of one man who once cut ' But I don't want to run a hundred 2° some figure in the world of affairs, who yards,' I interposed, somewhat resentfully, was prevailed upon to accept a professor- ' and if I did, / could n't run it in that ship and live among us, that he announced time.' that he was going to ' give up active life ' Never mind.' He brushed aside my and " retire " to teach at College.' objections, and continued his calculations. 25 I think that was a somewhat undeserved There are six days in a working we^k — slur on our faculty. I know I have to I refuse to work Sundays, although some work, and I know my colleagues do. We teachers have to — and thirty-six working don't feel that we have retired from active weeks in a year — and how many years life. Still, I must admit that there is n't one might use in the reckoning, who can 30 quite the same tension prevalent in what tell? Why, by properly placing those a visiting President of the United States pigeon-holes, I might save enough time tritely termed ' these academic shades,' as to take a trip to Europe, according to this there is, say, in the Stock Exchange, or in efficiency agent. — Of course, I .have n't Congress at the culmination of a tariff money enough, and if I had, how to com- 35 debate. Consequently I had hoped that bine these scattered moments into a uni- my friend would be soothed, and would fied whole would offer another problem — relax and yield himself to passive enjoy- but that is all beside the question. The ment. He didn't have to correct themes, moments were there, in potential empti- Why should n't he enjoy himself ? But he ness. One does n't refuse a' cup because 40 could n't. That terrible doctrine of effi- one lacks the wine to fill it. ciency was with him all the time, and gave 'Let me see you at work,' commanded him — and us — no rest. System, system he of the peering eyes. Meekly I sat — the word was constantly on his lips — down at my desk. Where were my and, what was worse, in his heart, themes ? Oh, yes, they were up there on 45 He carried it into all his pleasures — a shelf, across the room. Abjectly I and mine. I like to play cards. That is, arose. My friend looked at me reproach- I like to use a game of cards as an excuse fully. I reached up for the themes. Why for idle revery or gossip. I play a lei- had n't that shelf been placed lower ? surely game, a comfortable sort of a game, How many tenths of a second had I lost 50 a slouching, be-slippered, relaxing game, by that upward reach? I shivered, and restful beyond words. If I happen to for- clumsily knocked down a book. I had to get that my partner played a jack of clubs stoop to pick it up. More time lost ! I three tricks previous, and consequently took up the themes again, savagely. The neglect to take the proper measures, I rubber band was old. It broke under the 55 don't mind, and I don't want others to care, unwonted strain of my fervor. There But my friend would have none of this, was a flutter of white papers. Blunder- He had complicated ' leads ' and elab- ingly I bent forward to gather them up. orate systems. He played feverishly and E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 205 snapped at me constantly for my neglect- Have no more profit of their shining nights fulness. Cards were real, cards were Than those that walk and wot not what they earnest, and there was no idle dreaming are. permitted. I gasped a sigh of relief when To ° much t0 know ls t0 know nou g ht but a game was ended. He played, as he 5 A „j fame; At .u • « worked, relentlessly. And every S odfather can S lve a name - One day we went on a tramp in the Of course I do not scorn the labors of hills. I am not systematic on a tramp, my scientific colleagues ; their work, which I don't like to plan my route in advance ; goes far deeper than names, is necessary I prefer to follow the unexpected allure- 10 and beneficial. I merely sympathize with ment of shady by-paths, the invitation of them because to them so much of the uni- an unknown winding road, the beckoning verse is a symbol of labor. And I fail to of unexplored fields. To be sure, I usually see the necessity of making it a symbol get lost, and frequently get bedraggled by of labor for myself, when I may rather some unforeseen stream or slough ; but I 15 see in it a garden of beauty and a place like to get lost; it has such inviting possi- of contemplation and rest. In all this I bilities. Not so my friend. He de- suppose I am an ignoramus blindly stum- manded maps, a definite objective point, bling through unsuspected riches of wis- a clear itinerary, and no side-trips. I dom. I suppose I am a sinner turning my yielded, but with rebellion smoldering in 20 back upon the road of repentance. But my heart. I am perverse. I abominate those busy- Now I suppose I shall lay myself open bodies who would filch from us our few to the reproaches of a multitude of very remaining careless hours and would rob worthy persons when I confess that my them of the wayward prodigality that is dislike of system and rigidity is not con- 25 their charm. For my part, I refuse to fined to my choice of routes. Far from card-catalog my pleasures, it. I abhor system in appreciation. I can Needless to say, my friend was disgusted enjoy the contour of a hill without know- with me. He was as innocent of classified ing its geological formation. The soft knowledge of the countryside as I, but he glow of green in the April landscape 30 felt that he was excusable. He had spent brings me pleasure which would be con- his life in the city, and there he had ob- taminated by conscientious attempts to re- served with care the phenomena that had call the scientific explanation of the func- fallen under his gaze. I had not made tion of chlorophyl in bud and blade. I similar good use of my opportunities. If love to watch the great clouds drifting 35 I- admired the delicate tracery of a lazily through a blue sea of air; but I silhouetted tree, he wanted to know its don't care to master the nomenclature of name and use. If I paused to hear the meteorology. Nay, worst of all in these music of a tumbling brook, he wanted to days of widespread ' bird-lore,' I can enjoy estimate its volume and bemoaned the the dark flash of a bluebird's flight, but 40 waste of power. To the spiritual signifi- am only irked by classified lists of names cance, the soothing influence, of rural and descriptions; and I am infuriated by sights and sounds, he was insensible. At the attitude of those who make of every my lack of systematized knowledge he was walk a contest to see how many new disgusted. That walk was not a success, varieties of birds may be identified and 45 Well, my friend has left me. I can't classified — as if the great Kingdom of say I 'm sorry. I like him, of course — Out-of-Doors were a mere museum of but at a distance. A great peace has specimens and curiosities, to be grouped fallen upon me._ I can correct my themes and labeled by every observer ! Out upon in my office without nervously counting those misguided creatures who mistake 50 my every motion. I can relax once more, nomenclature for knowledge and classifi- cast aside the rigid garb of systematic ac- cation for understanding; who strut tivity, and once more don smoking-jacket through a starry evening, proud because and slippers, down-at-the-heel preferably, they can clap Arcturus on the back and I can sit down in the evening and listen call him familiarly by name. , 55 to the gobbling croak of _ a frog without being reproached for my inability to clas- These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights, sify it accurately in the animal kingdom. That give a name to every fixed star, My next-door neighbor is a great com- 206 WRITING OF TODAY fort to me. He ' came over ' last night, presume I might add the ten minutes to and while we sat before the open fire that my daily game of golf.' robbed the sharp evening air of its chill, 'Still, you object?' we discussed the whole matter comfort- 'I object to excess of efficiency. Ulti- ably. 5 mately, the time saved _ by introducing ' System in recreation ! ' he exclaimed more system into work is to be used in disgustedly when we had talked a while, recreation. Why not strain less at our ' To play by plan ! Why, your friend work, and make recreation of it ? ' would destroy all the spontaneity of life, My friend nodded thoughtfully, its fine, careless rapture.' 10 ' At any rate,' I continued, ' if I want ' Do you recall what Dr. Johnson said to do my allotted task in leisurely fashion, of such a man?' I queried. '" Sir, he is occasionally lingering over it to enjoy the an enthusiast by rule." I despise enthusi- fine flavor of achievement, I claim the asts by rule.' right to do so. I take the time from my ' But of course that is n't all there was 15 golf, but after six hours of work I go to to your experience,' my neighbor remarked my golf with steadier nerves than the man presently. ' Your visitor, after all, 'was who has worked five hours at high ten- more concerned with work than play. sion. Your five-hour man with his super- And in work, method and system have ficial efficiency is victim of an obsession: their place.' 20 speed. He spends himself in his work in ' More place than they deserve,' I grum- order that he may gain time for — a sana- bled. ' Enthusiasts by rule infest all our torium. He loses sight of his goal. To activities. Systematization has become change a little the somewhat antiquated over-systematization. Too often we can't refrain, he does n't care where he 's going; see the product for the machinery. We 25 he is satisfied if he is speeding on his way.' are victims to a pseudo-efficiency that I stopped, a bit out of breath with my merely clogs and retards achievement; earnestness. My friend was silently star- that defeats its own ends.' ing into the heart of the leisurely fire. ' On the other hand,' replied my friend After a moment he turned to me quiz- mildly, ' I suppose that system, rightly 30 zically. used, does save time. I suppose that genu- ' Is this to be a defense of dilettante- ine efficiency does permit of greater pro- ism ? ' duction. However, its advocates don't ' Not at all,' 1 exclaimed with some heat consider all sides of the question. In Then I smiled at my own fervor. ' Dilet- some pursuits increase of production 35 tantes are beneath defense. But my plea would be a calamity. Shall our factories, is for moderation; for a truer sense of by increased efficiency, be enabled to pro- values. I protest against a misplaced em- duce more phonographs ? Heaven forbid ! phasis upon output, a feverish demand for Their efficiency is already terrible.' results, at no matter what expenditure of ' And there are many occupations,' I 4° nervous energy. I protest, too, against a broke in, ' in which the time saved to the systematization that would reduce indi- workman by system would be useless, be- viduals to automatons; a mechanical effi- cause it comes in titbits. It can't be ciency that stereotypes the workman - and massed. And it must be massed, to be standardizes his product. To offer freer most effective. Suppose,' I added petu- 45 play to personality may well be worth the lantly, ' that I could go to Europe in the sacrifice of a little efficiency.' time I might save by correcting themes efficiently; I can't go to Europe for ten minutes a day. And I 've got to use my IV ten minutes on the day I save them. They c mTT „ „ can't be stored up each day, till a re- THE HUMANIZED PROFESSOR spectable quantity accumulates.' r „ „ . _. t -nt r -ir *. £ • j {New York Times. September 22. IQI4. ' No, of course. Yet, my friend, one By permission.] might pick holes in your argument. The [The letters of Professors Eucken, Haeckel, and ■miniitps rnav nnt Tip va1np1p<; By P ermission ^ great secret joy — of like foolishness. The King has no solitary preeminence When great professors like Eucken and 10 in never dying. He shares his mortal im- Haeckel demonstrate that they can be just mortality with another potentate and great as furious, bigoted, and illogical as the public character, the Oldest Graduate, ordinary citizen, the ordinary citizen There is always an Oldest Graduate ; and should feel saddened, but instead he feels always there are heirs waiting for the suc- elated. The heavens seem nearer to him 15 cession. Mr. Benjamin D. Silliman, dis- when a demigod loses his temper. tinguished and fortunate in so many other There is nothing intemperate about the regards, was also for some time the Old- remarks of Professor Ostwald, published est Living Graduate of Yale ; and now that yesterday, but they enlarge this joy of the honor belongs to Judge Cutler of '29, who ordinary citizen. They bring professors 20 lives in Waterbury, where they make the closer to him, make him less afraid, watches. May these be wound up for When Jupiter gives voice to the opinions many a day before he yields his crown to of Bottom, Jupiter becomes human, demo- the heir apparent. At ninety-three the cratic, likable. When we find this pro- Oldest Living Graduate is or should be fessor sketching the outcome of the war 25 but a boy. After waiting seventy odd and depicting, in an off-hand way, the an- years for his title, he will be in no hurry nexation of Canada to the United States to give it up. He should enjoy it to the as a result of it, he does not terrify us full, be merciful in his reminiscences, and any more. Anybody in Celtic Park could look with an indulgent pity on the lads of have evolved that prophecy without even 30 ninety and ninety-one who want his job. a degree of A.B., let alone a professor- For, flower unloved of Amaryllis though ship. it be, this honor is greatly prized. The We can love our professors, but we can- survivor in this Tontine has beaten all his not feel afraid of them when one of them contemporaries at college. He can say to says that 'the violation of Belgian neu- 35 Time, as Beranger said: trality was an act of military necessity, , 01d Vo , m hold fa , since it is now proved that Belgian neu- Let us drink ' a sti y ' cu > trality was to be violated by b ranee and England.' No, nor when he gives us to It is too much for this glory to go to a understand that the Napoleonic wars, the 40 man otherwise famous, as Mr. Silliman wars of Frederick the Great, and the was or as Horace Binney was. The lat- struggle between Austria and Italy, were ter, an illustrious lawyer whose fame is all caused by ' the English policy of world perhaps as dim now as that of most great dominion.' His vision of Russia resolv- lawyers who have not held high political ing itself into a number of independent 45 office, was graduated at Harvard in 1797, nations and his announcement that ' the if we remember well, and he was the old- principle of the absolute sovereignty of est living Harvard man for some time be- the individual nations ' must be destroyed, fore he was cut off in '95. An Oldest complete a picture gratifying to the self- Living Graduate who has no other fame esteem of the humble, unlearned, ordinary 50 than that is to be preferred. Such was citizen. Joseph Head of Harvard, of 1804. He Welcome, gods and demigods, to your lived in some little town. With his bent seats among the human race. The only form, his Van Winkle beard, his long reason we did n't invite you before was staff, he looked what he was as he marched because we were afraid you would n't 55 among the younger generations in the yard come. Check your halos at the door. Be on Commencement Day, ' the oldest living seated, gentlemen ; and make yourselves grad-oo-ate,' as he pronounced it after the at home. fashion of his rural youth. Good old Jo- 208 WRITING OF TODAY seph Head, if that was his name ! One take the truly wise graduate long to find thinks with kindness of him, and all his the most reasonable object of desire, predecessors ; and of his successors in the He nourishes the gentle vision in his heart, procession. He sees himself a well-preserved ancient In every college from A to Z something 5 of ninety-eight, with a face like a Baldwin of affection attaches to the college elder apple and still tolerable legs. His gold- and leader of the line. Of ordinary dis- headed cane is less a staff than a part of tinction the graduate may grow tired, be his make-up ; 't is a representative of the it his or that of a classmate. Of the monumental pomp of age. He wears, for class of 1825 at Bowdoin, of 1829 at Har- 10 effect, a tall hat of the fashion of fifty vard, of 1853 at Yale, it has been possible years before. He prides himself on the to hear too much. At Brunswick, in 1875, cut of his frock coat. His surviving hair Mr. Blaine happily expressed the weari- is soft and white. A perfect gentleman of ness which the constant celebration of the the old school. ' Young gentlemen,' says celebrated brings. ' I am glad to hear,' 15 the Oldest Living Graduate, ' I ascribe my he said, ' that those members of the class remarkable health and long life to the fact of 1825 who are illustrious on earth are that for seventy-five years I have never happy in heaven.' smoked nor drank. Boys,' he says to a The graduate whose ambition it is to few striplings of ninety odd assembled become the Oldest Living Graduate scorns 20 around the punch bowl, ' I attribute my all loud and easier fames. In seclusion good health and looks to the fact that for and with perfect modesty of spirit, he sets eighty years I have taken a nip of good before himself early the high goal. He stuff regularly every day. But I never accepts philosophically all detriments overdid it as you do.' which Fate and Fortune send. ' I am no 25 We once knew an Oldest Living Gradu- longer young,' he says to himself, ' but ate who would walk on the railroad track, why should I wish to be ? Everybody who although he was nearly a hundred and deaf stays in the game must get old, and how as a post. This is encouraging for begin- few can become the Oldest Living Gradu- ners, as it seems to show that the O. L. G. ate ! I am not handsome, witty, eloquent, 30 is born, not made by training. Only a or even popular. I don't have to be, in very few years ago there happened to live my business, which is that of living to in the same town the Oldest Living Gradu- be the O. L. G. My classmate, Hooker ate and the next-to-the-oldest living gradu- Haynes, has made most of the money there ate. They were great cronies and as is in the world. My classmate, Brattle 35 lively as crickets. But each watched the Holyoke, has married most of the rest. I distressingly robust health of the other don't need money in my business. Byles with some alarm. ' William is looking a is a bishop, Dwight is a senator. Bill leetle peaked,' John would say; 'I'm Trumbull is a trust. I have n't any office, afraid he won't live through the winter.' I don't direct anything. I have little prop- 40 ' John 's failin',' William would say; 'he erty and less hair. But I think I can out- ought n't be out in the cold so much at his live every man in my class and I mean to age.' And both lived in health to the very do it. Let them last into the nineties if edge of the hundred. The man who will they can. I '11 take an even hundred, and devote himself with a single mind to be- one to carry, if necessary.' 45 coming the Oldest Living Graduate de- The young chaps just out of college may serves to be happy, not know this harmless ambition at first. They are too young — confound 'em ! We remember hearing George Bancroft, sixty VI years after his graduation, imparting the 50 fact to a freshman. The freshman gaped SLEEPING OUTDOORS and gasped in wonder. How was it pos- sible for a man to have been graduated FREDERICK LEWIS ALLEN sixty years ago ? If Nebuchadnezzar had rr . , come into the room and tried to sell a book 55 lCmtUry Ma ^ ne ' November, ,913. By permission.] on vegetarianism, that freshman could not The most overrated summer sport in the have been more surprised. But youth 's world is outdoor sleeping. the stuff will not endure. It does n't I speak on this subject with some feel- E. HUMOROUS AMD OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 209 ing, as, in August last, I tested it on a ever. No one should say that I had week-end visit with my friend Jones at his blanched with fear. At nine-forty, Jones little mosquito ranch in the White Moun- yawned. tains. I can now understand why sleep- ' Why, it 's nearly ten,' said Mrs. Jones. ing under a roof, in a real bed, is insuf- 5 ' I had no idea it was so late.' ferable to a man who has been camping ' I was just going to suggest turning in/ all summer : what he misses is the keen Jones observed. ' I '11 get your blankets excitement, the constant entertainment, the and netting, if you like.' suspense, of a night in the woods. As I rose, and with a steady voice bade my soon as he lies down in a real bed he be- 10 hostess good night. The time had come. comes so utterly bored that he promptly Jones got the things, and we went out falls asleep, only to wake up in the morn- on the sleeping-porch, where he dumped ing and find that he has missed the whole them on my cot. The temperature had night. gone down a degree or two, but the air The moment I arrived at Jones's camp 15 was still a long way from cool. The on Saturday afternoon I realized that he winds were still slumbering. A mosquito was the victim of the outdoor-sleeping fad. was meditatively volplaning about. He was so under its spell that he imme- ' Is there anything else you want ? ' said diately took me out to show me my cot. Jones as he left me in what, in reasonable It was a frail, anemic, canvas thing that 20 circumstances, would have been my bed- screamed and creaked protests whenever room, but was now merely the world at it was moved or sat upon. It stood on a large. roofless sleeping-porch. Over it was the ' Nothing,' I said, with fortitude, branch of a tender tree and over that was ' Good night.' the open sky. 25 I went into the house and ten minutes ' Here,' said Jones, expansively, ' is later I emerged, attired in a neat, but where you 're to sleep. This region is the gaudy, pair of pajamas. A lamp lighted most wonderful place for sleeping in all my labors. The game was on; the mos- the world. I get actually to look forward quitoes and I were alone, to the nights ; I tumble in eagerly at ten 30 I shall withhold the tedious details of o'clock, and don't know another thing till bed-making. Suffice it to say that I fol- morning.' lowed the golden rule of the art : don't let ' You never know very much,' I medi- the feet escape ; sacrifice everything else, tated inwardly, picking a yellow caterpillar If a single toe projects, the blankets will off my cot. ' How about blankets and 35 be up and about your neck before you things ? ' It took a vast amount of imagi- know it. Then I folded a spare blanket nation to think of blankets, for the ther- into a pillow. Next came the magnum mometer showed several degrees of fever, opus — hanging the mosquito-netting. ' Oh, I '11 give you all you want, and Here I confronted several alternatives, lots of mosquito-netting, too,' Jones said. 40 First, there is the Romanesque style, in ' You can make your bed just as you like ; which one hangs the netting on a hoop and that's half the fun of the thing.' then projects the face precisely under the 'Ah, yes.' hoop, keeping it there all night. This Way down in my heart I had a fore- style is somewhat like sleeping with an in- boding that it would be rather more than 45 verted waste-basket on the face, and is half the fun. ' Wonderful ! ' I simulated, based on the fallacious notion that insects ' I have n't slept outdoors for years.' 1 bite only the head. Now I could show you ' Good ! ' said Jones. — but never mind. Through the long evening I kept a stout Then there is the Renaissance style. heart and a cheery face ; I even joked cal- 5° You suspend the netting gracefully by one lously about the coming night, just as men or two points from a branch or some such sometimes joke about death and insanity supposed fixture, and let it depend in ele- and the dentist. I ate a heavy dinner, for gant festoons to the floor, securing the cor- breakfast looked very, very far away, ners by lamps, vases, pitchers, or shoes. Then I played three-handed auction with 55 This method adequately answers the ques- Jones and his wife. I was as merry as tion, ' What shall we do with the wedding , - L ... . .. . T . , . , . , „ present Aunt Alice gave us ? ' 1 Strictly true, though I had spent several nights r ™ . , . , *5-, ... ,-. . , . outdoors. There is also the Perpendicular Gothic 2io , WRITING OF TODAY style — four posts erected at the corners of hand there are two live ones in the bush the cot, with netting draped over them, that will be along presently. This, I decided, required too much con- III. The use of netting rests on the struction, and I swung back to the Renais- theory that it offers an obstruction to sance. Securing some string, after a 5 mosquitoes. This was first proved false in short, dark, and eventful journey in the 1066, but people still — house, I hitched the string to the netting, Well, to tell the truth, that 's as far as tied it to a branch, made a beautiful pyra- I got. I inadvertently fell asleep in the midal tent, and squirmed inside with all the middle of law number three. Physics is delicate deliberation of a jackstraw-player. 10 the loser. I blame only myself. At last I was on the creaking cot, and my At dawn, which in summer occurs tent still stood ! shortly after bedtime and lasts for several The laws of physics tell us that breezes hours, I was awakened by the birds, which pass through netting. This merely goes to were making a dreadful din above me in show that physics has a big future. I had 15 the trees. I found that four mosquitoes distinctly felt a slight zephyr outside; but were perched on the netting about four- now, as I balanced on my shoulder-blades teen inches from my face — great, hungry on a Spartan blanket, I thought that the fellows, regular eagles. They stared at heat had become even more breathless ; I me till I could have hidden myself for em- felt that I was being suffocated. 20 barrassment. Presently a friend of theirs, Is n't there some wild animal that bloated with drink, sailed down and sat be- builds itself a house and then crawls in to side them, singing a triumphant blood-lust die? song in a harsh, drunken tenor. He was But I was not going to give up ; I forced plainly a degenerate going the pace that myself to draw a long sigh of relief, and 25 kills. said to myself : ' Oh, what wonderful air ! They say that if you look a wild animal How I shall sleep ! ' Yes, how ? in the eye he will turn away uneasily. I I humped about a few times — creaking tried this on Macbeth, the new arrival — as I have never creaked before — till I I called him Macbeth because he murdered thought I was more comfortable, pulled up 30 sleep — but he was unabashed. I even a blanket cautiously, kicked it off warmly, spoke to him sternly, told him to go home rolled back into my original position, and take his friends away with him, asked moved down six inches, so that my head him what sort of place this was for a chap just reached the pillow, thought about with a family ; I appealed to his better self, mosquitoes awhile, moved up four inches, 35 Macbeth's only reply was to crawl inso- thought about pillows, and then suddenly, lently through a tear in the netting and with a great start, realized that I was n't come straight at me. His song of triumph asleep. The fact stood out in my brain in rose in sharp crescendo till he struck my huge, staring capitals : you are wide nose ; then it ceased. I was just reaching awake; you are not even sleepy. It 40 to kill him, even at the risk of disfiguring was clear that my nerves needed soothing myself for life, when suddenly and if I was to get any sleep at all. without warning the netting gave way People recommend many ways of sooth- completely and fell about my ears. Can ing the nerves, but at times they are all you imagine a worse predicament than disappointing. I thought of sheep jump- 45 to be pinned under so much wreckage ing over a fence until all the sheep in my with a mosquito that you personally dis- head had gone lame. I counted up to three like ? hundred and seventy-four, which must be Well, I climbed out, rearranged my tent pretty nearly the world's record, but I (while Macbeth's friends got at my an- noted no good results. At the end of ansokles), sneaked in under the edge again, hour I was wider awake than ever and lay down once more, and looked about considerably more uncomfortable. warily for Macbeth. He was nowhere to About this time I began discovering be seen. I suspected some treachery, and laws of physics. on the off chance slapped the back of my I. When a man lies on his side on a 55 neck quickly and with tremendous force, cot, his weight is evenly distributed be- but with no corpse to show for it. tween his ear and his hip-bone. From that moment to this I have never II. For every dead mosquito in the seen Macbeth. It is all very sad. I al- E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 211 most wish now that I had n't been so harsh wondering myself, and he wanted to know ;with him. whether the mosquitoes had been thick. After I had given him up for lost, I I said no, not too thick to get through took count of the insect life about me, and the netting, and we both laughed and joked discovered a delightful game, called In- 5 about the night as though it were the fun- sides versus Outsides. At 4 a.m. the score niest thing in the world, stood as follows : Insides, three mosqui- That 's the way in such crises, when the toes, one spider ; Outsides, one ant, one terrible strain is over, daddy-long-legs, two mosquitoes. A vig- I avoided another night's excitement by orous campaign then began, the Insides 10 telegraphing myself to come home at once trying to get out, and the Outsides trying on the most urgent business, to get in. Mr. and Mrs. Jones were awfully cor- At 4:30 A.M., owing largely to my ef- dial, and laid emphasis on the fact that in forts, the aspect of things was somewhat the future my cot would always be wait- changed, the score standing : Insides, one 15 ing for me on the porch. I explained that mosquito ; Outsides, one wasp, six mosqui- my business would be very exacting for a toes, two unclassified. (Mind you, I 'm no few years, and I doubted if I would ever etymologist ; I don't pretend to know these be able to get away again, eight-legged, hairy lads by name.) I still cling to the old-fashioned idea The list of dead and injured was sim- 20 that night is the time for sleeping, and not ply appalling. for hunting and recreation. After awhile I tired of this game, but the mosquitoes were all for keeping it up indefinitely. Only when a breeze sprang VII up did they begin to reel home in twos and 25 threes to sleep off their jag. Then, once THE SERVANTLESS COTTAGE again, I shut my eyes in the hope that sleep would knit the ' ravell'd sleave of [RALPH BERGENGREN] care.' It seemed, however, that the ele- ments were all against knitting. The sun 3° lAtlantic Monthly June, 1914, By permission of , ,, , . ° ., , ,! , author and publisher.] at that moment came up through the trees and shone straight into my eyes. Stairs are done for. Observe the grow- This worried me not so much on my ing popularity of bungalows. Observe the own account as on Jones's ; I hated the multiplication of apartment houses. Lis- thought of his coming out with his wife at 35 ten to the words of the man who has lately breakfast-time and finding me dead of a built, and written about, what he calls a sunstroke on his porch. servantless cottage: Then I remembered that people don't ' Climbing is ofttimes all too strenuous die of sunstroke. They only fainted and for a happy housewife, so there must be lost their minds. 40 no stairs.' Shortly after this I must have fainted, For a few more decades, miserable for I woke up to find I had been uncon- women, unhappy housewives, and, by in- scious for at least two hours ! ference, undesirable mothers, will con- The last thing I remembered, before the tinue to drag out painful existences in coma set in, was killing a spider on my 45 houses of more than one story, stomach at five forty-five. . . It was now eight o'clock. The sun had No sta . irs! No stairs! the y° un S wfe moved round and I could hear the kitchen- And Cr c £ p ' ped her hands to see pump going, and see the housemaid, in- A house as like a little flat doors, hiding matches, and sweeping the 5o As any house could be j dust under the rugs. I felt sleepy, but otherwise moderately And observe also the end of the servant- well. 1 problem. For in the servantless cottage, Presently Jones came out in his bath- says the satisfied designer, 'milady need robe, and asked me how I had slept. I 55 fear no drudgery. A very few hours will told him that that was just what I 'd been suffice for housekeeping and cookery. ... . , , ., Work becomes a pleasure and a maid be- 1 Law of physics: sunstrokes are not necessarily j • li j fatal comes undesirable. 212 WRITING OF TODAY Well, well ! there are solutions and solu- bless you ! the word has often enough been tions of this servant-problem, and of the a term of honor — no really fine and en-, always interesting question of how other during place in the scheme of gracious and people ought to live. The question being cultivated domestic management? somewhat personal to myself, I have exam- 5 For many generations, stairs and service ined a good many of these solutions with- have been inseparable from the amenities out finding that any of them solved it to of domestic living. One has only to imag- my personal satisfaction. ine these two essentials suddenly elim- There is, of course, much to be said for inated from literature to experience a the servantless cottage, although to solve 10 pained sensation at the care-free way in a problem by giving it up is no very star- which the man of the servantless cottage tling triumph of domestic mathematics, gets rid of them. And one has only to The experience of innumerable couples look about the world as it stands at pres- with kitchenettes proves that life is pos- ent, servant-problem and all, to " realize sible under this solution, but the frank ad- 15 that it is the value of good domestic serv- mission of discontent among these experi- ice which actually creates and keeps alive menters indicates that it leaves much to the problem itself. For even if the happy be desired. My own domesticity is of the housewife enjoys every single item of kitchenette kind in winter, but expands in housekeeping and cookery, there are times summer to a modest establishment in the 20 when her personal attention to them is country with real stairs and a real cook in obviously undesirable, a real kitchen. I can see therefore — so Imagine our servantless cottage as an at least I believe — not only the possibili- example. Milady sings at her work. The ties of the servantless cottage, its economy portable vacuum cleaner — milord keeps of effort in the details of housework, and 25 up with all the latest improvements — its excellent adaptability to a small family gratefully eats up its daily dust. The fire- unaccustomed to any other standard of less cooker prepares the meals ' with a living, but also its complete, unwitting ab- perfection and deliciousness unrealized in negation of some of the finer things in hu- the old days.' A bos mother and the way man existence. 30 she used to cook ! But in serving these Now, if this man, in describing his meals of a hitherto unrealized perfection servantless cottage, had contented himself and deliciousness, milord and milady must with a plain and simple statement of its needs chase each other between kitchen advantages, I dare say I should have read and dining-room. The guest at dinner, if his description in the most friendly spirit 35 he is luckily accustomed to picnics, carries imaginable ; and certainly with no desire his own plate and washes it afterward. I to criticize his results. It was that silly have myself entertained many a guest in remark about milady that aroused opposi- this fashion, and he has carried his own tion. We live in a republic and we are plate, and, being that kind of a guest or I most of us reasonably self-respecting men 40 would n't have invited him, he has cheer- and women, not a milady among us, unless fully helped wash the dishes, wearing a she happens to be making a visit — in borrowed apron. But it would be absurd which case, one place she is not visiting is to claim that this performance, indefinitely a servantless cottage. And so, in a word, repeated, is an improvement upon an the servantless cottage ceases to be an 45 orderly, efficiently served dinner-party, honest, more or less successful effort to Conversation at dinner is more desirable provide a home in which the housewife than a foot-race between the courses; nor can most conveniently do her own work, do I believe that life under such condi- and becomes a neat little example of snob- tions can possibly ' become so alluring that bish absurdity. Work becomes a pleasure 50 one day the great majority of us will to the happy housewife for whom climbing choose it first of all.' a flight of stairs is ofttimes all too strenu- Concerning stairs : I perhaps have more ous — so keen and persistent a pleasure feeling for them than most ; but I am quite that domestic service becomes ' undesir- sure that I speak at least for a large minor- able ! ' Is anybody really expected to be- 55 ity. It is the flatness of the flat, its very lieve it? Or is domestic service itself a condensed and restricted coziness, its very phase of domesticity that can be so cheer- lack of upstairs and downstairs, which fully eliminated ? Has the servant — and, prevents it from ever attaining completely E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 213 the atmosphere of a home. The feet get to be under any conditions. The serv- which cross the floor above my head are ant-problem itself is not the young and those of another family ; the sounds which tender problem that many of us imagine, reach me from below are the noises of An examination of old newspapers will strangers; the life horizontal of the flat 5 show anybody who is sufficiently patient serves its convenient use but only empha- and curious that a hundred years ago there sizes the independence and self-respect of was much indignant wonder that young the life vertical, master of the floor above, women, visibly suited for domestic service, master likewise of the basement. I feel preferred to be seamstresses ! What is more human, less like some ingeniously 10 more modern is the grave enthusiasm with constructed doll, when I can take my can- which so many persons are trying to de- dle in hand and go upstairs to sleep. I cide how the rest of us shall live with the want no bungalow. There is something maximum amount of comfort and culture fine in going to sleep even one flight nearer for the minimum expenditure. And one the stars — and away from the dining- 15 interesting similarity between many of room. these suggestions is their passive opposi- And observe further, if you please : this tion to another important group of critics, servantless cottage necessarily has no attic. ' Have large families or perish as a na- Has the man no feeling whatever for the tion ! ' shriek our advisers on one hand, joys of his possible grandchildren? Or 2° ' Have small families or perish as individu- is the stairless, servantless cottage — als ! ' proclaim our advisers on the other. ' truly the little house is the "house of the For this servantless cottage is typical of future ' — meant also to be childless ? An a good many other housing suggestions in examination of the plan shows a so-called which the essential element is the small bedroom marked ' guest or children,' 25 family ; and even the possibility that the which indicates that the happy housewife children may live to grow up seems to have must exercise her own judgment. There been left out of consideration. Milord are accommodations for one guest or two and milady, I imagine, have chosen chil- children, but it seems fairly evident that dren instead of a guest. These children guest and children exclude each other. 30 (a boy and girl, as I like to picture Milord and milady must decide between them) grow up ; marry ; settle in their own hospitality and race-suicide, or two chil- servantless cottages, and have two chil- dren and no week-end visitor. Some will dren apiece. There are now a grand- choose guest; some will choose children, father and a grandmother, a son and a Personally I hope they will all choose chil- 35 daughter, a son-in-law and a daughter-in- dren, for, even without an attic, there is law, and four grandchildren. In each plenty of playground. ' People with tiny servantless cottage there is that one bed- incomes ' must always be careful not to room marked ' guest or children.' Grant- purchase too small a lot; and so we find ing all the possibilities of the ivy-covered that the servantless cottage has paths, and 40 ' cache,' — and now the trunks will simply a lawn, and flowers, and shrubbery, and a have to be taken out and stood on the lawn sun-dial, and an American elm, and a -even if the snow does fall on them — mi- ' toad-stool canopy ' between the poplars lord and milady, come Christmas or other and the white birches, and an ivy-covered anniversary, can entertain a visit from two ' cache ' to store the trunks in. I am glad 45 grandchildren and their father and mother, there is going to be such a domestic con- And by utilizing the ' cache ' a son or venience as a sun-dial ; and perhaps, when daughter can receive a short visit from the there is a guest, the trunks can be taken aged parents, not too long, of course, or out on the lawn and the children put to it would ruin the trunks. As for any of bed in the ' cache.' 50 the hearty, old-fashioned, up-and-down- But I guess that, after all, stairs will stairs hospitality — I may be an old fogey survive, and attics, and the servant-prob- myself, but the servantless cottage shocks lem. Innumerable families are already me. living in servantless houses, with stairs, ' Our bedroom resembles a cozy state- and it does n't even occur to them that 55 room on board ship.' Oh ! la-la-la-la-la ! they are solving any problem whatsoever. Why does n't somebody solve the problem Innumerable housewives are about, as of domestic living by suggesting that we happy under these conditions as most of us all live in house-boats ? 214 WRITING OF TODAY stoke up the furnace. And when the VIII storm is still roaring and the cheerful lit- ^ T „„„„„„ ^ . ^ . .„,^,,,„„,,^ tie needle begins to climb, you know with ON KEEPING A BAROMETER a rebound f the spirit that the worst is ,t j ^ j > n * k u ■ • t 5 over. An exciting occupation in its own [Independent, October 19, 1914. By permission.] = . . o * quiet way. The Irishman 'keeps a pig.' The old An absorbing occupation no less. The maid ' keeps a cat.' It is much more fun last thing at night when you have locked to keep a barometer. That is to say, it is up, put out the cat, set the screen before more fun if you are interested in the 10 the embers in the fireplace, and are all weather. And you are. If you will not ready for the ascent to bed, you turn to admit it, you are either an untrustworthy the faithful disc on the wall and set the witness or a lusus nature, a jest of na- index finger fair over the needle. So ture. when morning comes and you stop on the Weather is one of the three great uni- 15 way to the front porch for the morning versal experiences of mankind. All men paper to see what the elements have pre- are born, all men die, all men are pared over night for you, the discrepancy ' weathered.' The rain falls alike upon the between finger and needle tells the tale, just and the unjust, or would if it were An absorbing occupation indeed, not that the unjust have the umbrellas of 20 the just. In winter we all shiver, in sum- mer we all sweat. And all the time we all • IX talk about the weather. There is no other perfectly common topic of conversation; HAIRPINS because there is no other perfectly com- 25 mon experience. Men talk to their fel- l Su ", £ ew York, May 19, 1902. Reprinted in Cat- laws about the weather not because they *" Essays of the Sun ' I9 ° 5 - By *™-"»J cannot think of anything else to talk about, The comprehensive merits of the hairpin but because it is the one thing about which are known to all observant men. Its spe- they know that their fellows have thoughts 3° cial value in surgery is asserted by a ready for exchange. writer in American Medicine. It seems Since you will talk about the weather, that a surgeon can do almost anything with you should keep a barometer. It is better a hairpin. He can wire bones with it, than a pig, in that it produces nothing that probe and close wounds, pin bandages, you can sell, and you may therefore know 35 compress blood vessels, use it ' to remove that your motives in keeping it are unsul- foreign bodies from any natural passage,' lied by greed. It is better than a cat in and as a curette for scraping away soft that it drinks no milk, yowls no yowls, material. And no doubt the women doc- sheds no hair. It is better than a dog in tors can do a great deal more with that that — but no, we cannot admit it. Noth- 40 most gifted and versatile of human imple- ing is better than a dog. ments. Anthropologists have never done Keeping a barometer is a peaceful occu- justice to the hairpin. It keeps civiliza- pation. It hangs silent on the wall, tion together. In the hands of girls en- demanding nothing, asserting nothing, tirely great it is much mightier than the merely recording an impalpable fact — 45 sword or, for that matter, the plow, the pressure of the air. What is the plow but a development of the But keeping a barometer is an exciting forked stick, and what is the forked stick occupation. When you come down to but a modification of the hairpin? If breakfast to find its needle hovering there was any necessity, a woman could through a narrow arc away up in the fair 50 scratch the ground successfully now. In region above the thirty mark, a gentle fact, there is no work or play in which thrill runs through you at the thought something may not be accomplished by that the wonderful weather we have been means of it. having is to continue. When the needle Dullards will tell you that women executes a two-inch swoop in a few hours, 55 are n't so inventive as men, don't take out as it did one day last winter, you tingle so many patents. They don't have to. with the expectation of the ' big wind ' With the hairpin all that is doable can be that is surely coming, and hurry down to done. With a hairpin a woman can pick E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 215 a lock, pull a cork, peel an apple, draw out Dr. H. C. Carpenter lectured at a meet- a nail, beat an egg, see if a joint of meat ing of Philadelphia mothers the other day. is done, do up a baby, sharpen a pencil, He told them ' How to Take Care of the dig out a sliver, fasten a door, hang up a Baby,' and he showed that usually the baby plate or a picture, open a can, take up a 5 is far from well taken care of. Mothers carpet, repair a baby carriage, clean a are not serious enough : lamp chimney, put up a curtain, rake a ' " Don't play with the baby." Nothing grate fire, cut a pie, make a fork, a fish- could be more injurious to the infant's hook, an awl, a gimlet, or a chisel, a paper- nervous system than to excite it with the cutter, a clothespin, regulate a range, 10 customary entertainments with which fond tinker a sewing machine, stop a leak in the mothers and admiring friends bore the roof, turn over a flapjack, caulk a hole in helpless victim. It is a common error to a pair of trousers, stir batter, whip cream, imagine that because the child responds - reduce the pressure in the gas meter, keep with a wonderlook, a laugh, or even a bills and receipts on file, spread butter, cut 15 shriek of apparent delight, that it is being patterns, tighten windows, clean a watch, amused. Quite the contrary — it is not untie a knot, varnish floors,' do practical only being plagued, but is sustaining, in plumbing, reduce the asthma of tobacco nine cases out of ten, an irreparable in- pipes, pry shirt studs into buttonholes too jury.' small for them, fix a horse's harness, re- 20 Why are there not more Shakespeares, store damaged mechanical toys, wrestle Bacons, Mabies, and Carpenters? Be- with refractory beer stoppers, improvise cause most babies are irreparably injured, suspenders, shovel bonbons, inspect gas Baby's intellectuals are not properly and burners, saw cake, jab tramps, produce ar- systematically developed. He may seem to tificial buttons, hooks and eyes, sew, knit, 25 be enjoying himself when he coos and and darn, button gloves and shoes, put up crows and shrieks with apparent delight, awnings, doctor an automobile. In short, but he is not. He is pained. In isolation she can do what she wants to ; she needs and aloofness he is trying to study his sur- no other instrument. roundings and the psychology of his nurse If a woman went into the Robinson 30 and relations. They will not let him Crusoe line she would build a hut and make think. They interfere with the growth of her a coat of the skin of a goat by means his mental processes. They turn him of the hairpin. She will revolutionize away from his lofty cogitations by their surgery with it in time. Meanwhile the impertinent and trivial endearments. They male chirurgeons are doing the best they 35 warp his nature from its solemn bent, can; but it is not to be believed that they They kill his mind. Let him grow and have mastered the full mystery of the meditate. He has the floor. Give him hairpin. the opportunity "to develop himself. ' Don't talk baby talk,' says Dr. Carpen- X 4° ter. Certainly not. Why should a baby understand broken, any better than whole, THE IMPROVED BABY English? Why will mothers use that strange nursery Chinook, ' Did um shakum [Sun, New York, September 2, 1903. Reprinted in dady,' and so on ? The man's vocabulary Casual Essays of the Sun, 19.5. By perm.ss.on.] ^ . g s £ runken Qn account „ f th j s habit HJs The chief experts in child study and bump of language is flattened. Long infant psychology are men. The amount words for Little Ones; that's the talk. of valuable advice and directions given to ' John Henry, my valued progeny, I shall mothers by good, motherly men is surpris- discourse to you for a few moments on the ing. Whenever there is a Congress of 5» subject of the Conservation of Energy.' Mothers, Dr. Granville Stanley Hall and ' Marthy Ann, let me dissuade you from Dr. Hamilton Wright Mabie are sure to your fruitless conation to ingurgitate your unload stores of mother lore upon their rattle. The impenetrability of matter is listeners. Such is the unfailing wisdom of one of the earliest subjects which should men. The infants of today must be old 55 engage your attention.' before their time. Much is expected of ' One should avoid telling young chil- babes to whose welfare so many great dren such exciting stories as " Jack the masculine minds are contributing. Giant Killer." ' Explain, if you choose, 216 WRITING OF TODAY that it is absurd to suppose that Jack or sider himself a person important enough, anybody else would kill giants. Giants in the peculiarly important circumstances get large salaries. They are too valuable of his travel, to hand out two bits to an to kill. Don't tell stories of any kind, obliging gentleman of color and that he Read the Gazetteer to Baby. It will calm 5 would resent any legislative fussiness his nervous system and give him much which deprived him of this expression of statistical and geographical information. his own generosity and solvency. As to the colored person who takes the tip, we suspect that his self-respect is proof 10 against this subtle suggestion. Anyway ^-■l he earns the fee and it makes gracious the tut? d^-dt-g-d'c tttj person who gives it. 1 ±1J1 rUK 1 iiK b 11F There are very few remnants of the r/ ,, . „ .. .. _ . . , feudal system. Why destroy the one con- [Chicago Tribune, May o, 1915. By permission.] • . J ,, . u t." u ~-„~.. e 1 15 venient method by which a person of mod- Probably the two bits which the spend- est income and small authority can, for a thrift American traveler, having luxuri- moment, attain and realize the subtleties ated under blankets of a peculiar rigidity, of the grand estate? Purchasable at two the composition of which is known only bits the sensation is cheap. Many a man to the Pullman company, and having 20 has spent a $20 bill and had his egotism dressed without fracturing his skull, be- flattered less, stows upon the porter who tendered such creature comforts as may exist in a sleep- ing car, hits at some important props in XII our economic welfare. 25 Chairman Walsh and the committee on THE STRAW BREAKFAST industrial relations evidently suspect that an evil hides behind this quarter which the [Courier- Journal (Louisville) May 2, 1915. . , j ■» -ii il By permission.] average traveler deposits with the person who dusted him thus effectively. It may 30 From Germany comes news that a be making the Pullman company rich by learned man, a German professor of chem- making possible an avoidance of paying istry, has asserted that he can make a first- proper wages. It may be destroying the rate food of common wheat straw, self-respect of the porter, but we doubt it, Wheat straw, or oats straw or rye straw, experience never having discovered one 35 in addition to being useful for sucking who did not look as if he had all the self- cider or lemonade from a receptacle, bed- respect of a person with a bank account, ding horses, exercising the leg muscles of We suspect that the first sleeping car hens when grain is concealed in it, fooling porter who got the first two bits from a lean kine and making hats, is a fertilizer traveler nearly fell over in astonishment 40 of sorts. It has in it potash, or some other and was unable to express himself ade- chemical constituent of good soil. It pos- quately. We suspect that the whole sys- sibly is quite as valuable as a given quan- tem was originated by the travelers them- tity of shavings ironed out into batter cake selves and that they will continue to hand ' formation and then made into marcel out two bits in the morning regardless of 45 waves to tempt the coy appetites of those what changes are made in the wage scale, to whom conformation by honest ham and Naturally we want the money to go to eggs causes a shudder of horror at break- the porters and not to the Pullman com- fast time. pany, and for that reason we might insist The German savant proposes to make a that the company pay wages that would be 5o concentrated food from straw. It is to be adequate if there were no gratuities or a lozenge or cube something like those would refund the latter to the passenger in which you drop into hot water and make the form of lower rates. a sort of sterilized dishwater which is But we also suspect that the habit of called by a French name for soup. After tipping the porter is something not to be 55 eating it, no doubt, a bale of straw swells explained by any orthodox economic the- up in the inner being, and a fountain of ory; that it inheres in the grandiloquence strength wells up simultaneously in the of the average traveler who wishes to con- same place. Each digit itches for the E. ""HUMOROUS AMD OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 217 throat of the enemy, or longs, in the case communication include a resume of your of a civilian, to take a day's work by the personal and literary career. Don't fall scruff of the neck and cast it into the limbo into the error of making your letter too of things that were. Full of potash and concise. hope, the straw eater is a match for any 5 The following suggestions may serve to man. And he can get outside of his con- indicate some of the lines of thought you centrated bale of straw in less time than might follow: it takes a couple of roan steers to munch (1) State where you sent your first down one bale under the lee of a straw manuscript. stack when driven by winter hunger. 10 (2) What you thought of it, and of the The Herr Professor has, no doubt, hit editor who returned it. upon an important discovery. The time (3) Your height and chest measurement may come when it will be said that mak- (an editor likes to be on the safe side), ing bricks without straw is a simple matter (4) State who persuaded you to take compared with making Prussian grena- 15 up literature, and give height and chest diers without it. But, unfortunately for measurement of same. America, there is already in the market, (5) Give a short but optimistic descrip- tor soda fountain and circus lemonade tion of your contribution, not to exceed in booth use, an artificial straw made of paper length the contribution itself. treated with paraffin. When Americans 20 (6) State whether literary genius is rife begin to fill up on the concentrated straw in your family or has been rife at any lozenges, Richmond Pearson Hobson and time since 1066. a brace of retired admirals will be sure (7) Give a list of journals to which you to go about foretelling a German invasion, have already sent the enclosed contribu- and assuring us that every mother's son of 25 tion, and state your reasons for supposing us is wadded and packed with paper straw, that the editors were misguided. Hint while the Germans, who have been eating that perhaps, after all, their lack of enter- the regular kind, are adequately prepared prise was fortunate for the present recipi- to strew American giblets all over the ent. United States map, or the Japanese, bred 30 (8) Mention your hobbies and the dif- for battle on genuine rice straw, can swim ferent appointments you have held since the Pacific and arrive in California with the age of twelve, with names and ad- sufficient remaining strength to hammer dresses of employers. Also give your rea- the anti-alienism out of everybody west sons for remaining as long as you did in of the Rocky Mountains. 35 each situation. (9) State how long you have been a subscriber to the journal you are electing XIII to honor, and whether you think it 's worth the money. Point out any little im- WHAT TO TELL AN EDITOR 40 provements you consider desirable in its compilation, and mention other periodicals [Punch, January 14, 1914. By special permission as perfect examples. Preface these re- el t e proprietors.] marks with some such phrase as this: In view of the Daily Mail's praiseworthy ' Pray don't think I want to teach you your efforts to instruct applicants for situations 45 business, but — ' in the correct phrasing of letters to pro- (10) Give full list (names and ad- spective employers, we propose to supply dresses) of friends who have promised to a similar long-felt want, and give a little buy the paper if your contribution ap' advice as to the kind of letter it is desir- pears. able to enclose with contributions to peri- 50 (n) Give a brief outline, in faultless odicals. English, of your religious, political and po- Begin your letter in a friendly vein, hop- lice court convictions, your views on Mr. ing the editor and his people are pretty Lloyd-George, and any ideas you may have well. Remember also that editors like to about the Law of Copyright, know something of the characters and his- 55 Finally, enclose a stamped and addressed tories of their contributors. So let your envelope for the return of your article. F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS This section, like the preceding one, is really a branch of exposition. Many editorial articles are obviously controversial, though the tendency is for them to become less so ex- cept in occasional accesses of party strife. The difference between the purely expository article and the expository-controversial seems to lie in this — that while the writer of the former has a single eye to the reader, the writer of the latter has in view also sometimes ' » shadowy third,' sometimes a declared opponent. The controversial writer's constant endeavor is to pierce the joints of his opponent's armor, — less metaphorically, to point out the weak- nesses of the opposing case or the fallacies involved in its arguments or assumptions. The controversialist naturally sets forth his own case too as strongly and cogently as he can, but he must have in mind, not merely the immediate effect upon his reader, but the possi- ble openings he may leave for the adversary's counter-attack ; he breathes the atmosphere of battle. The articles in this section divide themselves into three groups : the first (I to III) cen- ters round what is somewhat vaguely called socialism; the second (IV and V) treats two phases of what is no less vaguely called the woman question; and the third (including all the rest) , deals with various issues arising in connection with the Great War. Whatever, in each case, may be the reader's sympathies, he should not fail to note the skill with which each writer states his own view, and scores at the expense of his imagined or realized an- tagonist. It is possible to admire and enjoy the brilliant sword-play of a controversial writer without sympathizing with the cause for which he fights. Indeed, it is only after observing the shrewd devices of the tried champions of debate that the young aspirant to the honors of the lists can venture into them without certainty of discomfiture. The first thing, un- doubtedly, is to have a good cause to fight for, or at least one that commends itself to the writer's inmost conviction; but he must also know how to defend his cause according to the art of war. I 'Well, any of us are welcome to try our hands at play-writing.' I might say that THE CASE FOR EQUALITY and smile. But I am quite safe in saying that to the majority of you it is just ex- GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 5 actly like saying to a beggar : ' Well, my friend, Mr. Barnato made a large fortune ; [Metropolitan December, 1913. Reprinted by cour- you have the same opportunities as Mr. tesy 01 the publishers. J Vi , , , ,- * Barnato; go and make that fortune, at When I speak of The Case for Equality I which Mr. Barnato would smile ; but it mean human equality ; and that, of course, 10 is of no use at all to the beggar. The fact can only mean one thing : it means equality is that you cannot equalize anything about of income. It means that if one person is human beings except their incomes. If in to have half a crown, the other is to have dealing with the subject you would only two and sixpence. It means that pre- begin by facing that fact, it would save cisely. You, Mr. Chairman, have spoken 15 you a very great deal of trouble in the of equality of opportunity. The difficulty form of useless speculation. I have about that is that it is entirely and com- chosen this subject for to-night because it pletely and eternally impossible. How are is an extremely practical and important po- you going to give everybody in this room litical subject. You have been for a long equal opportunities with me of writing 20 time using the power of Parliament to re- plays? The thing is, I say, a ghastly distribute income in this country more or mockery. In one sense it might be said: less. The very moment the Income Tax 218 F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 219 was introduced by Sir Robert Peel, some- " to the snobbery of the people who did not where in the 'forties — 1842, I think — like to take it than a real essential differ- from that moment you were beginning to ence of principle. The fact remains that effect a redistribution of income. If you a few years ago the Chancellor of the Ex- just glance over the subsequent succession 5 chequer began to put his hand into the na- of Chancellors of the Exchequer, you will tional pocket, and to give every person find them all redistributing income uncon- aged seventy of the working class, without sciously, until you come to Sir William reference to his ability or sex, if he claimed Harcourt with his death duties, Mr. As- it and had not a certain income at the quith with his discrimination between 10 time he claimed it, the sum of 5s. a week, earned and unearned income, ahd Mr. The recipients of that 5s. a week included Lloyd-George with his Supertax, all doing among them every possible variety of it consciously. The object of supertaxa- character. They all have exactly the sum tion, and the object of the threatened land of 5s. a week, no more and no less. Here taxation, is to effect a- further redistribu- 15 is a process which has begun, and a proc- tion of income in this country. There is ess which we all know is going to go on. another point which has not been quite so We know that that 5s. a week will not re- closely observed as that. The working main at 5s. a week. We know that it will classes have been using their power, at be presently 10s. a week. (Dissent.) I first indirectly, and of late years directly 20 should have thought that everybody here through the Labor Party in Parliament, to present would know that in New Zealand effect a redistribution. This used to be at the present time it is 10s. a week; and a redistribution in kind. Instead of get- that the Labor Party know it ; and that it ting money, the working classes got mu- is 10s. a week at an earlier age than the nicipal dwellings ; they got education ; they 25 age of seventy. If any man present is got sanitation ; they got the clearing away simple enough to believe that it is going to of slum areas ; and this mass of municipal stay at 5s. a week, I ask him to retire to work was largely paid for by rating richer the smoking-room downstairs, because he people than themselves, and by grants-in- is congenitally (I must say it, though I aid, which came from the Income Tax, 30 say it without malice) incapable of under- from which the working classes were ex- standing any address that I possibly can empt themselves. Thus they were delib- give. I take it now you are all convinced erately transferring wealth from one class that it will not stay at 5s. a week ; and I to another by Parliamentary power. They hope there will be no hesitation about this were redistributing part of the national in- 35 also; that the Supertax is not going to re- come, and diverting it in their own direc- main at what it is at present. I think you tion. This went on for many years ; but a must all admit, though some of you may few years ago they took, an entirely new deplore it, that the Supertax is going to departure. Instead of saying, ' We will go up, which means a further redistribu- get more schools out of you ; we will get 40 tion of "income in this country, more houses out of you ; we will get more Having put the matter on a thoroughly plumber's work out of you,' they suddenly practical basis, I now want to ask you took the step which was sooner or later in- whether you have made up your mind evitable, and said : ' We will have some what is going to be the final result of this money out of you. We will have some 45 process ; because if you are not like the money straight out of- your pockets into mere opportunists who are outside the Po- our pockets to do what we like with.' litical and Economic Circle and in the •There was an apparent precedent for this smoking-room downstairs — if you really in Poor Law outdoor relief, or the giving are serious in your pretensions as members of public money to poor persons on the 50 of this Circle, you must either have made ground that they are poor. But when you up your minds already on that point, or passed Old Age Pensions, then, for the you must be in the process of making up first time, you had money paid down with- your minds ; you must be asking yourselves out regard to the differences between one what is the final level to be? I am here person and another. It was not given ex- 55 to-night to say that I have quite made up clusively to the people who were poor, ex- my mind as to the only possible solution of cept that there was a certain limit of in- the question. I am going to show you that come, which was really rather a concession my solution, which is the solution of an 220 WRITING OF TODAY equal distribution, is one which has over- Take myself as an absolute, unquestionable whelming practical arguments in its favor, case. Now pick out somebody not quite Perhaps the strongest argument to peo- so clever. How much am I to have, and pie who are not very fond of abstract how much is he to have ? I notice a blank thought, is that equality of income is the 5 expression on your countenances. You only plan that has ever been successful, the are utterly unable to answer the question, only plan that has ever been possible. It In order to do so, you would have to corn- is the plan that has always prevailed; and pare us in some quantitative way. You it is prevalent at the present time to a would have to treat human capacity as a greater extent than any other rule of dis- 10 measurable thing ; but you know perfectly tribution. The moment you begin to try well it is not a measurable thing. Taking and think of any other, you are met with some person whom we will call X, an av- such difficulties and such absurdities that, erage man, you may think I am fifty times however reluctant you may be to come to as clever as X ; and you may think that I, the solution of equality, you are finally 15 perhaps, ought to have fifty times as big driven to it by the elimination of every an income. But if anybody asks you: other solution, except, of course, the solu- 'Where did you get that numerator of tion of the mere brute scramble that we fifty from, and what does your denomina- have at the present time. If you take our tor represent ? ' you will be compelled to Civil Service and our Military Service, 20 give it up. You cannot settle it. The you find that equal pay is the rule. If you thing is impossible. You cannot do it. take our trades, you find in every class of Every attempt you make in that way re- society a certain conception of what con- duces itself to absurdity in your hands; stitutes a becoming livelihood in that class and that silly dream of the nineteenth cen- of society ; and everybody in it aims at 25 tury which began with : ' The career open and claims an income representing that to the talents,' the idea that every man standard. Nobody seriously asks to have could get his value ; all that is the vainest more than the other persons of his class. Utopian dream; and the most ridiculous, Every soldier of the same rank gets prac- the most impracticable idea that ever came tically the same pay ; every policeman of 30 into the head of men. The reason it has the same rank ge£s the same pay ; every been talked about so much, is that the peo- colonel gets the same pay;. every general pie who were talking about it had no seri- gets the same pay; and every judge gets ous intention of ever bringing it into prac- £5000 a year. You do not find Mr. Justice tice and never pleaded it in practice except Darling getting up and saying : ' I really 35 as an excuse for giving somebody less than think that because I have put a little hu- themselves. It would have been far more mor into the proceedings, I ought to have sensible to go at the question in the old an extra allowance.' Nor do you find that mystic, religious way ; when you would the judges who put a little extra stupidity have immediately seen that all human and cruelty into the proceedings, ever sug- 40 souls are of infinite value, and all infinities gest that their salaries should be reduced equal. on that ground ; nor do the people who ad- It is now plain that if you are going to mire and uphold their cruelty and stupidity have any inequalities of income, they must propose that they should get any more. be arbitrary inequalities. You must say Now suppose you do not agree, suppose 45 flatly that certain persons are to have more you think there should be some other than others, giving no reason for it. I standard applied to men, I ask you not to am quite sure again, from the expression waste time arguing about it in the abstract, of your faces, that you have not any rea- but bring it down to a concrete case at sons. Well, I will give you one. As you once. Let me take a very obvious case. 50 know, obedience and subordination are I am an exceedingly clever man. There necessary in society. You cannot have a can be absolutely no question at all in my civilized society unless tolerably large case that in some ways I am above the bodies of men are willing to obey other average of mankind in talent. You laugh ; men, even by executing orders that they but I presume you are not laughing at the 55 do not themselves understand. That is the fact, but only because I do not bore you real foundation of our traditional feudal with the usual modest cough, and pretend inequality. In order to make a common to consider myself stupid. Very well, man obey some other man, you had to take F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 221 some means of making that other man an with me ; because that disposes of the last uncommon man ; and the simplest way was and only argument in favor of inequality to set him apart from common men by giv- of income : absolutely the last and only one. ing him more money, by putting him in a Now I come to the objections to inequal- different sort of dress, by making him live 5 ity, which have been too little considered in a different sort of house, by setting up in this country. I am going to show you a convention that under no circumstances that there is an overwhelming political ob- could his son marry the daughter of the jection to it. I will then show you that common man, or the common man's son there is a still more overwhelming eco- marry his daughter. In short, you re- 10 nomic objection to it; and I will finish by sorted _ to idolatry to secure subordination showing you that there is a biological ob- in society; for the man so set apart be- jection to it which, in my opinion, out- came literally an idol. I do not deny that weighs all the others. Let us begin with idolatry served its turn; but I suggest to the political objection. As long as you you that modern democracy and modern 15 have inequality of income, you may have conditions are exploding it. The very Franchise Acts, and you may have votes idols themselves have made the fatal mis- for men, and votes for women, and you take of allowing the invention of pho- may have votes for babies if you like, but tography and the half-tone process to de- there will be no such thing as real democ- stroy the glamour on which the whole so- 20 racy in this country. There will be class cial structure is based. So long as you government of the very worst description, have a peer or millionaire who is known There will be class government based on only by name and by reputation, people plutocracy, as there is at the present time ; may believe him to be a great man, quite and there will be no possible real repre- unlike themselves ; but the moment you put 25 sentation of the people in Parliament. It his portrait into the papers, it is all up: does not matter how high the characters the show is given away. The time has of the members may stand. I will take gone by for the old privacy, the old mys- two gentlemen who are at the head of Par- tery, the old seclusion ; that is how our liamentary life at the present time. Take idols are beginning to get found out in all 30 Mr. Asquith on the one hand, and Mr. directions. The whole movement of Lib- Balfour on the other. How can Mr. Bal- eralism in the history of the world — I do four Or Mr. Asquith represent men with not mean the Liberalism of Parliament, or £300 a year ; much less men with £50 or the Liberalism even of this Club, which, £60 a year ? How can they pursue in Par- as you know, has very little to do with 35 liament the interests of men with only a Liberalism at all — the history of Liberal- very small fragment of their income ? I ism in the world, when you understand it say, furthermore, that even if they wanted thoroughly, has been the history of Icono- to do it, they would not be let do it. I clasm. In America they will not allow say they are subject to public opinion. I their ambassadors to put on the uniform 40 say that public opinion is manufactured at that European ambassadors wear ; and the present time by newspapers ; and I say they will not allow their judges to assume that the newspapers are absolutely in the the ridiculous costume our judges put on hands of the plutocracy. The extent to to persuade people that a judge is not a which they are in the hands of the plu- man, but Justice incarnate ; and they do 45 tocracy I could illustrate in fifty ways ; not allow their President to put a crown but you cannot be so destitute of intelli- on his head, in order to produce illusions gence — I have no right to assume that as to its interior. I think you will admit you are lacking in intelligence at all — as that nowadays, in spite of the costumes of not to feel this every day of your life. If our judges, and in spite of our crowns, 50 you do not feel it, there is nothing that I there is very little of such illusion left, could say which would convince you of it ; As a matter of fact, the popularity of our but the extent to which our newspapers last two monarchs has been due, I think are under the personal control of the plu- you will agree with me, not at all to a be- tocracy, I may illustrate by a harmless lief in them as extraordinary and super- 55 little incident. natural persons, but to the precisely con- A little while ago I had the pleasure of trary belief in them as rather good fellows holding a public debate in Queen's Hall much like ourselves. I am glad you agree with Mr. Hilaire Belloc. It was reported 222 WRITING OF TODAY at some length in all the newspapers of thing, being a lifelong teetotaler, and the London. It was considered an event of meeting talking a great deal of nonsense sufficient public importance to occupy from about the publicans, in defense of the pub- one to three columns — the-three columns lican. The bishop did not speak in de- were in a highly conservative paper in 5 fense of the publican. He spoke in the London. All over the country the news- conventional manner against the liquor papers had reports. But there were two trade. The consequence was that in the papers that made absolutely no mention of Times next day my speech was reported at the debate. One of them was the Times full length; and the only thing that was and the other was the Daily Mail. It has 10 mentioned about the bishop was that ' the remained a profound mystery why those Bishop of Kensington then addressed the papers took absolutely no notice of a de- meeting.' When Bishop Gore, who was bate of which they were informed, and at then Bishop of Birmingham, delivered a which they were represented by their re- most eloquent protest in London against porters. The only conjecture that was 15 the assumption that political science, any made on the subject was based on the fact more than religion, was on the side of in- that one of the speakers, by an unfortunate dustrial sweating he fared worse than the slip, mentioned Lord Northcliffe not as Bishop of Kensington: for he was not Lord Northcliffe but as Mr. Harmsworth. mentioned at all except by one morning Now, gentlemen, I am not so absurd as to 20 paper, which shortly afterward changed suppose that Lord Northcliffe went down its editor. to the offices of these two papers of his, Gentlemen, leaving the question of the and said : ' This blasphemer has called me press, you know that every one of you " Mr. Harmsworth," as if I were not Lord wants to get into Parliament. I have Northcliffe ; never mention him in my 25 never yet met a member of the National papers again.' I do not believe anything Liberal Club who did not intend to get into of the kind; but I am perfectly prepared Parliament at some time, except those to believe that the gentlemen in his em- who, like our Chairman, are there already, ployment may have been so under the in- Well, most of you will get no further than fluence of Lord Northcliffe's position, and 30 taking part in other men's election meet- may have been themselves so unjustly ings. You will hardly ever have an op- mistrustful of Lord Northcliffe's breadth portunity of speaking on behalf of a man of mind, that they may have thought it who really represents your opinions, safer on the whole not to mention the de- Nine times out of ten, for the sake of what bate, in which they would have had to 35 you call the Liberal Party, you will be report that deplorable slip ; and so got out speaking on behalf of a rich man. You of the difficulty by not mentioning it at all. will be answering for his magnificent Lib- Any of you who are in public life must eral principles ; you will be explaining his know that the moment you take part in views on the Welsh Church, and on Home any anti-plutocratic movement you are 40 Rule, and on Free Trade. And the gen- boycotted by the newspapers. Nothing is tleman on whose behalf you are speaking, reported and worked up in the newspapers and who will be returned if your oratory except the interests of the plutocracy, is successful, will be sitting there on the Those papers form public opinion. Public platform wondering what on earth you are opinion cannot be formed in any other 45 talking about, but perfectly prepared to way. The consequence is that you have foot the bill, to pay the expenses, to bribe no genuinely popular government in this the constituency on the chance of getting country. I will give you just one other into Parliament. Doubtless, when he gets instance which comes back to my memory : into Parliament, he will go into whatever it is also a personal one. I once went to 50 lobby the Liberal whip tells him is the a meeting on the temperance question, proper lobby to go into. That is what you That meeting was addressed by me ; and get in the shape of democracy ; and that is it was addressed by a bishop. Under ordi- all you ever will get as long as you have nary circumstances, when a meeting is ad- inequality of income, dressed by me and addressed by a bishop, 55 Now I come to the economic objection ; the bishop is very fully reported; and I and you will all now please put on your am somewhat briefly reported. On this best expressions, being all of you political occasion, it happened that I said some- economists. Now, gentlemen, I am really F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 223 a political economist. I have studied the tion according to their own tastes, you thing. I understand Ricardo's law of rent must give a man his income in the shape and Jevons's law of value. I can also of purchasing power. By that purchasing tell you what in its essence sound economy power he determines production ; and if means for any nation. It means, gentle- 5 you allow the purchasing power of one men, just what sound economy means for class to fall below the level of the vital any individual ; and that is that whatever necessities of subsistence, and at the same powers the individual has of purchasing or time allow the purchasing power of an- producing, shall be exercised in the order other class to rise considerably above it of his most vital needs. Let me illustrate. 10 into the region of luxuries, then you find Suppose you find a man starving in the inevitably that those people with that streets. You are sympathetic: you give superfluity determine production to the that man sixpence. Suppose that man, in- output of luxuries, while at the same time stead of buying some bread and eating it, the necessities that are wanted at the other buys a bottle of scent to perfume his hand- 15 end cannot be sold, and are therefore not kerchief with, and then dies of starvation, produced. I have put it as shortly as pos- but with the satisfaction of having his sible ; but that is the economic argument in handkerchief perfumed ! You will admit favor of equality of income. All the argu- that that man is an unsound economist, ments which have been brought forward will you not ? You will even declare that 20 against it, and all the more personal con- he is a lunatic? Well, allow me to tell siderations in favor of inequality, seem to you, gentlemen, that is exactly what this me, as an economist, to be practically country is doing at the present time. It swept away by the overwhelming weight is spending very large sums on perfuming of that economic objection, its handkerchief while it is starving, and 25 I now come to the biological reasons for while it is rotting. How are you going equality. I do not know, gentlemen, what to remedy that? As long as you have in- may be the outcome of your experience in equality of income, that mad state of progressive political work, but I must con- things is compulsory. If one man has not fess to you here that I, having devoted enough money to feed his children prop- 30 more than thirty years, the most active erly, and another man has so much that part of my life, to political questions in after feeding and clothing and lodging their most serious aspect — not to the himself and his family as luxuriously as ridiculous game, not half as interesting as possible he has still a large surplus fund, golf, which you call party politics and with you will find that the richer man will take 35 which you debauch your intellects and his surplus purchasing power into the mar- waste your time, but to the genuine prob- ket, and by that purchasing power set the lems of the condition of the country and labor of the country, which ought to be the condition of the people : in short, to the devoted to producing more food for peo- life of the country — I must confess to you pie who have not enough food, to the pro- 40 that all my experience and all my thought duction of 80 horse-power motor-cars, and on the subject have left me with very yachts and jewels, and boxes at the opera, grave doubts as to whether mankind, as it and to the construction of such towns as exists at present, is capable of solving the Nice and Monte Carlo. The thing is in- political and economic problems which are evitable. Production is determined by 45 presented to the human race by its own purchasing power and always will be. If multitudinous numbers. If you take a few you were to attempt to do away with persons like ourselves, and put them into money and with purchasing power, then a new colony, in a climate which is not you would have, in order to satisfy your too rough, to make little pioneer villages nation, to ascertain what every man par- 50 like the pioneer villages in the days before ticularly wants and likes; and as that Capitalism overwhelmed America, in that would be impossible, you would have to village you may get a reasonable and de- give every man exactly the same thing, cent kind of life ; a rough life, but a natu- with the consequence that the man who ral life ; not in any very high sense a wanted a race-horse as a luxury would get 55 civilized life, and certainly not a cultured a gramophone, and the man who wanted life; but a tolerably human kind of life, a gramophone would get a race-horse. In But the moment you attempt to go beyond order to enable men to determine produc- the village stage, the moment you attempt 224 WRITING OF TODAY to create the complicated political, social see that this was blasphemy; but in my and industrial organization required by opinion the doctrine that the wholesaler our great modern empires and cities, the should excommunicate the retailer was a human constituents of these communities much more dangerous blasphemy. At all are hopelessly beaten by the problems ere- 5 events, when you are brought up, as you ated by that organization, and by their inevitably are in a society like ours, with own numbers. Our House of Commons, that sort of blasphemy being continually to do it justice, does not even pretend to dinned into your ears; when you are know what it is legislating about. Read taught to be unsocial at every point, and its speeches on the subject, and you will 10 brought up to be unsocial, then any little find that it practically gives up the prob- chance that your natural endowments at lem. It goes on in a hand-to-mouth fash- your birth may have left you of being able ion trying to remedy grievances, making to grapple with the enormous problems five or six new messes every time it clears of our modern civilization — problems that up an old one. You see measure after 15 demand from you the largest scope of measure brought out, accompanied by ex- mind, the most unhesitating magnanimity, tensions of the franchise ; but all the time the most sacred recognition of your spirit- we are going more deeply into the mire, ual and human equality with every person and increasing the evils I have been fight- in the nation — is utterly destroyed. That ing all my life. Although people are con- 20 is why I doubt whether these problems stantly assuming that these evils are being can be solved by us, brought up in that got rid of, I assure you that they are not way. To solve them, you need a new sort being got rid of at all; and the reason of of human being. that, it seems to me, is that we are not And now we have come to what we call capable of getting rid of them. We are a 25 Eugenics. Ever since the time of Plato stupid people ; and we are a bad looking — and I dare say the subject was practi- people. We are ugly; we have narrow cally as old in Plato's time as it is now — minds ; and we have bad manners. A sensible men have always said : ' Why great deal of that is due to the effect of cannot we breed men with the same care being brought up in a society of inequality. 30 that we breed horses?' (Hear, hear.) I know perfectly well what happened to Several gentlemen say ' Hear, hear.' myself. I can remember one of my earli- Have they ever tried it? You must al- est experiences in life was my father find- ways test yourselves, when you have these ing me playing with a certain little boy ideas, by asking yourselves how would you in the street, and telling me I was not to 35 begin. Suppose we could go as a depu- play with that little boy, giving me to tation to Parliament, and were allowed to understand that he was a very inferior and address Parliament at the bar of the objectionable kind of little boy. I had not House, and impressed them with the im- found him so. I asked my father ' Why ? ' portance of this problem to such an extent He said : ' His father keeps a shop.' I 40 that they passed an Act and sent it through said to my father : ' Well, but you keep a the Lords and got the Royal Assent, in- mill.' Therefore my father pointed out to demnifying us and giving us power prac- me that he sold things wholesale, and that tically, we here, to make an attempt at this little boy's father sold things retail ; breeding ; to pick out a mother and father and that, consequently, there was between 45 and try to produce a better sort of human me and that boy a gulf which could never being ; we should not know where to begin, be respectably bridged ; and that it was You see it is all very well when you come part of my duty and part of my honor to to breed a horse, because when you want regard that boy as an inferior, which I to breed a horse you know the sort of did ever after, in so far as I could safely 50 horse you want. If you want a race-horse, do so, having regard to the fact that the all you care about is that the horse should boy was a more vigorous and larger boy be a very fast horse. If you want a than myself. I was also taught, being an draught horse, you know that all you want Irish Protestant boy, what Protestant chil- is a powerful horse. You do not bother dren are habitually taught in Ireland : that 55 about the horse's soul ; you do not bother the great bulk of my fellow countrymen, very much about its temper; you do not being Roman Catholics, were condemned care whether it is a good horse in the pul- to eternal damnation. Perhaps you can pit sense of the word. You want a horse F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 225 that will go round a race-course in a them from instant rapine. I cannot imag- shorter time than any other horse. Or ine how any man gets himself into such a you want a horse that will carry a hun- deplorable condition of mind as to be- dredweight more than any other horse you lieve that this is true of himself, much can get hold of. It is quite simple, because 5 less of any other human being. There you know the sort of horse you want, may be some men of low type, who are But do you know the sort of man you nearly indiscriminate in their appetites; want? You do not. You have not the but I am perfectly certain, with regard to slightest idea. You do not even know how the great majority of men, that they may to begin. You say : _' Well, after all we 10 very often walk down Oxford Street with- do not want an epileptic. We do not want out meeting one single woman to whom an alcoholic' (It is a barbarous word, they could tolerate the idea of being mar- but drunken people are now called alco- ried ; and they will in any case be fortu- holics.) But for all you know to the con- nate (because I like the sensation when trary, the Superman may be a self-con- 15 it comes to me) if, on the most crowded trolled epileptic, fed exclusively on proof day and in the finest weather, they meet spirit, and consuming perhaps ten gallons two women for whom they feel that curi- a day. You laugh; but the thing is en- ous physiological attraction which we all tirely possible. You do not know what a recognize as the sex attraction. That at- healthy man is. All your doctors are not 20 traction means something. If that attrac- able to tell you. All they can tell you is tion meant something destructive and that if you bring them a healthy man, ruinous to the human race, the human race they will very soon have him in bed. Still would have been wiped out of existence less do you know, gentlemen, what is a long ago. It is what you call the Voice good man. Take a vote as to whether I 25 of Nature. You fall in love, as the say- am a good man or not. Some people will ing is. You see a woman whom you have tell you that my goodness is almost beyond never spoken to, about whom you know that of any other living person. They absolutely nothing at all ; you do not know will even tell you that I am the only hope her character, and you do not know her of religion in this country. You will not 30 aims ; but you look at her and fall in love have to go very far to find persons who with her. If you were a free person in are of exactly the contrary opinion. I a free society, you would feel very strongly tell you that you really do not know. I in love with her ; but nowadays you seldom think the very first thing you have to do feel more than that timid little — what is to face the fact that you do not know, 35 shall I call it ? — sort of sinking feeling, and that in the nature of things you never which is about as much as, in our present can know. Your capacity does not run society, is left of any of our natural emo- to it. You have no clue, as far as your tions. But you do feel some attraction, own judgment is concerned ; and, there- My contention is that this attraction is the fore, you are thrown back on the clue that 40 only clue you have to the breeding of the Nature gives you. human race, and I do not believe you will Let me propose to you an experiment ever have any improvement in the human which I am always proposing to large au- race until you greatly widen the area of diences in this country. I ask you to- possible sexual selection; until you make morrow in the afternoon, if it is a fine 45 it as wide as the numbers of the commu- afternoon, to walk down Park Lane or nity make it. Just consider what occurs Bond or Oxford Street, or any well-fre- at the present time. I walk down Oxford quented thoroughfare, and to look care- Street, let me say, as a young man. I see fully at all the women you see coming a woman who takes my fancy. I fall in along and to take a note of how many of 50 love with her. It would seem very sensi- those women you would care to be mar- ble, in an intelligent community, that I ried to. If we are to judge by the utter- should take off my hat and say to this ances of some of our Moral Reform So- lady: 'Will you excuse me; but you at- cieties, the members when they walk down tract me very strongly, and if you are Oxford Street, are so wildly and irresist- 55 not already engaged, would you mind tak- ibly attracted by every woman they meet, ing my name and address and considering old or young, that nothing but the se- whether you would care to marry me ? ' verest and most stringent laws restrain Now I have no such chance at present. 226 WRITING OF TODAY Probably when I meet that woman, she is ment, I have given you an economic argu- either a charwoman and I cannot marry ment, I have given you a biological her, or else she is a duchess and she will argument; and now make what you can not marry me. I have purposely taken the of it. charwoman and the duchess; but we cut 5 ******* matters much finer than that. We cut our little class distinctions, all founded upon inequality of income, so narrow and so II small that I have time and again spoken to English audiences of all classes through- 10 THE CASE FOR INEQUALITY out the Kingdom, and I have said to every man and woman in the audience : ' You LINCOLN STEFFENS know perfectly well that when it came to your turn to be married, you had not, as Metropolitan, February, 1914. Reprinted by cour- ' • ii_ 1 • tesy of the publishers.] a young man or a young woman, the choice 15 practically of all the unmarried young The only difficulty I find in answering people of your own age in our forty mil- Mr. Shaw when he is wrong is that I don't lion population to choose from. You had want to. It is sport to hear his purpose- at the outside a choice of two or three ; f ul fallacies running over the innocent sins and you did not like any of them very par- 20 of his generation, and mine. It 's a cruel ticularly as compared to the one you might sport, but it 's sport. And who would be have chosen, if you had had a larger a spoil-sport ? Not I ; not if the Superman choice.' That is a fact which you gentle- would limit his hunting to his own coun- men with your knowledge of life cannot try, where the libel laws make muckraking deny. The result is that you have, instead 25 an intellectual game and British com- of a natural evolutionary sexual selection, placency requires that it be played by a class selection which is really a money artists. But over here, in our country, selection. Is it to be wondered at that muckraking is serious business. We are you have an inferior and miserable breed running down the truth that shall make us under such circumstances ? I believe that 30 free. Mr. Shaw, addressing the Liberal this goes home more to the people than Club of England on ' The Case for Equal- any other argument I can bring forward, ity,' is a gentleman shooting over his own I have impressed audiences with that ar- preserves; the same man with the same gument who were entirely unable to grasp case in the Metropolitan Magazine is a the economic argument in the way you are 35 poacher. He is fair game for any of us ; able to grasp it, and who were indifferent big game, but fair. I protest that Mr. to the political arguments. I say, there- Shaw should either stay at home, where fore, that if all the other arguments did the greater the truth is the greater the not exist, the fact that equality of income libel, or get down here with us to the would have the effect of making the 40 hard but honest labor of raking up and entire community intermarriageable from marketing said truth. And why should he one end to the other, and would practically not deal in that precious commodity ? give a young man and young woman his The truth divine is funnier than any or her own choice right through the popu- man-made joke. lation — I say that that argument only, 45 His joke on the Liberal Club shows that, with the results which would be likely to The truth about the case for equality is accrue in the improvement of the race, more entertaining than Mr. Shaw's argu- would carry the day. ment for it. I am sorry there are no ladies present ' When I speak of the Case of Equality,' here. There ought to have been, to have 50 he begins, ' I mean human equality.' full justice done to the last argument. Now the joke in this thesis, the humor- But the final argument which prevails ous truth divine about human equality is with me is that it is half-past nine. I that we don't want it. By ' we ' I mean hope I have given you enough to talk not merely the editorial I; not myself about for some little time. I hope you 55 alone ; I mean Mr. Shaw also ; and not understand that equality means equality of only him and me, but Nature and human income. In justification of equality of in- nature. And I certainly would include come, I have given you a political argu- under that impersonal pronoun all those F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 227 who agree with him and me when I shall to get our Superman. But of this later, have made over for him the Superman's What I want to fix now is the point upon case for the Superman. which Mr. Shaw and I and Nature agree : For my contention is that Mr. Shaw's We all want human inequality, case for human equality is an argument 5 And that 's why Mr. Shaw wants eco- for human inequality; he doesn't know nomic equality: because he wants human just how to get it, but that is what he inequality. That is n't what he says ; not means and wants. all the time. As we have just seen, he ' I say,' as he says — I say that we are sometimes puts it the other way. Most of striving, not for human equality, but for 10 the time, however, he has it right ; most of the opposite: human inequality. Not de- his case is an argument for the solution mocracy; aristocracy is what we are after; of our economic problem in order to the or, to be more precise, aristocracies, development of the race. Again I define 'we' as Nature, human na- And, 'of course' (as he says), this is ture and Shaw, and, with all the force 15 the only way we can proceed. We can't Mr. Shaw puts into a doubtful statement, create new sorts of human beings; we I say that we democrats work and argue have to grow them ; we have to evolve our for democracy as a means to aristocracy; superman out of mankind as it exists at the free, natural development of human present. inequality. We do, and we must. Nature 20 If Mr. Shaw (or anybody else) can't see compels us to. that, I shall have to extend to him the Nature is working toward the develop- invitation he gave to the ' congenitally in- ment of variations in all species. capable ' members of the Liberal Club — Human nature is a part of Nature. ' to retire to the smoking-room down- Man is a species. So man is being worked 25 stairs.' toward variations in his species. Human But Mr. Shaw does see that, sometimes variations appear as human inequalities he says it; and I think he means it all the and the process we call evolution tends to time. It would be quibbling, therefore, to develop them into greater and greater in- hold him to his exact words when we can, equalities. Hence my conclusion : 30 by an effort, get at his thought. Let 's do It is human inequality, not human equal- that : ity, that Nature makes for and makes our ' When I speak of the case for equality,' human nature work for. he says, ' I mean human equality ; and No matter what men say, it is distinc- that, of course, can mean only one thing; tion and differences they want. But Mr. 35 it means equality of income.' And, as if to Shaw says it, sometimes ; he says it in clinch my case, he adds : ' The fact is you the bewildering course of his case for cannot equalize anything about human ' equality, meaning human equality.' beings except their incomes.' 