Writing of today: models of journalistic prose

GIFT or

RICIiARD D. MORGAN

WRITING OF TODAY

WRITING OF TODAY:

MODELS OF JOURNALISTIC PROSE

Selected and Discussed by

J. W. CUNLIFFE, D.Lit

Professor of English and Director of

The School of Journalism, Columbia

University

and

GERHARD R. LOMER, Ph.D.

Formerly Instructor in English in the School of

Journalism. Columbia University; Librarian,

McGill University

THIRD AND REVISED EDITION

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.

1923

Copyright, 1915, 1919, 1922, by
The Centuby Co.

First Edition, August, 1915
Second Edition, May, 1919
Third Edition, April, 1922

PRINTED IN U.

T/\/4m
c $■

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

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 literally 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 every-day 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 classroom 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
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

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PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION

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 anony-
mously, 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.

July, 1915.

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION

The generous welcome given to the first two issues of 'Writing of Today*
has prompted the preparation of a third edition with such improvements as
have been suggested by our own and others' experience in using the book for
teaching purposes. We wish again to express our gratitude to those who have
found time, amid the heavy responsibilities of teaching English composition, to
send us not only words of approval and encouragement, but criticisms whereby
the book has been made more effective for the purpose for which it was de-
signed. Some sections have been entirely recast, and none has been left with-
out alteration. Considerable changes were necessitated by the publication of
new and more timely material from which selections could be made. We wish
to renew our thanks to the authors and publishers whose generosity has made
it possible to combine variety of topic and treatment with a high standard of
literary excellence.

April, 1922.

CONTENTS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

A. Descriptive Articles

Kansas City Henry J. Haskell

World's Work, January, 1921

The Street Simeon Strunsky

Atlantic Monthly, February, 1914

Coney Island at Night James Huneker .

New York Herald, August 19, 1906

The Black Fog Herman Scheffauer

Atlantic Monthly, February, 1908

The Day of Glory Dorothy Canfield

Collier's, January II, 1919

Constantinople . Arthur Symons .

Graphic, London, Eng., October 19, 1918

The City That Was Will Irwin . .

Sun, New York, April 21, 1006

Pueblo in Flood Ray Humphreys

Denver Times, June 6, 1921

The Return of a Native .... P. W. Wilson .
North American Review, January, 1922

Seagulls in London W. H. Hudson .

Observer, London, Eng., January 16, 192 1

The Secret Door

Sir Paul Dukes

Atlantic Monthly, July, 192 1

My Experience in the Movies . . . Mary Roberts Rinehart
American Magazine, October, 1920

B. Narrative Articles

I International Oratory at the Washing-

ton Conference

Elmer Davis

II
III
IV

V

New York Times, December 11, 1921

The Birth of Sinn Fein .... Seumas MacManus .
New York Times, February 2, 1919

The Stranger Within Our Gates . . Adriana Spadoni .
New York Evening Post, September 10, 192 1

The Amazing Armistice .... Arthur Hornblow, Jr.
Century Magazine, November, 1921

England Honors Unknown Soldier . Sir Philip Gibbs . •
New York Times, November 12, 1920
vii

CONTENTS

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

I

II
III
IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

The 'Unknown Soldier' Arrives at

Washington Kirke L. Simpson

Associated Press Night Report, November 9, 1921

My First Flight .

H. G. Wells

American Magazine, December, 1912

By Bombing Plane to France . . . R. P. Hearne .
Sphere, London, Eng., December 28, 1918

Shooting the Rapids

Christian Science Monitor, November 23, 1920

Adrift in a Blizzard F. F. Van De Water

New York Tribune, March 29, 1919

A Letter Written After the Messina Disaster

McClure's Magazine, May, igcfg

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 2, 1912

The Death of Captain Scott . Lieut. E. R. G. R. Evans, R
New York Times, February 11, 1913

C. Interviews and Personal Sketches

Woodrow Wilson's Recovery . . . Louis Seibold .
World, New York, June 18, 1920

Lenine Robert Minor

World, New York, February 4, 19 19

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

Story Stalking with Merrick . . . R. C. Feld .
New York Times, January 1, 1922

Theodore Roosevelt Lyman Abbot .

Outlook, January 15, 1919

The Roosevelt Spirit is not Dead . . Julian Street .
Collier's, February 1, 1919

Mr. Lloyd George at the Guildhall . . Harold Begbie .
Daily Chronicle, London, Eng., November n, 1918

Joffre lean Richepin .

Translated from Le Figaro, August 30, 191 5

Marshall Foch's Return from the

U. S. A Stephane Lauzanne

Translated from Le Matin, December 19, 1921

Joseph Pulitzer: Reminiscences of a

Secretary Alleyne Ireland .

Metropolitan, October, 1913 — February, 1914

N.

77
80
82

84
86

87
92

95
103

105
109
in
116
118
121
123
126
129

131
133

CONTENTS

ix

XII Henry Watterson

Christian Science Monitor, December 23, 1921

XIII Mary White William Allen White

Emporia Gazette, May 16, 1921

XIV A Genius of the Short Story . . . Kathleen Norris .

Cosmopolitan, September, 1918

XV From Vaudeville to Opera in a Year Pierre V. R. Key .
Harper's Bazaar, February, 1919

D. Expository and Editorial Articles

I The Editorial Writer's Opportunity . Arthur Brisbane .
New York Evening Journal, November 12, 1912

II The Lusitania Anniversary . . . Frank H. Simonds
New York Tribune, May 7, J9i6

III Vae Victis! Henry Watterson

Louisville Courier Journal, April 7, 1917

IV Law and the Jungle H. E. Newbranch

Evening World-Herald, Omaha, Neb. September 30, 1919

V My Ideal of the True University . . Woodrow Wilson

Delineator, November, 1909

VI Materialism and Idealism in America . George Santayana
Landmark, London, Eng., January, 1919

VII Japan's Thwarted Emigration . . . Walter Weyl .

Asia, May, 1918

VIII The Problem of Living Things . . John Burroughs .

Independent, October 2, 1913

IX Science from the Side-Lines . . . Edwin E. Slosson

(Editor, Science Service)
Century Magazine, January, 1922

X John Dewey's Philosophy .... Randolph S. Bourne .
New Republic, March 13, 1915

XI France

A. Clutton Brock .

Times, London, Eng., October 2, 1914

XII A Retrospect of the War .... J. L. Garvin . . . .
Observer, London, Eng., November 17, 1918

XIII Will Marks Ever Recover? , . . . John Maynard Keynes .

New York Evening Post, April 9, 1921

XIV The Future of the World .... A. J. Balfour . . .

Landmark, London, Eng., January, 1919

XV Tradition Joseph Conrad .

Daily Mail, London, Eng., March 8, 1918

XVI Manners Makyth Man

New York Times, April 16, 1921

XVII Early South Dakotans

New York Times, April 24, 1921

PAGE
139

I40

142

144

148
I50
153
154
156
l6l
166
168
172

176
179
l8l

185

187
189

192
193

CONTENTS

PAGB

E. Humorous and Occasional Articles

I The Devil and the Deep Sea . . . Stephen B. Leacock . . .195
University Magazine, December, 19 10

II System versus Slippers . . . . . George Burwell Dutton . . 200
Unpopular Review, April, 1915

III The Oldest Living Graduate 205

Sun, New York, January 30, 1901

IV Sleeping Outdoors Frederick Lewis Allen . . 207

Century Magazine, November, 1913

V Hairpins 209

Sun, New York, May 19, 1902

VI The Improved Baby 210

Sun, New York, September 2, 1903

VII The Porter's Tip 211

Chicago Tribune, May 9, 191 5

VIII How to Throw Off an Article 212

Punch, London, Eng., January 8, 1919

IX Head and Background 213

New York Times, November 4, 1920

X Saying It with Flowers .... Franklin P. Adams . . .213

Harper's Monthly Magazine, April, 1921

XI Eat, Drink, and be Merry— For To-
morrow Ye Diet Don Marquis . . . .215

American Magazine, October, 1921

XII The Lady Bum By One of Them. . . . 220

New York Times, January 1, 1922

XIII The Potters— Pa and Ma Go to the

Opera J. P. McEvoy .... 224

Chicago Tribune, January 1, 1922

F. Controversial Articles

I The Case for Equality George Bernard Shaw . . 227

Metropolitan, December, 1913

II The Case for Inequality .... Lincoln Steffens .... 235
Metropolitan, February, 1914

III Socialism . Theodore Roosevelt . . . 238

Outlook, March 20 and 27, 1909

IV The Menace to Journalism .... Roscoe C. E. Brown . . 245

North American Review, November, 1921

V Publicity— and Its Ethics .... Atherton Brownell . . 250
North American Review, February, 1922

VI A Comment Roscoe C. E. Brown . . 255

North American Review, February, 1922

CONTENTS xi

VII Is the Girl of Today as Bad as She 's

Painted? 'Indeed She Is!' . . . Kathleen Norris . . . . 256
Pictorial Review, January, 1922

VIII Is the Girl of Today as Bad as She 's

Painted? T Should Say Not P . . Corra Harris . . . . 260
Pictorial Review, January, 1922

IX Do Women Dress to Please Men? —

Yes Charlotte Perkins Gilman . 264

Century Magazine, March, 1922

X Do Women Dress to Please Men? —

No Alexander Black . . . 266

Century Magazine, March, 1922

G. Literary Criticism

I The Sins of Book Reviewers . . . Henry Seictel Canby . . 270

Bookman, October, 1921

II The Organization of Modern Busi-
ness 273

New York Evening Post, December 31, 1921

III The Friendly Arctic 274

Christian Science Monitor, January 4, 1922

IV Mr. Bryan's Speeches Philip Littell . . . . . 277

New Republic, December 5, 1914

V Parnell Francis Hackett .... 279

New Republic, December 5, 1914

VI John Synge Stuart P. Sherman . . .281

New York Evening Post, January II, 1913

VII Mrs. Wharton's World Robert Herrick .... 287

New Republic, February 13, 1915

VIII The Most Heroic Effort .... John Masefield .... 290

Manchester Guardian, Eng., November 14, 1918 ....

IX The Fallacy of Free Verse . . . Theodore Maynard . . . 291

Yale Review, January, 1922

X Plays in Verse Edmund Gosse .... 297

Sunday Times, London, Eng., December n, 1921

H. Articles on Drama, Music, and Art

I Playwrights and Professors . . . Walter Prichard Eaton . . 301
Theatre Arts Magazine, January, 1920

II Some Platitudes Concerning Drama . John Galsworthy . . . 303
Fortnightly Review, London, Eng., December, 1909

III Writing Plays Arnold Bennett .... 307

Metropolitan, July, 1913

IV The Irish Drama William Butler Yeats . ,313

Twentieth Century Magazine, November, 191 1

Xll

CONTENTS

V The Merchant of Venice at the old

Vic St. John Ervine .

Observer, London, Eng., January 15, 1922

VI World Premiere of Madame Sans-

Gene W. J. Henderson

Sun, New York, January 26, 191 5

VII Miss Hinkle with the Boston Sym-
phony Philip Hale .

Boston Herald, December 19, 1914

VIII Mr. Coates and the New York Sym-
phony Richard Aldrich .

New York Times, January 2, 1922

IX Miss Myra Hess's Piano Recital . . Richard Aldrich .
New York Times, January 18, 1922

X Fallacies of the Futurists and New

Thinking G. K. Chesterton

New York Morning American, March 14, 1915

XI What August Rodin Meant in Sculp-
ture Royal Cortissoz .

New York Tribune, November 25, 191 7

XII Max Beerbohm's Drawings

New York Times, March 12, 1922

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 Mr. Arthur Symons's account of Constantinople.
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 arrangement
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 skill and power with which the modern
masters of the craft bring home to the reader's mind a definite and vivid impression or seriesi
of impressions. If he realizes appreciatively that the thing is done, he may come to under-
stand 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.

I worth twenty-five thousand dollars this

year, ten years hence may sell for ten

KANSAS CITY thousand, not because the building has

depreciated but because the neighborhood
HENRY J. HASKELL 5 has changed. With every decade resi-

dence neighborhoods in the average city
Of the Kansas City Star undergo transformation. Business en-

ms ,i> m u t t> • • i croaches. A public garage or an under-

[Worlds Work, January, 1921. By permission.] , ,. , ,,1. • & « .

taking establishment may be erected
At a recent conference of life insur- 10 next to a fine residence. Then popula-
ance officials to discuss mortgage loans, tion streams away. The home districts
one of the leading speakers urged the are thus driven hither and thither in
adoption of an inflexible rule not to lend baffling and apparently haphazard fash-
money on any residence more than ten ion.

years old. It was a striking recognition 15 These changes in residence centers en-
of the instability of residence neighbor- tail a terrific waste and economic loss,
hoods in American cities. A house It is impossible to estimate how much

3

WRITING OF TODAY

the national investment is impaired by crossings as soon as the city was rich
shifts that ought to be needless. The enough to join with its sister city across
amount must run into hundreds of mil- the Kansas line and the railroads in
lions annually. building adequate viaducts. Manufac-

The loss is not merely economic. It 5 turing establishments needing switch
falls on citizenship and on the family life tracks kept with the railroads in the
as well. It is. axiomatic that a city of bottoms of the Missouri, the Kansas, and
home owners is move subst?ntial and the Blue. So the difficult problem of
better managed than a city of renters, the grade crossing and the manufactur-
Any obstacle thrown in the way of home 10 ing district was solved by the natural
owning is an obstacle to good citizenship. features of plateau and valley.
The economic hazard that a man as- The better homes naturally began to

sumes in building a home, through the cluster on the hilltops. But difficulties
instability of residence districts, is one of arose in the grades resulting from the ar-
the great drawbacks to home building. 15 bitrary application of the characteristic
Men hesitate to make a large investment American gridiron plan of rectangular
that is not within their power to protect, streets, and in the undesirable houses and
In every city of any size there are thou- small industries that covered the waste
sands of families that have had the expe- lands of the valleys or draws, as the
rience of losing the value of their homes. 20 West calls them. These impossible build-
What must be their attitude toward the ings were constantly encroaching on the
municipality that permits such injus- better homes. They menaced residence
tices? What must be the effect of such property values and they were hopelessly
an experience on a man's civic pride and ugly and inadequate for modern needs,
citizenship? 25 In the early '8o's, just as the town was