'I must confess,' he confesses, 'that all So I will correct his thesis for him, and my experience and thought have left me 40 make him say what he says part of the with very grave doubts as to whether man- time and means all of the time : kind as it exists at present is capable of 'When I speak of the case for equal- solving the political and economic prob- ity, I mean human inequality; and that lems presented by its own multitudinous can mean but one thing : it means economic numbers. ... To solve them you need a 45 equality.' new sort of human being.' My statement of his case is better be- This sigh for a new sort of human being cause, first, it sounds more like Shaw than is merely a literary expression of Na- his own; second, it is nearer the truth; ture's brutal demand for the further vari- third, it illustrates what I said about the ation of the human species; for more 50 truth being funnier even than a Shaw jest, inequality, or for the more unequal devel- and there 's a fourth reason which should opment of existing inequalities. That is have a paragraph by itself: an amusing, confusing thing to cry for By reversing thus his main proposition, in a plea for human equality; and I think Mr. Shaw's argument becomes suddenly the statement is upside down. We don't 55 good ; not precisely, but pretty good, want the Superman to solve our political His case for equality (meaning human and economic problems. We want to inequality) now faces the fundamental solve our political and economic problems problem of the race : to develop the breeds 228 WRITING OF TODAY of men. And it gives Mr. Shaw's solu- would have the effect of making the entire tion : economic equality. ' Equality of in- community intermarriageable from one come ' is his phrase, and he goes on to end to the other and would practically show that he means equal pay. ' It give a young man or woman his or her means,' he says, ' that if one person is to 5 choice right through the population with have half a crown, the other is to have results likely to accrue in the improvement two-and-sixpence. It means that pre- of the race.' cisely.' That's right, too. Equality of income That 's right. If we are to have human might do the trick. But is n't it impossi- inequality, we must have economic equal- 10 ble ? And unnecessary ? ity. Not precisely ; no ; Mr. Shaw is pre- Mr. Shaw says every other kind of hu- cisely too precise there. But he is ap- man equality is impossible. Scientists say proximately right. He sees that the no precise equality occurs in Nature; not reason we have no aristocracies now is even among crystals ; and, as for incomes, because we have only plutocracies. His 15 the inhuman inequality between thrift and happiest illustration is given under the joyousness would spoil that arrangement, unhappy head of ' Biological Reasons for unless economic opportunities were equal- Equality.' He agrees with me that we ized. He says most human beings get cannot make his ' new sort of human ' equal pay ' now ; and he refers to the being ' ; he goes beyond me to say that we 20 wages of labor, and the army, navy and cannot even breed him as we do animals, civil lists. And he observes the leveling The breeder of horses, he argues, knows process of redistribution in pension legis- the sort of horse he wants. But, says Mr. lation, in income and all super-taxation. Shaw, 'you do not know the sort of man There is no denying these facts; the you want. . . . You have no clue, as far 25 tendency of political and social reform is as your own judgment is concerned, and toward the redistribution of wealth by therefore you are driven back on the clue force through confiscation. But all this Nature gives.' makes, not for equality of incomes; not This clue to natural selection is the sex precisely; it makes only toward approxi- attraction. ' My contention/ he says, ' is 30 mate equality. And in the wrong way ; that this attraction is the only clue you and here is where I take issue with Mr. have to the breeding of the human race.' Shaw on his whole case, whether he is And he shows that the money standards for human equality, as he says, or for of our plutocratic organization of society human inequality, as he also says, interfere with this natural instinct' in all 35 Our evils are due, not to private wealth, classes of society. ' You have,' he con- but to excessive wealth and power in the eludes, ' instead of a natural evolutionary hands of individuals. Equally bad, both sexual selection, a class selection which is must be prevented. Mr. Shaw would not really a money selection.' prevent either. He proposes to redistrib- One might quarrel with some of this. 40 ute accumulated wealth by some power A pretty good case could be made for the greater than the state puts into the hands improvement of some breeds of men. under of statesmen now. This is implied in existing conditions. And I, for one, know- ' precisely equal incomes,' which only a some sorts of human beings I want; mu- highly organized governmental machine sicians, for example ; artists generally, and 45 could establish. And even if that were Bernard Shaws ; and I think the day may done, it would n't stay done unless we had come when we shall know how to con- economic equality. And why attempt the tinue some such transmissible human in- impossible? equalities. But I accept the main argu- We can prevent excessive individual ment, that we cannot improve the stock 50 wealth by socializing the sources of un- fast or far so long as we breed as we do earned money. These are either natural so generally now for money, position or resources or leaks through which social other privilege. That is as absurd as value flows into private pockets. In a breeding horses, not for speed or strength, word, we should abolish privileges ; and, but for the amount of money their owners 55 for the rest, let Labor democratize indus- possess. try. These two courses would not in- And I quote sympathetically the close crease centralized power; they would give of his argument : ' Equality of income us what Mr. Shaw wants : economic de- F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 229 mocracy ; by giving us what he despises : fettered the individualism which found ex- equal opportunities — not to get rich, but pression in physical violence, and we are to develop each his own gifts or inequali- now endeavoring to put shackles on that ties freely. No man could get rich if he kind of individualism which finds expres- had access to no value except that which 5 sion in craft and greed. There is growth he produced, and I think that few would in all such matters. The individualism of want to. the Tweed Ring type would have seemed Men's activities and desires are deter- both commonplace and meritorious to the mined, not only economic conditions, Merovingian Franks, where it was not en- but by resultant social ideals, and long 10 tirely beyond their comprehension; and so before economic equality was reached; in future ages, if the world progresses as with the passing of the sources and ex- we hope and believe it will progress, the ample of distinguishing riches, we would standards of conduct which permit indi- be free ; free from the fear of poverty viduals to make money out of pestilential and power; free to form some other ideal 15 tenements or by the manipulation of than money. The aristocratic few seek stocks, or to refuse to share with their distinction or satisfaction now in service employees the dreadful burdens laid upon or skilful work. Some such ideal would the latter by the inevitable physical risks soon spread through a free society, and in a given business, will seem as amazing free the sex instinct to further by natural 20 to our descendants as we now find the selection, human, instead of economic, in- standards of a society which regarded equalities. Clovis and his immediate successors as preeminently fit for leadership. With those self-styled Socialists to m 25 whom ' Socialism ' is merely a vaguely conceived catchword, and who use it to SOCIALISM express their discontent with existing TWP-nnoRF wnnSFVPT t wrongs and their purpose to correct them, ltiiLUUVKt. KUUbJiVULl there is not much need of discussion. So lOMook, March 2a and 27( I9 o 9 . By permission 3° far as they make any proposals which are of author and publishers.] not foolish, and which tend towards bet- terment, we can act with them. But the 1 -where we cannot work with real> logkalj advanced Socialists, who socialists teach their faith as both a creed and a It is always difficult to discuss a ques- 35 party platform, may deceive to their ruin tion when it proves impossible to define decent and well-meaning but short-sighted the terms in which that question is to be men; and there is need of plain speaking discussed. Therefore there is not much to in order accurately to show the trend of be gained by a discussion of Socialism their teaching. versus Individualism in the abstract. 40 The immorality and absurdity of the Neither absolute Individualism nor abso- doctrines of Socialism as propounded by lute Socialism would be compatible with these advanced advocates are quite as civilization at all; and among the argu- great as those of the advocates, if such ments of the extremists of either side the there be, of an unlimited individualism, only unanswerable ones are those which 45 As an academic matter there is more need show the absurdity of the position of the of refutation of the creed of absolute So- other. Not so much as the first step cialism than of the creed of absolute indi- towards real civilization can be taken until vidualism; for it happens that at the pres- there arises some development of the right ent time a greater number of visionaries, of private property; that is, until men pass 5° both sinister and merely dreamy, believe out of the stage of savage socialism in in the former than in the latter. One which the violent and the thriftless forci- difficulty in arguing with professed Social- bly constitute themselves co-heirs with the ists of the extreme, or indeed of the op- industrious and the intelligent in what the portunist, type, however, is that those of labor of the latter produces. But it is 55 them who are sincere almost invariably equally true that every step toward civil- suffer from great looseness of thought; ization is marked by a check on individual- for if they did not keep their faith nebu- ism. The ages that have passed have lous, it would at once become abhorrent 230 WRITING OF TODAY in the eyes of any upright and sensible logical scientific Socialism would really man. The doctrinaire Socialists, the ex- come to. Aside from its thoroughly re- tremists, the men who represent the doc- pulsive quality, it ought not to be neces- trine in its most advanced form, are, and sary to point out that the condition of must necessarily be, not only convinced 5 affairs aimed at would in actual practice opponents of private property, but also bit- bring about the destruction of the race terly hostile to religion and morality; in within, at most, a couple of generations; short, they must be opposed to all those and such destruction is heartily to be de- principles through which, and through sired for any race of such infamous char- which alone, even an imperfect civilization 10 acter as to tolerate such a system. More- can be built up by slow advances through over, the ultra-Socialists of our own coun- the ages. try have shown by their attitude towards Indeed, these thoroughgoing Socialists one of their leaders, Mr. Herron, that, so occupy, in relation to all morality, and far as law and public sentiment will per- especially to domestic morality, a position 15 mit, they are now ready to try to realize so revolting — and I choose my words the ideals set forth by Messrs. Deville and carefully — that it is difficult even to dis- Pearson. As for Mr. Herron, I commend cuss it in a reputable paper. In America to those who desire to verify what I have the leaders even of this type have usually said, the article in the Boston Congrega- been cautious about stating frankly that so tionalist of June 15, 1901 ; and to those, they proposed to substitute free love for by the way, who have not the time to married and family life as we have it, al- hunt up all the original authorities, I though many of them do in a roundabout would commend a book called Socialism; way uphold this position. In places on the Nation of Fatherless Children, a book the continent of Europe, however, they 25 dedicated to the American Federation of are more straightforward, their attitude Labor. The chapters on Free Love, being that of one of extreme French So- Homeless Children, and Two Socialist cialist writers, M. Gabriel Deville, who Leaders are especially worth reading by announces that the Socialists intend to do any one who is for the moment confused away with both prostitution and marriage, 30 by the statements of certain Socialist which he regards as equally wicked — his leaders to the effect that advanced Social- method of doing away with prostitution ism does not contemplate an attack upon being to make unchastity universal. Pro- marriage and the family, fessor Carl Pearson, a leading English So- These same Socialist leaders, with a cialist, states their position exactly : 35 curious effrontery, at times deny that the ' The sex relation of the future will not exponents of ' scientific Socialism ' assume be regarded as a union for the birth of a position as regards industry which in children, but as the closest form of friend- condensed form may be stated as, that ship between man and woman. It will be each man is to do what work he can, or, accompanied by no child bearing or rear- 40 in other words, chooses, and in return is ing, or by this in a much more limited to take out from the common fund what- number than at present. With the sex re- ever he needs ; or, what amounts to the lationship, so> long as it does not result in same thing, that each man shall have equal children, we hold that the State in the remuneration with every other man, no future will in no wise interfere, but when 45 matter what work is done. If they will it does result in children, then the State turn to a little book recently written in will have a right to interfere.' He then England called The Case Against Social- goes on to point out that in order to save ism, they will find by looking at, say, pages the woman from ' economic dependence ' 229 and 300, or indeed almost at random upon the father of her children, the chil- 5o through the book, quotations from recog- dren will be raised at the expense of the nized Socialist leaders taking exactly this State; the usual plan being to have huge position; indeed, it is the position gen- buildings like foundling asylums. erally taken — though it is often opposed Mr. Pearson is a scientific man who, in or qualified, for Socialist leaders usually his own realm, is as worthy of serious 55 think confusedly, and often occupy incon- heed as Mr. Flinders Petrie, whom I men- sistent positions. Mrs. Besant, for in- tion later, is in his realm ; and the above stance, putting it pithily, says that we must quotation states in naked form just what come to the 'equal remuneration of all F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 231 workers ' ; and one of her colleagues, that would not stand for one moment the test 'the whole of our creed is that industry of actual experiment. If the leaders of shall be carried on, not for the profit of the Socialist party in America should to- those engaged in it, whether masters or day endeavor to force their followers to men, but for the benefit of the community. 5 admit all negroes and Chinamen to a real ... It is not for the miners, bootmakers, equality, their party would promptly dis- or shop assistants as such that we Social- band, and, rather than submit to such put- ists claim the profits of industry, but for ting into effect of their avowed purpose, the citizen.' In our own country, in So- would, as a literal fact, follow any capi- cialism Made Plain, a book officially circu- 10 talistic organization as an alternative, lated by the Milwaukee division of the It is not an accident that makes thor- Socialist party, the statement is explicit : oughgoing and radical Socialists adopt the ' Under the labor time-check medium of principles of free love as a necessary se- exchange proposed by Socialists, any la- quence to insisting that no man shall have borer could exchange the wealth he pro- 15 the right to what he earns. When So- duced in any given number of hours for cialism of this really advanced and logical the wealth produced by any other laborer type is tried as it was in France in 1792, in the same number of hours.' It is un- and again under the Commune in 1871, it necessary to point out that the pleasing is inevitable that the movement, ushered idea of these writers could be realized 20 in with every kind of high-sounding only if the State undertook the duty of phrase, should rapidly spread so as to taskmaster, for otherwise it is not con- include, not merely the forcible acquisition ceivable that anybody whose work would of the property of others, but every con- be worth anything would work at all under ceivable form of monetary corruption, im- such conditions. Under this type of So- 25 morality, licentiousness, and murderous cialism, therefore, or communism, the gov- violence. In theory, distinctions can be eminent would have to be the most drastic drawn between this kind of Socialism and possible despotism; a despotism so drastic anarchy and nihilism; but in practice, as that its realization would only be an ideal, in 1871, the apostles of all three act to- Of course in practice such a system could 30 gether ; and if the doctrines of any of not work at all ; and incidentally the mere them could be applied universally, all the attempt to realize it would necessarily be troubles of society would indeed cease, be- accompanied by a corruption so gross that cause society itself would cease. The the blackest spot of corruption in any ex- poor and the helpless, especially women isting form of city government would seem 35 and children, would be the first to die out, bright by comparison. and the few survivors would go back to In other words, on the social and domes- the condition of skin-clad savages, so that tic side doctrinaire Socialism would re- the whole painful and laborious work of place the family and home life by a glori- social development would have to begin fied State free-lunch counter and State 40 over again. Of course, long before such foundling asylum, deliberately enthroning an event really happened the Socialistic self-indulgence as the ideal, with, on its regime would have been overturned, and darker side, the absolute abandonment of in the reaction men would welcome any all morality as between man and woman; kind of one-man tyranny that was com- while in place of what Socialists are 45 patible with the existence of civilization, pleased to call ' wage slavery ' there would So much for the academic side of un- be created a system which would necessi- adulterated, or, as its advocates style it, tate either the prompt dying out of the ' advanced scientific ' Socialism. Its rep- community through sheer starvation, or an resentatives in this country who have iron despotism over all workers, compared 50 practically striven to act up to their ex- to which any slave system of the past treme doctrines, and have achieved leader- would seem beneficent, because less ut- ship in any one of the branches of the terly hopeless. Socialist party, especially the parlor So- ' Advanced ' Socialist leaders are fond cialists, and the like, be they lay or clerical, of declaiming against patriotism, or an- 55 deserve scant consideration at the hands nouncing their movement as international, of honest and clean-living men and and of claiming to treat all men alike ; but women. What their movement leads to on this point, as on all others, their system may be gathered from the fact that in the 232 WRITING OF TODAY last presidential election they nominated desire that this particular archeological and voted for a man who earns his liveli- shoemaker should stick to his early-Egyp- hood as the editor of a paper which not tion last. There are dreadful woes in merely practises every form of malignant modern life, dreadful suffering among and brutal slander, but condones and en- 5 some of those who toil, brutal wrong-doing . courages every form of brutal wrong- among some of those who make colossal doing, so long as either the slander or the fortunes by exploiting the toilers. It is violence is supposed to be at the expense the duty of every honest and upright man, of a man who owns something, wholly of every man who holds within his breast without regard to whether that man is 10 the capacity for righteous indignation, to himself a scoundrel, or a wise, kind, and recognize these wrongs, and to strive with helpful member of the community. As for all his might to bring about a better con- the so-called Christian Socialists who as- dition of things. But he will never bring sociate themselves with this movement, about this better condition by misstating they either are or ought to be aware of 15 facts and advocating remedies which are the pornographic literature, the porno- not merely false, but fatal, graphic propaganda, which make up one Take, for instance, the doctrine of the side of the movement; a pornographic extreme Socialists, that all wealth is pro- side which is entirely proper in a move- duced by manual workers, that the entire ment that in this country accepts as one 20 product of labor should be handed over of its heads a man whose domestic im- every day to the laborer, that wealth is morality has been so open and flagrant as criminal in itself. Of course wealth is no to merit the epithet of shameless. That more criminal than labor. Human society criminal nonsense should be listened to could not exist without both; and if all eagerly by some men bowed down by the 25 wealth were abolished this week, the ma- cruel condition of much of modern toil is jority of laborers would starve next week, not strange; but that men who pretend to As for the statement that all wealth is speak with culture of mind and authority produced by manual workers, in order to to teach, men who are or have been appreciate its folly it is merely necessary preachers of the Gospel or professors in 30 for any man to look at what is happening universities, should affiliate themselves right around him, in the next street, or with the preachers of criminal nonsense is the next village. Here in the city where a sign of either grave mental or moral the Outlook is edited, on Broadway be- shortcoming. tween Ninth and Tenth Streets, is a huge I wish it to be remembered that I speak 35 dry goods store. The business was orig- from the standpoint of, and on behalf of, inally started, and the block of which I the wage-worker and the tiller of the soil, am speaking was built for the purpose, by These are the two men whose welfare I an able New York merchant. It pros- have ever before me, and for their sakes pered. He and those who invested under I would do anything, except anything that 40 him made a good deal of money. Their is wrong; and it is because I believe that employees did well. Then he died, and teaching them doctrine like that which I certain other people took possession of it have stigmatized represents the most cruel and tried to run the business. The man- wrong in the long run, both to wage- ual labor was the same, the good-will was worker and to earth-tijler, that I repro- 45 the same, the physical conditions were the bate and denounce such conduct. same ; but the guiding intelligence at the We need have but scant patience with top had changed. The business was run those who assert that modern conditions at a loss. It would surely have had to are all that they should be, or that they shut, and all the employees, clerks, labor- cannot be improved. The wildest or 50 ers, everybody turned adrift, to infinite most vicious of Socialistic writers could suffering, if it had not again changed preach no more foolish doctrine than that hands and another business man of capac- contained in such ardent defenses of un- ity taken charge. The business was the controlled capitalism and individualism as same as before, the physical conditions Mr. Flinders Petrie's Janus, a book which 55 were the same, the good-will the same, is absurd, but which, because_ of this very the manual labor the same, but the guiding fact, is not mischievous, for it can arouse intelligence had changed, and now every- no other emotion than the very earnest thing once more prospered, and prospered F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 233 as had never been the case before. With those who would degrade labor by sapping such an instance before our very eyes, the foundations" of self-respect and self- with- such proof of what every business reliance. The Roman mob, living on the proves, namely, the vast importance of the bread given them by the State and clamor- part played by the guiding intelligence in 5 ing for excitement and amusement to be business, as in war, in invention, in art, purveyed by the State, represent for all in science, in every imaginable pursuit, it time the very nadir to which a free and is really difficult to show patience when self-respecting population of workers can asked to discuss such a proposition as that sink if they grow habitually to rely upon all wealth is produced solely by the work 10 others, and especially upon the State, of manual workers, and that the entire either to furnish them charity, or to per- product should be handed over to them, mit them to plunder, as a means of liveli- Of course, if any such theory were really hood. acted upon, there would soon be no prod- In short, it is simply common sense to uct to be handed over to the manual labor- 15 recognize that there is the widest inequal- ers, and they would die of starvation. A ity of service, and that therefore there great industry could no more be managed must be an equally wide inequality of re- by a mass-meeting of manual laborers ward, if our society is to rest upon the than a battle could be won in such fashion, basis of justice and wisdom. Service is than a painters' union could paint a Rem- 20 the true test by which a man's worth brandt, or a typographical union write one should be judged. We are against privi- of Shakespeare's plays. lege in any form : privilege to the capitalist The fact is that this kind of Socialism who exploits the poor man, and privilege represents an effort to enthrone privilege to the shiftless or vicious poor man who in its crudest form. Much of what we are 25 would rob his thrifty brother of what he fighting against in modern civilization has earned. Certain exceedingly valuable is privilege. We fight against privilege forms of service are rendered wholly when it takes the form of a franchise to without capital. On the other hand, there a street railway company to enjoy the use are exceedingly valuable forms of service of the streets of a great city without pay- 30 which can be rendered only by means of ing an adequate return ; when it takes the great accumulations of capital, and not to form of a great business combination recognize this fact would be to deprive our which grows rich by rebates which are whole people of one of the great agencies denied to other shippers ; when it takes the for their betterment. The test of a man's form of a stock-gambling operation which 35 worth to the community is the service he results in the watering of railway securi- renders to it, and we cannot afford to ties so that certain inside men get an make this test by material considerations enormous profit out of a swindle on the alone. One of the main vices of the So- public. All these represent various forms cialism which was propounded by Proud- of illegal, or, if not illegal, then anti-social, 4° hon, Lassalle, and Marx, and which is privilege. But there can be no greater preached by their disciples and imitators, abuse, nor greater example of corrupt and is that it is blind to everything except the destructive privilege, than that advocated merely material side of life. It is not by those who say that each man should only indifferent, but at bottom hostile, to put into a common store what he can and 45 the intellectual, the religious, the domestic take out what he needs. This is merely and moral life ; it is a form of communism another way of saying that the thriftless with no moral foundation, but essentially and the vicious, who could or would put based on the immediate annihilation of in but little, should be entitled to take out personal ownership of capital, and, in the the earnings of the intelligent, the fore- 50 near future, the annihilation of the family, sighted, and the industrious. Such a and ultimately the annihilation of civiliza- proposition is morally base. To choose to tion. live by theft or by charity means in each case degradation, a rapid lowering of self- n- where we can work with respect and self-reliance. The worst 55 socialists wrongs that capitalism can commit upon It is true that the doctrines of commu- labor would sink into insignificance when nistic Socialism, if consistently followed, compared with the hideous wrong done by mean the ultimate annihilation of civiliza- 234 WRITING OF TODAY tion. Yet the converse is also true. Ruin terialistic, and therefore sordid, doctrines faces us if we decline steadily to try to of those Socialists whose creed really is in reshape our whole civilization in accord- sharp antagonism to every principle of ance with the law of service and if we public and domestic morality, who war on permit ourselves to be misled by any em- 5 private property with a bitterness but lit- pirical or academic consideration into re- tie greater than that with which they war fusing to exert the common power of the against the institutions of the home and the community where only collective action family, and against every form of religion, can do what individualism has left un- Catholic or Protestant. The Socialists of done, or can remedy the wrongs done by 10 this moral type may in practice be very an unrestricted and ill-regulated individ- good citizens indeed, with whom we can ualism. There is any amount of evil in at many points cooperate. They are often our social and industrial conditions of to- joined temporarily with what are called day, and unless we recognize this fact and the ' opportunist Socialists ' — those who try resolutely to do what we can to remedy 15 may advocate an impossible and highly un- the evil, we run great risk of seeing men desirable Utopia as a matter of abstract in their misery turn to the false teachers faith, but who in practice try to secure the whose doctrines would indeed lead them adoption only of some given principle to greater misery, but who do at least rec- which will do away with some phase of ex- ognize the fact that they are now miser- 20 isting wrong. With these two groups of able. At the present time there are scores Socialists it is often possible for all far- of laws in the interest of labor — laws put- sighted men to join heartily in the effort ting a stop to child labor, decreasing the to secure a given reform or do away with hours of labor where they are excessive, a given abuse. Probably, in practice, putting a stop to unsanitary crowding and 25 wherever and whenever Socialists of these living, securing employers' liability, doing two types are able to form themselves into away with unhealthy conditions in various a party, they will disappoint both their trades, and the like — which should be own expectations and the fears of others passed by the National and the various by acting very much like other parties, like State Legislatures ; and those who wish to 30 other aggregations of men ; and it will be do effective work against Socialism would safe to adopt whatever they advance that do well to turn their energies into secur- is wise, and to reject whatever they ad- ing the enactment of these laws. vance that is foolish, just as we have to Moreover, we should always remember do as regards countless other groups who that Socialism is both a wide and a loose 35 on one issue or set of issues come together term, and that the self-styled Socialists are to strive for a change in the political or of many and utterly different types. If we social conditions of the world we live in. should study' only the professed apostles The important thing is generally the next of radical Socialism, of what these men step. We ought not to take it unless we themselves like to call ' scientific Social- 40 are sure that it is advisable ; but we should ism,' or if we should study only what ac- not hesitate to take it when once we are tive leaders of Socialism in this country sure; and we can safely join with others have usually done, or read only the papers who also wish to take it, without bother- in which they have usually expressed ing our heads overmuch as to any some- themselves, we would gain an utterly 45 what fantastic theories they may have wrong impression of very many men who concerning, say, the two hundredth step, call themselves Socialists. There are many which is not yet in sight, peculiarly high-minded men and women There are many schemes proposed which who like to speak of themselves as Social- their enemies, and a few of their friends, ists, whose attitude, conscious or uncon- 50 are pleased to call Socialistic, or which scious, is really merely an indignant are indorsed and favored by men who call recognition of the evil of present condi- themselves Socialists, but which are en- tions and an ardent wish to remedy it, and titled each to be considered on its merits whose Socialism is really only an advanced with regard only to the practical advan- form of liberalism. Many of these men 55 tage which each would confer. Every and women in actual fact take a large part public man, every reformer, is bound to in the advancement of moral ideas, and in refuse to dismiss these schemes with the practice wholly repudiate the purely ma- shallow statement that they are ' Socialis- F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 235 . — — — ■ 1 — tic'; for such an attitude is one of mere not. only will he suffer, but in the next mischievous dogmatism. There are com- generation the whole community will .to a munities in which our system of state ed- greater or less degree share his suffering, ucation is still resisted and condemned as In striving to better our industrial life Socialism ; and we have seen within the 5 we must ever keep in mind that, while we past two years in this country men who cannot afford to neglect its material side, were themselves directors in National we can even less afford to disregard its banks, which were supervised by the gov- moral and intellectual side. Each of us is ernment, object to such supervision of bound to remember that he is in very truth railways by the government on the ground 10 his brother's keeper, and that his duty is, that it was ' Socialistic' An employers' with judgment and common sense, to try liability law is no more Socialistic than a to help the brother. To the base and fire department; the regulation of railway greedy attitude of mind which adopts as rates is by no means as Socialistic as the its motto, ' What is thine is mine,' we op- digging and enlarging of the Erie Canal 15 pose the doctrine of service, the doctrine at the expense of the State. A proper that insists that each of us, in no hys- ' compensation law would merely distribute terical manner, but with common sense and over the entire industry the shock of acci- good judgment, and without neglect of his dent or disease, instead of limiting it to the or her own interests, shall yet act on the unfortunate individual on whom, through 20 saying, ' What is mine I will in good meas- no fault of his, it happened to fall. As ure make thine also.' communities become more thickly settled Socialism strives to remedy what is evil and their lives more complex, it grows ever alike in domestic and in economic life, and more and more necessary for some of the its tendency is to insist that the economic work formerly performed by individuals, 25 remedy is all-sufficient in every case. We each for himself, to be performed by the should all join in the effort to do away community for the community as a whole, with the evil ; but we should refuse to have Isolated farms need no complicated sys- anything to do with remedies which are tem of sewerage; but this does not mean either absurd or mischievous, for such, of that public control of sewerage in a great 30 course, would merely aggravate the pres- city should be resisted on the ground ent suffering. The first thing to recognize that it tends toward Socialism. Let each is that, while economic reform is often proposition be treated on its own merits, vital, it is never all-sufficient. The moral soberly and cautiously, but without any of reform, the change of character — in that rigidity of mind which fears all re- 35 which law can sometimes play a large, but form. If, for instance, the question arises never the largest, part — is the most neces- as to the establishment of day nurseries sary of all. In dealing with the marriage for the children of mothers who work in relation the Socialist attitude is one of un- factories, the obvious thing to do is to ap- mixed evil. Assuredly woman should be proach it with an open mind, listen to the 40 guarded and honored in every way, her arguments for and against, and, if neces- rights jealously upheld, and any wrong sary, try the experiment in actual prac- done her should be regarded and punished tice. If it is alleged that small groups of with severe judgment; but we must keep farmers have prospered by doing much of in mind the obvious fact that equality of their work in common, and by a kind of 45 consideration does not mean identity of mutual insurance and supervision, why of function. Our effort should be to raise the course we should look into the matter with level of self-respect, self-control, sense of an open mind, and try to find out, not what duty in both sexes, and not to push both we want the facts to be, but what the facts down to an evil equality of moral turpitude really are. 50 by doing away with the self-restraint and We cannot afford to subscribe to the sense of obligation which have been slowly doctrine, equally hard and foolish, that the built up through the ages. We must bring welfare of the children in the tenement- them to a moral level by raising the lower house district is no concern of the com- standard, not by depressing the high. It munity as a whole. If the child of the 55 is idle to prattle against the ' economic de- ; thronged city cannot live in decent sur- pendence ' of woman upon man. In the groundings, have teaching, have room to ideal household — an ideal which I be- play, have good water and clean air, then lieve, though very far from being univer- 236 WRITING OF TODAY sally realized, is yet now more generally less there is also equality of service. If realized than ever before — there is really the service is equal, let the reward be complete economic interdependence, as equal; but let the reward depend on the well as the high spiritual and moral inter- service ; and, mankind being composed as dependence which is more nearly attained 5 it is, there will be inequality of service for in happy wedlock, in a permanent partner- a long time to come, no matter how great ship of love and duty, than in any other the equality of opportunity may be; and relation of life which the world has yet just so long as there is inequality of serv- seen. Rights should be forfeited by neither ice it is eminently desirable that there partner ; and duties should be shirked by 10 should be inequality of reward, neither partner. The duty of the woman We recognize, and are bound to war to be the child-bearer and home-keeper is against, the evils of to-day. The remedies just as obvious, simple, and healthful as are partly economic and partly spiritual, the duty of the man to be the breadwinner partly to be obtained by laws, and in and, if necessary, the soldier. Whenever 15 greater part to be obtained by individual either the man or the woman loses the and associated effort; for character is the power or the will to perform these obvious vital matter, and character cannot be cre- duties, the loss is irreparable, and, what- ated by law. These remedies include a ever may be the gain in ease, amiable soft- religious and moral teaching which shall ness, self-indulgent pleasure, or even artis- 20 increase the spirit of human brotherhood; tic and material achievement, the whole an educational system which shall train civilization is rotten and must fall. men for every form of useful service — So with our industrial system. In many and which shall train us to prize common respects the wage system can be bettered ; sense no less than morality ; such a divi- but screaming about ' wage slavery ' is 25 sion of the profits of industry as shall tend largely absurd; at this moment, for in- to encourage intelligent and thrifty tool- stance, I am a ' wage slave ' of The Out- users to become tool-owners ; and a gov- look. Under certain conditions and in cer- ernment so strong, just, wise, and demo- tain cases the cooperative system can to a cratic that, neither lagging too far behind greater or less degree be substituted with 30 nor pushing heedlessly in advance, it may advantage for, or, more often, can be used do its full share in promoting these ends. to supplement, the wage system; but only on condition of recognizing the widely dif- ferent needs occasioned by different condi- IV tions, which needs are so diverse that they 35 must sometimes be met in totally different THE JUSTICE AND DESIRA- Wa X S ' u M a a- * <. u BILITY OF WOMAN We should do everything that can be „ done, by law or otherwise, to keep the ave- a Ur i 1 KAUrL. nues of occupation, of employment of 40 Uniependent> ApriI s> I£)I5 . By permis sion.] work, of interest, so open that there shall be, so far as it is humanly possible to The men of three eastern States — achieve it, a measurable equality of oppor- Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey tunity, an equality of opportunity for each — will have an opportunity this fall to put man to show the stuff that is in him. 45 themselves on record for or against woman When it comes to reward, let each man, suffrage. In each State a constitutional within the limits set by a sound and far- amendment extending the suffrage to sighted morality, get what, by his energy, women is to be submitted to the voters intelligence, thrift, courage, he is able to at the polls. What will the men of Massa- get, with the opportunity open. We must 50 chusetts, New York and New Jersey do set our faces against privilege; just as with the opportunity? Will they follow much against the kind of privilege which the enlightened example of the men of would let the shiftless and lazy laborer Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Wash- take what his brother has earned as ington, California, Arizona, Kansas, Ore- against the privilege which allows the huge 55 gon, Alaska, Illinois, Montana and Ne- capitalist to take toll to which he is not vada? Or will they choose to keep their entitled. We stand for equality of oppor- States a while longer groping in the mists tunity, but not for equality of reward un- of reaction ? F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 237 Women should vote for four good and tion of his mother's companionship, a sufficient reasons — and for one other rea- broadened respect for womanhood, son greater than all four. And the four In the fourth place, woman suffrage will reasons are these : be good for the State. The comment has It will be good for the women. 5 been keenly made that the State, like the It will be good for the men. family, needs not only a father but a It will be good for the family. mother. Women, by the very nature of It will be good for the State. their being, and of their normal existence, In the first place, then, it will be good are experts on certain vital subjects. And for women to vote — not, it should be 10 the State needs expert knowledge quite as noted, to have the right to vote, but to much as it needs good intentions and vote, for the suffrage is not only a priv- sound principles. Municipal housekeeping ilege but an unescapable obligation — be- could not but gain in efficiency from the cause it will broaden their mental and participation in its affairs of those in the moral horizon. It will give them some- 15 community whose peculiar business house- thing new to think about; and there is no keeping is. Women will bring to the ac- better, one might almost say no other, road tivities of government a new point of view, to intellectual development than thinking, valuable because it is a sound point of It will give them new responsibilities — view and no less valuable because it is a responsibilities to their neighbors, to the 20 different point of view. On such subjects community, to the State. There is no bet-« of the highest importance to the well-being ter road to moral development than the of the State as education, working condi- assumption and the bearing of responsi- tions for women, the purity of food, child bility. labor, the liquor traffic, the social evil, and In the second place, to have women vote 25 war, women have that to contribute in the will be good for men. It will put them on way of special knowledge and special sym- their mettle, for it would go hard with pathy which the State can ill afford to be masculine pride to find the ' weaker sex ' without. beating them at their own traditional task. Women have different qualities of mind It will make the men think too. For 30 from men. Men are, in theory at least there is no greater incentive to clear think- and often in practice, reasoning beings, ing than, first, the necessity of explaining Women are creatures of intuition. Men a matter to an inquiring mind and, second, plod to a conclusion ; women leap to it. the need of defending one's own position It is sometimes startling to observe how in argument. It will sharpen men's moral 35 woman's intuition surpasses man's reason responsibility. For women have a way of in soundness of result. But to whichever going straight to the heart of things ; and quality be awarded the palm for useful- it might be a new and stimulating experi- ness, there is no question that the two ence for a man to have to explain to his taken together are greatly more valuable wife, or his mother or his daughter — as 40 than either alone. fellow voters — just why he was voting on But to come to the last and greatest rea- the side of a corrupt boss or in favor of son of all. Partial suffrage — the suffrage the liquor traffic or against the suppression of men alone — is a denial of democracy, of child labor. Democracy will never be full and complete In the third place, the voting of women 45 until every individual in the community will be good for the family. It will create has an equal right to determine how the a new bond of union among its members, affairs of the community shall be managed. Husband and wife with a common duty to Democracy — the rule of the people — is the State will find themselves drawn no democracy while half of the people are closer together. The mother who goes to 5° excluded from the ruling. The United the polls with her son, the father who ac- States is a nation ' conceived in liberty, companies his daughter to the performance and dedicated to the proposition that all of their common civic task will find a new men are created equal.' There is no lib- pleasure in their parenthood and a new erty while women are free only to be gov- outlook upon its possibilities. The son 55 erned and not to govern. There is no who grows up to find his mother a voter, equality which does not include political informed on public affairs and intelligent equality — and political equality for all to discuss them, will have a new apprecia- persons regardless of sex. 238 WRITING OF TODAY tj prejudices and misconceptions which en- velop the fact. Tin? -RTTQTMTTQt; nil? RT7TMr- Throughout her girlhood the atmosphere IHh- tJUMN^bb Ub BblWG grows thicker. She finally faces the most A WOMAN 5 perilous and beautiful of experiences with little more than the ideas which have come IDA M. TARBELL to her from the confidences of evil-minded [American Magazine, March, ipi2 . Republished servants > inquisitive and imaginative play- as Chapter ill of The Business of Being a Woman mates, or the gossip she overhears in her rnfstr'lTautC^d'pubTsh^f I9 * 3 - By per " » mother's society. Every other matter of her life, serious and commonplace, has re- Respect for the Creator of this world is ceived careful attention, but here she has basic among all civilized people. The been obliged to feel her way and, worst of longer one lives the more thoroughly one abominations, to feel it with an inner fear realizes the soundness of this respect. The 15 that she ought not to know or seek to earth and its works are good. Most hu- know. man conceptions are barred by strange in- If there were no other reason for the consistencies. The man who praises the modern woman's revolt against marriage, works of the Creator as all wise not in- the usual attitude toward its central facts frequently treats His arrangement for 20 would be sufficient. The idea that celi- carrying on the race as if it were unfit to «bacy for woman is ' the aristocracy of the be spoken of in polite society. Nowhere future ' is soundly based if the Business of does the modern God-fearing man come Being a Woman rests on a mystery so nearer to sacrilege than in his attitude questionable that it cannot be frankly and toward the divine plan for renewing life. 25 truthfully explained by a girl's mother at A strange mixture of sincerity and hy- the moment her interest and curiosity seek pocrisy, self-flagellation and lust, aspira- satisfaction. That she gets on as well as tion and superstition, has gene into the she does, results, of course, from the es- making of this attitude. With the devel- sential soundness of the girl's nature, the opment of it we have nothing to do here. 30 armor of modesty, right instinct, and rev- What does concern us is the effect of this erence, with which she is endowed, profanity on the Business of Being a Woman. unconscious of the supreme importance OF HER MATE on the most important subject— 35 The direc t result of ignorance or ofdis- uninformed torted ideas of this tremendous matter of The central fact of the woman's life — carrying on human life is that it leaves the Nature's reason for her — is the child, his girl unconscious of the supreme impor- bearing and rearing. There is no escape tance of her mate. So heedlessly and ig- from the divine order that her life must 40 norantly is our mating done to-day that be built around this constraint, duty, or the huge machinery of church and state privilege, as she may please to consider it. and the tremendous power of public opin- But from the beginning to the end of life ion combined have been insufficient to pre- she is never permitted to treat it naturally serve to the institution of marriage any- and frankly. As a child accepting all that 45 thing like the stability it once had, or that opens to her as a matter of course, she is it is desirable that it should have, if its steered away from it as if it were some- full possibilities are to be realized. The thing evil. Her first essays at evasion and immorality and inhumanity of compelling spying often come to her in connection the obviously mismated to live together, with facts which are sacred and beautiful 50 grow on society. Divorce and separation and which she is perfectly willing to ac- are more and more tolerated. Yet little is cept as such if they were treated intelli- done to prevent the hasty and ill-consid- gently and reverently. If she could- be ered mating which is at the source of the kept from all knowledge of the procession trouble. of new life except as Nature reveals it to 55 Rarely has a girl a sound and informed her there would be reason in her treatment, sense to guide her in accepting her com- But this is impossible. From babyhood panion. The corollary of this bad propo- she breathes the atmosphere of unnatural sition is that she has no sufficient idea of F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 239 the seriousness of her undertaking. She back of divorces and separations, the brutal starts out as if on a life-long joyous holi- criminal causes aside, and one finds that day, primarily devised for her personal usually they begin in trivial things — an happiness. And what is happiness in her irritating habit or an offensive opinion per- mind? Certainly it is not a good to be 5 sisted in on the one side and not endured conquered — a state of mind wrested from philosophically on the other ; a petty self- life by tackling and mastering its varied ishness indulged on the one side and not experiences, the end, not the beginning of accepted humorously on the other — that a great journey. Too often it is that of is, the marriage is made or unmade by the modern Uneasy Woman — the attain- 10 small, not great things, ment of something outside of herself. She visualizes it, as possessions, as ease, a H0ME A REAL economic partnership ' good time,' opportunities for self-culture, It is a lack of any serious consideration the exclusive devotion of the mate to her. of the nature of the undertaking she is Rarely does she understand that happiness 15 going into which permits her at the start in her undertaking depends upon the wis- to accept a false notion of her economic dom and sense with which she conquers a position. She consents that she is being succession of hard places — calling for re- ' supported ' ; she consents to accept what adjustment of her ideas and sacrifice of is given her; she even consents to ask for her desires. All this she must discover 20 money. Men and society at large take her for herself. She is like a voyager who at her own valuation. Loose thinking by starts out on a great sea with no other those who seek to influence public opin- chart than a sailor's yarns, no other com- ion has aggravated the trouble. They pass than curiosity. start with the idea that she is a parasite , 25 — does not pay her way. ' Men hunt, fish, A YOUNG BRIDES AXIOMS keep the catt l e or raise corn > says & popu . The budget of axioms she brings to her lar writer, ' for women to eat the game, guidance she has picked up helter-skelter, the fish, the meat and the corn.' The in- They are the crumbs gathered from the ference is that the men alone render use- table of the Uneasy Woman, or worse, of 3° ful service. But neither man nor woman the pharisaical and satisfied woman, from eats of these things until the woman has good and bad books, from newspaper ex- prepared them. The theory that the man ploitations of divorce and scandal, from who raises corn does a more important sly gossip with girls whose budget of mari- piece of work than the woman who makes tal wisdom is as higgledy-piggledy as her 35 it into bread is absurd, own. The practice of handing over the pay en- And a pathetically trivial budget it is : velope at the end of the week to the ' He must tell her everything.' ' He woman, so common among laboring peo- must always pick up what she drops.' ' He pie, is a recognition of her equal economic must dress for dinner.' ' He must re- 40 function. It is a recognition that the ven- member her birthday.' That is, she be- ture of the two is common and that its gins her adventure with a set of hard-and- success depends as much on the care and fast rules — and nothing in this life causes intelligence with which she spends the more mischief than the effort to force upon money as it does on the energy and steadi- another one's own rules ! 45 ness with which he earns it. Whenever That marriage gives the finest oppor- one or the other fails trouble begins. The tunity that life affords for practising not failure to understand this business side of rules but principles, she has never been the marriage relation almost inevitably taught. Flexibility, adaptation, fair-mind- produces humiliation and irritation. So edness, the habit of supplementing the 50 serious has the strain become because of weakness of the one by the strength of the this false start that various devices have other, all the fine things upon which the been suggested to repair it — Mr. Wells' beauty, durability, and growth of human 'Paid Motherhood' is one; weekly wages relations depend — these are what decide as for a servant is another. Both notions the future of her marriage. These she 55 encourage the primary mistake that the misses while she insists on her rules ; and woman has not an equal economic place ruin is often the end. Study the causes with the man in the marriage. 240 WRITING OF TODAY Her ignorance in handling the products is household economy narrowing? of industry ha s helped the monopolistically Marriage is a business as well as a senti- inclined trust enormously. I can remem- mental partnership. But a business part- ber the day when the Beef Trust invaded nership brings grave practical responsibili- 5 a certain Middle Western town. The war ties, and this, under our present system, on the old-time butchers of the village was the girl is rarely trained to face. She be- open. ' Buy of us,' was the order, ' or comes a partner in an undertaking where we '11 fill the storage house so full that the her function is spending. The probability legs of the steers will hang out of the is she does not know a credit from a debit, 10 windows and we '11 give away the meat." has to learn to make out a check correctly, The women of the town had a prosperous and has no conscience about the funda- club which might have resisted the tyranny mental matter of living within the allow- which the members all deplored, but the ance- which can be set aside for the family club was busy that winter with a study of expenses. When this is true of her she at 15 the Greek drama ! They deplored the once puts herself into the rank of an in- tyranny, but they bought the cut-rate meat competent — she becomes an economic de- — the old butchers fought to a finish and pendent. She has laid the foundation for the housekeepers are now paying higher becoming an Uneasy Woman. prices for poorer meat and railing at the It is common enough to hear women ar- 20 impotency of man in breaking up the Beef guing that this close grappling with house- Trust ! hold economy is narrowing, not worthy of If two years ago when the question of them. Why keeping track of the cost of a higher duty on hosiery was before Con- eggs and butter and calculating how much gress any woman or club of women had your income will allow you to buy is any 25 come forward with carefully tabulated ex- more narrowing than keeping track of the periments, showing exactly the changes cost and quality of cotton or wool or iron which have gone on of late years in the and calculating how much a mill requires, shape, color, and wearing quality of the it is hard to see. It is the same kind of a 15-, 25-, and 50-cent stockings, the stock- problem. Moreover, it has the added in- 30 ings of the poor, she would have rendered terest of being always an independent a genuine economic service. The women personal problem. Most men work under held mass-meetings and prepared petitions, the deadening effect of impersonal rou- instead, using on the one side the informa- tine. They do that which others have tion the shopkeepers furnished, on the planned and for results in which they have 35 other that which the stocking manufactur- no share. ers furnished. Agitation based upon any- thing but personal knowledge is not a pub- woman s duty as a consumer ]j c serv ice. It may be easily a grave But the woman argues that her task has public danger. The facts needed for fix- no relation to the State. Her failure to 4° ing the hosiery duty the women should see that relation costs this country heavily, have furnished, for they buy the stockings. Her concern is with retail prices. If she does her work intelligently she knows the up T0 THE woman why of every fluctuation of price in stand- If the Uneasy American Woman were ards. She also knows whether she is re- 45 really fulfilling her economic functions to- ceiving the proper quality and quantity ; day she would never allow a short pound and yet so poorly have women discharged of butter, a yard of adulterated woolen these obligations that dealers for years goods, to come into her home. She would have been able to manipulate prices prac- never buy a ready-made garment which tically to please themselves, and as for 50 did not bear the label of the Consumer's quality and quantity we have the scandal League. She would recognize that she is of American woolen goods, of food adul- a guardian of quality, honesty, and human- teration, of false weights and measures, ity in industry. No one of these things could have come A persistent misconception of the nature about in this country if woman had taken 55 and the possibilities of this practical side her business as a consumer with anything of the Business of Being a Woman runs like the seriousness with which man takes through all present-day discussions of the his as a producer. changes in household economy. The F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 241 woman no longer has a chance to pay her ability to answer questions than her ef- way, we are told, because it is really fort not to discourage them; less upon cheaper to buy bread than to bake it, to her ability to lead authoritatively into great buy jam than to put it up. Of course, this fields than her efforts to push the child is a part of the vicious notion that a 5 ahead into those which attract him. To woman only makes an economic return by be responsive to his interests is the the manual labor she does. The Uneasy woman's greatest contribution to the Woman takes up the point and complains child's development, that she has nothing to do. But this re- I remember a call once made on me by lease from certain kinds of labor once 10 two little girls when our time was spent in necessary merely puts upon her the obli- an excited discussion of the parts of gation to apply the ingenuity and imagina- speech. They were living facts to them, tion necessary to make her business meet as real as if their discovery had been the changes of an ever-changing world, printed that morning for the first time in Because the conditions under which a 15 the newspaper. I was interested to find household must be run now are not what who it was that had been able to keep their they were fifty years ago is no proof that minds so naturally alive. I found that it the woman no longer has here an impor- came from the family habit of treating tant field of labor. There is more to the with respect whatever each child turned practical side of her business than prepar- 20 up. Nothing was slurred over as if it had kg food for the family ! It means, for no relation to life — not even the parts of one thing, the directing of its wants. The speech ! They were not asked or forced success of a household lies largely in its to load themselves up with baggage in power of selection. Today selection has which they soon discovered their parents given away to accumulation. The family 25 had no interest. Everything was treated becomes too often an incorporated com- as if it had a permanent place in the pany for getting things — with frightful scheme to which they were being intro- results. The woman holds the only strong duced. It is only in some such relation strategic position from which to war on that the natural bent of most children can this tendency as well as on the habits of 30 flower, that they can come early to them- wastefulness, which are making our na- selves. Where this warming, nourishing tional life increasingly hard and ugly. She intimacy is wanting, where the child is is so positioned that she can cultivate and turned over to schools to be put through enforce simplicity and thrift, the two hab- the mass drill which numbers make im- its which make most for elegance and for 35 perative — it is impossible for the most in- satisfaction in the material things of life, telligent teacher to do a great deal to help Whenever a woman does master this the child to his own. What the Uneasy economic side of her business in a manner Woman forgets is that no two children worthy of its importance she establishes born were ever alike, and no two children the most effective school for teaching 40 who grow to manhood and womanhood thrift, quality, management, selection — will ever live the same life. The effort all the factors in the economic problem, to malce one child like another, to make Such scientific household management is him what his parents want, not what he is the rarest kind of a training school. born to be, is one of the most cruel and 45 wasteful in society. It is the woman's home as an educational center business to prevent this. Every home is perforce a good or bad N0T T00 SMALL) BUT T00 GREAT A J0B educational center. It does its work m spite of every effort to shrink or supple- The Uneasy Woman tells you that this ment it. No teacher can entirely undo 50 close attention to the child is too confining, what it does, be that good or bad. The too narrowing. ' I will pity Mrs. Jones natural joyous opening of a child's mind for the hugeness of her task,' says Chester- depends on its first intimate relations, ton ; ' I will never pity her for its small- These are, as a rule, with the mother. It ness.' A woman never lived who did all is the mother who ' takes an interest,' who 55 she might have done to open the mind of oftenest decides whether the new mind her child for its great adventure. It is an shall open frankly and fearlessly. How exhaustless task. The woman who sees it she does her work depends less upon her knows she has need of all the education 242 WRITING OF TODAY the college can give, all the experience and and liberty. The woman saw this, and culture she can gather. She knows that the story of her efforts to secure both, that the fuller her individual life, the broader she might meet the requirements, is one her interests, the better for the child. She of the noblest in history. There was no should be a person in his eyes. The 5 doubt then as to the value of the tasks, no real service of the ' higher education,' the question as to their being worthy national freedom to take a part in whatever inter- obligations. It was a question of fitting ests or stimulates her — lies in the fact herself for them, that it fits her intellectually to be a com- panion worthy of a child. She should 10 HER freedom defeating her know that unless she does this thing for But what has happened? In the proc- him he goes forth with his mind still in ess of preparing herself to discharge more swaddling clothes, with the chances that it adequately her task as a woman in a re- will not be released until relentless life public, her respect for the task has been tears off the bands. 15 weakened. In this process, which we call The progress of society depends upon emancipation, she has in a sense lost sight getting out of men and women an increas- of the purpose of emancipation. Inter- ing amount of the powers with which they ested in acquiring new tools, she has come are born and which bad surroundings at to believe the tools more important than the start blunt or stupefy. This is what 20 the thing for which she was to use them, all systems of educations try to do, but the She has found out that with education and result of all systems of education depends freedom, pursuits of all sorts are open to upon the material that comes to the edu- her, and by following these pursuits she cator. Opening the mind of the child, can preserve her personal liberty, avoid that is the delicate task the State asks of 35 the grave responsibility, the almost in- the mother, and the quality of the future evitable sorrows and anxieties which be- State depends upon the way she discharges ""long to family life. She can choose her this part of her business. • friends and change them. She can travel, and gratify her tastes, satisfy her personal making democrats 30 am bitions. The snare has been too great, I think it is historically correct to say the beauty and joy of free individual life that the reason of the sudden and revolu- have dulled the sober sense of national tionary change in the education of Amer- obligation. The result is that she is fre- ican women, which began with the nine-- quently failing to discharge satisfactorily teenth century and continued through it, 35 some of the most imperative demands the was the realization that if we were to make nation makes upon her. real democrats, we must begin with the Take as an illustration the moral train- child, and if we began with the child we ing of the child. The most essential obli- must begin with the mother ! gation in a Woman's Business is estab- Everybody saw that unless the child 4° lishing her household on a sound moral learned by example and precept the great basis. If a child is anchored to basic prin- principle of liberty, equality, and frater- ciples it is because his home is built on nity, he was going to remain what by na- them. If he understands integrity as a ture we all are, imperious, demanding, and man, it is usually because a woman has self-seeking. The whole scheme must fail 45 done her work well. If she has hot done if his education failed. It is not too much it well it is probable that he will be a dis- to say that the success of the Declaration turbance and a menace when he is turned of Independence and the Constitution de- over to society. To send defective steel to pended, in the minds of certain early a gunmaker is no more fatal to making Democrats, upon the woman. The doc- 50 safe guns than turning out boys who are trines of these great instruments would shifty and tricky is to making an effective, be worked out according to the way she honest community. played her part. Her serious responsibil- Appalled by the seriousness of the task, ity came in the fact that her work was or lured from it by the joys of liberty and one that nobody could take off her hands. 55 education, the woman has too generally This responsibility required a preparation shifted it to other shoulders — shoulders entirely different from that which had which are waiting to help her work out been hers. She must he given education the problem, but which can never be a sub- F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 243 stitute. She has turned over the child to task of woman. Her great task is to pre- the teacher, secular and religious, and fan- pare the citizen. The tools for this are in cied that he might be made a man of in- her hands. It calls for education, and the tegrity by an elaborate system of teaching nation has provided it. It calls for free- in a mass. Has this shifting of responsi- 5 dom of movement and expression, and she bility no relation to the general lowering has them. It calls for ability to organize, of our commercial and political morality? to discuss problems, to work for whatever changes are essential. She is developing EMANCIPATION AND POLITICAL CORRUPTION th j s | biHty . It may bg thkt j t calls io ? th % For years we have been bombarded 10 vote . j do not myself see this, but it is with evidence of an appalling indifference certain that she will have the vote as soon to the moral quality of our commercial as not a majority — but an approximate and political transactions. It is not too half — not of men — but of women feel much to say that the revelations of cor- the need of it. ruption in our American cities, the use of 15 What she has partially at least lost sight town councils, State legislatures and even f is that education, freedom, organization, of the Federal Government in the inter- agitation, the suffrage are but tools to an ests of private business, have discredited end; what she now needs is to formulate the democratic system throughout the that end so nobly and clearly that the most world. It has given more material for 20 ignorant women may understand it. The those of other lands who despise democ- failure to do this is leading her deeper racy to sneer at us than anything that has and deeper into fruitless unrest. It is yet happened in this land. And this has breeding, too, a crop of problems which come about under the regime of the eman- stagger the thoughtful by their difficulty cipated woman. Is she in no way responsi- 25 and their elusiveness, and among these ble for it? If she had kept the early ideals problems none is more serious or more del- of the woman's part in democracy as j ca te than that of the Homeless Daughter: clearly before her eyes as she has kept It is she whom we will consider in the some of her personal wants and needs, next paper in this series, could there have been so disastrous a con- 30 dition? Would she be the Uneasy Woman she is if she had kept faith with VI the ideals that forced her emancipation? , ._ „,.„_,,,. _ _______ _„_ _„„ -if she had not substituted for them AN OPEN LETTER ON THE dreams of personal ambition, happiness, 35 WAR SITUATION and freedom ! The failure to fulfil your function in SIR CLAUD SCHUSTER the scheme under which you live always r „ v , _. , ., „ _, . . , _j a. /-* i * r ■ j ■ {New York Times, April i8, 1915. «By permission.] produces unrest. Content of mind is usu- ' v 3 . * ' ally in proportion to the service one ren- 40 March 11, 1915. ders in an undertaking he believes worth To Albert J. Beveridge, Esq. while. If our Uneasy Woman could Dear Senator : I found our conversa- grasp the full meaning of her place in this tion yesterday afternoon so interesting democracy, a place so essential that de- that I became really anxious that you mocracy must be overthrown unless she 45 should have before you the point of view rises to it — a part which man is not which I believe to be typical of the Eng- equipped to play and which he ought not lish middle class, so that at the risk of to be asked to play, would she not cease wearying you I venture to set down in this to apologize for herself — cease to look letter some of the points which I could not with envy on man's occupations ? Would 50 state in conversation as clearly as I could she not rise to her part and we not have have wished. at last the ' new woman ' of whom we In the first place, I should like you to have talked so long? think of the state of mind in which we all , were in the middle of last July — and suffrage needed? 5 5 when I say all, I mean that this state of Learning business careers, political and mind was common more or less to all industrial activities — none of these things classes, from the highest to the lowest. is more than incidental in the national We were all yery much concerned with 244 WRITING OF TODAY our own affairs. We had great domestic future, as it has done in the past, to hold and political difficulties. There was much our own against any competitor, industrial unrest, and the Irish situation It is true that to many observers it was such that those in the inner circles of seemed that the cotton trade was about to politics were greatly troubled, though I do 5 enter upon a period of depression. It is not think that the ordinary Englishman notorious that this trade is subject to peri- thought it possible that what he looked ods of great inflation and great depression, upon as an ordinary political row could which follow one upon the other with such develop into a real conflict. But we had uniformity that they can almost be pre- been in industrial and political trouble 10 dieted for some years in advance. In this often enough before, and few of us, if any, case prosperity had probably induced a gave these matters much thought when period of overtrading. Then came the once we had finished reading our morning Balkan War, which cut off a large section newspapers. Our thoughts were mainly of the Continental market, and the proba- with our own businesses, as an English- 15 bility of an unusually heavy cotton crop in man's thoughts generally are. the Southern States rendered it probable We were in a period of abounding pros- that the price of raw cotton would fall ab- perity. During the period from 1903 to normally, just at a time when merchants 1913 the yearly value of our imports had and manufacturers were overstocked, increased from 542 millions to 768 millions, 20 and our exports from 360 millions to 634 N0 englishman wanted war millions. During the three years 1910, But it did not cross the mind of any 191 1, and 1912 the British shipping en- single human being of any class or shade tered and cleared in the foreign trade at of political belief that a cure could be ports in the United Kingdom increased 25 found for any of such evils as there might from about 80 million tons to about S&yi be in the economic or political situation million tons, and the amount of foreign of this country by making war, and, least shipping in the same period so entered and of all, so far as the economic questions cleared from 54 millions to nearly 64 mil- were concerned, by making war on Ger- lions. These figures of the total exports 30 many. Including transshipped goods, in include foreign and colonial transship- 1913 Germany took from us £80,000,000 ments as well as United Kingdom prod- worth of goods and sent us £60,000,000. ucts. The exports of articles wholly or In 1912 she took from us £17,500,000 mainly manufactured in the United King- worth of cotton yarn and woolen goods, dom had increased in about the same pe- 35 It is a common saying here that when- riod from 234 millions to 385 millions, ever a British shell goes off it kills a cus- We were, in fact, largely absorbed in our tomer. We had as much as we could do own prosperity. with the capital at our command, and none of us were insane enough to think that we JEALOUSY ABOUT FOREIGN MARKETS 40 should get a better retum Qn what wag There was, of course, as there often is left if we made war upon a country where between nations, a certain amount of jeal- millions of British money was outstanding ousy between ourselves and Germany as at the moment. to foreign markets, and probably that jeal- It is perhaps not a very noble attitude ousy was more strongly accentuated 45 for a country to be entirely absorbed in among the merchants in the foreign ports business, though I must admit that I, for than among those at home. In the great- one, look upon an increase in the country's est of our staple trades, that of the spin- wealth as the surest agent in promoting ning of cotton and manufacturing of cot- the material comfort and, as I think also, ton goods, we were completely confident 50 the moral and other interests of the weekly of our power to hold our great markets, wage earner. But be that as it may, that We based that confidence partly on the was the condition in which we were in course of trade, which had flowed for some ' late July, and we were looking forward years in ever-increased volume, and partly rather eagerly to our usual August holi- on the experience which taught us that the 55 day after what had been a strenuous year. Lancashire climate and the long-held skill Most people, I expect, had taken their and inherited aptitude of the Lancashire rooms or hotel accommodation at seaside cotton operative would enable us in the places on the English coast — places which F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 245 have since been wrecked by German shells, ately apparent to those who could adjust Into this state of material comfort there their vision (it took most of us a few days crashed, as unexpectedly as those shells to do so) that a very dangerous crisis had themselves, first, the crisis of the last week arisen. of July, and then .the hell which, as we 5 say, Germany has seen fit to let loose on England might have been divided earth. It is unnecessary, since you are fully ac- When we were awakened to realize that quainted with the diplomatic history of there really was a European crisis our the ten days immediately preceding the first state was one of muddled astonish- 10 war, to set it out here in detail. I am ment. We had made provision in the past only trying to tell you how it looked to us for the protection of our coasts and trade then, and to assure you that deep as was routes and colonies through the means of our slowly growing conviction that Ger- a fleet. We had watched, some of us many had predetermined to commit this more anxiously than others, the building 15 crime, our certainty that we were right to up of a fleet on the other side of the North arrive at that conclusion grows larger still Sea, the reasons for whose existence with every fresh scrap of evidence, seemed to us impossible to explain. We We saw immediately that such a note know it now. as this could not have been delivered, and We had equipped an army, very efficient 20 that Sir Edward Grey's desperate efforts for matters within its scope, but wholly to obtain some peaceful solution could not unfit, so far as numbers were concerned, have been constantly repulsed by the Ger- for a conflict on a European scale. We mans, were it not that they had decided had not spent a penny upon the fortifica- to make war on Russia. If war was to be tion of our coasts, except upon the actual 25 made on Russia, war with France must defenses of such places as Portsmouth and follow. We were not bound to France by Plymouth and Sheerness, which serve as any treaty of alliance ; and if the war had bases for the fleet. been confined to one between Germany and And our preparations had been so lim- Austria on the one hand and France and ited because we have never believed that 30 Russia on the other, it is probable that a any European power would wantonly pro- wide divergence of opinion would have voke a great war. The inhabitants of the manifested itself here, great Continental States saw more clearly There were some of us who thought than we did, because on the frontiers of that such a war, deeply as it might stir all of them great forces had moved up 35 our sympathies and much as it might affect and down for years and great fortresses our material interests, still was no more served as an object lesson. Some even of a direct concern of ourselves than the ma- them, however — Belgium, for instance — jority of the inhabitants of the United had no real sense of impending danger. States think it to be of theirs. Others In these circumstances we learned of 4° thought, and still think, that the suppres- the murder of the Austrian Archduke, sion of France would be so intolerable a English people have a dislike of con- crime against civilization and liberty that spiracy and secret assassination, just as it would be better for this country to stand Americans have, and a very considerable against it even to the shedding of blood — wave of sympathy went out to the Aus- 45 even at any risk to herself or any dam- trians in what we regarded as their age to her material interest. This party trouble. People who knew anything of the thought that this crime was heightened history of the Balkan States were, how- tenfold when it was committed deliber- ever, not very greatly surprised. I think ately, and that these results would be still every one who was well informed, but not 50 more deplorable in that they must enthrone the great mass of the people, feared that as the supreme dictator in Europe and the some European complication might arise, world the power which had deliberately Then followed a long period of apparent plotted it and carried it out. calm. No doubt the Foreign Offices had enough information to make them uneasy, 55 Belgium united all England but this uneasiness was not communicated There were, therefore, doubts and to the outside world. Then came the Aus- waverings here as to our proper course 01 trian note to Serbia, and it was immedi- action. All these doubts and waverings 246 WRITING OF TODAY were set at rest by the invasion of Bel- our limited knowledge, that the following gium, and, from the moment when it be- motives and currents, crossing and react- came clear that Germany intended to take ing on one another, were the main causes that course, no one in this country doubted which impelled Germany to war : the necessity for and the justice of the 5 1. The personal and professional am- war, except a few people to whose voices bitions of the leaders of the army and no one listens because they are known al- navy, who, you will remember, exercise ways to be raised in support of a paradox upon the government of the country a or to deny the incontestable. Add to all direct influence. this the manner in which the war has 10 2. The personal position of the Em- been conducted on the other side: the peror. The French believe that he, for devastation of Belgium ; the strewing of some little time, has watched with anxiety mines loose in the North Sea; the sinking and jealousy the growing popularity of of merchant ships and emigrant ships and the Crown Prince with the military party, the attempts to sink hospital ships ; the out- 15 and has feared to be supplanted, if not on rages and burnings in northern France; his throne, at least in the hearts of his the bombardment of English open places people. and the murder of English women and 3. A national sense that the country and children; the cruel treatment of our pris- its inhabitants were not received by the oners, even the wounded (evidence of 20 world at a sufficiently high valuation, which accumulates day by day). The Germans, both as a people and as in- Do you think that if these things had dividuals, are intensely conscious of their happened to the United States her citizens national achievements and greatness. Up would not have been angry, and can you to 1870 their thought had bidden fair to suppose that we are otherwise than very 25 conquer the world. 1870 made them con- angry, with that kind of surly, taciturn scious of great material strength such as English rage which is not so picturesque they had before hardly realized. Yet they as the French fury, nor so plain to see as found that people still looked to France the German hate, but is, at least, as dur- or to England. The advance of French able and destructive? 30 methods of thought, French historians, and You asked me why, if we were not seek- French artists, and their influence on other ing war with Germany, and if we did not countries, has been strongly marked dur- hope to destroy her trade by force of arms, ing the last few years ; and the Germans Germany should have wished a war her- felt that they were, in a Europe which self. It is almost impossible, at this stage 35 reckoned by centuries, a young people of our knowledge, to estimate what mo- whose strength was undervalued. This tives or what motiveless impulses may feeling manifested itself in personal acts, have actuated her. Some people think wherever you met Germans over the Con- that her long preparation and her final tinent, in an uneasy self-assertion. You rush to arms were as much the creatures 40 must remember that Germany and Ger- of instinct as the mysterious unrest in a mans had grown rich rather suddenly, hive of bees which culminates in the act and had the defects which are sometimes of swarming. Others see in her acts evi- associated with that process, dence of a collective insanity seizing upon the whole nation. These theories have 45 N0 economic advantage from war something fantastic in them, but they 4. Trade interests, or what are believed probably contain also some germs of to be trade interests, no doubt influenced truth. them greatly. In my view, Great Britain History alone, informed by a knowledge has no economic advantage to gain from which we cannot possess of the true char- 50 the present struggle. Germany is in dif- acter of the chief actors, and of the actual ferent case, and it is easy to see why Ger- events in the palace at Potsdam, the im- mans should believe that such a war would perial yacht, and at the meeting place of bring them commercial prosperity. For the Kaiser and the Archduke Franz Ferdi- one thing, they hold an economic theory nand some little time before the murder 55 which is different from ours, and they be- of the latter, may be able to pronounce ex- lieve, as we do not believe, that one state ■ actly what forces on the German side pro- can grow rich through the impoverishment duced the catastrophe. It seems to us, in of another. V F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 247 Secondly, they make war on a system nation of the world once secured, their different from ours. Both in 1870 and in domination over Germany would be rooted this war, but far more in this war than in more firmly than ever. 1870, they have exacted large monetary 6. No doubt there intervened also some contributions from the territory which 5 feeling of fear. German statesmen, ever they occupy. This was more or less the since there began to be any thought of a theory of the Middle Ages, and it is ob- united Germany, have always looked un- vious that if one feudal baron took the easily toward the East. Russia was re- lands of another, and the gold plate which covering slowly, but too fast, from the dis- he had in his coffers, he was richer at the 10 aster of the Japanese War. She has now end of the struggle than at the beginning, access to the great savings bank of the It is not so obvious that one State is really world — the pocket of the French peasant, better off by such conduct, still less so The landowner of East Prussia naturally that the inhabitants of that State are in- fears the Cossack. It may well have been dividually enriched by it. 15 that the moment seemed to have come to But the theory looks tempting, and if make an end of the Russian peril, one is not deterred by scruples of morality, 7. For such an effort the time seemed no doubt one takes some satisfaction from propitious. Indeed, it may have seemed as the spoils of Antwerp, Brussels, and Liege, if it was now or never. The Balkan wars the appropriation of the coal mines of 20 seemed to have shut the door to the Near northern France, and the wholesale plun- East. They did more than that. It was der of the factories of Lille. But the more not likely that the young, strong, and vie- deeply seated economic cause lies in the torious Serbian Kingdom would acquiesce methods of German finance. for long in the possession by Austria of The huge ' go-downs ' which you saw in 25 Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the Near China are financed probably by the big East, and especially in the Valleys of the German banking houses at heavy interest. Euphrates and Tigris, lay the next task of There has been no form of commercial ex- Germany, as her desires prefigured it. pansion which has not found financial sup4 Here was the chance to open the door, and port on a lavish scale in Germany. Hence 30 at the same time to separate France from comes the necessity for continually ex- Russia or to destroy them both, panding markets, for quick and large re- It was no doubt hoped that France, and turns, and overinflation and overtrading certainly England, would be but little in- based on insufficient capital lent out on in- terested in a squabble arising in the Balkan sufficient security. 35 Peninsula. France, therefore, might per- haps not stand by her ally, and in that storm center of world finance case the Dual Alliance was broken forever The German money market, therefore, and the Germanic group remained supreme has for a long 'time been one of the storm in Europe. If France stood by her ally, at centers of the finance of the world. There 40 least England might be depended upon, is reason to suppose that, with the depres- with her well-known internal difficulties, sion consequent upon the Balkan wars, a her soft desire for peace, and her lack of crisis was approaching, and that some des- immediate interest in a Balkan quarrel, to perate stroke was necessary to avoid col- stand aside. If the Allies stood together, lapse. Hence it is supposed that the big 45 then there would be war, but war could German financiers and commercial men not come at a better time for Germany, were in a mind more easily disposed to just when the widening of the Kiel Canal welcome war than in more normal times. was completed and Russia had not finished 5. Undoubtedly the agrarian classes felt the reorganization of her armies or begun their power to be shaken. They had lately 50 the construction of the strategic railways had to submit to heavy taxation on capital in Poland which were to be financed out to provide the means of defense. It is of the French loan. If the Allies did not very probable that they were persuaded to stand together, the diplomatic triumph was endure this burden by promises that this immense. was the last time — that in the glory of a 55 If these were the predisposing causes, successful war the dreams of the Social- conscious or subconscious, there is one cir- ists would be forgotten (as has indeed cumstance yet to be mentioned which proved to be the case), and that, the domi- finally determined the matter. For many 248 WRITING OF TODAY years Germany has rattled the saber or Yet the comparative military strengths shaken the mailed fist and expected that of the contending powers are vastly dirfer- the nations of Europe would cower and ent from what they were in the early days give way. At the time of Agadir she put of the war, and all that difference is on on her shining armor and showed her 5 our side. We began the war with an army sword and clenched her fist, and nobody whose numbers were to be considered as minded. She began to be afraid that the little more than a make-weight in the world at large was ceasing to be afraid of struggle. By the middle of this year we her. shall have as many troops in the field as This time, when she had given a free 10 France herself, hand to her ally and assumed her usual panoply of war, she could not put it off French troops called best of all again without looking ridiculous, and if France began with her eastern fortresses she had looked ridiculous her diplomatists admitted to be in no state of defense, with and her military powers would have looked 15 admitted deficiencies in the higher com- ridiculous to themselves and to the German mand, and with troops who, though they people. Hence when the threats to Serbia still possessed the unquenchable ardor of had once been uttered they could not be. the historical French infantry, were diffi- withdrawn. cult to hold in the field. The French 20 troops were described to me the other day German victory menace to peace by a competent observer as the best troops These seem to us to have been the mov- in the field on either side, ing causes of Germany's aggression. Add Germany began with an overpowering to them the careless teaching of professors preponderance in heavy artillery and an and military historians that war is a god- 25 enormous store of ammunition. We have like thing and that the Germans are the already redressed the first of these in- greatest people upon earth, and you have a equalities, and on the second, while Ger- result which is enough to account for the many is shut off from help from overseas, present situation. every country in the world is furnishing I fear that all this is very tiresome. 30 us with munitions of war, and every re- Most of it you knew before, but I am most source possessed by this country herself anxious that you should not have any is at our service. Our fleet was to be doubt about the determination of this coun- worn down by a war of attrition until the try. My own fear is, not that we shall Germans possessed an equality of num- flag in the struggle but that we may, from 35 bers, and was then to be destroyed in a time to time, get out of hand. It may be fleet action. The war of attrition has that we shall be beaten. If so, we shall gone the other way. And we hear no at least have done our best, and we shall more of it. So far as we know, besides go down in what we regard as the wor- one cruiser playing hide-and-seek in the thiest cause in which a nation can fall. 40 Pacific, the only German ships of war We believe that if we go down the cause which venture out of harbor are a few of liberty throughout the world will suffer, submarines, and we do not know how Assuredly the result will not be a period many return home to recount their ex- of peace; nor will Germany's domination ploits. endure forever. 45 We have every confidence in the You have seen the military preparations strength and loyalty of those Continental and the state of the powers engaged in war nations which are embattled on our side, in the western theatre, and can judge bet- We think that both the fleet and the army ter than I can of the chances of success, have proved themselves worthy. But be- But I do not think, so far as I can form 50 yond all this we have ' great allies ' — and a an opinion, that we shall be beaten. It is determination that ' government of the true that Germany occupies almost all Bel- people, by the people, and for the people gium and some of the richest areas of shall not perish from the earth.' northern France ; that her spirit is un- Yours very truly, broken, and that her people have not con- 55 Claud Schuster. templated the possibility of defeat. F. CONT ROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 249 And all this for what reason ? Because VII she was jealous of Germany's greatness, ^t-t,,, . - T „ T ,^ T . „ . „, T ^ . because she wanted to hinder at any price A GERMAN DECLARATION a further growth of this greatness. For RUDOLF EUCKEN AND S there cannot be the least doubt on this ERNST HAECKEL point that England was determined in ad- vance to cast as many obstacles as possible INew York T.mcj, ^September 10, 1914. in the way of Germany's existence in this '"' struggle of the giants, and to hinder her The whole German world of letters is Io as much as possible in the full develop- today filled with deep indignation and ment of her powers. She (England) was strong moral indignation at the present watching only for a favorable opportunity behavior of England. Both of us, for when she could break out suddenly against many years bound to England by numerous Germany, and she therefore promptly scientific and personal ties, believe our- '5 seized on the invasion of Belgium, so nec- selves prepared to give open expression to essary to Germany, in order that she might this inward revulsion. In close cooper- cover with a small cloak of decency her ation with like-minded English investiga- brutal national egoism. Or is there in tors we have zealously exerted ourselves the whole wide world any one so simple to bring the two great peoples closer to- 20 as to believe that England would have gether in spirit and to promote a mutual declared war on France also if the latter understanding. A fruitful reciprocal in- had invaded Belgium? In that event she terchange of English and German culture would have wept hypocritical tears over seemed to us worth while, indeed neces- the unavoidable violation of international sary, for the spiritual advance of mankind, 25 law ; but as for the rest she would have which today confronts such great prob- laughed in her sleeve with great satisfac- lems. Gratefully we recall in this con- tion. This hypocritical Pharisaism is the nection the friendly reception which our most repugnant feature of the whole mat- efforts received in England. So great and ter ; it deserves nothing but contempt, noble were the traits of English character 3° The history of the world shows that which revealed themselves to us that we such sentiments lead the nations not up- were permitted to hope that in their sure ward but downward. For the present, growth they would come to be superior to however, we trust firmly in our just cause, the pitfalls and seamy sides of this charac- in the superior strength and the unyielding ter. And now they have proved inferior, 35 victorious spirit of the German people, inferior to the old evil of a brutal national Yet we must at the same time lament egoism which recognizes no rights on the deeply that that boundless egoism has dis- part of others, which, unconcerned about turbed for an immeasurable period of time morality or unmorality, pursues only its the spiritual cooperation of the two peo- own advantage. 