Here is the story of a typical American beginning to realize vaguely and uneasily
city that has made a certain contribution that something was wrong, the miracle
toward the solution of the problem of home of a creative mind appeared in Kansas
making through the stabilizing of residence City. William Rockhill Nelson, founder,
centers. Kansas City is situated at the 3° and for thirty-five years editor, of the
great bend of the Missouri River, where Kansas City Star, was that rare com-
it sweeps in from the north, at the mouth bination, a dreamer and idealist who was
of the Kansas River, and turns east to at the same time an aggressive, resource-
the Mississippi. Here great bluffs rise ful, practical man of affairs. Going to
from the Kansas and Missouri bottoms. 35 Kansas City from Fort Wayne, Ind., in
The bottoms, on water grade, naturally 1880, he found an overgrown country
became the site of a maze of railroad village, without a mile of paved street,
yards and manufacturing plants. The Mr. Nelson at once recognized the possi-
business and residence sections climbed bilities of beauty in the hills on which
the bluffs to the highlands south of the 4° the city was built. Three months after
Missouri, between the Kansas River on his newspaper was established he began
the west and the Blue River on the east, urging a park system. The campaign
Here it found itself on a rolling plateau lasted for fifteen years before it ended
gashed east and west by two minor in success. The outcome was the adop-
streams, O. K. Creek and Brush Creek, 45 tion of a charter amendment that per-
each with its tributary valleys. Thus mitted the city to acquire land for park
the town site was spread over a series and boulevard purposes through bene-
of hills and vales. This topography fit districts; imposing the expenses of the
partly solved the zoning problem for improvement on the property benefited.
Kansas City. Railroads, for instance, 5o At the same time the city was fortunate
are apt to enter a flat city haphazard, to find in A. R. Meyer and George E.
putting it unnecessarily to immense in- Kessler a president for the park board
convenience. They could reach Kansas and a landscape architect who compre-
City only by the water level of the Mis- hended the problem and were sufficiently
souri and Kansas Rivers, and by the O. 55 imaginative and resourceful to deal witn
K. Creek valley just south of the heart it in a broad way. They outlined the
of the business district. These valley scheme for "tieing together" the scat-
entrances solved the question of grade tered residence groups on the hilltops by

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES

means of boulevards through the draws. families settled. The matter of build-
They also perceived that certain salient ing restrictions had not yet been carried
features of topography were inevitable to a satisfactory conclusion. Homes
parts of a park and boulevard system. were still subject to the menace of
The north bluffs presented wonderful 5 business advance. Moreover, individual
scenic opportunities. Here was carved home builders proved insufficiently social-
ClifT Drive, overlooking the Missouri ized to provide the harmonious develop-
Valley for miles. At the southeast cor- ment required for the attractive residence
ner of the city, ten miles from the bluffs, district. It was hardly possible that such
was Swope Park, a tract about two miles I0 deficiencies could be met at that time by
long by a mile wide, the gift of a citizen, municipal action. Individual initiative
Thomas H. Swope. Obviously there was needed. Fortunately it was at hand.
was reason for a belt line boulevard While the park and boulevard system

around the city, including Cliff Drive and was being worked out by the municipality,
reaching Swope Park from the north and l5 Mr. Nelson's restless mind was busy with
west. Valleys within the city contributed the possibilities of the territory imme-
boulevard feeders to the trunk system. diately about his home. This he had built
These valley boulevards were particularly in the late '8o's considerably beyond the
beautiful, for they gave picturesque park southern limit of the residence district,
areas almost in the heart of the city. 20 In order to protect his place and give
Perhaps for this reason they exerted a scope to his plans he acquired two hun-
profound influence on the districts through dred acres in the neighborhood and began,
which they ran. In many instances hov- as he said, to play with it. He found re-
els were cleared away to make room for laxation in designing and building houses
the boulevard. The houses that took 25 and putting them in harmonious groups,
their place, while not remarkable and Often he treated the block as the unit in-
often commonplace, at least were infinitely stead of the individual house. Each
better than their predecessors. As a re- house in the block might be of identical
suit Kansas City has miles of small homes design, but the block harmonized with
fronting on boulevards, and these homes 30 the blocks adjacent. He used shrubbery
have given character to whole neighbor- profusely, and where his first winding
hoods. The boulevards thus did much to drive, Rockhill Road, crossed Brush
stabilize residence districts. Creek, he set an example by constructing

Reference has been made to the fact a charming two arch stone bridge. The
that the boulevards were constructed on 35 town had been accustomed to crossing its
the Henry George system of taxing the streams with what he derisively called
costs against the property benefited. A 'tin bridges.' By the time he had con-
few years ago a park board had a care- structed something like one hundred
ful study made of the effect of boulevard houses it was apparent that he had
construction on residence values. This 40 achieved a new thing, so far as Kansas
showed that property fronting on the City was concerned, in city building. He
boulevards, after paying the cost of con- had made a district of homes, provided
struction, had reaped an appreciation of by restrictions in the deeds against busi-
from 45 to 500 per cent, above the appre- ness invasions, given the residents a new
ciation of other property in the neighbor- 45 sense of security, and created a commun-
hood. ity atmosphere.

The boulevards thus helped to zone the His work was destined to have a wider

city, to prevent the establishing of slum influence than he could have imagined
districts, to provide ample areas for low when he began. Toward the end of the'
price homes, to create attractive vistas, 50 completion of this development a dozen
and to furnish water grade thoroughfares years ago, another practical dreamer set-
of enormous importance with the. growth tied in Kansas City. He was J. C.
of motor traffic. They did not solve the Nichols, a country boy from Kansas, who
problem of giving the security necessary had been graduated from the University
to a permanent anchorage for residence 55 of Kansas, and then had taken a year at
districts, or of developing the individual Harvard. Commencing to deal in real
home atmosphere and the community estate in as big a way as unlimited en-
pride that contribute toward keeping thusiasm and strictly limited capital

WRITING OF TODAY

would permit, he was impressed by what topography and traffic. All main thor-
had been accomplished in Rockhill. He ough fares were made broad, with one
believed it would be possible to repeat double boulevard and parkway from two
the achievement on a commercial scale, hundred and twenty-five to five hundred

Adjoining the Rockhill district on the 5 feet across. Residence streets were re-
south was an indefinite expanse of waste duced from the conventional width of
land, covered with dairy barns, hog lots, sixty feet to fifty, forty and finally to
rubbish dumps, stone quarries, slaughter thirty, except under unusual conditions
pens, pastures, and truck gardens. It that made even narrower ways desirable,
was accessible only by roads that were 10 Twenty-four feet of paving on the aver-
impassable a large part of the year. This age residence street was decided on as
territory, Mr. Nichols became convinced, giving room for three automobiles abreast
had possibilities. Here could be obtained in the hands of nervous drivers; or as
the large area which he saw it would be permitting the parking of a car on each
necessary to control in order to maintain 15 side of the street with room for a third
the character of the district. Charming car to pass between. In certain places,
blocks here and there, with ugly blocks where parallel streets lay on each side
between, would not do. A wide sweep of of a ridge, a footpath was permitted to
territory was essential to a harmonious take the place of a cross street. It was
development. With the help of men who 20 found that prospective purchasers pre-
believed in him and his plans the young ferred the seclusion and privacy of the
college graduate gradually obtained con- narrower streets, and that the absence of
trol of a thousand acres which he later a wide street area reflecting the heat of
increased to two thousand. In this area a Kansas City summer appealed to them,
he set out to create a district of homes. 25 Turf is much cooler than pavement.

His achievement was so remarkable that The length of the blocks in the Country
it became much more than a mere pri- Club district varied from 500 to 1200
vate enterprise. The Country Club dis- feet to meet the needs of the particular
trict, as it was called because of its in- local situation. Alleys were glaringly
elusion of the pioneer country club of 30 superfluous and were abolished at the out-
Kansas City, in conjunction with Rock- set. Sidewalks were laid on only one
hill, has become almost as distinctive a side of the street where such an arrange-
feature of the city as the boulevard sys- ment was convenient. Garden fronts for
tern itself. Its contributions to the homes were encouraged as making for
science of city planning are recognized by 35 privacy and as likely to help the general
engineers throughout the country. When appearance of the neighborhood by doing
it is understood that this neighborhood away with the temptation for unsightli-
community already has a population of ness from the ordinary backyard. The
fifteen thousand and that it is planned sixty miles of paved street in the district
for a population of fifty thousand, it is 40 were constructed in accordance with
evident that the very magnitude of the these principles, with the result that the
experiment gives it more than local sig- expense of waste street area, together
nificance. with the inevitable dust and heat, was

The first question Mr. Nichols had to reduced to a minimum. Ampler lots
consider in the district was a rational 45 were thus made possible, with a larger
street plan. More than a quarter of the proportion of free space. When every
entire area of Kansas City is devoted lot is built on, it is calculated that 94
to streets. The cost of paving and main- per cent, of the whole area of the dis-
taining them is very great. A large trict will remain free from building,
share of the trouble from excessive street 50 By permitting the contour of the ground
areas is due to the stupid application of to determine the location of streets, lots
the conventional checkerboard scheme of irregular shape were carved out that
which involves streets, with all their im- invited the construction of unusual types
provements, of uniform width at uni- of homes in a charming diversity,
form intervals, without regard to grades 55 Once the street scheme was under way
or traffic needs. One of the principles the problem of the individual home
of the new district was to lay out streets forced itself on the attention. Mr.
in accordance with the requirements of Nichols provided that the plans for every

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES

house must be approved by the central ness. In half of these, development work
office. The main question was not what already has been done. The others are
a house would cost, but whether it was still reserved. The center at Sixty-third
adapted to its lot and to the surround- and Brookside is typical. The first build-
ings. Even its color must be passed on. 5 ing there was a Standard Oil filling sta-
The detached garage is a problem every- rtion. Up to this time such stations had
where, and this supervision was made to been bare and ugly. The Standard Oil
cover all outbuildings as to location, de- management permitted the Nichols staff
sign, and color. to design and erect a charming brick

Neighborhoods were set aside for par- 10 building surrounded by shrubbery. A
ticular types of houses that seemed espe- fire and police station came next. It was
daily adapted to them. One secluded lit- constructed in the Old English style of
tie valley was devoted to the Old English architecture and looks like a dwelling,
type. Another district was restricted to not a fire and police station. Then a
Colonial houses, another to Italian. The 15 large building of half timber construction
architectural styles were emphasized with in English design was erected to house
appropriate benches, vases, and other dec- shops on the first floor, and a community
orative features in the parkways. Street hall seating five hundred persons on the
names were selected with a view to their second. The building was set back from
fitness, such as Pembroke Lane, Mission 20 the sidewalk to afford lawn and free
Drive, Santa Fe Road. space, the shops were decorated as care-

In order to promote the sale of property fully as a home, large signs and gaudy
and to encourage good architectural show windows were forbidden. Office
standards, it was determined to build space was provided on the second floor
groups of small houses for sale. One 25 and the hall was available for clubs, lec-
group, in Greenway fields, was in English tures, music, dancing classes, and enter-
village style. Another was of Cape Cod tainments of every sort,
cottages; another of Dutch Colonial de- At another center a quaint coffee shop

sign. As soon as the harmonious beauty was provided. At another, at the en-
of the groups developed, a demand for 3o trance to the district was established an
these houses set in. elaborate greenhouse, with landscape

A problem came up in arranging for and nursery service, and a riding acad-
the necessary restrictions. Mr. Nichols emy in the Spanish style,
made a forward step by proposing a plan The greenhouse was intended to be part

that the restrictions be made automati- 35 of the community work to encourage
cally renewing, except on a protest of a planting and the care of grounds. It was
majority of the property owners filed five believed that the existence of an adequately
years before the term of expiration, and equipped riding academy would promote
so effective only at the end of twenty- the growth of a fine and wholesome sport,
five year periods. This provision made 40 One country club with a polo field as well
the restrictions elastic and subject to as golf course was within the district
modification. But it remained easy to when it was established. A second one
continue the essential safeguards to the was soon added and ground was reserved
neighborhood. The five year clause gave for two more. A nine-hole community
both property owners and the handlers of 45 golf course was laid out, available to
mortgages ample opportunity to protect every resident of the district for a nomi-
themselves in the event of a proposed nal membership fee. Provision was made
change. for sites for future churches, schools,

Business centers now had to be taken playgrounds, and swimming pools. Cab-
into the account. 'While the encroach- 50 ins were built for headquarters for boys
ment of business on residence districts and girls who wanted to take hikes into
may ruin them, it is equally apparent that the country beyond.

a residence district from which business It gradually became evident that a dis-

service is barred is bound to languish. trict of this sort, to realize its possibili-
A careful survey was made of the possi- 55 ties, needed a much more intensive com-
ble needs of a population of fifty thou- munity service than was possible from an
sand in the Country Club district, and ordinary municipal government. Part of
eight centers were set aside for busi- the district had overflowed into a wooded

WRITING OF TODAY

and broken country on the Kansas side philanthropist, but as out of the questior

of the state line in the direction of the as a commercial proposition. The succes

first white mission to the Indians in Kan- of the Country Club district is the fina

sas, whose buildings were still standing. answer to these sneers. It is a vital goinj

It took its name, Mission Hills, from this 5 concern, one of the solidly established in

historic fact. In order to provide city stitutions of the city,

facilities it was necessary to establish a By this combination of topography

corporation whose members were the municipal planning in parks and boule

property owners of the district. This vards, and the initiative of men of imag
corporation collected its own taxes and 10 ination and practical genius in developing

administered its affairs through trustees. home districts, Kansas City has accom-

The plan proved so successful that it was plished much for itself and has made dis-

extended to the Missouri district in a mod- tinct contributions to the science of cit>

ified form. Residence associations were building. Its ninety miles of boulevards

formed to look after the odds and ends 15 and park drives, its twenty-seven hun-

of maintenance that so often make the dred acres of parks and parkways, and

difference between slovenliness and at- its thousands of garden homes, are the

tractive order. These maintenance so- fruits of this work,
cieties were of varying size, with a max-
imum of perhaps two hundred families, ao

They elected their trustees, and the deeds II
of sale of the property were made to

provide the collection of a maintenance THE STREET
tax up to one mill a square foot to be

used at the discretion of the trustees. 25 cTTv/rTrrk-vr ctdtutct/v

Thus was provided a fund to remove SIMEON STRUNSKY

SnOW from the Streets, tO keep the park- [Atlantic Monthly, February. 1914. Republished

ingS neatly mown, tO CUt the grass On in Belshazzar Court (Henry Holt and Co.), 1914.

vacant lots, to collect trash, to spray SrsT by permissl0n of the author and Pub'
trees, to enforce building restrictions, 30

and to handle the thousand community It is two short blocks from my office

interests that might arise. The mainte- near Park Row to the Subway station
nance tax, while not a municipal levy, where I take the express for Belshazzar
was made collectible by providing that if Court. Eight months in the year it is my
it were unpaid it should become a lien 35 endeavor to traverse this distance as
on the property. quickly as I can. This is done by cut-

Later a community secretary was em- ting diagonally across the street traffic,
ployed and all sorts of activities were un- By virtue of the law governing right-
dertaken for the purpose of promoting angled triangles I thus save as much as
the community spirit and so of indirectly 40 fifty feet and one-fifth of a minute of
stabilizing the neighborhood. A descrip- time. In the course of a year this saving
tion of the activities undertaken and pro- amounts to sixty minutes, which may be
jected would go beyond the limits of this profitably spent over a two-reel present a-
article. They include a campaign by tion of The Moonshiner's Bride, supple-
which two thousand bird houses were 45 mented by an intimate picture of Lumber-
erected in one season, for a lawn pag- ing in Saskatchewan. But with the com-
eant by nine hundred children, the an- ing of warm weather my habits change,
nual singing of Christmas carols through It grows more difficult to plunge into the
the streets of the district, a flower show, murk of the Subway,
supervised play, the publishing of a 5° A foretaste of the languor of June is
monthly neighborhood bulletin, commun- in the air. The turnstile storm-doors in
ity dinners, and community vegetable our office building, which have been put
gardens. aside for brief periods during the first de-