40 pies which promised so much good for History furnishes in abundance exam- the development of mankind. But they pies of such an unscrupulous egoism; we wished it, so there — on England alone need recall here only the destruction of falls the monstrous guilt and the historical the Danish fleet (1807) and the theft of responsibility, the Dutch colonies in the Napoleonic wars. 45 But what is taking place today is the VIII worst of all; it will be forever pointed at . in the annals of world history as England's A GERMAN VIEW OF THE indelible shame. England fights on be- FUTURE half of a Slavic, half-Asiatic power against 50 -urn- DC ., ,, nl , T ,,,, T _ Germanism ; she fights on the side not only WILHELM OSTWALD of barbarism but also of moral injustice, Vfew York Times, September 2i, 1914. for it is indeed not forgotten that Russia rT) , „ f By P ermls *° n -] . . , , P ,, ., [Professor Ostwald sent the following letter to began the war because She WOUld permit no Edwin D. Mead, Director of the World Peace radical reparation for a shameful murder. 55 Foundation, in London, with a request that it Ti ■ t- 1 j 1 jt 1^ 1. , j 1 might be published in America.] it is England whose fault has extended the present war into a world war, and has 1. The war is the result of a deliberate thereby endangered our joint culture, onslaught upon Germany and Austria by 250 WRITING OF TODAY the powers of the Triple Entente, Russia, a European war such as the present can France, and England. Its object is on the never again break out. part of Russia an extension of Russian 6. I hope, moreover, that the Russian supremacy over the Balkans, on the side people, after the conquest of their armies, of France revenge, and on the side of Eng- 5 will free themselves from czarism through land annihilation of the German navy and an internal movement by which the present German commerce. In England, espe- political Russia will be resolved into its daily, it has been for several centuries a natural units, namely, Great Russia, the constant policy to destroy upon favoring Caucasus, Little Russia, Poland, Siberia, occasion every navy of every other coun- 10 and Finland, to which probably the Baltic try which threatened to become equal to provinces would join themselves. These, the English navy. . I trust, would unite themselves with Fin- 2. Germany has proved its love of peace land and Sweden, and perhaps with Nor- for forty-four years under the most trying way and Denmark, into a Baltic feder- circumstances. While all other States 15 ation, which in close connection with have expanded themselves by conquest, Germany would insure European peace, Russia in Manchuria, England in the and especially form a bulwark against any Transvaal, France in Morocco, Italy in disposition to war which might remain in Tripoli, Austria in Bosnia, Japan in Korea, Great Britain. Germany alone has contented itself with 20 7. For the other side of the earth I pre- the borders fixed in 1871. It is purely a diet a similar development under the lead- war of defense which is now forced upon ership of the United States. I assume us. that the English dominion will suffer a 3. In the face of these attacks Germany downfall similar to that which I have pre- has until now (the end of August) proved 25 dieted for Russia, and that under these its military superiority, which rests upon circumstances Canada would join the the fact that the entire German military United States, the expanded republic as- force is scientifically organized and lion- suming a certain leadership with reference estly administered. to the South American republics. 4. The violation of Belgian neutrality 30 8. The principle of the absolute sover- was an act of military necessity, since it eignty of the individual nations, which in is now proved that Belgian neutrality was the present European tumult has proved to be violated by France and England. A itself so inadequate and baneful, must be proof of this is the accumulation of Eng- given up and replaced by a system con- lish munitions at Maubeuge, aside from 35 forming to the world's actual conditions many other facts. and especially to those political and eco- 5. According to the course of the war up nomic relations which determine indus- to the present time, European peace seems trial and cultural progress and the common to me nearer than ever before. We welfare. pacificists must only understand that un- 40 happily the time was not yet sufficiently developed to establish peace by the peace- IX ful way. If Germany, as everything now seems to make probable, is victorious in THE LAST SPRING OF THE the struggle not only with Russia and 45 OLD LION France, but attains the further end of de- stroying the source from which for two GEORGE BERNARD SHAW or three centuries all European strifes have been nourished and intensified, l New Statesman, London, England, December 12, namely, the English policy of world do- 50 I9 ' 4 ' By P ermiss '° n -] minion, then will Germany, fortified on What is the English press coming to one side by its military superiority, on the when it can find nothing in the French other side by the eminently peaceful senti- Yellow Book but the single morsel of ment of the greatest part of its people, and garbage that disgraces it? In the heat and especially of the German Emperor, dictate 55 scare of the first outbreak of war there peace to the rest of Europe, I hope espe- was some excuse for swallowing that gen- cially that the future treaty of peace will eral order of the Kaiser in which, finding in the first place provide effectually that the German language too inexpressive, he F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 251 exhorted his army to take no notice of the terrible than Waterloo were fought against French and Russian millions but concen- the same foe, but it was not England that trate their wrath on General French's won them. The Lion rose and began to ' contemptible little army.' Yet that jour- watch. The old instinct stirred in him. nalistic effort was plausible compared to 5 He heard the distant song, ' Deutschland, the ' official and secret report from a trust- Deutschland, tiber Alles,' and something worthy source ' which M. Etienne sent to in him said ' Never that while I live.' M. Jonnart on April 2, 1913. M. Jonnart's The rival built a warship, built another reception of it is not chronicled. I make warship and yet another, openly challenged haste to announce that I am not taken in 10 the sovereignty of the sea. That was the and that nothing more on that subject is to end. From that moment it was only a be feared by readers of this article. question of when to spring, for a lion with From an authentic part of this Yellow that one idea at heart, with that necessity Book there emerges a picture so stirring deep in his very bowels, must be crafty; that it is amazing to me that no English- 15 he must win at all hazards, no matter how man has yet rescued it from its wrappings long he crouches before the right moment of official correspondence, for in it you see comes. the old British lion, the lion of Waterloo, You see it coming in the Yellow Book. the lion of Blenheim, the lion of Trafalgar, Germany with Austria and Russia with making his last and most terrible and tri- 20 France stalk each other, finger on trigger, umphant spring. You see him with his France avoiding the fight, Russia gradually old craft and his old courage and strength arming herself and training herself for unimpaired, with his old amazing luck, his it, Austria speculating on it all, even Aus- old singleness of aim, his old deep-lying tria afraid of the Lion's rival, Germany, and subtle instinct that does better with- 25 France (always maneuvering for peace, out great men in a pinch than his enemies being outnumbered) at last finds that Ger- do with them. many, defiant of her and of Russia, con- For centuries now the Lion has held temptuously sure that she can crush the to his one idea that none shall be greater one with her right hand and the other than England on the land, and none as 30 with her left, yet fears the Lion and well great on the sea. To him it has been knows that if he comes to the aid of France nothing whether a rival to England was and Russia, the odds will be too terrible better or worse than England. When even for the victors of Sedan. France Waterloo was won, Byron said 'I'm sounds the Lion on the subject. The Lion, damned sorry,' and humanitarians and 35 grim and cautious, does not object to his libertarians looked aghast at the reestab- naval and military commanders talking to lishment of the Inquisition and the restora- the commanders of France and discussing tion of an effete and mischievous dynasty what might happen and how, in that case, by English arms on the ruins of liberty, things might be arranged. France sud- equality, and fraternity. Little recked the 40 denly bullies Germany — tells her to clear Lion of that. England's rival was in the out of Morocco and clear out sharp. Ger- dust; England was mistress of the seas; many looks at the Lion and sees him with England's General (what matter that he quivering tail about to spring. The odds was an Irishman?) was master of Europe, are too great. With mortification tearing with its kings whispering in his presence 45 her heart, Germany clears out, success- like frightened schoolboys. England right fully bullied for the first time since the or wrong, England complete with her own rise of her star. native corruptions and oppressions no less The Lion is balked. Another few years than her own native greatness and glory, of waiting and the British taxpayer may had risen all English from the conflict and 50 tire of keeping ahead of that growing fleet, held the balance of power in her hand. The old instinct whispers, ' Now, now, For a hundred years after that no Eng- before the rival is too strong.' Voices be- lishman knew what it was to turn pale at gin to cry that in the London streets, but the possibility of invasion. For more than there are new forces that the Lion must two generations of Englishmen the Lion 55 take account of. If the rival will not fight, lay and basked and smelled no foe that the it is not easy to attack him, and Germany pat of his paw could not dispose of. will not fight unless the Lion can be de- Then a rival arose again. Battles more tached from France and Russia, yet is sick 252 WRITING OF TODAY with the humiliation of that bullying, and ers which had frightened Germany. He knows that nothing but the riding down said to Grey : ' You must go to the of the bullies can restore her prestige and French and say that we are not bound to heal her wounded pride. But she must anything.' Grey, the amiable lover of swallow her spleen, for at every threat 5 peace, was delighted. He went, and the France points to the Lion and saves the French, with imperturbable politeness, peace France alone really desires. Every made a note of it, and then Asquith and time Germany is humiliated the Lion is Grey, with good conscience, found them- balked. Austria's Balkan speculation is selves busily persuading the world that the postponed, and Russia does not quite know 10 Lion was not bound to help France and whether she is balked or respited. Russia when the great day of Armageddon The Lion broods and broods, and deep came. They persuaded the nation, they in his subconsciousness there stirs the persuaded the House of Commons, they knowledge that Germany will never fight persuaded their own Cabinet, and at last unless — unless — unless — the Lion does 15 — at last — they persuaded Germany, not quite know what, does not want to And the Lion crouched. Almost before he know what, but disinterested observers was ready the devil's own luck struck complete the sentence thus : Unless Ger- down the Archduke by the hand of an as- many can be persuaded that the Lion is sassin, and Austria saw Servia in her taking a fancy to Germany and is becom- 2° grasp at last. She flew at Servia, Russia ing a bit of a pacifist and will not fight. flew at Austria, Germany flew at France, Then the luck that has so seldom failed and the Lion, with a mighty roar, sprang the Lion sent Prince Lichnowsky as Ger- at last, and in a flash had his teeth and man Ambassador to London. There was claws in the rival of England and will now nothing wrong in being, very friendly to 25 not let her go for all the pacifists or So- the Prince, a charming man with a very cialists in the world until he is either killed charming wife ; there was our Sir Edward or back on his Waterloo pedestal again. Grey, also a charming man, always ready That, gentlemen of England, is the epic to talk peace quite sincerely at tea parties of the Yellow Book, that was the roar that with all Europe if necessary. The Lion 30 your tradesmen pretended not to hear be- knew in his heart that Grey knew nothing cause it frightened them into assuring the of the ways of lions, and would not ap- Germans that it was only the bleat of a prove of them if he did, for Grey had pack of peaceful sheep attacked by a ideas instead of the one idea, and Prince wicked wolf. Much you will care for Lichnowsky knew so much less of the ways 35 their babble about old treaties and their of lions than Grey that he actually thought assurances that you are incapable of any- Grey was the Lion. The Lion said: thing so wicked as the hurrah with which ' This is not my doing. England's destiny your share in the lion heart responds to has provided Grey, and provided Lichnow- his roar and their piteous stories, like the sky ; England's star is still in the zenith.' 40 old stories of Boney eating babies, and Lichnowsky thought Grey every day a their frantic lies and shameful abuse of the greater statesman and a more charming enemy whom you know you must now hold man, and became every day more per- sacred from every weapon meaner than suaded that the lion's heart had changed your steel. and that he was becoming friendly, and 45 As for me, I understand it. I vibrate Grey thought Lichnowsky, perhaps, rather to it ; I perceive the might and mystery of a fool, but was none the less nice to him. it and all sorts of chords in me sound the Then there was Asquith, the lucid law- demand that the Lion's last fight shall be yer, the man who could neither remember the best fight of all and Germany the last the past nor foresee the future, yet was 50 foe overcome. But I am a Socialist and always a Yorkshireman with ancient Eng- know well that the Lion's day is gone by lish depths behind his mirrorlike lucidity, and that the bravest lion gets shot in the in which something of lion craft could long run. I foresee that his victory will lodge without troubling the surface of the not, like the old victories, lead to a cen- mirror. Asquith suddenly found working 55 tury of security. I know that it will cre- in himself an unaccountable but wholly ir- ate a situation more dangerous than the resistible impulse to hide and deny those situation of six months ago, and that only arrangements with the French command- by each western nation giving up every F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 253 dream of supremacy can that situation be It may, perhaps, be admitted that public mastered. A lion within frontiers is after opinion was in need of the medicine ad- all a lion in a cage, and the future has no ministered in his more elaborate paper, use for caged lions fighting to defend their which he whimsically entitled ' Common own chains. In future we must fight, not 5 Sense about the War.' That Great Brit- alone for England, but for the welfare of ain had, through her engagements with the world. But for all that the Lion is a her partners in the Triple Entente, vir- noble old beast and his past is a splendid tually bound herself to go to war in the past and his breed more valiant than ever event that France became involved ; that — too valiant, nowadays, indeed, to be 10 she must have entered into the conflict, merely Englishmen contra mundum. I Belgium or no Belgium; that her solicitude take off my hat to him as he makes his last over the fate of small nations was in exact charge and shall not cease to wave it be- ratio to her interest in the fate of those cause of the squealing of the terrified nations — these were all things which it chickens. 15 was well that the public should bear in mind. That the morality of nations is of more importance than their success in war, X and that the first condition of morality is to rid oneself of cant, hypocrisy, and self- BERNARD SHAW AND THE 2° delusion — these are principles with which WAR Shaw has made us familiar, and which many of us accept as fully and unquali- GEORGE W. KIRCH WE Y fiedly as he does. If to do this for one's people means extending aid and comfort [Nation, London^ England^February 13, 1915. 2$ to t h e enem y, SO much the worse for a people so bemused, so much more impera- The mental devastation caused by the tive the need of speaking out. In this war which is exacting such a toll of the view the thin plausibilities which disfig- world's civilization is scarcely less deplor- ured the paper, the gratuitous imputation able than the ruin which it has brought 30 of motives, the tricky identification of Mr. on our accumulated store of life and in- Asquith and Sir Edward Grey with Prus- dustry, of goodwill and morality. The dis- sian Junkerism, are easily forgiven. They location of mind which has made the ut- are, at the worst, evidence that Shaw's terances of grave German professors and perverse spirit does not know (for such is men of science come to our ears as the 35 the nature of perverse spirits) when to ravings of madmen has its counterpart in keep in the background, the outpourings of certain English men of The same may be said of the whimsical letters. But surely the Lucifer of this letter to President Wilson, requesting him divine tragedy is G. Bernard Shaw, to ask the belligerents to withdraw from Even that crystal-clear mind, insanely 40 the soil of Belgium and fight out their sane, with its almost miraculous freedom quarrel on their own soil. It is their from cant (except, of course, its own) has fight, not Belgium's. Only people absurd fallen from its high estate. No more can enough to regard a president of the United we look to it for light and leading through States as a sort of divine person — like this tangled web of chance and design, of 45 a pope or a kaiser — could regard this doubt and apprehension, in which the dip- letter as an impertinence. It was only the lomatic and ruling persons of Europe have most dramatic, and therefore the most ef- enmeshed us. Never have we needed more fective, way of calling the attention of the that penetrating intelligence, the drastic world to two vitally important but neg- word with which he was wont to purge our 50 lected facts — that nations that go to war souls. The familiar spirit of perverseness have no right to involve pacific nations in which has so often given the needed 'bite ' the dreadful consequences of their enmity, to his criticism of life appears for the mo- and that a great neutral power like the ment to have taken complete possession of United States lies under a duty to prevent him. How else can we explain that delib- 55 such an outrage, or, at least, to make its erate justification of bad faith between disapproval known and felt, nations which he has recently published Thus far we can loyally follow the mas- to the world ? ter — and forgive him. But the next arti- Z54 WRITING OF TODAY cle, the ' British Lion ' paper, gives us chooses to live in peace, shall be let alone, pause. In what menagerie of chimeras shall not be made _a pawn in the desperate did he discover such a beast ? Never, game of the outlaw nations that choose to surely, was there limned a more fantastic live by war. picture of the British mind and purpose 5 Apparently Mr. Shaw commits- himself than the Shavian conception of the British unreservedly to the view that if England, Lion, couching watchfully on his white to punish Servia for such a crime as she cliffs, slowly moving his tail to and fro is alleged to have committed against Aus- as he looks for the appearance of any tria, decided to go to war with that un- power great enough to dispute with him 10 happy country, she would be justified in the supremacy of the world, and then regarding as an enemy any neutral coun- springing on his rival and bringing him to try through which she desired to pass in earth. Poor, inept, unready, muddling old order to reach her victim. ' We should lion ! Like his near relation, the Ameri- have to treat the declaration of neutrality can Eagle, never suspecting what is to 15 as a declaration of war on us, and fight our happen until it has happened, never look- way through — durchhauen, in fact,' are ing beyond the claws of his outstretched his words. This doctrine that a nation paws, finding himself, he knows not how, which lies in the way of a belligerent may burdened with an empire by the grace of a rightfully be forced to choose between hundred accidents, now trying to shake off 20 hari-kari and war was a favorite principle the burden, now dumbly accepting, or even, of the Europe of Frederick the Great, and in an inspired hour, glorying in it, but is still practised by those who believe that never knowing what to do with it, never the earth and the fullness thereof belong quite sure whether it is in truth an empire to the fighting nations. But the world has or merely a grandiose but uneasy dream. 25 moved since those piping times of war, One can only guess at the motive which even if Mr. Shaw has not, and the notion inspired this bold piece of Nature-faking, that neutral peoples have rights which Was it mere waggery or was it satire ? belligerents are bound to respect, and espe- Doubtless the latter ; for Shaw has not left daily that a nation has a right to be let us under any illusions as to his real opin- 30 alone, to hold herself aloof from the preda- ion of the British beast — a sham lion tory strife of her bandit neighbors, and strutting across the stage with the stride pursue, if she will, the inglorious ways of of Lloyd-George and roaring with the peace — however this may inconvenience voice of Winston Churchill ; an Androcles' or annoy them, however much they may lion, that needs only to be confronted with 35 want to get at one another's throats across the real lion of Shaw's imagination to be her territory — has in these days attained laughed off the stage. And if he is not the proportions of a full-sized principle of laughed off, if the audience really identifies public right. Here in America we believe the two, and in Shaw's lion sees only a in it so fiercely that we have, in some sort, faithful picture of the familiar, official 40 neutralized the whole of the Western beast; if, in other words, the satirist has Hemisphere. spent his barbed shaft in vain, the game is If Germany should conclude to use the still worth the candle ; for the other Shaw, historic route up our Hudson Valley for the perverse spirit, has his innings. Has the purpose of invading Canada, or if he not once again made the British lion 45 Great Britain should reach a similar con- an ass? elusion in order to check a German inva- But when we come to the matter of Bel- sion by way of the St. Lawrence, I am gian neutrality, our mood of bewilderment afraid we should not listen with patience flares up in a flame of indignation, to the plea of military necessity as a justi- Shaw's definition of neutrality, and the 50 fication for dragging us into the war be- fine-spun argument which he draws from tween them against our will. We should it, belong in the Wonderland of Alice and probably make use of Voltaire's reply to the Red Queen, not in a world of realities, the scoundrelly courtier who made a simi- Neutrality does not mean the self-efface- lar plea, ' But one must live ! ' by retorting, ment of a nation, either in 'the conven- 55 ' We do not see the necessity.' And it is tional legal sense ' nor in any other in- quite likely that we should, with such telligible sense. It means only that a peo- force as we could command, proceed to pie which, in the midst of war's alarms, put that conviction into effect. F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 255 As to the treaty of which Mr. Asquith validated by the circumstance that the na- makes so much and Mr. Shaw so little, tion so bound finds a war on her hands that, of course, is no concern of Belgium's, which makes it highly inconvenient for As has been pointed out, her right to be her to keep her pledge, is to reduce the unravished rests upon no ' scrap of paper ' 5 rebus sic stantibus doctrine to an absurd- whatsoever, but upon recognized principles ity ; especially when it is considered that it of public right, to which no treaties or con- was to meet just this situation — to cut ventions could add a feather's weight, off the very advantage which Germany The quarrel over the treaty is between the now claims as her indefeasible right — great Powers which neutralized Belgium 1° that the treaty was made. To such straits — that is, imposed a compulsory neutrality of sophistry are the defenders of Ger- upon her, bound her to perpetual peace — many's high-handed violation of public and pledged their good faith to keep her right reduced. territory inviolate in the event of war In his reply to Shaw's ' Common Sense between themselves; not, be it observed, 15 about the War,' Mr. Arnold Bennett had for her sake nor in the interest of the pub- the boldness to suggest that Mr. Shaw, be- lie peace of Europe, but for their own fore republishing that paper, ' reconsider selfish ends. The question, then, is, Have his position and rewrite.' We do not join France and Great Britain the right to in this request. The perversities which charge Germany with bad faith in disre- 20 stung Mr. Bennett and other friends and garding their treaty ? Mr. Shaw says admirers of Shaw to reply — not very ef- ' No ! ' Treaties, like engagements be- fectively -- to that scathing satire on our tween individuals, are binding only under haute politique are perhaps an inseparable the conditions existing at the time they are part of it. We would not risk spoiling the made — rebus sic stantibus — and Ger- 25 indictment by recasting it. But as to this many's military necessity constituted a matter of the Belgian Treaty, it is cer- new condition which absolved her from tainly to be hoped that Mr. Shaw will set the obligation which the treaty of 1839 himself right with the world. He is too had imposed on her. An ' obvious barris- fine and penetrating an influence for good ter's point,' Mr. Shaw ; and the ' business ' 30 to stand forth as the apologist of private about Mr. Balfour's influenza and his or public bad faith, pledge to Sir Almroth Wright and the burning of his house ' equally obvious bar- rister's claptrap.' Here we have a case vr where the ordinary law of the land — of 35 Germany as well as of England and THE ^AR AND THE WAY France — better represents the common OUT morality, and where the common morality better represents the interests of civiliza- G LOWES DICKINSON tion than does the doctrine to which the 40 perversity of Shaw has led him to give the [Atlantic Monthly, April, 1915. By permission.] sanction of his backing. It is the common teaching of experience that all obligations I are not of equal validity, and that a In a previous essay, published in the changed condition of affairs which will ab- 45 Atlantic Monthly for December last, I solve the promiser in one case will be showed at length how this war, like all wholly ineffectual to relieve him in another European wars, was caused by the work- and different case. A violent headache ing of a false theory of the State on the may be a perfectly valid excuse for not minds and passions of rulers, statesmen, keeping a dinner engagement, but would 50 journalists, and other leaders of opinion, hardly avail a soldier in the firing-line who In the pages that follow it is my object should plead it as a reason for keeping out to discuss in some detail the kind of set- of the battle. tlement which will be needed at the peace, To assert seriously that the solemn en- if such wars are not to recur again and gagement of a nation not to use the terri- 55 again. But since men's ideas as to the tory of a neutral State as a base of oper- kind of peace that is desirable are affected ations against another nation (for that is by their conception of the causes of the what the Belgian treaty comes to) is in- war, I must begin by protesting against 256 WRITING OF TODAY the view, industriously disseminated by pied with their own lives. But, since they the English, and, no doubt, by the French do not know foreigners as they know one and Russian press, that the only cause of another, they can easily be made to be- the war was the wickedness of Germany, lieve that foreigners are their enemies. For this view clearly is much too simple 5 They do not think of them as real indi- and superficial; and it leads to a wrong vidual men and women. They think of conception of the remedy. Let us then them as a great solid mass, and attribute briefly examine it. to this mass any qualities suggestion may ' Germany,' we say, ' made the war.'- put into their heads. So, at the moment, Germany ? But what is Germany ? The 10 the ordinary Englishman believes that ' the German people ? The peasants ? The Germans ' are treacherous, brutal, blood- factory laborers? The millions of Social thirsty, cruel, while the Germans believe Democrats ? They made the war ? Is it that ' the English ' are cowardly, hypocrit- likely? Ten days before the war broke ical, and degenerate. They believe these out they, like the people everywhere, were 15 things because they are told to believe working, resting, eating, sleeping, dream- them, by the people who want to make ing of nothing less than of war. War bad blood. And they believe them the came upon them like a thunderclap. The more readily because they are at war. German people are as peaceable as every The fact, then, that to every nation other. Their soldiers complain of it. We 20 every other is '.foreign,' makes the peoples are fond of quoting General Bernhardi, of Europe the prey of those who want to but we never quote the passage in which make wars. We see in Germany who he explains why he wrote his book. He these people have been. They have been wrote it, he tells us, to counteract ' the professors, like Treitschke, militarists like aspirations for peace which seem to domi- 25 Bernhardi, journalists like Harden. And nate our age and threaten to poison the in England, they have been a Maxse, a soul of the German people.' Now that Northcliffe, a Cramb. The same kind of the war has come, the German people are people are and have been at work in all fighting; but they are fighting, as they countries for the same end. For years believe, to protect their hearths and homes 30 past they have been setting the Germans at against the wanton aggression of Russia, the English and the English at the Ger- France, and, above all, England. Like all mans. The German literature against the other peoples, they are fighting what England we have drawn from its obscurity they believe to be a defensive war. That since the war began. But what about the is the tragic irony of it. Whoever made 35 English literature against Germany? the war, it was not any of the peoples. Here is a specimen from one of our most 'Then, it was the German government.' prominent and intellectual journals: Yes, or else it was the Russian, or else it ' If Germany were extinguished to-mor- was both. In any case, it was a very few row, the day after to-morrow there is not men. The peace of Europe was in the 40 an Englishman in the world who would hands of some score of individuals. They not be > the richer. Nations have fought could make war, and the hundreds of mil- for years over a city or a right of succes- lions who were to fight and to suffer could sion ; must they not fight for two hundred not stop it. That is the really extraordi- and fifty million pounds of yearly com- nary fact. That is what is worth dwelling 45 merce ? ' 1 on. How could it happen ? Why are the Policy, playing on ignorance — that is nations passive clay in the hands of their the origin "of wars. But why the policy? governments ? What is it aiming at ? That, too, we must First, because they do not know one make clear, another. They speak different languages, 50 We accuse Germany of making an un- live different kinds of lives, have different provoked attack upon France and Russia, manners and customs. They do not hate and we are indignant. But we forget one another, but neither do they under- that, if Germany so acted, she was acting stand or trust one another. They do not in accordance with the principles and prac- feel that they belong together. Left to 55 tice dominant throughout Europe for cen- themselves, they would never, it is true, *This passage is referred to in Prince von want to fight one another. They do not 5?L°r,'S ™? ok ' i^P e ™\ Germany (p. 99, English ..■ i & r ., .. J translation), as illustrating English feeling against even think of one another; they are occu- Germany.— The Author. - F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 257 turies past. Our English national hero, plosion were there. It was merely a ques- Lord Roberts, warned us that she would tion who should first drop the match. Our act just so. But he added that she would discussions as to who that was are not as be quite right and that we ought to do the important as we think. This year, we be- same. When the Germans began to build 5 lieve it was Germany. But if it had not their fleet there were plenty of Englishmen been Germany this year, it might have who urged us to pick a quarrel with her at been Russia next. And some other year once and destroy her before she grew too it might have been France or England, strong. There is nothing peculiarly mon- The war came out of the European sys- strous or unique about the conduct we wtem, the system of states armed against impute to Germany. It is the conduct one another, and dominated by mutual fostered by the European system which suspicion and fear. While that system England, too, supports. That system is continues, war will continue. If we want one of armed states always expecting to be to stop war, we must alter that, attacked, and therefore always ready to 15 anticipate attack. We are engaged merely n in one act of a long and tragic drama. At the origin, then, of this war, there Let us look for a moment at the whole set was no good cause at all. It was one of of facts from which this war proceeded. the many wars for power and position. In 1870 there was war between Ger- 20 Englishmen, it is true, have been strongly many and France — a war of mutual jeal- moved by the invasion of Belgium, and I ousy and fear, with no good cause behind throw no doubt on the genuineness of their it and no good end before. In that war feeling. But it was not the invasion of Germany was victorious. She took from Belgium that made the war, although that France two of her provinces and left her 25 was a contributory cause of the English burning for revenge. Germany had made intervention. The origin of the war was a permanent enemy on the west. On her ambition and fear. But the origin is not east lay Russia. Between Russia and the same as the purpose. The purpose is Germany there was no cause of quarrel, what we choose to make it. What then is They had cooperated to crush Napoleon, 30 our purpose, now we are at war ? This and since then had commonly acted in question has been little discussed, and sympathy. There was no talk, during all there is little willingness in Europe to dis- those years, of Russian barbarism, or of cuss it, while the issue of the war hangs the inevitable conflict between Teuton and in the balance. But it is already clear that Slav. That idea was the effect, not the 35 it will divide the nation. We are united cause, of the hostility between the two in pursuing the war. We shall not be nations. The cause was the alliance of united in ending it. Germany with Austria in her quarrel with On one point, no doubt, the peoples of Russia. Russia and Austria were con- the allied nations are agreed. The Ger- tending for the mastery of the Balkan 40 mans must evacuate Belgium and indem- peninsula. Greed of territory and power nify her, so far as it can be done, for the was the ultimate source of their dispute — martyrdom inflicted on her by one of the supported, on the part of Russia, by the greatest crimes of history. That, at least, sentiment of race. And this quarrel in the if the Allies win. But what more? east was presently knit up with the quarrel 45 There are two ways of answering that in the west. To strengthen herself against question, and much of future history will Germany, France allied herself with Rus- depend on which is adopted, sia. Henceforth a war in the east would The one answer accepts frankly the tra- make a war in the west. Italy had al- ditional system. It assumes that the ready joined Germany and Austria. 5° states of Europe must always be enemies But England was not yet involved, and always settle their differences by war. What brought her in was the building of That being so, the only end it can con- the German fleet. We regarded it as a ceive for any war is the weakening of the menace. Perhaps it was. At any rate vanquished and the aggrandizement of the we thought so. And to secure ourselves 55 victors. It is thus that all former wars we joined hands with France and Russia, have been ended, and thus that they have The Triple Entente faced the Triple Al- always prepared new wars. The view I liance in arms. The materials for the ex- am considering accepts this consequence. 258 WRITING OF TODAY It means to ' crush Germany ' in order ' But we shall prevent her ! ' How ? to strengthen England. Quite openly it By partitioning her? By disarming her? sneers at the profession that this is 'a By changing the form of her government ? war to end war,' the profession that the All those things were tried by Napoleon, best of our youths carry in their hearts 5 and none of them can achieve their pur- to battle. Quite openly it justifies the pose. A nation does not consist in its militarism against which we have an- territory, or its armaments, or its govern- nounced to the world that we are fighting, ment. It consists in the tradition, the It approves militarism. All that it disap- character, and the spirit of its people, proves is the militarism of Germany. It i° While Germany wants to be one, while wants to make us too a military power, she wants to be strong, while she wants to prepared by compulsory military service be monarchic, nobody and nothing can for that " next war ' which it proposes to prevent her. A nation has never been make ' inevitable ' by the peace. This crushed by anything short of annihilation, view, already frankly expressed by the 15 Look at Ireland ! Look at Italy ! Look Morning Post, will, no doubt, when the at the Balkan States ! You may weaken moment is thought to have come, be urged Germany, yes ; you may cripple her for a also by the Times and its group of associ- time, as she, if she were victorious, could ated newspapers. It will be supported by weaken or cripple us. What of it? She educated people, and will appeal to the 20 will rise from humiliation more determined passions of the uneducated, and will prob- than ever to assert herself. We can no ably be urged by some members of the more crush her than she can crush us. It government. Let us then consider it. is certain, then, that if we can succeed We are to ' crush Germany ' ; or, as a in ' crushing ' Germany, and if we do noth- progressive newspaper phrases it, we are 25 ing else, we are preparing war for the to drive her, ' at no matter what cost to future, not peace. ourselves in lives and money, into uncon- It may be easier for us to realize this ditional surrender.' 1 That is, we are to point if we remember that there are Ger- carry on the war (if we can) far beyond mans, too, who expect and desire to get the point at which the Germans have aban- 30 peace out of this war, and that they too doned Belgium; beyond the point, even, hope to do it by ' crushing ' their enemies, at which they have abandoned Alsace- Thus, for example, the Frankfurter Zei- Lorraine and Posen. The Allies, as it is tung writes : sometimes explained, are to ' dictate terms ' One cannot count upon any other way at Berlin,' whatever terms and however 35 of carrying out the idea of peace except reasonable may be offered before they get by " force." By that, of course, we do not there. A war which is destroying men as refer to the evil generally connected with they have never been destroyed before, the word, but to something which has been from which at the best the nations will expressed in various ways during the last emerge permanently degraded in their 4° few months : we wish to have as the result stock, poorer in physique, duller in intelli- of this war a state in which the countries gence, weaker in will than they went in, which have now attacked us shall for all this war is to be protracted until the whole time be unable to repeat their attack, manhood of Europe is decimated, in order Germany, peaceful, as its allies, has with — in order to what ? Let us ask in detail. 45 them been entrusted with the historical In order, we are told, that the Germans mission of dictating a permanent peace may ' feel they are beaten.' And then ? to Europe. We are fighting primarily for They will be good in future? They will existence, but still more for this — that admit they were wrong? They will lick there may be rest in Europe from vain, the hand that chastised them ? Who be- 50 ambitious madmen and brigands, and that lieves it? The more completely they are they may be shown, like all others, the fit beaten, the more obstinately they will and natural sphere to which they belong, be set on recovery. When France was They must be deprived once and for all beaten to the dust in 1870, did she repent of the desire to attack us; till then, not a for having provoked the war ? On the 55 word of peace ! Then, and then only, can contrary, she gathered up her forces for the law of peace, protected by forces which revenge. And Germany will do the same, are strong and just, be established.' *New Statesman, December 19, 1914. This is the German version of the same I F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES AND LETTERS 259 idea that is sometimes put forward on the other great protagonist of history ; and behalf of the Allies. Peace, say we, by of the history of the last century it is the crushing Germany, since she is the only very nerve. For that reason, it cannot be disturber of the peace. Peace, say the truly claimed as the principle of this or Germans, by crushing the Allies, since 5 that nation. It has been contending in they are the only disturbers of the peace, them all at death grips with its enemy. But how does this view of the Germans The angels of light and darkness do not look to us? Does it look like peace ? Do preside over different nations. They con- we imagine ourselves lying down forever, tend in each for victory, beaten, humbled, and repentant, under the 10 Nevertheless there is truth in the idea contemptuous protection of an armed Ger- that modern Germany stands for domina- many ? Just as we feel about the German tion, and modern France and England for idea, so, we may be sure, do they feel about freedom. The unification of Germany in ours. That route does not and cannot an empire obscured, if it did not ruin, the lead to peace. Nothing can, except a radi- 15 German spirit of liberty. The governing cal change in the ideas and policy of the and articulate classes became arrogant and nations of Europe, and an expression of aggressive. The mass of the people be- that change in a definite political organiza- came passively acquiescent. They were tion. content to formulate freedom instead of 20 struggling for it. They became the harm- 111 less pedants of democracy. Meanwhile Those, then, who really desire a settle- the government pursued the ordinary ment that will secure peace in the future, course of empire. Wherever they ruled must abandon the idea of ' crushing ' Ger- over people of alien race and ideals, they many. Let us turn, now, to the other view 25 set themselves by force to convert them of our purpose in this war. into their own likeness. In Poland, in We are fighting, say our best spirits, Alsace-Lorraine, in Schleswig, they im- for freedom, and against domination, posed on the unwilling natives their lan- What do these terms mean ? By domina- guage, their education, and their ' culture.' tion we mean the imposition of rule, by 30 In Poland they have been endeavoring for force, upon unwilling subjects. In the re- years to expropriate the Poles and substi- lation of man to man the simplest form of tute a German population. ' No consider- domination is slavery. In that of state ation for the Polish people,' writes Prince to state its form is empire. 1 It is one of von Bulow, ' must hinder us from doing all the great contending powers in the tragedy 35 we can to maintain and strengthen the of history. It is real ; and also it has been German nationality in the former Polish championed as an ideal. Macchiavelli is domains.' And he adds with unconscious its philosopher, Carlyle its prophet, Treit- irony, ' In our policy with regard to the schke its historian. Rome stood for it 'in schools we are really fighting for Polish the ancient world, Spain in America, Eng- 40 nationality, which we wish to incorporate land in Ireland. And Germany stands for in German intellectual life.' it now in Belgium. By freedom, on the This is the traditional policy of empire, other hand, we mean the power and right The English pursued this policy in Ireland of individuals and of nations to live their with even greater vigor and ruthlessness own lives and unfold their own capacities. 45 throughout the eighteenth century. And This does not imply that they should do it is, perhaps, only the happy accident that simply what they like, but that the restric- we are an island power that has prevented • tions they admit should be self-chosen and us from being, to this day, the champions self-approved, with a view to the equal of domination. But history has helped us, freedom of others. The formula is so 50 and we have learned from history. It is familiar as to be tedious. But its mean- a chance, but a very significant chance, ing is infinite and profound. We have that made the outbreak of this war coin- hardly yet begun to spell its first letters, cide with our final abandonment of the It inspires the whole movement of democ- policy of coercion in Ireland. The British racy and all the wars of liberation. It is 55 system now, so far as men of white race are concerned, is one not of empire but of *I use this term in the sense of a system in s rpp f . rml miiniHp-d tjt?a/~t? us. We seek collective power because we ORGANIZATIONS FOR PEACE are incapable of individual greatness. We " THEODORE ROOSEVELT seek extension of territory because we cannot Utilize the territory we have. We [Chicago Herald, April 16, 1915. By permisson.] seek to be many because none of us is able ,,„,,,-,,, to be properly one. Once more we are My Dear Mrs. Rublee : witnessing whither that course must lead 15 I assume from your letter that you have us. Once more we are witnessing the vast not read my recent little book called Amer- ind vile futility of war. Once more we ica and the World War, and that you wish shall recover reeling from the horrjble in- my judgment about joining the peace or- toxication in which we have taken refuge, ganization of which you write. I em- to look with dismay on our bloody hands, 2ophatically advise you not to join such an and the bloody work they have achieved, organization. The platform of principles Once more we shall have a chance of inclosed in your letter seems to me both learning the lesson. Shall we learn it? silly and base. I cannot tell. This does not mean that all those sign- 25 ing and chamnioning it are silly and base. But I hope. I hope because of the It is unfortunately true that the very worst young. And to them I now turn. To movements in human history have some- you, young men, it has been given by a times had very high-minded men and tragic fate to see with your eyes and hear women enlisted in their support. Accord- with your ears what war really is. Old 30 ing to my views, the effort to break up this men made it, but you must wage it — with Union, in order to perpetuate slavery, what courage, with what generosity, with would have meant most dreadful woe to what sacrifice, I well know. If you return mankind, if successful ; yet my own kins- from this ordeal, remember what it has folk on my mother's side all took part in been. Do not listen to the shouts of vie- 35 it; and I do not believe there ever was a .tory; do not snuff the incense of applause, movement which enlisted more ardent sup- But keep your inner vision fixed on the port from big-hearted men and women or facts you have faced. You have seen bat- which was served with greater fervor and tleships, bayonets, and guns, and you know disinterestedness. them for what they are, forms of evil 40 Fifty years ago the Copperheads of the thought. Think other thoughts, love other North held exactly the views about peace loves, youth of England and of the world ! which are set forth in the platform you You have been through hell and purga- inclosed and to a man they voted against tory. Climb now the rocky stair that Abraham Lincoln. They did all they could leads to the sacred mount. The guide of 45 to break up the Union and to insure the tradition leaves you here. Guide now triumph of slavery, because they put peace yourselves and us ! Believe in the future, as the highest of all good; just exactly as for none but you can. Believe in what is it is put by the people who have con- called the impossible, for it waits the help structed the paper you sent me. Some of of your hands to show itself to be the in- 50 the finest and most honorable men I have evitable. Of it and of all our hopes, the known in my life were former Copper- old, the- disillusioned, the gross, the prac- heads. One of the men of whom I am titioners of the world are the foes. Be fondest at this present day was once a Cop- you the friends ! Take up the thought and perhead. give it shape in act ! You can and you 55 Nevertheless, I should stigmatize the alone. It is for that you have suffered. It is for that you have gained vision. . * ' Free . r teht, and sane is thy will and it will . j • s - ■__«.■„ ° e base not t0 act at lts bidding. Wherefore 1 And in your ears for your inspiration crown and miter thee lord over thyself F. CONTROVERSIAL ART ICLES AND LETTERS 263 Copperhead movement of fifty years ago is an evil and not a good movement. Any exactly as I stigmatize the movement movement that speaks against war in preached by the individuals whose paper terms that would apply as much to such a you inclose to me. Moreover, a very large war as that waged by Lincoln as to the proportion of the peace at any price or 5 war waged to destroy free people is a copperhead sympathizers were undoubt- thoroughly base and evil thing, edly physical cowards ; and equally un- Above all it is base and ev?l to clamor doubtedly a very large proportion of ultra- for peace in the abstract, when silence is pacificists of today who uphold such views kept about concrete and hideous wrongs as those outlined in the paper you in- 10 done to humanity at this very moment, closed, in championing peace without re- Belgium has been trampled into bloody gard to righteousness are really most in- mire. Frightful wrongs have been com- luenced by physical cowardice. They mitted upon the men, women and children fear death or pain or discomfort beyond of Belgium. The Belgians have fought anything else and like to hide their fear 15 valiantly against their oppressors. Yet behind high-sounding words. this paper you inclose does not contain one I speak with scientific accuracy when I protest against the commission of such Speak of this movement as both base and wrongs as have been committed on Bel- silly. It is silly because it is absolutely gium, and does denounce war in such fash- futile. It proposes to go on with just the 20 ion as to include in the condemnation the same kind of futile agitation which, by the Belgians just as much as the oppressors experience of a century and, above all, by of Belgium. the experience of the last thirty years, has There is nothing easier. There is noth- proved wholly useless and on the whole ing on the whole less worth while enter- slightly mischievous. Not one particle of 25 ing into than vague and hysterical denun- good will be obtained by any such action ciations of wrong in the abstract, or vague as that outlined in that paper you sent. and hysterical demands for right in the But this is not 411. It is base as well as abstract, coupled with the unworthy and futile. There is nothing more repulsive timid refusal even to allude to frightful than to see people agitating for general 3owrongs that are at the very moment be- righteousness in the abstract when they ing committed in the concrete, dare not stand up against wickedness in Congresses that pass resolutions against the concrete. On the whole there is noth- war and in favor of peace in the abstract ing that does so much damage to a church do not do one particle of good, because as to have a minister who thunders con- 35 their resolutions are utterly meaningless, tinually against wrong in the abstract, or and must be utterly meaningless unless against wrong committed by the Pharisees they are reduced to concrete cases. We a couple of thousand years ago, but who have before us that concrete case, cannot be persuaded to stand up against Let the people who advocate the plat- present-day wrong in the concrete ; and 40 form and principles you inclosed hold a the professional pacificist leaders in the meeting specifically to denounce the in- United States are in exactly this position, vasion of Belgium by Germany and to de- I assume, of course, that you are for mand that in the interests of peace, the peace in reality and not merely for the United States do what it can to put a stop name of peace, and that you are for peace 45 to those wrongs. based on justice and right and not for Let them denounce Messrs. Wilson and peace that consecrates successful wrong ; Bryan for trying to force through the ship for peace that consecrates wrong may be purchase bill, which was in the interest of actually worse than any war. Well, the the power that wronged Belgium and in paper you inclose is in effect exactly as 50 spite of the fact that their action might much an indorsement of the ' peace ' once tend to bring us into war with the powers obtained in Warsaw by trampling liberty that have sought to defend Belgium, and humanity under foot as of the ' peace ' Let 'them do something that shows that obtained at the same time in the United they mean what they say and that they States by restoring the Union and freeing 55 are really striving for righteousness, the slave. Any movement that fails em- Until they do this let every wise and up- phatically to discriminate between the two right man and woman refuse to have any- kinds of peace and the two kinds of war thing more to do with a movement which 264 WRITING OF TODAY is certainly both foolish and noxious, pletely as the part of Serbia through which which is accompanied by a peculiarly ig- I rode last January I am not sure. But noble abandonment of national duty and they did not commit ' atrocities ' on per- which, if successful, would do only harm sons. The two things are in a different and the mere attempt to accomplish which 5 category and Professor Henderson con- rightly exposes our people to measureless fuses the issue by putting them into the contempt. * same sentence as if they were one and the Sincerely yours, same thing. Here are a few specimens ; Theodore Roosevelt. of what the Austro-Hungarian troops Mrs. Juliet Barret Rublee, 10 did : Washington, D. C. a o t. • „•„ / & ' 191S, Aug. 18.— Prnivoor Village (near Losnitza:), Simana Mijatovitch, age 25; her daughter Doniza, age 3, and her son Milan, XIII age 1, shut up in house and burned alive. 15 Zivana Samowrovitch, age 27; Yveta Sa- SERBIAN ATROCITIES mowrovitch, age 3 years, and boy, not yet baptized, age 3 days, shut up in house and GEORGE MACAULAY TREVELYAN bu ™ e f 1 - iv< Vii a • t a: u Nedeljiza Village: Amza Jesditch, age 35, [New York Times, May 22 , 1915. By permission.] 20 eyes gouged out and killed; Micosava Vasili- jevitch, age 21, violated, cut open, and mur- In the letter by Professor Yandell Hen- dered. derson, in the Times of today's date, he Multiply these things by several hundred sa y s ■ and you get two August days' work of the As for atrocities, Belgium, Serbia, East 2 5 Austro-Hungarian army last year. These Prussia, and Poland have probably been no facts do not remind me, any more than the more thoroughly desolated than Georgia after facts related in the Bryce report remind Sherman's march to the sea. Away from me, either of Sherman's Soldiers or of your ordinary social restraints men always do college students and militiamen. I am such things. It is rare for a militia company sorry j cannot a t this time stay to make a here to have a field day or a college class to more profound stud of American institu- hold a reunion, without a certain percentage ,• r , ■ , J . _ , . T making beasts of themselves. tl0 ,f. a " d s ° clal customs, but I am com- pelled to return to-morrow to England, As a stranger in this land I am not in a with much gratitude for the kindness I position to contradict Professor Henderson 35 have received over here, which has per- about your present-day militia companies haps blinded me to the dark spots in your and college students, though from what I national character perceived by Professor have seen of your people, particularly at Henderson. As I am departing, I inclose the universities where I have principally to you the report on the atrocities in been, I read his statement with some sur- 40 Serbia, based on the first-hand evidence of prise. But as regards Sherman's march Dr. Arius Van Tienhoven of The Hague, to the sea, I am prepared, as a historian, to Holland, and Jules Schmidt, Swiss • en- deny that Sherman's troops either burned gineer. And I further refer you to the ar- women and children alive or gouged peo- tide by Dr. Reiss of Lausanne University, pies' eyes out or murdered civilians whole- 45 in the Revue de Paris, April 1, 1915. The sale, as the Austro-Hungarian troops did evidence is particularly full, because the in Serbia in the middle days of August Austrians were driven out of the scenes of last. If college students and militiamen do these atrocities a day or two after they had these things today, or such things as are committed them and the dead bodies and reported by the Bryce Commission on Bel- 50 charred remains of the women and chil- gium, I can only say that they are very dren were photographed. I have seen studiously kept out of your papers. But scores of these photographs, and read and Sherman's troops at least did not do them, heard masses of first-hand evidence on the They ' desolated ' the land, no doubt, subject, when I visited the scene of these though whether they desolated it as com- 55 atrocities in January. G. LITERARY CRITICISM Literary criticism makes use of some of the same mental processes that the writer of the expository article or the editorial brings to bear upon his material : in both cases there is the same striving to place certain facts clearly before the reader, and the same effort to express an unbiased and illuminating judgment upon these facts. Literary criticism covers a wide range, from the humble endeavor of the journalistic man of all work to tell what a book is about, to Anatole France's ' adventures of a soul among masterpieces.' There is no kind of work for which the literary tyro is more inclined, and none for which, as a rule, he is less fitted, for good reviewing involves a degree of the critical faculty with which the inexperienced are seldom endowed. Roughly speaking, there are two kinds of literary criticism found in periodicals. The book note or notice gives a short statement of the contents of a volume and seeks to char- acterize it in only the briefest and most general way. Such a notice is usually unsigned, and as its purpose is less serious than that of the larger reviews of the next class, its liter- ary art is not so conspicuous. The book review proper is a more elaborate consideration of a volume, its relation to its subject in general, and to the other works of its author. Book reviews of this latter sort are often noteworthy for their keen insight, their sound crit- ical judgment, and their trained literary style ; they are written and signed by authorities on the subject with which the book deals, and in many cases they become permanent contribu- tions to critical literature. Among the illustrations here printed such notices as those of the Salamander will serve as examples of the briefer kind of notice, and the review of J. P. MahafEy's What Have the Greeks Done for Modem Civilization'! is a good representative of the more elaborate, carefully constructed, and well expressed treatment of more serious or extensive subjects. Examples of the shorter notice will be found in numbers XII-XVI, and of the longer in numbers I-IV. A combination of these two methods is employed in the composite review which groups together several books of the same kind, or on the same subject, or by the same author. In such cases, a brief notice is usually given to each book separately and an attempt is made to compare them or to indicate their relations to the general subject with which they deal or to the previous#work of their authors. Specimens of this kind will be found in numbers V-XI. I come an apologist. He must ' show us.' Even as seasoned a Grecian as Professor THE GREEK GIFT TO Mahaffy, 1 who surely is entitled, if any CIVILIZATION one ' s > t0 b e at *" s ease * n Hdl as > does not 5 resist this compulsion. The quiet and still SAMUEL LEE WOLFF a ' r °* *" s delightful studies is stirred with argument, about Greek in the college cur- tHation, New York, April 7, 1910. By permission.] riculum, about the neglect of Aristotelian logic by American youth, about, on the one 1 10 hand, Greek versus ' Science,' and, on the The Greeks meant one thing to men of other hand, the truly ' scientific ' temper the early Renaissance, another thing to of Greek thought. Throughout he seems Pope and Addison, another thing to Ger- to feel that the Greeks need to be vindi- mans of the nineteenth century. Every cated; and their vindication, throughout, generation has taken its Greek in its own 15 is that they are 'modern.' way. And the present generation, heir of This seems to mean that they are free all the ages, is taking its Greek in nearly x What Have the Greeks Done fgr Modern cim _ everyway — except One. It IS not taking sationf The Lowell Lectures of 1008-09. By ire Hrpplr fnr o-i-nntpd An pxnnsitnr nf J° hn Penthind Mahaffy, C.V.O., D.C.L. (Oxon.), its Week tor grantea. m expositor ot £ of Trinity College; Dub i in ', New yb rk . &' Hellenism today is almost obliged to be- 20 p. Putnam's Sons. 265 266 WRITING OF TODAY from mysticism and obscurantism, those Ovidian. It springs not immediately, sins of the Middle Ages ; and Professor often not mediately, from Homer, Demos- Mahaffy is the more inclined to praise thenes, Pindar, ^Eschylus, Sophocles, or Greek clear-sightedness in virtue of his even Euripides. The other fifth, which own long-standing feud with medievalism. 5 does draw nourishment from Greek litera- There is a fine old-fashioned flavor, as of ture, draws it from the Greek literature some clergyman in Thomas Love Peacock not of the golden but of the silver and the ■ — a Ffolliott, a Portpipe, an Opimian — pinchbeck ages. Boccaccio, Professor in the valiant no-Popery flings of our au- Mahaffy points out (p. 9Sn), is indebted thor against the church and against the 10 to Greek prose fiction; but what he does theological prepossessions of medieval sci- not point out is that Boccaccio's debt runs ence and philosophy. The modern con- mostly to very late Byzantine romances tentiousness about Greek here receives a now lost. Lyly draws from Plutarch on temperamental reinforcement. Education. Sannazaro breaks from the All good things being Greek, and all bad 15 Virgilian pastoral tradition to return to things non-Greek, the Middle Ages were Theocritus. Tasso's Aminta, as is well non-Greek; and the Renaissance, which known, gets what is probably its most fa- put an end to them, was Greek. Such mous passage from the late prose romance seems to be the latent reasoning at the bot- of Achilles Tatius. As is not so well torn of Professor Mahaffy's view — and 20 known, the Jerusalem Delivered, too, pro- we admit it to be the popular view — that fessedly a restoration of the classical — by means of a resurgence of Greek art, that is, the Virgilian — epic, in reprobation literature, and philosophy, the Renais- of the composite romance-epic of Pulci, sance superseded the Middle Ages, and Boiardo, and Ariosto, is itself full of the that the Renaissance was in spirit and ac- 25 conceits of late Greek rhetoric. The complishment truly Greek, truly classical. Pastor Fido is based upon a story in Pau- The naive assumption of the humanists sanias. It seems well within the truth to that they had emerged from a ' thick say that where Renaissance literature is Gothic night,' Professor Mahaffy would Greek at all, it is almost certain to be in modify by substituting ' Latin ' for 30 the Alexandrianized, Romanized, Byzan- ' Gothic ' ; and, having thus given a bad tinized, and Orientalized vein that we call name to the Scholastic Philosophy, to Ro- Greek only because we have no better manesque and Gothic architecture, to the name for it. 'Dies Irae ' and to the chansons de geste, The art and the philosophy of the Ren- he would contentedly hang them all. Now, 35 aissance, like its literature, do not draw he believes, upon the thick Latin night up from pure Hellenic fountains. Botticelli, rose Greek, and up rose the sun : the clas- Raphael, and Titian are not inspired by sical Renaissance and the ' modern spirit ' Greek statuary of the best period, very lit- were a twin birth of the revival of Greek tie of which had been unearthed; Greek studies (pp. 18-19). This view seems to 40 painting was probably unknown to them, us erroneous ; and, as the conceptions un- and, at any rate, Greek painting, as far as derlying it determine Professor Mahaffy's it has survived at all, is of the Campanian, treatment of his subject, we shall examine the Alexandrian style — distinctly post- it at some length. Waiving all questions classical. The putti of the Renaissance of chronology, disregarding therefore all 45 may, indeed, it is thought, be traced to the medieval anticipations of the Renaissance ' Egyptian plague of Loves ' — those Cu- or of the ' modern spirit,' granting that the pids, which, whether attendant upon the light did not dawn till Greek began to re- amorous adventures of the gods, or nest- appear, and then dawned decisively, we be- ing in trees, or wreathing garlands, or lieve it would not be difficult to show that 50 exposed in cages for sale, ' flutter through the Renaissance itself was not essentially the Pompeian pictures.' And where the Hellenic. great painters of the Renaissance thought of themselves as illustrators of 'literary' 11 themes (we are just rediscovering how de- The literature of the Renaissance, both 55 cidedly they did so think of themselves — in and out of Italy, is four-fifths of it to the confusion of ' Art for Art's sake'), Latinistic — Virgilian, Ciceronian, Sene- they looked for their themes not in Homer, can, occasionally Horatian, very heavily or the tragedians, or the myths of Plato, G. LITERARY CRITICISM 267 but in Ovid, or Apuleius, or Philostratus, toli of Berni and his school on Figs, Beans, or Lucian. Raphael's frescoes in the Sausages, Bakers' Ovens, Hard-Boiled Farnesina got their Olympians not from Eggs, Chestnuts, Paint-Brushes, Bells, Hesiod but from Apuleius. Botticelli's Needles, Going Without Hats, and Lying ' Calunnia,' as Professor Mahaffy mentions 5 Late Abed. It is a far cry from this sort elsewhere, is derived from Lucian's de- of thing to Homer or to the Periclean age. scription of the Aia/3o\^ f Apelles. Man- Indeed, if by Greek we mean ' classic,' the tegna, Titian, Raphael, Giulio Romano, Renaissance was not Greek. Not until the and others deliberately retranslated into late eighteenth century, after the way had color and visual form the verbal descrip- 10 been cleared by those ' pedants,' German tions by Philostratus of paintings in a and other, to whom this work alludes so supposed picture-gallery. slightingly, was the true Renaissance of As for the Platonism of the Renais- classic Greek accomplished ; only then may sance, that too was composite, with its the modern world be said to have entered leaning toward pseudo-Dionysian hierar- 15 fully upon its Greek heritage. What the chies and toward elaborate theories of Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth love. It was the Platonism of Plotinus, centuries achieved was rather a Pan-Latin- rather, after the school of Alexandria ; for, istic revival, which attended especially to in spite of Ficino's translation, the Pla- the process of recasting and enriching the tonism of Athens was to them unknown 20 vernacular tongues, mostly by means of — or, when known, too purely Attic to be Latin or post-classical Greek models, into assimilated. There was, indeed, an echo vehicles of a modern Eloquentia that of pre-Socratic Greek thought in the ani- might rival the antique. Its degenerate mistic philosophies of southern Italy ; but models, together with its own taste in these Professor Mahaffy does not mention, 25 choosing them, made it not pure, repose- despite their influence upon Bacon by way ful, imaginative, but composite, unquiet, of Telesio and Campanella. fantastic, rhetorical, loquacious — all that In general, Renaissance taste is dis- is suggested when we say ' Alexandrian.' tinctly unclassical. It runs to digression and irrelevancy ; to inserted descriptions 30 m and episodes ; to huge verbosity. It rev- One cannot help feeling that Professor els in the ' word-paintings ' (e/c^pdcreis) Mahaffy's taste in these matters has been which were a specialty of the late sophists ' subdued to what it works in ' by his ex- and rhetoricians ; it never tires of their tensive studies of post-classical Greek, speechmaking. It favors whole bookfuls 35 This bias appears in the estimate of Aris- of orations invented as patterns of the kind totle's ' Poetics ' and the dicta about of thing that might be said upon a given Wordsworth, Tennyson, and others. The occasion by persons imaginary, mytholog- ' Poetics ' is treated as if it were merely a ical, or historical. These ^Soiroieiai and collection of judgments upon individual liberal bulk large in the Anthology, and re- 40 works in Greek literature : if these judg- appear in collections like ' Silvayn's Or- ments are erroneous, the work is a failure, ator ' — to mention, perhaps, the most fa- of course. It is not perceived, apparently, miliar name among many. The prose of that the ' Poetics ' is an exposition of basic the Renaissance, again, like late Greek principles, the principles of poetry and of prose, tends, without resistance, to the 45 art in general; and that, in its justifica- most exaggerated conceits and antitheses, tion of poetry as an imaginative embodi- each country in Europe developing its own ment of the universal (a view which particular brands of bad taste — Euphu- Plato, for all his poetry, completely ism, Gongorism, Marinism, and the rest missed), and in its promulgation of the — upon a common basis of Ciceronian and 50 law of unity, it laid sure foundations for late Greek rhetoric. In imitation, too, of the criticism of all time, and established the tours de force of degenerate Greek and an unassailable canon of classic or ideal Roman rhetoricians, the versifiers of the art. All this apart from the historical im- Renaissance often chose the most trivial portance of the ' Poetics ' misunderstood themes, and embellished them with all the 55 — apart from the pseudo-classic of the six- graces of double entendre. To match the teenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth cen- antique disquisitions Of Long Hair, and turies, apart from the controversies about In Praise of Baldness, we have the capi- ' imitation/ catharsis, and the ' three uni- 268 WRITING OF TODAY ties.' Of this really fundamental book Him, only him, the shield of Jove defends, _ Professor Mahaffy says (p. 62) : ' I know Whose means are fair and spotless as his of no poorer and more jejune exposition ends - of a great subject ' ; and on the next page Qr _ t0 take Wordsworth not on classical he cavalierly dismisses it upon the plea of 5 ground> and in a vein not sententious - lack of time. The same want of apprecia- ^ hat can be more Greek than those tion of the universal in Hellenism is re- tochthonous figures of the Leech-Gatherer, sponsible for some of the opinions here ex- and of Micha 6 el t the unfinished sh ' pressed upon the Greek in modern Eng- f i d ? lish poetry. Of the ' galaxy that illumined 10 the early nineteenth century,' Wordsworth ... 'T is believed by all is considered to be ' the least Greek ' (pp. That many and many a day he thither went, 56-7) ; and this because of his failure to And never lifted U P a single stone; distinguish prose diction from poetical and or this about Michael > s wife . because of the inordinate length of the 15 ' Excursion.' Keats, however, had caught Whose heart was in her house : two wheels the Greek spirit, though at second or third she had hand (p. 46); in Shelley, 'we have that O f antique form, this large for spinning perfect combination of romantic imagina- ™ w '„ , n , . r , . , . tion with Greek culture ' which makes him 20 That smaI1 for flax J and lf one whed had the greatest of this group (p. 56) ; and It W a S S because the other was at work J, lennyson is the most classical of our ' modern lyric poets' (p. 59). ■ — lines of which Homer would not need Read in view of the critic's Alexandrian to be ashamed. One might as well say bias and of the quotations which illustrate 25 that Millet's ' Sower ' is not Greek, or that his criticism, these dicta become plain. Lincoln's speech at Gettysburg is not Keats is Greek in being a master of iso- Greek — Greek as Simonides ! Finally lated sensuous images, chaste or volup- the Hellenism of Tennyson is here sup- tuous — not in virtue of his delicacy in posed to be shown by the ' Lotos Eaters ' selection or his passion for beauty ; cer- 30 and the Theocritean ' Come down, tainly not in virtue of that architectonic maid,' and that well-nigh intolerable piece which he never possessed. Shelley's of oxymoron and antithesis, 'clouds and sunsets ' and spirits and His honor rooted . j flower-bells and pavilions - the imagery And faith unfaithful k t him false f true of romanticism — are at the service of his 35 J revolt and of his love of Greece and lib- So much of Tennyson's work is Greek erty. What matter that Shelley hardly in a very pure sense that it seems a pity touched human experience, hardly touched to try to prove him Hellenic by what at the general life of man ? The case is still best can prove him only Alexandrian. clearer when we come to Wordsworth and 40 Tennyson. Of Wordsworth's purity and IV wisdom — of his universality, and of his While professing to deal with Hellenism ' plain and noble ' style — of all that makes in the modern world, the present volume him a true classic, a true Greek despite his gives much space to an examination of its recurrent prosiness — there is not a word ; 45 remote origins, under the various aspects though, of course, the specific Platonism in of race, poetry, prose, philosophy, and the Wordsworth's wonderful Ode (misquoted like. To us this seems irrelevant; what at p. 243) is recognized. But what of we ought to be concerned with here is is- 'Laodameia'? — sues, not origins. We have already ad- 50 verted, perhaps more than enough, to the . . . For the gods approve treatment of the Greek decadence as if The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul. that were the essentially Greek. Both „n , j; about everything else than he does; but I 11 < And the exact kt f between the actor tell you where he beats me and where he beats and ft dramat i s t? • he world. He don t care a damn for what Mr _ wnde looked . h ; the enemy does out of his sight, but it scares ^ pression wWch changed a , most immediately me like neu. int o a sniile> as he rep i} ed> • Usually a little 'Ulysses doesn't scare worth a damn,' strained.' was the verdict of a Wisconsin volunteer But surely you regard the actor as a cre- who saw him writing despatches amid a l 7^^J, l l " .. . A/r ,,,., , .„. . , , bursting shells. But physical courage was 5o p^^Slo^ %2&?5£&?£ the least of his endowments. He had inn- j-ibly creative ! ' nite patience, and could stand up before a storm of abuse and ignorant criticism, The interview is republished in the vol- which is difficult in a democratic country time called Decorative Art in America with no military caste and a volunteer 55 (Brentano's, 1906), and is still as fresh as army. His taste for liquor, manfully ever, after twenty years. I turned back to striven against, was wildly exaggerated by it the other day, after reading here and jealous rumor, and few commanders have there in two small blue volumes published G. LITERARY CRITICISM 273 in 1909, Speeches of William Jennings In reality all of them have the same age. Bryan, Revised and Arranged by Himself, They all taste of ' das Ewig-gestrige, das and wondering whether Mr. Bryan would Flache.' In 1904 Mr. Bryan gives ' the ever fall into the ideal interviewer's hands, reasons which lead me to believe that You, for example, could not interview Mr. 5 Christ has fully earned the right to be Bryan properly, nor could I. We should called The Prince of Peace/ and meditates feel both supercilious and intimidated, thus upon eggs : ' The egg is the most The man for the job is somebody who universal of foods and its use dates from could mediate fearlessly between the re- the beginning, but what is more mysteri- mote Bryan period and the present time. 10 ous than an egg? . . . We eat eggs, but Does such a man exist ? By accident I we cannot explain an egg.' From its con- have hit upon the right party — Hector text in a lecture on ' Man/ delivered at Malone. Of Hector his creator has writ- the Nebraska State University in 1905, and ten, in the stage directions to Man and also at Illinois College, I take this : ' Ask Superman, that ' the engaging freshness 15 the mother who holds in her arms her boy, of his personality and the dumbfounder- what her ideal is concerning him and she ing stateness of his culture make it ex- will tell you that she desires that his heart tremely difficult to decide whether he is may be so pure that it could be laid upon worth knowing; for whilst his company a pillow and not leave a stain; that his is undeniably pleasant and enlivening, 20 ambition may be so holy that it could be there is intellectually nothing new to be whispered in an angel's ear. . . .' got out of him.' You already perceive a If there is already too much supercili- certain affinity between Hector Malone ousness in the world such passages do and Mr. Bryan. Now for their unlike- harm. They do good if there is not super- ness : when Hector ' finds people chatter- 25 ciliousness enough. In either case they ing harmlessly about Anatole France and do good in their context. They and their Nietzsche, he devastates them with Mat- context have helped thousands upon thou- thew Arnold, the Autocrat of the Break- sands of Chautauquan early risers to be fast Table, and even Macaulay.' cheerful and industrious and unselfish and It is an affair of proportion. As Nietz- 30 kind. These speeches reveal an incom- sche and Anatole France are to Macaulay, parable mental unpreparedness to deal Matthew Arnold and the Autocrat, so, in with their grave subjects, with the resur- the scale of modernity, are these authors rection of the body, the atonement, mira- to those with whom Mr. Bryan does -his cles, inventions, evolution, faith, the soul, devastating. Mr. Bryan's culture would 35 the secret of life. With an easy, happy . seem about as dumbfounderingly stale to flow the make-believe thought comes out Hector Malone as Hector's does to a gen- in sincere and shallow sentences, which eration fed on Anatole and Nietzsche, make one respect Mr. Bryan's good inten- Hector is too modern and sophisticated to tions, and admire his sweetness and good quote Gray's Elegy, The Deserted Vil- 40 will. Thousands of good men and women lage, Tom Moore and William Cullen have grown better on this thin food. Bryant. He knows that people don't do Blessed are those who mean well, for they such things. But Mr. Bryan does them, shall be spared the labor of thought, and adds other incredibilities. Like Ten- _ It sounds patronizing, my attitude, and nyson's brook, Demosthenes has said, Rol- 45 it is. Although you and I can no more lin tells us, Muelbach relates an incident, write significantly of life or death than as Plutarch would say — here they are, Mr. Bryan can, yet we have a superficial and more of the same, in these two blue sophistication, we have acquired a sus- volumes. Looking backward, Mr. Bryan picion that twaddle exists and may be dis- quotes ' breathes there a man with soul 50 tinguished from its opposite. Therefore so dead ' and ' truth crushed to earth.' do we smile complacently, in our offensive Looking forward, he says that after Alex- way, when Mr. Bryan sets forth ' the rea- ander and Napoleon ' are fdrgotten, and sons which lead me to believe that Christ their achievements disappear in the cycle's .has fully earned the right to be called The sweep of years, children will still lisp the 55 Prince of Peace.' Little as we patronized name of Jefferson.' him in 1896, how can we help patronizing The earliest of these speeches and lee- Mr. Bryan now when we find him patron- tures is dated 1881 and the latest 1909. izing Christ? 274 WRITING OF TODAY Chronic good will, courage, a capacity gether O'Shea was rather jarring and for sudden formidableness, an early per- possessive, easily made jealous, insisting ception of important discontents, sympa- on visits, visitors and entertainments his thy with the unprivileged average — in wife disliked, with which he alternated this mixture, I suppose, we must seek the 5 periods of undependability and neglect, explanation of his hold upon his followers. His wife's impulsiveness and mettle he His size and importance were measured at did not understand, and before the entry the Baltimore convention in 1912, and of Parnell into their lives ' the wearing again in the following spring, when Presi- friction caused by our totally dissimilar dent Wilson, afraid to leave him outside 10 temperaments began to make us feel that and hostile, turned him into a third-rate close companionship was impossible, and secretary of state and a useful backer we mutually agreed that he should have of presidential legislation. One likes to rooms in London, visiting Eltham to see imagine him sitting in the state depart- myself and the children at week-ends.' ment, mellowed by his popularity, set free 15 Mrs. O'Shea's father was an English from old jealousies, showing an unex- clergyman, Sir John Page Wood. She pected capacity for team play, frock-coat- was the youngest of a family of thirteen, edly glad-handing and kind-wording a Brought up in a household where men like hundred callers a day, always glib and Trollope, the older Cunninghame Graham, sunny and sincere. Is he a shade more 20 John Morley came to visit, she spent a acquisitive than you 'd think to find such a great deal of her life with an august aunt very popular hero? Perhaps. Is he, for at a Georgian lodge in Eltham, to whom a man with exactly his reputation, a little George Meredith tised to come almost too smooth, too unrugged, too deficient in every week for a stipulated two hours of homely humor ? Why not ? In every 25 ' the classics and their discussion.' Mrs. reputation, however explicable, there is a O'Shea knew George Meredith well, and I residuum of mystery. ' What,' as Mr. dare say he, behind his badinage and ' ef- Bryan himself says, ' is more mysterious fectiveness,' knew that flashing spirit than an egg?' rather better. 30 In 1880 Willie O'Shea was urged to stand for an Irish constituency. ' I wrote IV back strongly encouraging him,' says Mrs. Parnell, ' for I knew it would give him PARNELL 1 occupation he liked and keep us apart — 35 and therefore good friends. Up to this F[RANCIS] H[ACKETT] time Willie had not met Mr. Parnell.' At this time Parnell was thirty-four INew Republic^ Decembe^ S.^M.^ By permission years of age The actual j eader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, he had already Married in her twentieth year or there- 40 broken away from the ' fine reasonable- abouts to a cornet in a sporting regiment, ness ' of Isaac Butt at which ' the English Katherine O'Shea had lived thirteen years parties smiled and patted the Irish in- with Willie O'Shea and borne him three dulgently on the head,' and he had initiated children before she met Charles Stewart his policy ' of uncompromising hostility to Parnell. Her relations with O'Shea had 45 all British parties and of unceasing oppo- long been unsatisfactory. Handsome, gay, sition to all their measures until the griev- sarcastic, self-assured, O'Shea was a ances of Ireland were redressed.' spoiled and rather dictatorial specimen of Because he disliked all social inter- the petty aristocracy. Already bankrupt course with Saxons, Mrs. O'Shea's at- through mismanagement of his racing 50 tempts to secure Parnell for her dinners stable, he spent a great deal of his time were repeatedly unsuccessful, but, a de- away from Mrs. O'Shea engaged in patch- termined lady, she eventually decided to ing up his fortunes, being absent as long deliver her invitation in person at the as eighteen months at a time on mining House. ' He came out, a tall, gaunt figure, ventures in Spain. When they were to- 55 thin and deadly pale. He looked straight 1 Charles Stewart Parnell, His Love Story and Po- at me smiling, and his curiously burning Meal Life- By Katherine O'Shea (Mrs Charles eyes looked into mine with a wondering Stewart Parnell). New York: George H. Doran :„t-_t_-„„ *i *. 4.1. ■ * i_ ,1. Company. mtentness that threw into my brain the G. LITERARY CRITICISM 275 sudden thought : " This man is won- they were not to be found.' But the inci- derful — and different." ' Mrs. O'Shea dent cemented the fate of O'Shea. ' From planned a theater party for his distraction, the date of this bitter quarrel Parnell and and ' he and I seemed naturally to fall I were one, without further scruple, with- into our places in the dark corner of the 5 out fear, and without remorse.' box. I had a feeling of complete sym- In 1881 Parnell was arrested for his pathy and companionship with him, as Land League activities, and was in Kil- though I had always known this strange, mainham at the will of Gladstone until unusual man with the thin face and the following May. It was a period of un- pinched nostrils, who sat by my side star- 10 remitting agony for Mrs. O'Shea, and for ing with curious intent gaze at the stage, him on her account. In February, 1882, and telling me in a low monotone of his she bore Parnell a daughter whom he saw American tour and of his broken health for the first and last time for a day in . . . and his eyes smiled into mine as he April. 'My little one's paternity was ut- broke off his theme and began to tell me 15 terly unsuspected by the O'Sheas.' of how he had met once more in America From that time till 1890, the year of the a lady to whom he had been practically divorce case, Parnell and Mrs. O'Shea engaged some years before.' lived their double life. A ' volcano capped A few months later, when Mrs. O'Shea with snow,' Parnell endured secrecy and was in great distress over the death of 20 deception, and she with him, for the sake Lucy Goldsmith, her lifelong friend and of the Home Rule bill. When the crash nurse, the tenor of Parnell's notes from came Mrs. O'Shea was afraid, but his Dublin revealed the truth. ' I cannot keep mind was clear. ' Put away all fear and myself away from you any longer, so shall regret for my public life. I have given, leave to-night for London.' They did not 25 and will give, Ireland what is in me to meet, but Mrs. O'Shea pictures the subse- give. That I have vowed to her, but my quent weeks. ' And my aunt would doze private life shall never belong to any coun- in her chair while I dropped the book I try, but one woman. There will be a had been reading to her and drifted into howl, but it will be the howling of hypo- unknown harmonies and color of life ... 30 crites ; not altogether, for some of these and I was conscious of sudden gusts of Irish fools are genuine in their belief that unrest and revolt against these leisured, forms and creeds can govern life and men.; peaceful days where the chiming of the perhaps they are right so far as they can . great clock in the hall was the only indi- experience life. But I am not as they, for cation of the flight of time.' 35 they are among the world's children. I ' In the autumn of 1880 Mr. Parnell am a man, and I have told these children came to stay with us at Eltham.' There what they want, and they clamor for it. he fell ill, brought near to death's door If they will let me, I will get it for them, by ' his exertions on behalf of the famine- But if they turn from me, my Queen, it stricken peasants of Ireland,' and Mrs. 40 matters not at all in the end. . . . You O'Shea nursed him back till he was nearly have stood to me for comfort and strength strong. Hovering over him as he slept, and my very life. I have never been able 'pulling the light rug better over him,' to feel in the least sorry for having come she recalls his murmur : ' Steer carefully into your life. It had to be, and the bad out of the harbor — there are breakers 45 times I have caused you and the stones ahead.' that have been flung and that will be flung Next year Captain O'Shea came to at you are all no matter, because to us Eltham without invitation, found Parnell's there is no one else in all the world that portmanteau there, sent it to London and matters at all — when you get to the bot- left declaring he would challenge Parnell 50 torn of things.' to a duel. The challenge was accepted Between O'Shea and Mrs. O'Shea there but ' Willie then thought he had been too were friendly relations till the end of hasty.' Parnell's real emotions seem to 1886. She induced Parnell to work for have centered on his portmanteau. ' My his parliamentary candidacy in 1886, and dear Mrs. O'Shea,' he wrote, ' will you 55 while O'Shea was willing to use Parnell kindly ask Captain O'Shea where he left to further his own necessities (he seems to my luggage? I inquired at both parcel have been a tool of Joseph Chamberlain) office, cloak room, and this hotel, and he hated and railed against the imperturb- 276 WRITING OF TODAY able Parnell. All during their intimacy, his own mean inadequacy, determined as Mrs. O'Shea acted as an intermediary be- he was to keep Mrs. O'Shea in bond, to tween Parnell and Gladstone in negoti- enforce a legal advantage that flattered ations which she vividly recounts. When- his vanity at the expense of everything ever Gladstone sought Parnell in an 5 generous, noble and free. He struggled, emergency he sent for him to Mrs. as small people always struggle, to keep O'Shea's house. The pious surprise of the springs of life from finding their level, Gladstone when the crash came was char- but they were too strong for him. After acteristic hypocrisy. many years' effort to reconcile herself to Mrs. O'Shea was married to Parnell in 10 insuperable limitations, Mrs. Parnell found June, 189 1. Worn out by his campaign an adequate, a complete, an immeasurable against his own former adherents, now appeal to every power and sympathy she under the dictation of Gladstone and the possessed. She answered that appeal he- priests, Parnell succumbed in October, roically, failing to conform with the writ- He died October sixth, less than four 15 ten law in order to conform with what months after his marriage, in his forty- may curtly be called the unwritten law of seventh year. her own and Parnell's being. Now a woman of nearly seventy, Mrs. When these volumes were published in Parnell has been induced to reveal her London, they were dismissed in twenty intimate life for the sake of Captain 20 lines by the British Weekly as an outrage O'Shea's child, her eldest son. That against decency, a ' glorification of adul- young man, whose psychology is not worth tery . . . the foulest treachery and vice.' discussing, is ' jealous for his father's It is quite in keeping with the Gladstone honor,' and it is ostensibly to prove that tradition and, indeed, with English right- Captain O'Shea was not a willing bene- 25 eousness in general, that this work, which ficiary of her relations with Parnell that the British Weekly ' would fain consign to these two volumes were written. The real oblivion,' is now offered to us in this coun- motive, however, is the deep human motive try by the agents of the British Weekly in of self-vindication. Mrs. Parnell loved America, one of the great men of his generation. 30 She loved him purely, passionately, con- s-umedly. Possessing the great treasure of his love in return, she has been unwilling v to die without rebutting all the slander, all the contumely, all the belittlement and 35 GEORGE MEREDITH reproach and vilification that were the price she paid for seeming to have cheated OLIVER ELTON Ireland of her uncrowned king. Writing rT . . . . . . , . iL T , ... , , ... , ° , ..«° [This is a recast of an article in the London these tWO volumes Without Scruple, With- Tribune of January 17, 1006, published in book out fear, and without remorse,' she has 40 feT a j on A S W J£ °T thel J essays in Modern, Studies . 1 , . 1 • 1 11 ,i r (kdward Arnold), London. 1007. By permission of brought to her aid all the resources of author and publisher.] imagination, keen intelligence, and vivid memory, and she has produced a work of l consummate significance and touching hu- 'Who really cares for what I say? manness. Defiant of convention, she has 45 The English people know nothing about given full reality for her reader to the me. There has always been something extraordinarily powerful and fascinating antipathetic between them and me. With personality to whom she dedicated her book after book it was always the same life. Exposing for this purpose much that outcry of censure and disapproval. The is painfully private and sacredly naive, 50 first time or two I minded it, then I de- dwelling on facts that belong, if anything termined to disregard what the people said belongs, to that inner life to which Par- altogether, and since then I have written nell asserted his right so implacably, she only to please myself. But even if you has, at this great cost, succeeded in assert- could tell the world all I think, no one ing the quality of their personal relation. 55 would listen.' It was true love, if ever love was true, and Mr. Meredith, who is reported thus to it honored human nature. If Captain have spoken some years ago, has notwith- O'Shea was ' deceived,' it was the fruit of standing won the only kind of fame for G. LITERARY CRITICISM 277 which he can be supposed to care. Not must face. To read him is like climbing, only has he received the Order of Merit, and calls for training and eyesight; but the last official imprimatur set by English there is always a view at the top, there society upon brains that are pronounced are the sunrise and the upper air. Nor is to be eminent and also harmless; he has 5 such a tax always paid him willingly by the honor paid him by all his fellow the better-trained, serious public of es- craftsmen, and by thousands of other per- caped and enlightened puritans, the sons. In such a case the good of fame is dwindled public of George Eliot. Nor has greater to those who proffer it than to he much in common with the novelists, the possibly weary winner of the fame. 10 English and other, of a later day. Mr. Meredith is now a kind of Field- For he, like Goethe, 'bids you hope,' Marshal of English letters. He is the while Tess of the D'Urbervilles and The man who has done most, and seen most Wings of the Dove do not. The move- service. To the general joy he is amongst ment of later fiction is towards pessimism, us and still upon the watch. His first 15 and its best makers, Guy de Maupassant, verses were printed in the year (1851) Gorky, D'Annunzio, agree in their want after Wordsworth's Prelude. His poetry of hopefulness if in nothing else. They is still being commented, proclaimed, and have been catching up and expressing in defended, it is alive and singing in our fiction ideas that found a nobler expres- ears. The Odes in Contribution to the a> sion, philosophical or lyrical, nearly a cen- Song of French History were collected in tury ago, in Schopenhauer and Leopardi. 