A decade ago any such elaborate com- ceptive approaches of Spring, only to come
munity scheme would have been sneered 55 back triumphant from Elba, have been
at by "practical" men as beautiful but definitely removed. The -t eel-workers
impossible. It would have been regarded pace their girders twenty floors high al-
as an appropriate plaything for a rich most in mid-season form, and their pneu-

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES

matic hammers scold and chatter through them in flagrantly unhygienic attitudes,
the sultry hours. The soda-fountains are my shoulders bent forward and my chest
bright with new compounds whose names and diaphragm in a position precisely the
ingeniously reflect the world's progress reverse of that prescribed by the doctor,
from day to day in politics, science, and 5 Perhaps the thing that makes me lin-
the arts. From my window I can see the ger before these familiar sights is the odd
long black steamships pushing down to circumstance that in Broadway's shop-
the sea, and they raise vague speculations windows Nature is almost never herself,
in my mind about the cost of living in the but is either supernatural or artificial,
vicinity of Sorrento and Fontainebleau. 10 Nature, for instance, never intended that
On such a day I am reminded of my razors should cut wood and remain sharp ;
physician's orders, issued last December, to that linen collars should keep on getting
walk a mile every afternoon on leaving cleaner the longer they are worn; that
my office. So I stroll up Broadway with giass should not break; that ink should not
the intention of taking my train farther 15 stain; that gauze should not tear; that an
up-town, at Fourteenth Street. object worth five dollars should sell for

The doctor did not say stroll. He said $1.39; but all these things happen in
a brisk walk with head erect, chest thrown Broadway windows. Williams, whom I
out, diaphragm well contracted, and a gen- meet now and then, who sometimes turns
eral aspect of money in the bank. But 20 and walks up with me to Fourteenth
here enters human perversity. The only Street, pointed out to me the other day
place where I am in the mood to walk how strange a thing it was that the one
after the prescribed military fashion is in street which has become a synonym for
the open country. Just where by all ac- 'real life' to all good suburban Ameri-
counts I ought to be sauntering without 25 cans is not real at all, but is crowded
heed to time, studying the lovely texts either with miracles or with imitations,
which Nature has set down in the modest The windows on Broadway glow with

type-forms selected from her inexhaustible wax fruits and with flowers of muslin and
fonts, — in the minion of ripening berries, taffeta drawn by bounteous Nature from
in the nonpareil of crawling insect life, 30 her storehouses in Parisian garret work-
the agate of tendril and filament, and the shops. Broadway's ostrich feathers have
12-point diamond of the dust, — there I been plucked in East Side tenements,
stride along and see little. The huge cigars in the tobacconist's win-

And in the city, where I should swing dows are of wood. The enormous bottles
along briskly, I lounge. What is there 35 of champagne in the saloons are of card-
on Broadway to linger over? On Broad- board, and empty. The tall scaffoldings
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 40 Japanese auction stores is not genuine,
high ; shrieking proclamations of auction 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- 45 flowers, artificial fruits, artificial limbs,
tigo; banners, escutcheons, crests, in all 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 5° once stood for a long while and gazed at
dress demonstrate the virtue of home ex- 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 55 know her wink was real? At any rate
other young women whittle at sticks with 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

to WRITING OF TODAY

obviously of lining and plaster. Their a change of soul within us. I suddenly
smug herculean husbands in pajamas pre- say to myself that there are plenty of
serve their equanimity in the severest win- trains to be had at Fourteenth Street,
ter weather only because of their wire- Williams recalls that another boat will
and-plaster constitution. The baby repos- 5 leave Battery Place shortly after the one
ing in its beribboned crib is china and he is bound for. So the tension of our
excelsior. Illusion everywhere. outstretched arms relaxes. I, who have

But the Broadway crowd is real. You been facing west, complete the half cir-
pnly have to buffet it for five minutes to cle and swing south. Williams veers
feel, in eyes and arms and shoulders, how 10 due north, and we two men stand face
real it is. When I was a boy and was to face. The beat and clamor of the
taken to the circus it was always an crowd fall away from us like a well-
amazing thing to me that there should trained stage mob. We are in Broad-
be so many people in the street moving way, but not of it.

in a direction away from the circus. 15 'Well, what's the good word?' says
Something of this sensation still besets Williams.

me whenever we go down in the Subway When two men meet on Broadway the

from Belshazzar Court to hear Caruso. spirit of optimism strikes fire. We be-
The presence of all the other people on gin by asking each other what the good
our train is simple enough. They are 20 word is. We take it for granted that
all on their way to hear Caruso. But neither of us has anything but a chron-
what of the crowds in the trains that icle of victory and courage to relate,
flash by in the opposite direction? It What other word but the good word is
is not a question of feeling sorry for tolerable in the lexicon of living, up-
them. I try to understand and I fail. 25 standing men ? Failure is only for the
But on Broadway on a late summer after- dead. Surrender is for the man with
noon the obverse is true. The natural yellow in his nature. So Williams and
thing is that the living tide as it presses I pay our acknowledgments to this best
south shall beat me back, halt me, eddy of possible worlds. I give Williams the
around me. I know that there are 30 good word. I make no allusion to the
people moving north with me, but I am fact that I have spent a miserable night
not acutely aware of them. This on- in communion with neuralgia; how can
rush of faces converges on me alone, that possibly concern him? Another
It is I against half the world. manuscript came back this morning

And then suddenly out of the surge of 35 from an editor who regretted that his
faces one leaps out at me. It is Wil- is the most unintelligent body of readers
Hams, whose doctor has told him that in the country. The third cook in three
the surest way of fighting down the lust weeks left us last night after making
for tobacco is to walk down from his vigorous reflections on my wife's good
office to the ferry every afternoon. 40 nature and my own appearance. Only
Williams and I salute each other after an hour ago, as I was watching the
the fashion of Broadway, which is to long, black steamers bound for Sor-
exchange greetings backward over the rento and Fontainebleau, the monotony
shoulder. This is the first step in an of one's treadmill work, the flat unprof-
elaborate minuet. Because we have 45 itableness of scribbling endlessly on
passed each other before recognition sheets of paper, had become almost a
came, our hands fly out backward. Now nausea. But Williams will know nothing
we whirl half around, so that I who have of this from me. Why should he? He
been moving north face the west, while may have been sitting up all night with
Williams, who has been traveling south, 50 a sick child. At this very moment the
now looks east. Our clasped hands thought of the little parched lips, the
strain at each other as we stand there moan, the unseeing eyes, may be tearing
poised for flight after the first greeting, at his entrails; but he in turn gives me the
A quarter of a minute perhaps, and we good word, and many others after that,
have said good-by. 55 and we pass on.

But if the critical quarter of a minute But sometimes I doubt. This splen-

passes, there ensues a change of geo- did optimism of people on Broadway, in
graphical position which corresponds to the Subway, and in the shops and offices

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES n

— is it really a sign of high spiritual down together will always demand cigars
courage, or is it just lack of sensibility? that go for a round sum, two for a
Do we find it easy to keep a stiff upper quarter or three for fifty (if the editor's
lip, to buck up, to never say die, be- check is what it ought to be),
cause we are brave men, or simply be- 5 When people speak of the want of
cause we lack the sensitiveness and the real comradeship among women, I some-
imagination to react to pain? It may be times wonder if one of the reasons may
even worse than that. It may be part not be that the prices which women are
of our commercial gift for window- accustomed to pay are individualistic in-
dressing, for putting up a good front. 10 stead of fraternal. The soda fountains

Sometimes I feel that Williams has no and the street cars do not dispense
right to be walking down Broadway on goods at the rate of two items for a
business when there is a stricken child single coin. It is infinitely worse in the
at home. The world cannot possibly department stores. Treating a friend to
need him at that moment as much as 15 something that costs $2.79 is inconceiv-
his own flesh and blood does. It is not able. But I have really wandered from
courage; it is brutish indifference. At my point.

such times I am tempted to dismiss as 'Well, be good/ says Williams, and

mythical all this fine talk about feelings rushes off to catch his boat,
that run deep beneath the surface, and 20 The point I wish to make is that on
bruised hearts that ache under the smile. Broadway people pay tribute to the prin-
If a man really suffers he will show it. ciple of goodness that rules this world,
If a man cultivates the habit of not both in the way they greet and in the
showing emotion he will end by having way they part. We salute by asking
none to show. How much of Broad- 25 each other what the good word is.
way's optimism is — But here I am When we say good-by we enjoin each
paraphrasing William James's Principles other to be good. The humorous as-
of Psychology, which the reader can sumption is that gay devils like Williams
just as well consult for himself in the and me need to be constantly warned
latest revised edition of 1907. 30 against straying off into the primrose

Also, I am exaggerating. Most likely paths that run out of Broadway.
Williams's children are all in perfect Simple, humorous, average American

health, and my envelope from the editor man ! You have left your suburban
has brought a check instead of a rejec- couch in time to walk half a mile to the
tion slip. It is on such occasions that 35 station and catch the 7 159 for the city.
Williams and I, after shaking hands the You have read your morning paper; dis-
way a locomotive takes on water on the cussed the weather, the tariff, and the
run, wheel around, halt, and proceed to prospects for lettuce with your neigh-
buy something at the rate of two for a bor; and made the office only a minute
quarter. If any one ever is inclined to 40 late. You have been fastened to your
doubt the spirit of American fraternity, desk from nine o'clock to five, with half
it is only necessary to recall the number an hour for lunch, which you have eaten
of commodities for men that sell two in a clamorous, overheated restaurant
for twenty-five cents. In theory, the while you watched your hat and coat,
two cigars which Williams and I buy 45 At odd moments during the day the
for twenty-five cents are worth fifteen thought of doctor's bills, rent bills,
cents apiece. As a matter of fact they school bills, has insisted on receiving at-
are probably ten-cent cigars. But the tention. At the end of the day, laden with
shopkeeper _ is welcome to his extra parcels from the market, from the hard-
nickel. It is a small price to pay for 50 ware store, from the seedman, you are
the seal of comradeship that stamps his bound for the ferry to catch the 5 43,
pair of cigars selling for a single quarter, when you meet Smith, who, having passed
Two men who have concluded a business the good word, sends you on your way
deal in which each has commendably with the injunction to be good — not to
tried to get the better of the other may 55 play roulette, not to open wine, not to
call for twenty-five cent perfectos or for turkey-trot, not to joy-ride, not to haunt
half-dollar Dreadnoughts. I understand the stage door. Be good, O simple, hu-
there are such. But friends sitting morous, average suburban American I

12 WRITING OF TODAY

I take back that word suburban. The speak of the women in the crowd. What
Sunday Supplement has given it a mean- an infinitely finer thing is a woman than
ing which is not mine. I am speaking a man of her class ! To see this for your-
only of the suburban in spirit, of a sim- self you have only to walk up Broadway
plicity, a meekness which is of the soul 5 until the southward-bearing stream breaks
only. Outwardly there is nothing subur- off and the tide begins to run from west
ban about the crowd on lower Broadway. to east. You have passed out of the com-
The man in the street is not at all the mercial district into the region of fac-
diminutive, apologetic creature with side tories. It is well on toward dark, and the
whiskers whom Mr. F. B. Opper brought 10 barracks that go by the unlovely name of
forth and named Common People, who loft buildings, are pouring out their bat-
begat the Strap-Hanger, who begat the talions of needle-workers. The crowd has
Rent-Payer, and the Ultimate Consumer. become a mass. The nervous pace of
The crowd on lower Broadway is alert lower Broadway slackens to the steady,
and well set up. Yes, though one hates 15 patient tramp of a host. It is an army of
to do it, I must say 'clean-cut.' The women, with here and there a flying de-
men on the sidewalk are young, limber, tachment of the male,
sharp-faced, almost insolent young men. On the faces of the men the day's toil

There are not very many old men in the has written its record even as on the
crowd, though I see any number of gray- ao women, but in a much coarser hand. Fa-
haired young men. Seldom do you de- tigue has beaten down the soul of these
tect the traditional signs of age, the sag- men into brutish indifference, but in the
ging lines of the face, the relaxed ab- women it has drawn fine the flesh only to
dominal contour, the tamed spirit. The make it more eloquent of the soul. In-
young, the young-old, the old-young, but 25 stead of listlessness, there is wist fulness,
rarely quite the old. Instead of vacuity you read mystery. In-

I am speaking only of externals, nate grace rises above the vulgarity of the
Clean-cut, eager faces are very fre- dress. Cheap, tawdry blouse and imita-
quently disappointing. A very ordinary tion willow-plume walk shoulder to shoul-
mind may be working behind that clear 30 der with the shoddy coat of the male,
sweep of brow and nose and chin. I copying Fifth Avenue as fifty cents may
have known the shocjc of young men who attain to five dollars. But the men's
look like kings of Wall Street and speak shoddy is merely a horror, whereas woman
like shoe clerks. They are shoe clerks, transfigures and subtilizes the cheap ma-
But the appearance is there, that athletic 35 terial. The spirit of grace which is the
carriage which is helped out by our birthright of her sex cannot be killed —
triumphant, ready-made clothing. I sup- not even by the presence of her best voung
pose I ought to detest the tailor's tricks man in Sunday clothes. She is finer by
which iron out all ages and all stations the heritage of her sex, and America has
into a uniformity of padded shoulders 40 accentuated her title. This America
and trim waistlines and hips. I imagine which drains her youthful vigor with over-
I ought to despise our habit of wearing work, which takes from her cheeks the
elegant shoddy where the European color she has brought from her Slavic or
chooses honest, clumsy woolens. But I Italian peasant home, makes restitution
am concerned only with externals, and in 45 by remolding her in more delicate, more
outward appearances a Broadway crowd alluring lines, gives her the high privilege
beats the world, ^sthetically we simply of charm — and neurosis.
are in a class by ourselves when com- Williams and I pause at the Subway on-

pared with the Englishman and the trances and watch the earth suck in the
Teuton in their skimpy, ill-cut garments. 5o crowd. It lets itself be swallowed up with
Let the British and German ambassadors meek good-nature. Our amazing good-
at Washington do their worst. This is nature! Political philosophers ,have de-
my firm belief and I will maintain it plored the fact. They have urged us to
against the world. The truth must out. be quicker-tempered, more resentful of
Ruat caelum. Ich kann nicht andcrs. 55 being stepped upon, more inclined to write
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.

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 1$

of taxicab extortioners, of insolent wait- to affirm on oath that the mob is not vin-
ers, of janitors, of indecent congestion in dictive, that it is not cruel. It may be a
travel, of unheated cars in the winter and bit sharp-tongued, fickle, a bit mischie-
barred-up windows in summer. I am at vous, but in the heart of the crowd there is
heart with the social philosophers. But 5 no evil passion. The evil comes from the
then I am not typical of the crowd. leaders, the demagogues, the professional
When my neighbor's elbow injects itself distorters of right thinking and right feel-
into the small of my back, I twist around ing. The crowd in the bleachers is not
and glower at him. I forget that his el- the clamorous, brute mob of tradition,
bow is the innocent mechanical result of a 10 I have watched faces in the bleachers and
whole series of elbows and backs extend- in the grand-stand and seen little of that
ing the length of the car, to where the fury which is supposed to animate the fan.
first cause operates in the form of a sta- For the most part he sits there with folded
tion-guard's shoulder ramming the human arms, thin-lipped, eager, but after all con-
cattle into their stalls. In the faces about 15 scious that there are other things in life
me there is no resentment. Instead of besides baseball. No, it is the leaders, the
smashing windows, instead of raising bar- baseball editors, the cartoonists, the hu-
ricades in the Subway and hanging the morists, the professional stimulators of
train-guards with their own lanterns about 'local pride,' with their exaggerated gloat-
their necks, the crowd sways and bends to 20 ings over a game won, their poisonous
the lurching of the train, and young attacks upon a losing team, who are re-
voices call out cheerfully, 'Plenty of room sponsible. It is these demagogues who
ahead.' drill the crowd in the gospel of loving

Horribly good-natured ! We have taken only a winner — but if I keep on I shall
a phrase which is the badge of our shame 25 be in politics before I know it.
and turned it into a jest. Plenty of room If you see in the homeward crowd in

ahead ! If this were a squat, ill-formed the Subway a face over which the pall of
proletarian race obviously predestined to depression has settled, that face very likely
subjection, one might understand. But is bent over the comic pictures in the
that a crowd of trim, well-cut, self-reliant 30 evening paper. I cannot recall seeing any
Americans, sharp-featured, alert, insolent one smile over these long serials of hu-
as I have called them, that they should morous adventure which run from day to
submit is a puzzle. Perhaps it is because day and from year to year. I have seen
of the fierce democracy of it all. The readers turn mechanically to these lurid
crush, the enforced intimacies of physical 35 comics and pore over them, foreheads
contact, the feeling that a man's natural puckered into a frown, lips unconsciously
condition is to push and be pushed, to spelling out the long legends which issue
shove ahead when the opportunity offers in the form of little balloons and lozenges
and to take it like a man when no chance from that amazing portrait gallery of
presents itself — that is equality. A seat 40 dwarfs, giants, shrilling viragos and
in the Subway is like the prizes of life for their diminutive husbands, devil-children,
which men have fought in these United quadrupeds, insects, — an entire zoology.
States. You struggle, you win or lose. If any stimulus rises from these pages to
If the other man wins there is no envy; the puzzled brain, the effect is not visible,
admiration rather, provided he has not 45 I imagine that by dint of repetition
shouldered and elbowed out of reason. through the years these grotesque crea-
That godlike freedom from envy is passing tions have become a reality to millions of
today, and perhaps the good nature of the readers. It is no longer a question of
crowd in the Subway will pass. I see humor, it is a vice. The Desperate Des-
signs of the approaching change. People 50 monds, the Newlyweds, and the Dingbats,
do not call out, 'Plenty of room ahead/ have acquired a horrible fascination,
so frequently as they used to. Otherwise I cannot see why readers of

Good-natured when dangling from the the funny page should appear to be mem-
strap in the Subway, good-natured in orizing pages from Euclid,
front of baseball bulletins on Park Row, 55 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

i4 WRITING OF TODAY

wearisome. I find myself strolling past gay in the fast-fading light, before the
Fourteenth Street, where I was to take magic hand of Edison wipes the wrinkles
my train for Belshazzar Court. Never from your face and galvanizes you into
mind, Forty-second Street will do as well, hectic vitality ; far from alluring with your
I am now on a different Broadway. The 5 tinsel shop-windows, with your pUffy-
crowd is no longer north and south, but faced, unshaven men leaning against door-
flows in every direction. It is churned up posts and chewing pessimistic toothpicks,
at every corner and spreads itself across your sharp-eyed newsboys wise with the
the squares and open places. Its appear- wisdom of the Tenderloin, and your itin-
ance has changed. It is no longer a fac- 10 erant women whose eyes wander from
tory population. Women still predomi- side to side. It is not in this guise that
nate, but they are the women of the pro- you draw the hearts of millions to your-
fessions and trades which center about self, O dingy, Gay White Way, O Via
Madison Square — business women of in- Lobsteria Dolorosa !

dependent standing, women from the mag- l5 Well, when a man begins to moralize it
azine offices, the publishing houses, the is time to go home. I have walked
insurance offices. You detect the bachelor farther than I intended, and I am soft
girl in the current which sets in toward from lack of exercise, and tired. The ro-
the home quarters of the undomesticated, mance of the crowd has disappeared,
the little Bohemias, the foreign eating- 20 Romance cannot survive that short pas-
places whose fixed table d'hote prices flash sage of Longacre Square, where the art
out in illumined signs from the side of the theater and of the picture-postcard
streets. Still farther north and the crowd flourish in an atmosphere impregnated
becomes tinged with the current of that with gasoline. As I glance into the win-
Broadway which the outside world knows 25 dows of the automobile salesrooms and
best. The idlers begin to mingle with the catch my own reflection in the enamel of
workers, men in English clothes with Babylonian limousines I find myself think-
canes, women with plumes and jeweled ing all at once of the children at home,
reticules. You catch the first heart-beat They expand and fill up the horizon,
of Little Old New York. 30 Broadway disappears. I smile into the

The first stirrings of this gayer Broad- face of a painted promenader, but how is
way die down as quickly almost as they she to know that it is not at her I smile
manifested themselves. The idlers and but at the sudden recollection of what the
those who minister to them have heard baby said at the breakfast-table that morn-
the call of the dinner hour and have van- 35 ing? Like all good New Yorkers when
ished, into hotel doors, into shabbier quar- they enter the Subway, I proceed to
ters by no means in keeping with the cut choke up all my senses against contact
of their garments and their apparent in- -with the external world, and thus resolv-
difference to useful employment. Soon Jng myself into a state of coma, I dip
the street is almost empty. It is not a 40 down into the bowels of the earth, whence
beautiful Broadway in this garish interval jn due time I am spewed out two short
between the last of the matinee anJ shop- blocks from Belshazzar Court,
ping crowd and the vanguard of the night
crowd. The monster electric sign-boards

have not begun to gleam and flash and 45 jjj

revolve and confound the eye and the

senses At night the electric Niagara C0NEY ISLAND AT NIGHT

hides the squalid fronts of ugly brick, the

dark doorways, the clutter of fire-escapes, TAMrc uiTMrinnj

the rickety wooden hoardings. Not an So JAMLb HUNHKLK

imperial street this Broadway at 6:30 of [New York Herald A ust I0 1?0o> Repub.

a summer's afternoon. Cheap jewelry lished in New Cosmopolis, (Chas. Scnbner's Sons)

shops, cheap tobacconist's shops, cheap i5bfi.her?]nnted by pernu88,on of the author ■"*
haberdasheries, cheap restaurants, grimy

little newspaper agencies and ticket- 55 It was the hottest night of the summer
offices, and 'demonstration' stores for at Coney Island. All day a steaming cur-
patent food, patent waters, patent razors, tain of mist hid the sun from the eyes of
O Gay White Way, you are far from men and women and children ; yet proved

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 15

no shield against the blasting heat. Hu- There must be in every one, no matter

midity and not the sun-rays had been the how phlegmatic, a residuum of energy
enemy. And when a claret-colored disk which may boil over when some exciting
showed dully through the nacreous vapors event knocks at the door of our being. It
just before setting, we knew that the 5 is, psychologists assure us, the play-in-
night would bring little respite from the stinct of the animal in us that delights in
horror of the waking hours. It was a games innocent and dangerous. If forty
time to try men's nerves. The average thousand people assemble to see a game of
obligations of life had faded into the baseball, how many more would gather
abyss of general indifference, one that had 10 with feverish gaiety if there were a surety
absorbed the exactions of daily behavior of the umpire's death at every game?
— politeness, order, sobriety, and decency. The Romans daily witnessed men and
Add a few notches upward on the ther- women destroyed in the arena of their cir-
mometer, and mankind soon reverts to the cus — witnessed it with a satisfaction aes-
habits and conditions of his primitive an- 15 thetic and profound. The reason was not
cestors. The ape, the tiger, and the jackal that they were less civilized than the mod-
in all of us come to the surface with erns, but only more frank. Their play-
shocking rapidity. We are, in a reason- instinct was more fully developed and the
able analysis, the victims of our environ- classical world was not hampered by our
ment, the slaves of temperature. Heat *, moral prejudices.

and cold have produced the African and As cruelty is proscribed among highly

the Laplander. At Coney Island during a civilized nations today — the game of life
torrid spell we are very near the soil; we being so vilely cruel that the arena with
cast to the winds modesty, prudence, and its bulls and tigers is unnecessary — our
dignity. Then, life is worth living only 25 play-instinct finds vent in a species of
when stripped to the skin. diversion that must not be examined too

Three seasons had I passed without a closely, as it verges perilously on idiocy,
visit to this astonishing bedlam, yet I Coney Island is only another name for
found the place well-nigh unrecognizable, topsyturvydom. There the true becomes
Knowing old Coney Island, the magnitude 30 the grotesque, the vision of a maniac,
of its changes did not so much amaze and Else why those nerve-racking entertain-
terrify me. One should never be amazed ments, ends of the world, creations, hells,
in America. After an hour's hasty sur- heavens, fantastic trips to ugly lands, pan-
vey, Atlantic City seemed a normal spot, oramas of sheer madness, flights through
Broad stretches of board walk, long, 35 the air in boats, through water in sleds,
sweeping beaches, space to turn about — on the earth in toy trains ! Unreality is
these and other items might be added, as greedily craved by the mob as alcohol
But at Coney Island the cramped positions by the dipsomaniac; indeed, the jumbled
one must assume to stand or move, the nightmares of a morphine eater are ac-
fierce warfare of humanity as it forces its 40 tually realized at Luna Park. Every
way along the streets or into the crazy angle reveals some new horror. Me-
shows— surely conceived by madmen for chanical waterfalls, with women and chil-
madmen — the indescribable and hideous dren racing around curving, tumbling
symphony of noise running the gamut floods; elephants tramping ponderously
from shrill steam-whistles to the diapa- 45 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 positively enthralling; Japanese and Irish,
of repose even in their moments of leisure. 50 Germans and Indians, Hindus and Ital-
Some one has said that the Englishman ians, cats and girls and ponies and — the
takes his pleasures sadly; then we must list sets whirring the wheels of the big-
take ours by rude assault. All Coney gest of dictionaries.
Island reminded me of a disturbed ant- jn Dreamland there is a white tower

heap, the human ants ferocious ( in their 55 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
of sight. x This was so before fire destroyed the place.

!6 WRITING OF TODAY

walls of monstrosities— laughable, shock- must bid you to remember that everything
ing, sinister, and desperately depressing. is relative; that the morals of one age are
In the center flying boats cleave the air ; the crimes of another ; that I am, compara-
from the top of a crimson lighthouse flat, tively speaking, a stranger to our summer
sled-like barges plunge down a liquid rail- 5 cities and perhaps not peculiarly well
road, while from every cavern issue fitted to judge of such an astounding in-
screams of tortured and delighted humans stitution as Coney Island,
and the hoarse barking of men with mega- The madness converges below Brighton,

phones. They assault your ears with reaching its apex on Surf Avenue,
their invitations, protestations, and bias- 10 jammed with pleasure-seekers, fringed by
phemies. You are conjured to 'go to 'fakers' and their utterly abominable wares.
Hell-gate'; you are singled out by some Farther up the beach order reigns, men
brawny individual with threatening into- and women are clothed in their right mind,
nations and bade enter the animal show walk, talk, and act rationally. At the
where a lion or a tiger is warranted to 15 Oriental dignity prevails. Few people are
claw a keeper at least once a day. The to be seen. The place slumbers. You
glare is appalling, the sky a metallic blue, feel that in such a hotel you may live as
the sun a slayer. you wish. Manhattan, no longer queen

And then the innumerable distractions of the beaches, has its interests. The bath-
of the animated walks, the dwarfs and the 20 ing attracts. The wide porches and the
dogs, the horses and the miniature rail- dining couples are pleasing to see. A
way. Inside the various buildings you theater there is for those to whom the
may see the cosmos in the act of forma- ocean is not a stimulating spectacle,
tion, or San Francisco destroyed by fire Walk farther. We reach Brighton,
and quake; the end of life, organic and 25 There the pot begins to bubble. A smaller
inorganic, is displayed for a modest pit- Coney confronts you. You pass on.
tance; you may sleigh in Switzerland or Stopping before what was once Anton
take a lulling ride in Venetian gondolas. Seidl's music pavilion, you indulge, more
But nothing is real. Doubtless the crowd sadly than sentimentally, in memories of
would be disappointed by a glimpse of the 30 those evenings, over two decades ago,
real Venice, the real Switzerland, the real when the sound of the waves formed a
hell, the real heaven. Everything is the background for the dead master's music-
reflection of a cracked mirror held in the making— Beethoven and Wagner and
hand of the clever showman, who, know- Liszt.

ing us as children of a larger growth, 35 Instead of Briinhilde and her sisters'
compounds his mess, bizarre and ridicu- wild ride, we hear the wooden horse
lous, accordingly. There is little need to orchestrion screeching 'Meet Me at the
ponder the whys and wherefores of our Church.' Move on? Has public musical
aberrancy. Once en masse, humanity taste moved with the years? Meet me at
sheds its civilization and becomes half 40 the madhouse ! We reach the Boulevard
child, half savage. In the theaters the and note its agreeable vastness. The sun
gentlest are swayed by a sort of mob has set and the world is become suddenly
mania and delight in scenes of cruelty afire.

and bloodshed — though at home the Then Coney Island, with its vulgarity,

sight of a canary with a broken wing 45 its babble and tumult, is a glorified city of
sets stirring in us tender sympathy. A flame. But don't go too near it ; your
crowd seldom reasons. It will lynch an wings will easily singe on the broad a.o-
innocent man or glorify a scamp politician nue where beer, sausage, fruit, pop-corn,
with equal facility. Hence the monstrous candy, flapjacks, green corn, and again
debauch of the fancy at Coney Island, 50 beer, rule the appetites of the multitude,
where New York chases its chimera of After seeing the aerial magic of that great
pleasure. pyrotechnic artist Pain, a man who could,

Nevertheless, with all its perversion, its if he so desired, create a new species of
oblique image of life, is Coney Island art, and his nocturnes of jeweled fire, you
much madder than the Stock Exchange, 55 wonder why the entire beach is not 1
the prize-ring, roller-skating, a fashion- Fire Island. The view of Luna
able cotillion, a political mass-meeting, or from Sheepshead Bay suggests a ceme-
some theatrical performances? Again I tery of fire, the tombs, turrets, and towers,

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 17

, — _ _ _

illuminated, and mortuary shafts of flame. pillar of luminosity that looked a cross
At Dreamland the little lighthouse is a between a corn-cob and a thermometer
scarlet incandescence. The big building afire. I sat down on the sand. I would
stands a dazzling apparition for men on stay out the night. And then I began to
ships and steamers out at sea. Every- 5 look about me. In Hyde Park, London, I
thing is fretted with fire. Fire delicately had seen hundreds of vagabonds huddled
etches some fairy structure ; fire out- in the grass, their clothes mere rags, their
lines an Oriental gateway ; fire runs like a attitudes those of death, but nothing in
musical scale through many octaves, the England or America can match what I
darkness crowding it, the mist blurring it. 10 saw this particular night. While the
Fire is the god of Coney Island after sun- poorer classes predominated, there was
down, and fire was its god this night, the little suggestion of abject pauperism,
hottest of the summer. Many seemed gay. The white dresses of