1898. Last year (1906) saw his jubilee as The same discouragement lay at the base a novelist; for in 1856 appeared the Shav- of Tolstoy's thought, before he found his ing of Shagpat, which disclosed the costly peculiar salvation, and it still tinges his treasure-house of his fancy and the over- 25 fiction when he forgets his creed and re- running springs of his wit. The Ordeal members that he is an artist. The history of Richard Feverel came out in 1859, the of this pessimistic movement in fiction is same year as Adam Bede and The Origin still unwritten, and the movement itself is of Species; Lord Ormont and His Aminta, unexhausted. in 1894. Some thirteen novels, besides 30 But the groundwork of Mr. Meredith, short tales, criticisms, and poems, are the with his forward look, his belief in love fruit of those forty years. Mr. Meredith and courage, is different. It is stoical Wrought unweariably through the later day rather than pessimistic; and in that he of Dickens and Thackeray, through the resembles Zola, whose method — labori- day of George Eliot and the jaunty revul- 35 ous, serried, humorless — is the opposite sion against her, and now through the day of his. Mr. Meredith grew up on the high of Mr. Hardy and Mr. Henry James. He hopes fed by the revolutions of the mid- was neglected or patronized by many of century, and the most heroic figure in his the critics in the sixties and the early books is Mazzini, the ' Chief ' in Vittoria. seventies, and perhaps the habit of feeling 40 He has a moral and spiritual afflatus of induced by this treatment may linger in the nobler order, peculiarly and tradition- the words quoted above. The bigger ally English, in that line of the great Eng- reading public, the masses of the English lish prophets which comes down from community overseas, no doubt are still Langland and Sir Thomas More to Car- recalcitrant. Mr. Meredith has never 45 lyle. His creed does not depend, visibly, struck home to them, as Dickens struck on formal doctrine for its force, but home with his splendid humanity, his un- neither does it rest on any preoccupying certain art and moderate education, and enmity towards doctrine. His inspiration his true wealth of genial and farcical type, plays in various moods — strenuous, Some, too, of those devoted to Thack- 50 ethereal, ironical — rarely serene, over his eray's vast and populous canvas, to his vision of ' certain nobler races, now dimly occasional classic sureness, and constant imagined'; and casts a new interpreting elegance of speech (amidst much that is light, above all, on the rarer forms of love merely journalistic fiction), and to his and patriotism and friendship. .Yet there half-dozen scenes of vehement human 55 are none of the airs of the prophet, for drama, may have shivered at the refresh- the media preferred by Mr. Meredith in ing east wind and shrunk from the moun- his prose are wit and aphorism, situa- tain sickness that the reader of Meredith tion and portraiture, and to these the lyri- 278 WRITING OF TODAY cal and didactic elements are subordi- gentlemen proved such by trial of circum- nate. stance, like Evan Harrington, the tailor's son. There are, further, the retainers, 11 butlers, intelligent handmaids, sporting Mr. Meredith has run a course of his 5 coves, and prize-fighters like that admir- own, and has owed little to any man of able light-weight Skepsey, the servant of his own craft. It may be guessed, indeed, Natalie Radnor. There are the ladies of that the author of Harry Richmond had clouded, fame, who serve the unauthor- before him in CopperAeld the example of ized amusements of gentlemen, and who a new, humorous, natural, and beautiful 10 are somewhat unreal, though tragically- form of autobiographic fiction. And conceived, characters. Mr. Meredith, by Thomas Love Peacock, to whom Mr. choosing within this province an immeas- Meredith's first book was inscribed, may urably higher range of interest and pas- have lent a happy turn to his generous sion than the accurate patient Trollope, and repeated and witty praise of wine, 15 has added a new stratum of semi-bar- and have supplied some hint for those barian territory to English fiction, country-house gatherings of humorists and It may be called the Empire-making fantasts of which a specimen is found so stratum, and the profound feeling for the late as 1890 in One of Our Conquerors, work and future of our race that throbs In such a gathering the inmates and 20 through Mr. Meredith's writings provides visitors are endowed with a surprising him with an outlet into a freer air. He point, wit, and agility of soul in their is, I have said, a liberal idealist, whose tongue-combats. But Peacock's humorists hopes are rooted in the tenacious, the Nor- all come from London, or from the void, man, the constructive aspirations of the for the week-end, and go back on the Mon- 25 Englishman. And his faith is strength- day. These are minor debts, and Mr. ened by his outlook upon the European Meredith stands apart from all the recog- stir for freedom, which carries him be- nized groups of schools of English novel- yond the political creed of the class he ists. For his true and chosen background portrays. A rare reconciliation of ideals, is the real, feudal, Tory, country world 30 that may perhaps hereafter be noted as of old Victorian England, with its in- prophetic ! In Vittoria he finds a subject eradicable shades of caste-feeling, its sur- that is free from any of the limitations face gallantry, its reluctance to think, its imposed by irony. Music and freedom, vigor of physique and its excellent man- the freedom of Italy and its signal, the ners. It is not likely that such a world, 35 singing of the heroine in La Scala, are its which is still alive and long will be, should animating powers. The compass of his trouble much about its own countenance gifts, both as an epical narrator and a as reflected in the ' steel glass ' of the painter of noble character, are best seen novelist. His favorite characters are the in the pair of stories that take us from bravest and fairest that such a society can 40 the humors of the English lawn to the breed, or at least cannot prevent from struggle of Italian liberation. In Emilia being bred, in its midst ; and his frequent in England, otherwise Sandra Belloni, and subject is the struggle of these favorites in Emilia in Italy, otherwise Vittoria (all to rise above the spiritual and mental level three being names for one woman), he of their world. Many of his personages 45 has described, as no English writer ever are real gentry, rooted in their estates, yet, a true artist-soul, with a patriot soul persons of the upper untitled or the lower behind it of equal stature. The com- titled classes, or else in some defined social panion-book is Mr. Swinburne's Songs be- relationship to these — great dames, young fore Sunrise, for the spirit of Mazzini soldiers, eldest sons of the land, naval 50 breathes in both. And in other stories commanders, scholars of the strenuous or Mr. Meredith has found an air freer than the portly type, parsons of good estima- that of England. There are bright and tion, usually ponderous, and the babbling keen glimpses of France in Beauchamp's society mob. In natural connection with Career and in the gracious Renee de these are the tenants, oaken old yeomen 55 Rouaillout. The study of Lassalle and or farmers, Fleming or Blaize, often the Helene de Racowitza, made from the au- fathers of fair daughters, who rise by thorities, in The Tragic Comedians, does natural selection, like Lucy Feverel ; or not fully reach the high-strung purpose of G. LITERARY CRITICISM 279 the writer, in spite of the elemental or ward trial. But he has, more than once, tidal energy of Alvan-Lassalle. But Alvan his Hermiones as well as his Perditas, is a relief after the manly, self-restrained, figures of the ' sanctissima coniux,' Sep- pattern Englishmen commonly invented by tember faces, thrown into contrast with Mr. Meredith in order to find some one 5 those fresher ones without loss of charm, worthy of his heroines. The friendship of Diana of the Crossways and her ' Tony ' is an instance. One of 111 Our Conquerors essays the hardest and He seems to have ' reversed the order nicest problem in Mr. Meredith's later of Paradise,' and to have created his 10 books, as Rhoda Fleming does among the women first, and so to have had less clay earlier. It is a demonstration of the mys- at disposal for fashioning their mates, tery of pain in the hearts of a mother and Renee, Emilia, Carinthia, Lucy, with their a daughter. The mother dreads the dis- musical names — in their talk, and his talk closure, which the daughter has to face, about them, his style is at its purest and 15 of their socially unauthorized position, clearest, and the colors of the portraits The girl is illegitimate, owing to a foolish are unfading. Women are nearer to na- marriage made by her father long ago. ture than men, and the power to paint Words are found for her discovery of the them can only come straight from the circumstance ; for this is required the breast of nature — from experience lived 20 delicacy of the great masters. The through and transmuted into artistic form, mother dies, the girl becomes a magnifi- Indeed, the business of 'reading the fe- cent spirit, a sworn defender of the un- male heart' has not often been practised fortunate among her own sex, and her in English prose without a dispiriting ef- own happiness is at last assured, a hand- feet. The tradition of unreality is old and 25 some and chivalrous hero being provided obstinate. It runs far back into the Renais- for her with some surface failings that sance romance, like Sidney's Arcadia — make him possible. where, indeed, there is one tragic feminine But for such work Mr. Meredith has figure, the queen Gynecia; and to the had to invent his own dialect. He sets long-winded books in French and English 30 himself, continually, to realize motives consumed by our seventeenth-century an- that have their life only in the ante- cestresses. But those old romances were chambers of consciousness, and sensations apt to be made either by courtly, artificial that fade in the effort to give them words, men or by spinsters without any profitable Here he forswears whim and witty fancy ;' experience of humanity. One of these 35 in the best passages, all is attention and spinsters, Samuel Richardson, succeeded grave precision. The bending of English once, despite his fussy morals and clammy prose to this finer purpose is one of Mr. rhetoric. The laborious knife of George Meredith's substantial glories. Undiscov- Eliot sometimes bites deep. But a man, if ered forces of vanity, of self-protection only he is great enough and can rise above 40 that is sure of its danger but not of its the natural barrier (' La haine entre les reasons, of self-regard and self-distrust, deux sexes,' says Joubert, ' ne s'eteint find their calculus. He is taxed with guere'), is the best and kindest painter of obscurity, but he is as lucid a writer, in women and of their ailments of the soul, this province, as the nature of the subject and the best describer of them. Or so 45 permits. He moves as safely in the dark the event seems to have proved. This is as Dostoieffsky, the great specialist; and not a reflection upon women; for, after though, unlike him, he is sometimes ham- all, it is better to belong to the class that pered by the satiric aim, and is less con- is pictured than to the class that paints tent to let the nakedness of our nature pictures. 50 plead for itself, he is also free from the Balzac and Mr. Meredith, diverse in wildness and mirage and crazy touch that almost all ways, have both left behind prove refracting elements in Crime and them a portrait gallery of actual and liv- Punishment or The Idiot. In the scien- ing women. Balzac excels with older, tific dissection of motive, filament by fila- harder, and stranger natures. The Eng- 55 ment, Mr. Henry James ranks beside him, lishman, more of a poet at the heart, pre- and in the power to realize deep-plotting, fers to celebrate youth and beauty that ambiguous natures, may be his superior, are victorious after long inward and out- just as his hold on beauty of style is more 28o WRITING OF TODAY certain and steady. But the characters of for his name enduring. In his dramatic^ Mr. Meredith are fuller than any other ironic way, he is one of the masters of .novelist's of strong, natural vitality; they the spiritual life: — not the life of the fight, and swim, and wander in scented lonely mystic or thinker (for such persons forests, and wipe the sweat from their 5 do not figure in his books as they do in brows, and intercept mad dogs, and make Balzac's) but the life of men and women love in their youth beneath the wild in contact, snared by instinct or egoism, cherry-blossom, and give their lives to but capable of emerging with made souls, save some ' little mudlarking waif,' like marked and scarred but ready to begin Beauchamp; and his words accordingly 10 afresh. Historically, this kind of special ring and rush as the blood runs faster, power leaves him somewhat solitary Out of this kind of strength comes the amongst English novelists, power that, lies behind the finer, tenderer passages that interpret obscure matters of IV the heart. The intellect remains the mas- 15 There is, however, no monotony of ter while threading the mazes of unuttered tragic note. Mr. Meredith's chosen weap- painful feeling. In the episode already on is comedy, and his discourse On the mentioned, Natalie, the nominal wife, who Idea of Comedy, given in 1877 at the is caught in the birdlime of false social middle of his career, throws a backward position, asks a friend for the counsel 20 and forward light upon his artistic prac- which yet she fears to receive. tice. It is a classic piece of criticism, ' She bowed to her chastisement. One written by a fellow of Ha^litt, with the motive in her consultation with him came advantages that the craftsman, like Dry- of the knowledge of his capacity to inflict den in the Discourse of Satire, is speak- it and honesty in the act, and a thirst she 25 ing of his own craft ; and that, like Dry- had to hear the truth loud-tongued from den, he has ample reading and scholarship him : together with a feeling that he was as well as the memory of his own creative excessive and satiric, not to be read by processes. As we read, we feel that since the letter of his words: and in conse- Goldsmith the higher comic spirit, as dis- quence, she could bear the lash from him, 3otinct from that of farce or irony, has fled and tell her soul that he overdid it, and from the stage to the novel. Mr. Mere- have an unjustly-treated self to cherish, dith is not popular, because he is full of But in very truth she was a woman who the comic spirit as he conceives it. It is loved to hear the truth ; she was formed not the high and bare cynicism of Con- to love the truth her position reduced 35 greve, the emperor of phrasing. It is dis- her to violate; she esteemed the hearing tinguished from farcical humor by its dif- of it as medical to her; she selected for ferent treatment of the victim, counselor him who would apply it : so far ' If you laugh all around him, tumble she went on the straight way : and the him, roll him about, deal him a smack and desire for a sustaining deception from the 40 drop a tear on him, own his likeness to mouth of a trustworthy man set her hang- you and yours to your neighbor, spare ing on his utterances with an anxious hope him as little as you shun, pity him as much of the reverse of what was to* come and as you expose, it is the spirit of Humor what she herself apprehended; such as that is moving you.' checked her pulses and iced her feet and 45 But even this is not the whole of the fingers.' comic spirit. Lessing had said that ' Com- Mr. Meredith's analysis, in serious ro- edy is laughter, not derision ' ; and deri- fhance, is nearly always moral analysis; sion with a moral purpose is still further it is concerned with complex refinements off from comedy than farce. Even irony of the profounder pieties and veracities. 50 is only part of its essence. He is always testing human nature with ' If instead of falling foul of the ridic- his finger, like a glass, to see if it rings ulous person with a satiric rod, to make clear and right. Or rather, to read him, him writhe and shriek aloud, you prefer before the heart is hardened, is like going to sting him under a semi-caress, by which to the dentist, who does" not spare to touch 55 he shall in his anguish be rendered doubt- the nerve. This is another reason for his ful whether indeed anything has hurt him, incomplete popularity; but, inasmuch as you are an engine of Irony.' his science is genuine, it is also a reason In the view of Mr. Meredith the comic G. LITERARY CRITICISM 281 spirit, as distinct from inferior or allied reason — and banished, if at all, by the forms of humor, cannot flourish except in warmth of authentic love. Evan Har- a disinfected society where manners are rington is a second Book of Snobs, the highly trained. Like most honest readers, air being some hundred feet higher of he finds the Restoration and Revolution 5 social elevation, and the scene being laid Jijfpomedy, which records quite another so- amidst the classes where the sense of rank ciety, generally dead and tiresome, pre- and caste, at the era depicted in the book, supposing as it does an audience not a is Chinese in its strictness. It is the light- little inhuman. The flowering of the est and blithest of Mr. Meredith's English comic spirit is bound up, he insists, with 10 tales, and in it his tragic force is sleeping, the due position and honorable estate of while his heroic force is at play. The women. Where they are the cheap butts, Egoist, with its more intricate and mature rather than the arbiters and voices of the subject, is now long established in all our comic spirit, there is no hope for it. affections, and answers best to the au- ' Now, comedy is the fountain of good 15 thor's own ' idea ' of the comic spirit, sense, not the less perfectly sound on ac- Here he writes intoxicated with his own count of the sparkle; and comedy lifts wit, in the way that' is so rare in English- women to a station offering them free men. He is like some irresistible ex- play for their wit, as they usually show ecutant, unafraid of the most discordant it, when they have it, on the side of good 20 or fantastic witch-dance of words, and yet sense. The higher the comedy, the more striking continually into impeccable ex- prominent the part they enjoy in it. . . . pression. The same relish is felt in all Celimene is undisputed mistress of the at- his later books, but never for so long, tribute (of common sense) in the Mis- anthrope, wiser as a woman than Alceste 25 v as a man. In Congreve's Way of the Though no one speaks less from a chair World Millamant overshadows Mirabel, or pulpit, Mr. Meredith stands to be the sprightliest male figure of English judged as a teacher and prophet. He is comedy.' not content to be an observer. Comedy It may be replied that Alceste, with his 30 and morality are in history old and law- passion for Celimene conflicting with his fully wedded lovers. If we cannot have passion for sincerity, is the higher of the the perfectly free poetical life of Arden, two ; but in respect of pure wit he is then give us that L'Ecole des Femmes or doubtless the smaller. It may also be The Egoist. In The Amazing Marriage, added that Mr. Meredith's women are not 35 in One of Our Conquerors, and, every- often witty, or that when they are their where, the pleasure of the educator is ap- wit is strained. But good sense, barbed parent. The characters are plunged into with disconcerting smiles, they have in trial, they are beaten and tempered and supreme measure. We can best under- annealed, partly by ridicule, partly by their stand Mr. Meredith's idea of the comic 4° own passion ; and this is done in the name spirit from the malady which it is in- of Nature, to see how they will stand the tended to show up and, if possible, to cure, shock. Mr. Meredith's ethic is best ap- That is ' sentimentalism ' ; and by the term plied in his prose and best expounded in is understood, not the simple movements his verse, though his verse comes, far less of the heart in simple persons, with their 45 often than his prose, to Tightness of form, untrained expression, but the impulses of He has his own divinity, pagan by name, vanity or selfish craving, masquerading as Where other writers appeal to God or to those of the heart and uttering phrases too Humanity, he speaks, somewhat insist- big for the occasion or false to it. Senti- ently, of the Earth ; and the Earth is not mentalism implies the absence both of 50 the malign stepmother of pessimistic clear reason, and also of the one other theory, but a stern genial mother, if at thing, besides religion and country, that times something of a governess. In Mr. the comic .spirit respects, simple and G. M. Trevelyan's clear exposition of The healthy passion. Evan Harrington and Poetry and Philosophy of George Mere- The Egoist are built upon this conception 55 dith,_ there is heard a welcome note of of a vanity which is the target of thought- caution : ful glancing ridicule, and which is at last ' Some may think that the value of the exposed, if not cured, by the daylight of lessons he would enforce is not much en- 282 WRITING OF TODAY hanced by the alleged sanction of Earth, criticism that trained its readers to lose They may think that it is really much the the instinct for literary power, and it is same as the more usual formula of the now nearly dead. No doubt there was, at sanction of Heaven, and that it has first sight, colorable matter for reproach, equally much or equally little weight.' 5 In every book by Mr. Meredith, from The Earth, however, is less a ' sanction ' Shaving of Shagpat to The Amazing than an emotional symbol of Nature, and Marriage, the outline of the figures and its incessant recurrence does more harm even of the events is more or less veiled to Mr. Meredith's art than to his thinking, under a sparkling mist or spray of com- Earth lends us our bodies, our fund of 10 mentary, an emanation of bewildering power, and our capital of instinct, which light. may be turned to uses fruitful or sterile. Self-suppression does not enter into Our life is the adjustment and realization such a method, as it does into that of of the forces that Earth has given us. It Flaubert, and there is as much choric in- is love, rightly understood, that tasks and 15 terlude as drama. There is a heady, sub- rewards our power of directing those tie element, which beguiles and dislodges forces. Such love helps us, in its better the reader, and dazes him with myriads forms, to the vision of those ' nobler races/ of epigrams. The epigrams of Mr. Mere- for out of love they must be begotten, dith might be fairly divided into those The creed is not unlike Carlyle's in its 20 which leave a headache behind them and courage, but it is more possible, less sav- those that do not. So great a rapidity of age, and less solitary. There is to be no comment does not make for proportion tampering with the intellect by soothing and composition. But take the story, and illusions; 'we must do,' as George Eliot strip it, at whatever momentary sacrifice, said, ' without opium.' The volume called 25 of all but the actual narrative and dia- A Reading of Earth, and the poem therein logue, keeping also the passages that ex- called A Faith On Trial, give us Mr. pressly describe motive and sensation, but Meredith's religion. Whatever the power leaving out the chorus of aphorisms, and or complexion of the enemy, whether it the test will be nobly met. We can then be ignorance, or languor, or bereavement, 30 go back again and put in as much of the or self-deception, he is always in the atti- rainbow as we will. tude of the challenger ; like Ivanhoe, who The difficulty of style is felt most keenly rode up the lists, and in token of mortal in Mr. Meredith's poetry. There, in its combat touched the shield with the sharp most restless form, is the swift intellect, end of his spear, despite the well-meant 35 working for the writer's cherished ethical hints of ' some of the lower classes.' or spiritual ideas, and working through a torrent of images, sometimes turbid, and VI sometimes abstrusely delicate, but huddling Soon or late has to be faced the hin- on one another as fast as in the dying drance of Mr. Meredith's verbal strange- 40 speech of Romeo. As Lamb said of ness, which is still supposed to warrant Shakespeare, ' before one idea has burst its or explain his slow acceptance by the shell, another is hatched and clamorous for public. The robust older critics, who disclosure.' But the poetry also often suf- were still flourishing when he began to fers (the prose less, because prose will write fifty years ago made much, it is said, 45 bear more of such vagrancy than poetry, of this hindrance. But they did not try and yet remain true to the law of its art) to understand. Their idea was to decree because the intellect, so far from being rewards and punishments to an artist — content to let the sensuous matter clear so many stripes of the cat on the shoulders itself and rely on itself, as Keats in balanced by so many of good conduct on 50 his finest passages is content to do, is the sleeve. The author, if not a criminal, always interposing and. enlisting that ma- who had to come up for punishment, was terial in the service of the ' criticism of a kind of ticket-of-leave man who must life.' Many are the verses where the report himself under suspicion. And if issue is doubtful, or rather not doubtful; the sentence was capital, the executioner 55 where the night-long wrestle with words wore a mask of blue or buff, according to is continued from sheer courage rather the complexion of the journal that shel- than in the hope of possibility of victory, tered his anonymity. It was the kind of Many, again, for instance in Modern G. LITERARY CRITICISM 283 love, are those where the result is im- peccable and the sense of strain is lost. VI More seldom are the imagery and the music all-sufficient to one another, in a JOHN SYNGE 1 kind of Goethe-like repose, as here : 5 F STUART P. SHERMAN The pine-tree drops its dead ; They are quiet, as under the sea. lEvening Post, New York, January n, 1913. Overhead, overhead, By Passion.] Rushes life in a race, I0 j hn Synge was so skilful in eluding As the clouds the clouds chase: biographers that he was dead before it Md we dr'op like the fruits of the tree, Y^JT^F^J? ft TT*? ft Even we ^ e ^ad exls *ed. Withm the last year or Even so.' two he has become one of the most con- isspicuous figures in the literary world. But commonly, in Mr. Meredith's verses, Yet current discussion has proceeded for imagination is at war with and outraces the most part in ignorance of the facts its own power of expression, and thus is f his life and has confined itself mainly too frequently defeated, though its tri- to one or two of the plays. Even among umphs are not rare, and would, if selected aothe better informed there still remain the and arrayed together, form a ' golden widest differences of opinion regarding treasury' large enough. But, as with his character, his relation to the so-called some older poets like George Chapman, Irish Renaissance, and his appropriate words, lines, and passages, which are in- niche in the temple of fame. And in con- formed with lofty and gracious ideas, are 25 sequence of various non-literary forces, so variably cast that the innermost soul the division has been rather partizan -of poetry must alternately repudiate and than critical. It is darkly hinted in one welcome them. quarter that he owes everything to the In the novels the proportion is differ- French decadents. On the other hand, ent ; the pages that go quite amiss and 30 Mr. Yeats would have us believe that his do violence to the writer's own ideals of work came straight from the heart of form are relatively fewer. The diction Erin. On the one hand it is argued that, of Mr. Meredith in his prose is, for long he is only a clever craftsman. But Mr. spaces, pure, chosen, and simple. The Howe holds that he stands by his abso- oddness is produced by slight dislocations 35 ] u te achievement only a little lower than of historic English, an unusual order Shakespeare. ' If he had lived,' says Mr. of words, a curious disposal of particles Howe, ' he could not but have added to and abstract nouns, which in cumulation the number of his plays; and yet in the give a superficial effect of freakishness. s i x plays he has left us, what that is es- As so often with Latin or Italian, the de- 40 sential in life has he failed to include"? ' cipherer finds himself gazing at a sentence fhi s [ s the question one asks of the su- made up of common words without get- preme geniuses; this is the question one ting to their sense. The subject may be as k s of Shakespeare. commended to some young Germanized With the collected works of Synge now American for a golden or leaden disserta- 45 before us and with eager advocates and tion. There is, indeed, no reason why a jealous disparagers on each side of us, it classic author should not be treated by the mav he worth while to inquire in an en- usual methods of scholarship, if they are tirely dispassionate way what manner of applied with tact, as Mr. Trevelyan ap- ma n this was. plies them. This is only a sign of re- 50 i i_- t. a _ i» m,„™„„ «- +^ lThe Works of John M. Synge. Boston: J. W. spect, which we offer to Chapman or to Luce & Co 4 v j, ls _ Donne. But it may be well to have the The Cutting of an Agate. By William Butler e tt:„1j:»,~ „, „„ !,.(„,„ Yeats. ?Jew York: The Macmillan Co. In this are transpicuous page Of Yielding Open betore gathe red up Mr. Yeats's principal articles on Synge; US, that we may keep Our heads while we also articles on Lady Gregory, John Shaw-Taylor, Study the heir of his noble art. 55 §££». "d miscellaneous thoughts on poetry and /. M. Synge; A Critical Study. By P. P. Howe. New York: Mitchell Kennerley. 284 WRITING OF TODAY France. There is no necessary conflict be- 1 tween these two reports, but there is a Synge was for a considerable portion noticeable difference of emphasis. Be- of his life practically as well as theoret- tween Synge and Racine I should never ically a tramp. We know that he was 5 attempt to establish any affinity. But be- born at Rathfarnham, near Dublin, in tween Anatole France and Synge? — that 1871, and that he passed through Trinity is quite another matter. For the discreet College. Then the door is almost closed discoverer of the new poet admits that he upon his occupations till 1898-9, when he found Synge ' full of that kind of mor- was called from abroad to take part in 10 bidity that has its root in too much brood- the new movement in Ireland. Yet we ing over methods of expression, and ways are permitted to catch one significant of looking upon life which come, not out glimpse of a poverty-stricken, silent, of life, but out of literature.' Was that rather morose young man in ill health, Mr. Yeats's covert way of confessing that who has left his native land and is ap- 15 Synge was steeped in Anatole France? parently seeking to escape from his mem- This, at any rate, can be established: ories in aimless wanderings among alien Synge's point of view in comedy is iden- people and alien modes of thought. His tical with that of Anatole France. De- first wayfaring was in Germany, where spite the Frenchman's vastly greater range Heine was perhaps the will-o'-the-wisp to 20 of culture, the two men are absolutely at his feet, but all roads lead the literary one in their aloof, pyrrhonic irony and vagabond ultimately to Paris, and when their homeless laughter — the laughter of he had made his pilgrimages, he brought men who have wandered all the highways up in the Latin Quarter. ' Before I met of the world and have found no abiding him,' says Mr. Yeats, ' he had wandered 25 city. over much of Europe, listening to stories Mr. Yeats, who is crammed with con- in the Black Forest, making friends with victions and constitutionally incapable of servants and with poor people, and this understanding this desperate and smiting from an esthetic interest, for he had gath- skepticism — no one, I think, asserts that ered no statistics, had no money to give, 30 Synge acquired his humor from the Dub- and cared nothing for the wrongs of the lin singers — Mr. Yeats gives a puzzled poor, being content to pay for the pleas- account of Synge's ideas which uninten- ure of eye and ear with a tune upon the tionally confirms our conjecture. Synge fiddle.' had, he tells us, ' no obvious ideal ' ; he Synge's transformation from a tramp 35 seemed ' unfitted to think a political into an Irishman of letters his sponsors thought'; he looked on Catholic and represent to us as a kind of modern Protestant alike with amused indifference; miracle. But they can preserve this air all which comes down to us from educa- of mystery only by insisting that the re- tion, and all the earnest contentions of the turn to Ireland meant an abrupt break and 40 day excited his irony; 'so far as casual a fresh beginning rather than the natural eye could see,' he had ' little .personal evolution of his. career — only, in short, will.' This description of moral and voli- by maintaining that what is clearly illu- tional prostration would be applied with initiating is wholly irrelevant. Now about hardly an alteration to Anatole France. 1895 Synge installed himself in solitary 45 And it should help put to rest the legend lodgings in Paris and undertook to pre- of the joyous Synge, bounding over the pare himself to be a ' critic of French lit- hills with the glad, wild life of the un- erature from the French point of view.' spoiled barbarian. There are passages in At this point our authorities diverge, and the Aran Islands, to be sure, which re- Mr. Yeats executes a bit of skilful and 50 veal high nervous excitement induced by characteristic legerdemain. He lifts the conflict with the elements. But there are curtain in the garret of the Latin Quarter also clear indications of chronic weari- some four years later and discovers the nessand low vitality. In the grim humor author of two or three poor poems study- of his little narrative, Under Ether, there ing the works of Racine. George Moore, 55 is something more than a manly resolu- on the other hand, says explicitly that tion in the face of death; there is in it Synge was writing indifferent impression- the nonchalance of one who has long istic criticisms of Lemaitre and Anatole made death his familiar. G. LITERARY CRITICISM 285 May was sweet that year, and it was 11 pleasantly you 'd pass that day. '•Synge's verse is what we should ex- Then I'd leave my pleasant studies, and pect of a rather despondent young Bo- ™ e paper I had smudged with ink where hemian, unsure of himself, and seeking 5^ would , be ?P endln S the bette £ P" ° f f ** among other poets food and forms for his fcf h^s^I M tal 'the "sound "of melancholy. I wish to tarry for a mo- y0U r voice, or of your loom when your hands raent upon his small collection of poems moved quickly. It's then I would set store and translations, partly because, though of the quiet sky and the lanes and little little known, it is intrinsically interesting, 10 places, and the sea was far away in one place and partly because it reveals so clearly on and the high hills in another, a small scale the nature of his literary There is n0 tongue will tell till the judg- talent. The poems are due to the influ- ment what * feel ln m y self those times - ence of various masters — to Burns, Here are al j the peculiar marks of Wordsworth, Swinburne, and, notably, to 15 Synge himself — the irresistibly quaint that fascinating outlaw, Maistre Francms idiom) the drifting rhythm, the loose sen- Villon. In about one-third of them he tence structure, thought thrown out after sings of death, and in nearly all of them thought, as it were, without premeditation, there is a distinguishable echo of some and blossoming from phrase to phrase, the earlier singer. ^ 20 window opened upon a mist of vague and In the poem, To the Oaks of Glen- limitless emotion, the poignant and ador- cree, to take a single example, we notice aD i e Celtic wistfulness : while, as a matter how Maistre Villon helps him shape and f f acti these lines are a tolerably close round out the first pure impulse of lyric translation of the first half of Leopardi's exultation : 25 < Silva.' We are here in the presence of a My arms are round you, and I lean pure miracle of that style which is Synge's Against you, while the lark special creation, and which distinguishes .Sings over us, and golden lights and green him not merely from Leopardi, but also Shadows are on your bark. from all his Anglo-Irish contemporaries. There'll come a season when you'll stretch 30 with all its apparent spontaneity, his Blackboards to cover me; st le is as patie ntly and cunningly wretch Jer ° me P °° r bought out as the style of Walter Pater With worms eternally. —wrought of a scrupulously select vo- cabulary, idiom, and images, with an ex- The startling and paradoxical fact 35 acting ear controlling the cadence and about this collection is that the original shepherding the roving and dreamy poems constantly remind us of some one phrases. With the aid of this perfected else; the translations alone seem unmis- instrument he is able to appropriate and takably Synge's. The original poems sea l as his own poems from authors as have the merits of skilful literary lmita- 40 diverse as Petrarch and Walter von der tion. They might have been written, Vogelweide, Leopardi and Villon. This however, by Stevenson or Lang or by Mr. f ac t, taken together with his dependence Edmund Gosse, or by half a dozen other on the original poems, tends to justify a cultivators of old French verse. But search beneath the surface of his other neither Mr. Gosse nor Lang nor Steven- 45 wor k for alien forces secretly shaping his son could have written a line of the poem emotions and determining his forms, that follows: Are you bearing in mind that time when there was a fine look out of your eyes, and 50 The orthodox method of 'explaining' yourself, pleased and thoughtful, were go- Synge is to ignore the poems and trans- jng up the boundaries that are set to child- lations and point to the volume on the hood? That time the quiet rooms, and the Aran T s i an ds. This is the record, we are lanes about the house, would be noisy with t M f g , Ht salvation; here your songs that were never tired out; the „ ,• ' « 1 t t u a _ t LC , time you'd be sitting down with some work 55 lles } he ke y t0 , th ? dramas. In other that is right for women, and well pleased words, we are asked to believe that Mr. with the hazy coming times you were look- Yeats's theory of poetry has been de- ing out at in your own mind. monstrated. A stranded Irishman living 286 WRITING OF TODAY gloomily in Paris without ideal and almost customs of the Indians, to take a wife, without ideas is sent to a little group of but he did not live with her. A melan- lonely islands to the southwest of Galway, choly disposition drew him to the depths inhabited by stolid fisher-folk in a very of the forest; there he passed whole days backward state of culture. He spends 5 alone, and seemed a savage among the part of every year there — we pass over savages.' the fact that the other part is spent in The attitude, the point of view — that Paris — wearing the rawhide shoes of the is the question about this Irishman and natives, warming his blood with their fires his book on the Aran Islands. Que diable and their poteen, living in their kitchens, 10 allait-il faire dans cette galere? Now, hearing their legends, and sharing in their it is an essential error to imagine that noble primitive customs till the folk pas- when Synge passed from the Latin Quar- sion "streams through him and makes him ter to the Aran Islands he was returning a genius. If any one is skeptical, we point to his own people. He never desired to to the fact that something like the ' germ ' 15 return to his own people. He went to this of two or three of Synge's plays is actu- group of islands, and then to the most re- ally present here in the form of jottings mote and backward of them, because he on folk story and belief. Now, this is a wished to escape into a perfectly strange delightfully simple recipe for making a and virgin environment, genius. If this were the whole truth, one 20 The peculiar charm of the Aran Islands might agree without reservation with one and other books of its class consists not of the reviewers who declares that the in the identification of the narrator with Aran Islands is of ' vast importance as the life of the people whom he describes, throwing light on this curious develop- but rather in accentuating the contrast be- ment,' and who adds that it ' is like no 25 tween the sophisticated son of the cities other book we have ever read.' and the simple barbarian. It is the es- When I first read the Aran Islands, I thetic charm of looking upon illusions thought of that much-experienced vaga- through the eyes of the disillusioned. In. bond and subtle exploiter of exotic and the earlier examples of this genre the primitive cultures, Pierre Loti ; and I have 30 sense of the sundering gulf is emphasized learned recently with some satisfaction, by bringing the weary heir of all the ages from a foot-note in Mr. Howe's book, that into sentimental relations with a- ' noble ' ' Synge thought Pierre Loti " the best liv- female savage — an unspoiled daughter of ing writer of prose." ' And when I found the wilderness. But the sentiment now Synge comparing conditions in the Aran 35 smacks of the romanticism of the old Islands to a disadvantage with what he school. In the various books in which had seen in his rambles in Brittany, I Pierre Loti pictures his exotic amours, thought of Anatole le Braz and all his you may trace the declension of the lovely charming studies of the songs and super- and beloved barbarian into a mere tran- stitions and customs and characters of that 40 sitory symbol of the ' soul ' of the land other Celtic people. And then there in which she is found. In the Manage de drifted into my remembrance the pensive Loti, for example, there is still a breath face of another wanderer and exile, half- of strange passion for the poor Samoan Irish and half-Greek, known in the Orient girl, yet the lover comments as follows : as Koizumi Yakumo, and in the Western 45 ' In truth, we were children of two na- world as Lafcadio Hearn. As I turned tures, widely sundered and diverse, and once more the pages of his book on Japan the union of our souls could be only tran- and ran through the Life and Letters, sitory, incomplete, and troubled.' But in glancing at his Eastern costume and at the that most heartlessly beautiful book in almond eyes of his sons, I reflected that 50 contemporary literature, Madame Chrys- he, at any rate, had possessed the courage antheme, the breath of passion has given to realize the dreams of his favorite au- way to sheer nervous disgust. With the thor, Theophile Gautier, and the Oriental little yellow poupee, Loti has nothing in reveries of Victor Hugo. Finally, I common, not even an emotion. As he opened the book of Chateaubriand, great 55 takes pains to point out in the dedication father of them all, and read : ' When he to the Duchesse de Richelieu, though Ma- arrived among the Natchez, Rene had dame Chrysantheme seems to have the been obliged, in order to conform to the longest role, it is certain that the three G. LITERARY CRITICISM . 287 principal personages are : ' Moi, le Japon the cynicism of Villon, and which in the et I'Effet que ce pays m'a produit,' ' My- Aran Islands expanded under the influ- self, Japan, and the Effect which that ence of Loti, is again checked and con- country produces in me' — the bitter per- trolled by the irony of Anatole France, fume which a crushed chrysanthemum of 5 This is no doubt a bald and over-em- Nagasaki exhales for the nostrils of a dis- phatic way of putting the case, but it may illusioned Academician. serve to indicate the general modes in Essentially Synge was seeking the same which foreign forces determined his tal- thing — the perfume which the Aran Is- ent. Synge has been praised by many lands could yield to a disillusioned Irish- 10 critics on the ground that he has recon- Parisian. He, too, has transferred the ciled poetry. with life. In the sense that sentiment, which was formerly attached to he has broken through the old ' poetic the fair savage, to the land itself. Despite diction ' and invented a new poetic dia- his apparent solicitude for realistic detail, lect with a fresh savor of earth in it, it is the subjective soul of the islands that 15 this is doubtless true. But in a pro- he is striving to capture. His book, like founder sense it is nearer the truth to Loti's, is pieced together of short im- say that he has widened the rift that was pressionistic sketches which are related to between them. For the drift of all his one another only through the mood of the work is to emphasize the eternal hostility author. ' It is only in the intonation of a 20 between a harsh and repugnant world of few sentences, 5 he writes, * or some frag- facts controlled by law, and the inviting ment of melody that I catch the real spirit realm of a lawless imagination. In one of of the island, for in general the men sit the longest of his plays, The Well of the together and talk of the tides and fish, and Saints, this idea becomes perfectly explicit, of the price of kelp in Connemara.' The 25 Two blind beggars who have long pleased traditional lovely savage has here suffered themselves with thinking of each other's a further declension into a peasant girl beauty are, through a miracle, restored in her teens towards whom only a friendly to sight. But the vision of ' things as they attachment exists. Yet this girl, like her are' is so hideous that they fall into a famous predecessors, becomes the symbol 3oviolent hatred of each other. And they of what he has come to seek : ' At one are both so thankful when they go blind moment she is a simple peasant, at another again that they reject with scorn the holy she seems to be looking out at the world man's offer to repeat the miracle. This is with a sense of prehistoric disillusion and perhaps the most elaborate expression of to sum up in the expression of her gray- 35 an idea in all Synge's works, and one is blue eyes the whole external despondency not surprised to learn that four years be- of the clouds and sea.' And after he has fore The Well of the Saints there was per- talked to her of the ' men who live alone formed and printed in Paris a ' Chinese ' in Paris,' he notes that ' below the sym- play by M. George Clemenceau, called the pathy we feel there is still a chasm be- 40 Voile du Bonheur, which contains identi- tween us.' I do not wish to push this cally the same idea, and which, as Mr. parallelism farther than it goes. In the Howe concedes, it is ' perfectly probable ' Aran Islands- the Moi, as well as the that Synge knew. maiden, is subdued almost beyond com- For us The Well of the Saints- is sig- parison. But both men, like all the chil- 45 nificant only as illustrating with especial dren of Chateaubriand, avail themselves clearness that profound sense of disillu- of picturesque exotic scenes as a kind of sion which underlies all Synge's eccentric sounding chamber to enlarge and rever- comedies, and constitutes, as I have said, berate the lyric cry of their own weari- his point of contact with Anatole France, ness in civilized life and their loneliness 50 The most France-like comedy that he ever out of it. conceived was never written, but the scenario is reported to us by Mr. Yeats. Iv ' Two women, a Protestant and a Catholic, Synge's dramas are all sad, tragedies take refuge in a cave, and there quarrel and comedies alike, because they are all 55 about religion, abusing the Pope or Henry based upon a radical and hopeless disil- VIII, but in low voices, for the one fears lusion. In them the native lyrical impulse, to be ravished by the soldiers, the other which in the poems we found checked by, by the rebels. At last one woman goes 288 WRITING OF TODAY out because she would sooner any fate Edward O'Brien declares in the preface than such wicked company.' Now it is printed in the collective edition, this just this homeless elfishness of his mirth drama is set in the atmosphere of uni- that distinguishes Synge from Jonson and versal action ; it holds the ' timeless peace ' Moliere and Congreve, with whose names 5 that passeth all understanding. This were his has been so fearlessly coupled. In all vision, indeed. It is a noble phrase, this the classical comedy of the world one is ' timeless peace.' It connotes in my imag- made aware of the seat whence the laugh- ination the serene enduring forever of ing spirit sallies forth to scourge the vices victorious heroes and saints who have or sport with the follies and affectations 10 passed out of tribulation. It is not, at of men. When the play is over, some- any rate, an empty euphemism for an- thing has been accomplished towards the nihilation, but a state in which those of clarification of one's feelings and ideas; the living dwell who, like the Stoic em- after the comic catharsis, illusions dissolve peror, have caught a vision of the central and give way to a fresh vision of what 15 beauty and abiding harmony in all the is true and permanent and reasonable, works of God. It is the mood in which Synge's comedies end in a kind of iron- all high tragedy leaves us ; the still elation ical bewilderment. His, indeed, is outlaw into which we rise when blind GEdipus comedy with gipsy laughter coming from answers the call of the god ; the ' calm of somewhere in the shrubbery by the road- 20 mind, all passion spent' with which we side, pealing out against church and state, are dismissed by that superb last chorus and man and wife, and all the ordinances in ' Samson Agonistes,' beginning, of civil life. . „ . , , . , , It is not that many of the dramatis A " is best, though oft we doubt ■i , .. . .. j What the unsearchable dispose persona are vagrants, but that the dram- 25 Qf H; hest wisdom brin s P about atist himself is in secret heart a vagrant, and his inmost vision of felicity is a pur- Such, they tell us, is the atmosphere of poseless vagabondage. What are the pas- Riders to the Sea. It is like Lear, it is sages in these plays that all the critics like Greek tragedy; it is not, as they delight to quote, and that the playgoer 30 hasten with somewhat suspicious eager- carries home from the theater — frag- ness to say — it is not like Maeterlinck's ments of them — singing in his memory? Home or The Intruder. Synge certainly They are the passages in which some does differ from Maeterlinck in two strik- queen or beggar, touched with lyric ecs- ing respects. While the Belgian ' mystic ' tasy, expresses a longing to go roaming 35 deprives his persons of personality and down the open road or into the wilderness, locality and confers a kind of demonic You will find this gipsy call in every one personality upon death, the naturalistic of Synge's dramas except The Riders to Irishman steeps his lines in personality the Sea. Even to that piece built of the and the reek of the gray sky and the smell heroic stuff of the bards, Deirdre of the 40 of the sea, and he represents death, in Sorrows, he gives the same turn : here it is spite of the premonitions of Maurya, as a wondrously fair woman scorning a share only the old dark way of nature. But so in sovereignty and the high king of Ulster far as what the Germans call the ' inner to go salmon-spearing and vagabonding form ' is concerned, Synge gives us simply with the sons of Naisi. To this man in 45 an Irish transposition of Maeterlinck, whose vision of joy we are invited to par- Strictly speaking, Riders to the Sea is not ticipate, life presents itself in its comic a tragedy at all, because it is not a drama, aspects as a juxtaposition and irreconcil- It might with more propriety be called a able opposition of hideous realities and tragic idyl — a sombre picture, impressive hopeless dreams, dreams like the glens of 50 enough in its kind, with the fearful whis- Neifin in the dews of night, realities like pering of the young girls, whose necks Old Mahon in the potato field — ' He was a have not yet bowed beneath the ancient dirty man, God forgive him.' burden, and the gray broken old mother, What, then, shall we say of his trag- who looks before and after and has passed edy? Those who are sealed of the tribe 55 through all illusions, sitting there pa- of Synge speak high praise of The Riders tiently, passively, receiving the tidings of to the Sea, that picture of the drear old disaster. Protagonist in the proper sense woman who has lost all her sons. As Mr. of the word there is none ; no act of the ' G. LITERARY CRITICISM 289 will turning against destiny as a token of rately be described as a screen. What the human participation in that divine energy public knows about Bernard Shaw is either into which death resumes us all. It is this trivial or misleading. Thus the public turning of the will that makes just the knows that Bernard Shaw can read dia- difference between what is drama and smond type with his left eye at a distance what is not ; and between the mood with . of twenty-eight inches ; that he can hear which^ Samson in Gaza affects us when he a note the pitch of which does not exceed says, 'And I shall shortly be with them 30,000 vibrations per second; that, when that rest,' and the mood with which he sits down upon a chair, the "distance Maurya affects- us when she says, ' No iobetween the crown of his head and the man at all can be living forever, and we seat is 3 feet 1.8 inches. These things are must be satisfied.' It is the difference be- trivial. Or the public knows that Ber- tween Milton looking into the timeless nard Shaw is a very striking and provoc- peace and Synge looking into the noisome ative writer of plays, that he is also a grave. We heard him before crying aloud issocialist and a vegetarian; and these things under the golden lights of the oaks of are misleading. Glencree that in the end black boards That is why any satisfactory account of would cover him and he should lie with Bernard Shaw rendered to those who have worms eternally. Just that is the tragic allowed themselves to be deceived by com- vision and significance of The Riders to zomon fame must necessarily take the form the Sea. f a schedule of popular fallacies. Such a schedule will at any rate be found more VII useful, and certainly less hackneyed, than a personal 'interview' and description of GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 25 one who has been more often photo- , graphed and handled in the picturesque harlequin OR patriot? and f am iii ar way of the expert pressman than the most popular member of the JOHN PALMER British Cabinet. Perhaps, therefore, I , r . ., ,, , _ . . , 30 may regard myself as excused from accu- ICentury Mag^ne, March, W5 . By perrmss.cn.] r ^ y S sketd / ng the wicke t- ga te which The first fallacy is that Bernard Shaw leads to Bernard Shaw's private dwelling, is an immensely public person ; that he is or from telling the story of his velvet coat, a sort of twentieth-century Grand Mon- or from- recording the number of times he arch who, if manners allowed, would dine 35 has been met upon the top of an omnibus like Louis XIV in the presence of the (where he used virtually to live), or be- people and receive the press in his dress- traying what he writes to young people ing-gown. Now, it is true that Bernard in confidence about the nose of a cele- Shaw has been photographed by Alvin brated author. Langdort Coburn without a stitch ; that at 40 Intimate revelations of this kind do not one period of his career he almost lived take the public far. They do not seriously upon a public platform ; that he invariably disturb the inaccessible privacy which Ber- tells us the private history of each of his nard Shaw has always contrived to main- books and plays ; that, partly from a sense tain. The truth is that the authentic au- of fun, and partly from a determination 45 thor of Man and Superman has never that what he has seriously to say shall be really been interviewed; has never really heard, he talks and writes a good deal 'plucked me ope his doublet and offered about himself; and that he has allowed them his throat to cut ' to visitors who are Mr. Archibald Henderson to compile a likely to be hiding a kodak under their sort of concordance to his personality. So coat or to be surreptitiously fingering a Nevertheless, it is not true that Ber- note-book. Bernard Shaw of the inter- nard Shaw is an immensely public person, views and the funny stories is public Or perhaps I should put it this way: enough; but this Bernard Shaw is almost Bernard Shaw whom the public knows is entirely a legend. Before this legend gets not an authenic revelation of the ex- 55 as firm a hold upon New York as it has tremely private gentleman who lives in upon London, it may be well to number Adelphi Terrace. The Bernard Shaw some of the more striking fallacies of whom the public knows might more accu- which it is composed. There is only one 290 WRITING OF TODAY serious drawback to this method of ap- Bernard Shaw sets out under an unfortu- proach, and this drawback vanishes almost nate sense that the ground has already as soon as it is explained. Exploding pop- been covered; that the job has already ular fallacies is disagreeable work, and it been done brilliantly, thoroughly, and fi- usually gives to the sentences of the au- 5 nally. thor engaged upon it an air of quarreling The best essays on the work of Bernard violently with his readers and with his Shaw, the most impartial, authoritative, subject. and penetrating, are by Bernard Shaw Such is not the intention or mood of himself. The best stories about Bernard this present article. I have an immense 10 Shaw, whether they are the cruel, illumi- enthusiasm and liking for Bernard Shaw nating anecdotes which delight the envi- and for the greater part of most of what ous, or the flashes of resource and honesty Bernard Shaw has written. I claim, in- which are cherished by his friends and ad- deed, to admire Bernard Shaw for sounder mirers, are once again by Bernard Shaw and weightier reasons than have yet oc- 15 himself. Should you set out to extol or to curred to Bernard Shaw himself. These advertise Bernard Shaw, you know that reasons will be presented later in a post- this has already been done with incom- script of appreciation. When the worst parable energy and talent, and that it has fallacies regarding Bernard Shaw have been done by one who knows. Should you, been briefly described and contradicted (it*) on the other hand, set out to expose or would require a large volume to describe pull to tatters the reputation and char- and contradict them in detail), I shall be acter of Bernard Shaw, again you know in a better position to assert, briefly again, that you are the merest amateur compared wherein Bernard Shaw's genius truly con- with G. B. S. ; know also that, if you sists ; exactly how serious he is ; and, more 25 want to do the business effectively, and particularly, why he has just written a leave Bernard Shaw obviously for dead on pamphlet about the war, and why he ought the field of controversy, you will have to not to have done so. Meantime I hope call in G. B. S. to help you. It is possible that readers of this article will agree to to slay Bernard Shaw; but it is possible to digest the fallacies and to wait for the 3° slay him only in alliance with himself. It postscript; also to believe that my habitu- is a joke of the two hemispheres that Ber- ally indignant manner is simply the result nard Shaw better understands his merits of writing regularly about the British than any one else in the world. It is a theater. . finer joke, and not so threadworn, that he The first fallacy is already declared ; 35 better understands his limitations. Either namely, that Bernard Shaw is a public way, whether you are celebrating his gen- person. The second fallacy is that Ber- ius or asserting your position as the candid nard Shaw is an easy and profitable sub- friend, you are forced to acknowledge at ject to write about. He is not. It is true the last that your researches into Bernard that Bernard Shaw's interviews with the 40 Shaw are simply not in the same class press are the best interviews, and that he with his own either in intimacy (which is invariably galvanizes the dullest of his ap- surprising in an age when the press is preciators into liveliness. Pronounce the often more intimate with a man than his name of Bernard Shaw in almost any com- own tooth-brush) ; in detachment and ab- pany, and immediately every one perks up 45 sence of favor (which, again, is surpris- with an epigram or a paradox or an anec- ing, in an age when men of letters take dote. Bernard Shaw, like Falstaff, is not themselves very seriously) ; or in a se- only witty himself ; he is the occasion that verely just recognition of the subject's wit is in other men. merit (more surprising still in an age Nevertheless, Bernard Shaw is not a 50 when public men carefully cultivate a rep- good subject. It is not encouraging to utation for modesty), embark upon an enterprise with the sure knowledge that the thing has been done SHAW N0T AN original thinker before and better done. Bernard Shaw is The third fallacy is that Bernard Shaw not a good subject because he has already 55 is a profoundly original thinker and a been exhausted. There is not more than propagandist of absolutely new ideas. He one expert upon Bernard Shaw. Every has repeatedly told his readers and his one professionally required to write about friends that he is nothing of the kind. G. LITERARY CRITICISM 291 His biographer somewhere quotes him as 'side of G. B. S. as philosopher than the paying, ' I am an expert picker of men's man to whom this reputation is so per- brains, and I have been extremely for- sistently attached. Five years ago I came tunate in my friends.' Nor need we go to London burdened with the classic wis- to Bernard Shaw's biographer for this. 5 dom of an ancient university. I had read Bernard Shaw has spent half his life in some philosophy in one school and some telling the world the exact scientific truth economy in another. As a musician I had about himself, and of course the world has read Wagner for a venerable classic. As refused to believe him. It is hardly exag- the merest Philistine in connoisseurship, I geration to say that whenever Bernard 10 recognized in Rodin a great sculptor of Shaw tells people soberly and honestly ex- the last generation, as firmly established actly the sort of man he is, and exactly in immortality as Michelangelo, and I the kind of work he has done, they laugh saluted in the New English Art Club a heartily, and say that Bernard Shaw is a thoroughly respectable academy of paint- very funny and inventive person. Simi- 15 ing. As a playgoer destined . to succeed larly, whenever he ventures into fun and Max Beerbohm, who himself in remote fiction, his hearers insist upon taking him antiquity had succeeded G. B. S. on the as seriously as they would take a prophet. Saturday Review, I had become weary It follows that Bernard Shaw, who is a of Ibsen, and had begun to wonder why modest, conscientious, kindly, industrious, 20 Granville Barker seemed old enough to be and well-read man of letters, is commonly my uncle. Now, I do not regard myself regarded as a reckless firebrand who lives as being in the least in advance of my by the cart and the trumpet, is up to his time ; yet when I came to London I found neck in all that is lawless and improper, is that Bernard Shaw, who still preached without compassion or shame, speaks al- 25 Ibsen and Wagner, who spoke with Rodin ways in paradoxes, and claims to be as a contemporary, who preached a phi- greater than Shakespeare. Not fewer than losophy which was already introduced into fourteen years ago Bernard Shaw told the examination-papers at a place not sus- world that he was an elderly gentleman pected of modernism, who talked economy who had made "an immense reputation by 30 out of university text-books which it was being the best of a bad lot and by plagiar- a scholarly and pedantic exercise to con- izing the English classics. He really fute in the lecture-rooms of Oxford — meant what he said; but the preface in that this thoroughly safe, orthodox, and which he said it is still supposed to be the almost medieval Bernard Shaw was being locus classicus of his claim to supersede 35 received by the literary societies and the the author of Macbeth. Here, again, it press of London as an original and revolu- is impossible to say of Bernard Shaw any tionary thinker. I then began to under- true thing he has not already said of him- stand why Bernard Shaw has very little self. He has repeatedly urged his critics respect for some of his contemporaries, and followers to reject utterly the legend 40 of G. B. S. 'I find myself,' Bernard THE ' better than Shakespeare ' fallacy Shaw wrote in 1900, ' while still in middle This brings us to the fourth fallacy, life almost as legendary a person as the The fourth fallacy is that Bernard Shaw Flying Dutchman. Critics, like other peo- has made enormous and extravagant pie, see what they look for, not what is 45 claims for himself as a critic, philosopher, actually before them. In my plays they sociologist, and dramatist. Let us take a look for my legendary qualities, and find passage of Bernard Shaw's preface to the originality and brilliancy in my most Plays for Puritans. It is the famous hackneyed claptrap. Were I to republish ' Better than Shakespeare ' passage, the Buckstone's Wreck Ashore as my latest 50 foundation of a public charge that George comedy, it would be hailed as a master- Bernard Shaw thinks too highly of him- piece of perverse paradox and scintillating self. It is a conclusive proof that he does satire.' nothing of the kind. It harks back to Nothing in modern literary history is our second fallacy: more remarkable than the reputation of 55 M gtorieg are the oW tori char . G. B. S. for original and daring specula- acte / s are the familiar har i equin and y co i um . tion; and no one, myself possibly excepted, bine, clown and pantaloon (note the harle- more thoroughly appreciates the funny quin's leap in the third act of Cesar and 292 WRITING OF TODAY Cleopatra) ; my stage tricks and suspenses too highly appreciated by Bernard Shaw, and thrills and jests are the ones in vogue The truth is that Bernard Shaw has had when I was a boy, by which time my grand- to d t stores f en and time ^^Wii-iv.t - «p-t g his , friends K, for T kine h 00 rash admirers have hailed me, as above all smn ^ ° f )? lln and in snubbing the worship things original ; what the world calls origi- of his followers. He has had continually nality is only an unaccustomed method of to explain to the superior socialists that he tickling it. Meyerbeer seemed prodigiously is not really a great orator; to the dra- original to the Parisians, when he first burst matic critics that he is not really the on them. Today he is only the crow who I0 greatest dramatist who ever lived; to men followed Beethoven s plow. I am a crow of science that he is not the erudite h who have followed many plows. No doubt .:„;„„ + l„, t,„„„ :„„„;„ = j f,„™ T t. n I seem prodigiously clever to those who f c j, an %& have imagined from The Doc- have never hopped hungry and curious across tor ^ s Dilemma and not the expert in the fields of philosophy, politics and art. acoustics they have inferred from Pyg- Karl Marx said of Stuart Mill that his emi- 15 malion; _ to distracted heads of families nence was due to the flatness of the surround- that he is not in the least qualified to tell ing country. In these days of Board Schools, them how to control their marriageable universal reading, newspapers and the mevit- daughters. Bernard Shaw has worked able ensuing demand for notabilities of all h d t the greatness which ■ sorts, literary, military, political and fashion- ,, , , . f ., & ,,. able/to write paragraphs about, that sort of 2othr ust "P™ ^m than many of his contem- eminence is within the reach of very moderate poranes have worked to achieve wealth ability. Reputations are cheap nowadays. and a blue ribbon ; and the harder he has worked, the more convinced the public has Who, after that, will say that Bernard become that he is an incorrigibly insolent Shaw has in him a particle of author's 25 and pertinacious champion of his title to conceit ? He has never claimed more than be infallible. is due to him. There is not the least evi- It is essential to get this notion of Ber- dence of vanity or self-importance in the nard Shaw as the miles gloriosus corrected printed work of George Bernard Shaw, at the start, otherwise we shall never there is even less in his speeches, letters 30 handle the key to his achievement. You (the private letters of George Bernard will ask how it has arisen. It has arisen Shaw will be his masterpiece when, and simply and inevitably from the fact that if, they ever come to be published), con- Bernard Shaw was for many years of his versation, or general demeanor. It is true life a professional critic, and that he was that he has frequently and vigorously 35 by nature able to regard himself and his claimed not to be entirely foolish, and own performances with complete detach- that sometimes he has insisted that he ment. Naturally, when he came to write really does know what he is writing plays, and found that the said plays were about. But it is also true that no critic incompetently criticized, he used his na- has more persistently assured the public 4°tive gift for regarding himself impartially, that there is nothing really important or and his acquired skill as a professional new in any of the ideas and devices which critic, to inform his readers exactly how so curiously amazed the first audiences of good and how bad his plays really were, his early plays. Has he not soberly as- Hence he has acquired a reputation, for sured the American public that 'the nov- 45 vainglory, for it is a rooted idea with elties of one generation are only the resus- some people that a man who talks about citated fashions of the generation before himself is necessarily vainglorious, last'? And has he not proved this with Bernard Shaw's detached and disinter- instances out of The Devil's Disciple? ested observation of his own career and Did he not prophesy that a few years 50 achievements is not within the power of would expose that play for ' the thread- the average man of letters. It was ac- hate popular melodrama it technically is ' ? cordingly misunderstood. Not every one Nevertheless, though it is possible for can discuss his own work as though it any one read in the works of Bernard were the work of a stranger. The self- Shaw to parallel these instances of self- 55 criticism of Bernard Shaw, read as a assessment from almost any volume, pam- whole, shows an amazing literary altruism, phlet, speech, or anecdote of his life, the It shows exactly how far he is from con- belief still rules that Bernard Shaw is senting to occupy the throne into which G. LITERARY CRITICISM 293 he has been thrust. Bernard Shaw, in his every other English man of letters who prefaces, is not a prophet claiming inspira- has had anything to do with it. Compare tion for his script; he is one of the crowd for a moment the conduct of Bernard that reads and judges for itself; only he Shaw at a rehearsal of one of his own reads and judges a little more closely and splays with the conduct, say, of Barrie. severely than the rest. Bernard Shaw's Barrie is happy so long as no one takes modesty — his curious aloofness from his any notice of him. He has so immense a own fame — is the more attractive in that disdain for the minutiae of theatrical pro- it is absolutely innocent of stage-manage- duction that he would rather write ten ment. There are men who have made 10 plays than control the rehearsal of one. corners in retirement — men of whom it is Bernard Shaw, on the other hand, with at once exclaimed how humble and un- the amazing industry of a really serious spoiled they are. Shrewd observers will person, turns up with a closely written always suspect the man of letters who is volume of notes, determining down to the famous for his modesty; who seems to 15 minutest detail where, how, and when his think it positively indecent that his face company shall deliver their lines and do should be seen; who has always 'just left their necessary 'business.' It is only be- the theater ' when there is a call to be cause Bernard Shaw is so immensely se- taken; who has a reputation for inacces- rious that he can be so tremendously sibility. Bernard Shaw, of course, is en- 2ocasual and brilliant. He is ready for tirely free of this organized and blushing everything and everybody because he has humility. His very real modesty consists seriously considered everything and seri- in his being able to assess himself cor- ously regarded everybody. A first-rate rectly. He is one of the few living au- impromptu usually indicates a mind richly thors who has not been taken in by his 25 stored and well arranged. Bernard Shaw own performances. It does not occur to can extemporize on most subjects because him to divide the literature of the day into he has seriously thought about them. The (a) the works of Bernard Shaw and (b) more brilliantly he sparkles upon a given other people's works. He thinks of Man theme, the more sober has been his edu- and Superman as he thinks of The Sil- 30 cation in its rudiments. Unfortunately, ver Box. It is a play of contemporary many people have come to exactly the op- interest and of some merit, and he does posite conclusion. Because Bernard Shaw not see why he should be barred from dis- has a rapid and vital way of writing, be- cussing it as an expert critic just because cause he presents his argument at a maxi- he happens to be the author. Bernard 35 mum, seasons it with boisterous analogies, Shaw has certainly imposed upon many of and frequently drives it home at the point his friends and observers. He has not of a hearty joke, he is suspected of sacri- imposed upon himself. ficing sense to sound. The dancing of his manner conceals the severe decorum of his shaw not a jester 40 matter. It is true that Bernard Shaw can The fifth fallacy is that Bernard Shaw be funny, but it is wholly false that he is is an incorrigible jester, that he is never in the least a flippant writer or a careless serious, that he is ready to sacrifice his thinker. He is as serious as Praise-God best friend and his firmest conviction for Barebones and as careful as Octavius the sake of a really good joke. Now, the 45 Caesar. first thing to realize about Bernard Shaw is his overflowing gravity. He has taken HIS Reputation of reason more things seriously in his career than The sixth fallacy has to do with the ail- any living and notable person. He has head-and-no-heart formula. It is said of taken music seriously, and painting and 50 Bernard Shaw by some very excellent crit- socialism and philosophy and politics and ics that he is an expert logician arguing in public speaking. He has taken the trouble vacuo, that he has exalted reason as a god, to make up his mind upon scores of things that his mind is a wonderful machine to which the average heedless man hardly which never goes wrong because its owner gives a second thought — things like diet, 55 is not swayed by the ordinary passions, hygiene, vaccination, phonetic spelling, likes, prejudices, sentiments, impulses, and vivisection. He has even taken seri- infatuations, enthusiasms, and weaknesses ously the English theater, unlike virtually of ordinary mankind. How the critics 294 WRITING OF TODAY square this notion of Bernard Shaw with the rationalists as men who 'deal with the kind friend and counselor who lives in people's. insides from the point of view of Adelphi Terrace they alone can tell. It is men who have no stomachs.' Bernard probably this idea of Bernard Shaw which Shaw would agree. No one, in habit or most heartily tickles him. Bernard Shaw 5 opinion, lives more remotely than Ber-. greatly enjoys contemplating the motley nard Shaw from the clear, hard, logical^ 1 crowd of his legendary selves; but none devitalized, and sapless world of Comte, can please him more thoroughly — because and Spencer, none could be more outrageously fictitious — than Bernard Shaw the vivisector of 10 SHAW FAR FR0M BEING AN anarchist his kind, the high priest of reason and The seventh fallacy is that Bernard common sense. Shaw is an anarchist, a disturber of the This last superstition has grown mainly peace, a champion of the right of every out of the simple fact that G. B. S. as a man to do as he pleases and to think for critic of music, art, and the drama was 15 himself. This idea of Bernard Shaw is so actually a critic. He took his criticism as deeply rooted in the public mind, despite seriously as he took his socialism or his Bernard Shaw's serious and repeated dis- conviction that tobacco was a noxious claimers of its accuracy, that, if any young weed. Being a serious critic, he found it person in London runs away from her necessary to tell the truth concerning the 20 parents, or if any elderly gentleman aban- artistic achievements of many sensitive dons his wife and family, these things are and amiable young people. Naturally, not only regarded as the results of Ber- Bernard Shaw got the reputation of being nard Shaw's pernicious teaching, but their a heartless brute for his candor, and a perpetrators are upheld and justified by logical brute, owing to the soundness of 25 the belief that they are disciples following his arguments. Then, when Bernard the lead of G. B. S. as prophet and mas- Shaw came to write plays,- it was discov- ter. These startling misconceptions have ered that his young women behaved like arisen from the fact that Bernard Shaw reasonable creatures and that his young has pointed out in a popular play that men appreciated the importance of 5 per 30 children do not always agree in all points cent. This was unusual in the soft, ro- with their parents, and that he has argued mantic stage creatures of the late nine- in a less popular play that one or two re- ties ; so here was more evidence of Ber- forms in the marriage laws of Great Brit- nard Shaw's insensibility, of his arid and ain are already overdue. Was ever a rep- merciless rationalism, of his impenetrable 35 utation won upon slenderer evidence? indifference to all that warms the blood Why, Shakespeare told us three hundred of common humanity. years ago how Of course there was not the slightest „. , , , . , real evidence of all this. If there is one T^A ed ^ e ; s P f a, T 0W , f $ *e cuckoo so long idea more than another that persists all 40 Thatlthad lts h ^ bit off by its young, through the work of Bernard Shaw, and and it is now on record in a British blue- defines his personality, it is to be found in book that a committee of the most respec- his perpetual repudiation of reason. Al- table gentlemen of the British bar and most his whole literary career has been church have agreed with Bernard Shaw spent in adapting the message of Schopen- 45 that British divorce is unnecessarily hauer to his own optimism and belief in expensive, inequitable, and humiliating, the goodness of life. Not reason and not The practical extent of Bernard Shaw's the categories determine or create, but anarchism coincides with the anarchism of passion and will. Bernard Shaw has al- our judges and our bishops, ways insisted that reason is no motive 50 Those who dig deeper than this, with power ; that the true motive power is will ; the preconceived resolution to find that that the setting up of reason above will is Bernard Shaw is an anarchist, will only a damnable error. Life is the satisfaction be more hopelessly misled. They will of a power in us of which we can give no find that he preaches, as we have already rational account whatever — that is the 55 discovered, the ultimate supremacy of pas- final declaration of Bernard Shaw; and sion and will; that he sees the gods and his doctrine corresponds with his tern- the laws of each generation as mere ex- perament. Rudyard Kipling has described pressions of the will and passion of their G. LITERARY CRITICISM 295 generation ; and that he claims for poster- fort and loss of time he thereby inflicts ity the right to supersede them as soon as upon his neighbors. It is, in one word, posterity is moved by a higher will and a anarchic, a graphic illustration of the finer passion. But this is not anarchism, great gulf that is fixed between two pub- It is so far from being anarchism that side 5 lie figures of the time who, nevertheless, by side with these doctrines Bernard Shaw have impartially been described by the has, in The Sanity of Art, written down careless as anarchists, one of the best defenses of law and order — of the convenience and necessity of po- SHAW A precisian rather than a licemen, churches, and all kinds of public io careless man of letters authority — that has appeared in popular The eighth fallacy is that Bernard Shaw form within recent years. It is true that is a headlong, dashing, and opinionative Bernard Shaw pleads for liberty, and writer, without technical equipment, who points out that it is better for a man to succeeds by an impudent trust in his un- act and think responsibly for himself than 15 assisted genius, and brings off his best ef- to run to the nearest constable or parish forts by a happy fluke. This fallacy has priest. But it is also true that he wants stuck to Bernard Shaw all through his ca- people to have no more liberty than is reer as a critic of music, painting, the good for them, and that he very seriously drama, as a playwright, as a pamphleteer, distrusts the ability of the average man 20 as a public speaker. When G. B. S., as to think for himself. Bernard Shaw Corno di Bassett, was writing about mu- knows that the average man has neither sic for a London newspaper, the public the time nor the brains nor the imagina- insisted that his appointment was a joke, tion to be original in such matters as It was the public's own joke, and the crossing the road or getting married or 25 public enjoyed it immensely. Indeed, it determining whether he ought or ought chuckled so heartily that G. B. S. had not not to cut the throat of his neighbor. the malice to undeceive it. He played Nothing could be further from the with this popular legend of himself, as mind of Bernard Shaw than the philo- he has so often played with a hundred sophic anarchy of Godwin or John Stuart 30 others. He was thought to be merely a Mill. Bernard Shaw is not an anarchist rude young man who knocked the profes- either in speculation or in practice. He is sors' heads together without the least idea as sound on the question of law and order of what they contained. Bernard Shaw's as Mr. Asquith. He is as correct in de- characteristic confutation of this public portment and as regular in his conduct as 35 error was to reduce it to absurdity, the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford. The most When people handed him a score, he held pictorial way of emphasizing the differ- it carefully upside down and studied it in ence between a real anarchist and Ber- that position. When he was asked to play nard Shaw is to compare the handwriting the piano, he walked to the wrong end. of Bernard Shaw and, say, of Cunning- 40 Bernard Shaw's conduct as a critic of mu- hame Graham. Bernard Shaw writes like sic, acting under provocation, was very a sensible citizen who intends his pages natural; but it was in the result unfortu- to be read. It is true that he asserts his nate. Popularly imagined to be an irre- individuality as one who values what is sponsible amateur with a literary knack, comely by writing the most beautiful hand 45 Bernard Shaw, in all he has undertaken, of any author living, just as he insists that has, if anything, erred from an excessive his books shall be printed in a style that knowledge and interest in the expert pro- proclaims him a pupil of William Mor- fessional and technical side of his subject, ris. But he writes mainly to be read, Bernard Shaw knew years ago all about aware that the liberty of writing illegibly 50 the enormity of exploding undiminished is not worth the trouble it would give chords of the ninth and thirteenth on the to a community which practised it. The unsuspecting ear, just as today he thor- writing of Cunninghame Graham, on the oughly understands the appallingly scien- other hand, requires an expert in caligra- tific progressions of Scriabin. Similarly phy. It has baffled half the big printing- 55 he can tell you the difference at a glance nouses in London. It is the last, insolent between real sunshine in an open field and assertion that every man has the right to the good north light of a Chelsea studio, do as he pleases regardless of the discom- or explain why ' values ' are more difficult 296 WRITING OF TODAY to capture when colors are bright than Far from being the happy and careless when they are looked for in a dark in- privateer of popular belief, he is usually terior. As to the technic of the theatre — to be found struggling for freedom under well, the subject is hardly worth discuss- the oppression of things stored for refer- ing. Some of his later plays are nothing 5 ence in his capacious memory. The great if they are not technical. critic, like any ordinary, unskilled specta- The fallacy that Bernard Shaw is a tor, should be able to look at a work of happy savage among critics and artists, art without prejudice in favor of any par- ignorant and careless of form, unread in ticular form or fashion. It should not the necessary conventions, speaking always iomatter to him a jot or influence his judg- at random with the confidence that only a ment in the slightest whether the music perfect ignorance can give, is particularly he hears is symphonic or metrical, whether deplorable, because it necessarily blinds its the thirteenth is exploded as a thirteenth adherents to Bernard Shaw's most serious or prepared as a six-four chord. He defect both as critic and creator. Usually 15 should be similarly indifferent whether a Bernard Shaw knows too much, rather dramatist talks to him in blank-verse so- than too little, of his subject. He is too liloquy or in conversational duologue, keenly interested in its bones and its Preoccupation with manner, apart from mechanism. His famous distinction be- matter — usually implying an a priori tween music which is decorative and mu- a>prejudice in favor of one manner over an- sic which is dramatic is quite unsound, as other — is the mark of pedantry ; and of I would undertake to show in nothing less this pedantry — always the pedantry of a than a small pamphlet ; but it is not the man who is expert and knows too much — mistake of a critic ignorant of music. It Bernard Shaw is not always free, though is rather the mistake of a critic too keenly 25 he is far too good a critic to be often absorbed in the technic of music. at fault. If the professors in the early nineties had objected to G. B. S. because he was THE KEAL SHAW liable to lapses into the pedantry of which We have not yet exhausted the popular they themselves were accused, they would 30 fallacies about Bernard Shaw, but as most have been nearer the mark than they were of my readers will already be wondering in foolishly dismissing him as an ignora- what is left of the man who has just de- mus. Similarly, as a dramatic critic, G. scribed Sir Edward Grey as a Junker, I B. S. erred not by attaching too little will turn now from George Bernard value to the forms and conventions of the 35 Shaw, who is as legendary as the Flying theatre, but by attaching too much. It is Dutchman, to the very positive and sub- true that he did not make the absurd mis- stantial author of Commons ens e and the take of some of his followers, and regard War. I have yet to explain why Ber- Ibsen as a great dramatist on account of nard Shaw, stripped of his professional one or two pettifogging and questionable 40 masks, and rescued from the misconcep- reforms in dramatic convention, such as tions of his admirers, remains one of the the abolishing of soliloquies and asides and most striking public figures of our day, extra doors to the sitting-room. But he and must fairly be regarded as the most certainly attached too much importance important apparition in the British theatre to these things, mainly because he knew 45 since Goldsmith and Sheridan. We have so much about them; and this critical in- seen that Bernard Shaw is not original sistence of his as a Saturday Reviewer has in what he preaches, is erudite rather than had its revenge in some of his own plays, adventurous, is in no sense revolutionary where his purely technical mastery of the- or anarchical, is extremely serious, and is atrical devices, his stage-cleverness, and 50 far from being an orgiastic and impudent craftsman's virtuosity have led him into rationalist for whom drifting humanity is mechanical horse-play and stock positions stuff for a paradox. Bernard Shaw has unworthy of the author of John Bull's not won the notice of mankind because Other Island and Major Barbara. Ber- he has thought of things which have nard Shaw has continually suffered from 55 hitherto occurred to no one else ; nor has knowing his subject too well from the he won the notice of mankind because he angle of the expert, and he has frequently has a native gift of buffoonery and a tal- fallen into the mistakes of the expert, ent for the stage. The merit of Bernard G. LITERARY CRITICISM 297 Shaw has to be sought outside his doctrine. 'That struts and frets his houf upon the stage The secret of his genius lies deeper than And then is heard no more : it is a tale his fun, and has scarcely anything to do Jpld by an idiot, full of sound and fury, with his craft. Signifying nothing, 5 he has written more than the equivalent his self-crushing criticism of < life is not worth ii ving- > if Bernard It ironically happens that Bernard Shaw Shaw will not admit that Shakespeare in as a critic has virtually made it impossible this passage is no more than an utterer of for those who accept his criticism to allow a universal platitude for pessimists, he that Bernard Shaw as a dramatic author 10 will have to agree that Ibsen is no more has any right to be really famous. We than an utterer of parochial platitude for have seen that Bernard Shaw as a critic the suffragette platform. Probably, how- repeatedly fell into the grievous error of ever, now that Bernard Shaw has himself separating the stuff he was criticizing into become a classical author, he has realized manner and matter. Thus, confronted 15 that to distinguish between the ideas of a with the Elizabethan dramatists, Bernard literary genius and the language in which Shaw always maintained that they had they are expressed is as absurd as to dis- nothing to say and that they were toler- tinguish between the subject of a painter able only because they had an incompar- and the way in which it is painted, or be- ably wonderful way of saying it. Com- 20 tween the themes of a musician and the paring Shakespeare with Ibsen, for exam- notes in which they are rendered, pie, he would point out that, if you para- At any rate, Bernard Shaw must realize phrased Ibsen's Peer Gynt, it still re- how very badly he himself would fare mained good intellectual stuff, and that, if under such a distinction. We have seen you paraphrased Shakespeare's ' Life 's but 25 that Bernard Shaw in doctrine and idea a walking shadow,' it became the merest is in no sense original. His celebration commonplace. Bernard Shaw thence pro- of the state is as old as Plato. His par- ceeded to draw the moral that Ibsen, ticular sort of puritanism is as old as apart from mere favor and prettiness, was Cromwell. His particular brand of so- the greater and more penetrating drama- 30 cialism is as old as Owen. A paraphrase tist. Fortunately for Bernard Shaw, as of Bernard Shaw — a reduction of Ber- we shall shortly realize, this criticism of nard Shaw to the bare bones of his subject his is not only false in fact, but it is also matter — would be as intolerable as the nonsense in theory. It is false in fact, be- speeches of his disciples and some of his cause it is quite untrue that Shakespeare 35 masters usually are. In a word, if Ber- paraphrased is commonplace whereas lb- nard Shaw is a genius, he is a genius for sen paraphrased is an intellectual feast, the same reason that Shakespeare is a gen- It would be more to the point if Bernard ius. He is a genius not because he has Shaw had said that Shakespeare para- anything new to say, but because he has a phrased is commonplace for all time and 40 passionate and a personal way of saying that Ibsen paraphrased is commonplace for it. If I had the time to go deeper into only the nineteenth century. It would be this matter, I should like to ask whether still more to the point if Bernard Shaw jt is really possible to get hold of a new had said that it is quite impossible to para- idea as distinguished from a new way of phrase any work of genius in so far as *5 presenting an old one. But, at all events, genius has gone to its making. It is I have already said enough to justify the absurd to talk of paraphrasing Shake- assumption that, if Bernard Shaw can speare because Shakespeare is of genius claim an immortality, however brief, it all compact; and it is as true of Ibsen as will not be by virtue of his original, novel, of Shakespeare that, so far as he is a 5<> and startling opinions, but by virtue of his genius and not merely a scientific natural- literary presentation of them in a manner ist, it is absurd to separate what he says entirely his own. The equations read: from his way of saying it. When Shake- The ldeas ° f Bernard Shaw = the com- speare has written: monplaces of his time. 55 The ideas of Bernard Shaw-)- his way .... Out, out, brief candle! of presenting them = G. B. S. Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 298 WRITING OF TODAY nard Shaw, like every man of genius, is passion and style the secrets of the happy agent of a power and a passion shaw's success which uses his prejudices, memories, and Bernard Shaw, then, has won the at- doctrines, in a way he is intellectually tention of the present generation, and he 5 powerless to resist. will hold the attention of posterity not The real thrill of his work is conveyed because he has new theories about the in some sentences of his preface to Man world, but because, by virtue of strictly and Superman — sentences used by him in personal and inalienable qualities, he is quite another connection : able to give to the most ' hackneyed clap- 10 This is the true joy of life . the being used trap' (Bernard Shaw s own description) for a purpose recognized by yourself as a an air of novelty. Were he baldly to tell mighty one ; the being thoroughly worn out us that incomes should be equally divided, before you are thrown on the scrap-heap; and that interest is an iniquitous and pro- the being a force of nature, instead of a foundly unsocial device invented by those 15 feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and who have too much money for the purpose grievances, complaining that the world will of levying blackmail upon those who have not devote ltself to makm S 5™ ha ^' not enough, we should simply remember To apply this passage to the work of Ber- that we had read all this years ago in an nard Shaw is again to destroy the popular old book and turn to something rather 20 conception of him as merely the acute rai- more worth our time and attention. sonneur, the intellectual critic of his kind, But when Bernard Shaw writes Wid- with a wallet of revolutionary propaganda ewer's Houses or Socialism and Supe- whereby his reputation lives or dies. Not rior Brains, it is quite another matter, his doctrine and not his deliberate pulpit- Here we have original work of the first 25 eering make Bernard Shaw a vital influ- quality. The ideas are common to us all; ence in modern literature. The real se- but Bernard Shaw's presentation of these cret of his influence can be explained in a ideas thrills us with a conviction that sentence : Bernard Shaw has passion and nothing quite like it has ever come within he has style. Therefore, like every man our experience. We realize that we have 30 of genius, he is driven to say more than never before encountered just this blend he intends, and to say it in an arresting of wit and sense, this intellectual wrestle voice. and thrust, this fervor and fun, this argu- It remains to ask what is the prime irri- mentative and syllabic virtuosity, this ap- tant of this passion in Bernard Shaw, parently impudent disregard of style that 35 Where are we to look for the catfish only the more piquantly emphasizes a per- which keeps his mental aquarium alive fectly individual and highly cultivated lit- and astir? First, without preliminary, erary art. Then we begin to wonder let us dart on that preface ' Why for Puri- what is the inspiration of this rapid Jehu ; tans,' which more than any other gives us whence does he get his impulse to drive all 40 the key to Bernard Shaw's work and char- these ancient ideas so furiously through acter. Bernard Shaw writes as follows: the modern world. How are we to ex- T , T it . , , . _ .. plain the passion that fills him and lifts J ha Y t e - * Amk, always been a Puritan in f . 1 f 1 1 i_- i_ it, it. 1 ^ my attitude towards Art. I am as fond of his work to levels higher than the plat- fine music and handsome bui i din g S as Milton form he undertakes to fill ? We are sensi- 45 waSj or Cromwell, or Bunyan ; but if I found ble in Bernard Shaw's best work of a that they were becoming the instruments of horse-power, of a spiritual energy, which a systematic idolatry of sensuousness, I would is no more the product of his doctrinal hold it good statesmanship to blow every prejudice against rent and interest than cathedral in the world to pieces with dyna- the energy which drove Wagner to com- 5o ™ k(i > or S an and a , u » without the least heed to pose the Nibelung's Ring was the product *f u 8 £^ of the art cntlcs and cultured of his desire to justify his revolutionary p principles or to improve the operatic stage Bernard Shaw's primal inspiration, that scenery of his generation. We know that is to say, is not esthetic or intellectual, the inspiration of Bernard Shaw must be 55 but moral. We have to reckon with a something deeper than a dislike of Roe- moral fury where he most individually buck Ramsden or a desire to abolish Mr. rages. The demon which seizes his pen Sartorius. We know, in fact, that Ber- at the critical moment, and uses him for G. LITERARY CRITICISM 299 its own enthusiastic purpose, is the demon a mission of which Bernard Shaw is often which drove Milton to destroy Arminius. himself aware when he is most firmly un- When Bernard Shaw imagines that he der its dominion, coolly and reasonably desires, simply as a practical socialist and in the name of com- 5 0UR modern treatment of prophets mon sense, to nationalize land and capi- This brings us within view of Bernard tal, and give to everybody as much money Shaw's pamphlet on the war. It is nat- as he requires, he is mistaken. Like every ural in a preacher that the most unpar- other prophet who has succeeded in mov- donable sin of the many he is called to ing his generation, Bernard Shaw begins 10 denounce should be the sin of compla- with a passion and a prejudice, and after- cency; for the sin of complacency virtu- ward manufactures and systematizes the ally amounts to the sin of refusing to evidence. That Bernard Shaw is a social- hear what the preacher has to say, or, at ist is an accident of the time. The essen- all events, of refusing to take it seriously, tial thing is that Bernard Shaw passion- 15 Bernard Shaw has said continuously for ately hates all that is complacent, malevo- many years that the average man is an lent, callous, inequitable, oppressive, un- unsocial sinner; and the average man, in- social, stupid, irreligious, enervating, nar- stead of hanging his head and mending row, misinformed, unimaginative, lazy, his ways, has smiled in the face of the envious, unclean, disloyal, mercenary, and 20 prophet. At one time the prophet was extravagant. Hating all this with the stoned, and at another time he was poi- positive, energetic, and proselytizing ha- soned or ostracized or pelted in the pil- tred of an incorrigible moralist, he has lory. But we have lately learned a more naturally seized on the biggest and most effective way of dealing with a prophet: adequate stick in reach with which to beat 25 either we turn him into a society preacher the nineteenth-century sinner. This stick and enjoy his denunciation of what our happened to be the socialist stick. If G. neighbors do, or we pay him handsomely B. S. had lived with Grosseteste in the to amuse us in the theater. We have thus thirteenth century, it would have been the improved immensely on the methods of no-taxation-without-representation stick. 3° the scribe and the Pharisee; for where the If he had lived with Star Chamber in the scribe and the Pharisee destroyed only the sixteenth century, it would have been the bodies of their prophets, we, with an even Habeas Corpus stick. If he had lived more thorough complacency, aim also at with Rousseau in the eighteenth century, destroying their souls — usually with some it would have been the social-contract- 35 success. and-law-of-nature stick. Bernard Shaw's But the British public has not succeeded socialism stick is simply his weapon — the with Bernard Shaw, who continues to be most convenient weapon to hand — with periodically stirred to frenzy by his in- which to convict a society founded upon ability to make every one realize that he capitalism of the greatest possible amount 40 or she is directly responsible for all the of sin with the least possible opportunity crimes and miseries of modern civiliza- of an overwhelming retort from the sin- tion. Moreover, because Bernard Shaw ner. The important thing is not that has lived most of his life in England, and Bernard Shaw preaches socialism, but that has therefore been less seriously taken in he uses the doctrines of socialism as 45 England than elsewhere, he has concluded Cromwell's troopers used the psalms of that the English are more complacent than David or as Tolstoy used the gospels of any other people in the world. More and Christ — namely, to put the unjust man more he has come to regard it as his spe- and his evil ways out of court and counte- cial mission to humble this complacency, nance. To this end he employs also his 50 to convict the Englishman, above all men, craft as a dialectician, his gift as a stylist, of sin, and of the necessity for humility his clear exposition and wit, his fun, irony, and repentance. Therefose, whenever the observation of men, genius for mystifica- British public becomes, in the view of tion and effective pose — all, indeed, that Bernard Shaw, unduly exalted — when- enters into the public idea of G. B. S. 55 ever, in fact, it thinks it has a reason to These things are merely auxiliary; any be proud of the British name — Bernard moment they are likely to be caught up Shaw is at once suspicious and usually in- in the service of his passionate mission — censed. Latterly he has been unable to 300 WRITING OF TODAY resist any occasion of pricking the infla- er's Houses. That is to say, it is a tract tion, real or imagined, of the British in which the case against British compla- spirit; and latterly, misled by habit, and cency is put at a maximum by a fearless exaggerating the sins he was born to chas- and passionate advocate for the prosecu- tise, Bernard Shaw has made some serious 5 tion. mistakes. Not Bernard Shaw, but the time, has changed. Here we strike at the root of shaw a prophet of humility Bernard Shaw's mistake. Hitherto, he to the English was doing salutary work in his campaign Thus when, more than two years ago, 10 against the silent self-assurance of the the whole British nation was struck with mean, sensual man. There are as many grief at the loss of the Titanic, and was complacent persons in Great Britain as reading with a reasonable pride of the elsewhere, and so long as Great .Britain splendid behavior of her heroic crew, Ber- was at peace with her neighbors, it was nard Shaw rose in his robe of the prophet isbeneficial that Bernard Shaw should inl- and told the public not to exaggerate agine that the British, among whom he its vicarious gallantry. Then in August, lived, were more guilty in this respect 1914, when Great Britain was straining than any other extant community, and every nerve to get her army to the Conti- that he should lose no opportunity for nent in time to save Belgium from the 20 satirical, ironical, comic, or didactic re- worst of war, Bernard Shaw published an proof. But when Great Britain and her article in the British press virtually to the allies had their back to the wall, when effect that Great Britain was not fighting there were opponents to be countered and for the sanctity of treaties or the rights of met, Bernard Shaw's insular mistake that a little nation, but for British homes and 25 the British as a nation are any more corn- British skins. Maliciously he chose for placent than any other nation with a past the publication of this assault upon Brit- to be proud of and a future to believe in ish complacency the most obstinately and became a really injurious heresy. It be- hatefully complacent British newspaper at gan, indeed, to look rather like giving his disposal. 30 away his people to the enemy. Of course Finally there came the celebrated it was nothing of the kind. Common- pamphlet Commonsense and the War. sense and the War, intelligently read, This must be read as Bernard Shaw's vibrates with patriotism, and it proudly most audacious effort to puncture the self- proclaims the essential Tightness of the esteem of the British public. It has 35 struggle in which Great Britain is now caused much brain-searching among those engaged. But the patriotism of Com- who have simply regarded George Bernard monsense and the War is less apparent Shaw as a very discreet and financially to the audiences which laugh at Bernard successful mountebank; for Bernard Shaw in the theater and outrageously re- Shaw, in writing this pamphlet, has done 40 gard him as a privileged fool at the court a clearly unpopular thing. Undoubtedly of King Demos, than the fact that it be- he has angered and estranged many of his gins by asserting that Sir Edward Grey is admirers. Some regard the pamphlet as a Junker, and goes on to examine whether an obscure attempt to discredit the allied we really have the right to condemn our cause. Others regard it as an escapade 45 enemies without a preliminary inquiry of revolting levity, inexpedient from a into our own consciences and affairs, patriotic point of view and essentially Bernard Shaw has made a mistake, but wrong in its conclusions. The real point it is a natural, not an ignoble, mistake, that concerns us here is that the pamphlet It will have no permanent effect upon is not a new, unexpected, or isolated per- 50 those who are sensible, even in Bernard formance of Bernard Shaw, but a natural Shaw's most special pleading, of the pas- sequel of all he has hitherto written, sionate moral sincerity which gives con- Those who have followed Bernard Shaw sistency and fire to all he writes. Cow- to the threshold of his pamphlet on the monsense and the War was a blunder; war have no right at this time to be aston- 55 but it was also an act of disinterested ished or to refuse him their applause, courage. It was not dictated by any wish Commonsense and the War is simply to stand in front of the picture or to a topical and a later edition of Widow- splash in a sea too deep for purposes of G. LITERARY CRITICISM 3°i exhibition. Bernard Shaw, in writing on earth only when all men fulfil Christ's Commons ens e and the War is simply teaching. the priest who insists upon sacrifice before ' I believe that the fulfilment of this going into battle, or believes that every teaching is possible, easy and pleasant, good fight should be preceded by confes- 5 'I believe that even now, when this sion, absolution, and high mass. teaching is not fulfilled, if I should be the only one among all those that do not fulfil the personal equation in shaw it> there is> nevert heless, nothing else for One word more. Bernard Shaw, the me to do for the salvation of my life from prophet and the puritan, lives in his work, iothe certainty of eternal loss but to fulfil But the passion which gives him uniform- this teaching, just as a man in a burning ity and purpose as a public figure has not house, if he find a door of safety, must go impaired his personal humor, his toler- out. ance for all that is sweet and commend- ' I believe that my life according to the able, his broadness of view and eagerly 15 teaching of the world has been a torment, inquisitive outlook upon life, his candor and that a life according to Christ's teach- and honesty of mind, his generous wel- ing can alone give me in this world the come of new ideas, his love of beautiful happiness for which I was destined by the things, his ability to appreciate and sym- Father of Life. pathize even with those forces which are 20 ' I believe that this teaching will give banded to destroy him. These are the welfare to all humanity, will save me qualities which have obscured from con- from inevitable destruction and will give temporaries the essential simplicity of his me in this world the greatest happiness, mind, and have warmly endeared him to Consequently, I cannot help fulfilling it.' the younger generation of authors and 25 The second statement which I shall critics who have learned from their mas- quote was written some seventeen years ter how profitably they may supersede later when Tolstoy was seventy-three. It him. This younger generation, though it was occasioned by the act of excommuni- very frequently turns the weapons of cation directed against him by the Holy Bernard Shaw against himself, will never 30 Synod on account of a chapter in his forget or neglect the debt it owes to the great book, Resurrection, relative to mass helpful, patient, and wise counselor it has and the eucharist. been privileged to observe and know. ' I believe in God, who is to me the Spirit, Love, the Principle of all things. > 35 1 believe that he is in me and I in him. I believe that the will of God has never VIII been more clearly expressed than in the teaching of the man, Christ, but we may TOLSTOY'S RELIGION not thmk of Christ as God and address 4° him in prayer without committing the EDWARD A. THURBER greatest sacrilege. I believe that the. true happiness of man consists in the accom- lOpen Court, /a«wy,^ 9 14^. ^permission of au- p lj s hment of the will of God. I believe that the will of God is that every man A man's creeds provide such an inade- 45 should love his neighbor and do unto him quate road-book to his religious experi- as he would be done by; herein is con- ences, that, like a conscientious traveler tained, as the Bible says, all the law and who wishes to get certain things oyer the prophets. I believe that the meaning with, I shall begin this sketch by quoting f life for each one of us is solely to three statements made by Tolstoy con- 50 increase this love within us ; I believe that cerning his beliefs. The first occurs at the increase of our power to love will the opening of the twelfth chapter of his bring about in this life a joy which will tractate, My Religion, and bears the date grow day by day, and in the other world 1884 or thereabouts, Tolstoy being at the will become a more perfect happiness. I time in his fifty-seventh year. 55 believe that the growth of love will con- ' I believe in Christ's teaching, and this tribute more than any other force to es- is my faith : tablish on this earth the kingdom of God, ' I believe that my happiness is possible that is, will replace an order of life in 302 WRITING OF TODAY which division, guile and violence are all Scriptures and their teaching, as it cul- powerful by another order in which con- minated, to him, in the character of Jesus, cord, truth and brotherhood will reign. But ignoring his dogmas for the moment, I believe that for the increase of love I wish simply to present in brief outline there is but one means — prayer. Not the 5 the life and makeup of this remarkable public prayer in temples, which Christ ex- man as a sort of background for the con- pressly reproved, but the kind of prayer elusions he came to, and also to his multi- of which he himself gave an example, farious and powerful influence, solitary prayer, which reaffirms in us a Of our primary, our animal passions, consciousness of the meaning of life and i° Tolstoy had more than his share, and also the knowledge that we depend absolutely of those other more human passions, ex- on the will of God. I believe in life pressed most unequivocally perhaps in eternal. I believe that we are rewarded that sharp conflict between fact and dream according to our acts here and every- in violent, tumultuous natures. He pos- where, now and forever. I believe all i5 sessed the cruelty of a confirmed and this so firmly that at my age — on the eager hunter; indeed, hunting was the borders of the grave — I ought often to last pleasure of all vicious and cruel pleas- make an effort to think of the death of ures, as he called them, which he sacri- my body as merely the birth of a new ficed. After giving an account of the life.' 20 slow death of a wolf which he had killed My third quotation is taken from a let- by hitting it with a club on the root of ter written by Tolstoy the year before he the nose, he adds, ' I fairly reveled as I died, that is, in 1909, when he was eighty- contemplated the tortures of that dying one. animal.' Nor to jealousy, as well as to ' The teaching of Jesus is to me but 25 cruelty, was he a stranger, as many a one of the beautiful religious teachings story of his boyhood testifies. In a fit of which we have received from Egyptian, jealousy he once pushed from a balcony Jewish, Hindu, Chinese, Greek, antiquity, a little playmate of his, a girl. She was The two great principles of Jesus : the lame for a long time afterward, love of God, that is, absolute perfection, 30 Here is an early note in his journal and the love of one's neighbor, the love of concerning the three demons that were all men without any distinction whatso- tormenting him: ' 1. Gambling. Can pos- ever, have been preached by all the sages sibly be overcome. 2. Sensuality. Very of the world, — Krishna, Buddha, Lao-tze, hard struggle. 3. Vanity. Most terrible Confucius, Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, 35 of all.' Gambling was one of the routine Marcus Aurelius, and among the mod- pastimes of young men born in Tolstoy's erns, Rousseau, Pascal, Kant, Emerson, social environment. As late as the year Channing, and many others. Religious before his marriage, a night's high play and moral truth is everywhere and always cost him the manuscript of The Cossacks, the same. I have no predilection for 40 which he sold to an editor for $500 to pay Christianity. If I have been especially his debts of honor. interested in the teachings of Jesus, it is, Vanity, pride, conceit and self-pity were first, because I was born and have lived companions of his early years. Mention among Christian people; second, because of them crops out constantly in his half I have found a great intellectual pleasure 45 autobiographical books, Childhood, Boy- in disengaging the pure teaching from the hood, Youth. ' I imagined there could be surprising falsifications affixed to it by no happiness on earth for a man with so churches.' big a nose as I had, such thick lips and These professions I do not intend to little eyes.' He speaks disconsolately of dwell upon except to note that Tolstoy, 50 ' this face without expression. These in his very old age, seemed inclined on feeble, soft, characterless features remind occasion not to realize that his religion me of peasants' features — these great was after all profoundly Christian. In hands and feet.' ' I wanted everybody to the crisis of it or at the time of what we know me and love me,' he writes, 'I might call his final conversion, he was 55 wished that merely on hearing my name drawing very little inspiration from all would be struck with admiration and Krishna, Confucius, Epictetus; the foun- thank me.' From his journal again, 'My tain of his religious experiences was the great fault, pride. A self-love immense. G. LITERARY CRITICISM 303 I am so ambitious that if I had to choose mired, he could not help admiring, their between glory and virtue (which I love), poverty of spirit, their loyalty, their un- I am ready to believe that I should choose questioning self-sacrifice. He used to the former.' Turgenev spoke at one time watch old men at prayer in silent rever- of Tolstoy's stupid, nobleman's pride, his sence. And naturally with his own frank- blustering and braggadocio. Those who ness and sympathy and love of truth, he have read his book, Childhood, will recall was just the sort of boy to win the con- the tears that Tolstoy poured forth, tears fidence of these great-hearted people, of self-pity, Werther tears, expressive of Tolstoy owes them much both on account the sorrows that were engulfing him ; they 10 of their real wisdom of character and on were the tears of a self-conscious, im- account of the stories they used to tell aginative, sentimental boy. At five years him, those embodiments of joys and sor- of age, he felt (he says) that life was not rows, actual, undefiled. a game, but a long, hard travail. But Tolstoy's world was after all not If it is part of the office of genius to 15 this peasant world, but the world of the marshal and direct vehement passions, landed proprietor. As a young man at then Tolstoy was rich in his endowment, college he threw off all beliefs of the. His quiver was full of the arrows of church and became an out and out nihilist, wrath — more akin to Milton, I should — he believed in nothing at all. This in- say, than to any other figure of his rank 20 deed was the correct attitude of the in letters I can think of — to Milton whom young blades of his day. It was the ex- one has called the most emotional of our altation, one might say, and in his case a English poets. Tolstoy's path was blazed perfectly honest exaltation, of the intel- with zeal, rage, indignation — boisterous, lect. A man must submit the beliefs of uncontrolled, calm even, satisfying. ' I 25 the world to the scrutiny of his reason, get drunk,' he says, 'with this seething and if his reason says 'reject,' rejected madness of indignation which I love to they must be. It is a pure matter of logic, experience, which I even excite _when I the cruel, uncompromising logic of youth, feel it coming because it throws me into This, I presume, was the most unhappy a sort of calm and gives me, for some mo- 30 period of Tolstoy's life and it lasted a ments at least, an extraordinary elasticity, good many years. Here was a man who the energy and fire of all physical and earnestly desired to make a signal con- moral capacities.' 1 This riotous tempera- tribution, to impress a glowing person- ment was housed, as we know, in a superb ality upon the life of his time, and his body ; it was employed ultimately in a 35 intellectual philosophy was negation. He great passion to serve mankind. This is looked about him and discovered that why one likes to dwell upon the wrath of many who believed as he did — the great Tolstoy. majority of them, he averred — were Tolstoy divides his life into three plain rascals; gain was the key to their periods which he calls, characteristically, 4° conduct. They were greedy, sensual and the period in which he lived for himself ; quarrelsome ; they sneered at piety and the period in which he lived for man- were themselves master hypocrites. And kind; and the period in which he lived yet the creed or lack of creed of these for God. Though such a division is nihilists was unimpeachable. Tolstoy put somewhat arbitrary, I shall adopt it, as 45 all this down in the journal; he weighed it emphasizes rather conveniently certain the problem, analyzed himself scathingly, crises in his life. The first period came and yet could come to no other conclusion, to an end at the time of his marriage ; it Here, then, was an impasse. There was, had lasted thirty- four years. He was indeed, one way out of it; that was to brought up like a good Russian in the 50 kill himself. The demon of suicide kept Greek church, and as a boy accepted Tolstoy pretty close company for many a frankly its ritual and its dogma. Many day. Just why he did not put an end to pious and simple-hearted people were his life is a little hard to explain, if he about him, some of them relatives, some has given us absolutely just data of his servants in the house, and others peasants 55 experiences. Why did not St. Augustine of the estate. They and he were instinc- kill himself ? They are comparable char- tively drawn to one another. He ad- acters; both were miserably unhappy. 'From the journal of Prince Nukiudov, 1857. The demon of suicide appears to have 304 WRITING OF TODAY been superseded at critical moments by a could have been in greater sympathy than divinity that was shaping his ends. Per- Tolstoy, and nowhere did he practise it on haps, too, he exaggerated. Men like this a greater scale than in the two great always overstate; they also in their fury novels of his maturity, War and Peace, fail to account for the hidden influences sand Anna Karenina. The former of that transcend their logic. these novels comes as near being a cosmos There was in his case, to be sure, an as any single work of the nineteenth cen- alleviation other than suicide — story tury. It soon forced itself into transla- writing. In the distribution of talents tion, and was received the civilized world that goes on in this world, Tolstoy was ioover with astonishment. That one man invested with an almost uncanny creative could know so much of life ! And yet this imagination. He could put himself defi- book bears evidence of a troubled, dis- nitely in the place of other people. And cordant mind. That may not be a misfor- so intense and of so wide a range were tune in a great work of art; it is, how- his experiences and his sympathies that 15 ever, likely to be. For those later pages this talent of his allowed him to ignore of dialogue in Paradise Lost justifying momentarily his philosophy. I shall not the ways of God to man are no more dwell upon his early stories. They were surely an artistic blemish than are the received with immediate applause, and chapters of preaching in Tolstoy's great placed him at once in the front rank of 20 novel. The lessons in a work of art fol- Russia's writers. Later, in his religious low a far different lead from the lessons zeal, he rejected them almost entire as in a sermon. In the former case you examples of perverted art. A vain dis- gather them as you may, you are some- claimer ! They were uneven, of course ; what loath to restate them ; an appeal to of a hundred stories not all can be su- 25 the imagination can never be logically re- preme. Yet I am not aware that one stated. But a sermon is statement; the could honestly call any one of them fee- preacher is at pains to tell you precisely ble; many are masterly — none artistically in terms of reason what he means. These untrue ; nor was Tolstoy capable of writ- two methods will not combine. That Tol- ing an impure story. His intuitions be- 30 stoy should have been a preacher is, I lied his reason. These stories express the think, to our great advantage, but he sort of man Tolstoy was, and Tolstoy the might have spared us his philosophical man, Tolstoy as he appeared in his crea- discussions in his novels, tive work, was, I am inclined to believe, a This distinction of mind is thrown into finer personality than Tolstoy the thinker. 35 relief by a couple of sentences taken from I do not mean by this statement, of his correspondence. ' At this moment,' he course, that an imaginative writer should writes, ' I am yoking myself anew to that not possess a philosophy of life. The tiresome and vulgar Anna Karenina, with truth lies in the opposite direction. Great the sole desire of getting rid of it with all poets are seers ; their wisdom is the wis- 40 possible speed.' Tolstoy was not bored dom of the searching minds. The poems merely with Anna Karenina; he was of Homer epitomize Greek wisdom of the weary of art. The life of this modern heroic age ; Don Quixote, the plays of St. Augustine had been a prolonged agony Moliere and of Shakespeare stand for defi- of religious doubt ; the salvation of his nite views of life, unexpressed, to be sure, 45 soul, his personal responsibility, was its in the language of philosophy, but still chief concern. How he ultimately came there, and there, I assume, consciously, to see the light, he has told us in My A poet should not be deprived of his hu- Confession. From that tractate, begun in manity. This view was realized most 1879, I shall quote a few passages to mark clearly, I imagine, by the Greeks in their 50 the stages of his progress from his first attitude toward their great dramatists, period of denial to his final period of The Greeks expected from their drama- faith. tists distinct and tangible interpretations, 'I began,' he says, 'to draw nearer to and they were not disappointed. vEschy- the believers among the poor, the simple, lus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes 55 and the ignorant ; the pilgrims, the monks, analyzed for them the principles of moral the peasants. The doctrines of these men and religious conduct. of the people like those of the pretended With such a conception of art no one believers of my own class, were Christian. G. LITERARY CRITICISM 3°5 Here also much that was superstitious was lieve, that I could not feel my explanation mingled with the truths of Christianity, was artificial ' . . . ' But,' he adds, ' when but with this difference, that the supersti- I drew near to the " holy gates " and the tion of the believers of our class was en- priest called on me to repeat that I be- tirely unnecessary to them, and never in- jlieved that what I was about to swallow fluenced their lives beyond serving as a was the real body and blood, it cut me to kind of Epicurean distraction; while the the heart; it was a false note, though superstition of the believing laboring class small ; it was no unconsidered word ; it was so interwoven with their lives that was the cruel demand of one who had evi- it was impossible to conceive them without 10 dently never known what faith was.' it — it was a necessary condition of their In this condition Tolstoy lived for three living at all. The whole life of the be- years; it was while he was writing Anna lievers of our class was in flat contradic- Karenina. The ideals of his own class, tion with their faith, and the whole life represented by the chief characters in that of the believers of the people was a con- 15 book, had become odious to him, he was firmation of the meaning of life which turning for religious guidance to the peo- their faith gave them.' pie. They only were on the right track; And so he began to study the lives and they only had grasped the teachings of the doctrines of the ' people.' He re- Jesus. Yet a searcher must make distinc- turned, as it were, to the past, to his child- ajtions. ' The people,' he affirms, ' as a hood and youth. ' I united myself,' he whole had a knowledge of truth ; this was says, ' to my ancestors — to those I loved, incontestable, for otherwise they could not my father, mother, and grandparents. I live. Moreover, this knowledge of truth joined the millions of the people whom I was open to me; I was already living by respect. Moreover there was nothing bad 25 it, and felt all its force ; but in that same in all this, for bad with me meant the in- knowledge there was also error. Of that dulgence of the lusts of the flesh. When I again I could not doubt. All, however, got up early to attend divine service, I knew that formerly repelled me now presented that I was doing well, if it were only be- itself in a vivid light. Although I saw cause I tamed my intellectual pride for 30 that there was less of what had repelled the sake of a closftr union with my an- me as false among the people than among cestors and contemporaries, and, in order the representatives of the church, I also to seek for a meaning in life, sacrificed my saw that in the belief of the people what bodily comfort.' was false was mingled with what was It was the same with preparing for the 35 true.' communion, the daily reading of prayers, Tolstoy is now passing into his third with genuflections, and the observance of period — as he puts it, the period in which all the fasts. ' However insignificant the he lived for God. The immediate occa- sacrifices were,' he says, ' they were made sion of his break with the church was the in a good cause.' He prepared for the 40 Turko-Russian war of 1877. ' At this communion, fasted, and observed regular time,' he- says, ' Russia was engaged in hours for prayer both at home and at war; and in the name of Christian love, church. Russians were engaged in slaying their Such is the picture of Tolstoy, a com- brethren. Not to think of this was impos- municant of the orthodox church — as we 45 sible. But at the same time in the shall see, a somewhat uncertain figure. churches men were praying for the suc- ' I shall never forget,' he goes on, ' the cess of our arms, and the teachers of re- painful feeling I experienced when I took ligion were accepting these murders as communion for the first time after many acts which were the consequence of faith, years. ... It was such happiness for me 50 Not only murder in actual warfare was to humble myself with a quiet heart be- approved, but, during the troubles which fore the confessor, a simple and mild ensued, I saw members of the church, her priest, and, repenting of my sins, to lay teachers, monks and ascetics, approving of bare all the mire of my soul; it was such the murder of erring and helpless youths, happiness to be united in spirit with the 55 1 looked round on all that was done by meek fathers of the church who composed men who professed to be Christians, and these prayers ; such happiness to be one I was horrified.' with all who have believed and who do be- The Tolstoy who now emerges, Tolstoy 306 WRITING OF TODAY at the age of fifty, is the man we know ' good works.' The first article in the best. ' Leon is always working,' his wife creed of a man of religion is to get him- writes. ' Alas ! he is writing some sort of self right with his God. This becomes religious treatises. He lies and reflects his passion and until that matter is set- until his head splits, and all to prove that 5 tied, the world about him counts for noth- the church is not in accord with the teach- ing. The words, ' benevolence,' ' philan- ing of the Gospels. I doubt if his efforts thropy,' ' horse-sense,' while the struggle interest a dozen people in Russia. But is on, bring no comfort to such a man. there is nothing to do for it. I only hope They appear rather as mere babblings, a that it will be over with quickly, and pass 10 cheap way out of it. Tolstoy is not at away like a disease.' To him she wrote : home with the moralists ; his place is ' That you should waste such extraor- among that rarer, more positive company dinary intellectual force in chopping of men of religion, whose good works are wood, heating the samovar and in cobbling simply an inevitable offshoot of their shoes, saddens me.' And later : ' Well, I 15 faith. Thus, in spite of the denial I have take comfort in the Russian proverb, " Let mentioned, Tolstoy ranks with the great the child have his way, provided he religious leaders, does n't cry." ' A question naturally arises, Can a man This is expert testimony; yet the views be at once both a prophet and an artist? of Mme. Tolstoy concerning her husband 20 And the answer is, I take it, Yes, religion do not coincide fully, I imagine, with our and art may lie down together like the own. A prophet, to be sure, is likely to tiger and the lamb, but the lamb must be troublesome about the house. And always lie inside the tiger. Tolstoy re- Tolstoy, we must know, was what Wil- mained a great artist, but during his later liam James calls a twice-born man. His 25 life his art always served his religion. In mother gave birth to him in 1828; but his book, What is Art? published in 1898, one birth is never enough for a saint. Tolstoy being at the time seventy years of The Isaiahs and the Pascals and the Bun- age, he denies to art the quality of beauty, yans always have to be born again ; other- a quality which the Greeks insisted upon, wise, like most of us, they die. No Greek 30 To his mind the artistic activity is simply that I know of, and no Roman, was ever the evoking in oneseM feelings one has born more than once; they were, as Car- once experienced and then having evoked lyle says, the best of them, terribly at them, consciously handing them on, by ease in Zion. But the Hebrews and the means of certain external signs, so that Christians, the prophets and the saints 35 others may be infected by these feelings among them, were never satisfied — are and also experience them. His definition never satisfied — with but one birth. Tol- proper goes no further than this ; but the stoy had several of them, and the latest definition is not the most significant part was always prone to be a little more pain- of that book. Distinctions between good ful than the one before. Such profusion 40 and bad art do not interest Tolstoy, al- is undomestic. Let us now turn to one or though he uses those words constantly; two other considerations. his distinctions, as a man of religion, are If you recall the statements I quoted at between art ' worth while ' and art per- the beginning of this sketch, you noted verted, Art worth while, he affirms, one spirited denial, the denial of the di- 45 should in the first place express those vinity of Christ. Tolstoy was excom- primary emotions — love, hatred, jeal- municated from one church and could ousy, fear — in such terms that all people, have joined no other, Catholic or Evan- the peasant as well as the philosopher, gelical; nor could he have become an ac- may understand them. Ibsen's The Mas- tive member of the Y. M. C. A. All con- 50 ter Builder is intelligible only to a class; nections of such a nature would have en- it is therefore an example of perverted tailed an intellectual compromise as ab- art. The Odyssey is an example of art horrent to him as it was impossible. To worth while. In the second place, great Tolstoy's imperious, Russian mind, creeds art, supreme art, should have as its funda- could not be ' restated,' and yet he was as 55 mental theme the Christian gospel of far removed from a mere moralist as was brotherly love. That is art most worth a medieval saint. His religion was a re- while. Adam Bede, The Christmas Carol, ligion of faith, it rested not at all on the works of Dostoievsky, the story of G. LITERARY CRITICISM 3°7 Joseph and his brethren, are a few ex- the existence of such misery as he had amples of art on the theme of brotherly witnessed should in no way be a reason love. for embittering the life of the home cir- Those who have familiarized themselves cle. Simple-minded Tolstoy ! ' I felt,' he with the sequence of Tolstoy's imaginative 5 adds naively, ' that this was perfectly just, writing have noticed the effect of these and held my tongue; but in the depth of theories upon it. His art undergoes a re- my soul I knew that I was right, and I newal. No longer are his stories mere could not quiet my conscience.' It was transcripts of life; in fact, most of them, this unquiet conscience that sent him off his assertions to the contrary notwith- 10 finally to die alone. standing, were never quite that. But now In the morning papers of December 8, they serve much more consciously his re- igi2, there appeared among the headlines ligious ideals. Among them appear what the announcement of the printing of Tol- might be called parables, Two Old Men, stoy's diary. The appended article gave The Death of Ivan Mitch, Master and 15 a few extracts, evidently from a preface, Man — with this distinction : The char- From this, in closing, I shall quote briefly, acters in Tolstoy's finest parables, unlike allowing Tolstoy the ultimate word, those in the parables we are most familiar ' After all,' he wrote, ' let my diaries re- with, are never types; they are always in- main as they are. It may be seen from dividualized. The stories wear their rue 20 them that in spite of the misery of my of sermonizing with a difference. I seem youth, God did not abandon me and that to see the lamb of art lying down most as I grew older I learned, however little, trustfully very near but yet outside the to understand and to love Him.' ' I have tiger of religion. Resurrection, the great had moments,' he continues, ' when I have novel of his old age, is a Pilgrim's Prog- 25 sometimes been so impure and so subject ress through a real world. Perhaps the to personal passions that the light of this main characters are not so sharply defined truth has been obscured by my own as in Anna Karenina; Tolstoy did not obscurity; but in spite of all, I have know them quite so well. He is an old man served at times as the intermediary for now, and the turmoil and contradictions 30 His truth, and those have been the hap- of youth have in part escaped him. But piest moments of my life.' What a the critic approaches Resurrection softly, change here from that head-long Tolstoy for it stands among the fairest and most who one day came from the Caucasus to authentic ' poems of human compassion.' ally himself with the devotees of art ! Tolstoy's character takes .on much of 35 And what a contrast, too, between the the complexity of the modern age, yet so fine renunciation of these words and the sharp are its main features that it seems arrogance of that other confessor of a at times almost simple. It was a brutal century before — Rousseau ! ' May God act, perhaps, for him to thrust his diary will that, passing through me, these truths into the hands of his betrothed, knowing 40 have not been sullied, and may mankind that she would read it in tears ; the act find in them its pasture. It is only in that may have been brutal; to him it was a that my writings have importance.' gage to sheer honesty. On the evening of Finally, 'If the people of the world wish his return from a visit to the slums of to ready my writing, let them dwell on Moscow, he began to argue with a friend, 45 those passages where I know the Divine but with such warmth and so angrily that power has spoken through me, and let his wife rushed in from an adjoining them profit from them throughout their room to ask what had happened. ' It ap- lives.' peared,' 2 he says, ' that I had, without being aware of it, shouted out in an agon- 50 IX ized voice, gesticulating wildly, " We should not go on living in this way ! We RUSSIAN NOVELISTS AND must not live so ! We have no right ! " ' ENGLISH He was rebuked for his unnecessary ex- citement, was told that he could not talk 55 Wation, New York, February 25, 191S. quietly upon any question, that he was ir- y P ermissl0n -] ritable, and it was pointed out to him that When the uttermost causes of the pres- a From What Shall We Do? ent war are recorded some day in the 308 WRITING OF TODAY great Blue Book of history, a fair measure cere, but it is not a novel of life, but a of. responsibility will fall upon Dostoiev- novel with a purpose. It inculcates the sky, Tolstoy, and their successors. Such a ideal of the man who stands beyond good Blue Book will print copious extracts and evil with almost exclusive emphasis from the Russian novelists and copious ex- 5 on the dogma that the aim of life is in tracts from the younger English novelists, the satisfaction of physical desire. Sanine and will show how the Anglo-Russian has been explained as marking the reac- entente which made the present conflict tion from the shattered hopes and ideals possible had been encouraged, or at least of the Russian revolution. Since altru- accompanied, by a remarkable rapproche- 10 ism, self-sacrifice, had been proved a fail- ment between Russian fiction and the new- ure in the thousands of Russian youth est British schools. The influence of who had gone to the gallows in vain, Dostoievsky, as the most typical represent- there must be a sharp swing towards ego- ative of the Slav soul, upon the ideals and ism, self-indulgence in a very specific method of writers like Compton Macken- 15 sense. In this sharp reaction from pole zie, W. B. Maxwell, J. D. Beresford, Gil- to pole the book is typically Russian. It bert Cannan, and half a dozen others, is is not typical in the lifelessness of its unmistakable. It is an influence acknowl- principal characters. For all his playing edged. Imitation of the Russians is re- the Superman, Sanine is an abstraction vealed not only in the way these younger 20 and a good deal of a bore. He is utterly men have gone in for the novel of psychol- removed from the flesh and blood that ogy, or in their discovery of the ' lower crowd the pages of Tolstoy, Dostoievsky, classes,' or in their exploiting of the lower and Turgenieff. emotions, or in their extreme frankness. Plainly, the writers of the English novel It is shown in a close modeling of char- 25 who would master the secret of the great acter upon character, and almost of Russians must study their ' Bible ' more phrase upon phrase. One might take Mr. carefully; though even then it is evident Gilbert Cannan's latest story, Young that they will assimilate the new teaching Earnest (Appleton), and point out peo- under the limitations of racial tempera- pie, situations, turns of expression, which 3oment and social tradition. The one les- are straight from Dostoievsky, though son they should and may acquire is that modified — and not infrequently misap- the great Russians never worked by form- plied — in accordance with the English ula, even when they worked for a purpose, temperament and the writer's special It is true that Turgenieff's novels have a equipment. Dostoievsky's Crime and Pun- 35 social meaning in the sense that his suc- ishment has been for some time a sort of cessive stories chronicle the emergence of Bible to the circle of younger writers in new types from changing social condi- England. tions. Only Turgenieff's characters are Unfortunately, there is evidence that the never ' types,' but intensely living men younger English novelists, in stibjecting 40 and women. It is true that Tolstoy in themselves to , the influence of the Rus- Anna Karenina is already the moralist, sians, have followed not only the masters but his ethical purpose is quite submerged but the third-rate men. Even the Rus- in the epic of life, the preacher is sians can do fairly poor work at times, drowned in the artist. And so in Dos- As an example there is the famous Sanine, 45 toievsky, that gospel of redemption by Michael Artzibasheff, which appeared through suffering, which comes nearest to in Russia half a dozen years ago, and is being a formula, is always exemplified in now put forth in an English translation men and women of an almost terrifying (B. W. Huebsch), with an introduction reality. It follows that the outspokenness by Mr. Gilbert Cannan. The writer of 5oof the Russian masters arises entirely out the introduction admits that the book is of an inner necessity, out of the need of an uncomfortable one. What he seems to depicting the truth. Their frankness may overlook is that Sanine is uncomfortable at times be excruciating, but it is never in an utterly different way from Crime shocking. It proceeds from life and not and Punishment. The Russian novel has 55 from, formula. always been sincere, outspoken, and faith- Whereas formula, in setting or in ex- ful to the complexities of life. Sanine is pression, is very prominent among the fearfully outspoken, and is probably sin- English imitators of the Russians, just as G. LITERARY CRITICISM 3°9 it is prominent in Sanine which is scarcely mind ; Hugh Walpole (to come to our par- anything but imitation. It is prominent ticular instance) that of Youth. ' Mr. in the English writers who are apt to Walpole offers us indeed a rare and in- think that sincerity is that which shocks teresting case,' says Mr. James. ' We see the bourgeois. Mr. Gilbert Cannan, for 5 about the field none other like it ; the case example, is realistic by formula and idyllic of a positive identity between the spirit, by formula. When realistic he is very, not to say the time of life or stage of ex- very realistic. On such occasions men perience, of the aspiring artist and the and women ' hunger for the possession ' of field itself of its vision.' each other, and their kisses are ' bitter 10 We wonder if this is the right explana- sweet.' When idyllic, he is very idyllic, tion of the phenomenon. It is true that, and men and women run hand in hand under the age of thirty, Mr. Walpole has down sun-kissed slopes — pure spirit, in produced six novels tingling with the con- fact. Now, the great Russians are neither sciousness of youth. But is normal youth sultry by rule nor idyllic by rule ; but they 15 quite so conscious of itself ? Are not blend spirit and body, sin and ecstasy, into your middle-aged novelists and poets the that single thing called life. ones who really worship it ? What if Mr. Walpole were simply precocious? His six novels, saturated with the worship of X 20 youth, are in much the mood that inspired The Princess and the Butterfly. When HUGH WALPOLE AND THE that play was written, Mr. Shaw, then a NOVEL dramatic critic, at once nicknamed it Turning Forty. Its author, Mr. Pinero, H. W. BOYNTON 25 had just passed the turn, and its mood, however coddled for dramatic purposes, [Evening Post^ New York^ April 24 , 1915. was natural. For a boy in his twenties, on the other hand, to write a Maradick It was very recently that England found at Forty seems unnatural — until we per- time to be interested in certain rising or 3oceive that by an excess of sensibility and newly risen novelists who seemed to be out of the very intensity of his worship bringing fresh matter, or at least a fresh of youth, he has dramatized his dread of flavor, to English fiction. They owed its loss. And he has not perceived that much to Messrs. Wells, Bennett, and Gals- the mood in which middle-age regrets worthy, and probably more to the Con- 35 youth is incidental and relatively slight, tinental masters, French and Russian, Youth, after all, is not the only thing with whose weapons the death-blow (we worth having. flatter ourselves) has at last been dealt Because he thinks it is the only thing, to Respectability and Victorianism. Their or the chief thing, Mr. Walpole's middle- workmanship is of the uniform brilliancy 40 aged men are represented as mainly occu- to which British authorship has recently pied in clinging to it. The hero of his been speeded up. And there is something first novel, The Wooden Horse, is a man approaching uniformity in the larger proc- with a grown-up son and the heart and ess behind their virtuosity. Henry James mind of a healthy boy. His triumph is has called it a process of saturation : 45 precisely that he himself has not grown 'The process of squeezing out to the ut- up. This is true also of Mr. Zanti, in most the plump and more or less juicy Fortitude. The pathos of the protagonist orange of a particular acquainted state, of The Gods and Mr. Perrin is that he and letting this affirmation of energy, ■ has lost, with youth, his chances of hap- however directed or undirected, constitute 50 piness ; and so it is with Maradick. for them the " treatment " of a theme — Therefore, although the later novels of that is what we remark them as mainly this writer show a steady advance in engaged in.' Applying this generaliza- workmanship, and the emergence of a de- tion, Mr. James observes that Arnold Ben- sire to interpret life in its larger aspects, nett's saturation is that of a special pro-J5we never quite get away from that initial vincial milieu, the Five Towns ; Mr. H. ^.3 'preoccupation. Mr. Walpole's first book, Wells's, that of the extraordinarily intense The Wooden Horse, is (like most first and versatile experiences of his "own books) so far inferior to its successors 3io WRITING OF TODAY that it may safely be ignored. His episode, is the subject of this strangely ' Trojan ' family are the aristocratic pup- original and powerful tale, pets of tradition ; the types appear again Its successors, Fortitude and The Duch- in The Duchess of Wrexe, but greatly ess of Wrexe, have won a much wider humanized and individualized. It is al- 5 audience and more enthusiastic praise, most possible to believe in the Beamin- Fortitude is a story upon the big scale, sters — never in the Trojans. The a ' life ' novel of the type to which novel- Wooden Horse was written while Mr. ists are so generally returning from the Walpole was teaching in an English novel of episode which supplanted it for school. On the strength of its acceptance 10 a decade or two. There is an advantage by a publisher, he made the plunge from in following a human experience from be- schoolmastering to professional author- ginning to end, or at least from infancy ship. The Gods and Mr. Perrin is evi- to maturity for which the episodic method dently based on his experiences as a has no equivalent. Only the pursuit must schoolmaster. It is much shorter and, in 15 be worth while, the companion of so long scope, less pretentious than any of the a journey must be something more than other stories except The Prelude to Ad- a weakling. The heroes of these young venture, and this is perhaps why these English novelists are too often mere bun- books seem to me his strongest pieces of dies of desire and sensibility. They are work. There is a grim intensity and econ- 2oin fact the offspring of a strange mesal- omy about them which is far more im- liance. We cannot believe that there is pressive than the diffused enthusiasm and a new race of Englishmen whom they at times strained sensibility of the longer fairly represent. If any proof were novels. They spring more directly from needed of their alien blood, it would be in the writer's experience — or perhaps we 25 their easy habit of bursting into floods of should say they spring from experiences tears. Some day one of them will for- which the writer is better able to inter- get and kiss his comrade on both cheeks, pret. The Gods and Mr. Perrin is sub- after which the very finest of Oxford ac- titled A Tragi-Comedy, and is, in fact, a cents will not be able to conceal the mon- well-nigh terrifying study of the mental 30 grel that he is — Tolstoy, as it were, out and moral desolation of a certain type of Mrs. X Y . Mr. Walpole's of provincial school. Moffat's is in its young men are more manly and more way as dreary as Do-the-Boys Hall, but English than Mr. Compton Mackenzie's or here it is the dreariness of the masters Mr. Gilbert Cannan's; but they are not upon which the eye is focussed. Mr. 35 free from strained emotionalism. Forti- Perrin is simply the most hapless of a tude, the book which made the writer hapless group, hating their task and each known in America, is a sort of extended other to the verge of murder and mad- ' prelude to adventure.' At the end of it ness. That he falls short of murder and Peter Westcott has just learned the lesson is rescued from madness is hardly more 40 that by losing the world a man may gain than a piece of luck. The ' unconvincing ' his soul. We leave him baring his bosom, part of the story is that in which he is a trifle theatrically (he is always self- represented as deliberately planning, in a conscious), to the storm. 'He was alone, spirit of heroic bravado, to turn back and he was happy, happy as he had never again to the dreadful existence which he 45 before known happiness, in any time, be- has roused himself to fling off. The fore. . . . The rain lashed his face and Prelude to Adventure, which followed Mr. body. His clothes hung heavily about Perrin in point of time, deals with a sort him. He answered the storm : " Make of of obverse problem : it begins with a mur- me a man — to be afraid of nothing . . . der, -and goes on to show that even such 50 to be ready for everything — love, friend- an act may not be the be-all and the end- ship, success ... to take it as it comes all of character and experience for the ... to care nothing if these things are murderer — may, indeed, be but the rising not for me — make me brave ! Make me of the curtain, a ' prelude to adventure.' brave." ' So the book ends as it has be- How it happened that our Cambridge 55 gun, with a cry for courage — a cry with undergraduate killed his man, that he was a touch of hysteria in it. never legally brought to book, and that With The Duchess of Wrexe, Mr. Wal- his life was not hopelessly ruined by the pole has begun, it is clear, a new adven- G. LITERARY CRITICISM 311 ture of his own, an adventure towards the be a fruitful enough ideal for the profes- interpretation of society as contrasted sional critic reading anew the ancient with the individual. This story is the first monuments ; but for the less exacting task of a group to be called The Rising City, of reckoning the claims of contemporary but for some reason the writer has taken 5 creators to our attention, there are simpler special pains to disclaim it as a trilogy, methods than an elaborate portraiture of ' The Duchess of Wrexe,' he says, ' is en- what may very possibly prove to be lack- tirely a novel complete and independent in ing in salient or permanent traits. At itself. . . . The three novels will be con- least before undertaking any such task, nected in place, in idea, and in sequence 10 criticism might well attempt to answer the of time. Also certain of the same char- question that every thoughtful contem- acters will appear in all three books. But porary must put to an imaginative effort, the novels are not intended as sequels of especially to the novel which deals with one another, nor is The Rising City a the known appearances of life: what has Trilogy.' Mr. Walpole's people have a 15 this hand made of my world? For it is way of reappearing in later books, but, here that the novelist touches us all most trilogy or not, something more than that closely. seems to be here presaged. The Duchess What has Mrs. Wharton done for our of Wrexe, in its larger aspect, is a study world — for the American scene, to use of the passing of an ancient order, the 20 Mr. Henry James's somewhat precious British ' Autocrats,' as typified by the Bea- phrase ? The experts have told us again minsters, with the old Duchess of Wrexe and again that Mrs. Wharton's touch is at their head. The Duchess dies at the the deftest, the surest, of all our American moment when the relief of Mafeking lets manipulators in the novel form. Quite loose the ' tigers ' of London, the mongrel 25 recently Mr. James has reiterated in his democracy kept, for the most part, within reverberating periods his authoritative strictest bounds. The moral drawn is that praise of Mrs. Wharton's accomplishment, tigers must have some sort of freedom, Hers is the only American name he Has and that democracy can succeed only found occasion to mention in his latest when it has had free play — when ' Love 30 appraisal of contemporary English fiction, thy neighbor as thyself ' may be looked The ground for according such distinction for as the upshot. ' That 's my Individ- to Mrs. Wharton is plain to one acquainted ualism, my Rising City/ says the chorus- with the craftsman's side of the novelist's philosopher of the book ; and seems to give business. Mrs. Wharton writes well — < a key to the treatment of the two novels 35 perhaps too consciously well. Technically which are to be its successors, if not in a she has formed her method on the ap- strict sense its sequels. Mr. Walpole still proved tradition of French fiction, the has youth, and if, as Mr. James surmises, tradition of refinements and exclusions, of what he needs is to 'work free of this subtleties and intentions, the tradition of primitive predicament,' in order to do 40 Flaubert and Turgenieff, on which Mr. mature work, that is a matter which time James admiringly formed himself a gen- will doubtless attend to. eration ago, rather than on the richer if less esthetically satisfying tradition of English and Russian fiction, of Fielding XI 45 and Thackeray, of Tolstoy and Dostoiev- sky. In this approved school triumphs are MRS. WHARTON'S WORLD more easily won, at least more enthusi- astically recognized by the expert who has ROBERT HERRICK served his term there, than in the other 50 looser tradition. [Sew Republic February 13, 1915. By permission Technical proficiency of anv sort ac- of author and publisher.] ,. , r . . ,,. J ,..■'. . ' cording to any intelligent ideal, is com- The exclusive aim of literary criticism mendable surely, but only in measure as it can hardly be that of drawing the mental achieves the purpose of all technique, and spiritual portrait of a creative per- 55 which is effective creation. No true ar- sonality, as Mr. Brownell, reaffirming the tist can be content with a triumph of man- faith derived from his master Sainte- ner alone. If Mrs. Wharton were forced Beuve, has recently asserted. That may to remain on a solitary pedestal of tech- 312 WRITING OF TODAY nical proficiency, hers would be a lonely shoddy part. For it is the shoddier part position in this day of unacademic free- of rich and fashionable New York, in- dom in all creative effort, and her ad- dubitably authentic as ' society ' though it mirers by dwelling too insistently on her be, that preponderatingly occupies the excellent manner would do her a dubious 5 scene in The House of Mirth and The service, all the more as their praises seem Custom of the Country — the part Mrs. to deny the validity of other and robuster Wharton has least zealously embraced, ideals for the novel. It may well be, in- however carefully she may have studied deed, that the French tradition with all its its manifestations. The House of Mirth, reservations is already doomed in favor 10 offering that most significant of Mrs. of that freer, more epic treatment of life Wharton's discoveries, the lamentable so much deprecated by Mr. James in his Lily Bart, contains less of obvious shoddy comments on Tolstoy. than The Custom of the Country, with its However all this may be judged by the Undine Spragg and Elmer Moffatt. In- few who are absorbed in the how rather 15 deed, so far to the extravagant verge of than the what of the finished product, it is the social world has Mrs. Wharton moved futile to deny that the what is always of in this latter novel that .it remains fan- first importance to that large mute audi- tastically unreal, with the generic unreality ence of the uninitiated to which every of the parable, betrayed even by the stage creator must appeal in the last resort. 2° names of the heroine and of her origin, And respecting Mrs. Wharton's content, it ' Apex City.' Apex City ! As expert a has been her misfortune that her pub- realist as Mrs. Wharton must have been Ushers should have advertised so persist- aware to what unreality of the typical she ently and complacently her peculiar advan- was surrendering herself with those satiric tage in possessing an accurate knowledge 25 names. One feels that extremely little of of her material, for observing, that is, that this variegated chronique of marriage and small portion of American humanity in- divorce, of ' Wall street deals ' and vul- tensively occupied with purely social am- garian millionaires, ever really entered bitions. Mrs. Wharton, we have been into Mrs. Wharton's delicate perceptions, told, has actually been part of what she 30 They emerge from beneath her trained presents as fiction, the inference being that hand almost as raw as from the repor- the fiction must inevitably be the better torial insignificance of the newspaper to for this fact. It is a naive conviction that which she so often refers the reader for intimate experience is a condition of im- corroboration. The singular character- aginative realization. The truth seems to 35 istic of imaginative presentations is that be that the least influential factor is they provide their own test of their valid- the observed fact, while the personality ity, whether or not the reader has through which the fact must pass with its happened to have similar experiences, fundamental knowledge and power of real- Crusoe's island was never doubted by boy ization is the controlling one. It scarcely 40 or man. But one doubts Undine Spragg, needs the illustrious example of a Balzac, Apex City, Elmer Moffatt and their world, who constructed solidly an entire social although the newspapers authenticate system out of the meagerest of observed them daily with precise detail. That data, to suggest that Mrs. Wharton may something human, essential for conviction, actually have been hampered in her im- 45 which the newspaper paragraph must per- aginative representations by a too exclu- force omit, the novelist should provide — sive and intimate acquaintance with her at any rate a novelist such as Mrs. Whar- material. Certainly she has not done least ton. Otherwise why piece together the — been least convincing — in those occa- shoddy chronicle of Undine Sp-ragg's ca- sional excursions into the less familiar 50 reer ? reaches of her field such as Ethan Frome. In The Fruit of the Tree Mrs. Wharton Possibly it was an instinctive realiza- has largely ignored the loud, the shoddy, tion of this commonplace that led Mrs. the super-fashionable. Yet the world here Wharton in the three American novels of displayed is scarcely more of her own which I am especially thinking to choose 55 hearth, I suspect, than that of the two that portion of the abundant material at others mentioned. The reforming, socio- her command which presumably appealed logical hero is an emanation of the serious least to her own heart and soul — the world that customarily revolves some- G. LITERARY CRITICISM 3*3 where within hail of the more hectic orbit ually anemic as Mrs. Wharton's world be- of ' society.' But Amherst and his phil- trays them ? Without too easy a patriot- anthropic yearnings over the Westmore ism it may be doubted whether this clever mills has the fatal stamp of amateurish- observer has ' been fair ' even to our ness — the unrealized — almost as plainly 5 'most fashionable circles.' Certainly she as the preposterous Spragg family. 'W ith has not cared to tone her pictures by vig- all his earnest intention Amherst merely orous contrasts or shaded examples. In- scratches the surface of the immense field stances of these she has offered, but with of American social endeavor. His creator little enthusiasm ; they are pallid ghosts, still thinks of these matters in the terms ioher ' nice ' people, who by right of soul of ' doing good ' and ' social settlements.' as well as of blood belong to the world she Fortunately The Fruit of the Tree holds has chosen to exploit. Why has Mrs. much else that is better realized if not Wharton never cared to do more for them, better worth realizing than social service ; for the Seldens, the Marvells ? it contains the soft, shallow Bessie, the 15 The explanation may lie in the truth of best done of Mrs. Wharton's many rich which I have already hinted, that Mrs. women, as well as Justine, the most daring Wharton is not primarily a social his- of her young women. And the conflict torian, that she does not use the novel for between the rich wife and the idealistic this epic purpose, although these longer husband, the reactions of Amherst and his 2oAmerican stories suggest quite naturally venturous second wife, are all much more such a presumption. Ethan Frome be- in Mrs. Wharton's real province — the trays the secret of her true power. This analytic and psychological province where shortened novel, this monochrome prose the subtleties of the subtly-minded are tragedy so exquisitely dealt with, reveals neatly unraveled. 25 the spiritual interest with which Mrs. What has Mrs. Wharton done toward Wharton is innately sympathetic — this painting in our national canvas? Grant- and the suppressed drama of Bessie and ing the utility and significance of all ele- Amherst, the expressed drama of Amherst ments in the scene, granting at least for and Justine. These spiritual conflicts in- The House of Mirth and The Fruit of the 30 volve no necessity of picturing a civiliza- Tree, the authenticity of portrayal, never- tion ; they are universal. Just because, theless, beyond the single figure of .Lily perhaps, they are not conditioned by Bart, which is doubtless the most authori- special environment or caste, because they tative version ever rendered of the shal- lie outside the hard actualities of her per- lowly rooted and socially obsessed Ameri- 35 sonal contracts, their creator's imagination can girl, there is little of importance that seems to have been happily released, to remains. For one reason, Mrs. Wharton's work more freely and convincingly in stories are almost manless in any real con- them. Ethan Frome conceivably sprang ception of the sex, and in spite of the from no more intimate experience than dominance of American women in our so- 40 Undine Spragg and her crew, yet his sub- cial world we have not yet reached the dued and twilight tragedy of relaxed will point where men are utterly negligible, spoke to his creator with all the fidelity of where Selden or Marvell, Rosedale or Gus high art. This is the field of creative in- Trenor will answer for men. As for the terest to which Mrs. Wharton has repaired woman side of the picture, Mrs. Whar- 45 more frequently in her short stories than ton's chosen contribution has been quite in her novels. Her talent, a defining, an- exclusively in the realm of social passion, alyzing, and subtlizing talent, has found which she has correctly portrayed as little that was really congenial or sugges- the pathological absorption of American tive in the common run of our coarsely women. Even her skill and her special 50 accented national life. She has rarely , knowledge have not saved her from exag- caught its more significant notes or tried gerations, unrealities, and repetitions, to peer beneath its obvious superficiali- The prevailing tone, the final. taste of this ties, nor has she been warmly charmed American society is that of a marvelous by its kaleidoscopic glitter. The larger thinness — tinniness, rather. Are we as a 55 canvas, therefore, I infer, is not her nat- people when we evolve into ' society/ are ural opportunity, competent artist that our women, even, as mentally and spirit- she is. 314 WRITING OF TODAY champagne, and surreptitious banknotes XII must become, almost at once, inexpressibly- tedious. It is just that to which Mr. THE SALAMANDER Johnson has devoted nearly 400 pages of 5 close print, and it loses none of its tedious- [Times (London, England) Literary Supplement, ness at second hand. But to complain that April 2, 1915. By permission.] ,, ,. . , r . . , . the subject is immensely over-weighted is The Salamander, by Owen Johnson only to recognize that Mr. Johnson is fol- (Martin Seeker), though it has un- lowing the approved method of some of doubted merits as a novel, must equally be 10 our younger novelists on this side of the described as a sociological monograph on a Atlantic. And, indeed, the reader who very extensive scale. It is an exact report persists with the story, nerved by the of the conditions of the life led by the same devotion to social science as that Salamander. What, then, is a Sala- which animates Mr. Johnson, will often mander? From a portentously serious 15 be well rewarded. For one thing, his foreword, in the best manner of the socio- searchlight plays relentlessly into the re- logical treatise, we learn that the Sala- cesses of New York life. The method of mander is a type of young woman that has the procured husband who can frank all been rapidly developing in New York, escapades of his wife in her role of mis- whose 'passion is to know, to leave no 20 tress is explained in perfectly candid de- cranny unexplored, to see, not to experi- tail; and in a lighter vein the story of ence, to flit miraculously through the how Estelle Monks became Ferdie Am- flames — never to be consumed ! ' Out of sterdam, of the famous Society column of the States somewhere she flings herself, the Free Press, is a master-picture of unintroduced, upon New York, determined 25 American push and American slang. But to ' see the world ' like her brothers. She there are plenty of effective scenes, genre sticks at nothing, except the loss of her pictures worked up with an immense ' virtue ' ; and the more perilous the adven- amount of vivacious realism ; the amours ture, the more 'dangerous' the man, the of men and women rigorously followed better she likes it. How does she live? 30 out, dissected, and discussed with much Well, as she represents one side of the skill and insight — though the serious in- f eminist movement, which would encour- tensity with which they are handled would age women to share with men the work of not be excessive if the fate of the United life and be economically independent, the States depended upon them ; and the hero- answer is an odd one. She gets some easy 35 ine emerges from the whole a sympathetic occupation — she typewrites or ' plays at figure whom we gladly resign at the end art,' or ' touches the stage,' or does a little to a conventional matrimonial career, journalism — and so gets 'the little ready money she needs.' But she lives in taxis and motors, dines at a new restaurant 40 XIII every night, ' knows the insides of pawn- shops, has secret treaties with tradesmen, THE SALAMANDER and by a hundred stratagems procures her- self presents which may be converted into tP«»<*, A P"l 2I, th I e 9I5 r - o ?J t0 ^ cial P ermission of cash.' The day of the Salamander is from 45 e proprie ors " eighteen to twenty-five; then she either I have just read The Salamander marries, as does Dore, the heroine of this (Seeker) of Mr. Owen Johnson — a name novel, or takes up some serious career, or new to me and one to keep on the select list flouts the true gospel of a Salamander by — and I feel I know just all about one side definitely stepping outside the social pale. 50 of that city of surprises, New York. The The Salamander is undeniably a portent, Salamander is either a native of New at least to the American sociologist. But York or a migrant thither from a West- it must be doubted whether even that em State. It is of the so-miscalled gen- resolute inquirer, in his thirst for knowl- tier sex, of any age from eighteen to nom- edge, could stand any long experience of 55 inal twenty-five. It plays with fire to the the Salamander's world. To ordinary in- extent of eating it and living on it —r that, dividuals the unending whirl of buzzing roughly, is Mr. Johnson's idea. It can telephones, joyrides, noise, kisses, orchids, (as the saying is) take care of itself. G. LITERARY CRITICISM 315 Naturalists observe that it has a long head plans to lose the boat and Nash, and be- md a little heart. Quintessential^ a cold come Louis's mistress. But John is in md dishonest reptile, it offers all and gives Shanghai and has learned their plans. He nothing in particular in exchange for any- calls at Louis's bachelor establishment at thing from ' bokays ' to automobiles. Be- 5 the moment when Hilary has joined it. ginning with male flappers, preferably the He remonstrates. Nash presently drops young of plutocrats, it later fastens on the in also, knows what is happening, but is plutocrats themselves or their robust ene- prepared to give the lovers a blessing, mies. Strong men, at whose nod railroad though not a divorce. Hilary asserts her and chewing gum trusts go quaking, fight 1° right to live in the sun. Nash and John publicly over it in equivocal restaurants, are about to go their ways, when ' Stop ! ' Mr. Johnson's particular salamander, Dore came an order like a pistol-shot — to the by pseudonym, eschews the rigor of the two men about to pass out of the door, game. She allows herself to be hard hit, ' No one leaves here. There is cholera in and, instead of running away with the 15 the house. You are in quarantine.' So hitter, is betrayed by a maternal instinct there we are. In the end (the quarantine (with which she has, properly speaking, lasts eight days) Hilary discovers that no business) to take unto herself a young John is the only man she has ever loved, rotter with a determined spark of character Nash, the husband, crosses the chalk line glinting behind his eyes, who has for her 20 to the cholera-quarters, and so gets him- fair sake fought himself free of the widow self permanently out of the way, Louis is Cliquot and others. This, I suppose, is a disposed of readily, and all ends comfort- concession to the molasses formula, ably for people who take comfort in this though our author is too sincere a person kind of nonsense, to accept it, and hints in an epilogue that 25 burnt salamanders don't dread the fire as much as would be comforting to their con- XV verted husbands to believe. This clever novel has n't the air of caricature which SHOCKING REVELATIONS x the subject might seem to invite. Dore 3o herself is made plausible enough — no {Nation, London, England, February 13, 191s. mean feat. Salamanderism is presented y permlsslonJ as a phase of the new feminism in U.S. A. Armageddon has discovered the gov- An allied species has been reported in erness. Next to the Archangelic hosts, Chelsea by detached observers. 35 there has been no more popular legend than that of the German governess in the household of the Prime Minister (or was XIV it the Foreign Secretary? or the First Lord of the Admiralty?) whose bedroom, WIFE AND NO WIFE 1 4° when searched, yielded diagrams of every fort in the kingdom and a bonnet-box {Evening Post,^ New ^Yorit. April 24, 1915. lined with bombs. Then, shortly after the y permissions outbreak of war, came the entertaining The place is Shanghai, the time the memoirs of Miss Anne Topham, ex-gov- present, the persons a woman and three 45 erness to the Kaiser's children ; and now men, all in love with her — the situation we have the revelations of an anonymous therefore an advance upon the consecrated lady, for five years English governess to a one, by virtue of being a quadrangle in- princely family in Germany, stead of a triangle. It is a very pretty It is instructive to compare these two amplication, to begin with. Hilary, the 50 memoirs. Miss Topham's, written some leroine, has once (innocently) planned to years before the war, was a candid and secome John's mistress, but has with- friendly account of the Imperial family, irawn at the last moment and married valuable because of its cordial sincerity Nash. After four years of marriage she and freedom from prejudice. The vol- las fallen in love with young Louis. 55 ume before us is a remarkable example Sfash is about to sail for Manila ; Hilary of the psychological effects of war. With- l The Chalk Line. By Anne Warwick. New York: * What I Found Out. By an English Governess. John Lane Company. (Chapman & Hall.) 3 i6 WRITING OF TODAY out for a moment suggesting that the overheard remarking mysteriously that anonymous lady is actuated by any mo- ' " they " wanted him to go to France to tive other than the strictest regard for look at it.' A few days afterwards a box accuracy, the reader cannot but be struck of chocolates arrives from France with by the almost uncanny precision with 5 the General's card enclosed. No harm which these notes ring true to the tune surely in a box of chocolates? Why, of the moment. then, does the Prince chuckle when he sees The public mind, for instance, is it and exclaim ecstatically, ' The old dare anxiously engaged in the consideration of devil ! ' Anonyma is ready with the ex- a Zeppelin raid. ' Anonyma's ' volume 10 planation : opens with an account of her arrival in Germany: her princely charges, boys of ' I have heard it said since I came back to five and six, are discovered at play, and England, by a Frenchman, that General von 1 t- ■ ,1 • .. ; Y „ Kluck is supposed to have visited France in- so absorbing ,s their game that the en- ^ to J* k ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ trance of the governess is unheeded. And 15 s0 ^ s _ ^ hich Germans bought and secretly what is this game ? It is a Knegspiel for made ready to use as trenches a year before infants, manufactured by Count Zeppelin, the war broke out.' consisting of miniature airships supplied with sugar bombs, and a costly and elabo- Thus, cunningly, by the method of innu- rate model of London. As the governess M endo and suggestion, the governess works comes into the room, she overhears the her fateful spell. Everything utters the tutor exclaiming: 'Now, watch again the same note of secret menace. Out of the way I do it. One over Westminster Ab- mouth of babes Bernhardism babbles un- bey — ' checked; the very servants give away im- The same ominously apposite impression asportant political secrets as readily as they is conveyed in turn by every member of receive tips. All is in order, from the the German war party. Take General von German governess spy story (with names Bernhardi : ' the most ruthless, brutal- and addresses complete) to the improper looking man I had ever met, the very type proposals of the Prussian Lieutenant. It of militarism in flesh and blood — espe- 30 would be unjust to Anonyma to quit this daily blood.' With a bow so stiff that it notice without a reference to the Kaiser. ' seemed as though he grudged bending his One afternoon as she is reading quietly in thick, short neck for my benefit,' the Gen- the garden, two gentlemen in uniform are eral raps out the harsh inquiry: 'You seen approaching. The governess looks are English ? ' ' She was born in Washing- 35 up, and is so startled by the sight of one ton,' tactfully explains Herr Krupp, hurry- of them that she overturns her chair, ing to the rescue of an awkward situation. The Emperor (for it is he) gallantly re- ' Ach, that is better,' the General grunts, places it, remarking as he does so, ' Ah, I A few minutes later, however, the gov- see that I have upset the United King- erness is indiscreet enough to express her 40 dom ! ' The two enter into an animated admiration for England. 'That is non- conversation, but the governess observes, sense,' observes Bernhardi savagely : ' an occasional odd, wandering look come into his eyes ' ; and that his left hand, ' al- 'You have only to read their newspapers though beautifully kept, is not an attrac- to see that the English know they are de- 45tive sh and looks some how unhealthy.' generating fast. But the hand of tate is on ™ , ,5 ii„„j ;„ l„j. w ..* t-u„ „,„+;,,<, -f^r them. They are asleep, and will wake up J, he ^ h f n d is bad; but the motive for with a rude' shock only when it is too late.' the Kaiser s visit puts the crowning seal on our suspicions: As he departs, Bernhardi observes (aside) to Krupp, 'Ah, you will have your big 50 „ 'What do you suppose brought Him to the surprise all ready for us at the Festakt! ' Schloss? enquires an ,^ tful baroness No, r?_ *.._„ 4-„ ir™ tru.^v ,„;*!, u;,, « m-^t it was not to see the children, nor the Prince, Or turn to Von K uck, with his great nQr Lieut enant von X , he's seen them dome head and his air of being absent- all _ he came t0 see you! ' minded and thinking deeply. of something far away in space,' and he will be ssMachiavellism can go no further. H. DRAMATIC CRITICISM The purpose of dramatic criticism is to do for a play or a playwright very much what literary criticism does for a book or its author. There is, however, iu dramatic criticism a less general agreement of critical opinion and, owing to the changing character of modern drama, a less definitely organized body of critical theory for the guidance of individual judg- ment. It must also be remembered that the time limitations under which the average first night notice is produced, while they no doubt tend to preserve freshness and vividness of im- pression, at the same time do not allow for that slow process of maturing thought which gives to good writing the smoothness and flavor of old wine. The student who looks forward to the writing of dramatic criticism should have a knowl- edge of the history of dramatic literature and an acquaintance with the best of the numerous recent books on the drama and the stage. He needs also to keep in close touch with the better newspapers of such cities as London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, and New York, which are noteworthy for the number and character of their dramatic productions, nor should he neglect the magazines devoted to the drama, where he will find good examples of dramatic criticism and carefully written reviews of the season's productions. Careful distinction should be made between the conscientiously written, independently formed judgment of a play and the commonplace and valueless press-agent kind of notice so common in the newspapers, a notice usually as lacking in literary skill as it is in critical discrimination. While the technique of the dramatic review has fortunately not yet become so stereotyped as that of the news-story, some of the topics which are ordinarily included may be mentioned: the name of the play, the author, the theater, the occasion (first perform- ance, anniversary, revival, or benefit), the star or chief actors (sometimes the whole cast), a summary of the action, and some statement as to the character of the production, the qual- ity of the acting, and the general impression made by the play. The hybrid nature of many of the recent theatrical productions makes it impossible to predict in any given case how much space should be given to any of the factors enumerated above, but it is safe for the young critic to remember that ' the play 's the thing,' and that its importance should not be overshadowed by actors or scenery or audience. Iu the illustrations of dramatic criticism which follow the student will find not only the brief (Rosy Rapture) and the more lengthy notice ('Typically American'), but also exam- ples of the revival of the preface (Barker's Midsummer Night's Dream), of the critical ar- ticle on a dramatic movement or school (W. B. Yeats on 'The Irish Drama'), of the ap- preciation of a playwright (W. P. Eaton, ' Concerning David Belasco'), and of the author's personal attitude toward his craft (Arnold Bennett, ' Writing Plays,' and B. Veiller, ' How I Wrote Within the Law ') . J convinced that it is easier to write a play than a novel. Personally, I would sooner WRITING PLAYS write two plays than one novel — less ex- penditure of nervous force and mere ARNOLD BENNETT 5 brains would be required for two plays than for one novel. (I emphasize the [Metropolitan, July, 1913. Reprinted by courtesy WO rd ' write ' because if the whole weari- of the publishers.] ness between the first concep tion and the There is an idea abroad, assiduously first performance of a play is compared fostered as a rule by critics who happen 10 with the whole weariness between the first to have written neither novels nor plays, conception and the first publication of a that it is more difficult to write a play novel, then the play has it. I would than a novel. I do not think so. I have sooner get seventy and seven novels pro- written or collaborated in about twenty duced than one play. But my immediate novels and about twenty plays, and I am 15 object is to compare only writing with 317 318 WRITING OF TODAY writing.) It seems to me that the sole some seven situations in the customary persons entitled to judge of the compara- drama, and a play which does not contain tive difficulty of writing plays and writing at least one of those situations in each act novels are those authors who have sue- will be condemned as ' undramatic ' or ceeded or failed equally well in both de- 5 ' thin,' or as being ' all talk.' It may con- partments. And in this limited band I tain half a hundred other situations, but imagine that the differences of opinion on for the mandarin a situation which is not the point could not be marked. I would one of the seven is not a situation. Sim- like to note, in passing, for the support of ilarly there are some dozen character my proposition, that whereas established 10 types in the customary drama, and all novelists not infrequently venture into the original — that is, truthful — character^ theatre with audacity, established drama- ization will be dismissed as a total absence tists are very cautious indeed about quit- of characterization because it does not re- ting the theatre. An established drama- produce any of these dozen types. Thus tist usually takes good care to write plays 15 every truly original play is bound to be and naught else ; he will not affront the indicted for bad technique. The author is risks of coming out into the open; and bound to be told that what he has written therein his instinct is quite properly that may be marvelously clever, but that it is of self-preservation. Of many established not a play. I remember the day — and it dramatists all over the world it may be a>is not long ago — when even so experi- afifirmed that if they were so indiscreet as enced and sincere a critic a's William to publish a novel the result would be a Archer used to argue that if the ' intel- great shattering and a great awakening. lectual ' drama did not succeed with the general public, it was because its tech- seven faultless beomides 25 nique was not up to the level of the tech- An enormous amount of vague rever- nique of the commercial drama ! Perhaps ential nonsense is talked about the tech- he has changed his opinion since then, nique of the stage, the assumption being Heaven knows that the so-called ' intel- that in difficulty it far surpasses any other lectual ' drama is amateurish enough, but literary technique, and that until it is ac- 30 nearly all literary art is amateurish, and quired a respectable play cannot be writ- assuredly no intellectual drama could hope ten. One hears also that it can only be to compete in clumsiness with some of the acquired behind the scenes. A famous most successful commercial plays of mod- actor-manager once kindly gave me the era times. I tremble to think what the benefit of his experience, and what he 35 mandarins and William Archer would say said was that a dramatist who wished to to the technique of Hamlet, could it by learn his business must live behind the some miracle be brought forward as a new scenes — and study the works of Dion piece by a Mr. Shakespeare. They would Boucicault ! The truth is that no tech- probably recommend Mr. Shakespeare to nique is so crude and so simple as the 40 consider the ways of Sardou, Henri Bern- technique of the stage, and that the proper sfein and Sir Herbert Tree, and be wise, place to learn it is not behind the scenes, Most positively they would assert that but in the pit. Managers, being the most Hamlet was not a play. And their pupils conservative people on earth, except com- of the daily press would point out — what positors, will honestly try to convince the 45 surely Mr. Shakespeare ought to have per- naive dramatist that effects can only be ceived for himself — that the second, obtained in the precise way in which ef- third, or fourth act might be cut whole- fects have always been obtained, and that sale without the slightest loss to the piece, this and that rule must not be broken on In the sense in which mandarins under- pain of outraging the public. And indeed 50 stand the word technique, there is no it is natural that managers should talk technique special to the stage except that thus, seeing the low state of the drama, which concerns the moving of solid human because in any art rules and reaction al- bodies to and fro, and the limitations of ways flourish when creative energy is the human senses. The dramatist must sick. The mandarins have ever said and 55 not expect his audience to be able to see will ever say that a technique which does or hear two things at once, nor to be not correspond with their own is no tech- incapable of fatigue. And he must not nique, but simple clumsiness. There are expect his interpreters to stroll round or H. DRAMAT IC CRITICISM 319 come on or go off in a satisfactory man- of matter, and less subtle kinds of matter. ner unless he provides them with satisfac- There are numerous delicate and difficult tory reasons for strolling round, coming affairs of craft that the dramatist need in, or going off. Lastly, he must not ex- not think about at all. If he attempts to pect his interpreters to achieve physical 5 go beyond a certain very mild degree of impossibilities. The dramatist who sends subtlety he is merely wasting his time, a pretty woman off in street attire and What passes for subtlety on the stage seeks to bring her on again in thirty sec- would have a very obvious air in a novel, onds fully dressed for a court ball may fail as some dramatists have unhappily dis- ' in stage technique, but he has not proved 10 covered. Thus whole continents of danger that stage technique is tremendously diffi- may be shunned by the dramatist, and in- cult; he has proved something quite else, stead of being scorned for his cowardice One reason why a play is easier to write he will be very rightly applauded for his than a novel is that a play is shorter than artistic discretion. Fortunate predica- a novel. On the average one may say 15 ment ! Again, he need not — indeed he that it takes six plays to make the matter must not — save in a primitive and hinting of a novel. Other things being equal, a manner, concern himself with ' atmos- short work of art presents fewer difficul- phere.' He may roughly suggest one, but ties than a longer one. The contrary is if he begins on the feat of ' creating ' an held true by the majority, but then the 20 atmosphere (as it is called), the last sub- majority, having never attempted to pro- urban train will have departed before he duce a long work of art, are unqualified to has reached the crisis of the play. The offer an opinion. It is said that the most last suburban train is the best friend of difficult form of poetry is the sonnet. But the dramatist, though the fellow seldom the most difficult form of poetry is the 25 has the sense to see it. Further he is epic. The proof that the sonnet is the saved all descriptive work. See a novelist most difficult form is alleged to be in the harassing himself into his grave over the fewness of perfect sonnets. There are, description of a landscape, a room, a however, few more perfect sonnets than gesture — while the dramatist grins. The perfect epics. A perfect sonnet may be 30 dramatist may have to imagine a land- a heavenly accident. But such accidents scape, a room, or a gesture; but he can never happen to writers of epics, has not got to write it — and it is the Some years ago we had an enormous writing which hastens death. If a drama- palaver about the ' art of the short story,' tist and a novelist set out to portray which numerous persons who had omitted 35 a clever woman, they are almost equally to write novels pronounced to be more matched, because each has to make difficult than the novel. But the fact re- the creature say things and do things, mains that there are scores of perfect But if they set out to portray a charming short stories, whereas it is doubtful woman, the dramatist can recline in an whether anybody but Turgenieff ever did 40 easy-chair and smoke while the novelist is write a perfect novel. A short form is ruining temper, digestion and eyesight, easier to manipulate than a long form be- and spreading terror in his household cause its construction is less complicated, by his moodiness and unapproachability. because the balance of its proportions can The electric light burns in the novelist's be more easily corrected by means of a 45 study at 3 a.m. — the novelist is still en- rapid survey, because it is lawful and even deavoring to convey by means of words necessary in it to leave undone many the extraordinary fascination that his things which are very hard to do, and be- heroine could exercise over mankind by cause the emotional strain is less pro- the mere act of walking into a room; and longed. The most difficult thing in all art 50 he never has really succeeded and never is to maintain the imaginative tension will. The dramatist writes curtly, ' Enter unslackened throughout a considerable Millicent.' All are anxious to do the period. dramatist's job for him. Is the play being read at home — the reader eagerly and enter millicent' 55 with brilliant success puts his imagination Then, not only does a play contain less to work and completes a charming Milli- matter than a novel — it is further simpli- cent after his own secret desires, fied by the fact that it contains fewer kinds (Whereas he would coldly decline to add 320 WRITING OF TODAY one touch to Millicent were she the her- I have been moved to suggest that, if the oine of a novel.) Is the play being per- art of omission is so wondrously difficult, a formed on the stage — an experienced, dramatist who practised the habit of omit- conscientious and perhaps lovely actress ting to write anything whatever ought to will strive her hardest to prove that the 5 be hailed as the supreme craftsman, dramatist was right about Millicent's as- Whether in a play or in a novel, the tounding fascination. And if she fails no- creative artist has to tell a story — using body will blame the dramatist ; the drama- the word story in a very wide sense. Just tist will receive naught but sympathy. as a novel is divided into chapters, and for io a similar reason, a play is divided into the play story vs. the novel story acts But ne ither chapters nor acts are And there is still another region of su- necessary. Some of Balzac's chief novels perlative difficulty which is narrowly cir- have no chapter-divisions, and it has been cumscribed for the spoiled dramatist — I proved that a theater audience can and mean the whole business of persuading the 15 will listen for two hours to ' talk/ and public that the improbable is probable, even recitative singing, on the stage, Every work of art is and must be without a pause. Indeed audiences, under crammed with improbabilities and artifice ; the compulsion of an artist strong and inl- and the greater portion of the artifice is perious enough, could, I am sure, be employed in just this trickery of persua- strained to marvelous feats of prolonged sion. Only, the public of the dramatist receptivity. However, chapters and acts needs far less persuading than the public are usual, and they involve the same con- of the novelist. The novelist announces structional processes on the part of the that Millicent accepted thd hand of the artist. The entire play or novel must tell wrong man, and in spite of all the nov- 25 a Complete story — that is, arouse a curi- elist's corroborative and exegetical detail osity and reasonably satisfy it, raise a the insulted reader declines to credit the main question and then settle it. And each statement and condemns the incident as act or other chief division must tell a defi- unconvincing. The dramatist decides that nite portion of the story, satisfy part of Millicent must accept the hand of the 30 the curiosity, settle part of the question, wrong man, and there she is on the stage And each scene or other minor division in flesh and blood, veritably doing it ! Not must do the same according to its scale. easy for even the critical beholder to Everything basic that applies to the tech- maintain that Millicent could not and did nique of the novel applies equally to the not do such a silly thing when he has actu- 35 technique of the play, ally with his eyes seen her in the very act ! The dramatist, as usual, having done less, DRAMA NEED N0T BE dramatic is more richly rewarded by results. In particular I would urge that a play, Of course, it will be argued, as it has any more than a novel, need not be dra- always been argued, by those who have 4omatic, employing the term as it is usually not written novels, that it is precisely the employed. In so far as it suspends the ' doing less ' — the leaving out — that con- listener's interest every tale, however told, stitutes the unique and fearful difficulty of may be said to be dramatic. In this sense dramatic art. 'The skill to leave out' — The Golden Bowl is dramatic; so are lo ! the master faculty of the dramatist! 