At ten o'clock the crowds had not the women and children relieved the som-
abated. Noise still reigned over the Bow- 15 ber masses of black men, who, though
ery, and the cafes, restaurants, dens, and coatless for the most part, made black
shows were full of gabbling, eating, drink- splotches on the sand. In serried array
ing, cursing, and laughing folk. I had they lay; there was no order in their po-
intended to return either to my hotel or sition, yet a short distance away they
to New York, but the heat pinioned my 20 gave the impression of an army at rest,
will. In company with thousands, I The entire beach was thick with humanity,
strolled the beach near the Boulevard. At close range it resolved itself in groups,
An amiable policeman told me that few sweethearts in pairs, families of three or
people would go back to the city, that, four, six or seven, planted close together,
hot as it was at Coney, the East Side was 25 With care, hesitation, and difficulty I navi-
more stifling. The sight of cars coming gated around these islets of flesh and
down crowded at eleven o'clock and re- blood. Sometimes I stumbled over a foot
turning half-full at midnight determined or an arm. Once I kicked a head, and I
my plan of action. I went to my hotel, was cursed many times and vigorously
put on a sweater and a cap, changed a bill 30 cursed. But I persisted. Like the 'white
into silver, and with a stick for company mice/ I was there to see. Policemen
I returned to the West End. There were plodded through the crowds, and if there
more people than before, though it was was undue hilarity warned the offenders
nearly one o'clock and the lights were be- in a low voice. But it was impossible for
ginning to dim. I searched for the 35 such a large body of people to be more
friendly policeman, but instead found a orderly, more decent. I determined to
surly one, who warned me that it would prowl down the lower beach, between the
be a risk to venture upon the beach if I Boulevard and Sea Gate,
had a watch or money. I longed for a My sporting instinct came to the sur-

Josiah Flynt who would pilot me through 40 face. Here was game. Not in the imrae-
this jungle of humanity. The heat was morial mob, joking and snoring, shrieking
depressing and mosquitoes made us miser- and buzzing, would I find what I sought,
able. They knew me for a fresh comer I tried to pass under the bathing-houses,
and exacted a sorry toll from my hands, but so densely packed were the paths that
neck, and face. I wavered in my resolu- 45 I was threatened by a dozen harsh voices,
tion to spend the night on the beach. I So I pursued a safer way, down Surf Ave-
had left my rake at home, and as I am nue. It was still filled with people— men
not a socialist I could not emulate the per- and women, battered, bleary, drunk or
formances of the 'white mice,' as the East tired, dragged their weary paces, regard-
Side names the good, well-dressed young 50 ing each other as do wolves, ready to
men and women of means who make soci- spring. We all felt like sticky August
ological calls on them, notebooks in their salt. Reaching the beach again, I was
hands, curiosity in their eyes, and burn- too fatigued to walk farther. I propped
ing enthusiasm in their hearts. my head against the wooden pillar of an

All the lights of the pleasure palaces S5 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 est the sudden scream of a woman fol-
over the Brighton pavilion there was a lowed by ominous bass laughter. Some

18 WRITING OF TODAY

one plucked a banjo. Dogs barked. A wife and children needed food! I had
hymn rose on the hot air. Around me it eaten my dinner at the Manhattan, and I
was like a battle-field of the slain. A enjoyed that selfish credulity which an
curious drone was in the air; it was the able-bodied gourmand feels when he is
monster breathing. A muggy moon shone 5 approached by some one who has tasted
intermittently over us, its bleached rays no food for days.

painting in one ghastly tone the upturned And this miserable being came nearer

faces of the sleepers. The stale, sour, to me, feebly, supplicatingly. His eyes
rank smell of wretched mankind poisoned were like red dots in the head of a fam-
the atmosphere, thick with sultry vapors. i0 ished animal. His hot breath issued as
I wished myself home. from an open grave. The child sobbed

Then a gentle voice said — the accent louder, and the mother, half awake,
was slightly foreign: clutched it. She sat up. The other two

'What a sight the poor make in the children arose, alarmed, silent. It was
moonlight !' I did not turn, but answered 15 too much for my pampered nerves. Bid-
that I had thought that same thing. The ding the man remain where he was, I ran
voice proceeded. It was not strong, across the beach to the Bowery and into
though a resonant baritone: a little saloon full of half-drunken, vicious

'You are alone, good sir; but look at people. Ten minutes later we sat at an
my brood, and don't wonder at people 20 improvised supper of pretzels, cold fish,
dying without asking the world's permis- and beer. I knew this family wouldn't
sion.' touch anything else. Starvation itself

I half arose, expecting that it was a would not force them to break their tribal
beggar who addressed me. A child began law. I have an idea that I was thirsty
whimpering. I saw a woman on her side as myself, for I enjoyed the flat beer, and I
holding with relaxed grasp this crying in- enjoyed the subdued ferocity with which
fant — the wail was hardly perceptible the family ate and drank. The baby did
above the swish of the surf. Near her not stir. It had fallen asleep. The
were two older children. The man who mother, a worn-out woman, still young,
had spoken to me was sitting, his head 30 mechanically put the food into her mouth,
plunged almost between his knees, his not looking at us, not speaking to the two
skinny hands supporting his head. He girls. She was numbed by hunger and
was exceedingly poor, wearing only a heat.

ragged shirt and trousers. His head was 'See here, what's your name?' I asked,
large and curly with thick hair. He could 35 'My name,' he stammered, 'is Hyman.'
not have been more than forty. When T mean your family name,' I demanded ;

he lifted his head his eyes in the moon- 'Hyman is your first name.'
shine were like two red cinders. A wild He gave me a keen glance. Then he

beast — and with a gentle, even cultivated, quietly replied: 'You are right. My full
voice. I went over to him. The child 40 name is Hyman Levin.'
still moaned as the fingers of the ex- 'Have you a home?' I pursued. I felt

hausted woman opened farther. I forgot my importance. I was playing the role of
sociology and wondered if here was a benefactor, and what philanthropist, great
case of starvation — a hungry family in all or small, does not desire the worth of his
the Gargantuan feast of Coney Island. 45 money ? Besides, it is good policy to
The idea was horrible. cross-examine a starving man. He appre-

'What 's the matter, Batiushka?' I ciates your interest at such a time. (Oh,
asked, adopting a familiar form of Rus- what smiling villains are we all!)
sian salutation. He fell on his knees. 'I live in an alley near Oliver Street.

'Brother,' he panted, 'are you a Rus- 5o Usually we go to the recreation pier near
sian? A Jew? Help us. We have not Peck Slip, but the child was so sick that
eaten since yesterday morning.' I confess I came down here last night.'
I shuddered. I confess also that I did n't 'Last night ?'

believe him. A man, a Jewish man with 'Yes, I pawned my coat to get the car

a family, in New York and starving ! 55 fare.'

New York, with its rich charitable insti- This is a truthful report of the man's
tutions! And this fellow tried to make conversation. He was out of work —
me think that he needed food; that his sickness— and he had pawned, piece by

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 19

piece, bit by bit, everything in the house, trayed a reader. He had conversed well
His wife went to the pawnhouse, while he, about Gorky and Tolstoy, had read Karl
scarcely able to hold up his head, watched Marx, and knew the names of all his
the baby. The children lived in the saints of anarchy. A socialist? I do not
streets, feeding at the garbage cans, 5 know. I only know that your bookish
thankful for such a chance. Is this exag- theories go to smash when you hear a
geration? If you think so, then you don't man's voice thrill with anguish. A pau-
know your own city. Such things happen per, you say, a lazy good-for-nothing?
every day. The neighbors were kind, es- Ay, perhaps he was — perhaps they all are ;
pecially the Irish. But they, too, could » but drunkard, thief, even murderer, must
scarcely boast more than one meal a day. they starve? Anarchs and infidels? So
Hyman coughed; he evidently was marked were the Americans of 1776, according to
for the death of a consumptive. Yet he the English.

fought on. The charities were available Remember what Richard Jeffries wrote :

—for a time. But funds ran low; public i5 'Food and drink, roof and clothes are the
interest also ran low. The Levins found inalienable right of every child born into
themselves within five days of rent time the light. If the world does not provide
in their room, a musty, dirty garret. Life it freely — not as a grudging gift, but as
from heat and insufficient food became a right, as a son of the house sits down
intolerable, and, half crazed with fever, *> to breakfast— then is the world mad. . . ,
on that hot Monday, they contrived to t verily believe that the earth in one year
reach the seashore. With only a few produces enough food to last for thirty,
pennies, yet they were happier; they could why> then> have we not enough? ... It
at least breathe fresh air, see the water is not the pauper— oh, inexpressibly
But so forbidding was the appearance of *5 wjcked wor(j j_jt js tne Well-to-do who
this unhappy family that they were warned are the criminal classes.' Grant Allen
off the board walk and frightened away said that all men are born free and un_
from the crowd of pleasure-seekers. We equal True But should they be al-
do not care to see these death's-heads at iowe(j to want for bread ?
our feasts. Finally they found refuge un- 30 Don>t ask me the remeQy t am neither
der the bath-house, and there I met them. a professional prophet nor a socialist.

Worse remains. When the dawn came Don>t throw socialism at my head.
up softly like the vanguard of an army Ready_made prophylactics smell suspi-
without banners I shook the sleeping Hy- dousl The <dismal sdence, scareg me
man. I awoke the woman I had heard 35 Before the fatal wQrds <unearned incre.
queer sounds in the throat of # the child, ment, T ^^ And the socialist*s con.
noises like water slowly dripping into a . f h approaches singularly

well Why should I go on? The duM £ ^ w concePPtion of mon\rch/

was dead, and I was not surprised Nor £ Leyins (n

were the parents They made = no outcry, 4o nationalities. Starve

but covered the ^tle thing with the moth- y the abundant city, where

er s old pelisse, btunned by their cumu- ,r ,,..,' ,, , A , -> t~. ^ -ui 1
lative misfortunes, this death was accepted God * m the world today ? Impossible
with the fatalism of a Russian. I told a fiy the sentimentalists. I didnt believe
policeman the story, and a half-hour later 45 *> either> "ntl1 l met the, L.f !ns:. ,Tnat
the entire family was carted away with adventure has cured me of all foolish op-
the promise that they would be given food timistic boasting. I have told the story
and shelter plainly. I realized of how little account

There was a bitter taste in my mouth, to people in such awful straits is the clan-
If a poor devil of a tramp or a working 50 gor of contending political parties. Of
man had met me then I should not have what interest to a man, his belly pinched
been able to look either one in the eye. by starvation, whether one Jack in office is
Oh how cheap is chanty! The silver I ousted by another Jack who desires the
spent did not relieve the Levins. They place ; whether this one is president, that
had scarcely bade me good-by, so op- 55 one is governor ? A flare of fireworks, a
pressed were they by their sorrow, their river of beer, on the East Side for a
shame. They must have hated me. The night, and the people are forgotten by
man was not ignorant. His English be- their masters. It has been so always ; for

20 WRITING OF TODAY

eternity it will endure. Does not Cam-

panella's sonnet sing: jy

The people is a beast of muddy brain

That knows not its own strength, and there- 5 THE BLACK FOG

fore stands
Loaded with wood and stone; . HERMAN SCHEFFAUER

Its OW.l are all things between earth and [Atlantic Monthly, February, 1908. By permis-

Heaven ; sion of author and publisher.]

But this it knows not, and if one arise 10

To tell this truth it kills him unforgiven. The black fog has come. Over all the

city it lies intact and deep. An absolute

Grunting, growling, spitting, coughing, midnight reigns. Almost material, almost
the huge army of thousands began in tangible, almost massive, seems this en-
maelstrom fashion to move cityward. I5 velope of sulphurous gloom. It invests the
Some stopped at the half-way house of city like a flood ; within the streets, within
whisky; many breakfasted, but the main the houses, and within the lungs of all its
body made a dash for the cars. The night denizens, it lies intrenched and pitiless,
had been a trying one, the new day did The chimneys pour forth their smoke, but
not promise ; yet it was a new day, and 20 the leaden air oppresses and repels it, and
with it a flock of fresh hopes was born. it sinks to the ground, making the dark-
The crowd seemed rested; in its eyes was ness denser. The gloom seems to have
the lust of life, and it was absolutely good- risen from the shores of those streams of
humored. I heard a vague tale about a wailing and lamentation, baleful Acheron
man-hunt during the night — how a thief 25 and Cocytus environing Tartarus, where
had been chased with stones and clubs the thin shades cluster and move, like
until, reaching Sea Gate, he had boldly those who are now pent in this city on the
plunged into the water and disappeared. Thames.

His hawk-like features, the color of clay The darkness is not black, but of a deep
from fright, had impressed the old man 30 brown. It is as though one walked at the
who related the story. In return I told bottom of a muddy sea. The farther wall
the Levins' heart-breaking tale, and he of this chamber is almost invisible— at
did not appear much interested. What ten o'clock in the morning. Above this
signified to all those strong, bustling men dreadful pall that hides his rays, the life-
and women the death of a tiny girl baby 35 giving sun, bursting with useless fire, now
— dead and hardly clad in a wisp of black- beats upon the surface of the sea of
ened canvas? shadow, but his baffled light is repelled or

'Better dead!' The mobs thickened, smothered in the misty deeps. Difficult
Policemen fought them into line. The hot is it for him who walks in an unlifted
sun arose, in company with the penetrat- 40 night to believe that the sun still shines,
ing odors of bad coffee and greasy crullers. Let us forth into the streets so still and

Another day's labor was arrived. Soon sorrowful. With our hands we grope our
would appear the first detachment of way past garden-railings, feeling with ad-
women and children sick from the night venturous foot for the steps or curbs. A
in the city. Soon would be heard the 45 glowing patch appears above us ; it seems
howling of the fakers : 'Go to Hell, go incredibly far away. We put forth our
to Hell-gate !' hand and touch the dank iron of a lamp-

I felt that I had been very near it, that post. Not even fire and light avail against
I had seen a new Coney Island. I went the almighty fog. Footsteps resound
home, after this, the most miserable night 50 about us, but they are the footsteps of
of my life — miserable because my nerves ghosts, for one beholds no body. Now
were out of gear. I was once more the and then some human being brushes by —
normal, selfish man, thinking of his bed, a woman, announced, perhaps, by rustling
of his breakfast. I had, of course, quite skirts or by some perfume cast from her
forgotten the Levins. 55 clothes; perhaps a man, declared by the

thud of a cane on the flagstones or the
dull glow of a cigar.

Upon the main thoroughfares, a weird

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 21

and muffled pandemonium prevails. From bands and mothers their sons, mortal
out the heart of the yellow-reddish murk enemies may walk side by side and feel
resounds the beat of horses' hoofs; now no stir of rage, the outcast and pariah may
and then a spark flies close from their jostle with the peer of golden millions, for
iron shoes. Hoarse warning cries are 5 all are blind, helplessly blind! Eerie is
heard from everywhere, and sometimes, this fog-life ; London lies beneath its spec-
where the fog for a moment is thinned, tral pall like a doomed state whose hope
exaggerated shapes and monstrous figures and whose daylight are wrecked by the
loom up and creep along, great trucks, thick shadows of war or insurrection,
wains, and omnibuses with lanterns lit 10 Swiftly we move along beside a stone
and the drivers leading the horses. Then wall surmounted by an iron rail which
again strange man-shaped spots appear, serves as a guide. We recoil as a vast
like demons come from infernal corridors ; apparition looms up before us and our
they swell out of the darkness surrounded hands touch its cold, graven sides. It is
by faint red haloes. These are pedestri- 15 the Marble Arch, rising like a pale trans-
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 Caesar lifted up out of the vistas
is clear, now sputter dismally, invisible 20 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 25 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. 30 the tall specter of the constable.
The curbs are cumbered with useless hack- «j jive m Fulham, sir/ she replies,

ney and hansom cabs, the horses unhar- <pieaSe, sir, which is the way to Fulham?'
nessed, the drivers disconsolate. The The oliceman points into the darkening

crawling omnibuses, blundering along the wastes

indistinguishable streets often meet or 35 <You ^ find it , he <Bet_

mount upon the sidewalks amidst cries . h h J ^ .

and wild confusion, and there they remain, . , ,

like ships becalmed at night. Those huge \„™ r^, .„

Behemoths and cars of Juggernaut, the Where are you, little girl? says a

gigantic, double-decked motor-omnibuses, 40 ™lce> and a bent figure with outstretched
with their two lurid yellow eyes and little hands emerges through the walls of ob-
sparks of red and green, stand trembling scurity. Where are you? I 11 show you
and snorting with impatience, immersed the way to Fulham. Come with me.
and obliterated in the fog. Universal It is an old man; his beards white as

night enthralls the world-metropolis; its 45 snow; a placard glimmers faintly on his
currents of commerce stagnate in its veins, breast. He is blind The little maid
its mighty plans and purposes are frus- places her hand in his; they make two
trated or delayed, and this central heart steps and the next instant are effaced in
of the trade of the whole earth is stand- the fog. Only the blind know the way
ing still in a dark paralysis. 50 through this city that is blind.

Onward into the night, into the mists, Does the sun still move on overhead

into the unknown ! We see not and are and the hours with him, or are time and
not seen. We pass and repass, all of us the earth standing still? After a long
shrouded in the all-enveloping gloom, time we at last wander along the Strand,
along the daily walks where life roared in 55 which is smitten with an unusual silence
the sunlight of yesterday; we pass,— lov- The close current of its traffic is stayed
ers may almost touch each other, each un- and disorganized ; its thousands of pedes-
known to each, wives may pass their hus- trians have shrunk to hundreds groping

22 WRITING OF TODAY

through the choking miasma and the chan- irom the bon of Man to the Love of Man.
nels of tenebrous smoke. Pillars and cornices and angles of carven

How in the blindness that encompasses stone emerge faintly from the turbid chaos,
them do these dark-flitting shapes of men like dim suggestions in a dream, or half-
and women hurry on ! They are as shad- 5 heard whispers out of midnight, all under
ows lost and dissolved in night. They are the towering rood throbbing to the sky.
the searchers and the symbols of the never- It is high noon ; a burst of bells suddenly
ending quest for light, for happiness, for breaks forth from the gossamer towers, a
peace. Something of the same feeling clanging chorus, loud, vibrant, and me-
comes upon me as once came upon me 10 tallic. These violent voices are the chimes
when I walked through the empty streets that utter every day with their iron
of the dead Pompeii and only my footfall tongues the beloved national hymn, 'God
echoed on its sunswept stones. Here each Save the King.' Now the strong glooms
is by and to himself complete, a little ani- darken about the dome once more ; the
mated fire in the heart, a little light in the 15 luster fades, and the great cross blurs
brain, in the veins a little warm red blood dimly back into the crowding ocean of
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 go. », space, this apparition of the sign of human
The Black Fog, like Death itself, is a love, it would but have called forth ideas
great leveler. All these beings are but of the olden agony or a slight, subcon-
phantoms to the eye, phantoms of human scious tremble of reverence in those of re-
lives, dusky moths storm-driven to and ligious blood. We repeat again the eternal
fro on the gusts of existence, each on 25 interrogations : What is Truth ? and —
its own quest, which is that dream of the 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 blank- 30 Thames whose clashing waves lap and
ness of an umber-tinted vast swells forth a 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 35 stant cry of ever-recurrent life ? Down
does battle with the flying mists about the 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 40 iron law. But seldom we venture to
only the towering imaginations of a 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 45 now, fall dead at our feet, or lest, cower-
thinner in the upper air, and unfolds to 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 So Mantled in the palls of this everlasting ig-
light of the sun. There it lifts and 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, 5S draws hope from the very truth that this
swart-black with its crime and misery; 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.

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 23

Yet all nature about us is content, and the the minutes, brought eleven finally very
sojourn in the sunshine of all other liv- near. Then the clock, your heart, all the
ing things is full of beauty and joy. But world, seemed to stand still. The great
today the city mourns in sackcloth and moment was there. Would the announce-
ashes. 5 ing cannon speak ? Such a terrible silence

Darkly the waters gurgle through this as the world kept during that supreme mo-
murky night-in-day. Perhaps Peace is ment of suspense! It was the quintes-
there, upon their bosom or within their sence of all the moral torture of four
depths, to be borne onward in some oar- nightmare years.

less, rudderless boat, past the muffled thun- I0 And then . . . like a shock within your
der of the metropolis, past fields filled own body it came, the first solemn procla-
with the mystery of things that live and mation of the cannon, shaking the win-
grow and die, past the river's mouth where dows, the houses, the very sky, with its
its lips of land speak a great farewell, out news. The war was over. The accursed
into the wastes of the infinite sea. Lov- l5 guns had ceased tearing to pieces our hus-
ingly its breast would open and merge bands and our sons and our fathers,
one again into the elements of its mighty Of all the hundreds of thousands of

vase, to be formed anew in the unceasing women who heard those guns I think
ferment of processes of creation. there was not one who did not feel in-

Over the bridge the breathing specters 20 stantly, scalding on her cheeks, the blessed
move; below, indistinct and long-drawn tears — tears of joy! She had forgotten
shapes fare by, silent and immense, past that there could be tears of joy. The hor-
all the pride of the city, — bearing what rible weight on the soul that had grown
burthens? steered by what ghostly helms- to be a part of life dissolved away in that
man ? So the barge of dolor must cross 25 assuaging flood ; the horrible constriction
the lamenting currents of the infernal around the heart loosened. We wept
river. The shadow of another boat, with with all our might; we poured out once
sweeps groaning in their locks, glides by for all the old bitterness, the old horror,
beneath. Within its ribs lie piled We felt sanity coming back, and faith and

What merchandise? whence, whither, and for 3° even hope, that forgotten possession of
whom? the old days-

Perchance it is a fate-appointed hearse, When the first tears of deliverance had

Bearing away to some mysterious tomb passed, and your knees had stopped shak-

Or Limbo of the scornful universe ing, and your heart no longer beat suffo-

The joy, the peace, the life-hope, the abor- 35 catingly in your throat, why, then every

ti°ns , one felt one common imperious desire, to

Of all things good which should have been leaye the Kttle cramping prison 0f his

But °have° been' strangled by that City's °wn walls, to escape out of the selfish cir-
Curse# & cle of his own joy, and to mingle his

40 thanksgiving with that of all his fellows,
to make himself physically, as he felt
y spiritually, at one with rejoicing human-

ity.
tt-ttt r»Av m? pt m?v And we au" rusned out lnto tne streets.

1±1U UJ\Y VV <arL.UK¥ 45 j think there neyer can haye been such

nnnATuv r amftft n a da^ before> such a daY of Pure thanks-

DOROTHY CANMELD giving and joy fof every Qne For the

[Collier's, January u, 1919. Republished in vol- emotion was so intense that, during the

ume under the same title (copyright, 1919) by priceless hours of that first day, it admit-

Jlprinted.f & C°" by wh08e permission * is here 5° ted no other. Human hearts could hold

no more than that great gladness. The

. . . if the armistice is signed, a salvo of dreadful past, the terrible problems of

cannon from the Invalides at ' eleven the future, were not. We lived and drew

o'clock will announce the end of the war. our breath only in the knowledge that 'fir-

55 ing had ceased at eleven o'clock that
The clock hands crept slowly past ten morning,' and that those who had fought
and lagged intolerably thereafter. The as best they could for the Right had con-
rapid beating of your heart, telling off quered. You saw everywhere supreme

24 WRITING OF TODAY

testimony to the nobility of the moment, rhythm mingling with the longer shout,

women in black, with bits of bright- repeated over and over:

colored tricolor pinned on their long black

veils, with at last a smile, the most won- Allons, enfants de la patrie,

derful of all smiles, in their dimmed eyes. 5 Le Jour de Gloire est arrive I

They were marching with the others in

the streets ; every one was marching with Now people were beginning to shout :

every one else, arm in arm, singing: 'To Strasbourg! To Strasbourg! To

Strasbourg! To Strasbourg!' Then you
Allons, enfants de la patrie, » knew that y°u were beinS swept along to

Le Jour de Gloire est arrive! the Place de la Concorde, to salute the

statue of Strasbourg, freed from her forty
The houses echoed to those words, re- years of mourning and slavery,
peated and repeated by every band of jubi- The crowd grew denser and denser as

lant men and women and children who 15 it approached that heart of Paris ; and the
swept by, waving flags and shouting: denser it grew the higher flamed the great

fire of rejoicing, mounting up almost visi-
Come, children of our country, bly to the quiet gray skies:

The Day of Glory is here

20 Come, children of our country,

Every group had at its head a permis- The Day of Glory is here!

sionnaire or two in field uniform who had

been pounced upon as the visible emblem 'To Strasbourg! To Strasbourg! To
of victory, kissed, embraced, covered with Strasbourg !'

flowers, and set in the front rank to carry 25 No evil epithets hurled at the defeated
the largest flag. Sometimes there walked enemy, not one, not one in all those long
beside these soldiers working women with hours of shouting out what was in the
sleeping babies in their arms, sometimes heart; no ugly effigies, no taunting cries,
old men in frock coats with ribbons in no mention even of the enemy — instead
their buttonholes, sometimes light-hearted, 30 a fresh outburst of rejoicing at the en-
laughing little munition workers still in counter with a long procession of Bel-
their black aprons, but with tricolored gians, marching arm in arm, carrying
ribbons twisted in their hair, sometimes Belgian flags and pealing out like trum-
elegantly dressed ladies, sometimes women pets the noble Brabanqonne ! We made
in long mourning veils, sometimes ragged 35 way for them with respectful admiration,
old beggars, sometimes a cab filled with we stopped our song to listen to theirs,
crippled soldiers waving their crutches — we let them pass, waving our hats, our
but all with the same face of stead- handkerchiefs, cheering them, pressing
fast glowing jubilee. During those few flowers upon them, snatching at their
blessed hours there was no bitterness, no 40 hands for a clasp as they went by, bless-
evil arrogance, no revengeful fury. Any ing them for their constancy and courage,
one who saw all that afternoon those thou- sharing their relief till our hearts were
sands and thousands of human faces all like to burst !

shining with the same exaltation can We fell in behind them and at once

never entirely despair of his fellows again, 45 had to separate again to allow the pas-
knowing them to be capable of that pure sage of a huge camion, bristling with
joy. American soldiers, heaped up in a great

The crowd seemed to be merely wash- pyramid of brown. How every one
ing back and forth in surging waves of cheered them, a different shout, with none
thanksgiving, up and down the streets 5<> of the poignant undercurrent of sympathy
aimlessly, carrying flowers to no purpose for pain that had greeted the Belgian ex-
but to celebrate their happiness. But iles. These brave, lovable, boyish cru-
once you were in it, singing and marching saders come from across the sea for a
with the others, you felt an invisible cur- great ideal, who had been ready to give
rent bearing you steadily, irresistibly, in 55 all, but who had been blessedly spared the
one direction; and soon, as you marched, last sacrifice — it was a shout of Hesse
and grew nearer the unknown goal, you which greeted them! They represented
heard another shorter, more peremptory, the youth, the sunshine; they were loved

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 25

and laughed at and acclaimed by the our heads, as we passed, we cast our flow-
crowd as they passed, waving their caps, ers up on the pedestal, we were swept
leaning over the side to shake the myriad along by the current — we were the cur-
hands stretched up to them, catching at rent ourselves !

the flowers flung at them, shouting out 5 At the base of the statue a group of
some song, perhaps a college cheer, judg- white-haired Alsatians stood, men and
ing by the professionally frantic gestures women, with quivering lips and trem-
of a cheer leader, grinding his teeth and bling hands. Theirs was the honor to
waving his arms wildly to exhort them to arrange the flowers which, tossed too
more volume of sound. Whatever it was, I0 hastily by the eager bearers, fell to the
it was quite inaudible in the general up- ground.

roar, the only coherent accent of which As they stooped for them, and reached

was the swelling cry repeated till it was high to find yet one more corner not
like an elemental sound of nature: covered with blooms, a splendid, fair-

15 haired lad, sturdy and tall, with the field
The Day of Glory has arrived. outfit of the French soldier heavy on his

back, pushed his way through the crowd.

Now a group of English soldiers oyer- He had in his hand a little bouquet-

took us, carrying a great, red, glorious white and red roses, and forget-me-nots.
English flag, adding some hearty, inaudi- ^ His eyes were fixed on the statue. He
ble marching song to the tumult. As did not see the old men and women there
they passed, a poilu in our band sprang to receive the flowers. He pressed past
forward, seized one of the Anglo-Saxons them and with his own young hands laid
in his arms and kissed him resoundingly his humble offering at the feet of the
on both cheeks. Then there was laugh- 25 recovered city. He looked up at the
ter, and shouts and handshakings and statue and his lips moved. He could not
more embracing, and they too vanished have been more unconscious if he had
away in the waves of the great river of been entirely alone in an Alsatian forest,
humanity flowing steadily, rapidly toward The expression of his beautiful young
the statue of the lost city whose loss had 30 face was such that a hush of awe fell on
meant the triumph of unscrupulous force, those who saw him.

whose restitution meant the righting of an An old woman in black took his hand

old wrong in the name of Justice. We in hers and said: 'You are from Al-
were almost there now; the huge open sace?'
place opened out before us. 35 T escaped from Strasbourg to join the

Now we had come into it, and our French army,' he said, 'and all my family
songs for an instant were cut short by are there.' His eyes brimmed, his chin
one great cry of astonishment. As far quivered.

as the eye could reach, the vast public The old woman had a noble gesture of

square was black with the crowd, and 40 self-forgetting humanity. She took him
brilliant with waving flags, a band up in her arms and kissed him on both
on the terrace of the Tuileries, stationed cheeks. 'You are my son,' she said,
between the captured German airplanes, They all crowded around him, taking

flashed in the air the yellow sheen of their his hand. 'And my brother !' 'And
innumerable brass instruments, evidently 45 mine !' 'And mine !'
playing with all their souls, but not a The tears ran down their cheeks,

sound of their music reached our ears, so

deafening was the burst of shouting and yj

singing as the crowd saw its goal, the

high statue of the lost city, buried in 50 rnMQTAMTTMnPTT?

heaped-up flowers and palms, a triumphant LUJN ^ A AJN 1 1 JN UFLb

wreath of gold shadowing the eyes which ^^TTXTT^ OTr,T^ATn

so long had looked back to France from ARTHUR SYMONS

eX\ ,* . . , , „,. [Graphic, London, Eng., October 19, 1918.