45 Dominique and Persuasion. A play need But, in the first place, I do not believe that, not be more dramatic than that. Very having regard to the relative scope of the emphatically a play need not be dramatic play and of the novel, the necessity for in the stage sense. It need never induce leaving out is more acute in the one than interest to the degree of excitement. It in the other. The adjective ' photo- 50 need have nothing that resembles what graphic ' is as absurd applied to the novel would be recognizable in the theater as a as to the play. And, in the second place, situation. It may amble on — and it will other factors being equal, it is less ex- still be a play, and it may succeed in pleas- hausting, and it requires less skill, to re- ing either the fastidious hundreds or the frain from doing than to do. To know 55unfastidious hundreds of thousands, ac- when to. refrain from doing may be hard, cording to the talent of the author. With- but positively to do is even harder. Some- out doubt mandarins will continue for times, listening to partizans of the drama, about a century yet to excommunicate cer- H. DRAMATIC CRITICISM 321 tain plays from the category of plays, flout from time to time, and occasionally But nobody will be any the worse. And with gorgeous results, and the successful dramatists will go on proving that what- dramatist has hitherto not been less guilty ever else divides a play from a book ' dra- of flouting it than the novelist or any matic quality' does not. Some arch- 5 other artist. mandarin may launch at me one of those And now having shown that some al- mandarinic epigrammatic questions which leged differences between the play and the are supposed to overthrow the adversary novel are illusory, and that a certain tech- at one dart. ' Do you seriously mean to nical difference, though possibly real, is argue, sir, that drama need not be dra- 10 superficial and slight, I come to the funda- matic?' I do, if the word dramatic is mental difference between them — a dit- to be used in the mandarinic signification, ference which the laity does not suspect, I mean to state that some of the finest plays which is seldom insisted upon and never of the modern age differ from a psycho- sufficiently, but which nobody who is well logical novel in nothing but the superficial 15 versed in the making of both plays and form of telling. Example, Henri Becque's novels can fail to feel profoundly. The La Parisienne, than which there is no bet- emotional strain of writing a play is not ter. If I am asked to give my own defini- merely less prolonged than that of writing tion of the adjective 'dramatic,' I would a novel — it is less severe even while it say that that story is dramatic which is 20 lasts, lower in degree and of a less purely told in dialogue imagined to be spoken by creative character. And herein is the actors and actresses on the stage, and that chief of all the reasons why a play is any narrower definition is bound to ex- easier to write than a novel. The drama elude some genuine plays universally ac- does not belong exclusively to literature, cepted as such — even by mandarins. For 25 because its effect depends on something be it noted that the mandarin is never con- more than the composition of words. The sistent. dramatist is the sole author of the play, My definition brings me to the sole tech- but he is not the sole creator of it. With- nical difference between a play and a novel out him nothing can be done, but, on the — in the play the story is told by means 30 other hand, he cannot do everything him- of dialogue. It is a difference less im- self. He begins the work of creation, portant than it seems, and not invariably which is finished either by creative inter- even a sure point of distinction between prefers on the stage or by the creative im- the two kinds of narrative. For a novel agination of the reader in the study. It is may consist exclusively of dialogue. And 35 as if he carried an immense weight to the plays may contain other matter than dia- landing at the turn of a flight of stairs, and logue. The classic chorus is not dialogue, that thence upward the lifting had to be But nowadays we should consider the de- done by other people. Consider the affair vice of the chorus to be clumsy, as, nowa- as a pyramidal structure, and the dramatist days, it indeed would be. We have grown 40 js the base — but he is not the apex. A very ingenious and clever at the trickery play is a collaboration of creative faculties, of making characters talk to the audience The egotism of the dramatist resents this and explain themselves and their past his- uncomfortable fact, but the fact exists, tory while seemingly innocent of any such And further, the creative faculties are not intention. And here, I admit, the drama- 45 only those of the author, the stage-director tist has to face a difficulty special to him- (producer) and the actors — the audience self, which the novelist can avoid. I be- itself is unconsciously part of the col- lieve it to be the sole difficulty which is laboration. peculiar to the drama, and that it is not Hence a dramatist who attempts to do acute is proved by the ease with which 50 the whole work of creation before the act- third-rate dramatists have generally van- ing begins is an inartistic usurper of the quished it. Mandarins are wont to assert functions of others, and will fail to proper that the dramatist is also handicapped by accomplishment at the end. The drama- the necessity for rigid economy in the use tist must deliberately, in performing his of material. This is not so. Rigid econ- 55 share of the work, leave scope for a mul- oray in the use of material is equally ad- titude of alien faculties whose operations visable in every form of art. If it is a he can neither precisely foresee nor corn- necessity it is a necessity which all artists pletely control. The point is not that in 322 WRITING OF TODAY the writing of a play there are various sorts of new considerations have been pre- sorts of matters — as we have already sented to him. Not a word has been seen — which the dramatist must ignore ; altered ; but it is noticeably another play, the point is that even in the region proper Which is merely to say that the creative to him he must not push the creative act 5 work on it which still remains to be done to its final limit. He must ever remember has been more accurately envisaged. This those who are to come after him. experience could not happen to a novel, because when a novel is written it is fin- AUTHOR GIVES WAY TO PRODUCER ished. When the play is ' finished,' the proc- w And when the director of rehearsals, or esses of collaboration have yet to begin, producer, has been chosen, and this price- The serious work of the dramatist is over, less and mysterious person has his first but the most desolating part of his toil serious confabulation with the author, awaits him. I do not refer to the business then at once the play begins to assume new of arranging with a theatrical manager 15 shapes — contours undreamed of by the for the production of the play. For, author till that startling moment. And though that generally partakes of the na- even if the author has the temerity to ture of tragedy, it also partakes of the conduct his own rehearsals, similar dis- nature of amusing burlesque, owing to the concerting phenomena will occur ; for the fact that theatrical managers are — no 20 author as a producer is a different fellow doubt inevitably — theatrical. Neverthe- from the author as author. The producer less, even the theatrical manager, while is up against realities. He, first, renders disclaiming the slightest interest in any- the play concrete, gradually condenses its thing more vital to the stage than the box- filmy vapors into a solid element. ... He office, is himself in some degree a col- 25 suggests the casting. ' What do you think laborator, and is the first to show to the of X for the old man ? ' asked the pro- dramatist that a play is not a play till it ducer. The author is staggered. Is it is performed. The manager reads the conceivable that so renowned a producer .play, and, to the dramatist's astonishment, can have so misread and misunderstood reads quite a different play from that 30 the play? X would be preposterous as the which the dramatist imagines he wrote, old man. But the producer goes on talk- In particular the manager reads a play ing. And suddenly the author sees pos- which can scarcely hope to succeed — in- sibilities in X. But at the same time he deed a play against whose chances of sue- sees a different play from what he wrote, cess ten thousand powerful reasons can be 35 And quite probably he sees a more glori- adduced. It is remarkable that a manager ous play. Quite probably he had not sus- nearly always foresees failure in a manu- pected how great a dramatist he is. . . . script, and very seldom success. The Before the first rehearsal is called, the manager's prof oundest instinct — self- play, still without a word altered, has gone preservation again — is to refuse a play ; 40 through astounding creative transmuta- if he accepts, it is against the grain, tions; the author recognizes in it some against his judgment — and out of a mad likeness to his beloved child, but it is the spirit of adventure. Some of the most likeness of a first cousin, glittering successes have been rehearsed in an atmosphere of settled despair. The 45 THE ACT0RS finish the work dramatist naturally feels an immense con- At the first rehearsal, and for many re- tempt for the opinions, artistic and other- hearsals, to an extent perhaps increasing, wise, of the manager, and he is therein perhaps decreasing, the dramatist is forced justified. The manager's vocation is not into an apologetic and self-conscious to write plays, nor (let us hope) to act in 50 mood; and his mien is something between them, nor to direct the rehearsals of them, that of a criminal who has committed a and even his knowledge of the vagaries of horrid offense and that of a father over his own box-office has often proved to be the crude body of a new-born child. Now pitiably delusive. The manager's true and in truth he deeply realizes that a play is a only vocation is to refrain from producing 55 collaboration. In extreme cases he may plays. Despite all this, however, the man- be brought to see that he himself is one of ager has already collaborated in the play, the less important factors in the collabora- The dramatist sees it differently now. All tion. The first preoccupation of the in- H. DRAMATIC CRITICISM 3^3 terpreters is not with his play at all, but — stop. And the dramatist lying awake in quite rightly — with their own careers; if the night, reflects stoically, fatalistically: they were not honestly convinced that 'Well, that is the play that they have their own careers were the chief genuine made of my play!' And he may be excuse for the existence of the theater and 5 pleased or he may be disgusted. But if he the play they would not act very well, attends the first performance he cannot But more than that, they do not regard his fail to notice, after the first few minutes play as a sufficient vehicle for the further- of it, that he was quite mistaken, and that ance of their careers. At the most favor- what the actors are performing is still an- able what they secretly think is that if they ioother play. The audience is collaborating, are permitted to exercise their talents on his play there is a chance that they may be able to turn it into a sufficient vehicle for jj the furtherance of their careers. The at- titude of every actor toward his part is: 15 THE IRISH DRAMA 'My part is not much of a part as it stands, but if my individuality is allowed WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS to get into free contact with it, I may make something brilliant OUt of it.' [Twentieth Century Magazine, November, 1911. Which attitude is a proper attitude, and 20 y P ermlsslon -J an attitude, in my opinion, justified by the I will not criticize the contemporary facts of the case. The actor's phrase is theater as a whole. If you were satisfied that he creates a part, and he is right, with it you would not have formed your- He completes the labor of creation begun selves into a Drama League. If I were by the author and continued by the pro- 25 satisfied with it I should not have spent ducer, and if liberty is not accorded to him so much time over our Irish players. We — if either the author or the producer at- all know, owing to the commercial condi- tempts to do too much of the creative tions of the times, contemporary drama, work — the result cannot be satisfactory. as a whole, does not take its place beside As the rehearsals proceed the play 30 the best painting, the best music, and the changes from day to day. However auto- best books of our times ; the contemporary cratic the producer, however obstinate the theater makes a pretense of representing dramatist, the play will vary at each re- reality — of showing us people no more hearsal like a large cloud in a gentle wind, exciting than we are ourselves, no more It is never the same play for two days to- 35 eloquent than we are ourselves, no more gether. Nor is this surprising, seeing that picturesquely dressed than we are our- every day and night a dozen, or it may be selves, and it is right that it should do two dozen, human beings endowed with so. Reformers of the theater, for the the creative gift are creatively working on most part, accept the same idea. And it. Every dramatist who is candid with 40 they, at least, do give you reality, and they himself well knows that, though his play make it interesting to you, as Mr. Gals- is often worsened by his collaborators, it worthy does in his Strife and in his Jus- is also often improved — and improved in tice, by showing the great hidden forces of the most mysterious and dazzling man- the modern world — the strife between tier — without a word being altered. Pro- 45 capital and labor, the contest of men ducer and actors do not merely suggest against theological institutions, against the possibilities, they execute them. And the accepted social code, etc. There is an- author is confronted by artistic phenomena other way to change the stage, and that for which lawfully he may not claim is to show there a life, whether ideal or credit. On the other hand, he may be 50 real, that is exciting and picturesque in confronted by inartistic phenomena in re- itself. Italy, where they have made the spect to which lawfully he is blameless, verse drama once more a really popular but which he cannot prevent ; a rehearsal thing, is doing that in one way. In Sicily, is like a battle — certain persons are where Grasso is creating a wonderful theoretically in control, but in fact the 55 school of players, and in Ireland, it is being thing principally fights itself. And thus done in a different way. We are putting the creation goes on until the dress re- upon the stage a real life where men talk hearsal, when it seems to have come to a picturesque and musical words, and where 324 WRITING OF TODAY men have often strange and picturesque who are not peasants, but young men and characters; that is to say, the life of far- women taken from various businesses in away villages where an old leisurely habit Dublin, have come to understand the peas- of life still remains. ant so well. We took them at the start From the first start of our intellectual 5 from different patriotic societies, where movement in Ireland, our faith in success everything encouraged them to study the has come from our knowledge of the life country life. In 1902 a group of young of the country places, and the imaginative men and women were playing old- beauty of their speech. One discovers fashioned farces at a coffee palace in thoughts there not very much unlike those 10 Dublin, and when they gave up their of Homer, not very unlike those of the farces and took to our plays instead, they Greek dramatists. Of course there is a did it in the first instance more from great deal that is crude, but there are patriotism than anything else. Many of songs and stories, showing an attitude of them belonged to the Gaelic League ; some mind that seems the very root of art. '5 of them knew Irish, and living Irish is a Close to the house where I spend every peasant speech. But if politics helped us, summer there is the little picturesque vil- politics injured us also. We did not lage of Ballylee, two or three houses gath- realize when we began that we should ered about an old castle, a very old bridge, have to fight and conquer conventional and beside the bridge great stones that zo conceptions of Irish character. And yet helped the traveler when the stream was we should have foreseen it. flooded, probably for centuries before the All Irish thought has been artificial for bridge was built. Seventy years ago there years. In the earlier parts of the nine- died in that village Mary Hynes, a beau- teenth century England had met the Irish tiful peasant girl, and the poet Rafftery 25 national demand by slandering our char- put her into a song. A few years ago I acters. She did not wish to give us self- heard old men and women describe her government and so she said we were un- beauty after all these years with wonder worthy of it. The Irish peasant, for in- and excitement in their voices. ' The sun stance, was caricatured in Punch, in and the moon,' said one, ' never shone 30 speeches and in newspapers. He was upon anybody so lovely.' ' I tremble all represented as half animal, or as all but over when I think of her,' said another, a savage. To meet this, beginning, I Nor was the poet's praise that made think, with O'Connell, who said that the her so famous unworthy praise. ' Mary Irish peasantry were the finest peasantry Hynes, the calm and easy woman, has 35 upon earth, Ireland created a whole liter- beauty in her mind and beauty in her ature of national glorification. We re- body.' That 's what Rafftery said pi her. peated to one another the real or sup- It is like hearing the old men on the walls posed virtues of our people. We had of Troy speak of Helen. them always ready to meet the foreign In Ireland the country life has for us 40 slander. This attitude of mind lasted the further fascination that it is the only long after the need for it had gone by. thoroughly Irish life that is left. Every- Every kind of enthusiast, political, re- where else English influence has made a ligious, social, had endowed some section conquest more thorough than any that the of Irishmen with the virtues he most ad- sword cquld make. All our patriotic 45 mired, and national song and national movements go back to the peasant, just as novel — we used the word nation con- similar movements have done in Norway, stantly — were expected to show Ireland We try to re-create Ireland in an Irish in the best possible light. 'We were not way by mastering what he knows, and by a people curious about life, looking at it using it to understand what the old manu- 50 with disinterested contemplation, but a scripts contain. To understand the peas- kind of army organized for offense and ant by the Saga, the Saga by the peasant defense. We understood nothing but — that was the Norwegian formula. If propaganda. you keep this in mind it will show you The first play of country life that we that our theatre of folk art is no artificial 55 set upon the stage was in Irish. Our creation of a literary clique, but an ex- own players had not then come together pression of the Irish mind of today. It and we got players from a branch of the will explain to you also how our players, Gaelic League. At the last moment one H. DRAMATIC CRITICISM 325 player refused to go upon the stage be- should outrage the feelings of the crowds, cause the cottage he was to play in was Just as he felt in his own life continual too shabby to do credit to his country, struggle between his ideal purpose and his and another demanded the banishing of infirmity and his poverty, so did he see in a pack of cards that had been given to a 5 the world about him an ideal dream and a group of young men who were to sit grotesque reality. He knew the country playing in the corner. He admitted that places as no Irish writer for fifty years he spent most of his own evenings play- had known them, but he selected from ing cards, but he did not think it right them strange, passionate and grotesque that the Irish should be represented as 10 types, to .set beside his dream. It was no playing them upon the stage. malice, no love of mischief, that made him The history of imaginative thought is imagine instead of colleens of the old sort, generally a history of violent reactions, and the good young men of Boucicault, Synge came to destroy all that unreal- blind Martin and his wife in The Well of ity. I met Synge in 1897, in a students' 15 the Saints, the erring wife in The Shadow hotel in Paris. He had learned Irish of the Glen, the fantastic, mistaken here- from a Gaelic professor at Trinity Col- worship of the people in his Playboy of lege, Dublin, and had spent some years the Western World. He took his types wandering through Europe. Nothing in- from reality indeed, but exaggerated them terested him but the life of the poor, not 20 and arranged them according to his fancy, because they were poor, for he was noth- until he had created something as strange ing of a philanthropist, an artist merely, as the wandering knight and the Sancho but because there was something in their Panza of Cervantes. I can imagine some way of thinking that excited him. He was patriotic Spaniard saying to Cervantes, very poor himself, though of an old fam- 25 ' Do you really pretend that this fat, cow- ily, and a fine scholar. He had lived with ardly peasant, and this crack-brained German peasants in the Black Forest and knight are typical of the peasants and the with a chairmaker in Paris, and brought gentlemen of Spain ? ' I can imagine his fiddle everywhere that he would be others even without any patriotic bias ask- more welcome. I got him to come back 30 ing why he gave them such strange types, to Ireland, and there in the Arran and He, too, took from life the violent and Blasket Islands he found a life after his incomplete that through its symbolism he own heart. There he escaped the squalor might reveal a heroic dream. When we of the poor and the nobility of the rich, have filled our minds with the work of He had nothing of the modern humani- 35 Synge, we remember, even more vividly tarian ; he had no interest in economics, no than the strange persons he has created, interest in social forces, and he had little blind Martin's dream of the splendid life of the Irish politician. He was a Nation- that might be, Nora Bourke's pre-occu- alist, but he never spoke of politics; noth- pation with the fine men she fancied, the ing interested him but the individual man : 4° Playboy's poetical reveries of far-off ex- in fact I think his own ill health and citing things. Dublin for a time saw but poverty had made individual destiny mo- one-half his meaning and rejected him, mentous to him. All the things that we rioting for a week after the first per- forget in the excitements of newspapers formance of his greatest play, rejecting and crowds and business, were always 45 him as most countries have rejected their present to him. In one of his early poems greatest poets. But Dublin has repented he asks on his twenty-fifth birthday if the sooner than most countries have repented, twenty-five years to come are to be as evil and today the Playboy is played con- as the twenty-five gone by. But gradually stantly in Dublin to good houses, drawn he attained happiness through his art, com- 50 from all political and social sections. The ing to see in his individual infirmities but six days' rioting was his laurel wreath. a sort of burning glass that gathered for Lady Gregory's plays were accepted his study the general lot of men. All be- from the first, for she is attracted, not came but a subject for artistic creation, by the harsh, but the gracious elements in and an occasion for the creative joy. 55 life. She has no sarcasm. It was sar- It was inevitable that a man like this, casm, aimed at the whole of life, that who seemed ignorant of the mere exist- made Synge his worst enemies. There is ence of all these Irish controversies, no bitterness in her laughter, in her vision 326 WRITING OF TODAY no delight in the grotesque things. Some London, has transmogrified Shakespeare, of her plays, those that touch upon some The golden fairies chase one another patriotic emotion, are so well loved that through the woods in single file or lie men passing the Abbey Theater door and prone on a low green mound, grouped seeing some favorite name upon the bill 5 round Titania, under great shafts of green will pay their sixpence, and having seen, mounting to the sky, against a purple back- say, The Rising of the Moon, for perhaps ground. This color-effect, the heavy the fortieth time, will come out after mass of old gold against the purple and twenty minutes of emotion and go upon the green, is wonderfully beautiful. In the their way. No new play can mean as 10 end the golden fairies play hide-and-seek much to them, and so they only stay for round the columns of Theseus's palace, the old one. Our other dramatists, Mr. Gradually their numbers dwindle. At last Robinson, Mr. Murray, Mr. Boyle, Mr. only one, a girl, is left — the last patch of Irving, are less full of the folk life; prob- gold to fade from the sight, and to leave ably they may be half conscious of some 15 on the mind the strange, new impression reaction against us older writers, because of the play as golden, a ' golden book of at moments they seem almost as much in- spirit and sense.' Who is the magician terested in economic problems as a Gals- who invented these golden fairies? Is it worthy or a Shaw; but what interests me Mr. Barker or Mr. Norman Wilkinson? most in their work is that by their means K>One might perhaps have had misgivings we are setting upon the stage the life of about the thing in advance, a fear of taw- most classes in Ireland that have anything driness, dreadful associations with the Irish about them. We have begun to go golden image in Kensington-gardens. But beyond the peasant to find themes in the the thing turns out to have been an inspira- workhouse parlor, the house of the strong zstion, something to strike us all with won- farmer, in the seminary and the shop. der and delight. As soon as you see the thing you know that Mendelssohn would never do. For our part, we should have III welcomed Stravinsky. But Mr. Cecil 30 Sharp has given us old English folk-music, GRANVILLE BARKER'S PRO- rather dolorous, always piano, more quaint DUCTION OF ' A MIDSUM- than tuneful. Well, somehow or other, as MER NIGHT'S DREAM ' the Americans say, it ' goes.' It goes quite well with the gold. [Times, London, England, February 7, 1914. 35 By permission.] A PATCH OF SCARLET Is it Titania's ' Indian Boy ' that has On the gold is one single patch of scar- given Mr. Barker his notion of Orientaliz- let. This is Puck, with a baggy wig and ing Shakespeare's fairies ? Or is it Bakst ? baggy breeches, a hobgoblin. He — Puck Anyhow, they look like Cambodian idols 40 is this time really a he — is Mr. Donald and posture like Nijinsky in Le Dieu Bleu. Calthrop, gyrating, sitting at Oberon's feet But the most startling thing about them is cross-legged, tumbling head over heels, or, that they are all gold — gold hair, gold like a mischievous boy, putting finger to faces, gold to the tips of their toes. A nose behind Bottom's back. A most un- golden Oberon is flouted by a golden Ti- 45 canny Puck, this scarlet patch, tania, Peas-Blossom and Cobweb and As for Theseus and Hippolyta and their Moth and Mustard-Seed are golden chil- train, we do not know where their dresses dren — the only children among these fair- come from. We can only make shots. Is ies, three in flakes of gold and the fourth it from the mural decorations of Minos's in golden baggy trousers out of Sumurun. 50 palace unearthed in Crete ? But some of The rest are ' golden lads and lassies,' who, them seem Byzantine and suggest a Ra- some of them, dance old romping, ob- venna fresco. All, men and women alike, viously English, dances, while the others, wear ' peg-top ' trousers, tight at the ankle, the Cambodian idols, fall into stiff postures But in the last scene, at the performance in corners. One with a scimitar stalks like 55 of Pyramus and Thisbe, they, so to speak, a black marionette, with His scimitar, in put on their evening clothes — flowing Petrouchka. Evidently the Russian bal- Greek robes. So clad, they recline on let, which has transformed so much in couches in the very front of the stage H. DRAMATIC CRITICISM 327 (Mr. Barker's now familiar ' apron outburst of enthusiasm — pent up in silent • stage') while the performance of Quince absorption during the evening — at the and his fellows takes place on the palace fall of the curtain. Mr. Barker, standing steps in the rear. This, again, is a novel amid his golden fairies, seemed to be arrangement and an admirable. Quince 5 thinking that silence, too, has been said (Mr. Whitby) is impayable, Bottom (Mr. to be golden; but he was compelled, never- Playfair) immense, Flute (Mr. Quarter- theless, to utter a word of thanks. If only maine) deliriously absurd as Thisbe. And he can keep it up! If only he can run then the ' Bergamask ' dance ! It never through all Shakespeare in the spirit of came out of Bergamo, but is right War- 10 daring artistic adventure with which he wickshire, the acme of the clumsy gro- has turned the fairy-land of A Midsummer tesque, with vigorous kickings in that part Night into gold, of the anatomy meant for kicks. Perhaps the best thing in the performance, how- ever, was the behavior of the audience; 15 jy Theseus's courtly lead in the applause, the whispered comments of Demetrius and Ly- a PREFACE TO ' A MIDSUM- sander, the lively interest of the courtiers ' MER NIGHT'S DREAM ' It was all alive, this scene, all at the high water mark of excitement. 20 GRANVILLE BARKER As always in A Midsummer Night, the difficulty is with the bewitched quartet of INew York Times, February 17, 1915. By permis- lovers. The difficulty is that they are of- sion of author and P ublisher -] ten in imminent danger of becoming bores. ' September 29, 1662 . . . and then to If they escape being bores, they may be 25 the King's Theater, where we saw Mid- said to have succeeded. We are not sure summer Night's Dream, which I had that the men did altogether escape; but the never seen before, nor shall ever again, ladies, Miss McCarthy and Miss Cowie, for it is the most insipid, ridiculous play were more lucky. Miss McCarthy hardly that I ever saw in my life. I saw, I con- shows at her best in a flaxen wig, but no 30 f ess, some good dancing and some hand- doubt she must needs be contrasted with some women, which was all my pleasure.' Miss Cowie's brunette. The quarrel of How many of us nowadays would dare the two girls gives, as always, a tremen- confide that even to a cipher diary? But dous ' lift ' to this part of the play. Miss Pepys, as usual, is in the fashion. Shakes- Cowie makes a surprisingly intense vixen 35 peare was out-moded, and the theatre — an anticipation of Carmen. manager was already bolstering up his mere poetry with sensuality and display. ^ THE GOLDEN OBERON We have> q£ cours6j reformed all that . But it is not of these one thinks in the Still, if I must choose between this cheer- end. The mind goes back to the golden 4° ful Philistine, and the pious, awestruck fairies, and one's memories of this produc- commentator, who tells me that ' the tion must always be golden memories, germs of a whole philosophy of life are The golden Oberon, Mr. Dennis Neilson- latent in the wayward love scenes of A Terry, is a figure of slim, noble, and Midsummer Night's Dream, I turn rather Giorgionesque beauty. His movements 45 to Pepys. He has done less to keep are grace itself. His voice, with the fa- Shakespeare from his own. If you go to miliar family timbre, is the very voice for a theatre to scoff you may remain to en- some of the most beautiful lines Shake- joy yourself; if you go to pray (once in speare ever wrote. This Oberon, for the a while) you likelier leave to patronize, first time, dominates not only the scene, 50 Why waste time in proving that A Mid- hut the whole play, informs it with gra- summer Night's Dream is a bad play, or ciousness and majesty (fairy majesty, proving otherwise, since to its deepest golden majesty) and exquisite rhythmic damnation one must add: — Written by a beauty. Miss Christine Silver's Titania is man of genius for the theatre, playwright a delicate, fragile pendant to the Oberon. 55 in spite of himself? Does not vitality de- The little golden child- fairies are delight- feat doctrine? The opening of the play fully childish, even in their stiff Cam- may be bad. The opening speech surely bodian-idol attitudes. There was a great is even very bad dramatic verse. There 328 WRITING OF TODAY is nothing much in the character of The- Snug, asks, ' Let me play the lion, too/ seus ; there 's nothing at all in Hippolyta. from that moment they have my heart, all The substance of the opening scene is out five forever. It is a little puzzling to of keeping both with its own method and discover just how bad their play is meant with the scope of the play. But before 5 to be. Did Quince write it? If he is the end of it, earlier than usual even in guilty of ' now I am dead,' then is not the his later days, Shakespeare has begun to prologue a plagiarism? But a good deal get into his stride. If he could n't yet of more respectable play-writing than this develop character he could write poetry, was plagiarism, as who knew better than and : 10 Shakespeare ? I suspect he was of two . . . O happy fair, minds himself on the point, if any at all. Your eyes are lode stars and your tongue Then come the fairies. Can even gen- sweet air, ius succeed in putting fairies on the stage? More tuneable than larke to shepherd's ear The pious commentators say not. This When wheat is green and hawthorn buds l5 p i av atK i t h e sublimer parts of King Lear appear. are f re ely quoted as impossible in the At the sound of that we cease to demand theatre. But, then, by some trick of from Helena— for the moment, at least reasoning they blame the theatre for it. — any more material qualities. How he I cannot follow that. If a play, writ- could and seemingly could n't help but » ten for the stage, cannot be put on the flower into verse ! It was still a question, stage, the playwright, it seems to me, has I suppose, whether he remained a poet or failed, be he who he may. Has Shakes- became a dramatist. He was, in every peare failed, or need the producer only sense, nearer to Venus and Adonis than pray for a little genius, too? The fairies Macbeth. If he had n't been a man of «5 are the producer's test. Let me confess the people, if he had n't had his living to that, though mainly love of the play, yet earn, if he hadn't had more fun in him partly, too, a hope of passing that test, than the writing of lyric poetry will sat- has inspired the present production, isfy ! If it was he made the English the- Foolhardy one feels, facing it. But if a atre, did not the theatre make him what 30 method of staging can compass the diffi- he is — what he might be to us ? culties of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Next come the clowns. It is neces- surely its cause is won. sary, I am ashamed to say, to remark, Lacking genius one considers first how that Clown does not, first of all, mean a not to do a thing. Not to try and realize person who tries to be funny. A clown 35 these small folk who war with rere-mice is a countryman. Now, your Cockney for their leathern wings; that goes with- audience finds a countryman comic, and out saying. In this play I can visualize your Cockney writer to this day often neither a beginning nor an end to realism makes him outrageously so. Shakespeare of either scenery or action. Nor yet to presumably knew something about coun- 40 use children. To my mind neither chil- trymen, and he made the simple discovery dren nor animals fit with the theater, and put it into practice for the first time Perfect in their natural beauty, they put in this play, that, set down lovingly, your our artifice to shame. In this case one is clown is better fun by far than mocked tempted, one yields a little, over Cobweb at ; if, indeed, apart from an actor's gri- 45 and Co. It 's possible, even probable, that maces, he had then been funny at all. children served Shakespeare. But I ex- Later on Shakespeare did this, as he did pect that the little eyases of that time most other things, better, but he never were as smartly trained in speaking verse did it so simply. If Shallow and Silence as is a crack cathedral choir now in the are finer, they are different ; moreover, 50 singing of anthems. That there might be though countrymen, they are not clowns, a special beauty, an impersonal clarity, If Dogberry is as good, he hasn't, for in a boy's Oberon or Titania, I can well me, quite the charm. There are little believe. To take a nearly parallel case sketches in the last plays; that delightful who would not choose to hear treble than person, for instance, at the end of An- 55 soprano, through Bach's Matthew Pas- tony and Cleopatra, with his ' I wish you sionf This is an interesting point, and joy of the worm.' But from the moment it opens up the whole question of the loss Bottom, gloweringly mistrustful of poor and gain to pure poetry on the stage by H. DRAMATIC CRITICISM 3 2 9 the coming of women players. But where weather except their sheer beauty ? But are our children with the training in fine what better excuse? Oberon is con- speech and movement? Stop beneath the stantly guilty. So recklessly happy in windows of an elementary school and lis- writing such verse does Shakespeare grow ten. Or worse, listen to the chatter of a 5 that even the quarrel of the four lovers smart society gathering; in the school is stayed by a charming speech of He- playground at least there is lung power, lena's thirty-seven lines long. It is true It will take some generations of awaken- that at the end of it Hermia, her author ing to the value of song and dance, tune allowing her to recollect the quarrel, says and rhythm, to reestablish a standard of 10 she is amazed at these passionate words, beauty in the English language. but that the passage beginning, ' We, Her- The theater might help if it were al- mia, like two artificial gods,' is meant by lowed. Though, first of all, heaven Shakespeare to be spoken otherwise than knows, it needs to help itself. One may with a meticulous regard to its every say that the tradition of verse-speaking 15 beauty is hard to believe. And its every on the English stage is almost dead. So beauty will scarcely shine through throb- much the better. Our latest inheritance bing passion. No, his heart was in these of it, at the least, was unsound, dating not passages of verse, and so the heart of the from Shakespearean times, the great age play is in them. And the secret of the of verse, but from the ' heroic days ' of 20 play — the refutation of all doctrinaire Rowe and Otway; later from the trans- criticism of it — lies in the fact that lators of ' the immortal Kotzebue ' and the though they may offend against every let- portentous Sheridan Knowles. Comic ter of dramatic law they fulfil the inmost verse found its grave (at times a charm- spirit of it, inasmuch as they are dramatic ingly bedizened grave in the rhymed bur- 25 in themselves. They are instinct with lesque of Planche and Byron. But that excitement, that spontaneity, that Shakespeare was a classic and must be sense of emotional overflow which is spoken ' classically,' and what you drama. They are as carefully constructed couldn't speak classically you had bet- for effective speaking as a messenger's ter cut. Look at the Shakespeare prompt- 30 speech in a Greek drama. One passage in books of even the last few years and see particular, Puck's 'My mistress with a how mercilessly rhymed couplets were got monster is in love,' is both in idea and rid of, blots upon the dignity of the play, form, in its tension, climax, and rounding From this sort of thing William Poel has off, a true messenger's speech. Shake- been our saviour, and we owe him thanks. 35 speare, I say, was from the first a play- In the teeth of ridicule, he insisted that wright in spite of himself. Even when he for an actor to make himself like unto a seems to sacrifice drama to poem he — in- human megaphone was to miss, for one stinctively or not — manages to make the thing, the whole merit of Elizabethan poem itself more dramatic than the drama verse with its consonantal swiftness, its 40 he sacrifices. And once he has found gradations sudden or slow into vowelled himself as a playwright, very small mercy liquidity, its comic rushes and stops, with, he has on verse for its own sake. He above all, the peculiar beauty of its seems to write it as the fancy takes him, rhymes. We have had, of course, indi- badly or well, broken or whole. Is there vidual actors or speakers of taste and 45 a single rule he will not break, lest his genius (one instances Forbes Robertson), drama should for a moment suffer? Is and there might be now and then a com- there a supreme passage in the later plays pany inspired by such scholarly ideals as but is supreme more in its dramatic emo- Benson could give, but Poel preached a tion than its sheer poetry? Take for an gospel. 5o instance the line in King Lear — ' Never, What else was Shakespeare's chief de- never, never, never, never.' Can you de- light in this play but the screeds of word- fend it as poetry any more than you can music to be spoken by Oberon, Titania, defend ' Oh, Sophonisba, Sophonisba, and Puck ? At every possible and impos- oh ' ? As a moment of drama what could sible moment he is at it. For Puck's de- 55 be more poignantly beautiful? scription of himself there may be need, Whence comes the tradition that a blank but what excuse can we make for Ti- verse play is, merely by virtue of its tania's thirty-five lines about the dreadful verse, the top notch of achievement? 330 WRITING OF TODAY Shakespeare's best work, seen alive in Finally I divide the play into three the theatre, gives, I maintain, no color to parts. I don't defend the division ; it only it. Verse was his first love, his natural happens to be a convenient one. I can't medium — the finest medium for the the- defend any division, and some day I really atre in general of his day, I '11 admit. 5 must ask a modern audience to sit through But how far he was, in principle and two hours and a half of Shakespeare practice, from those worthy disciples who without a break; the play would gain have for these centuries attempted and do greatly. This is less absurd, that is all, indeed still attempt to drag us wearily up than the Jonsonian five-act division of the their strictly decasyllabic pathway to Par- io Folio, for which, of course, there is no nassus, only a placing of their work and authority, his side by side in the living theatre will show. It has all come, I suppose, from V learned people elevating him to the study from the stage. Despise the theatre ; it 15 CONCERNING DAVID revenges itself. I digress. BELASCO The fairies cannot sound too beautiful. How should they look? One does one's WALTER PRICHARD EATON best. But I realize that when there per- haps is no really right thing to do one is 20 {American Maga^ne,^JamiaTy, 1913. always tempted to do too much. One y permisslon - yields to the natural fun, of course, of If the average theatregoer were asked making a thing look pretty in itself, who is the commanding figure on the They must be not too startling. But one American stage today, he would prob- wishes people were n't so easily startled. 25 ably reply without hesitation, ' David I won't have them dowdy. They must n't Belasco.' David Belasco, indeed, has warp your imagination — stepping too been an important figure on our stage boldly between Shakespeare's spirit and since 1882, when he first came from Cali- yours. It is a difficult problem: we (Nor- fornia to New York. With all his theat- man Wilkinson and I — he to do and I 3°rical and rather tiresome tricks for ob- to carp) have done our best. taining publicity, he could not, of course, One point is worth making. Oberon have achieved and maintained his em- and Titania are romantic creations : inence without solid and unusual artistic sprung from Huon of Bordeaux, etc., say merit. But his merit is so conspicuous in the commentators; come from the farthest 35 one particular line, that of creating scenic steppe of India, says Shakespeare. But and histrionic illusion, that it seems com- Puck is English folklore. pletely to have blinded many people to his How should the fairies dance? Here shortcomings in many other important re- I give up my part of apologist to Cecil spects. Even the critics, in New York at Sharp. I only know they should have no 40 any rate, completely lose their faculty of truck with a strange technique brought judgment when he mounts a new play, from Italy in the eighteenth century. If and mistake illusion for intellect, scenic there is an English way of dancing — and realism for reality. Because the acted Sharp says there is — should not that be drama is composed of many elements, and their way? 45 because illusive scenery and naturalistic And what tunes should they sing to? acting are only a part of perfection, and English tunes. And on this point Sharp .ultimately not the most important part, has much to say — more sometimes than it is time we considered David Belasco I can quite follow him in. I have no and his work a little more dispassionately, doubt there is a lyric missing at the end 5<>When considering him and his work at of the play, and to set a tune to the present, we are in grave danger of for- rhythm of Oberon's spoken words seems getting altogether that literature has some absurd. If this most appropriate one we claims, that dramatic realism is as much borrow from Two Noble Kinsmen is a matter of character selection and deeds not Shakespeare's (Swinburne thought it 55 as of scenery or acting, that progress in was), I'm sorry. I'm sorry, anyway, if the drama is marked not only by the it 's vandalism, but something has to be multiplication of electric switchboards, done. but by the increased power of the stage H. DRAMATIC CRITICISM 33* I interest people in the vital problems survived. With Mr. De Mille, Belasco E the life about them. Mechanically, wrote The Charity Ball, Men and Women, (avid Belasco's productions are in the The Wife, and Lord Chumley (acted by ery van of dramatic progress. Spiritu- E. H. Sothern). The first three were lly, they mostly belong back in the days 5 effective dramas in the prevailing man- f Dion Boucicault, whom Mr. Belasco ner — nothing more ; the last was a char- nce served as secretary. acter sketch. In 1893 Belasco collabo- It is rather important that this distinc- rated with Franklyn Fyles on The Girl I on should be made, and made clearly, Left Behind Me. In 1895 he brought out nd driven if possible into the public con- 10 Mrs. Carter in The Heart of Maryland. ciousness. Progress in any branch of Soon after, the same actress appeared uman endeavor is difficult enough, and first in Du Barry and then in Zaza, the be theatre is peculiarly conservative, latter a sentimentalized adaptation from Vhen, therefore, a leader arises who can the French. Since 1900, wlren Blanche arry the crowd with him, it is a pity to 15 Bates acted John Luther Long's pathetic ee him neglect his opportunities, and still Madame Butterfly under his management, lore a pity to see the crowd, deceived by he has capped one popular success with he outward show of progress, fancy they another. Merely out of David Warfield's re marching on when they are only acting of Charles Klein's sentimental play, larking time. Belasco has unquestion- 2aThe Music Master, he would have made a bly set a new standard of production on snug fortune. He has mounted a pseudo- ur stage; he has, just as unquestionably, Japanese play, The Darling of the Gods; lone almost nothing to advance the stand- a sentimental melodrama of the Forty- rd of play-writing, to substitute reality niners, The Girl of the Golden West; a or sentimentality, literature for trivial 25 Civil War drama, The Warrens of Vir- tory-telling, poetry for pasteboard, ideas ginia; a California play, The Rose of the or tradition. As far as advancing the Rancho; a French adaptation, The Lily; ,rt of play-writing is concerned, apart a Viennese adaptation, The Concert; a rom the art of play-producing, he has drama of the supernatural, for David leen as negligible a factor as was Joseph 30 Warfield, The Return of Peter Grimm; efferson. Indubitably a supreme artist Eugene Walter's The Easiest Way; a n his line, that line is narrow, so narrow play about dual personality, called The hat, until it is widened, he cannot justly Case of Becky; a political play, The le regarded as a true leader, nor his Woman, and latest of all, The Governor's laims either as a dramatist or an adapter 35 Lady. if other men's dramas be taken very seri- This is a long list, and it is by no means iiisly. complete either. It represents almost no In a book called The American Drama- popular failures, and it represents a great ist, by M. J. Moses, there is a chapter deal of remarkably good theatrical enter- levoted to Belasco, which contains a par- 4°Jainment, for which we should be, and are, ial list of the plays which he either rightly grateful. But it represents, never- yrote, adapted, or collaborated on, after theless, almost no new dramatic literature, le came to New York in 1882. While and it includes no classics; it marks no onnected first with the Madison Square development of the art of play-writing; nd then with the Lyceum Theatre, Mr. 45 as a body, it takes almost no account of Selasco wrote wholly or in part, accord- the new forces of social criticism at work tig to Mr. Moses, La Belle Russe, The in our drama and our literature; it makes Wranglers of Paris, Hearts of Oak (with almost no contributions to the American ames A. Heme), May Blossoms, Va- stage, apart from the individual produc- '.rie, Miss Hellyet, Pawn Ticket 210, The 5o tion of each work under the Belasco guid- ioonlight Marriage, The Doll Master, A ance. Christmas Night, Within an Inch of His Most of these plays were not written ■ife, The Lone Pine, American Born, Not by Mr. Belasco himself. But so potent "milty, The Haunted House, Cherry and is his individuality as a producer, and so 'air Star, Sylvia's Loves, Paul Arniff, 55 slight is the personality and message of "he . Curse of Cain, The Millionaire's the author behind each one, that each laughter, The Ace of Spades, and The seemed, when seen, to bear in every detail loll of the Drum. Not one of these has" the Belasco stamp. There are at least 332 WRITING OF TODAY two striking exceptions, Eugene Walter's Let us consider for a moment his latest acid drama of the Tenderloin, The Easi- production, The Governor's Lady, writ- est Way, and Leo Dietrichstein's adapta- ten by Alice Bradley (whoever she may I tion of Herman Bahr's satiric comedy, be). This drama, shown in New York The Concert. In each of these plays the 5 last September with great acclaim, is personality of the author emerged, be- perhaps one of the most marvelously cause in each there was a definite, vital mounted plays of the decade. But when idea which was the author's own, and to a certain hypnotized New York critic de- J express which he wrote his play. Each clares it one of the most marvelous plays ' of these works approximates, at least, 10 of the decade, he is talking nonsense. It dramatic literature, and each can have, is a false, sentimental, trivial play, per- and has had, an independent existence and verted in ethics and twisted in logic, not a pronounced influence, quite apart from worthy of an hour's serious consideration, the Belas'co production. So too, in lesser apart from its superb production on Mr. degree, has Madame Butterfly. 15 Belasco's stage. And the greater the Now, the very fact that so few of the genius of production, the greater the pity Belasco productions speak the author's in- that it should be wasted on such trashy dividual message, that so very few of material. them emerge as independent plays, is a In The Governor's Lady we find an un- pretty good indication that he is n't doing m disguised and persistent plea for our much as a producer to encourage author- sentimental sympathy, and this sympathy ship. He took The Easiest Way after is to be extended to a woman who is a Walter had made a reputation. He took bad wife. Daniel Slade, it seems, started The Concert after it had been produced life as a poor, rough miner, but he has all over the Continent. He has appar- 25 made his pile, built a magnificent house in ently dropped John Luther Long, who a Western city, wishes to go to the opera, brought him his one touch of poetic entertain important people, get elected fancy. Charles Klein, who wrote The governor. His wife, however, is homely Music Master and The Auctioneer for and humble, and absolutely refuses to as- Warfield, produced independently his 30 sist him in his ambitions. She will not more important dramas, such as The Lion even try. Of course it is never safe to and the Mouse, in which he tried, at least, say that anything is n't possible where a to touch on real American problems, woman is concerned, so we will pass over Nearly all the rest of Mr. Belasco's au- the point that the rough miner's wife is thors are quite negligible. They exist for 35 generally more eager to go to the opera the public only as the Belasco wizardry than he is. The indubitable fact remains of stage manipulation can give their con- that Mary Slade was a bad wife, and coctions illusion. This is the very nega- stupidly, stubbornly, and intentionally a tion of leadership in the progress of a bad wife. As a matter of fact, instead of native drama. 40 pitying her when Daniel desired a divorce The true first and fundamental duty of and the companionship of a young woman a producer is not to reflect his own tern- who would help him in his legitimate am- perament and tastes, but to reflect the bitions, we rather pity Daniel. Daniel, author's, to stage the author's message, however, is represented incongruously as not his own. Most of Belasco's authors, 45 still loving his wife, and the wife as still to be sure, have had no message. Can loving Daniel. The young woman is rep- it be that he has preferred it so? Can resented as loving somebody else. She it be that he has preferred to take a nega- accepts Daniel for his money. Daniel tive drama and shape it into a stage puts his wife aside, not because her pig- entertainment of sure popularity, com- 50 headed selfishness has killed the subtle pounded of old-fashioned sentimentality bond of affection in his breast, but purely and new-fashioned superficial and scenic for political reasons. By the time the realism, rather than to work with ma- play is in mid-flight there is scarcely a terial which he could not in conscience character who has n't done something bend to his own purposes ? That is a 55 despicable. In the clear light of logic, in question Time is going to answer for Mr. a Pinero satire, for instance, these people Belasco, and answer not uncertainly, un- would be so unpleasant that the dear, less he takes care. shocked public would refuse to look upon H. DRAMATIC CRITICISM 333 them. But they are here so rose-watered sometimes supposed, even though it ap- with sentimentality that the dear public pears to be the goal of every actor to be loves them all, and when the injured wife under his management. As far back as tells the young woman who is about to 1882 he taught the gospel of naturalism succeed her how much she loves Daniel, 5 in acting, and in The Governor's Lady all the laundries in New York rejoice, he is still teaching it, and teaching it with Yet we talk about Belasco realism! marvelous results. It is difficult to see The last act of the play takes place in a how that drama could be acted with a replica of one of those numerous white greater illusion of life. We gladly give tiled Childs' restaurants in New York. 10 him full credit for this. But what be- Daniel and Mary are reconciled in this comes of the actors and actresses he spot. There is no reason why they should makes? Do they go on growing? Do be reconciled here, of course. People they enlarge their scope, their repertoire? with their incomes don't eat at Childs'; What has Blanche Bates done any better and as the whole point of Mary's char- 15 or more important than Madame Butter- acter was her humble, home-loving in- fly? What has become of the golden stincts, New York was the last place she promise of David Warfield? He has would have chosen to live in anyway, played just four parts in the twelve years But Childs' had never been shown on the since Belasco took him out of the Weber stage before. That was reason enough. 20 and Fields' Music Hall. Time is not Scenically, the interior of the restau- standing still for David Warfield any rant is reproduced with photographic more than for the rest of us. He has at- fidelity; you almost gasp at the faithful- tempted no great part yet. His Peter ness of detail, even down to the arc-lamps Grimm is but a variant of his Music outside, sputtering in the winter storm. 25 Master. The heights are still unsealed, And so we rave about realism. But is still unattempted. What has become of this realism which really matters? The his ambition to play Shylock? With his characters in this play do not belong talents and ambition, with Belasco's in Childs'. The people who lunch at vaunted ability to manipulate the switch- Childs' are the myriad more humble toilers, 30 board and flood the moon on Portia's clerks, stenographers, and the like, who garden, with Blanche Bates's once bril- can afford nothing more luxurious. Any Kant promise and eager hopes, we might true realism in the drama, if it employed have a Shylock and a Portia and an at- Childs' as a setting, would employ such mospheric production of the great classic people as characters, and would let us see 35 which would mark an epoch on our stage, a little more clearly, a little mpre signifi- But we do not have it. We do not even * cantly, into their lives. We all know hear of it any more. We have no true Childs' restaurants have white walls, a romance from Belasco. We have no true griddle-cake grill in the window, and a realism. We just have wonderfully cash-register. But the problems of the 40 mounted sentimental, old-fashioned sto- ivorkers who eat there we do not know, ries, doctored up, to be sure, with set- Dr know but dimly. Show us those prob- tings in psychotherapists' laboratories or lems, as Tolstoy would show them, or Childs' restaurants, to give them a spuri- Hauptmann, or Gorky, or Galsworthy, or ous ' scientific ' or contemporary tone. :ven Eugene Walter, and you have true 45 And the pity of it ! Here is a man who realism. Mr. Belasco's realism goes no is the one undoubted genius we have as ieeper than his scenery — and scenery is a producer of plays, whose ability to Mt the background of drama, merely a create stage illusion is not exceeded in secondary aid to illusion. As a scene- any country, who has. an enormous public jainter and coach of acting Belasco is 50 following, who is one of a very few ndeed a realist. In any deeper and more managers who is also himself an artist, ruly dramatic sense he is not a realist at capable of designing the scenery, training ill, and few if any of his productions the actors, devising the lights, adapting lave shown that he understands what the play — who is, in short, a real ' man his deeper realism is. He is merely the 55 of the theatre.' He might, if anybody raditional sentimentalist of the playhouse, can, give us in America a Theatre Libre Nor has his contribution to the art of or a Deutsches Theater, even as Antoine icting in America been so great as is and Adolf L'Arronge and Max Reinhardt. 334 WRITING OF TODAY He might, if any one can, call out the who really liked it — besides the author — best and newest and most earnest in the was a conductor on a Seventh Avenue playwrights of America, giving their work street car. He spoke to me one night six such illusive production as would cause months after the play had ended its tri- it to conquer, to win the public. He Sumphant career. I was getting off the might, if any one can, make literature and car with Mrs. Veiller and he stepped down the stage no longer inimical in New York, to help us off and said : make the American drama respected and ' Mr. Veiller, I want to tell you I liked worthy of respect, and the classics, too, The Primrose Path, and thought it was a once more popular and enjoyable. But he 10 shame it didn't get over. It was the best has, instead, evidently chosen the Easiest show I saw this year.' Way. He has exploited his genius as a He jumped back on his car before I had producer, above the material produced; time to thank him, and I never saw him and however much he may have done for again. I 've been rather worried about the dress of the American drama, the 15 that man. drama itself has gained nothing from his Within the Law in its original form talents. It is still struggling upward out- was an attack on the jury system. The side of his theatres, and unaided by his character corresponding to Gilder, the de- influence and prestige. partment store proprietor, was the judge 20 who sentenced Mary Turner to prison. Mary was pretty much as she is now, a VI salesgirl accused of theft. The scene of the first act was a court room. The jury HOW I WROTE ' WITHIN had been out all night. Everybody was THE LAW' 25 worn out with the long, tedious wait for the verdict. The jury filed in, sleepy, BAYARD VEILLER blear-eyed and cross. The proceedings were hurried as much as possible. The [.Metropolitan Magazine, June, 1913. By courtesy c l er k of the court gabbled through the of the publishers.] . r . ™. ° . & 30 usual formulas. The foreman in a weary At a dinner one evening in January, voice announced the verdict of ' guilty.' 1910, several of my friends were discus- In a word, I showed the case of a girl sing a certain very popular, lurid crook who was being railroaded to prison in melodrama then running in a New York order that the judge might get away on theatre. I never thought much of that 35 a hunting trip and that everybody else piece and said so. Furthermore, I main- concerned might hurry through with their tained that that sort of thing was the work. The judge pronounced sentence — easiest stuff in the world to turn out. three years — and it was to him instead ' Well, if you know so much,' said Mrs. of the department store proprietor that Veiller, 'why don't you write one your- 4° Mary Turner made the speech that now self and make a little money for us ? ' ends the first act of Within the Law. ' Oh, very well, I will,' I replied. I did not have to invent this. Such ' What is more, I '11 do it in a month.' conditions actually exist and have existed (Chorus of jeers.) for years. I knew the whole police and Two days later I set to work. And I 45 criminal courts situation backwards, finished the job in three weeks. Within thanks to my experience of several years the Law as it is being played today is as a reporter. I ' covered ' police head- substantially the same — with the excep- quarters in New York for a long period tion of the first act — as ^he original before I took to play-writing. During manuscript I turned out in that time. Of 5° that time Theodore Roosevelt was police course there have been numerous changes, commissioner, ' Jake ' Riis was doing but they were in minor details and not in headquarters for the Sun, Lincoln Stef- the general form. fens for the Evening Post, and I for the I wrote it for money. Up to that time Evening Mail. In no other way can a I had made several contributions to art. 55 man acquire such a thorough knowledge The most notable of them was a superb of and insight into the realities that make thing which ran for one week, The Prim- our civilization hideous as by the work rose Path. The only person I ever found that falls to the lot of a police reporter. H. DRAMATIC CRITICISM 335 He_ knows the inside of the system by department stores came about in this which poor people are exploited for the way: After the play was finished the benefit of the unscrupulous. He sees first manager I took it to was George nothing but the reverse of the medal. Tyler. He said he liked it, thought it He learns the hollowness of the pretenses 5 would probably be a hit and make a great by which the system is maintained. deal of money. He would not produce it, however, because he had already arranged the idea of revenge to p ro d uce another piece which was sure- The next three acts developed naturally fire and bound to be the melodrama hit of out of this situation. It is only right to 10 the season. make due acknowledgment to Alexandre ' But,' he said, ' your first act has a fine Dumas, for, as you have no doubt recog- idea for a play by itself. Why don't you nized, the idea of the person wrongfully write a new first act in its place and write convicted and imprisoned carrying out a another play for me on the theme con- systematic plan of vengeance is nothing stained in this first act, the attack on the but the plot of Monte Crist 0. The main jury system?' difference is that it is a girl instead of a As George Tyler is my best friend, and man. Most of the managers I subse- as I was under obligations to him which quently took the play to threw up their I hope I can never repay, I followed his hands in horror at this idea. They de- 20 suggestion. I set aside the court room clared we never in the world could win scene so as to use it in another play. I the sympathy of audiences for a woman left the heroine as she was, a salesgirl who devoted all her energies to revenge, wrongfully accused of theft. And I made They could not see that this is one of the her plight the basis of an attack on the most elemental feelings in human nature. 25 department store system in particular and Some big elemental feeling must be the our economic system in general. I am a basis of all drama. And the instinct to Socialist. Some of the things I learned say ' I '11 get even with you ' is one of the at police headquarters made me especially most universal. I made the girl set out interested in conditions at the New York deliberately to injure the man who had 30 department stores. The fact is that they sent her to prison. The natural thing for are just 1000 per cent, worse than anybody her to consider was : ' Where can I hurt not in touch with them has any idea of. him most ? ' Obviously his affection for The fact is that our social fabric is so his boy was his tenderest spot. More- rotten that the entire industrial world is over as he had irreparably ruined her 35 simply riding on the backs of women, life, it was logical for her to attack his. Day by day I hear of instances at first And the best way to damage it was to hand that confirm these convictions be- associate it by marriage with that of a yond doubt. However, all this leads away convicted felon. So that by marrying his from the subject. I am free to admit that son she inflicted a two-fold injury on her 40 I saw the pictorial value of these condi- enemy. Hence her crucial speech in the tions and particularly for the first act of second act : ' You took away my name and Within the Law. They made a first act gave me a number. Now I have given up just as suitable as the previous one that that number and I 've got your name ! ' I set aside for future use. The subse- The original title of the piece, by the 45 quent acts followed it just as naturally as way, was The Miracle. This was taken they followed the other, from a line in the third act. The father, To return to the original process, remonstrating with his son for clinging Knowing the police methods, it was per- so obstinately to the girl in the belief that fectly easy to imagine the girl's history he can change her, says: 'What are you 50 after she was let out of jail. It is the waiting for — a miracle ? ' Then the son almost invariable practice of the police replies : ' No, I 'm going to make it.' when they see an ex-convict to warn the The title was altered later for fear that it employer. So naturally the first thing might conflict with a spectacular produc- that would have happened to Mary Turner tion' of Max Reinhardt's by the same 55 soon after she obtained a job would be name. for a detective to come into the shop and The change in the first act from an at- give the boss full information about her. tack on the jury system to an attack on After a few attempts to earn an honest 336 WRITING OF TODAY living, being determined not to become a the present time — not only in lesser de- prostitute, she would say to herself : ' Oh, tails such as this, but in larger affairs, very well; if they won't let me be honest When the silencer was publicly tested it I '11 get money in the same way the big, was said that reporters in the next room successful crooks, the politicians and the 5 had been unable to hear the sound of the grafters get theirs, — dishonestly, but shot. So I thought: 'If reporters, why within the law.' At the same time I made not policemen ? ' The introduction of the her execute her scheme for revenge on incident in the second act, when Joe Gar- Gilder, son shows how effective the silencer is by The fourth act I stole. Almost every 10 shooting at a vase, was merely a matter of incident in it is a matter of public record, ordinary technical skill. You must let The third degree trick worked on Joe the audience see things like that for them- Garson by Inspector Burke in the play is selves: it is not sufficient to explain them, precisely the same trick that was carried Incidentally, a great many people who out by Inspector Byrnes, undoubtedly the 15 saw the play have wondered whether the best policeman who ever lived, on a crook vase is really shot. If guns used on the named McGloin. Everybody down at stage were actually loaded with bullets I headquarters knows about it — in fact it shudder to think of the calamities that is related in Byrnes' book. might follow. I would not trust my life 20 to the marksmanship of the average actor. live suggestions There is a very simple mechanism by As for the trap laid for Mary Turner by which the vase is smashed at just the the inspector, that also was comparatively right moment in such a way that it seems easy. Police methods are invariably sim- to have been shattered by a bullet, pie. Whenever they want to catch crim- 25 The revolving searchlight from the inals and cannot procure evidence the Metropolitan Tower which flashes in policy is to entrap them into committing through the window in the third act and some crime at which they can be caught, reveals the dead body of English Eddie to This they do by means of a stool pigeon; Inspector Burke was the result of mere hence the character of English Eddie. 3° accident. This was not in the play orig- Originally I had the woman take part in inally but was introduced during the Chi- the burglary of Gilder's home for addi- cago run of the piece. For some time, tional revenge. It was, thanks to an ex- however, I felt the need of a spot light cellent suggestion from Charles Klein, to account for the inspector's seeing the that I changed this. He pointed out that 35 body while the room was almost in total this would alienate the audience's sym- darkness. But I could not figure out any pathy which her previous wrongs had won plausible excuse for bringing it in. One for her. Accordingly, I had her go to afternoon I was talking to Al Woods in Gilder's house, not to share in, but to his room on the sixth floor of the Sher- prevent the robbery. Then occurred the 40 man House in Chicago. Suddenly a problem of how to account for her find- bright light was reflected on the ceiling ing out about the burglary scheme. One from the street. I jumped up, went to thing a playwright always has to avoid the window and saw that a wagon was is giving audiences cause to puzzle over passing by with a large plate of glass, any point. Once they do that their atten- 45 This had caught the sunlight and flashed tion is distracted from the action and the it up into the room. That gave me the suspense is broken. It was Roi Megrue idea for the third act: 'Why not a who suggested that I have the inspector searchlight ? ' I remembered that there telephone her anonymously so as to in- were two such in New York, one on top veigle her into the trap. These changes 50 of the Hippodrome and the other on the were made after the play had opened in Metropolitan Tower, and it just became a Chicago. question of which was the more expedient The Maxim silencer business I put in to use. because there was a great deal in the It was not until after the play was newspapers about the invention just at the 55 written that trouble really began. I was time I was writing the piece. I think unknown. No play of mine had ever every play should be, as largely as pos- approached a success. I peddled it all sible, a reflex of what is in the papers at over New York. Charles Klein, who is H. DRAMATIC CRITICISM 337 interested in the Authors' Producing Com- him. We both felt that the play had a pany, thought of doing it, but came to the big chance if it was properly cast, and conclusion finally that he would need all put back as it had been originally written, his time to dramatize The Ne'er-Do- During my conversation with Mr. Well. 5 Brady he had said, ' If you and Selwyn Eventually Mr. Brady agreed to pro- don't like the way I'm doing your play, duce it. The original idea was that the why don't you buy and run it to suit part of Mary Turner should be played by yourselves ? Grace George, who had read the play and I repeated this to Mr. Selwyn. He liked it. The matter was left in abeyance 10 gave the matter a good deal of thought for a while. When Mr. Brady was ready and finally said to me, ' Bayard, do you to produce it, he sent for me and said : think if I give the play a really first-class 'Look here; this play won't do as it production and a good cast, you can put stands ; it needs a good many changes, it over ? ' You have n't enough experience to make 15 I said that I thought that it had a big them. The only thing to do is to let chance under the proper conditions. George Broadhurst rewrite it.' Of course I am going into these details because it this meant giving Mr. Broadhurst a third has become the fashion with many makers of the royalties. However I was willing of plays to revile the play broker, and I to make almost any concessions for the 20 am extremely anxious to tell frankly what sake of having the part played by Miss one play broker named Selwyn has done George, which means a certain $9000 or for me. $10,000 a week box office returns for al- The negotiations for the sale of the most any play. So Mr. Broadhurst — play took about ten minutes. Mr. Selwyn who is a very skilful dramaturge — took 25 paid Mr. Brady ten thousand dollars for the play and made what changes he saw the property, and assumed Mr. Brady's fit. They were very well done, but they contract with me, which called for an un- entirely changed the meaning of the piece, usually high royalty for a beginner : five We started rehearsals, and when Miss per cent, on the first four thousand of the George read the new version she said: 30 gross receipts and 10 per cent, on every- ' This is not the play I accepted,' and thing over that amount. Selwyn had been threw up her part and refused to have very pleased, as a play agent, over this anything to do with it. Emily Stevens contract, and he did n't seem to mind it was then engaged for the part and gave greatly when he took it over as a man- an admirable performance. 35 ager. But we both thought it a good deal The play did not do well in Chicago, of a joke. I especially enjoyed it. Whether this was owing to the changes made in it or not I won't pretend to say. A success undreamed of But I came back to New York feeling Up to this time Mr. Selwyn had not terribly despondent over the outlook. 40 figured to any great extent as a producing Mr. Brady had produced the piece with manager, but in order to protect a client, second-hand scenery, an act from The in whom he had great faith, which faith Boss, an act from The Gentleman from I hope eventually to justify, he risked Mississippi, an act from The Dollar Mark, what at that time was a great deal of then some five or six years old, being used, 45 money to him, and this was only the be- and its use freely was commented upon ginning, by the Chicago critics. So the matter was settled. I took the I saw Mr. Brady and we discussed the train for Chicago that afternoon with situation freely. I told him that I didn't carte blanche to do what I wanted to — think the play had a chance in its present 50 the happiest man you ever saw. I set to form and he grimly agreed with me. He work the next day. I took out all the refused, however, to allow me to make changes Mr. Broadhurst had made and such changes as I saw fit. restored the play to its original form. I pruned and revised and built up. Every- we buy out mr. brady 5 5 body in the world, stage doorkeepers, I then went to Archie Selwyn, who was, charwomen and mechanics had sugges- still is, and always will be, my business tions to make. There is always a host of agent, and talked the matter over with people willing to rewrite your play for 338 WRITING OF TODAY you. Occasionally I even heard a good department store proprietors in New York suggestion. The rest of the play's his- City establish a minimum wage scale of tory you know. eight dollars a week in their stores. My And to be quite frank with you, I don't play has done at least that much good, think Within the Law is a great play. 5 But I do admit that it 's theatrically effec- tive. And I think that is due to the fact VII that I went over it as carefully as I could ( , during the weeks it ran in Chicago, tying I YJrMLALLY AMERICAN 1 up loose ends wherever I saw them and 10 •e-t>a-nt/-tc xt a ^t^tt building the thing up: for instance, i-KANUS HACKETT Mary's Speech that now rings down the [New Republic November 14, 1914. By permission curtain at the end of the third act, after of author and publisher.] she has accused her husband of the death What foreigners think of America is a of English Eddie. 'Arrest him,' the in- 15 matter of slight importance. So long as spector says. ' You can't.' ' Why not ? ' foreigners begin by drinking ice-water the ' Because that man was a burglar and my minute they land, they will continue to husband shot him in defense of his suffer dire results and form equally dire home ! ' is Mary's final answer. Orig- impressions. But what Americans think inally that speech occurred in the fourth 20 of themselves, and especially of things act. And the curtain for the third act said to be 'typically American,' is a mat- was unsatisfactory until I got the idea of ter of considerable importance. Who will transferring that speech from the fourth. be right about America if Americans are None of us thought for a minute that wrong? Within the Law would be the success that 25 Mr. George M. Cohan, the gifted it is. We all looked for a moderate hit adapter of The Miracle Man, is supposed and a run possibly until the first of the to be 'typically American.' When one year, but that we should sell out on the contrasts the Chicago stockbroker with second night that the play was presented the Kentucky mountaineer, the buoyant in New York and never have an empty 30 daughter of Oregon with the wizened seat in the house for three hundred great-granddaughter of Vermont, this performances was beyond our wildest phrase seems slightly vague. What, after dreams. all, is ' typically American ' ? It is true The play will make a fortune for Mr. that Mr. Cohan is as familiar as currency. Selwyn and his associates, and it 's doing 35 One associates him with every blinking very well indeed for me, too, thank you electric sign in the country, with hustlers kindly. and drummers, girls who are perfect Has it accomplished anything else? peaches and men who are princes, bell- What real good has it done ? Frankly, I hops and night-letters, the cannon-ball ex- don't know. I hope that it has served its 40 press and The Saturday Evening Post. sociological purpose. I feel very strongly All these things, pushed into the shop- that when a maker of plays has pointed window of American life, are undoubtedly out strongly and fearlessly a social situa- indigenous and typical. But are they tion that needs a remedy he has done his really American? They come with work. The stage is not the place for the 45 Trade, and their homogeneity is the discussion of reforms ; but I am quite sure homogeneity of the business world. In that it is the surest place to make their so far as Americans are spiritually com- necessity known to the greatest number mercialized, these things are psycholog- of people. ically national. But where commerce The plight of underpaid working-girls 50 stops, they stop; and the woods know has been known for years; brilliant them not, nor the sun on the prairie, thinkers have talked about it, great In its clever and definite organization, writers have written about it, but it re- its_ swift manceuvers, sharp contrasts, mained for my bedraggled, tear-stained quick changes, sprints, slides, dives, Mr. shop girl on her way to prison, with glit- 55 Cohan's drama affords the same excite- tering Steel handcuffs on her wrists, and » The Miracle Man, a four-act play by George M. her reiterated, ' but you won't pay them Cohan, from the story by Frank L. Packard. Pre- , , ,- ' , / . ,, ' ' , .. sented at the Astor Theatre, New York, October, enough to live on, to make three of the i 9 i 4 . * ' H. DRAMATIC CRITICISM 339 merit as the ' national ' game. Abasing of crooked New Yorkers tried to turn a myself before all the fans in the nation, remote New England Patriarch's religious I suggest that the reason is simple. The miracles to their own profit, and how in spirit of star baseball, like the spirit of doing so the crooked ones went straight. Mr. Cohan's drama, is the spirit of the 5 To tell such a story for a national audi- business world. It is not possible, in ence, to relate it to national institutions passing, to prove that commercialism has and national ideologies, to give it the given the game of baseball its character, same credibility as a two-cent stamp — I am content to venture the suggestion that was Mr. Cohan's ambition, backed that it is business enterprise which is the 10 by the belief that the idea was big enough source of these supposed Americanisms, to ' get across.' And get across it does, and not Americans who are the source of where many greater ideas have inconti- business enterprise. Popular taste in nently failed. games, in the theatre, in literature, even In spite of his own repudiation, Mr. in politics, is modified by the general 15 Cohan is a genuine artist. The Patriarch business preoccupation. As Mr. Cohan in this play is a little conventionalized, himself says, busy people want succinct but not a bit more than Walt Whitman or plays and stories — ' small but complete John Alexander Dowie. He is an impres- and electric doses,' just as they want a sive Patriarch, and Mr. Thompson intones Religion Movement with a high-speed 20 him like a psalm. The cocaine fiend, also, motor. It is an inevitable development, is slightly conventionalized, and could and just because Mr. Cohan is imbued hardly have fooled the inhabitants of with the same spirit, and is one of its Needley, Maine. The girl who falls in love really great exponents, he rivals baseball with the cocaine fiend is, also, not suffi- in popularity and appeal. 25ciently hand-made. One would prefer a What sort of drama comes from the little more violet and a little less shrink, disciple of business enterprise? Mr. But with these objections registered, there Cohan compares the production of plays is much in which to rejoice. As the with that of garters or canned asparagus. Flopper, Mr. James C. Marlowe was quite His lingo is subservient to the patrons 30 human, funny and American. The fake who hustle and drum. But, disregarding cripple introduced to the shrine of the this rather refreshing difference in idiom, Patriarch, he revealed not only Mr. Co- where does Mr. Cohan ' get off ' ? As- han's excellent sense of humor, but also suming that he has a right to can as- his imagination and his taste. The real paragus, what sort of asparagus does he 35 cripple, acted by Mr. Percy Helton, was can? also admirably conceived — pallid, venom- Judging by The Miracle Man there is a ous, intense. And when the dumbfound- great deal to be said for the business ing real miracle takes place, just after the ideology in drama. This play is derived fakers had ' worked ' the Patriarch for the from a story which ' got ' Mr. Cohan by 40 sake of manufacturing publicity, the whole the way it introduced ' crooks with a cast is manoeuvered for a ' curtain ' of sense of humor into the novel atmosphere the highest emotional effect, of religion.' Adapted from fiction, the But in spite of the homely touches so play proves its adapter to have a superb cleverly observed, and so well conveyed nose for situation. It was a departure 45 by Mr. Frank Bacon as the Yankee hotel for Mr. Cohan, but just as P. D. Armour proprietor; in spite of the spacious dig- progressed from hams to soaps and per- nity and impressiveness of the Patriarch; fumes, so Mr. Cohan, equally fertile and in spite of the Flopper's conviction that adventurous, could move from musical ' Napoleon's noodle was a billiard ball ' comedy to a drama of religion. The as- 50 compared to the chief crook's; in spite of paragus might be religious asparagus, but the shrewdness with which this gentleman he canned it just the same. makes good his boast that ' he 'd have sick Where The Miracle Man shows the millionaires throwing certified checks benefits of its author's commercial psy- through the windows of the Shrine'; chology is in its astonishing clarity and in- 55 there is, in the denouement of The Mir- telligence. Setting out to tell a given acle Man, a proportion of buncombe al- story, it tells that story without superfluity most too great to be borne. At no point or waste. It seeks to show how a band was the tool of the crooks, passed off 340 WRITING OF TODAY as the Patriarch's long-lost grand-niece, revolves, and you are shown in action and quite in the picture as real. But as time in situ what the witness is telling the jury, went on, and as Miss Gail Kane kept Thus the murdered man's widow in the asseverating that her heart had changed box — we beg pardon, on the stand — after five years' wicked life, and that she ssays, 'At that moment my husband's tele- could not deceive the kind old man, one phone-bell rang,' and at that moment you parted company from Mr. George M. are transported to the room where the bell Cohan. Miss Gail Kane undulates in is ringing and see all that follows. Or voice and figure, but she is only verbally the accused's child tells the jury how she 'tough.' As an actress she rises, or iowas sitting down to the piano — and hey stoops, neither to the possibilities nor presto ! there she is sitting at the piano, probabilities of her part, so that while and you get another instalment of the ac- one is reluctantly willing to believe in tion subjected oculis Udelibus. Or the ac- sudden conversions in real life, one is cused's wife relates how in the long, long quite incapable of accepting this one in 15 ago she met the murdered man and was The Miracle Man. As for the men's con- deceived by him — and, on the spot, you versions they are dreadfully reinforced are shown the meeting and the deception, by love affairs straight from the ware- Of course, this means that the story house. As for the chief crook, Mr. is told backwards — you start with the George Nash made him too true ever to 20 murder and go on to the cause of the mur- be turned good. der, and finish up with the long, long ago In piling up sentimentality Mr. Cohan — but perhaps that is as good a way of is faithful to the psychology of commer- telling a melodramatic story as any other, cialism. But some day, being full of real and it is, anyhow, a novel way. Besides, artistic perception, Mr. Cohan may see 25 you have the fun of constantly speculating the truth. On that day he will see why about the moment at which the court fresh asparagus is better than canned. scene is going to vanish into darkness and be superseded by a bit of the actual story which the court is trying to unravel. VIII 3° Why the murder was no vulgar crime, but what Bacon calls a kind of wild jus- *ON TRIAL' AT THE LYRIC tice, it would be spoiling sport to tell. THEATRE The audience is soon let into that secret, and it looks as though the interest would [Times, London, England, April 30, 1913. 35 prematurely fade, but it is revived and By permission.] kept up tQ the end by thg j ngenious ; ntr0 _ Why does American melodrama bear duction and detection of a subordinate export better than American farce ? For criminal — who had been in court all the one reason, because jokes are apt to be time, a mere insignificant and unobserved local whereas thrills never are. For an- 40 item until he was wanted for the de- other, because the American virtue of nouement. strict attention to business is all the more Miss Edyth Goodall and Mr. Arthur effective when the business is serious busi- Wontner take the principal parts. They ness. are both excellent at this kind of work, On Trial is an American melodrama 45 and in a scene — • not new, but always ef- which distributes its thrills on a novel fective — wherein the truth is wrung by plan. Its framework is a murder-trial, a relentless man out of a lying woman, and you have all the orthodox excitements they last night strung the audience to the of a trial scene; speeches of counsel, agi- topmost pitch of excitement. There is tation of accused, demeanor of jury, and 50 a clever child-actress, Odette Goimbault, so forth, plus the amusement of noting the Mr. Julian Royce and Mr. Bassett Roe ob- differences between an American criminal viously enjoyed themselves as the oppos- court and one of our own. But the court ing counsel — American counsel, of scene is only a framework. As each im- course, with a manner more free-and-easy portant piece of evidence is reached the 55 than forensic, and the house as obviously lights are suddenly extinguished, the scene enjoyed the whole affair. H. DRAMATIC CRITICISM 341 she ' could always tell Meredith's style, IX because there were so many parenthe- ses.' FANNY'S FIRST PLAY ' The divertissement by the dramatic 5 critics by no means exhausts the satiric W. is. CAlHliK humor of the piece, though it seems to lUcCture's Magazine, March, , 9 i 3 . By permission.] h a. ve attracted more attention than any- thing else m the play, both here and in While Fanny's First Play can by no London. The complexion of Fanny's means be ranked among Mr. George Ber- 10 budding talents seems to have afforded nard Shaw's best plays, it is one of the Mr. Shaw a great deal of amusement; he most amusing, and its unconventionality fairly outdoes himself to be shocking in pleased the New York public. Mr. Shaw the play he makes Fanny write. He sets out to ridicule certain conventions— seems to relish the notion of attributing theatrical conventions, domestic and social 15 a flippant and rather ' raw ' burlesque on conventions. Miss Fanny O'Dowda, a the respectable, middle-class English home student of a woman's college in Cam- to a young girl, gently bred. This, Mr. bridge and a member of a socialist society, Shaw seems to chuckle, is the sort of has written a play, and her father ar- thing young ladies who are impelled to- ranges to have it produced on her birth- 20 ward literature are thinking about today, day — produced by a professional com- But to Fanny's own play. Knox and pany, with the_ London critics in attend- Gilbey are partners, drapers, most respect- ance to pass judgment upon the piece, able. Margaret Knox is betrothed to Count O'Dowda, an esthetic survival of Bobby Gilbey — both young people had the eighteenth century, has not read the 25 been reared in the pure atmosphere of the play himself, and probably would not have British tradesmen's home, and both understood much of it if he had. The are being carefully educated. Margaret, name of the author is withheld from the whose mother is a religious fanatic, has company and critics, as Miss O'Dowda had rather more than her fair share of wishes no allowance made for her youth 30 cant. But both young people, according and sex. to Fanny, are quite unregenerate, nor- On the evening when the play is to be mal savages, absolutely untouched by the given, the critics meet at Count O'Dowda's moral and social standards under which house and before dinner deliver them- they apparently live. Margaret, to give selves upon plays and play-writing in gen- 35 vent to her high spirits on a boat-race eral. They insist upon knowing the au- night, goes alone to a public dance-hall, thorship of the play they have come to picks up as escort a French naval officer see. ' How,' says Gunn, ' is one to know whom she has never seen before, and, what to say about a play, if one does n't when the police raid the place, knocks out know the author?' Says Bannel: ' You 40 an officer's two front teeth with a well wouldn't say the same thing about a aimed blow. She and her escort are Pinero play and one by Henry Arthur taken to Holloway jail and locked up for Jones.' After this introduction follows two weeks. Fanny O'Dowda's play, in three acts. Bobby goes out for a lark with ' Dar- When Fanny's play is over, the critics 45 ling Dora,' a little girl who lives as she come forward, and attempt to decide upon can and who has been in jail before, the authorship. In attempting to place They go to a dance-hall, drink too much, the play in the right locker, the critics exchange hats, and walk about the streets take up the best known English play- singing until they are sent to jail for wrights one after another, and, in their 50 disturbing the- peace and resisting arrest, own way, define the work of Mr. Shaw And yet these are all, as they say in New and his contemporaries, tagging each play- England, pleasant young people, not at all wright by some external and unimportant vicious or unattractive. Even ' Darling characteristic that has nothing to do with Dora,' Fanny thinks, is not in the least a his real manner or method, much less with 55 degraded person. Here, says Fanny, we his dramatic purpose. They characterize have the normal young of the species ex- each brand of modern play by comments pressing their healthy animal spirits, which remind one of the woman who said That they get locked up is, of course, an 342 WRITING OF TODAY accident for the young people, a structural X convenience for Fanny. But neither Fanny nor Bobby nor Margaret regard ' ROSY RAPTURE ' AT THE two weeks in jail as a retribution — the DUKE OF YORK'S blush is for the jail! 5 When Margaret finds Out that she likes Wtutrated London News, March 27, i 9 i S . ... , ,° , , . . By permission.] liberty, she is honest about it; she says she enjoyed the dance-hall and the street- Not even the brilliant talents of a Bar- fight ; she conceals nothing about the po- rie can convert a revue into something else liceman's teeth, not even the teeth them- 10 than its inconsequent self, nor does the selves, which she keeps as a trophy; and atmosphere of home and baby which he she avows that she has long been in love affects in his example harmonize too well with Bobby's butler. But living under a with the machinery of burlesque, wild respectable roof, and expressing his youth dancing, and beauty-chorus. The ma- under cover, has made a sad sneak out of 15 terial in which an artist works cannot Bobby. He cuts his little Dora when he but influence his art, and so, notwithstand- is out walking with his mother, and ing the piquancy of a combination of Sir coaxes the butler to tell him how he can J. M. Barrie as author and Gaby Deslys break his engagement and put all the as actress, with its consequence of this blame of it on Margaret. And Fanny 20 embodiment of gaiety being involved in does manage to put the onus of Bobby's scenes of domestic sentiment, we hardly unattractive qualities on his respectable get the best sort of satire or the prettiest bringing-up. He is certainly more like- fancy of which our English Puck is cap- able in his natural unregenerateness than able under these conditions. His travesty when he tries to conform to what he 25 is devoted to stage devices and stage fash- thinks respectable. One imagines that ions which are already rather demodes, ' Darling Dora ' sees the best of him, and which soon exhaust their humorous when he ' always imagines himself a kit- possibilities. Skits on the problem play ten and bites her ankles coming up the and the triangle of sex, on stage hus- stairs.' 30 bands who hide in wardrobes, and hero- in the last act the old gods of the Brit- ines of melodrama who shiver in the ish hearthstone meet their twilight, crum- snow, are a bit old-fashioned nowadays; ble to dust at the thrust of Fanny's bold and the Barrie travesties of David Cop- quill. Everybody takes down the Sunday perfield and Sir Herbert Tree are no bet- shutters and lays bare the windows of his 35 ter and no less superficial than average soul : Bobby declares that he will have burlesques in revues. The best thing in nobody but his Dora ; Margaret proclaims Rosy Rapture is the little episode in which her love for the butler ; the butler modestly Mile. Deslys as French peasant girl and confesses that he is the son of a duke, Mr. Jack Norworth as English Tommy that his older brother has just died, and 40 make love with the help of a phrase-book that he has succeeded to the title; Mar- and with Lord Kitchener's homily to sol- garet's fanatical mother admits that she diers in mind, and give us also a new ver- is not so sure about the ' inner light,' after sion of Sally in Our Alley; that is the all; and the two drapers, Knox and Gil- daintiest of ideas — Barrie at his best, bey, resolve to take a highball and be less 45 No less happy is the set of moving pic- respectable in the future. One can't help tures describing the adventures of the wondering whether Fanny would advise baby in his perambulator discovering for a similar relaxation in all British house- his actress mother ' how to be happy holds, and where, if it occurred, she thinks though at home.' There are songs and we would come out. Fanny has her own 50 dances and jokes to be sure, and a beauty- engaging ideas to tie to; they will always chorus which is beautiful, and 'Gaby' keep her up to a certain pitch. But peo- herself is delightfully vivacious, and Mr. pie without ideas must have something. Norworth has a tongue-twisting ditty, and The question is, whether Fanny might not Mr. Eric Lewis is fine fun as a butler find Knox and Gilbey less interesting un- 55 urging the chorus to fling themselves into respectable than respectable ; and Mrs. a polka — in fact, it would be quite a good Knox's hysteria might easily take a more revue if we had not expected something offensive form than religious mania. so superlatively good from a Barrie revue. I. MUSICAL CRITICISM , l m? ne * may * T ary the °P enin S P hr ase of Professor Daniel Gregory Mason, editor-in-chief a-Z i MuSi0 < ' So many and varied are the paths of musical enjoyment and profit, so difficult and sometimes so conflicting are the types of music presented, that the timid or inexperienced writer may well pause at the threshold, afraid of wholly losing his way in such a labyrinth.' The timidity of the inexperienced critic is a wholesome fear, especially if he is not acquainted with the technique and history of the form of musical art he under- takes to discuss. It may fall to the lot of a young journalist to be sent, much against his will, to report a concert, and if this happens, he will doubtless do his best in the way of judicious, or, at least, inoffensive praise, describing, with such variety of phraseology as he can command, the pleasure derived by the audience from the efforts of the performers. Such notices can hardly be called musical criticism, which has to do not merely with the effect upon the audience, but with the merits of the compositions rendered, as well as the way in which they are interpreted. Obviously for such a responsible task, musical knowledge and artistic sympathy of a high order are necessary if the judgment of the critic is to carry weight. In addition to these qualifications he must have the power of presentation; there are many skilled musicians who would make poor critics, because they have not the power of expressing themselves in writing. The examples of the best American criticism here sub- mitted will give the young student some idea- of the character and extent of the qualifications required, and may serve to warn him that great natural capacities as well as prolonged study are necessary before the career of a musical critic can be begun with any hope of success. I Relations,' and as such to deliver a series of lectures throughout this country dur- CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS ing a visit of three months. What M. Saint-Saens is about to do constitutes not [Evening Post^ Ne ^ m Y s °r^ , Ma y : S' «is. 5 the least of his many patriotic services to France. HIS UNUSUAL VERSATILITY Camille Saint-Saens, France's foremost puisician, and held by many to be the greatest living composer, landed on these It is not easy to reconcile the appear- shores on Thursday, in the performance 10 ance of the man with one's knowledge of a patriotic duty. And to it, in spite of of the extraordinary range of his ex- his eighty years, he is bringing, as those periences, the distinction of his artistic who saw him hurry down the gangplank accomplishments, and the universal rec- of the Rochambeau can testify, all the ognition he has received for half a cen- keenness and nervous energy which have 15 tury. He stepped ashore like any simple driven him through a vigorous career into voyager — albeit one who had business to every quarter of the globe and every transact and was eager to be at it. A realm of music, to say nothing of the dark suit and plain black overcoat — a other arts and sciences. trifle dingy it must be admitted — a derby Now in the evening of his life, at the 20 hat, close cropped gray hair, and square request of the French Government, he beard, strong aquiline nose, and. quick, has undertaken to represent France at the keen eyes, gave to their rather small- Panama-Pacific Exposition. What is a sized but sturdy possessor anything but more arduous undertaking, he has agreed, the suggestion of temperament or of gen- also at the request of his government, to 25 ius. A small leather bag supported by a be ' First Delegate to the Franco-Amer- strap 'over his shoulder added to his busi- ican Commission for the Development of ness-like appearance. Political, Economic, Literary, and Artistic Could this be the man of whom Liszt 343 344 WRITING OF TODAY once said : ' I and Saint-Saens are the only two left who know how to play honors heaped upon him the piano in Europe'? or of whom Wag- Oxford found him early worthy of the ner said: 'He is the greatest living honorary degree of doctor of music; French composer,' or Gounod that ' he 5 Cambridge showed wider recognition of could write at will a work in the style his abilities by conferring upon the com- of Rossini, of Verdi, of Schumann, or of poser the degree of doctor of letters. In Wagner.' M. Saint-Saens knew these his own country honors innumerable have celebrities well; they with many more of been heaped on him. Indeed, few men the most distinguished Europeans of the 10 live to enjoy more acknowledgments of nineteenth century were his friends. And success than have been tendered him. yet here was he who first won fame when Thirty-four years ago he became a mem- he made his premier public appearance ber of the Institute, and he has since as a pianist in Paris two years before been made a member of the Royal Acad- the French Revolution of '48, now 15 emies of Belgium, Prussia, Sweden, trudging down a gangplank on a New Greece, and Spain. York dock, without attracting any more The striking thing today about Saint- notice than any returning traveler re- Saens is the vigor he has retained through ceives. a working life of remarkable fullness. It All of this emphasizes the sanity, the 20 began when he was ten, and his fecundity lack of ostentation, the independence, and has been nothing short of marvelous; the savoir faire which are M. Saint- more than ten pages of small print are Saen's distinguishing traits. Eccentrici- necessary to catalogue his musical com- ties, at least surface eccentricities, are positions, which range through every style no part of him. He is essentially a man 25 of musical writing. In addition, he has of the world. His interests are world- had over half a century of continual wide, and his knowledge is in keeping, travel, performing his own works, con- Not inaptly he has been dubbed the Ad- ducting and helping to produce others, mirable Crichton of the Boulevards. Be- and giving organ and piano concerts in all yond a doubt, even such a prototype could 30 the capitals of Europe. His travels have not surpass him for versatility. He loves taken him to Asia and Africa, and he has all the arts only less well than music, been in the United States before this. He writes verses and occasional sonnets. He has furthermore found time as at His musical criticism did valiant service present to identify himself with national for music in France in a critical period. 35 movements. He was the prime mover His literary publications include besides in the organization of a society for the critiques, reminiscences, verse, essays, and promotion of French music as long ago comedies. as 1871. And he helped to establish a As for his talk, that which was heard league against vulgar and incorrect words at his ' Mondays ' is famous. Ordinarily 4° threatening to become part of the French somewhat cold and self-contained, on oc- language. casions like these the composer unbent, M. Saint-Saens has undoubtedly been as once for instance when to the de- able to accomplish so much because of light of his visitors, he and Bizet acted his early start. He was a ' wonderchild.' and sang Offenbach's Homeric travesty, 45 In many respects his infancy resembled La Belle Helene. From boyhood, he Mozart's. Born on October 9, 1835, in showed a keen interest and aptitude for Paris, he was hardly out of his nurse's science, which enabled him to master the arms before the world of sounds began formal side of music with most surpris- to claim him. ' I began listening to every ing celerity. Mathematics and astronomy 50 noise,' says his own account. ' My great- were very much to his taste. And he has est pleasure was the symphony of the frequently contributed papers to scientific kettle on the hob. I used to listen with societies and magazines. An archeolog- passionate interest to its slow and sur- ical treatise on the Greek theatre was an prising crescendo and finally its song like early excursion, and at another time, unon 55 that of an oboe. Berlioz must have lis- returning from a visit to the East, he tened to that same oboe, for I heard it amazed a learned society with a paper on afterward in the Damnation of Faust in his studies of mirages. the Ride to Hell.' I. MUSICAL CRITICISM 345 belonged, I do not belong, and I never a student of other mastees shall belong to the Wagnerian religion.' At two and a half years he played the M. Saint-Saen's most celebrated musical piano; he played with taste and skill at compositions are, with the date of their five. And at ten he gave his first public 5- publications: Les Noces de Promethee, concert, playing, among other things, Bee- 1867; La Princesse Jaune, 1872; Le thoven's C minor Concerto and one of Timbre d' Argent, 1877; Samson et De- .Mozart's pieces, accompanied by the or- lila, 1877; Etienne Marcel, 1879; Rouet chestra of the Italian Opera. He was d'Omphale, Danse Macabre, Jeunesse seven when Stamaty took him as a pupil, 10 d'Hercule, Symphonies en mi, en la, et and he had shown his ability to play en ut, Henry VIII, 1883 ; Ascanio, parts of Mozart's Don Juan at sight. 1890; Phryne, 1893; Chceurs d'Anti- In 1847 Saint-Saens entered the Conser- gone, 1893; Javotte, 1896; Dejanire, vatoire, where he studied under Benoist 1898 ; Les Barbares, 1901 ; Parysatis, and Halevy, devoting himself to piano, 15 1902 ; Helene, 1903 ; L'Ancetre, 1906, and organ, and theory to such purpose that many concertos, sonatas, and quin- he became a prize winner. tettes. His first symphony was written and per- It was on his visit here in 1906 that formed when he was seventeen with sue- Saint-Saens announced that he would quit cess by the Societe de Sainte Cecilie. He 20 the concert stage, after sixty years of became organist of the Church of St. hard work. He had, ten years before, Merri in 1853, and organist of the Made- had the satisfaction of celebrating the leine in 1858. He did some teaching also fiftieth anniversary of his first appear- at that time, but gave most of his time ance in public by giving a concert in the to his beloved occupation of composing. 25 identical chamber — the Salle Pleyel — in His facility in that direction is the basis which as a boy of ten he made his de- of many stories. There are few erasures but. on his manuscripts. He puts his ideas On that visit in 1906 the composer ex- down rapidly on paper, chatting some- pressed himself as delighted with Amer- times the while, and he needs no piano 30 ica. But he said that what interested him to assist him. He wrote his opera Pro- most was not America as it was, but what serpine without having an instrument in it would become some day, when a thou- reach. sand elements were amalgamated in form- As a student of the music of other ing a product as yet unknown. Today he masters, he is probably without a rival. 