Ah, what an ovation we gave her ! 55 By permission.]

Then we shouted as we had not done be-
fore, the great primitive, inarticulate cry Water, camels, sand, then broader
of rejoicing that bursts from the heart too water, boats, a little station, with a veiled
full. We shook out our flags high over woman standing in a doorway; then more

26 WRITING OF TODAY

water and sandy grass, a few trees, then crowds of Pera and Galata and Stamboul,
waste land, a long line of bullocks plow- is the little fierce, wind-swept suburb of
ing; then, between the railway and the Eyoub, conservatively alive among its
water, a cluster of colored houses, mostly graves. The Christian is unwelcome
of wood; then trees, more waste land, a 5 there; and why should he not be unwel-
little bay, with hills beyond; then fields, come? The mosque is the most sacred
more clusters of mean houses, plowed mosque in Constantinople, one of the two
land and water ; at last, the wall, with its mosques which no Christian is allowed to
gaps and towers ; a graveyard, gardens ; enter ; and is there anything unreasonable
then, between roofs and walls, the long I0 in this reticence ? It is his association
curve of Constantinople. A dense smell, with other races, his struggle against the
dogs, houses; then an actual sea-shore, alien forces in his midst, that degrades
with men wading bare-legged in the the Turk; he learns craft from the Jew
water, and boats coming in laden with and greed from the Christian,
melons; then streets of houses, with frag- 15 In Eyoub he has drawn himself aside,
ments of turreted walls, two birds on he lives the life of his forefathers; and
every turret; side-streets, cutting deeply you find yourself in another atmosphere
between two lines of low red roofs ; faces as you land from the steamer at the last
of many colors, strange clothes; then, station on the Golden Horn. Beyond the
over the roofs, but close, the water, ^ water, low hills rise curved ; dark cy-
houses, domes, minarets of the city, in a presses climb the hillside in rigid lines;
flash, veiled suddenly by the walls of the near the shore, rising out of trees, are the
station, fastened about one. small white dome and the two minarets

The streets of Stamboul climb and zig- of the mosque. The streets are broad,
zag; to walk in them is to crawl like a 25 well-paved, with none of the dirt and slime
maggot in rotting cheese. A tram runs of Constantinople; on each side of the
along one winding road, distracting it street are shops in which beads and rosa-
with a little civilization. Away from the ries are sold, and you see, for once, really
tram-line, and even along a part of it, appetizing pancakes being made, clean
Stamboul is Eastern ; the Thousand and 30 bread and clean fruit being sold. Men sit
One Nights are not yet over. The Ba- gravely in the cafes and at the doors of
zaar lies in its midst, a center of leisurely the shops; there is no noise, no bustle;
and vehement life; around the Bazaar every eye turns on you, without approval,
there are streets of shops, in which men but, as you walk quietly through their
live and work according to their trades ; 35 midst, without open hostility. The walls
I remember best the street of the shoe- around the mosques are pierced by barred
makers and <he street of the workers windows, through which you see bushy
in iron. Markets spread outwards and trees, and one huge plane-tree, gaping as
downwards, and, level with the quays, if from a wound. As I passed, the outer
there are more populous streets of shops, 40 doorway was being re-painted, and the
in which men make wooden and iron black lettering above it was being
things for the ships, and clothes for those carefully brightened. The inner court,
who come and go in the ships; and there through which men and women were
is always a quayside bustle, smell, and passing, was well swept; there was none
filth ; fierce men shouldering along, and 45 of the dust which lies thick about so
sore dogs and men with red scarves round many of the mosques ; I caught a glimpse
their heads, sitting on stools smoking of the doorway into the mosque itself;
cigarettes and drinking coffee out of tiny the unadorned white marble was spot-
cups. Through openings between the lessly white. But a little way beyond the
sheds and houses you can see ships being 50 mosque, a winding path begins uphill
loaded, mended, and painted ; caiques wait among the tombs, a kind of stairway with
to take passengers across, and the passen- well-swept stairs, between the tomb-
gers sit in the caiques with umbrellas over stones ; around many of them are iron
their heads. rails, freshly painted ; even the tombs of

There is rest and peace by the Sea of 55 women, with their flower-topped heads,
Marmora, but for the Moslem the one are sometimes railed round. From the
harbor of peace, where he is wholly at hilltop you look down on the Sweet
home with himself, far from the mongrel Waters of Europe, a placid lagoon, with

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 27

its dim water and pale islands of grasses without individual fire. Their eyes are
and barren shores. like the conscious eyes of animals that

Farther to the right, beyond the hill of have been taught coquetry; they have an
graves and the mosques, is the curved instinct and artifice, and nothing between,
course of the Golden Horn, with its shore 5 They grow sleepy in captivity, and, not
of houses and its many masts shining un- being wholly human, they paint their
der the sunlight. I sat long on the hill, faces and dye their nails and their hair,
looking down on this fierce and, as they that they may be more decorative than
call it, fanatical suburb, where I had ex- humanity. Their faces have the precise,
pected to feel only a sense of peril and 10 not quite perfect, regularity of early
discomfort. Never had these enemies, painting and sculpture, in which men
the Turks, seemed to me so sympathetic, trimmed nature a little awkwardly. The
so reasonable; only, I could not help feel- nose is apt to be too long or too promi-
ing that some apology was needed for my nent, the chin too thickened. The mind
being there at all. 15 has done nothing to model the lines of

If you stand in the courtyard of the their faces finely; the lines are always in
Suleimanie, just before the hour of prayer smooth curves, in which elegance sleeps,
(you have but to turn, and you can see Beauty in them is an exterior thing, into
the water, Galata, and Scutari, in exquisite which the individuality does not enter,
fragments), you will see men coming in 20 They are as they were made in the begin-
one by one, and going up to the washing- ning; they change only to fatten and to
place against the wall. They take off fade; they die children whom life has
their coats and shoes, stand on the narrow taught nothing but the taste of sweet and
foothold of stone in front of the tap, and bitter.

wash hands and feet and head. The 25 The attraction of the East for the West
carter has tied his horse to a tree; the is, after all, nostalgia; it is as if, when
soldiers stroll in barefoot with their shoes ; we are awakened by dreams, we remember
the many fez shine vividly against the that forgotten country out of which we
straight white wall. The muezzins are came. We came out of the East, and we
waiting on the minarets ; they lean over 30 return to the East. All our civilization
their balconies ; then voice after voice, in has been but an attempt at forgetting, and,
the wailing Eastern tone, cries the saluta- in spite of that long attempt, we still
tion, one voice striking through another. remember. When we first approach it,
They move round their balconies, crying the East seems nothing more than one
to north and south and east and west. 35 great enigma, presented to us almost on
The men go in slowly at all the doors, the terrifying terms of the Sphinx. We
pushing aside the heavy curtain. are on the threshold of a mystery; a cur-

It is this mosque, which is set on the tain trembles over some veiled image, per-
highest hill and seems to crown the city, haps the image of wisdom. The grave
that Turkish poets have called 'splendor' 40 faces of worshipers look into our faces
and 'joy.' And, indeed, seen from the without curiosity ; they come out into the
outside, it is the most beautiful mosque in light from behind the veil and go about
Constantinople. Its admirable propor- their daily business, and they are as in-
tions, its severe and elegant bulk, its scrutable to us as if they really were in
whole mass and height, stand out square 45 communion with a wisdom which we do
and gray and uprising against the blue not know. Perhaps, after all, this secret
of the sky ; a great gray building, with its with which they seem to go about is no
flat surfaces, like the walls of a vast more than certain ordinary and, of neces-
house, and great doorways, level with the sity, incommunicable thoughts. Here ev-
wall, squared round by barred windows, 5° erything is incommunicable ; there is a
and the long square lines of the harem, barrier between us and them, as narrow,
four five-sided minarets rising from its perhaps, and as real as the barrier be-
corners, with their elaborately carved bal- tween Europe and Asia : you have only to
conies hung with little black lamps. cross the Bosphorus.

Women have no souls, say the Turks. 55 The true East, one imagines, might
Well, Turkish women have none. The come ultimately to have its satisfaction
soul in them sleeps, and without dreams, for us, if only in our admiration before a
Their eyes are like lustrous oil, and shine complete, finished thing which we may not

28 WRITING OF TODAY

understand. In Constantinople we meet greater part of the town fronts on two
the East half-way; it has all the finished sides on San Francisco Bay, a body of
barbarism of the West in conflict with its water always tinged with gold from the
own fiercer elements. In that still hos- great washings of the mountain, usually
tile corner of Europe, the East still has to 5 overhung with a haze, and of magnificent
fight for foothold; it has never been let color changes. Across the Bay to the
alone long enough to give itself up to its north lies Mount Tamalpais, about 3000
own leisure. Left to himself, the Turk's feet high, and so close that ferries from
finest capacity is for an ironical repose, as the waterfront take one in less than half
he sits aside while the world goes by. 10 an hour to the little towns of Sausalito
He has settled now into a tragic, not sat- and Belvidere, at its foot,
isfied, unstirred immobility; he desires no Tamalpais is a wooded mountain, with

change, but things as they are do not give ample slopes, and from it on the north
him happiness. Under his acceptance of stretch away ridges of forest land, the
them he has a few fierce ideas, held like 15 outposts of the great Northern woods of
swords. Religion which becomes fanati- Sequoia sempervirens. This mountain
cism, fatalism which becomes inertia, and the mountainous country to the south
pride which becomes a mask for igno- bring the real forest closer to San Fran-
rance, guide or station him. In his rejec- cisco than to any other American city,
tion of the West he has not been able to 20 Within the last few years men have killed
keep the West out of his city, and the deer on the slopes of Tamalpais and
West is beginning to soak into his soul. looked down to see the cable cars crawl-

ing up the hills of San Francisco to the
south. In the suburbs coyotes still stole
VII a$ in and robbed hen roosts by night. The

people lived much out of doors. There is
THE CITY THAT WAS no time of the year, except a short part

of the rainy season, when the weather
WILL IRWIN keeps one from the fields. The slopes of

30 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 New York Sun, April PcfofPq run far nn inrn trip rpHwnnrl rnnn-

21, 1906, three days after the Visitation came upon estates run iar Up into trie reOWOOO COUn-

San Francisco. It is here reprinted by permission try. The deep COves of Belvidere, shel-

of the Sun and of Mr. B. W. Huebsch, who repub- f^rpH r»v th*» winrl frnm Tatnolrvaic TipM

lished the revised article in book form. Two omit- terea; by th? ,wmc| trom 1 amalpaiS, Held

ted passages are indicated by asterisks.] 35 a colony of arks or houseboats, where

people lived in the rather disagreeable
The old San Francisco is dead. The summer months, coming over to business
gayest, lightest hearted, most pleasure every day by ferry. Everything there in-
loving city of the Western Continent, and vites out of doors.

in many ways the most interesting and 40 The climate of California is peculiar;
romantic, is a horde of refugees living it is hard to give an impression of it. In
among ruins. It may rebuild; it probably the region about San Francisco, all the
will; but those who have known that forces of nature work on their own laws,
peculiar city by the Golden Gate, have There is no thunder and lightning; there
caught its flavor of the Arabian Nights, 45 is no snow, except a flurry once in five
feel that it can never be the same. It is or six years; there are perhaps half a
as though a pretty, frivolous woman had dozen nights in the winter when the ther-
passed through a great tragedy. She sur- mometer drops low enough so that in the
vives, but she is sobered and different, morning there is a little film of ice on ex-
If it rises out of the ashes it must be a 50 posed water. Neither is there any hot
modern city, much like other cities and weather. Yet most Easterners remaining
without 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 . . . .

are really the end of the Coast Range of 55 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
Ocean. Behind it is the ocean; but the people. The externals of the city are —

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 29

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 sary to say that no teams ever came up
strange seas of the Pacific, San Fran- 5 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, or two. At the end of four blocks, the
as he reached dockage, in a succession of 10 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 chiff on its seaward frontage. the whole panorama of the bay. Luckily
Further along lay Nob Hill, crowned with 15 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. of the architecture and with the green-
Below was the business district, whose 20 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- San Francisco since the padres came and
pearance. Most of the buildings were *5 gathered the Indians about Mission Do-
low and of wood. In the middle period of lores.

the '7o's, when a great part of San Fran- And it was a city of romance and a

cisco was building, the newly-rich per- gateway to adventure. It opened out
petrated some atrocious architecture. In on the mysterious Pacific, the untamed
that time, too, every one put bow win- 30 ocean ; and through the Golden Gate en-
dows on his house to catch all of the morn- tered China, Japan, the South Sea Islands,
ing sunlight that was coming through the Lower California, the west coast of Cen-
fog ; and those little houses, with bow win- tral America, Australia. There was a
dows and fancy work all down their fronts, sprinkling, too, of Alaska and Siberia,
were characteristic of the middle class 35 From his windows on Russian Hill one
residence 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
and with little regard for streets, and brig, bringing in copra, to take out cot-
their houses hung crazily on a side hill 40 tons and idols; a Chinese junk after
which was little less than a precipice, sharks' livers; an old whaler, which
The Chinese, although they occupied an seemed to drip oil, home from a year of
abandoned business district, had remade cruising in the Arctic. Even the tramp
their dwellings Chinese fashion, and the windjammers were deep-chested craft,
Mexicans and Spaniards had added to 45 capable of rounding the Horn or of cir-
their houses those little balconies without cumnavigating the globe; and they came
which life is not life to a Spaniard. in streaked and picturesque from their

Yet the most characteristic thing after long voyaging,
all was the coloring. The sea fog had a In the orange colored dawn which al-

trick of painting every exposed object a 5o 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 who have brought their customs and sail
a delight to the eye. For the color was 55 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.