35 looks forward to observing just how far Von Biilow was so much impressed by that process of amalgamation has gone. this knowledge that he recorded his won- He is bitter against the foes of France, der at the young musician's prodigious but he permits himself to talk little on the memory, saying that even at that time subject of the war. But he could not con- nothing in a musical way was unknown 40 ceal his real feelings when he landed the to him. Berlioz was equally impressed other day. Some admirers who rushed to with his talent and musical erudition, welcome him were brushed off with the ' Camille Saint-Saens is one of the great- protest that he would have none of them, est musicians of our time,' he said, and for being German, that time was 1867. One of the peculiari- 45 ties of Saint-Saens and his work — it is said to be a distinction which he alone II of recent composers of consequence pos- sessed—is his complete independence of 'BORIS GODOUNOFF ' Richard Wagner. He alone, in the opin- 50 ion of most authorities, would have been KURT SCHINDLER what he has been if Wagner had never existed. And yet he helped France to W° rth American ^^February, 1913. understand Wagner. As he himself said : 'I admire the works of Richard Wagner 55 With Boris Godounoff, a drama of the profoundly, in spite of their eccentrici- Russian people, a new type of ' historical ties. They are superior and powerful, opera ' has been founded ; far from the ste- which suffices for me. But I have never reotyped pattern of Halevy's and Meyer- 346 WRITING OF TODAY beer's ambiguous and artificial creations, it was who first taught him the piano, this is a work of the simple and com- The young Moussorgsky had a strong and pelling logic of a master playwright, vivid imagination which was nourished by in which the great emotional forces, the the Russian fairy-tales, so highly colored revolutionizing sentiments of a period are- 5 and barbarically gorgeous in their pic- depicted through the medium of music. turing, which he heard from the lips of There have been great musical geniuses his ' Njanja,' the nurse. At an early age who summed up every development that he used to sit down and improvise at the had gone before; of this type were Bach piano on these fairy-tales. The devotion and Mozart. Then there were those vol- 10 of the boy to his mother was of the ten- canic temperaments, those prophetic minds derest kind. In later years he used to who definitely formulated new ideals — speak of her as ' a saint,' and his impres- Monteverde, Gluck, Beethoven, and Wag- sive cradle song is inscribed to her mem- ner, and among these must be included the ory. In 1849, when he was ten years old, Russian Moussorgsky, who with clear pur- 15 his father sent him to St. Petersburg, pose steered the ship of art, as he said, where he first went to a preparatory ' unto new shores.' Moussorgsky was not school, later to a high school for noble- only a wonderful composer individually, men. He kept on with his piano studies, but behind him lay the unexplored musical developing a remarkable proficiency ; and wealth of the great Slav nation — a mine 20 through an old priest, who taught him in of rhythmically and melodically unusual religion, he came to know about the old folk-songs ; of Byzantine church-chants Greek liturgical chants and about the mu- flavoring of the mysterious early Chris- sic of the Roman Catholic Church, a tian period ; of old bard tunes, rhapsodical knowledge which benefited him much in and full of grandeur ; of new and violent 25 later years. He also learned German and vocal inflections rooted in the dialects Latin and showed marked interest for the of a rich and varied language. While study of history, of German philosophy Tschaikowsky had adapted his Russian and psychology. When, in 1856, he en- nature to the cosmopolitan surroundings tered the Preobrajenki Regiment, he soon in which he lived, his poor and obscure 30 became very popular through his lovable contemporary (for Moussorgsky was lit- character and his many accomplishments, tie known outside of Russia till long after both among his comrades and in social his death) built the edifice of his art on circles. purely racial grounds. At this time he became acquainted with It was this intimate love of his own peo- 35 Dargomyszky, the greatest Russian com- ple that led Moussorgsky to base his poser of those days, whose fine personality greatest work, Boris, on a play by Push- and high ideals made a profound impres- kin, the poet who ' took Russia away from sion on the young man, and at whose the artificiality of the eighteenth century house he met all the young composers of and revealed the possibilities of native 40 the day. Dargomyszky, mature alike in material in the native tongue.' And as his work and years, had developed the the intense humanism of Moussorgsky's theory in his new opera, The Guest of the art made it a graphic reflection of his own Stone, that the musical sound should be experiences as well as of the life of his the exact translation of the spoken word, nation, a knowledge of the man in the 45 This was, of course, very much the same artist is essential to an understanding of idea that Richard Wagner carried out his work. when in Die Meistersinger he let Eva and Modest Petrovitch Moussorgsky was Magdalene, David and Hans Sachs, sing born in Karevo, a village two hundred in vocal inflections conforming absolutely miles south of St. Petersburg, on the 28th 50 to the inflections of the speaking voice, a of March of the year 1839, as the son of principle which, naturally, led to very dif- simple people belonging to the small no- ferent results when applied to the Rus- bility. Here he passed his childhood to sian language, so rich in sonority, so his tenth year in the midst of fields and changeful in modulations. While Dargo- forests, the typical Russian landscape, in 55 myszky's Guest of Stone impresses one intimate touch with nature and the life of today as dry and theoretical, it was left the peasants. His father and mother to Moussorgsky, who eagerly absorbed were both very musical, and his mother Dargomyszky's axioms and instructions, I. MUSICAL CRITICISM 347 to carry this idea of musical naturalism to lamenting the doom to which it is predes- its utmost convincing conclusions. tined in the small and prescribed circuit of Moussorgsky now began to compose its life. From 1866 to 1868 Moussorgsky larger works, and in i860 Anton Rubin- lives again in the country and comes once stein conducted an orchestral scherzo of 5 more in touch with the peasant popula- his in St. Petersburg. Already the year tion; and in the new light of the ideal before Moussorgsky had sent his resigna- that Dargomyszky inculcated in him, he tion to the regiment, feeling that his mu- sees a new beauty in the Russian peasant sical calling needed his entire and undi- songs, in the simple and direct utterances vided devotion. No advice from his fam- 10 of these village types. A little episode be- ily or his friends was of any avail; the came of momentous interest in his life examples of Cui and Lermontoff, the poet, development : by 'chance he witnessed un- that were held up to prove to him that art seen from his window a scene where a and service in the army could be com- poor little wretch, the village simpleton, bined, failed to impress him. He said, ' I 15 makes love to the beautiful Ivanovna, the am not Lermontoff; I cannot serve two belle of the village. The touching and masters.' This resolution was in one re- throbbing accents of this poor, loveless, spect most dangerous to Moussorgsky, be- feeble-minded creature, the direct truth cause, not being blessed with wordly that speaks out of his instinctive passion, means, he was deprived of an assured in- 20 made a profound impression on Mous- come and soon faced grave financial sorgsky. troubles. These sorrows, together with And he tries to embody this little scene the strain of his feverish zeal in music, exactly as he has witnessed it in a song led very soon to a nervous breakdown, for which he wrote both words and music, and he had to be removed to the country, 25 This incident is used in Boris Godounoff where his mother had remarried after the most effectively, and because of its im- death of his father. From now on for portance it is, perhaps, worth while to re- the rest of his life Moussorgsky's health call the fact that the Russian country peo- was frail, his manners feverish, restless, pie treat these unfortunate ' yourodivy,' irregular, and his sensitiveness high 30 the village simpletons, of which they have strung to a degree. In the meantime he so many, with awe and superstitious rev- worked on a grand opera on the subject erence, believing that they have divine of Flaubert's Salammbo. This work was foresight, an idea that is to some extent never finished, but a great many of its borne out by science, which claims that melodies have been rescued, being incor- 35 their lack of intellect is often compen- porated in Boris Godounoff and in the sated by a keener intuition, religious cantata Joshua. In the white The witnessing of this pathetic little heat of his enthusiasm he scorned the ad- drama inspires him to a further resolution vice of his friends to acquire a better in his work. He will from now on not knowledge of musical technique, because 40 only seek to make the song an exact he mistakenly confounded technique with translation of the spoken word, but he will Conventionalism and because he was too try to reveal through music those instinc- full of inspiration to wait for the years tive hidden undercurrents of emotion of dry preparatory work, and, further, which lie beneath the veneer of civiliza- because he believed that a new path can 45 tion and which psychologists study in the only be found by creating a new style to- insane and feeble-minded. He will thus, gether with a new inspiration. with his music, approach mysterious The year 1865 forms a turning-point in thresholds which among poets only his composing. His mother, Julia Ivan- Shakespeare dared to cross. The cul- ovna, had died, and in the days of deep- somination of these efforts of Moussorgsky est emotion that sent his mind wandering was to be the mad scene of Boris Godou- back to the early days of his childhood he noff. But not everything in Moussorgsky's wrote his Cradle Song of the Poor and work deals with sad and gruesome things, dedicated it to the memory of his mother. He shares with some of the great men of Here a new type of song is created; it is 55 Russian literature the reverse side of the a picture of real life, a genre scene of the national character — a keen sense of hu- deepest meaning, this song of the peasant mor and mockery. A delightful specimen mother bent over the child, wailing and of this side of his talent is a character 348 WRITING OF TODAY song called The Seminarist, in which he ing such subordinate personages as the shows the troubles of a young student of hostess and the little Tsarevitch (played theology, who, under the watchful eyes by a woman) several arias to sing. He had of his teacher, the priest, essays a flirta- the good taste, though, to keep these arias tion with the latter's daughter, is caught 5 in the folk-song style, thus preserving the and drastically punished and now tries to unity of the opera's historical character, repeat his Latin lesson of irregular verbs, In February, 1873, the second act was while choked with sobs and haunted by produced on a private stage, and owing to vivid, unpleasant memories. its success the entire work was taken up Even more amusing and original is an- 10 at the Imperial Theatre, where the first other song called The Peep Show, a performance took place on the 24th of kind of musical pamphlet in which he lets January, 1874. It had an enormous suc- the five most important music critics of cess, especially with the younger genera- St. Petersburg pass by as in a camera ob- tion, the progressive faction of the stu- scura, each one parodied in a good-na- 15 dents. Twenty performances were given, tured way. There is Famyntsine, the but, much to the grief of the composer a classic, for whom great music ends with great many scenes, because of court in- Mozart. There is Fifi Tolstoi, who raves, trigue, were censored as revolutionary about Patti and dances an ecstatic waltz and had to be omitted. Just for a few to the air of ' Patti-Patti,' and there is 20 weeks the life of the composer had seemed Zaremba prostrated before the genius of to reach a climax of recognition and suc- Wagner. This musical pamphlet, in its cess, but from now on one disappointment humor and bonhomie, was an immense succeeded another. The only real gleam success. What Moussorgsky would have of hope that still shone into his life was a done had he finished the music to Gogol's 25 message of appreciation from Franz Liszt, comedy, The Marriage, we cannot tell, who had received through mutual friends He completed but one act, in which he a set of children's songs called The realized a verisimilitude in reproducing the Child's Nursery in which Moussorgsky types of the Russian bourgeoisie, faith- had noted the little joys and troubles of ful alike in manner of speech and of ac- 3° child life with an accuracy and fidelity to tion, that strikes us today, forty-five detail hitherto unheard of. Liszt sent years later, as extremely modern and Moussorgsky word that he was enchanted really ahead of the times. But he gave with it and wanted to transcribe it for the up the work on this musical comedy when piano. the idea of setting to music Pushkin's his- 35 During the last seven years of Mous- torical drama Boris Godounoff was pro- sorgsky's life he worked on another opera posed to him by the actor Nikolsky, whom taken from Russian history and dealing he met at the house of his intimate friend with the conspiracy of the Khovanskis. Stassof at St. Petersburg. At Stassof's Its Russian title is Khovantchina. He house he also met Rimsky-Korsakoff, with 40 did not live to complete this, although whom he liked to discuss music and with some parts of it were given under the di- whom in later years he even shared an rection of Balakireff during Moussorg- apartment. sky's lifetime. The work was actually In September, 1868, he started to work finished by Rimsky-Korsakoff, who also on Boris. The first act was already 45 re-orchestrated a great many parts of finished in November, and in the fall of Boris to suit the exigencies of large 1869 the first version was completed. He opera-houses. The service that Rimsky- orchestrated it in the subsequent winter, Korsakoff tried to render the memory of and the circle of musicians that first heard his comrade is of questionable value, it received it with great enthusiasm be- 50 Rimsky was not a big enough man to cause it seemed to carry out the ideals of realize the beauty and originality of the young Russian school desiring abso- Moussorgsky's genius, and he often tried lute veracity and minute reproduction of to cover and soften what seemed to him life. His friends, though, unanimously harshness, but what was really visionary objected to the absence of the female ele- 55 audacity and the force of inspiration, ment and of a love story in the opera, His corrections, although giving higher which he remedied by inventing the scene color, often detracted from the vigor of of the Polish Princess Marina and by giv- Moussorgsky's drawing. I. MUSICAL CRITICISM 349 f, !■' ~ 'C Over the last few years of Moussorg- in a monastery of Moscow at night. The KSky's life it is well to pass quickly. The venerable monk, Pimenn, is in the act of story is too sad. Deep melancholy had finishing his chronicle of the history of settled on him, and he was so poor that Russia, in which he has described the in order to make a living he had to take 5 murder of the Tsarevitch Dimitri. A up inferior clerical work in the various young novice, Gregory, who shares the ministerial departments and was obliged cell, awakes from obsessing dreams of am- to accept a position as accompanist in a bition, and Pimenn, to quiet him, tells him singing-school. of the vanity of earthly power and how When he returned to St. Petersburg 10 even those who wear the crown are not in 1880, he was already desperately ill and free from sorrow. While speaking of addicted to the use of cognac. His the murder of Dimitri the old monk men- friends tried to raise money for him by tions the fact that the Tsarevitch, had he giving a concert of his own compositions lived, would have been exactly the same in February, 1881, but it was too late; and 15 age as the young monk Gregory now is. a few days later he had to be taken to the Instantly an idea flares up in the mind of military hospital, where he died on the the fanatic novice; he persuades himself 16th of March, 1881. that he is God's instrument to bring just The story of Boris Godounoff is punishment upon Boris and to avenge the founded on some facts in Russian history «j death of the Tsarevitch. between the years 1598-1605. It is the The second scene of the first act is at story of the False Dimitri, used by many a village inn near the Lithuanian fron- dramatists, among them the German, tier, where the authorities are seeking the Schiller, and the Russian, Pushkin ; and it fugitive young monk, who is stirring up is the text of the latter author which 25 the people by proclaiming that he is the forms the basis of Moussorgsky's libretto, young Dimitri. They find Gregory in the but certain scenes were written by Mous- company of two jolly vagabond friars, sorgsky himself after descriptions by the but he escapes through the window bound • historian, Karamzine. After the death of for the Polish frontier. The second act Ivan the Terrible, Feodor, the feeble- 30 is in Polish Lithuania, where a great fes- minded brother of the Tsar, had ascended tival is being held at the Castle of Sando- the throne; and there being only an in- mir. Marina, a Polish princess, urged on fant son, Dimitri, Boris, the brother-in- by her Jesuit advisers, has received the law of Feodor, was made regent and tutor false Dimitri hospitably, seeing in him a of the child. Before the opening of the 35 means to strike at the Russian throne, opera the gruesome deed had already Dimitri, who has fallen in love with taken place- — that is, the murder of the Marina, is stirred by her to his utmost Tsarevitch Dimitri in the church of Oug- ambition. She says that only when he litch at the hidden instigation of Boris, becomes Tsar of Russia will she marry who knows that he thus paves for himself 4° him. The next scene, in the palace of the the way to the throne. Feodor mean- Tsar Boris, in the nursery of the Imperial while has died, and when the curtain rises children, is an intimate picture of ten- the scene is the monastery of Novo- der home life, offering opportunities for Dvejtchi near Moscow, whereto Boris has charming children songs and nursery dit- retired, professing that he will not ac- 45 ties. Here the Tsar is seen in his human cept the crown. A great crowd of coun- aspect as a grave and affectionate father try people, ignorant and docile, pour into capable of the deepest love for his chil- the courtyard, driven by prefects and dren. Yet always the shadow of his Boiars to implore Boris to become their crime moves beside him. He hears Tsar. This blind multitude is a mere tool 50 through the sly and cunning Boiar Choui- in the hands of the noblemen. The next sky, of an uprising at the frontier and of scene shows the coronation of Boris on the appearance of a young man claiming the Kremlin, where, though surrounded by to be Dimitri. Doubts arise in his soul as the cheers of his subjects, the new Tsar, to whether his commands were actually haunted by his deed, is sad and filled with 55 carried out and if the Tsarevitch may not ominous forebodings. This ends the pro- really still be alive. Left alone, a grow- logue of the opera. ing horror seizes him; the ghost of the The first scene of Act I reveals a cell murdered child seems to arise before his 350 WRITING OF TODAY eyes — a vision he seeks in vain to repel ism succeeds the outburst of fury, and — and with a prayer to God for forgive- cheering and shouting, the multitude joins ness he sinks down fainting. the advancing army. Only the poor idiot The next scene is the death of Boris, boy remains behind, and while the snow For reasons of operatic expediency the 5 falls more and more thickly he sits alone, scene has been put at the end of the opera, sending forth his sorrowful plaint : ' Fall, a proceeding which is legitimate because fall, bitter tears, weep, O soul of the the composer himself at one time had pro- righteous ! The enemy approaches, blood posed the arrangement. In the great will flow, fire will rage. Woe on Rus- vaulted hall of the Kremlin the Duma of 10 sia ! Weep, ye starving people ! ' the Bo'iars is assembled to discuss the In reviewing the life-work of Mous- punishment of the usurper Dimitri. sorgsky we find a variety of novel as- They have not caught him yet, but they pects that distinguish it, as well as a wide are already planning what mode of death range of themes that his work comprises; to choose. There they sit in solemn ses- 15 we find poignant pathos, and delightful hu- sion in their sumptuous robes and furs mor, strong dramatic contrasts on one when Boris, still in the throes of his ter- side, and again, when needed, the mon- rible vision, appears, haggard and haunted, otony of an incessant invariable rhythm, The old monk, Pimenn, enters, the chron- the refined subtle charm of the children icier of the first act, who, in the midst of 20 songs, and a barbaric stirring force in the intrigue and lying ambition, typifies Truth folk scenes of his operas. With an ex- in this drama. He recounts to the Tsar traordinarily precise vision he draws the a miracle of the restoring of sight to a musical pictures of a Russian landscape blind peasant who made a pilgrimage to in the charm of spring and summer or in the grave of the dead Dimitri. While 25 the grim clutches of Russia's frosty win- this proves the actual death of the Tsare- ter, and more in particular the picture of vitch and the falsity of the pretender's the Russian village in all the phases of claim, it only intensifies the mystic terror peasant life, showing the mother and the by which Boris is obsessed. He com- child, the beggar and the ' yourodivy,' the pletely collapses under the clear gaze of 30 young lovers, and the sad housewives, the the old monk, feeling that Pimenn reads Jews, and the monks. Such interior the guilt in his soul. His attendants, see- scenes as the pompous assembly of the ing that his end is near, send for his lit- peasant family at a holiday celebration, tie son to receive his benediction, and or the jollities of a village inn, are drawn they then clothe Boris in the Imperial 35 by him with humor and precision. Skima, the funeral shroud of the Tsars. Moussorgsky always needs a pictorial Boris dies. vision to inspire him to music; his under- The last scene, as Moussorgsky planned standing of musical truth means absolute it, shows us the highway to Moscow adherence to life, absolute nature-likeness, on which on a bitter cold winter day 40 This is decidedly a limitation of his tal- the pretender is advancing with his troops ent, a one-sidedness that he shares with toward the capital. A group of peasant Berlioz and with Richard Strauss. He serfs have caught an Imperial messenger always has in view a goal not purely mu- and vent their rage upon him. Children sical ; the idea of thematic development, as are tormenting a poor feeble-minded lad, 45 it forms an intrinsic part of symphonic a 'yourodivy,' as they call them in Rus- composition, never appeals to him. His sia. The two vagabond friars of the strict adherence to the inflections of the scene in the inn again appear, seeking to Russian spoken word leads him to a lib- rouse the people to revolt, with the result erty and freedom from regular rhythms that a new storm of fury breaks out. In 50 hitherto unheard of. There is no regu- their frenzy they seize upon two Jesuits larity of musical periods corresponding who are accompanying the victorious to each other, as in the classical masters, army of the false Dimitri (who is, in fact, and there are continual changes of bar the Jesuits' tool). While they are about and tempo such as nobody had dared to to tear in pieces these monks the pre- 55 write up to his time. It means boldness, tender appears riding at the head of his indeed, on the part of Moussorgsky in troops and proclaiming freedom and for- the year 1868, to change the bar twenty- giveness to all. Equally frantic patriot- three times inside of one song (No. I of I. MUS ICAL CRITICISM 351 the children songs) ; today we have without adding the smallness of individual become accustomed to such proceeding taste to the pure gold of the people's own through the modernists of France and greatest possession. Germany; yet none of these followers This is exactly the corner where Mous- have done it with so much logic as Mous- 5 sorgsky grips us with his boundless love sorgsky, who merely sought after the most of truth and this is why his work, al- correct musical notation of the speech though strictly national in its idiom, of the people. Modern musical explorers reaches far over the Russian boundaries of Russia, who, like Madam Lineff, in its appeal to the entire civilized world, have traveled through the peasant dis- 10 It is a singular power of music that it can tricts, taking down the Russian folk songs convey the very soul essence of a nation by means of the phonograph, have stated even to those who have never come in scientifically how variable and flexible the any touch with it and who do not under- : character of the Russian folk melos is. stand its language. We have become accustomed to the cele- 15 In Boris Godounoff the ' people ' are brated five-four rhythm of Tschaikowsky's actually in the foreground of the happen- Pathetique, but by acquaintance with the ings, the great masses are really the prin- work of Moussorgsky one learns an- cipal actor ; at first dumb, oppressed, easily other typical Russian rhythm, the seven- guided, then stirred up, threatening, finally four, and Rimsky's fairy opera entrances 20 in open revolt and jubilant war spirit, with its pompous and stately eleven-four The strong veracity of these folk scenes that is as old as the oldest Slavonic tradi- can be likened without blasphemy to such tions. eternal masterpieces as Shakespeare's A new and fertile soil of exploration Coriolanus and Julius Casar. And in all Moussorgsky had before him when with 25 dramatic music there is nothing as near his keen ears and scrutinizing eyes he to Macbeth as the specter scene of Boris. watched the country people at work and One important innovation is that Mous- in song. He had caught as well the weird sorgsky uses principally prose diction in- melodic outline of the Russian lament stead of verse, which makes possible the or wail, the strange incantations of 30 intense realism of his style, and which those bards or ' rhapsodes ' that now, permits him to faithfully picture scenes of as centuries ago, wander through the every-day life. His acts begin without plains of Russia singing the old bal- elaborate orchestral preludes, and the lads and folk songs or lamenting at music ends with the falling of the cur- the funeral of the dead in long-drawn- 35 tain ; in fact, his self-imposed restraint out melodious phrases that are like the keeps him from drawing one more line or falling of tears. Moussorgsky's songs inventing one more melody than is act- are the songs of the soil. His spirit ually demanded by the situation. The of observation, of musical experimenta- idea of spinning out or developing themes tion, let him describe the very graphic 40 symbolically, as Wagner did, is entirely movements and gestures of the moujik or excluded from his operatic credo. On the Russian peasant in music, an achievement contrary, it is to the singers, the actual that helps the dramatic effectiveness of exponents of the dramatic message, that the folk scenes of his operas greatly, supremacy is given. Much attention is The idiom of the Russian folk song had 45 paid to the acting not only of the soloists, so completely become his own that it is but also of the chorus, and the gestures hard to say in his work where the nature are often indicated by the music itself, product stops and where his own inven- Since Wagner's death there is no work tion begins. Far from blaming him for that has so stirred the musical world relying thus upon the nation's resources, 50 through its freedom from convention, its we ought to admire the truth and strength direct truth, and its compelling sincerity ; of his unconscious atavistic music heri- and a singular pathos is attached to the tage which allowed him to speak with the fact that Boris was written forty-three original force of the people, a spokesman years ago, but only came to the knowledge of the dumb millions. Many other Rus- 55 of the international public since the sump- sian composers have used the treasure tuous performances in Paris in 1908. hold of folk songs, but none like Mous- Since then the work has been given in sorgsky without tainting and soiling them, Italian in both Monte Carlo and Milan, 352 WRITING OF TODAY and is shortly to be heard in New York, these three operas made any serious im- This wider recognition of Moussorgsky's pression or effected a lasting occupation genius, which only began when his ideals of the local stage. struck fire from the susceptible musicians Last evening's production was witnessed of France, has meant nothing less than 5 by a large and eager audience. The bril- a reawakening of musical conscience by liancy of the stage pictures, the swift this naturalist in art, who declared: 'I movement of Sardou's skilfully planned ac- want Truth above all ! To seek and find tion, the disclosure of Geraldine Farrar's these treasures hidden in the masses and gifts in a new investiture and the new in individuals which no hand as yet has i demonstration of a pleasing skill within a touched, and to feed hungering humanity limited field of impersonation on the part with them as with a wholesome food, this of Mr. Amato, for which he has few op- is the artist's problem and the joy of joys, portunities, all served to hold the interest Art is not a goal, but the means to talk of the assembly and furnished food for to one's brethren ! ' 15 much animated discussion in the entr'actes. SUCCESS DEPENDS ON SINGERS III But there was no ground for belief that the opera had made any deeper conviction WORLD PREMIERE OF ' MA- *> of creative power than its predecessors DAME SANS-GENE ' from the same pen. If the work obtains any vogue it will be entirely due to the [W. J. HENDERSON] achievements of the principal impersona- tors. And it must be kept in mind that [Sun, New York, January 26, 1915. 25 this can confidently be said in spite of the By permission.] fact that Arturo Toscanini, the foremost ' madame sans-gene '— metropolitan opera opera conductor of the world, has de- house voted to the interpretation of the work Caterina Hubscher Geraldine Farrar his unique endowments and his inexhaust- Lefebvre Giovanni Martinelli 3° lble energy. Napoleon Pasquale Amato Of the liberties taken with history by Fouque Andrea de Segurola Sardou and Moreau in their comedy noth- Count de Neipperg Paul Althouse ing need now be said. Mr. Simoni has Queen Carolina Vera Curtis made as 'good an opera book out of the Princess Elisa Minnie Eggener 35 p i ay as cou i d be expected. He has kept Despreaux . . .AngeloBada dose to his original and his labor has %%T: ::::::::. \v.v:::SSS?u«35SI **^j*** *mj ** °f omission and J condensation in order that the piece might Madame Sans-Gene, opera in four acts, be reduced to practicable proportions. If the book by Renato Simoni after the 40 the libretto is not a great one, it can comedy by Victorien Sardou and E. hardly be called the fault of Mr. Simoni. Moreau, the music by Umberto Giordano, It is too crowded with incident and ac- was performed last night at the Metro- tion. An ideal opera book would seldom politan Opera House for the first time on be able to stand performance without the any stage. The comedy should be remem- 45 music, because it would be too ' talky.' bered by local theatregoers from its in- The numerous sustained lyric utterances teresting representations with Kathryn which are the life of an opera are the Kidder in the title role and from the pro- death of a play. On the other hand a duction in which Mme. Rejane was the composer cannot work to advantage when principal actor. Umberto Giordano is the 50 he is encumbered with a mass of details of composer of Andrea Chenier, an opera stage business. What he requires for his produced at the Academy of Music by the purposes is a few grand dramatic situa- late Colonel Mapleson on November 13, tions in which the elemental emotions are 1896; Fedora, produced by Heinrich Con- to be expressed not by doing but by speech ried at the Metropolitan on December 5, 55 which he is to translate into song. 1906, and Siberia, produced at the Man- The first opera makers tried to construct hattan Opera House by Oscar Hammer- this type of poetic drama by carrying on stein on February 5, 1907. Not one of their explanatory dialogue in recitative I. MUSICAL CRITICISM 353 and publishing their emotional states in lighted our ears and our taste in his arias. Their purpose was defeated by the Manon, music which wears the powdered decadence of their method into a mere wig, the exaggerated gallantry and the stereotyped formula. Later masters pirouette of Paris of the close of the sought to reconstruct the form by modi- 5 eighteenth century. lying the large difference between the That Giordano has written his score in recitation and the air. Still later com- a workmanlike manner goes almost with- posers abolished the conventions of the out saying. The routine of operatic com- recitative entirely and wrote their dia- position is well known to Italian com- logue in a continuous melos, known tech- 10 posers. In fact they know more about nically as arioso. When they needed the this than about anything else, and much larger lyric utterance they gave it, but not of the lyric art which emanates from the in any conventional pattern such as that land of the ' drama per musica ' discloses of the eighteenth century aria. its inheritance of the blood of a genera- iStion in which one who could write an ef- memorable great acts fective opera finale was called a skilful But no great operatic masterpiece has contrapuntist. Giordano is a competent ever been created which contains no mo- routinier; he knows how to put an opera ments of rapturous melodic song, of pure score together. lyric utterance. Without pausing to 20 His method has no new features. It is search the archives of the mind any that of the contemporaneous Italian stage, operagoer will think of the great third His dialogue is carried on in continuous act of Aida, of Otello's farewell to 'the melody, with rare excursions into the pomp, the pride and circumstance of war,' modern type of recitative. His larger of the dialogue of Pelleas and Melisande 25 dramatic situations he seeks to embody in beside the fountain, of ' O sink' hernieder ' broader lyric form, but as already said he and ' Mild und leise ' in Tristan, of Wo- is too frequently hampered by the nature tan's farewell, of Bruennhilde's immola- of the situations themselves, tion. These things are music, great The melodic flights which do occur dis- music, and an opera book to be a good 30 close no lofty flight of musical invention, one must not only make room for great They are pretty and pleasing, but they music but must inspire it. lack the directness, the individuality, the If the objection be raised that Gior- incisiveness essential to the excitement of dano's work is comedy and we are quoting enthusiasm. Thematic representation is tragedies, it is necessary only to recall the 35 not employed at all in the manner of frequent and beautiful instances of lyric Wagner or even Puccini's Tosca, but the utterance in a baker's dozen of works, older device of fixed ideas and reminis- among them Rossini's Barber of Seville, cences is utilized rather baldly and ineffec- Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, Wolf-Fer- tively. The repetitions of the love mel- rari's Le Donne Curiose, Smetana's Bar- 40 odies are of course obvious ; all such repe- tered Bride, Wagner's Die Meistersinger titions are. The crashing chords of brass and Verdi's Falstaff. Surely Comedy with which herald Napoleon are mere noise her smile and her rod of satiric castiga- without musical design, tion has done as much for music as The composer has said that his thought Tragedy with her grim portents and her 45 centralized on the Little Corporal. Al- •; agonies. though he does not appear till the third The book of Madame Sans-Gene sup- act everything portends him, foreshadows plies only a few dramatic points for him, is prologue to him. It is always in- strong and vital music. The point at teresting and instructive to know what which the development of this vivacious 50 are the purposes of an artist; but to comedy' calls for the most moving emo- measure his achievements by them is tional utterance is in the second act, when frequently disappointing. In the score of Lefebvre repeats to his wife the Em- Giordano Napoleon _ is an ante-climax, peror's suggestion of divorce. For the The composer unwittingly shot his bolt in rest there are some delightful bits of 55 the second act, and when the third brings I comedy in the book and some of them the figure of the first Emperor the stage clamor for that style of delicate and fan- is still dominated by the wilful Sans- ciful music with which Massenet has de- Gene. 354 WRITING OF TODAY revolution, a historical event portentous few musical tricks even j n its outward and pictorial as- The orchestration is on the whole work- pects, which the composer tried to seize, manlike. But there are some pages in and still more momentous in its profounder which it is much overdone, and in the 5 significance which was not to be published third act at times even the powerful tones to us merely by echoes of the MarseiU of Mr. Amato were inaudible. Musical laise, the Carmagnole and the Ca ira. tricks of the time are not numerous. In the second act the composer was invited There are some harp sweeps along the to embody the unhealthy, overdrawn and whole tone scale. Stopped trumpets in- 10 even apprehensive ceremonials of a mush- evitably impart a nasal twang to certain room aristocracy striving to inspire itself passages. The bass drum wearies itself with confidence by the exercise of sheer in futile struggles to indicate the tumult audacity. Into this had to be projected of a troubled historical period. the outspoken thought and untrammeled So much for a swift review of the 15 feelings of a woman of the people rebel- music in its more immediate revelations, ling against a society of pretenders. It But certain problems larger than those was a formidable task indeed and it indicated in this examination confronted proved to be far beyond the abilities of Giordano. In common with every other the composer of Fedora and Siberia. writer of opera he had to face the diffi- 20 Having examined the broader require- culties of characterization. These pre- ments of the score, we may now proceed sented themselves to him in two general to pass in review some of its salient de- phases, of which the more familiar may be tails as they appear in the several acts, discussed first. In Madame Sans-Gene, The first act bristles with incidents. The as in any other lyric drama, there is an 25 composer has endeavored to give some imperative demand for definition of the musical coherence to it by entrusting the characters of the protagonists as well as principal figuration and movement to the for that broader characterization which orchestra, which thus provides a well creates a style perfectly adapted to the tinted background for animated dialogue, emotional movement of the play. 3° The first real success of the method is Both of these requirements Giordano found in the scene between Caterina and has met but feebly. His assertion that Fouque, in which old French melody of the musical thought of his composition re- rustic type, well suited to suggest Cate- volves around Napoleon may be true, but rina's Alsatian origin, is worked up into there is no individuality in the music of 35 an extended scherzando which is quite the Emperor. He speaks precisely the pleasing. same lyric language as the other persons There is a light touch in the music ac- of the comedy, and he speaks it with less companying the entrance of Lefebvre and directness than Sans-Gene. Nor can it be his soldier companions, and the tenor has said that the general emotional scheme of 40 a respectable bit of semi-declamatory mel- the play has given the composer any ody beginning with ' Ah, perdio fu un larger inspiration than this historical travaglio rude.' After that all is rapid figure which he believed to occupy his dialogue, as was most of that which went mind. The music of the whole opera is before, together with the bustle of action, lamentably deficient in power of char- 45 crowds rushing on and off the stage, pass- acterization. ing the windows at the rear and batter- We are not therefore disappointed when ing at the door. The last crowd which we consider the other phase of character- passes at the rear just before the curtain ization which was placed before this mu- falls sings the Marseillaise, which always sician. He was called upon to make a 50 was a good tune and still is. At an op- deeply significant contrast between his portune moment, too, the composer finds a first and his second act. The accomplish- happy use for the Carmagnole, for its ment of the task would have been a veri- thought resounds through the action : table tour de force for even a master, , T . , , GiorcLr ^^ bCy0nd tHe P0W6rS ° f " *^ S °" Z P^sTmarche,' In his first act he was asked to find a In like manner one hears echoes of the musical expression for the spirit of the Ca ira. The composer is quite right in I . MUSICAL CRITICISM 355 .introducing those melodies of the period, his arms, and then it is his turn with, They belong to the story, and as all good ' Questa bocca tua perfumata e pure ' — and true theatregoers knqw, we must have ' this, thy mouth, perfumed and pure ' — local color. Any composer who knows his and again the composer writes commend- business can get it from the native color 5 ably and without inspiration. A musician shop, and it is not hard to remember that scrutinizing these two lyric passages will the best tune in Giordano's Siberia was see that their technical weakness lies ' Ay ouchnem,' made in Russia. in the want of organic relation in their The second act opens delightfully. It phrases. The development of a melodic is perhaps one of the curiosities of the 10 climax is thus rendered impossible, and lyric drama that three minor characters, the whole scene is without cohesion, a tailor, a dancing master and a valet, A little further on in this act there is have a trio, which is. almost the best bit a well written bit of ensemble for Cater- of music in the entire score. The fact ina, Lefebvre and Neipperg, but it is that it is woefully wanting in originality 15 marred by thick orchestration. The en- affects the matter not in the least, for un- trance of the court ladies gives oppor- qriginal composition is often the hap- tunity for some more music of grace and piest product of mediocrity. This trio has elegance, sung by the women who sur- grace, charm and elegance of style and round Fouque. But this music, charm- aptly expresses the mood of three servants 20 ing as it is, has no more distinction than trained under the old nobility and now that of the trio at the beginning of the waiting upon the upstart creations of the act. It sounds like Bizet waking from a Corsican. Carmen dream in a Massenet entourage. The scene between Caterina and the The rest of the act is action and dialogue, dancing master is well written, but there 25 some of the latter heated in character, as is nothing in the music which discloses in the defiance of the Queen of Naples by more than the familiar technical skill of Caterina. There is little room for great a professional composer of Italian opera, music. What Giordano has made exposes It is the work of a man who knows his its mechanism plainly and one sees the business, but has nothing to demand par- 3° ancient wheels going around, ticular consideration. In the next scene, In the third act Caterina visits the Em- that between Caterina and her husband, peror in obedience to his command, and the composer has the largest opportunity we see Napoleon for the first time. But, of the entire book, and it is here that he as has already been noted, the composer most strikingly reveals the weakness of 35 could find no expression for this remark- his invention. able personality save a noise of trumpets This is the scene in which Lefebvre, re- and trombones. It would be futile to turning from the Emperor, tells Caterina attempt a description of the music of that his Majesty is wearied of her manners this act. Here indeed and hence to the and her language and has suggested that 40 finish ' the play 's the thing.' No one her husband divorce her. When she asks has anything to sing except declamation, him what he answered he says: 'What which is frequently shouting rather than would you have' said?' Then the woman speech. pours out her soul in the words with There is one well made passage, to wit, which she would have spurned the royal 45 that in which Caterina reminds Napoleon suggestion and ends with : ' So would of a long past visit to his room and you have said, if you had a bit of heart.' how he neglected her proffered love for the study of a war map. This speech, splendid emotion ' che in quel tempo io pensavo,' might One can imagine a Verdi voicing in 50 have given us something movingly tender poignant phrases a splendid emotion like in its musical expression, but Giordano this, or a Montemezzi letting it flame contrived to miss his opportunity once through a clear medium of pure melody, again through his inability to write firmly Giordano has done fairly well with it, but organized melody. it never rises to a thrill. It commands 55 _ From this point to the end of the opera respectful admiration and that is all. little could be done by such a writer as Lefebvre quietly remarks, ' Well, that 's this and indeed not much even by a mas- what I said to him.' Caterina runs into ter. Yet the observant hearer feels that 356 WRITING OF TODAY a musician with ability to create an Or- turning of the opera such as Mr. Gatti- chestral utterance would have accom- Casazza has customarily given us. panied with music of delineative force the tense action of Neipperg's stolen visit and capture, and of Napoleon's attempt to 5 IV trap his Empress. In the present case one may reasonably doubt that an audience GILBERT AND SULLIVAN will take note of this music or even be insensibly affected by it. H. E. KREHBIEL MISS FARRAR's ACTING' [New York Tribune, May 23, 1915. By permission.] Of the production at the Metropolitan There have been sporadic seasons of little can be said that is not commenda- the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan in tory. Miss Farrar was the chief offender the theatres of New York as long as the against probability and against good taste, 15 operettas have existed; but last week was for her Caterina was too rude, too vul- the first week in thirty years, if we are gar and suddenly too rid of her awkward- not mistaken, in which the same work ness. There was much cleverness in her occupied two stages for days together at acting and much that was astonishingly the same time. Then, as now, it was The pointless. She sang the music well 20 Mikado which was performed, and the enough. If there were anything calling operetta was brand new. It would be a for great delicacy of treatment or for an pleasant reflection, could it be indulged, art of deep resource there might be much that the simultaneous performances at the more to say. But vocally Caterina is Forty-eighth Street and Standard theatres simple. In the combination of song and 25 were an indication of a return of Gilbert action which constitutes an operatic im- and Sullivan's works to the extraordinary personation Miss Farrar made a lively im- vogue which they had a quarter of a cen- pression on the audience, but just what tury ago, before idiotic buffooneries and the various members of that audience will vulgar jingles had debauched public taste, think about it all when at home and not 30 It may be an extravagant hope that this under the immediate influence of the might be so, but there are indications of a young soprano's magnetic personality may return to better standards than those be another matter. However, Miss Far- which gradually took possession of the rar usually makes progress in her roles, Broadway playhouses after the last of the and may in this one. 35 Gilbert and Sullivan works had been Mr. Amato achieved a genuine success brought forward, and a cataclysm may be with his Napoleon. His makeup was impending which will submerge the now- good, his rapid walk and energetic action dominant frivolity and bring back a love well fitted into the moods of his scenes for comedy which shall be bright and and his delivery of the lines was intelli- 40 clean and music which shall be worthy gent. He presented a well composed of the name. Such appreciation as The character of a type different from any- Lilac Domino received might be looked thing he has given us before, clearly and upon as a preliminary step toward this firmly drawn and full of interesting per- desirable consummation, for that clever sonality. _ 45 work at least gave no offense to lovers of Mr. Martinelli sang the music of Le- good music and showed how much more f ebvre well and made a manly figure of refinement and skill the best foreign com- him. Mr. de Segurola showed his cus- posers have than the best of those who tomary histrionic skill in the compara- live in this country. Now, in his day Sir tively small role of Fouque. Mr. Bada 50 Arthur Sullivan was a much more thor- commanded the warmest possible praise oughly schooled musician than any of the for his admirable character sketch of the men of France and Germany whose works dancing master and Mr. Tegani must be he supplanted in the popular taste of Eng- mentioned for his neat singing of the mu- land and America, and, no doubt, fre- sic of Gelsonimo. Mr. Althouse was very 55 quently regretted that fate had turned his vigorous as Neipperg, but praise can fol- muse into the comic path. His friends low him no further. The scenery was of knew that he cast many a regretful look course all new and excellent, and the cos- upon the scores of The Prodigal Son, The I . MUSICAL CRITICISM 357 Golden Legend and Ivanhoe when in the tian to the Italian manner born), Strauss full flush of his victories on the operetta and Millocker were (we can only say ' are ' stage; but the most discerning critics of a few of them), it cannot be said for among them must have known that in the them that they were at all unique in their ■ serious vein which he would have pre- 5 genre. They were but developments of ferred to follow he had added nothing to the French type tricked out with German music with all his fine talent (or genius, dance rhythms. Not so the creations of if one would have it so), whereas, in the Gilbert and Sullivan. They are racy, of light dramatic style into which he was the English soil, drawn by his partnership with Gilbert he 10 did a distinct and even great service to S0ME observations on the new yoek his generation, his art, his people and all performances peoples who use the English tongue. The Every revival of one of the operettas of props which Mr. Gilbert placed under the the fortunately mated collaborators recalls structure of his reputation were more nu- 15 interesting memories to the minds of vet- merous and more varied, but he, too, was eran playgoers. It is not likely that any at his best in the refined whimsicality and one who was at the first performance of polite satire of his operetta books. Their any operetta in the list will ever have the destruction would be a severe loss to the recollection of the incident forced from literature of the stage, while the wiping 20 his mind. It was the happy lot of the out of all his other dramatic writings writer to attend the first American pro- might be contemplated with equanimity, duction of all the operettas since Iolanthe It will be interesting for a long time to in his capacity of music reviewer for The come to read the social history of the Tribune. Every one of the incidents closing decades of the nineteenth century 25 stands out so prominently in his memory in Gilbert's skits, which, in spite of their that he can recall the place without diffi- farcical character, served the true and culty, some of the people of the company best purposes of comedy in their smiling and in some cases the name of the com- chastisement of popular follies. panion who enjoyed the pleasure with Looked at from one point of view it 30 him ; yet the first premiere took place nearly may safely be said that through their thirty years ago and the last more than ministrations Gilbert and Sullivan placed twenty-one. He saw Iolanthe in rehear- their native England far in advance of sal, but the trefoil of P's — Pinafore, all the nations of the world. Theirs was Pirates and Patience — antedate his New peculiarly the age of operetta. During 35 York experiences, as, of course, do The the last forty years no form of theatrical Trial by Jury and The Sorcerer. It was entertainment has compared in popularity significant that when the time came for with musical comedy in England, Ger- the successor of Iolanthe to appear there many, France, and America. Yet it was was less advance speculation touching the only in England and America that, 40 name and character of the next operetta through their efforts, popular taste was than there had been indulged thitherto, turned and developed in a direction which Already in that early day there was a feel- deserved commendation by the standards ing, not entirely unmixed with fear, that at once of good art and good morals. In the two arch funmakers had reached the France the descent from the opera 45 climax of their powers and that though comique of Auber, Boieldieu and Adam to they might continue to turn out an oper- the opera bouife of Offenbach was great; etta every year or two it would be vain but it was atoned for, measurably, by the to expect the freshness of wit and afflu- gracefulness and piquancy of Offenbach's ence of melody which characterized the melodic talent, and also, to some extent, 50 three works whose names began with a P. by the satirical scourge which his libret- Iolanthe betrayed a decline in both text tists applied to the manners of the Second and music by exposing to the crowd a 'Empire. In Germany French opera good many of the formulas which the bouffe crowded out the Singspiel of men clever Englishmen employed. Though not like Lortzing, whose talent was most in- 55 a failure in the common sense, it fell short gratiating, without putting works of char- of the success of its predecessors. It acteristic originality in its place. Clever seemed as if Mr. Gilbert had been unfor- as the best operettas of Suppe (a Dalma- tunate with his plot; that the object of his 358 WRITING OF TODAY satire was not obvious enough and he work out at the Fifth Avenue Theatre spoiled its effect by mixing together under Mr. Stetson's management. Sul- fairies and noblemen in a manner that livan, who had been in the United States was too far-fetched even for Gilbertian some six years before with his collabo- extravaganza. Princess Ida, which had 5 rator for the purpose of protecting the its first performance at the Savoy on financial interests of the firm, came again January 5, 1884, reached New York five with the same purpose in view. While weeks later, its first performance taking the new company was preparing and the place at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, then managers waiting for the dog days to pass under the management of John Stetson, 10 Mr. Duff determined to make a trial on February 11. The basis of its book whether or not an operetta of which the was a comedy, or rather, a burlesque, libretto and vocal score had been pub- called The Princess, which Gilbert had lished and put on sale was protected brought out fourteen years before at the against public performance. He enlisted Royal Olympic Theatre, in London, with 15 a very capable company and hurriedly be- incidental music borrowed from La Peri- gan preparations, with a view to a simul- chole and other operas bouffes and comic taneous production with that of Mr. Stet- operas, even Rossini's Barber being put son. Both announced August 19 as the under tribute. Mr. Gilbert called his bur- date, but at the eleventh hour Mr. Duff lesque ' a respectful parody on Mr. Tenny- 20 found that he had to postpone his opening son's exquisite poem ' when he printed it for a week. While these managers were in a volume of his plays in 1875, and his fighting for precedence, however, Harry operetta he called ' a respectful perver- Miner ran away with the prize, such as it sion of Tennyson's ' Princess.' The peo- was. At the Union Square Theatre he pie concerned in the first American per- 25 pitchforked a ridiculous perversion upon formances were C. Brocolini (King his stage some ten days before Mr. Stet- Hildebrand) , Wallace McCreery (Hil- son's date, using, as Mr. Duff proposed to arion), W. S. Rising (Cyril), Charles J. use, orchestral parts made by some hack Lang (Florian), J. H. Ryley (King musician from the pianoforte accompani- Gama), Ainsley Scott (Arac), James 30 ment in the vocal score. The device was Early (Guron), E. J, Cloney (Scynthius) , not new, nor was it confined to the man- Cora Tanner (Princess Ida), Florence agers of operetta companies. Operas of Bemister (Lady Psyche), Genevieve Rey- the highest type, like Carmen, had been nolds (Lady Blanche), Hattie Dolaro thus shabbily treated before, and works of (Melissa), Eva Barrington (Sacharissa) , 35 Mascagni and Puccini have had to suffer Eily Coghlan (Chloe) and Clara Prim- the same indignity since. The Union rose (Ada). The company had been Square perversion, in which Roland Reed brought together for the production by and Alice Harrison took part, killed itself Edward E. Rice. In his notice of the without hurting the opera which was soon first performance, which was followed by 40 running at both of the other rival houses, an extended review a few days later, the The Fifth Avenue Theatre premiere took Tribune's critic said that the verdict, so place on August 19, 1885, the Standard far as it could be read in the applause of Theatre's on August 24. All the singers the audience, was in favor of the work, in Mr. D'Oyly Carte's company were Eng- for about ten of the musical numbers were 45 Hsh except Miss Geraldine Ulmar, the demanded a second time and one a third, parts being distributed as follows: The The Mikado brought a sword into the Mikado, F. Frederici; Nanki-Poo, Cour- camp of the New York theatrical man- tice Pounds; Ko-Ko, G. Thome; Pooh- agers, among whom rivalry for the priv- Bah, Fred Billington ; Pish-Tush, G. ilege of performing the Gilbert and Sulli- 5o Bryan Browne; Yum-Yum, Geraldine Ul- van operetta had grown keen. The new mar; Pitti-Sing, Kate Forster; Peep-Bo, work had its first performance on March Geraldine St. Maur; Katisha, Elsie Cam- 14, 1885, in London. Among the Amer- eron. The best people in Mr. Duff's com- ican managers who wanted it, and went to pany were Mrs. Zelda Seguin, who had London to negotiate for it, was J. C. Duff, 55 been an admired contralto in English of the Standard Theatre. Mr. D'Oyly opera for years (Katisha), Harry Hilliard Carte, however, had planned to organize (Nanki-Poo), J. H. Ryley (Ko-Ko), A. E. an English company and bring the new Stoddard (Pish-Tush), and W. H. Hamil- I. MUSICAL CRITICISM 359 ton (The Mikado), Miss Vernona Jarbeau and such pieces as the madrigal, gavotte was a crude and rude Yum-Yum. The and country dance will be reckoned among Tribune's reviewer remarked of the his happiest inspirations; but Mr. Gilbert Standard Theatre performance that the had failed, largely because he had not operetta was still in process of baking, as 5 presented a subject for satire which had well as making (the opening night being contemporaneous vitality and validity, intolerably hot), and this was half true He was wasting his ingenuity in poking also of the Fifth Avenue performance, fun at old-fashioned stage melodrama, and which had been unduly hurried. Mean- possibly at features of old English baro- while Mr. Carte had brought an action in 10 nial life, in which we had only a literary equity in the United States Circuit Court or romantic interest. And so the opera to restrain Mr. Duff, and his performance lived out its first season and soon disap- on August 24th was allowed by the court, peared in the limbo of things forgotten. Mr. Duff having given an indemnity bond The audience that greeted the first per- in the sum of $1500. On September 17th 15 formance was an exceedingly well dis- Judge Wallace decided against the appli- posed one. It crowded the playhouse in cation for an injunction, holding that the every part, of course, and as Miss Ulmar, publication of the libretto and vocal score Miss Forster, Mr. Pounds, Mr. Thorne, was a dedication of the entire composi- Mr. Billington and Mr. Frederici (all of tion to the public, the only right reserved 20 whom had won the hearts of New Yorkers by the authors being that of multiplying in The Mikado) appeared in turn they and selling copies of the orchestral parts were made to feel that they had been kept which were still in manuscript. One in warm and kindly memories during the month after the first performance the intervening year. Few repetitions were composer conducted a performance of the 25 demanded, however, and though the finale operetta at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, and of the first act was given twice, a deal of on a curtain call made a short spe,ech, in the applausive call sounded perfunctory, which he expressed the hope that the day As we look back upon the works of the would come 'when the legislators of this happily mated collaborators and their re- magnificent country may see fit to afford 30 ception by press and public we see a the same protection to a man who employs gradual ascent from The Sorcerer to The his brains in literature and art that they Mikado, with interruptions which were do to one who invents a new beer-tap or not grievously disappointing in lolanthe who accidentally gives an extra turn to and Princess Ida. From The Mikado to a screw, doing away with the necessity of 35 Utopia, Limited, there is a descent, with boring a hole first.' a breathing spell at The Yeomen of the The Mikado raised its authors to the Guard. To understand the popular atti- topmost crest of popularity. When their tude toward the works it must be remem- next operetta, Ruddigore, was brought bered that the standard of comparison was forward for its first American perform- 4° that created by the authors themselves, ance at the Fifth Avenue Theatre, on No person of good literary, dramatic and February 21, 1887 (it had had its Lon- musical taste thought of comparing any don premiere on January 22), the Trib- of the operettas with the works of their une's reviewer observed that the audience French and German competitors. Of the had been better advised of what to ex- 45 latter only Johann Strauss could have en- pect than any assembly ever before dured such a comparison. Public taste gathered together for such a purpose in had been educated to a point which it has America. ' Neither Wagner's Parsifal, never reached since ; instead, it has de- nor Verdi's Otello, nor Sardou's Theo- generated steadily, until it is now willing dora caused in anticipation one tithe of 50 to accept the buffooneries and musical the excitement created by Ruddigore,' was dishwater of present day ' musical com- the added comment. The greater, there- edy ' — heaven save the mark ! Things fore, was the disappointment. Sir Arthur were different even when the post-Afi- had striven with more than his customary kado operettas were received with disap- zeal and conscientiousness on the score, 55 pointment. The records were always and, without cutting loose from any of made by the serious critics regretfully, his old formulas, had brought in new in- In the presence of Mr. Gilbert's efferves- terest with the flavor of old English airs; cent intellectuality they could always for- 360 WRITING OF TODAY give his cynicism, and in the hearing of us ! How serious we were in those days ! Sir Arthur's music retain their respect Who would think of cogitating such sol- for him and their appreciation of the emnities over the invertebrate vulgarities art, even while wishing that he had a called comic operas and musical comedies more fecund fancy and a more varied 5 now? But The Yeomen of the Guard style. had its prescribed run, and now that it So the Tribune reviewer is found always has been revived by Mr. Hopper and seeking out the good in each successive his helpers we find a mental refreshment work and holding up the excellencies which and an esthetic delight in its text and had been overlooked by the public. In his 10 music, and count as naught against it criticism of The Yeomen of the Guard all the other doings in musical theatre- which had its first performance here at dom. the Casino on October 17, 1888 (London Before the next operetta of Gilbert and a fortnight earlier), he said: 'The good Sullivan reached New York an effort was qualities of both [authors] are present in 15 made by Rudolph Aronson to revive an a measure in the new operetta, but are interest in Offenbach's Les Brigands and scarcely obvious enough to meet the de- La Fille du Tambour Major in English mands which they have taught us to make adaptations — the first an old one by Gil- of each new work from their pens ; and so bert. At the other theatres short experi- it must regretfully be recorded that Pin- 20 ments were made with other European afore, Patience and The Mikado have not works (Czibulka's May Queen, originally a worthy successor in The Yeomen of the Der Glucksritter, at Palmer's; Von Guard. Least of all can the new work Suppe's Clover, otherwise Die lagd nach be consorted with Princess Ida, for its dem Gliick, also at Palmer's, and Lecocq's greatest weakness is found right where 25 La jolie Persane, effectually disguised as the greatest charm of the "respectful per- The Oolah, at the Broadway). A disas- version " of Tennyson's poem lay — trous experiment was made with a vulgar namely, in the book. In its literary qual- and amorphous thing called Dovetta, for ity Princess Ida was distinctly above any which the music had been written by a of its congeners, and its failure was best 30 New York woman, at the Standard Thea- explained on the ground of a want of ap- tre, but it broke down in the second week, preciation on the part of a public that had So also The Drum Major had to give way come to look for broad farce where it to a revival of Erminie at the Casino, should have gone for refined comicality. ' Can Gilbert and Sullivan find no more Princess Ida seemed to point in the direc- 35 themes ? ' wailed the Tribune. ' Does the tion in which Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan fault of their barrenness lie with them, might have developed the unique style of or has the taste of the public degenerated operetta which is their invention. With so that horse-play is wanted in place of all its paradox and logic gone mad, with humor, farce instead of fancy, and gaudy all its burlesque of oldtime chivalry and 40 mummery instead of music? ... In the the severity of its satire on so-called hands of these masters of satirical para- " woman's rights," there was in it a deli- dox we may safely leave all the ele- cacy of treatment, an affectionate touch, ments of our social, political and artistic so far as the central character was con- life. They know a satirist's privilege and cerned, that brought the whole play pretty 45 will not abuse it.' near the standard of true comedy.' The Finally the longed-for new operetta reviewer then pointed out that the satire came, on January 7, 1890, at the New of the new comedy seemed to be directed Park Theatre, under the management against love, and therefore could not meet of A. M. Palmer. It was The Gon- with sympathy, or Shakespeare's fool, ' a 50 doliers, which had been produced in manifestly absurd proceeding; for to the London just a month before. It had been world of today the stage fool can only be eagerly waited for, yet it was the first of a vehicle, not an object of satire. He the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas which lacks contemporaneous human interest, made an unqualified fiasco, chiefly because Besides, there is no satire in the treat- 55 of the poor performance at the hands of ment of the fool who seems to have been the English company which D'Oyly Carte introduced to play exactly the same part sent over with it. The incapacity of the that he does in Shakespeare.' Mercy on actors was so obvious that a re-organiza- I. MUSICAL CRITICISM 361 tion of the company was undertaken at .. once. Mr. Billington and Mr. Temple, v identified with earlier productions of Mr. tj/^ctoivt cva/tutj^vt-i;- D'Oyly Carte, were brought from London BOSTON SYMPHONY to replace two of the inefficients, and the 5 REHEARSAL operetta was removed to Palmer's Thea- tre. How long it held the boards there PHILIP HALE we do not recall, but there was a story rn„,.,„ v ,j rw 1, n ,, , T , ~. . ' . , , . , , ,, J [Boston Herald, October 17, 1914.] that John Stetson, who had backed the American season of the operetta, ex- 10 The first Public Rehearsal of the Bos- pressed his opinion of it in a characteristic ton Symphony Orchestra, thirty-fourth speech, ending with : ' " Gondoliers " — season, Dr. Karl Muck, conductor, took huh ! " Gone Dollars/' I caM it.' An place yesterday afternoon in Symphony amiable incident of its career was a per- Hall, which was completely filled. The formance at a special matinee given by 15 program was as follows : Francis Wilson and his company, playing at the time in Philadelphia. Mr. Palmer Symphony No. 3 Eroica'. .... ..Beethoven :~„;iaA tu*,™ +.-. ~;»r<> „ „=,f^,™o„^«> n ^ u;<> Variations on a theme of Haydn. .. .Brahms nvited them to give a performance at his To . Don Juan f , _ R Strauss theatre, which they did, as Mr. Wilson 0vert ^ re t0 ' B^the ■ We ber said in a curtain speech, to show the peo- 20 pie of New York what Americans could The reception of Dr. Muck was ex- do with the opera. traordinary. As soon as he appeared on The Gondoliers was still enjoying popu- the stage many in the audience arose and larity in England when Gilbert and Sul- remained standing during the minutes of livan fell out because of a quarrel between 25 enthusiastic applause. More than once Mr. D'Oyly Carte and one of them touch- Dr. Muck, ready to begin the symphony, ing the management of the Savoy Thea- was obliged to turn and bow in recogni- tre. For nearly three years the partner- tion. We do not remember in the course ship between the men, financially profit- of twenty-five years a welcome like that able to them, artistically profitable to all 30 of yesterday to any returning conductor English speaking peoples, remained sun- of this orchestra. The tribute was spon- dered. Meanwhile both turned to other taneous and magnificent. It was a tribute collaborators. With Alfred Cellier Gil- to the man as well as to the conductor, bert wrote The Mountebanks, and Sulli- It has been said that Dr. Muck was van collaborated with Mr. Grundy in writ- 35 anxious to serve his native land by en- ing Haddon Hall. New York heard The listing in her army. The wish was nat- Mountebanks at the Garden Theatre for ural; but here in Boston he can serve the first time on January 10, 1893, but her more effectively by representing an Haddon Hall had no production in the art that has long been cultivated in Ger- metropolis. 40 many, an art that Germany has fostered, There was general rejoicing when the a peaceful art that has made Germany men, whose experiences with other part- famous throughout the world. Nor could ners had plainly demonstrated how nee- the interpretative branch of this art find essary each was to the other, were a more brilliant, a more intellectual, rep- reconciled and created Utopia, Limited. 45 resentative than Dr. Muck. Over four months elapsed after the Lon- And as in Germany for years, the com- don production before the operetta had its posers and virtuosos of Italy, France and first American performance at the Broad- Russia have been welcome, so at these way Theatre, on March 26, 1894. It pro- concerts there will be no display of chau- vided the most grievous disappointment 50 vinism. The greatest art knows no nar- ever given by a creation of the men. The row boundaries ; it is universal, not na- book was labored and the score the weak- tional. It matters not that Beethoven's est of any written by the composer. It family came from a little village near was the last of the Gilbert and Sullivan Louvain; that, born in Germany, he be- productions ; dramatist and musician both 55 came an Austrian by adoption. It matters seemed to realize that they had exhausted not whether Haydn were a Croatian or an the vein which had yielded a glorious Austrian; that Berlioz was a Frenchman treasure. and Rimsky-Korsakoff a Russian. If the 362 WRITING OF TODAY program of yesterday bore the names of intoxicating; the allurement is not sensu- four composers whose works have honored ous. However admirable the technic dis- Germany, the program next week intro- played in the composition of this work, duces works by a Frenchman, an Amer- however interesting the variations may be ican, and a Finn. 5 to the student of Brahm's architectural The choice of Beethoven's Eroica talent, the music, with the exception noted symphony to open the season was a for- and with the exception of the choral as tunate one. There is no doubt that the stated at the beginning, makes little ap- composer wrote this symphony in honor of peal to the average hearer. St. Anthony, Napoleon, and erased the conqueror's 10 if the painters are to be believed, was name on the title page when he heard that more fortunate. his idol had become Emperor to trample The reading of Strauss's Don Juan on the rights of man, to serve his own — would that his latest symphonic poems ambition. For this symphony heajrd at a could be ranked with the earlier one ! — time like the present the lines of Walt 15 was brilliantly fiery and passionate. The Whitman might well serve as a motto : long episode portraying the love scene be- „,. , . . , tween Don Juan and the Anna of Lenau's With music strong I come — with my cornets p0 em — or is the heroine, Princess Isa- and my drums b n ? f tfa comment ators and glos- 1 play not marches for accepted victors only . : ,.~ , . ,. . & -I play great marches for conquer >d «» sansts differ here in a distressing manner and slain persons. — tnis episode, with the oboe solo played exquisitely by Mr. Longy, was wondrously Have you heard that it was good to gain the beautiful in its sensuousness. day ? It is not necessary, however, to speak in I also say it is good to fall — battles are lost 25 detail of the performance of the orchestra in the same spirit in which they are won. as a wno le. There are new comers. One T ,.j . . ,. , . or two of them take the place of men now I beat and pound for the dead: , . .. .... r T . • I blow through my embouchures my loudest engaged in active military service. It is and gayest for them. enough to say that the orchestral perform- 30 ance was uncommonly spirited, elastic and. Vivas to those who have failed! emotional for the first one of a season. And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea! And to those themselves who sank in the -yj sea ! . v - 1 And to all generals that lost engagements! .„„,. „.„„„ „ „„„,,., „,.,.,, and all overcome heroes! MISS HINKLE WITH THE And the numberless unknown heroes, equal BOSTON SYMPHONY to the greatest heroes known. A ,. .. . , • • , , PHILIP HALE After the strangely impressive and elo- 40 quent performance, there was long-con- [Boston Herald, December 19, 1914.] tinued applause. Dr. Muck was recalled many times and Major Higginson, leaving The eighth Public Rehearsal of the Bos- his seat, shook hands with him in the ton Symphony Orchestra, Dr. Karl Muck sight of the people. 45 conductor, took place yesterday afternoon Mr. Max Kalbeck, who has written the in Symphony Hall. Miss Florence Hinkle, life of Johannes Brahms in seven octavo soprano, was the soloist. The program volumes, attempts to find in each one of was as follows: the variations on the St. Anthony Choral, . „ . _. ,„ something illustrative of the Saint's tem P - * a*"* g^^;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;.^" tations in the Egyptian desert. He thus „ . f , gives another instance of the attempted ^Sen^fhf P^t, The Chang- extraction of sunbeams from cucumbers. ing chord> p er ip te i a) i he obbligato If Mr. Kalbeck s theory that each vana- Recitative Schoenberg tion portrays or hints at a temptation is 55 First time 'in Boston" true, the bored Saint had little difficulty in . Ave Maria' from 'The Cross of Fire' resisting. Only one, the charming Grazi- Bruch oso, is alluring; the charm is soothing, not Symphony in G (The Surprise) Haydn I. MUSICAL CRITICISM 363 Bill Nye said, many years ago, that the in Thule; human souls may find them- music of Wagner was better than it selves in closer and closer harmony with sounded. Arnold Schoenberg says today external things wearing a sombreness dis- that his own music is better than it tasteful to our race when it was young, sounds. 5 . . . The time seems near, if it has not The pieces played yesterday are extraor- actually arrived, ' when the mournful sub- dinary. It is easy to say that the com- limity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain, poser is a maniac or a poseur. Neither will be all of nature that is absolutely con- statement would be accurate. Those who sonant with the moods of the more think- have read his treatise on harmony know 10 ing among mankind. And ultimately, to that he is a man of unusual knowledge, the commonest tourist spots like Iceland force, originality. Those who heard his may become what the vineyards and myr- quartette last season know that he can tie gardens of South Europe are to him write music of uncommon beauty and now, and Heidelberg and Baden be passed towering imagination in a more familiar 15 unheeded as he hastens from the Alps to form. the sand dunes of Scheveningen.' It would also be easy to say that when When Schoenberg's Five Pieces were Strauss's Til Eulens'piegel was first per- performed for the first time in London, formed in Boston, the majority in the au- and in Chicago, there were scenes of out- dience thought the music chaotic, incom- 20 spoken disapproval. Yesterday the be- prehensible and the composer mad. To- havior of the audience was highly credit- day, in comparison with Schoenberg's able to Boston. There was smiling; pieces, this symphonic poem is as clear there was giggling at times ; there was ap- as music by Haydn. Remember, too, that plause. Nobody rose to remonstrate, when Debussy's Nocturnes were played 25 Nothing was thrown at Dr. Muck and the twice in succession at Chickering Hall orchestra. There was no perturbation of they were thought to be incomprehen- Nature to show that Schoenberg's pieces sible. were playing: the sun did not hasten its These instances will not answer the ob- descent; there was no earthquake shock, jectors to Schoenberg. What is to be 30 It was as it should have been in Boston, said of his five pieces? Personal impres- Miss Florence Hinkle has a beautiful sions are interesting chiefly to the per- voice which she uses with rare skill, son impressed. No two persons hear mu- The Canzona of Cherubino, sensuous in sic in the same way. I could make little its suppressed passion, should be sung by out of the first and the fifth pieces. There 35 a darker voice to gain full effect. It are fine moments in The Past and The served yesterday to display the art of Miss Changing Chord; beautiful suggestions Hinkle in sustained and flawless song, of moods; strangely beautiful effects of The lyrical measures of Bruck's Ave color. Nor is the fourth piece wholly Maria, conventionally suave, were sung inexplicable. To argue for or against this 40 with unexaggerated emotion, and the music, which might be of another planet, singer gave dramatic importance to the after even several hearings, would be pre- agitated passages that in themselves are sumptuous and foolish. It took many of a perfunctory and meaningless nature. Bostonians, well acquainted with orches- It has been said by some that Miss Hinkle tral and chamber compositions, a long 45 is a cool, impassive singer. They prob- time to familiarize themselves with the ably mean by this that she is not spas- idiom of Cesar Franck, and later with modic and hysterical. Seldom at Sym- that of Debussy. These composers, how- phony concerts of late years has there ever, are not so fundamentally radical, an- been such a delightful display of pure archistic, as Schoenberg. 50 vocal art as that of yesterday. Thomas Hardy in that noble prose epic, Dr. Muck gave an eloquent reading of the description of Egdon Heath, asks if the Faust overture in which there are the exclusive reign of orthodox beauty is hints at the Wagner to come. The sym- not approaching its last quarter. ' The phony of Haydn, admirably performed, is new vale of Tempe may be a gaunt waste 55 not among his most interesting. J. ART CRITICISM Good art criticism is as difficult and as rare as adequate musical criticism. The ground covered by this form of writing is so extensive and the processes involved are, from the lay- man's point of view, so technical that it is unusual to find in any but the specially trained writer that thorough acquaintance with the materials and the methods of art without which esthetic criticism remains but the perfunctory notice of an outsider. Though painting and sculpture are the main objects of art collections, each year brings to public attention exhibits of etchings, pastels, pencil sketches, miniatures, textiles, tapestries, jewelry, metal work, ceramics, furniture, and architectural drawings, including landscape gardening and city planning. To master the history and technical vocabulary of any one of these is no light task. The student should therefore make the most of every opportunity not merely to familiarize himself with the aims and possibilities of these various branches of art, but also actually to see how their products are planned and executed in studio and workshop before they reach the art gallery or the exhibition room. If he is so fortunate as himself to have some skill, however slight, in one of these arts, his understanding and appreciation of all will be the clearer and more intimate. When he comes to write, however, he should remember his reader, and, especially as a beginner, shun that too prevalent artistic pose which delights in parading a newly acquired vocabulary. There is nothing esoteric or obscure about great art, and good art criticism ought to cast light and not shadow upon the object which it asks the reader to contemplate. In the selections which follow will be found good examples of art criticism dealing with a school or a movement ('The P. R. B.' and 'Fallacies of the Futurist and New Think- ing ' ) ; of the extended notice of an exhibition ( ' The Hudson-Fulton Exhibition,' ' The Pittsburgh Exhibition,' and ' An American Salon of Humorists ') ; of the short topical or occasional paragraph or note ('War in Art' and 'The American Art Collector') ; and of the critical article dealing with the application of art to some wide phase of life such as the theatre or the home ('Leon Bakst's Designs' and 'The Garden as a Means of Expression'). The reader should bear in mind that the nature of the subjects with which art criticism deals and the necessary limitations of language require, in a great many cases, that the text of an article be supplemented by illustrations. These have of necessity been omitted in the reprint of articles III, IV, V, and VII, and, in fairness to the authors, attention is here called to this omission. \ I lais. He is, at any rate, able to tell the story of the beginning and early strug- THE P. R. B. 1 gles of the most important movement in ,_ . ^ , jn r •, c- tk . * modern English painting more fully than [Times (London, England), Literary Supplement, . , °. r ,, , °. TT 1 . December 8, 1905. By permission.] 5 it has ever been told before. He is also _.,.,,, , , ,, . . able to give us a very clear and precise This book has a threefold interest— account of the i nte ntions of that move- historical, artistic, and human. Mr. Hoi- ment and of the state of th - which it man Hunt, as every one knows, was one proposed to re f rm. Besides this he has of the original members of the Pre- „ re i ated) with some natura i bitterness, but Raphaehte Brotherhood. Indeed he is at with constant humor and vivacity; the tale some pains to prove that he was the chief of his own fight with oyert and with a originator of the ideas and principles pro f essional hostility so bitter that one which that brotherhood was formed to ad- can scarcely beHeve it was d i s i nter ested. vance, and that it was his influence which l5 The brunt of this hostilit was borne b made Pre-Raphaehtes of Rossetti and Mil- Mi]lais as wdl as by Mr Holman Hunt . 1 Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raphaelite Brother- and to j udge f rom Mr Hunt's account of hood. By W. Holman Hunt, O.M., D.l.L. Iwo ? 1 , , • , -»,-.,, . volumes. (Macmillan.) a conversation he had with Millais years 364 J. ART CRITICISM 365 afterwards, Millais was still sore at the emotions and ideas. This insistence upon thought of it, not only with those who had the necessity of noble emotions and ideas abused him so recklessly, but also with was the second great article of their creed, certain members of the brotherhood whose They saw that realism means nothing weaknesses hindered the advancement of 5 and leads nowhere ; that it is only the their cause. Many books have been writ- blind energy of scepticism. Science in- ten in which Rossetti has been made to ap- vestigates life with the purpose of dis- pear the chief of the Pre-Raphaelites. covering some truth valuable to man ; and Millais seems to have resented this mis- art, they held, must study life with the representation as much as Mr. Hunt him- 10 purpose of expressing some truth valu- self. ' You have written a very readable able to man, and of expressing it in a and plausible book about Rossetti,' he said manner suited to the understanding of to the author of one of these works, ' but contemporaries : it is altogether a romance. Why instead The course of ious tions of art _ of getting your information from the fam- 15 ists which led t / excellence [says Mr. Hol- lly, did n t you come to me or go to Hoi- man Hunt in the same conversation] cannot man Hunt?' It ought to be perfectly be too studiously followed, but their treat- clear to every one that most of Rossetti's ment of subjects, perfect as they were for pictures have little in common with the their time, should not be repeated. . . . The great mass of the pictures that are usually *> language they used was then a living one, called Pre-Raphaelite. Rossetti's art is "™ Jt » , dead - : .• ■ For , us f.'* 9 '^ , . ., r £ t , u - . ■ „. • treatment for subjects of sacred or historic weak in its grasp of facts. His object in im is mere fetation If t were to painting was nearly always to expresshis put a flag with a cross on it in Christ's hand, emotions, and he was apt to be impatient th e art-galvanizing revivalists might be of the only means by which in a picture « pleased, but unaffected people would regard emotions can be expressed. Sometimes he the work as having no living interest for was able to simplify his pictures to such them. I have been trying for some treatment an extent that he was not hindered by de- that might make them see this Christ with tail* \n the evnrpqsinn nf his emntions and something of the surprise that the Maries tails in the expression 01 his emotions and themselves felt on mee ting Him as One who . then he produced beautiful works of art. 3» h ^ cQme out of the g _ But too often the faults of his pictures are the very emptiness and evasion which We can see in the last sentence the be- the Pre-Raphaelites held to be the prevail- ginning of those ideas which afterwards ing vices in the art which they set out to led Mr. Holman Hunt to fill his sacred reform. Their first object was a closer 35 pictures with local color laboriously stud- study of nature, based upon the belief, ied in Palestine. The fallacy of such which has inspired so much of the best ideas is easy to expose. Local color is no modern art, that all life has a significance part of the essence of the story of Christ and a nobility of its own, and that art can to our imaginations ; and no amount of advance only as the artist's sense of that 40 local color will make it real to us. Every significance is enlarged by a larger study one from childhood thinks of the great of life. This, of course, is the very op- events of the Bible as having taken place posite of the academic doctrine that only in his own country and of the actors in certain portions and aspects of life are them as his own countrymen. For us worthy of artistic treatment, and that the 45 Christ plucked ears of corn in an English experience of the masters has determined cornfield and His tomb was in an English once and for all what those portions and garden. When, therefore, He is repre- aspects are. sented to us in strange surroundings, It is pretty clear from Mr. Holman painted with painful accuracy, our atten- Hunt's account of Pre-Raphaelite ideas 50 tion is distracted from Him to those sur- that the Pre-Raphaelites discovered roundings, and the picture becomes merely their own principle of selection for them- a conscientious study of local color, not selves ; and they believed that a right and only for us, but for the artist himself, living principle of selection could only be For he, too, is working against the grain discovered by artists inspired by noble 55 of his own imagination. It is only by a emotions and ideas, and determined to conscious effort, and by taking a journey flinch from no difficulties of representa- to Palestine, that he can think of Christ tion in their eagerness to express those as an Oriental, living and moving in a 366 WRITING OF TODAY strange Oriental world; and this effort lais, he tells us, was essentially conserva- hinders the working of his imagination, tive in his nature, and far too good a Pictures such as the ' Finding of Christ painter, in those early days, not to ap- in the Temple ' and ' The Shadow of predate all kinds of excellence. It is Death,' prove that in painting them Mr. 5 pretty clear that the popular artists of Holman Hunt was distracted, by his de- the time were afraid of Millais's great termination to be correct in local color, talent and of the manner in which it from the emotions and ideas which he shamed their own plausible evasions, hoped to express by means of it. Com- There is no other way of accounting for pared with the ' Hireling Shepherd,' which 10 the brutality of the attacks that were is a picture of an English man and woman made upon him. Perhaps the most brutal in an English pasture, these works are of all came from Dickens, who, knowing laborious failures. It is one of the chief nothing of pictures himself, was probably excellencies of the best Pre-Raphaelite incited to make it by some of the popular works that they are racy of the soil be- 15 painters who were friends of his. Speak- yond any other modern English pictures; ing of Millais's beautiful 'Christ in the and none of them are more racy of the soil Carpenter's Shop,' he said: than the ' Hireling Shepherd.' But the ' Finding of Christ in the Temple ' and . In £<= foreground of that carpenter's shop ' The Shadow of Death,' and others like 20 |f . a hideous, wry-necked, blubbering, red- .. , 1 A . „ ., .1 a haired boy in a night-gown, who appears to them, lack this excellence altogether. A have rece j ved a ° ke ? n t h e hand from the painter, however hard he may try, cannot stick of anot her boy with whom he had been make his work racy of a foreign soil, and playing in an adjacent gutter, and to be hold- Mr. Holman Hunt, being one of the most ing it up for the contemplation of a kneeling English of painters, was less fitted to make 25 woman, so horrible in her ugliness that (sup- the attempt than most. ' His object was,' ' posing it were possible for any human crea- he tells us, 'to use his powers to make , ture *° e ,_ XIst , foI \ a moment with that dis- more tangible Jesus Christ's 'history and l° cated f *"»*> she would stand ° nt - T ,. 6 » 1. > 1. 1 < 1. .ti ™e rest of the company as a monster in the teaching Art he remarks, has often vilest cabaret ; n France or the lowest in . illustrated the theme, but it has surrounded 30 s h p j n England, it with many enervating fables and per- verted the heroic drama with feeble in- Mr. Holman Hunt tells us how the term terpretation.' He hoped by going to Pal- Pre-Raphaelite first came into being. He estine and studying the very scene in and Millais discussed Raphael's 'Trans- which that drama was played to purge his 35 figuration ' with other Academy students, mind of all the conventional associations and condemned it ' for its grandiose dis- that had gathered round it. Even Rus- regard of .the simplicity of truth, for the kin " refused to admit that any additional pompous posturing of the Apostles, and vitality could be gained by designing and the unspiritual attitudinizing of the Sav- painting in Syria with its life and man- 40 ior.' It was, they said, a signal step in ners before his eyes.' And the result has the decadence of Italian art. ' When we proved that Ruskin was right. Every one had advanced this opinion to other stu- must respect Mr. Holman Hunt for the dents, they, as a reductio ad absurdum, force of character which made him carry had said, " Then you are Pre-Raphaelite." his principles so far ; but every one must 45 Referring to this as we worked side by regret that he should have wasted so much side, Millais and I laughingly agreed that of his great talents upon what is, after the designation must be accepted.' The all, only a perversion of the. principles Pre-Raphaelites may seem romantic upon which the best Pre-Raphaelite pic- enough to us now, but they were as hos- tures were based. 50 tile to any kind of romanticism which But to return to these principles — the hindered disinterested observation and Pre-Raphaelites were very far from de- good workmanship as to the most pedantic spising all art except that of the Primi- classicism. fives. Indeed, Mr. Holman Hunt speaks ^ u . „„„ r ,, ,. r ,, „ ., .„, . . ' , / »„ 1 he danger of the time [says Mr. Hunt] with surprising reverence of artists fa- 55 arose f rom the vigor of the rising taste for mous in his youth and almost forgotten Gothic art rather than from the classical now. He admired Raphael and most of form of design, whose power was fast wan- the great painters of the past; while Mil- ing. . . . The fashion for feudal forms had J. ART CRITICISM 3^7 grown altogether slavish. ... To follow ture: all the rest is exactly like used-up ancient precedent line for line had become blotting paper — which perhaps it is. I a religion. To reproduce the English round j n f er w hich is supposed to be the right and pointed styles with barbarous embellish- merely by the position of the ffiffi^'^t^^&K 7»^ d *f> whkh says 'Supplement of of modern ambition. th ? New A S e - , A s ^dy by Picasso. In another place there is an explanation It cannot be repeated too emphatically that Picasso is the first important artist that the Pre-Raphaelites sought no short that this planet has produced, and that the cuts to excellence. They had a passion 10 sodden blotting paper opposite represents, for honesty and hard work. They were not indeed a Table, a Wineglass, and a filled, too, with high ideas, and, though Mandoline, but the ' souls ' of a Table, a some of these ideas may have been extrav- Wineglass, and a Mandoline, agantly applied and expressed, they came Now, as the Frenchman said at Mugby nearer to founding an original school of 15 Junction, 'Heavens! how arrives it?' painting than any other set of English How does human dignity descend to these painters in the nineteenth century. Mr. monkey antics? How does the human Holman Hunt was the first of them, and brain sink back into this bestial darkness ? throughout his long life he has never de- Let us see if we can roughly trace the serted their faith. He was, therefore, the 20 origin and operation of the process, man of all others best fitted to tell the There are running about England today story of their prime, and this book of his, some thousands of a certain sort of peo- though we could wish that some passages pie. They are, of course, a small minority in it were less bitter, deserves to be read of the nation; but they are a large mi- with attention and reverence. We hope 25 nority of the middle class ; and if one's that an index will be added to the next life moves down certain ways, the world edition. may well seem to be full of them. They are in revolt against something they have forgotten in favor of something II 30 else which (by their own account) they have not yet found. They are always al- FALLACIES OF THE FUTURISTS luding to Thought of various kinds — Free AND NEW THINKING Thought and Higher Thought and Ad- vanced Thought. As a matter of fact, G. K. CHESTERTON 35 they never, under any circumstances, think at all; but they do lots of other things [New York Mormng American March 14, i9'5- which are much jollier than thinking: they y peimission. listen to music and look at sunsets and The other day, when I opened an ad- go to tea parties, and are kind to children vanced magazine which I always read 40 as far as they know how. with interest, there fell out of it a large, ' Well/ you will say, ' a good and happy shiny piece, of paper on which there was life. Why should they be bothered with ^reproduced a Work, a product of the hu- thinking? What would become of their man will — a thing done on purpose any- gimcrack cottages in the country and their how, if one could scarcely call it a de- 45 corrugated iron ethical societies if they sign. If you ask me what it represented, began to think? They live artistically, as you have formed no conception of the do the lower animals — by a general sense very nature of this fair thing. It is quite of suitability to the senses and the habits, inadequate to say that it represents noth- One esthete knows another esthete by ing. I should not be content with say- 50 the color and the smell — the color of his ing even that it does not suggest anything, coat and the smell of his favorite flower. I affirm, with entire and untroubled cer- One spirit in revolt knows another spirit tainty, that it is nothing : so far as is pos- in revolt, just as one dandy knows another sible when some space is occupied, the dandy — by the necktie, thing is not there. There is something a 55 The ordinary artistic Socialist throws little like a dilapidated railing at the bot- out signals to his own kind, and naturally torn of the picture, and something a little gravitates to his own environment. He like Chinese lettering at the top of the pic- does not in the least know what Socialism 368 WRITING OF TODAY is, and he does not need to : he does know enough even for the modern mind to f ol- that he gets on with the kind of men who low; the distinction is quite obvious. If call themselves Socialists. He knows the there exist plausible reasons for supposing other man's extravagances will be of his that an innovation is an improvement, sort, and not of another sort. He knows 5 then, of course, it is a valid argument to a Socialist can be trusted to call another say that many real improvements have Socialist's wife ' comrade ' without taking been denounced as innovations, her on a gin-crawl. He knows that a So- If I think a man honest, and it is an- cialist can be trusted at tea-time to de- swered that he has been in prison, then stroy the whole morality of mankind with- 10 it is rational for me to reply that St. out using a word that could bring a blush Paul or Cervantes was in prison. But to the cheek of a young person. In short, it is not rational of me to say that all the he knows that there are a sort of people people in prison must be like Cervantes like himself in the world, and certain so- or St. Paul. There must be a prima facie ciological conjectures (about which he 15 case for the new thing; otherwise it is never thinks seriously at all) are among obvious that nothing is being asked of it the outward tests for detecting them.' but newness. Now the number of new In saying all this you speak with your things that are possible is at any given mo- usual noble delicacy and unerring wit. ment by its nature infinite. When we do But there is a further complication, which 20 anything we deny ourselves a thousand I can no longer conceal from you. The other things. When we go to Tunbridge tragedy is this : that these happy, thought- Wells we may be said to be avoiding a less people did once really have a Thought, million other places from China to Peru. This one isolated thought has stuck in Whenever a man puts on his hat he is their heads ever since. Nobody can get 25 refusing to put on an infinite number of it out of their heads; and nobody can get other things, from the flower-pot to the any other thought into their heads. waste-paper basket. If, therefore, you It is a thought which, uncorrected by have no other test of a new idea except other thoughts, is quite foolish and dan- its newness, you will only be able to say: gerous ; but it is a connected string of con- 30 ' Well, I, at my present stage of evolution, cepts, intelligible and even true in itself: do not see the good of wearing a flower- it is the only one they have; and it gives pot for a hat. But I must not offend my them a dickens of a time. The one only great-grandson, who is so very particular, and original connected Thought that ever and for all I know (since he does not ex- penetrated these people's heads runs as 35 ist yet), may absolutely insist on this uni- follows: My grandfather thought wires form for all his ancestors.' were necessary for telegrams : I know now Perhaps you think this is an improb- that he was wrong; therefore, whatever able example and an unlikely way of talk- I think is right my grandson will prob- ing. Perhaps, in some rural seclusion, ably think wrong. 4° you have failed to meet any people who Upon that one mental process the whole talk like that. Turn, then, to the subse- of our ' progress ' is conducted ; and, very quent issue of the advanced paper to naturally, it ends in a smash — or, rather, which I have referred, and you will find a in a splash, by Picasso. That there is gentleman talking exactly like my imag- some truth in the Thought is not to be 45 inary ancestor, with his flower-pot hat. denied. Some things do alter; different An art critic of conspicuous intelligence generations do have different standpoints; sits in front of my absurd piece of blot- truth should be kept reasonably flexible to ting paper, dazed but submissive. He fit fashions which are often genuine hu- does actually say, in so many words, that man moods. But the worshipers of the 50 he can make neither head nor tail of it, Thought think it idolatry to have any but that the Future will. He does, with a other thoughts but that. really beautiful humility, prostrate himself They insist that on every subject all in the dust, t not only before Picasso, but the things we understand must be wrong, before a totally imaginary great-grand- and consequently all the things that no- 55 child, who will profess to see some sense body could conceivably understand (like in Picasso. This condition is plainly in- poor old Picasso) must be right. Their tolerable: we cannot go about thinking fallacy, one would suppose, was simple that all our thoughts are wrong without J. ART CRITICISM 369 having even any notion of what thoughts fers so interesting a study as that of Hol- are right. Shall we try to get that land, for we know of none so little deriva- Thought out of these people's heads? Or tive, so essentially characteristic of the shall we try to get some others in? people who produced it, so eminently di- Either will involve the most horrible men- 5 rect and personal — in fact so entirely tal torture. indigenous and original. Fully to appre- ciate and enjoy it one need not study the craft of immediate predecessors, but should III rather bear in mind the political and so- 10 cial conditions which preceded this flower- THE HUDSON-FULTON ing of an art born of a large leisure pur- EXHIBITION chased by a past of strenuous combat with nature at home and oppression from FRANK FOWLER abroad. These obstacles, this discipline, 15 this long abstinence from the lighter mo- [ScnW ' By% a S' ss SnTf nber ' I9 ° 9 " mf r n .ts of existence, this repression of the spiritual side of humanity seems to have The occasionally recurring festivals and prepared the ground for a rich harvest celebrations which mark the commemora- when the time arrived in which these peo- tion of some historical event or achieve- 20 pie could look about them in security and ment possess, among other advantages, comfort. This land they had saved from that of recalling. facts of interest contem- the sea, these homes they had established poraneous to those thus specifically sig- through privation and hardship became nalized; and the various exhibitions, now objects of delight and pride; and when in progress in connection with the Hud- 25 they sought subjects upon which to lavish son-Fulton ceremonies seem particularly their artistic skill it was these familiar to suggest this beneficent result. The hu- things that appealed to them — the things man mind loves to wander through pro- they loved. ductive periods of the past; and in this Holland had by this time cast off the case while the fancy plays around the 30 Spanish yoke, the Italianate influence of material significance of achievements like traveled painters and of its Flemish neigh- those of the two figures in whose honor bors, and had become its own independent the recent demonstrations have been made, self looking honestly in the face of na- the doors of our art collectors have inci- ture and reporting her with an integrity dentally been thrown open revealing veri- 35 that to the knowing ones is simply admir- table treasures of painting of the best able. These interiors and the life of the period of Dutch art, that of about Hud- home, as may be noted in the work here son's time. of de Hooch, Terborch, Metzu and others, At just this moment in the practice of furnished subject enough — their art painting when subtlety of seeing is so 40 ceased to be that of mere picture-making opening a new world that the painter in and religious imagery which until now his elation at the vision is sometimes neg- outside influence had largely stimulated; lectful of his means, it is singularly while in the splendid school of landscape propitious to be given access to an un- they founded may be discovered the fore- usual collection of what is perhaps the 45 runners of the Rousseaus, Troyons, Dau- soundest method of painting recorded in bignys of a later day in France, the annals of art. As it is of the genius The Dutch also celebrated themselves, of rectitude in any activity that its mel- their personalities — they were so essen- iorative attributes are widespread, the art tially national that guilds, corporations, connoisseur and amateur have peculiar 50 charitable institutions, municipal bodies cause for congratulation that the present and public buildings encouraged portrait occasion happens to commemorate the en- painting, and it may be to this fact that terprise of the Dutch at an epoch par- they owe the noble school of portraiture ticularly rich in the art of painting, of which many fine examples may be stud- Earlier than this the art of Holland had 55 ied here, and which adds such lustre to not the distinct national note that at this their art. moment it reached. The richness of the holdings of Dutch The painting of few nations indeed of- pictures by a few discerning collectors in 370 WRITING OF TODAY this country will be a matter of surprise this stately whole and then with feelings to many visiting these galleries, and they of regret that much must necessarily be will be moved to an expression of appre- ignored. But as we are on the search for ciation to the owners of these treasures some representative examples where so for their public spirit in collecting them 5 many appear to represent adequately, can and permitting them to be shown. The one do better than to hail with pleasure extent of the collection is so unlooked the Vermeer entitled : ' Woman Writing for that it may be well to mention that a Letter ' ! This is one of those canvases of the seven Vermeers owned in the whose perfection is almost elusive, but United States, five are here on view, while 10 which may be appreciatively approached some thirty Rembrandts, and in the neigh- by comparing it with it matters little what borhood of twenty Franz Hals, many modern master of genre. Something of of finest quality, are distributed among the magic of Holland's softened light this profusion of lesser, but still brilliant seems to have filtered through the aper- lights of the time. 15 ture by which this figure with the still- As mere demonstrations of how to paint life objects on the table is illuminated, al- one need look no further than to certain though the window is not seen. This is examples of Hals, for instance; and there a Vermeer that places him near the great are others among these -who might serve Rembrandt himself in its rendering of as exemplars of sane and wholesome tech- 20 graduated light. This light plays from nical methods, although none, save Hals, object to object with the inevitableness of perhaps, so obviously demonstrates the nature, and so perfect is its management actual application of pigment — this, too, that the spectator forgets to analyze the in his case, in conjunction with intelligent source of its undoubted charm. When composition and often good, if not great 25 one seeks to account for this wonderful color. There are others' again who in result it is found perhaps in the perfect perfection of seeing and doing elude defi- adjustment of the figure to its surround- nition and enter into the mysteries of the ings. The theme is trivial enough, which circumambient air. In these particular only goes to prove that art can make any canvases there appears no thought of 3° moment great. The melting into the clever accomplishment, they simply exist background and the material itself of the as the world about us exists bathed in that ermine bordering the yellow sacque the all-enveloping atmosphere which the figure wears, the quiet merging of the Dutch were first to successfully render, hand with the objects it touches are all The consciousness of drawing, technique, 35 demonstrations of a vision as fine, as sub- methods, is lost in the unconsciousness of tie and as true as one can recall in the satisfied vision. Of the producers of whole range of painting. This is not these marvels of painting Rembrandt painting in the sense of Hals, of Van der ranks supreme, but there are painters of Heist, it is an emanation of a sensitive works of smaller size who, from the stand- 40 personality using pigment as a medium, point of perfection rank little lower than If space permitted a fuller discussion — he. ' The Lady with Guitar,' ' The Music Les- To the lover of processes alone, then, son,' ' Girl Playing a Guitar,' ' Young there is material in these galleries for Woman at Casement,' should each and all boundless enjoyment. One may go from 45 be reviewed, for this painter is one of the canvas to canvas with varying emotions, rarest. but unvarying delight. The beautiful ve- ' The Music Party,' by Pieter de Hooch, racity of Vermeer, the competency of Van is less naive in its presentation than the der Heist, unerring vision of Hals, mys- above-mentioned works, more sought-for terious enveloppe of Rembrandt, suavity 50 as a tableau, not so genuinely felt as he is of Dou, Terborch, Metzu and de Hooch, sometimes in his earlier works where the dignity and impressiveness of Ruisdael, less formal occupations of home-life en- versatility of Cuyp, simplified breadth of gaged his brush. He is still interested, Van Goyen, vitality of Jan Steen, and however, in varying cross-light and scrup- homeliness of Van Ostade are some of the 55 ulous in his attention to detail, qualities peculiar to a few among this A larger method of painting and prob- host of masters. ably of seeing is to be noted in the picture One may discuss only a small portion of by Gerard Terborch, ' Lady Pouring Out J. ART CRITICISM 371 Wine.' This group of three persons is central incident. The color, however, is given with a breadth more often found in good, and the painting solid, life-size work than in a canvas of this Of the group of landscapists, Jacob van dimension. All is painted with a free Ruisdael comes out with the strength that touch, the figures in half-tone strongly put 5 is his own. It is not difficult to detect in, the still-life of truthful observation, here the fountain-head of that splendid while the salient figure of the woman in stream of technical influence which in- the foreground is, of a mastery quite de- spired later the Fontainebleau school. lightful. This is not of Terborch's most One picture, entitled ' Landscape,' showing usual subjects, but it reveals the large 10 a foreground pool where float swan and competency and painter-like quality which water-plants and edged with well-observed gave such value to his transcriptions of sedges, at the foot of a knoll where tosses the interiors of the patrician class of Hoi- a wind-driven tree, is of a tonality that land, and his glimpses of the domestic life compels admiration. Other ' Landscapes ' of the Dutch merchants. He displays 15 attest the solemn sentiment and dignity of high accomplishment in the practice of this painter, who, if not brilliant in his painting in this work, which may also be color or facile in his touch, is profound remarked in ' Interior with Soldiers,' and in temper, and a master of drawing and in the portrait of a man and one of a terrestrial construction, woman to be seen here. 20 As already suggested, it was typical of Had Cuyp been less varied in subject, the Dutch at this period that they de- had he pursued, for instance, out-door voted themselves to portrait painting as light exclusively, such as we see in his well as to landscape and genre. If nature 'Landscape with Cattle,' one feels that he outside and indoors appealed strongly to would have gone farther and have exerted «5 them, so did the men who made the state, a more potent influence on his school, the women who ruled the home. Por- His very versatility seems to militate traiture pure and simple probably never against surpassing excellence in any one reached a higher level of accomplishment direction; he is spread over too large a than at this time through the genius of field to strongly impress in any; but in 30 Rembrandt, Franz Hals, Van der Heist, these landscapes with living interests he Ravesteyn, Flinck, Santvoort, and Bol, all is at his best, and this makes one regret of whom sought this human characteriza- that his curiosity did not here penetrate tion with much directness and vitality, deeper, for the unmistakable sensitiveness It will be impossible to speak fully of to surface-light remarked in this picture 35 the masterpieces of this side of their art, as it plays on the hides of the cattle and to be met with in this exhibition, but a touches the various substances of earth number must be signaled as among the and vegetation goes to prove that here finest examples. is a painter who by happy disposition and Perhaps for emphasis of personal iden- lightness of touch seemed destined to viv- 40 tity there never painted a man more mar- ify the art of painting, who had something velously equipped than Franz Hals. Not to say, something to reveal concerning the only is he the most dexterous, but with world of sight that for the time in which celerity and sureness of touch he managed he worked was new and stimulating. to preserve the sentiment of the presence We will now turn to Jan Steen, who is 45 of the subject before him to an extraor- here with, among other things, a 'Dutch dinary degree; while for the address and Kermess ' full of a rollicking vitality and precision with which he treats various ar- tipsy mirth, and of excellent color. He ticks of human attire, the damasked pat- certainly could give movement, and the tern of a silk, for example, obeying the spirit of the scene, as may be observed in 50 laws of perspective in its design and of his ' Dancing Couple,' ' Drunken Family,' construction in its retreating folds, there and ' Grace Before Meat.' has yet to be found so consummate a mas- Adrian van Ostade's ' The Old Fiddler ' ter. Trinkets, ornaments, filmy cuffs, is, from our present-day ideas of such a fluted collars, books of devotion, or what scene, rather conventionally lighted, the 55 not, these are observed and given with a foreground foliage kept somewhat arbi- fidelity of vision and an obedience of hand trarily in half-tone with the evident inten- little short of miraculous. His wizard tion of emphasizing more effectually the touch is no less noted in the constructive 372 WRITING OF TODAY planes of the head, the hands, the super- stance all objects existed for him in an in- ficies of the flesh of his sitters, while he tervening world of light where they lost preserves always a breadth of treatment certain accents of outline that guide lesser which never degenerates into useless de- men to the conservation of the contours tail. He is the king of practitioners in 5 which developed this outline, and to which the virtuosity of his performance, but he they resorted as a necessary convention does not sacrifice the personality of his for the interpretation of form. Rem- subject to the exhibition of his skill. We brandt did not, as a rule, depend on this find portraits here which exemplify these to give reality to the figures he painted — observations concerning his method of 10 they seem to emerge into visibility as painting. His ' Woman with a Rose ' images of this thought, this thought po- is an instance of this splendid bravura tential enough to become real, and real of brushwork, this swift but accurate enough to touch the profound. Neither differentiation of textures, tactful em- ' The Gilder ' nor the ' Portrait of an Old phasis of the important, and the dis- 15 Woman ' is of this phase of his art, su- criminating subservience of the secondary perb as they are; but 'The Savant' emits incidents of sight. The amplitude of this note of profundity and becomes, so stroke in broad passages and planes of the to say, impalpably real. This spacious dress, the quick but decided touches that canvas is of a sentiment and significance suggest the detail of ornament and pat- 20 quite other than may be felt in his por- tern so justly given that they sustain their traits mentioned above. Those are of this rightful surface in the constructive model- world of conventional existence — ' The ing of the gown, all this, with largeness of Savant ' is of Rembrandt's own. gesture and of pose mark this canvas as a One would like to dilate on the ' Young sumptuous example of the painter. The 25 Man Putting on His Armor,' ' Lucretia,' portraits of Heer and Vrouw Bodolphe ' Hendrickje Stoff els,' and many more, but are of that intimacy of likeness which we may only call attention to the vivid seems a documentary record of an exist- although restrained canvas named ' The ing type, almost ethnical in its searching Noble Slav,' with its unctuous painting definition of race. They are painted with 30 and concentrated chiaroscuro causing it a sobriety of statement that is in contrast to stand out by some apparent illumina- to the ' Woman with a Rose ' as befits the tion peculiar to itself. This voluminous presentation of elderly persons of settled presence is seizing in corporeity, while in condition, and which goes to prove that the painting of the chain about the shoul- Hals is possessed of a valuable artistic 35 der and the sacrifice of needless accesso- judgment which equals that of his technical ries it is one of Rembrandt's most char- superiority. ' Portrait of a Man Stand- acteristic moods of vision and production, ing ' is one of the broad, crisp, but fluent, ' The Portrait of Himself ' is in the senti- examples of his dexterity. ment of this kind of evolution of a figure After all is said, even he, it must be ad- 40 in a costume of no particular date, but sit- mitted, sometimes plays with his brush ting there, staff in hand, a clothed entity in a way not too edifying from the point of serious mien betraying the ravages of of view of art; so that for all his excel- life on a stalwart frame, vital still in its lence he is to be admired with reserve, decline. It is haunting in its personality and, at his best, hailed a master. 45 telling of a life passed in seeking to em- As if to point the lesson that superlative body plastically its thought. Massively performance may still lack that something pathetic, yet of a splendor of presentation which is almost incommunicable but of which appeals to the connoisseur, an- undoubted power, surpassing in its pro- nouncing that he is confronted by not fundity the achievements of his most ac- 50 only a great figure of the past, but by complished fellows, Rembrandt stands in that ever present joy — a work of art. this brilliant circle of painters as the one When painting thus freely and unhamp- possessed of this gift divine. ered by a commission, there is observed This solitary, living practically apart in something in Rembrandt's treatment of an atmosphere of his own creation, ap- 55 the apparel of his subject that is peculiarly peared in his higher moments to wrest his own. The dress is of no particular secrets from the surrounding air. With- time, nor is it quite recognizable as drapery out losing the concrete quality of sub- — it clothes his thought and drapes the J. ART CRITICISM 373 person painted; but one forgets these mat- critics, art lovers and collectors has shown ters in experiencing a sense of satisfied once more the immense prestige of the vision. He is a creator in more ways Carnegie Institute and its colossal impor- than one, and at these times it is as tance as America's only Salon, the supreme though some brooding and elemental 5 tribunal of art in the Western Hemi- sentiment became invested with a form sphere. Pittsburgh has no rival city; which he evolved; became indeed in his New York sinks into insignificance beside hands, as I have said, a thing of art. it; it is the one and only location in Among the deductions that occur to one America where once a year are congre- who has examined this exhibition with 10 gated in a harmonious ensemble the best attention and a certain familiarity with examples obtainable of national and for- the processes of painting are these : these eign art. No previous show has suc- Dutch can still hold their own, nay, we ceeded in presenting so many exception- may learn much from them about frank, ally good canvases and Director J. W. solid and sincere manipulation of paint — 15 Beatty deserves the fullest recognition for their work is done to stay, to withstand his untiring zeal and discretion in present- the deterioration of time, it is of honest ing a display of work so convincingly execution so far as the medium is con- representative of the best painting that is cerned, and in some respects mere paint- being accomplished at home and abroad, ing cannot be better done. Where per- 20 Very noticeable is the fact that the young haps we moderns have surpassed them is painters have been given opportunity, in our manner of seeing, of using the eye- There is a distinctly vital and vigorous sight, in which, with the years, we have impression imparted by the different gal- developed an almost new sense of sight; leries and wholesome absence in a great so that a lighter, more subtle, more 25 measure of those tedious monsters known amusing aspect of nature seems to have as exhibition pictures, and of those aca- been revealed to us, permitting us, through demically painted ever-recurring theses painting, to touch a now wider range of which point to stagnation in art and induce emotions through painted art. And even apathy and indifference in the minds of this advance is more appreciable in the 3° the discerning public. The impression field of landscape painting than in that gained at private view and increased by of figure work and portraits. subsequent visits, is an impression of fresh, If these two qualities, then, could be spontaneous art, of the kind that reacts on united, sanity of method and subtlety of the beholder, forming in imagination an sight, there would burst upon this age of 35 intimate bond of thought between him and art a splendor of achievement which might the artist. rival that of Haarlem and of Amsterdam. Courtesy to the stranger would induce one to mention foreign performances first, even if no other reason prevailed; com- IV 40 parisons may be odious, but in a case where canvases from all countries meet on PITTSBURGH INTERNATIONAL a common footing it is forced upon the EXHIBITION, 1914 critic to see how the painting by artists of one nation compares with that of another. W. H. de B. NELSON 45 At the very first encounter, and strength- ened by later visits, it is clear that the [International Studio (John Lane Co.), June, 1914. English contingent represented by sixty By permission of author and publisher.] P ,. ° , .1 . . . • , " * and more artists make the strongest 1m- The season of American art, limited by pression in portraiture, and in such pic- custom and convenience to the period ex- 50 tures as represent what is felt and imag- tending from November to the end of ined rather than what is merely visualized. May, meets with its apotheosis at Pitts- When it comes to downright painting of burgh, after which the grim message of sea or mountain, snow-clad river banks, Shipka Pass, ' All is Still,' is applicable to weird, majestic canyons or a city's traffic, the reign of art, until once more winter 55 no country can defeat the American resumes its interrupted sway. The Eight- painter in his big and bold portrayal of eenth Annual Exhibition, so eagerly facts, but when it comes to subtlety of awaited and speculated upon by painters, conception, to imagery, to a fantasy un- 374 WRITING OF TODAY seen of mortal eyes, there the British the intelligence. Materialism is an excel- painter shows his superiority. In spite lent attribute, but it should not be the of unquestioned mastery over the medium, sum total of a picture. The soul of the of an undoubted capacity for clear and artist must look behind his pigment or his truthful vision, it is to be wondered 5 work threatens to become commonplace. whether the soul of Peter Bell be not re- It fell to a Spaniard and an Englishman fleeted within the souls of many American to show the strongest harbor scenes. painters of high rank : ' Fishermen of the Cantabrique,' by Mar- , ,, . ... tinez-Cubells, is an imposing canvas, splen- A primrose by the river s brim didl painted sho wing a fishing smack at A yellow primrose was to him — ., J f .' , & s » And it was nothing more. th « P' er > wlth the " ew f w ° rk > while other boats are at anchor close by. A ray There is another explanation, and it is of light illumines the sluggish water in the perhaps nearer to the truth. It may well right-hand corner, gaining tremendous be that the American artist does not con- "5 force by contrast. Hayley-Lever, the sider subject matter of particular impor- Englishman, is represented by one of his tance in his canvas, but is ruled by his characteristic paintings of St. Ives Har- desire to express freely and powerfully bor, full of light and movement, the boats luminous skies, characteristic sketches of in the foreground dancing on the sunlit his own native heath or some one else's 20 waves. Each picture is a masterpiece, and, above all things, a solidly painted Comparison is invited between British foreground, quality of paint, luminosity, and American painters for the reason that well-adjudged planes of light and dark no other country stands so high in the being the compelling forces. This theory quality of work submitted. Some of the is borne out by the fact that the room of 25 Britishers that have helped to make this honor was bestowed upon Paul Dougherty, year's international a red-letter event are who though still young is already in the W. Orpen, T. C. Dugdale, J. da Costa, fortunate position of having to search, like Arnesby Brown, Anning Bell, Hayley- Alexander, for fresh kingdoms to conquer. Lever, W. Nicholson, and Hilda Fearon. No one, after touring Gallery L, could 30 Some big men are not mentioned, for the deny to him all the gifts mentioned above reason that their contributions fall below and many others, in his twenty-six ex- standard. Much is expected of Charles hibits of sea and Alps, but at the same Sims, but his ' Month of Mary ' is a disap- time it must be advanced that these pic- pointing canvas — heavy in color, unre- tures lack that peculiar quality which is 35 lated, and with miniature groups in the the essence of real art, and which distin- foreground, resembling in conception a guishes the nature copyist from the true shepherd's calendar. One charm only it genius who combines what he has seen possesses, namely, a background of de- with what he has felt. The same applies lightful design and richness of tone. The to the medal picture of E. W. Redfield and 40 Orpen self-portrait, with its outre back- to the canvases of such men as Elmer ground and quaint accessories, is a mag- Schofield, Gardner Symons, and many nificent piece of characterization and quite others. They are giants within their lim- outstrips other essays in portraiture, with its. They copy nature superbly and' there very few exceptions, they stop contented. Is there not the fear 45 Gaston La Touche, the Frenchman, has of traveling a lane that has no outlet ? two pictures, but they do not represent him There is an excellent Japanese word, at his best. They appear to be hurriedly esoragoto — all acknowledgment to Mr. A. executed and contain bad color. Will J. Eddy — which has no exact equivalent Ashton received an honorable mention for in English or French, and which amounts 50 his ' On the Seine.' His sky-line of build- to a canon. Every, painting, to be effec- ings is typically Parisian and interesting, tive, must be esoragoto, i.e., an invented His barge, too, in shadow has been well picture or a picture into which certain fie- handled, but he seems to miss that peculiar tions are painted. Realistic transcriptions color which every one knowing the river must yield to idealistic compositions, with 55 appreciates and discerns, a maximum of self. A good picture, be- John W. Alexander has a large and sides being true to nature, in order to be somewhat detached composition entitled great art, must excite curiosity and pique ' Her Birthday,' in which three graceful J. ART CRITICISM 375 and pleasant-looking young women in dif- by the great German master, Franz von ferent well-studied poses are busy arrang- Stuck, both of which pictures have un- ing flowers. The canvas contains many fortunately been relegated to odd corners very beautiful passages and is full of deli- in the minor galleries. A good third place cate distinction. 5 in this line of effort may be fairly ac- Chicharro, whose admiration for Zu- corded to the Cleveland artist, H. G. loaga is clearly mirrored in his perform- Keller, who in his ' Wisdom and Destiny ' ances, shows some Castilian peasants has given a delightful piece of color and breaking bread, very black bread, with composition. ' Old House in the Hills,' sun-baked fingers. They are not pleas- 10 by W. L. Lathrop, proves how effective ant, these nut-brown, hard-featured peas- the simplest subject may prove in the ants with their piercing black eyes and hands of a master; painted by a man of sullen demeanor. The artist lacks the mediocrity, no one would have given this fluidity and imagination of his leader, canvas a second glance. Jonas Lie shows Chicharro carries realism to a point where 15 the lower bay blocked with ice and senti- the observer is less impressed than repelled nelled by its grim line of snow-clad sky- by his brutality. This brutality is also evi- scrapers. Charles- Bittinger's ' Road to dent in the work of George W. Bellows, the River' compels applause by the un- who was deservedly awarded a medal for affected treatment of a simple subject, his exceedingly vital picture entitled ' Cliff 20 where powerful sunlight is effected with- Dwellers,' being an admirable rendering out trickery. Caro-Delvaille presents a of the sordid east-end life of New York's nude of Rubenesque proportions, entitled slummery by the river. The picture is ' La Nature Endormie,' which conjures up frank to a degree and distinctly Rabelais- visions of the Autumn Salon and previous ian in flavor. 25 efforts by the same artist. Good as it is, Portraits and still life were wisely de- we infinitely prefer his ' The Young Maid,' nied the right to be too insistently in which in smaller compass shows a wait- evidence. Landscapes were admitted in ress, back to the beholder, depositing a overwhelming proportion. W. M. Chase tray upon the table. Head and neck are has a portrait and a still life. We all 30 beautifully modeled, and the flesh tones know and respect his fishes. The portrait contrast well with the conventional black is of his youngest son, dressed in Etons, frock. Robert Henri's ' Thomas ' will full of animation and dashing out of the please the superficial observer, but we canvas as through an open door. The wonder what would be said of a pupil who lad's bright face, dark hair and olive com- 35 dared to exhibit such bad draughtsman- plexion have been finely handled, better, ship. a great deal, than the advancing right leg, A. J. Mannings is a better painter of which is just- a little unconvincing in the horses than of cattle, but his ' Cow and action. ' The Madonna of the Applecart ' Calf ' command more than respect. The aptly describes an excellent portrait by 40 best cows in the exhibition are in the fore- T. C. Dugdale, entitled ' Coster-girl and ground of Arnesby Brown's fine painting, Child.' It is a glowing tribute to London's ' In Suffolk.' They are beefy and elemen- east-end and to the memory of Phil May, tal, and form no part of a set piece. Mary who alone of artists depicted the real cos- Cassatt is a disappointment. Her picture ter type. Splendid in color and compo- 45 in pyramidal construction shows a mother sition, this picture is one of the real gems bending over a boy of tender years and of the exhibition. huge feet, who gazes into his mother's Among pictures of allegorical import face. It is Raphaelesque without tender- must be mentioned first and foremost an ness and good drawing. Though Raphael exquisite decorative scheme by Anning 50 erred occasionally in draughtsmanship, Bell, entitled ' The South Wind,' which even in the ' Sistine Madonna,' yet he is reproduced on the first page of this arti- never could have modeled such feet upon cle, and in second place ' Summer Night ' an infant. 376 WRITING OF TODAY the society is somewhat in the nature of * an anti-climax; but in their day people ... ■„ r ,r,T^^T ~. tmi „„ flocked to the exhibitions where, each AN AMERICAN SALON OF year) they held up t0 mer ciless ridicule the HUMORISTS 5 staid, decorous productions of the regular Academy shows. And there was a certain LOUIS BAURY buoyant inspiration and technical felicity rD , T , _ . . , .. pervading all their merriment which raised [Bookman, January, 1915. By permission of author f, ri P. . , ., , , and publisher'] these affairs far above the plane of mere 10 undergraduate decorative revels. 1 Today, the men who once poured forth Just why it is that painting should be these festive creations are for the most deemed the most irrevocably grave of all part in the heydey of their prime. But artistic manifestations, no one has ever one journeys from ' important exhibition ' explained. But such certainly appears to 15 to ' interesting group of canvases ' to be the case — particularly here in Amer- ' noteworthy shows/ looking in vain for a ica. In literature a man has every chance, place where the spirit of the old ' Fakers,' if he can, to be as hilariously unbridled as in matured and mellowed form, may logi- Mark Twain, and still take his place, un- cally disport itself, and yet remain faith- challenged, on the shelf with the greatest ; 20 ful to the highest artistic conscience. It on the stage he may be as essentially a begins to look as if the only place where humorist as Joseph Jefferson, and yet go such things can pursue their joyous way down in history with a halo round his unfettered amid all the intensity of ' mod- memory ; even in the uncorporeal sphere ernity ' is in a gallery especially devoted to of music he may be as light and bizarre 25 their interests — just as the playgrounds and impish as fancy will permit, without for children have to be solemnly marked in any way jeopardizing his artistic dig- off by act of legislature and maintained nity; but let him attempt any such gala- sacrosanct by the police force, hearted display in terms of paint, and the Actually to have to offer arguments most staid Academician and the most per- 30 in favor of a Salon of Humorists in fervid Futurist bang their doors with equal this country, where a sense of humor is vigor in his face. Which, in this day as much a standard national institution when there is more talk than ever before as George Washington's truthfulness or of the development of a really national art, Bunker Hill or true democracy, would seems just a trifle rash. 35 seem too paradoxical. Fortunately, though, That ebullient spirit that, without ' mis- the work of the men who without the sion ' or ' message ' or ' school,' craves only least encouragement do make occasional the privilege of making holiday with facts forays in this manner is sufficient argu- and pelting impartially with its own gay, ment of itself. There are, for example, inimitable, irreverent confetti every head 40 the pictures of Boardman Robinson — that bobs up in the carnival of civilization among which is a pungent little wash seems too thoroughly American to be con- drawing called ' The Romanticist ' — never signed always to the lighter, more ephem- before exhibited or published — which eral pictorial avenues. Mark Twain and could most appropriately open an Ameri- O. Henry are American in a sense in 45 can Salon of Humorists — and that with- which Poe and Lowell, for instance, never out the slightest disrespect to romance it- can be. That the spirit which caused self. them to multiply the gaiety of nations is The man depicted herein is not a painter, really inherent in the hearts of American Quite unmistakably, he belongs to ' the painters, one has to travel no further than 50 literati.' But his influence upon gallery to the rooms of the old ' Fakers ' to real- exhibitions has been extensive. For he is ize. an ' apostle of art.' He it is who, over Around the time of the Spanish War the tea-cups, has converted our daughters, that little off-shoot of the National Acad- and so gained a certain ascendancy in an emy of Design contained a group of stu- 55 age of feminism. He has interior-deco- dents with conspicuous aptitudes for satir- rated the halls of Philistia itself — and izing passing artistic foibles. Pressed, very nearly persuaded the lot of us to sell they will admit that the present form of our birthright for a pot of lilies. And J. ART CRITICISM 377 * - . now one enjoys the gratification of seeing genial setting. For if ever man was a all his suspicions about him upheld. humorist at heart, that man is Luks. He A raven of butterfly fragility, he rises is in direct line of descent from Swift and against his nicotine-misted background, Rabelais and Fielding. Humor there is his rapturous eyes seeking the heavens — 5 in his most terribly poignant studies, in and stopping at a low-hung ceiling. Even his most heartrending delineations of slum the most literal-minded would desire no life, of stricken urchins and ignorant, snatch of superimposed dialogue to en- experience-wise old apple women. But force the humor of the thing. The humor when humor predominates, when it is the is inherent in every line of the drawing, 10 irrepressible motive of his theme, then in all the subtle force and forceful sub- Luks is at his best. Then he is most un- tlety of the entire handling. One senses restrainedly himself. at once the impalpability of the chin be- Look over his sketch-books where are neath those curled whiskers, the scrawni- jotted down the swift, undeniable first im- ness of the stringed neck somewhere in the 15 pressions of his journeyings among men. floss of that hair, the timidity of those It is humor that radiates through every too-small pale hands which are, one is vibrant line of them. Turning the pages sure, fidgetting under the ceremonious is like walking along a crowded thorough- folds of his Inverness. fare in company with one of those jovially After this the ladies who peer at can- 20 shrewd old eighteenth-century commen- vases anxiously through veils, and mur- tators on human foibles. No word is mur of ' perspective ' ; the people who flut- spoken. One simply feels a nudge in the ter catalogue pages and talk hesitatingly ribs, and, looking, the essential flavor of of ' tone ' and ' value ' and ' quality ' and a group, a situation, a personality is made other safely elusive things, after having 25 inimitably manifest. A cabby lolling on looked up the artist's name — these may his box, a too-young matron whispering walk with a new sprightliness now and imprudent stories into the ear of a promis- hold up their heads. Which, after all, is ing debutante, a couple from ' hall-room- a very excellent thing for ' art.' And even dom ' parading at the fashionable hour on the most strident anarchists shouting for 30 the avenue, the manner in which a young ' wider latitudes " should be appeased, restaurant omnibus fetches via ordinaire For just as it is said that what cannot be — it is such things as these that most in- spoken can be put to music, so, in another evitably attract Luks's attention. The sense, what cannot be told can be painted, painting of ' Amateur Night,' reproduced For there are people boasting of portraits, 35 here, though perhaps not the best example even by Sargent who, if they studied them of this phase of Mr. Luks's work, unques- attentively, instead of pointing them out tionably possesses the authentic spirit, with a casual reference to the price paid, And it is a work for which he has special would be more inclined to try suing the fondness. painter for libel. So let us fling open the 40 ' I felt that very deeply when I was doors and see if we really are as irrevoca- painting it,' he said recently. ' At the bly grave as all this talk of art in the Sun- time, I was doing a good deal of pot-boil- day supplements and the public libraries ing in the form of posters for those ex- would lead one to suppose. travagant melodramas which were in such 45 favor then; and so I was quite in the at- 11 mosphere of this sort of thing. I 've at- In the field of American art, no place is tended dozens of " amateur nights," and more genuinely recognized and assured I like those kids that get up there and than the high one occupied by George make fools of themselves. They 're not Luks. What Arthur Davies is to the 5o always such fools as they act.' poetry of contemporary painting, Luks is No half-tone reproduction of this paint- to its prose. So it is particularly pleas- ing can begin to do justice to the masterly ing, on entering the American Salon of observation and handling of the play of Humorists, to find a canvas of his promi- footlights over the figures — which, tech- nently hung. One simply cannot help 55 nically, is the most notable achievement of feeling that at last this man who has ever the picture. But it retains unimpaired been as a red rag to academies and revo- the full force of that girl's desperately lutionaries alike, has found a truly con- clenched hands, the modeling of that 378 WRITING OF TODAY youth's legs, the significance of the taut of ' society ' disporting itself at the rink postures of both performers. And it loses for all the world as the Sunday supple- little in the understanding with which ments have recorded that it disports itself those faces are rendered. — just the same 'easy informality' and Gazing on them, one understands pretty 5 ' sang froid ' — and the visitor will prob- well how the comedienne of the team fired ably spend some time in studying out and her adoring one with histrionic desire — enjoying the details for himself before and how, though remaining forever turning to the red chalk drawing by Ever- ' minor chords,' they will return again and ett Shinn. again to ' Amateur Night.' It is this 10 Shinn, it must be understood — even power of Luks's — evinced even in his though the catalogue, in its official impar- slightest things — to make one feel the tiality cannot commit such confidences — past and probable future of all his charac- is among the bright particular stars of this ters, as well as the intensely living present exhibition. Falling, as a craftsman, into he sets before you, which makes of him an 15 the same general category as Glackens, undeniable master. there is, among other things, the difference Hanging near this picture of his is that when Shinn turns illustrator he is Glackens's ' Roller Skating.' There is no very likely to be at his unqualified worst, more sincere artist than Glackens in But when he gets down to the ' serious America today. Among painters he is es- 20 work ' which your average artist under- pecially esteemed for his technical abilities takes with a portentous frown — and — and for the magnitude of the technical maybe one eye on the predilections of the problems he so often undertakes to solve, judiciary committee — then Everett Shinn In the old days, though, when Glackens becomes his most debonair, charming, concerned himself more with cartoons and 25 airy, slightly cynical, but always diverting, illustrations, there used to be a certain entertaining, and amusing self. And it is rollicking buoyance pervading his work in this guise that he appears at the Salon which somehow seems too frequently miss- of Humorists. ing in his later and more elaborate oils. It might be that the ultra-captious would But ever and again it returns joyously 30 take some exceptions to the drawing of the and takes possession of his brush for long figure on the left of the group shown stretches. The ' Roller Skating ' canvas here, but certainly no one could offer any is one of those in which its influence is objection to the pose and spirit of it. And apparent. Perhaps the murkiness of the every one of that trio is alive — alive with atmosphere is rather too palpable in the 35 a life of its own, gay, racy, undeniable, original, but after one peeps through this, Here again a title is a mere superfluous he is very willing to forgive it for the footnote. The picture's humor is intrinsic, wealth of humor underneath. There are a and so completely summed up within itself score of keen, delightful points made here that no slightest further touch, whether of — of character, of anecdote, of gesture, of 40 word or crayon, is necessary. And the attitude, of incident — all set forth with beauty of it is, as the New England woman that strict economy of detail and sense of said of the doughnuts that were so appreci- ensemble rhythm which belongs, perhaps ated, ' there 's plenty more of the same above all else, to a proper interpretation kind where that came from.' of crowds. 45 Unfortunately, the Salon of Humorists Possibly after the Salon of Humorists as yet has few sculptured pieces to offer, has become thoroughly established, Mr. But it is significant that some of the most Glackens will relent and give us more oils notable of those that are available repre- in this vein — things like those Dickensian sent the work of a man whose star is very observations he has made in crowded slum 50 decidedly in the ascendant. New York streets where really all is not poverty and at large discovered Herbert Crowley only stark misery, and there do exist other oc- a few months ago; but, having once been cupations than having the milk inspected discovered, he is not the sort of person and dodging the charity workers, who — easily to be forgotten. The fervor of the poor things ! — should not be blamed too 55 true artist is his ; and it finds expression in much, because they, too, have to make a sumptuously decorative designs which living somehow. Possibly he will go even have been compared — although the like- further. Meanwhile we have this vision ness is really superficial — to a certain J. ART CRITICISM 379 vein of Aubrey Beardsley; in rich-hued whelmingly captivated Paris — as things pastel dreams, behind the surface simplic- do when they are especially piquant and ity of which rages all the monstrous com- chic and sophisticated. There the blithest, plexity with which the orchestration of gayest, deepest, wisest work of such artists modern life is instinct; in delicately whim- 5 as Forain and Willette and Steinlin and sical little child-fables in line that are Ibels, of Guillaume, Redon, and Robida, fathered by very much the same spirit that and literally hundreds of others, rollicked produced Stevenson's Garden of Verses; gleefully forth for the delectation of the and in twentieth-century grotesques of multitudes. Somehow, that is always the the order shown here. 10 way. Unto him that hath shall be given ! 'I do these things,' said Mr. Crowley, The platitudes will not be downed. For 'because I have to — because my contact although this Salon has apotheosized cer- with people and events has bred them in- tain ideals and forced the more staid and side me, and they must come out. And of entrenched Salons to take serious recogni- course the sense of humor must come out 15 tion, as the phrase goes, of its artistic along with the rest. Humor is there — achievements, Paris was really the last within everybody — as big and true as love city in the world that stood in actual need or hate or desire or any other human emo- of such an institution. Paris, the witch- tion ; and so fully worthy of being as finely ing, the sprightly, the saucy, the witty — expressed as one can express it.' 20 Paris, which acclaimed and appreciated That is what Crowley does in these gar- the mastership of a Daumier and a Tou- goyles. They are philosophies in bronze, louse-Lautrec — Paris, where to be clever commenting upon whole segments of so- is to be courted instead of to be' in- ciety, yet quite without malice. Take ' In- spected with apprehensive suspicion — capacity,' for instance. The face alone 25 Paris, where flourish regularly a half- runs the entire emotional gamut from a dozen publications of the order of le Rire child whose nurse will not stop the lolli- and I'Assiette au Beurre, in affirmation pop man who is passing to the politician of the illustrator's right to deride man- who cannot stop the restrictive bills that kind according to his own sweet pleasure are being passed. The Church of the So- 30 and, if need be, to go out into the smoking- cial Revolution should avail itself of these room for his inspiration in doing it — what gargoyles, if only to demonstrate the genu- need had Paris of an institution for the ineness of its modernity. uncensored stigmatizing of affectation and To keep Mr. Crowley company in the folly, the disrobing of vice, the indication sculpture section there is Mrs. Jerome 35 of the grotesque incongruities of the every- Meyers. Mrs. Meyers specializes on day! Why, for all its glory and its con- women — which is indiscreet, but highly quest, such a gallery was but as a ring on diverting. Her work is always interest- the Parisian little finger, a flower in its ing, adequate, deftly executed, and modern buttonhole. in manner. The accompanying piece is 40 But what chance has the American illus- fairly typical both of her method and her trator for participation in such lively and satire. The subject of it is an effusive preeminently worth-while sport? Ask devotee of Mr. Robinson's Romanticist, him — as the present writer has asked a an elder sister of Mr. Don Marquis's score of illustrators — and he will tell friend, Hermione. She, too, looks out 45 you at voluminous length, and with a force upon a world that is wonderful — simply which even a Parisian weekly might ex- wonderful, and matches her gowns and purgate, that he has none at all. Take jewels to her moods and her room-fur- the case of such a well-established illus- nishings to her temperament. Probably trator as J. E. Jackson. When he leaves the hangings in her boudoir are mauve — 50 the regular illustrative round for his met- with a shadow pattern. ropolitan pastels he may freely express the utmost heights of his vision — and who 111 better than he has realized that subtle As the Laird in Trilby so variously in- green which sleeps in the sky above Man- timated, they do these things better in 55 hattan when the day of toil is ending France. Paris instituted a Salon des Hu- and the streets are restless with home- moristes as long ago as the spring of 1907. ward-faring throngs and the air rau- And that Salon instantaneously and over- cous with the cries of baseball extras? 380 WRITING OF TODAY Yet let him depart from the prescribed explains, ' that would fit into a real Salon orbits in an opposite direction, and even of Humorists. As things are, such draw- so comparatively mild a satire as ' Beauty ings are luxuries, and however much I and the Beast ' goes the normal rounds might enjoy it, I really don't have a chance only to be shunned. Perhaps the dog was 5 to indulge in them.' not deemed sufficiently beautiful. Yet And although Herb Roth in his crisp, there are many folk who would find more tumultuous comments, manages again and humor in the observation of that beast's again to strike from the ephemera; of the — er, woman's — foot alone than in a vol- daily news brilliant sparks, swift flashes ume of sketches of the Florist: ' We have 10 of character and parables of mirth which, some lovely mistletoe, miss.' Beautiful as in the cases of the Winthrop Ames cari- Young Lady : ' Thanks ; I really don't cature and the Brieux paraphrase, possess need that ' type. more than casual passing interest, one Of course, every periodical has a right still cannot help wondering just how much to pursue its own policy undisturbed, and 15 Mr. Roth might accomplish if left entirely editors know best to what public they wish to* his own lightning-like devices — with a to appeal; but at the same time, it seems Salon of Humorists waiting for the re- prodigally slack that so much talent — one suits. does not say genius, but undeniable and And if this be the case with men who, astoundingly facile talent — as exists in 20 on newspapers, are coming into constant the ranks of our illustrators should, per- touch with life at its liveliest, how much force, express itself always in echoes and more should it apply to magazine illus- embellishments. trators whose facility is so largely de- One need not deny, either, the very pat- voted to depicting Estelle falling into the ent cleverness of a good deal of the work 25 arms of Milton, and the King of the Wire- the avowedly humorous magazines pub- Tappers at the precise moment when the lish, to protest that the mordant, grim, great detective and his trusty lieutenants relentless irony of, say, Glenn Coleman burst in upon him ? If the individual out- can scarcely find adequate outlet in pic- look of these illustrators could have free torial variations upon the side-splitting 30 outlet, it would more often than not prove themes that college youths always love to be in humorous vein. And there is no chorus-girls violently and carry a little time more favorable than the present for wine without due restraint, that the affording it outlet here in America. ' woman movement ' — whatever that may Paris will have no Salon des Humoristes be — will inevitably force hale and pros- 35 this year. Pierrot is in the trenched fields, perous men into washing dishes, that facing the invader. But Pierrot is the last young things in love simply cannot help who would wish to see the carnival itself turning down the parlor lights and kissing, lapse. For Pierrot is immortal ; and even while the new fashions are really too ab- though he die, he lives on, unconquer- surd and golfers use naughty words when 40 able. they slice the ball, and poets always, al- Finally, then, we can do honor to him ways wear long hair because they never in the illustrator's section through Oliver have enough money to meet the rapacious Herford — not because Mr. Herford is an demands of barbers. illustrator in the ordinary sense of the Yet these things of Mr. Coleman's, 45 word, but because he falls into no regular clothed in the curiously quaint atmosphere classification, and so might as well go here he so well conjures up — these forays into as anywhere else. One does not think of stuffy parks and city margins where the Oliver Herford so much as an artist or a refuse of the ragged-edge congregate and wit as in the light of an institution. He crack grisly jokes anent their own tat- 50 is the nearest American counterpart to ters — have a very definite place in the Max Beerbohm. The same urbanity is empire of American humor. And so, his, the same poise, the same sophistica- equally, have the impressions of those two tion, the same naivete, the same nice abil- vivid, arresting, but sharply differentiated ity for doing charming and rather ticklish newspaper men, Cesare and Roth. 55 things without ever descending to the in- The restaurant scene by Cesare, here delicate or offending good taste. The ac- reproduced, was a mere piece d'occasion, companying examples of his work are re- however. ' I do practically nothing,' he cent things ; but anything else of his' would _____^ J. ART CRITICISM 381 have served as well. Oliver Herford ' be- Stuart Davis should be a decided asset to I lon g s -' the Salon of Humorists. And when the same motive which domi- IV nates Sloan and Davis springs, instead of No age has been so multifarious as our 5 from the socialistic or the ultra-realistic, own in playing politics through art. In from the decorative instinct, the result is literature the tendency extends all the a form equally important to an exhibition way from Bernard Shaw to James Oppen- of this order. It is the poster at its best, heim — which is a long distance, any way 'It appears almost certain now,' laments you care to figure it. In the graphic arts 10 Louis Fancher, ' that the keen interest it is somewhat more concentrated, and — people in this country once took in posters taken on the whole — of more compelling as works of art was merely a fad — that calibre. For where a book or a play or a has gone the way of all fads. But I can't treatise has an excellent chance of boring help feeling that it would n't have done so you with dogmatics and repetitions and 15 had it been properly developed. We talk ; arguments, a picture simply presents its about the supremacy of German posters; naked vision — and dares you to deny it. but we forget that German artists had to And, be your politics what they may, you go through a long, bitter, discouraging cannot gainsay the fact that no more rep- fight before they won recognition for the resentative emanations exist of that tan- 20 high standards they finally succeeded in gled, restless, striving, groping, shatter- setting up. Here in this country, though, ing, up-building, cursing, laughing, men- it 's impossible, as things are, to wage such acing, praying thing we call modernity a fight. But from personal experiences, I than this little gallery of protest contains, feel certain that the public itself, once There are the cartoons of Arthur 25 thoroughly imbued with the poster ideal, Young, grinning through tears of sympa- would appreciate and demand that style of thy, which, ever since the Gene Field era, work.' Certainly, Mr. Fancher's own when they first began to appear in Chi- ' Carnival ' is not a bad argument in its cago, have found their fundamental im- favor. pulse in the social incongruities. And 30 And certainly the sharp, bold postures of there are the etchings and sketches and the poster, its abrupt gestures, the sim- oils of John Sloan. Keenly sensitive to plicity of its masses of colors, the hyper- his time, Sloan expresses himself inevi- bole of its statements, indicate a special tably in the humorous strain — and in all sympathy with much current thought and his humor there lives that pathos which 35 movement. belongs to all truly felt humor. Note the And from posters the transition into wistfulness with which he has endowed pure fantastics is an easy one — things, even such a denunciation of mankind's for example, such as the painted groups tawdriness as the accompanying drawing Helena Smith Dayton models in plaster, comprises. It is always that way with 40 Here is work as wholly American as his things. And that is why John Sloan Coney Island or world-series ball-games or can unfold the most brutal actualities of department-store bargain-days. Whether the highways and the hidden closets of one considers it as a parody of the new society, and still set tender chords to art forms or as an absolutely personal ap- vibrating. • 45 proach, it is equally interesting. There is Among the younger men striving along no little tolerance manifest through all the somewhat similar lines none gives more fun and satire with which that human striking promise than Stuart Davis. Bold, melange on the ' Boarding-House Steps ' original, forthright, one feels that much is conceived. And the same spirit accom- should be before him. And although one's 50 panies Mrs. Dayton everywhere — into instinct is to be chary in praise of an the restaurants and tango-halls where the ability which is still more or less poten- out-of-towners rub elbows with the demi- tial, one yet cannot but notice the tendency monde for the enrichment of waiters, along toward a certain Strindbergian quality in lower Fifth Avenue at that hour when the his studies of personality that places them 55 cloak and suit trade inherits the earth, in the category of what Edwin Bjorkman into those parks where the child is indeed has called ' pure cultures.' The more one father to the man — wherever, in fact, the sees of his work, the more one feels that whim of the moment suggests. 382 WRITING OF TODAY In the course of these trips, too, Mrs. artists have not the mastery to make any- Dayton's feeling for types frequently ex- thing vivid or fine in design out of scenes pands into a genuine grasp of character, that they have never witnessed. And even in her most headlong moods she Mr. H. A. Olivier's ' Where Belgium never descends to downright triviality. 5 Greeted Britain' (360) represents the And triviality is the worst enemy meeting of King George with King Albert against which the American Salon of Hu- on December 4. It is not a battle picture, morists will have to contend. but the representation of a historical Of course, the few pictures and sculp- event. Mr. Olivier has not attempted, like tures grouped here represent only a frag- 10 Velasquez in ' The Surrender of Breda,' mentary glimpse even of that spirit which to make the scene impressive by pictorial now is obliged to blossom sporadically, art. He aims rather at giving his picture But they are sufficient to suggest some of an air of authenticity. There is nothing the larger possibilities latent within that to excite the mind through the eye. He particular sort of humor that crackles be- 15 seems to tell us, ' This is how it happened.' neath the cuticle of American life. But we are not convinced that it did so All of which may sound excessively happen, because no one in the picture is serious ; but that is the trouble with hu- quite lifelike enough. It is of the same mor. One simply can't consider it without character, in fact, as most coronation pic- becoming serious — particularly here in 20 tures. The right people are there, all America. For humor is more to us than easily recognizable, and are playing their a mere mood. It is the pith of the swift, proper parts. Those things are souvenirs electric atmosphere that is so distinctively of great events and must be accepted, our own, that capitalization of the mo- without much criticism, as souvenirs, ment which serves us in lieu of the tradi- 25 Mr. Lavery's ' Wounded : London Hos- tion that is Europe's. It is a thing as pital, 1915' (181) is much more a work wide as a city street, as free as a prairie, of art. It is, in fact, one of the best pic- as vivid as an incandescent sign. It is as tures he has ever painted; but he would impudent as a skyscraper, as warm as a have done it better still, if he had been hand-clasp, as true as the shifting crowds 30 content to give us simply a large interior that give rise to it while they dream and and had not been conscious of the moral love and laugh and die. and historical interest of the scene. For When we fully realize this in our the one weak point in the picture is the graphic arts, something very fresh and nurse and wounded soldier in the fore- notable in a new way should result. 35 ground. They are not, like the rest, seen Surely, it is worth while setting out toward by a painter, but by a sentimentalist, that end. They are too obviously playing their parts and over-acting them a little, so that they VI seem to belong to a different and inferior 40 kind of art from the rest of the picture. THE WAR IN ART Mr. Clausen in his ' Renaissance ' (143) is allegorical, and his allegory succeeds ITimes, London, England ^ (Weekly Edition), May better than the realism of other painters. " ^ It is the Renaissance of France that he The Academy this year, which was 45 paints, and the- whole picture is fine in opened to the public on Monday, is quite color and in design except for the faces, up to the average and perhaps rather bet- They are always the difficulty of allegory, ter than usual. The war has not suddenly If too much emphasis is laid on them, their inspired British art with a new serious- figures become too personal for allegorical ness and simplicity ; but no one could ex- 50 types ; and in this picture they are too per- pect it to do that, and we shall not give sonal and a little absurd. There is incon- ourselves the cheap pleasure of rebuking gruity between the purely allegorical nude our painters because they are not new-born figure and the eminent Frenchman with since August. the Legion of Honor, who might almost be Some of them have painted battle-pic- 55 a portrait. But we can forget this incon- tures, but war is a subject that has seldom gruity in the whole design, and that does brought any luck to painters. The great- give us a sense of the Renaissance of est do not often attempt it, and lesser France. ^^^ J. ART CRITICISM 3»3 Mr. W. L. Wyllie's 'The Fighting Line light and form are so mingled that they from Ypres to the Sea' (352) is a war surprise and convince us. The picture has landscape with an aeroplane. But the been made straight from the reality in aeroplane is not assimilated to the land- front of the painter, but it has all come scape. It dominates everything, not as a 5 right, except the figure of the man, where feature in the design, but as an unusual the artist's emphasis has failed, so that fact; and that is the worst of war in pic- he is merely a little piece of dullness in a tures. It is nearly always merely an un- very brilliant whole, usual fact, appealing too directly to the mind, like a piece of exciting news. It is 10 not art, as exciting news is not literature. Mr. T. Mostyn in his 'Flight' (435) VII gives us the typical rather than the actual ; but he is not quite enough of a master to LEON BAKST'S DESIGNS FOR make the typical impressive. These flee- 15 SCENERY AND COSTUME ing female figures are a little platitudinous, like minor poetry. They remind us of a GERALD C. SIORDET great many other pictures, as minor poetry i reminds US of Other verse. That is also [International Studio (John Lane Co.), November, the fault of Mr. Richard Jack's ' Home- » I913 " By P ermission of author and !»«"".] less' (464), though this is more a picture Leon Bakst, about whom so much has than most of the attempts to paint war. been talked and written during the last But, again, we feel that we have seen it few years in connection with the art of before, that it belongs to the stage rather the theatre, was born in Sf. Petersburg than to real life or to the world of imagi- 25 in the year 1868. Passing through the nation. academic course of art training in that There is more vividness in Mr. P. W. city, he went to Paris to study in 1895, Adam's interior, 'War' (480), a room and on his return to Russia won such suc- wrecked by a shell. This is well painted, cess as a painter of portraits and official and the composition both expresses the 30 pictures as to be appointed to the position havoc and is in itself startling and satis- of painter to the Imperial family. But a factory. In the ' Retreat from the Marne ' realistic subject-picture, a Pieti, in which (593) Mr. John Charlton seems merely to the artist presented the persons of our tell us that the Germans were driven back Lord and His Mother under the guise of in more confusion than they probably 35 peasants, and attempted to depict without were. It is like the highly-colored de- restraint the most violent affections of grief scription of a correspondent who was not in the principal figures, was found so dis- present. That is also true of Mr. W. B. pleasing to tide committee of the Academy Wollen's ' Landrecies, Augustus' (664). to which it was submitted for exhibition We have street fighting with every empha- 40 that, though the work was hung, it was sis laid on its violence; but it is mere scored from corner to corner with bands violence of language which may excite for of white chalk. The artist withdrew the a moment but soon wearies. In ' The picture : and the insult, combined with the Strongest' (973) Mr. Fortunino Matania representations of a little group of friends gives us merely an illustration, but a vivid 45 whose belief in his particular genius had and amusing one : a Belgian or French boy been aroused by the success of a number putting out his tongue at a German sol- of experiments in the designing of decora- dier as his mother leads him by with tion and stage scenery and costume, de- averted face. It is effective because not cided him to break with official patronage exaggerated. The German is not vio- 50 and to follow his own bent. The secession lently brutal. He looks at the boy rather of the younger school of Russian dancing, stupidly, as if uncertain whether to take personified in the art of Nijinsky, provided any notice of him or not. him with the very opportunity he was So much for the war pictures. We turn seeking ; he left Russia, staked his artistic with some relief to the others. Mr. Sar- 55 interests in the new venture, and provided gent is at his best in several little pic- the ballets with a series of settings and tures. He has never done anything better costumes that have inestimably enriched than his ' Tyrolese Crucifix' (198), where the performances of the Russian dancers 384 WRITING OF TODAY and have been the means of his acquiring ently will bring you forth not dresses a great artistic reputation for himself. merely but personages who move with ease Yet I am not at all sure that in Eng- and certainty each in his own time, and land, at any rate, the theatrical work of yet retain the stamp of their creator. Leon Bakst has not been treated with 5 This peculiar receptivity of mind, which greater solemnity than he himself would at the same time recreates and rearranges, consider appropriate. The Englishman in is of all qualities that most fitted to adapt art has always been rather like the old itself to the art of the theatre, in which lady and the patent medicine — ' My dear, scenery and costume are most telling only it must be good, the advertisements speak 10 when they make no attempt to conceal, so well of it ' — and provided that the crit- rather welcome, the presence of conscious ics supply him with a few portable sen- recognized artifice — in fact, when the art tentiae on the matter in hand he has been that makes them is considered as itself a content to like things not so much for plaything. It is hardly possible to find a what they are as for the variety of terms 15 single design by Bakst which is not from in which they can be described. In the this point of view ' amusing.' case of work so unavoidable as that of Of course some have greater value than Bakst it is the critic's function to drape others. The last exhibition of his draw- the obvious, to explain away enjoyment ings contained a number of designs which, that might seem too indiscreet or too di- 20 admirable as they were as working indi- rect, and so to arrange things that re- cations of costume and color, would by spectability may safely become a little themselves have carried little proof of the wild, and audacity remain still fairly re- exuberant and at the same time fastidious spectable. power of design which, among other quali- But to Bakst himself his work presents 25 ties, gives a permanent value to his more itself in a much simpler light. Art, as he finished drawings. says, is a plaything, and an artist's work One critic said of him, apropos of will be good only when it has been great his drawings for Scheherazade and Le fun doing it. Here is the real secret of his Dieu Bleu, that he had ' rediscovered appeal. Grant him whatever fine and far- 30 the luscious female line bequeathed by fetched qualities you will — and there is the early Orientals.' I am not sure that plenty enough to his credit — these designs I know what he meant : historically the of his charm because, behind all the inter- remark seems to mean nothing; yet it is vening processes of knowledge and calcu- very true that Bakst shows a passionate lation, they reveal the enjoyment of the 35 enthusiasm for the flesh, for the contours child, exultant in the possession of paint- of form, for strange poise and counter- box and brushes, greatly daring to draw poise of limb, for furious, abandoned monsters, or princesses, or cities of an en- movement, that sets an Eastern stamp chanted world. upon his art, and reminds us that he is of That they should keep the freshness and 4° the nation that long ago watched King sparkle of spontaneity is the more remark- David dance before the Lord ' with all his able when one considers the amount of might.' solid learning that has gone to the design- The illustrations to this article demon- ing of such a series of costumes as enrich strate the extraordinary facility with the ballets of Scheherazade, Le Dieu Bleu, 45 which Bakst modifies treatment and design Helene de Sparte, or Signor d'Annunzio's in accordance with the character of his medievalist experiments, 5". Sebastien and subject. Look at the pencil drawing for Pisanelle. Bakst is a real student, a genu- the first act of Pisanelle, with its great ine scholar in costume. His designs are three-masted ship, its bales of treasure no mere archeological resuscitations of 50 stowed upon the quay, its crowd of detail the wardrobes of the past; neither are they in such little compass, the whole compact the summary, impressionistic stock-in- and childlike as a medieval woodcut; or trade of the quick-change artist. He is, the lovely, subtly simple dress of Likenion indeed, a kind of bright, particular cha- in Daphnis and Chloe; or the truculent meleon. He will settle into the strange, 55 swagger of the Pole from Boris Godou- distorted glamour of the East, or the simple noff; of the wasted fakir, blue and yellow graces of archaic Greece, or the fierce, draped, part of the very spirit of the East, gay medley of the Middle Ages, and pres- Each is of its world, and though the mind J. ART CRITICISM 3^5 may turn to memories of the Morte D'Ar- i f ' a? the Greek vase-painters, or of that v *■*■*■ splendid Bakstian masterpiece, ' Sidonia „,„_ A .,__.,-.. , T AT ,~ the Sorceress,' each drawing lives by THE AMERICAN ART something more than the stimulus of past 5 COLLECTOR art. * . It is perhaps only natural that SO versa- W hilade Wa Press, May 4, 191s. By permission.] tile a master of theatrical design should The war has increased the anxiety of have tried his hand on modern dress. Yet British art lovers as to the inroads made I cannot think that he has achieved a real 10 by American collectors upon privately- success. However much we may lament owned art works. Fearing that through the fact, we live in. a democratic, utilitarian fatalities and through the general financial age. Trousers are trousers, skirts are depression caused by the war many Eng- skirts for all the world. It is true that lish collections will have to be sold, a spe- some words of Chaucer's 'poor parson ' 15 cial committee of the National Gallery concerning ' disordinate scantitee of cloth- Trustees has been formed in London to inge ' are not altogether inapplicable even discuss ways and means of acquiring op- to the present time : but the days when men tions on such collections and prevent them and women made themselves picturesquely from passing into the hands of Americans, ridiculous by wearing almost nothing, or 20 This anxiety is perhaps natural enough trailing the ' superfluitee of their gowns in considering that within recent years 316 the dong and in the myre,' merely in order valuable paintings were shipped out of to furnish an advertisement of their social England to private and public galleries in status, are gone to return no more. There the United States. If actually faced with, are no more Sumptuary Laws, and, to 25 the problem the British Government would speak broadly, the dressmakers' ' matcher ' probably be unwilling to permit the steady may come out tomorrow in just such an- drain on its art treasures, as the Italian other costume for shape and style as her Government was when it passed a law for- employer has been 'creating' today for bidding the exportation of masterpieces the greatest lady in the land. 3° from the country. And while no Amer- * The problem, then, for the original de- ican collector will deny the British pub- signer is hedged about with limitations, lie's right to first opportunity of buying He can do no more than ring the changes British art works, the ground upon which on a round of styles that can be har- this committee chooses to advocate the ex- monized with the thing we call a ' skirt,' 35. ercise of that right is little short of of- •and when he attempts to take a flight be- fensive. yond the experiments of the past he will ' American millionaires,' declared one generally land himself in an impossible art authority, testifying before the corn- situation. The most practical of Bakst's mittee, ' find the collecting of old masters ■designs for modern costume are merely 40 more amusing than other ways of spend- charming adaptations of past styles. The ing money. It produces more social re- lovely drawing, reproduced in color for turn than other ways.' Another said: this article, differs but little in idea from 'American millionaires make collections a creation of any well-known house, save to advertise themselves, to a certain extent, for the arrangement of lace upon the arms 45 expecting to get back their money in other — a point designed to lend originality to ways.' Said a third: 'There is a great the dress, but in reality the sole feature rush for art by American millionaires who which in any other pose but that of the really do not care much about it.' drawing itself would be impossible. These charges are too absurd to require Yet, when all is said, it would be un- 50 refutation. In Philadelphia alone we have seemly to carp in any serious spirit at the the example of great collections — the experiments of an artist to whom we owe Widener, the Johnson and the McFadden, so mVich pure enjoyment, and whose genius for example — assembled with discriminat- for design ranging over so wide a field ing taste and carefully guarded from any- finds almost .nothing which it cannot at 55 thing resembling publicity or ' social re- oi^ce assimilate and adorn with some orig- turn.' It is America's pride and her hope inal feature of its own making. of being the future art centre of the world, that her richest citizens have interested. 386 WRITING OF TODAY themselves in art and are importing the would have us concentrate our attention rarest masterpieces of antiquity to hang in on the blending and harmonizing of color private galleries and — as many have al- masses, certainly a most laudable object in ready done — eventually to donate whole itself, but not if it is allowed to distract priceless collections to the use and educa- 5 the attention from, and blind the vision to, tion of the public. the larger problem of which it is only a part. It is not too much to say that in the ma- JX jority of gardens, and in suburban gar- 10 dens especially, we have more evidences THE GARDEN AS A MEANS OF of an utter lack of any kind of artistic per- ARTISTIC EXPRESSION ceptl °, n th /" ln an ^ other class of feature capable 01 becoming a medium for art ex- THOMAS H. MAWSON pression. Either an absurd effort is made 15 to imitate the glories of Nature on half an [Studio Yearbook of Decorative Art (John Lane acre of ground, and to include in this area Usher] 1913 " By permission of author and pub ' every class of scenery, hill and vale, rock and swamp, in absurd miniature and hope- From the dawn of literature and art to less jumble, with impossible bridges over the present day, poets have sung and ar- 20 invisible streams and little erections shiny tists have painted the incomparable charms with varnish and hideous with cheap col- of the garden. Whether by this term we ored glass, or, on the other hand, the conjure up to the mind a vision of par- ground is parcelled out into confessedly terres neat and prim, and with each por- utilitarian plots for the culture of ' speci- tion of the design carefully balanced 25 mens.' against every other, or, on the contrary, Neither course is right, for both are ex- the rank profusion and free unrestrained tremes, and extreme measures in art, as in growth of the wild garden with its direct all things, rarely point the way to perfec- tribute to the supreme beauty of Nature, tion. Instead we must have, first of all, a we shall find that, since man's earliest 30 clear impression of the possibilities of all ages, there has not been wanting apprecia- the factors which go to the making of a tion for the incomparable possibilities of garden, whether architecture, trees, green- the garden on the part of those who have sward, rock, water, roads and paths, or been leaders in art and letters in every lawns for games, as well as of their rela- generation. 35 tive functions, and from these materials When we add to this fact the considera- we must build up our picture, or rather tion that, not only has Holy Writ placed series of pictures, for one of the greatest before us a garden as the scene of many charms with which we can invest the gar- of the most sacred as well as the most stir- den will be that of a certain complexity ring episodes, but that ancient mythology 4° which will give variety and prevent sati- has almost invariably appealed to the pop- ety. These two considerations interact on ular mind at one point or another by means one another and cannot be considered of a garden, it becomes almost impossible apart, or we shall fall afresh into the er- to conceive how the modern neglect of rors of the gardeners of a century ago, gardening as a means of serious art ex- 45 and even earlier, who, subordinating pression can have come about. everything to the creation of ' effects,' Instead of the intelligent enthusiasm ended in reducing their works to a series which one would expect such a heritage of startling caricatures. Each walk or of tradition to engender, we find today drive was so contrived as to bring the be- that the vast majority of people, if they 50 holder suddenly opposite some daring cre- trouble to define the purpose of a garden ation in which sham churches or ruins and at all, would consider it merely as a place hummocky foreground and other stage for the cultivation of individual specimens scenery played a prominent part. These of flowering plants or shrubs for their in- and other curious devices, such as sun- trinsic beauty alone, and would show no 55 dials which squirted water at the person consciousness whatever for the possibili- who approached them (from one of which ties for collective effect which it presents, the present site of the London County Others, more in sympathy with their work, Council Offices obtained its name), might J. ART CRITICISM 387 amuse when first seen, but, on familiarity, older style had been dragged by puerile amusement would give place to satiety and imitators who had copied its forms with- satiety to disgust, for, of all things, the out in the slightest understanding its tone of a well-ordered garden should be spirit. restful, and familiarity, instead of breed- 5 The battle of the styles was in full swing ing contempt, should give a greater and when Schiller wrote, in 1795, ' There will fuller realization of its many charms as be found in all probability a very good well as adding the delights of old as- middle course between the formality of the sociation. French gardening-taste and the lawless This, then, is the garden of our dreams, 10 freedom of the so-called English style,' a place where our highest and best in- and it has been going on ever since, stincts may find satisfaction, cut off from There are, however, strong indications the jarring notes and sordid features of that a solution of the difficulty is being the outside world, and where we may find found at last along the lines indicated by at all times coolness and brightness and a 15 the writer just quoted, and that in taking temptation to rest, and where ' retired from each style all that it has to teach us, Leisure ' may ' in trim gardens take his acknowledging, on the one hand, Nature's pleasure.' _ preeminent and unique example, and, on To realize such a garden we must know, the other, the claims that a style which first of all, what are the materials which 20 has come down to us from remote ages, we may legitimately use in its creation, and each generation adding its own vision to then, treating these as the artist views his the -conception, must have upon our re- pigments, how we may blend and use them spectful consideration, and what limitations their physical prop- We are fast coming to see that, while erties will impose upon us. 25 the Formal style is to be preferred in Immediately we approach our task, how- conjunction with architecture, the Land- ever, we are confronted with two distinct scape style also has its uses where Nature schools of garden designers, having dia- reigns; and so, by the use of both, or metrically opposed ideas as to the methods rather, of a style which makes more use to be employed and the results to be aimed 3° of the precedent of the one mode near the at. The two styles they advocate may, for mansion and more and more of the fea- want of better titles, be called the ' For- tures of the other as we recede from it, we mal ' and ' Landscape ' styles. The for- are able to blend Nature with Art in a mer of these aims at a balanced and co- harmonious manner. -ordinated entity which shall frankly and 35 The greatest result of this clearly indi- confessedly be a work of art, made to cated promise of the dawn of a truly na- please, and culling for its use the best tional school of garden design which has from all. the arts and sciences; while the taken place so far is the recognition ac- latter aims at taking Nature as its guide, corded to the profession of Landscape Ar- and avoiding, or rather consciously ignor- 40 chitecture, or, as the writer would prefer ing, every possible suggestion of conven- to have it named, ' Topographical Archi- tionalization or, indeed, of design as usu- tecture,' the art of planning over large ;ally understood in other arts. areas. This art, which aims more at co- Which of these two schools of garden ordinating and correlating the various makers we are to follow will, I think, be 45 units than at the designing of the units , abundantly clear if we look into their themselves, has had its professors in every' origin. We shall then find that, whereas generation — Haussmann in Paris, Sir the former, the Formal, style of design, is Christopher Wren in London, the brothers •of ancient origin and has been developed Adam in Edinburgh, and so on, but by that same form of evolution which has 50 these have had to work, one might almost governed the production of every other say, by stealth, and rather as designers of ■class of art, and in particular in its closest buildings overstepping their province than relative, architecture, the latter is an up- as professors of a distinct branch of art, start fashion which sprang up around a requiring for its due presentment a dis- half-truth which had become a catch 55 tinct and very liberal training, ■phrase, which was that ' All Nature is a This last phrase strikes the key-note of ■garden fair,' and owed its opportunity to the whole matter with all its problems, for -the extravagant lengths into which the it is almost entirely due to the utter lack of 388 WRITING OF TODAY any appreciation of the necessity for what ever, represent the best results of that I have called ' a distinct and very liberal ideal arrangement only to be reached when training ' which has resulted in the neglect a capable and enthusiastic practitioner of the art and the abundant possibilities of works under the inspiring influence and its application which have always existed 5 with the practical help of a sympathetic and which are to be found on every hand client, himself strongly imbued with the today, unrecognized and undeveloped, artistic sense and able to sympathize with While every other branch of art demands difficulties and rejoice when they are over- from its votaries, not only a heaven-born come. genius, but also a knowledge of the prece- 10 Another contributing cause to the con- dent of his art and a technical training in fusion of which I have complained, and the use of his media, it would seem to be which it is my object to remove, is the lack tacitly agreed by most people in this coun- of good textbooks by competent authori- ty that any ordinary and not very gifted ties dealing with the subject of garden de- individual should be able to evolve from 15 sign. While we have a plethora of gar- his inner consciousness, without previous den books, they are by amateurs for ama- training or experience, all the qualities for teurs, by domestic architects for architects, the laying out of parks, gardens, boule- or by horticulturalists on horticulture, and vards, or even the artistic presentment of never, broadly speaking, since Repton's whole cities. The most notable, or should 20 days, by landscape architects for garden I say notorious, result of this state of designers. things is that, in this country, practically And now for my confession, lest my ul- all our public parks and gardens have been terior motives should be discovered uncon- laid out by amateurs in a manner which is f essed ! My chief aim, nay, almost my puerile and utterly abhorrent to any one »5 whole aim, in writing this article is the with any artistic sense, and their architec- hope that I may influence some of the ture is chosen from the catalogues of the younger generation of art students, among makers of iron buildings. whom the Studio Year Book may circu- There are exceptions of course, simply late, to make one or other of the two great because once in a century or so it happens 30 sub-divisions of the profession of Land- by chance that the work falls into the scape Architecture (Civic Art and Land- hands of the right man; but the average scape Gardening) their life study, city councilor or borough official is not It is with the latter, and in many ways chosen for his post on account of his devo- the more entrancing, of these two sub- tion to art, but for his executive, financial, 35 divisions that we are more particularly or technical ability, and to expect such a concerned at present. Its aim is so to gentleman, however gifted in his own group and arrange the various factors sphere, suddenly whenever called upon, which go to the making of the modern do- like Shelley's skylark, to pour out from a main, and so to design and embellish them full heart ' profuse strains of unpremedi- 40 that they form a composite whole beauti- tated art ' would strike one as utterly im- ful in itself, thus adding to the attractions possible were it not done so often. of the individual features by providing for We thus come across this strange result them a suitable setting and by harmony that, whereas in this country our splendid and contrast. That there should be any country seats, laid out by the great garden 45 need to urge students of art to take up this designers of the past, are incomparably work speaks volumes for the low and beautiful, our public gardens, as I have al- neglected state into which the whole art ready said, leave much, very much, to be of garden design has fallen, and it is my desired ; while in other countries, and espe- earnest wish that the profession to which daily in the United States of America and 50 I have devoted my life should in the future in France, the reverse is the case, and be more adequately represented by men while the public works, like the gardens who have had a catholic art training, such and boulevards of Paris, have a world- as will enable them to combat the mass of wide reputation, the private gardens, de- misconception of the nature and functions, signed by amateurs, are on the whole in- 55 of garden design which at present sur- ferior to ours. Exception must be made, rounds the whole subject, of course, in favor of the world-famous There is another misconception which gardens to the villas of Italy, which, how- has tended to prevent suitable men taking- J. ART CRITICISM 389 up the work of garden design, due to the many-sided his work and training will be. failure to differentiate between garden It is a far cry from the point at which he making and gardening. I would even go first stands on the vacant site, and maps so far as to say that a knowledge of the out in his mind the rudiments of his sciences of horticulture and arboriculture, 5 scheme, to the day when he designs the while extremely desirable, is not essential finishing touches' and carefully balances to the landscape architect. It is sufficient sun-dials, statuary, and the smaller furnish- if he knows what effects are possible and ings of the garden in height, breadth and what he may use under varying circum- bulk against the open spaces surrounding stances, for the task of materializing his 10 them, or against the proportions of the designs will fall, not upon him, but upon vista the termination of which the feature the working gardener. is to mark. Between these two points, This is only true, of course, in an ab- which, in time, may possibly be separated stract sense, for I should always recom- by months and even years of patient en- mend that a student should have a general 15 deavor, will come a mass of questions to acquaintance with these sciences; still it be decided and problems to be met which, serves to illustrate my point, and, anyway, while they will call forth the best and there are many other subjects which are highest that is in him, will also prove of still more essential to him. Perhaps the most absorbing interest at every turn, chief of these is a knowledge of architec- 20 Nor is there the possibility of the slightest ture and a deep and real sympathy with sameness in this work. Quite apart from the aims and inspirations of its exponents ; the enormous difference between public for not only will there be more or less and private gardens in spirit and intent, constructional work in all his schemes, but no two sites are the same, and every cli- in almost every case he will be called upon 25 ent's requirements will differ, so that orig- to work in collaboration with a domestic inality is inevitable and will be of the best architect. This knowledge, too, will have sort, that is, of that form which proceeds to be of the most catholic nature, for, gen- not from a desire to avoid sameness but erally speaking, the landscape architect which springs naturally from a proper will be called upon to harmonize his 30 treatment of the individual problems pe- scheme with preexistent architecture culiar to the particular site under treat- which may be in any one of the number- ment. less styles prevailing or in no style what- This rapid survey of some of the more ever. In the latter case there is, of course, essential requirements of the landscape ar- opportunity for the exercise of genius of 35 chitect serves to show us something of the the highest order if the grotesque efforts complexity, as well as of the charm, of the of an amateur in architectural design are art of garden making. What more en- so to be backed up by their surroundings trancing task could there be than one in that defects are remedied or, at least, nega- which we are constantly employed in the tived and lack of proportion removed by 40 creation of the beautiful, not merely with the addition of balancing features. the pigments of the artist for the edifica- Another requirement of the professor of tion of the few who have the specialized garden making, which, however, must: training to feel and understand, but to be necessarily be more born than made, is the a delight, in some sort at least, to every power so to interpret his vision of beauties 45 beholder, and to be produced not in coun-- to be to others that he fills them with his terfeit presentment by pigments but by the own enthusiasm for the beautiful and manipulation of the actual objects them- gains their assent to his proposals and selves. This very fact, of course, invests their active cooperation. This is the most the work with a special difficulty which is difficult task of all, but as I have dealt 50 shared with the sculptor and which is that, with it at length on many other occasions, while the painter or engraver selects his it is unnecessary to do more than call at- point of view and composes his scheme tention to it now. from that point alone, the garden designer To these subjects will have to be added and sculptor have each to create a compo- a knowledge in the round of road en- 55 sition which shall be equally beautiful gineering, land draining, and almost every from every point from which it may be ob- form of constructional work and estate served, management. It will thus be seen how There is, however, a reciprocal relation- 39° WRITING OF TODAY ship between the practical and esthetic in styles and on a large scale, the foliage ef- garden design which differentiates it from fects must necessarily be kept so entirely every other form of art. The landscape subservient to the purely architectural por- architect is more bound by, or rather his tions of the scheme that only trees and art is more controlled by, practical and s shrubs which may be reduced to definite utilitarian limitations than any other and conventional form by the use of the branch except, perhaps, domestic architec- knife and shears can be used, such as cor- ture. Even in this instance, however, dons, hedges, and screens of foliage. On there is one great factor which is peculiar the opposite hand, as I have pointed out in to his art and which is not shared by 10 one of my books, there is no sense of ra- the domestic architect. This arises from congruity felt when even the tiniest of cot- the fact that he has to deal with two tages is overhung by the largest trees, in distinct classes of objects, the inani- fact the greater the contrast the greater mate, which is fixed and abiding, and the sense of protection from winter storms the animate, which is constantly chang- 15 and summer heat. Between these two ex- ing with the seasons and even from tremes there is infinite gradation, and half Hour to hour. The former class is rep- the training of the student of the form of resented by the architectural features applied art which we are discussing will incorporated with his scheme, the con- be complete when he has learned so much tours and levels of the various portions of 20 of the laws of proportion as will enable the site, whether natural or controlled, him unerringly to decide how much of and, to a lesser degree, the distant pros- each, foliage and architecture, may be used pect, which may have an important func- in any class of scheme and where the tion to perform in the completion of his mass of each should be placed, effects. The latter class is composed of 25 From what I have said it will be seen the whole available range of the native and that modern needs and modern opportuni- naturalized vegetable products, from the ties are almost compelling the creation of oak to the cactus, in all their almost .be- what is practically a new profession and wilderingly divergent forms, sizes, and one which possesses the greatest attrac- esthetic qualities. We must also add to 30 tions for the art student with a pronounced it one feature which, although really inani- love of architecture, arboriculture, and the mate, still possesses all the qualities of allied arts, and who is filled, at the same variableness, otherwise almost entirely pe- time, with a practical enthusiasm for the culiar to animate nature, in a most re- betterment of the conditions under which markable degree. That is water, without 35 his fellowmen labor and live. To create which, in some form or other, very few beauty, not only of form and environment landscape compositions can be deemed to but also of mind and moral atmosphere, is be complete, and about the use and adap- a task which should inspire the best and tation of which to the garden a whole vol- noblest type of mind and supply food suf- ume might be written. 40 ficient, both in quantity and quality, for It is no light task to create a composi- the greatest intellect. The student who tion in which the animate and inanimate decides to take up this work need never shall combine and harmonize from all fear that he will not have scope for the points of view at all times and in every best and the highest that is in him, or that season. In some cases, of course, espe- 45 he will ever find his work pall or anything cially in heroic compositions in which the he is called upon to do lacking in intense architecture is in the traditionally classic and vital interest. THE END