The hills are steep beyond conception. Along the waterfront the people of

3o WRITING OF TODAY

these craft met. The smelting pot of the Since then some of the peculiar character
races,' Stevenson called it; and this was of the old plaza has gone,
always the city of his soul. There were The Barbary Coast was a loud bit of

black Gilbert Islanders, almost indistin- hell. No one knows who coined the
guishable from negroes; lighter Kanakas 5 name. The place was simply three blocks
from Hawaii or Samoa; Lascars in tur- of solid dance halls, there for the delight
bans; thickset Russian sailors; wild Chi- of the sailors of the world. On a fine
nese with unbraided hair; Italian fisher- busy night every door blared loud dance
men in tarn o' shanters, loud shirts and music from orchestras, steam pianos and
blue sashes ; Greeks, Alaska Indians, little 10 gramophones, and the cumulative effect of
bay Spanish-Americans, together with the sound which reached the street was
men of all the European races. These chaos and pandemonium. Almost any-
came in and out from among the queer thing might be happening behind the
craft, to lose themselves in the disrep- swinging doors. For a fine and pictur-
utable, tumble-down, but always mysteri- 15 esque bundle of names characteristic of
ous shanties and small saloons. In the the place, a police story of three or four
back rooms of these saloons South Sea years ago is typical. Hell broke out in
Island traders and captains, fresh from the Eye Wink Dance Hall. The trouble
the lands of romance, whaling masters, was started by a sailor known as Kanaka
people who were trying to get up treasure 20 Pete, who lived in the What Cheer House,
expeditions, filibusters, Alaskan miners, over a woman known as Iodoform Kate,
used to meet and trade adventures. . Kanaka Pete chased the man he had

There was another element, less pic- marked to the Little Silver Dollar, where
turesque and equally characteristic, along he halted and punctured him. The by-
the waterfront. San Francisco was the 25 product of his gun made some holes in the
back eddy of European civilization — one front of the Eye Wink, which were
end of the world. The drifters came proudly kept as souvenirs, and were
there and stopped, lingered a while to live probably there until it went out in the
by their wits in a country where living fire. This was low life, the lowest of
after a fashion has always been marvel- 30 the low.

ously cheap. These people haunted the Until the last decade almost anything
waterfront and the Barbary Coast by except the commonplace and the expected
night, and lay by day on the grass in might happen to a man on the waterfront.
Portsmouth Square. The cheerful industry of shanghaing was

The square, the old plaza about which 35 reduced to a science. A citizen taking a
the city was built, Spanish fashion, had drink in one of the saloons which hung
seen many things. There in the first out over the water might be dropped
burst of the early days the vigilance com- through the floor into a boat, or he might
mittee used to hold its hangings. There, drink with a stranger and wake in the
in the time of the sand lot troubles, Den- 40 forecastle of a whaler bound for the Arcr
nis Kearney, who nearly pulled the town tic. Such an incident is the basis of
down about his ears, used to make his Frank Norris's novel, Moran of the Lady
orations which set the unruly to rioting. Letty, and although the novel draws it
In later years Chinatown lay on one side pretty strong, it is not exaggerated. Ten
of it and the Latin quarter and the 'Bar- 45 years ago the police, the Sailors' Union,
bary Coast' on the other. and the foreign consuls, working together,

On this square the drifters lay all day stopped all this,
long and told strange yarns. Stevenson Kearney Street, a wilder and stranger
lounged there with them in his time and Bowery, was the main through fare ^ of
learned the things which wove into so these people. An exiled Californian,
The Wrecker and his South Sea sto- mourning over the city of his heart, has
ries ; and now in the center of the square said :

there stands the beautiful Stevenson mon- 'In a half an hour of Kearney Street I
ument. In later years the authorities put could raise a dozen men for any wild ad-
up a municipal building on one side of this 55 venture, from pulling down a statue to
square and prevented the loungers, for de- searching for the Cocos Island treasure.'
ccncy's sake, from lying on the grass. This is hardly an exaggeration. It was

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 31

the Rialto of the desperate, Street of the El Dorado in 1849 lie on tne. plains or in
Adventurers. the hill-cemeteries of the mining camps.

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 5 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 em stock, produce fruit larger and finer,
floating population lay apart from the reg- if coarser in flavor, than that of the par-
ular life of the city, which was distinctive ent tree. As the fruits grow, so the chil-
in itself. 10 dren grow. A normal, healthy, Califor-

The Californian is the second gener- nian woman plays out of doors from baby-
ation of a picked and mixed ancestry. hood to old age. The mixed stock has
The merry, the adventurous, often the given her that regularity of features
desperate, always the brave, deserted the which goes with the blend of bloods; the
South and New England in 1849 to rush 15 climate has perfected and rounded her fig-
around the Horn or to try the perils of ure; out of doors exercise from earliest
the plains. They found there a land al- youth has given her a deep bosom; the
ready grown old in the hands of the cosmetic mists have made her complexion
Spaniards — younger sons of hidalgo and soft and brilliant. At the University of
many of them of the best blood of Spain. *> California, where the student body is
To a great extent the pioneers intermar- nearly all native, the gymnasium measure-
ried with Spanish women; in fact, except ments show that the girls are a little more
for a proud little colony here and there, than two inches taller than their sisters of
the old, aristocratic Spanish blood is sunk Vassar and Michigan,
in that of the conquering race. Then 25 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 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, 30 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 grown to be independent of the matinees,
of a free and merry stock, the real, native From two o'clock to half-past five, a solid
Californian is a distinctive type; as far procession of Dianas, Hebes, and Junos
from the Easterner in psychology as the 35 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- 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. 40 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 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 45 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 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. 50 too, would be caught by the infection of

Almost has the Californian developed a daring dress,
racial physiology. He tends to size, to 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 55 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 land woman on whom a hard soil has be-
tones of the weaklings who started for stowed a grudged beauty — for the mo-

32 WRITING OF TODAY

bility, the fire, which belongs to the remain open until two o'clock in the morn-
Frenchwoman. The second generation of ing at least.

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 5 ing character of the people. In great
flesh. It was the beauty of Greece. part their pleasures were simple, inexpen-

With such a people, life was always sive, and out of doors. No people were
gay. If the fairly Parisian gaiety did not fonder of expeditions into the country, of
display itself on the streets, except in the picnics — which might be brought off at
matinee parade, it was because the winds 10 almost any season of the year — and of
made open-air cafes disagreeable at all long tours in the great mountains and
seasons of the year. The life careless forests.

went on indoors or in the hundreds of Hospitality was nearly a vice. As in

pretty estates — 'ranches' the Calif ornians the early mining days, if they liked the
called them — which fringe the city. 15 stranger the people took him in. At the

San Francisco was famous for its res- first meeting the San Francisco man had
taurants and cafes. Probably they were him put up at the club; at the second, he
lacking at the top ; probably the very best, invited him home to dinner. As long as
for people who do not care how they the stranger stayed he was being invited
spend their money, was not to be had. 20 to week-end parties at ranches, to little
But they gave the best fare on earth, for dinners in this or that restaurant and to
the price, at a dollar, seventy-five cents, a the houses of his new acquaintances, until
half a dollar, or even fifteen cents. his engagements grew beyond hope of ful-

If one should tell exactly what could filment. Perhaps there was rather too
be had at Coppa's for fifty cents or at «5 much of this kind of thing. At the end of
the Fashion for, say thirty-five, no New a fortnight a visitor with a pleasant smile
Yorker who has not been there would be- and a good story left the place a wreck,
lieve it. The San Francisco French din- This tendency ran through all grades of
ner and the San Francisco free lunch society — except, perhaps, the sporting peo-
were as the Public Library to Boston or 30 pie who kept the tracks and the fighting
the stockyards to Chicago. A number of game alive. These also met the stranger
causes contributed to this. The country — and also took him in.
all about produced everything that a cook Centers of man hospitality were the

needs and that in abundance — the bay clubs, especially the famous Bohemian and
was an almost untapped fishing pound, the 35 the Family. The latter was an off-shoot
fruit farms came up to the very edge of 0f the Bohemian; and it had been grow-
the town, and the surrounding country ing fast and vying with the older organi-
produced in abundance fine meats, game, zation for the honor of entertaining pleas-
all cereals, and all vegetables. ing and distinguished visitors.

But the chefs who came from France 40 The Bohemian Club, whose real founder
in the early days and stayed because they is said to have been the late Henry
liked this land of plenty were the head George, was formed in the ^o's by news-
and front of it. They passed on their art paper writers and men working in the
to other Frenchmen or to the clever Chi- arts or interested in them. It had grown
nese. Most of the French chefs at the 45 to a membership of 750. It still kept for
biggest restaurants were born in Canton, its nucleus painters, writers, musicians,
China. Later the Italians, learning of and actors, amateur and professional,
this country where good food is appreci- They were a gay group of men, and hos-
ated, came and brought their own style, pitality was their avocation. Yet the
Householders always dined out one or two 50 thing which set this club off from all
nights of the week, and boarding houses others in the world was the midsummer
were scarce, for the unattached preferred High Jinks.

the restaurants. The club owns a fine tract of redwood

forest fifty miles north of San Francisco

The crty never went to bed. There was 55 on the Russian River. There are two
no closing law, so that the saloons kept varieties of big trees in California: the
open nights and Sundays at their own Sequoia gigantea, and the Sequoia sem-
sweet will. Most of the cafes elected to pervirens. The great trees of the Man-

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 33

posa grove belong to the gigantea species. The foreign quarters are worth an arti-

The sempervirens, however, reaches the cle in themselves. Chief of these was, of
diameter of sixteen feet, and some of the course, Chinatown, of which every one
greatest trees of this species are in the has heard who ever heard of San Fran-
Bohemian Club grove. It lies in a cleft 5 cisco. A district six blocks long and two
of the mountains; and up one hillside blocks wide, housed 30,000 Chinese when
there runs a natural out of doors stage of the quarter was full. The dwellings were
remarkable acoustic properties. old business blocks of the early days; but

In August the whole Bohemian Club, the Chinese had added to them, had re-
or such as could get away from business, 10 built them, had run out their own balco-
went up to this grove and camped out nies and entrances, and had given the
for two weeks. On the last night they quarter that feeling of huddled irregu-
put on the Jinks proper, a great spectacle larity which makes all Chinese built
in praise of the forest with poetic words, dwellings fall naturally into pictures,
music, and effects done by the club. In 15 Not only this; they had burrowed
late years this has been practically a to a depth of a story or two under the
masque or an opera. It cost about $10,- ground, and through this ran passages in
000. It took the spare time of scores of which the Chinese transacted their dark
men for weeks; yet these 750 business and devious affairs — as the smuggling of
men, professional men, artists, newspaper 20 opium, the traffic in slave girls, and the
workers, struggled for the honor of help- settlement of their difficulties,
ing out on the Jinks ; and the whole thing In the last five years there was less of

was done naturally and with reverence. this underground life than formerly, for
It would not be possible anywhere else in the Board of Health had a clean-up some
this country ; the thing which made it *5 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 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. 30 quarter. The guides gave him a show by
Now some one who has taken the trouble actors hired for his benefit. In reality
has found that more persons mentioned in the place amounted to a great deal in a
Who's Who by the thousand of the popu- financial way. There were clothing and
lation were born in Massachusetts, than in :igar factories of importance, and much of
any other State ; but that Massachusetts is 35 the Pacific rice, tea, and silk importing
crowded closely by California, with the was in the hands of the merchants, who
rest nowhere. The institutions of learn- numbered several millionaires. Mainly,
ing in Massachusetts account for her pre- however, it was a Tenderloin for the
eminence; the art spirit does it for Cali- house servants of the city — for the San
fornia. The really big men nurtured on 40 Francisco Chinaman was seldom a laun-
California influence are few, perhaps; but dryman; he was too much in demand at
she has sent out an amazing number of fancy prices as a servant,
good workers in painting, in authorship, 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 45 rels with the revolvers of their highbind-
settled down from the rather wild spirit ers. There were two theaters in the
of the middle period; it had come to be quarter, a number of rich joss houses,
there a good deal as it is elsewhere, three newspapers, and a Chinese tele-
There was much wealth; and the hills of phone exchange. There is a race feeling
the western addition were growing up 50 against the Chinese among the working
with fine mansions. Outside of the city, people of San Francisco, and no white
at Burlingame, there was a fine country man, except the very lowest outcasts,
club centering a region of country estates lived in the quarter.

which stretched out to Menlo Park. This On the slopes of Telegraph Hill dwelt

club had a good polo team, which played 55 the Mexicans and Spanish, in low houses,
every year with teams of Englishmen which they had transformed by balconies
from southern California and even with into a semblance of Spain. Above, and
teams from Honolulu. streaming over the hill, were the Italians.

34 WRITING OF TODAY

The tenement quarter of San Francisco myself, sighted the smoking, flooded ruins
shone by contrast with those of Chicago of what was Pueblo soon after two
and New York, for while these people o'clock on Saturday afternoon,
lived in old and humble houses they had Swooping downward from the rain

room to breathe and an eminence for light 5 clouds into the sunlight, we flashed into
and air. Their shanties clung to the side view of the thousands of mud-bespat-
of the hill or hung on the very edge of tered hysterical men and women who
the precipice overlooking the Bay, on the lined the upper streets of the town,
verge of which a wall kept their babies Thousands of arms shot skyward in salu-
from falling. The effect was picturesque, i0 tation to us, the first of the outside world
and this hill was the delight of painters. to reach the stricken city since the wall
It was all more like Italy than anything in of water reached it on Friday night,
the Italian quarter of New York and Chi- Circling over the city of Pueblo was

cago— the very climate and surround- much akin to circling over a ruined
ings, the wine country close at hand, the 15 French village in wartime. From the air-
Bay for their lateen boats, helped them. plane Pueblo looked like a mass of ruins.
Over by the ocean and surrounded by Thin columns of blue smoke curled sky-
cemeteries in which there are no more ward from a half dozen fires, water
burials, there is an eminence which is gushed and roared and eddied over more
topped by two peaks and which the Span- 20 than a third of the city. Thin lines of
ish of the early days named after the khaki, with here and there the flash of a
breasts of a woman. The unpoetic Amer- bayonet, showed the military lines. Back
icans had renamed it Twin Peaks. At its of these lines was massed the citizenry in
foot was Mission Dolores, the last mission every stage of fright,
planted by the Spanish padres in their 25 Down in the yards lay two great trains
march up the coast, and from these hills — passenger trains — half buried in mud.
the Spanish looked for the first time upon Where the depot had been there was a
the golden bay. nasty sea of water. Sixteen cars of cat-
Many years ago some one set up at the tie lay under water near the Nuckolls
summit of this peak a sixty foot cross of 30 packing plant. Two bridges out of twelve
timber. Once a high wind blew it down, were still standing. But they were sway-
and the women of the Fair family then ing in the flood waters. A street car,
had it restored so firmly that it would re- afloat on the waters, bumped its nose
sist anything. It has risen for fifty years against the second-story of the Vail Ho-
above the gay, careless, luxuriant, and 35 tel like a battering ram. Timber, partly
lovable city, in full view from every emi- burned, floated down the streets. Dead
nence and from every valley. It stands livestock, battered automobiles, old wag-
tonight, above the desolation of ruins. ons, houses, typewriters lay piled in heaps

The bonny, merry city — the good, gray at every corner,
city — O that one who has mingled the 40 Banking down over the Congress Hotel
wine of her bounding life with the wine we sailed back over the residential sec-
of his youth should live to write the obitu- tion of the city, over the Centennial High
ary of Old San Francisco ! School, where relief stations were operat-

ing full blast, and everywhere the plane
45 was greeted with a faint buzz from the
VIII thousands of upturned faces that watched

our every move. It was a buzz when it
PUEBLO IN FLOOD reached us, but it was a wild roar, police

told us after we landed.
RAY HUMPHREYS 50 With no trains, no telephones, no lights,

-«.■«'-•'!. „ no telegraph, a scarcity of food and no

tzw„ "'SJfitJBLS P"mimm 0t ^ter, Pueblo greeted the plane as the

first sign of an armistice after the battle
Buffeting a terrific head wind and a she had waged single-handed for more
mass of clouds that threatened at times to 55 than sixteen hours.

send the ship crashing to earth 2,000 feet Circling again in great swoops, we
below, the Oriole airplane, carrying a rep- righted ourselves and, climbing high
resentative of the Associated Press and above the ruined city, we took a huge,

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 35

sickening glide toward the State Fair a waterdog as well as a flier to make the

Grounds and the landing field, only to find grade. At length we struck a paved

the field a lake of blue water. Again we street. A military patrol halted us with

climbed into the sky, circled the city 1,500 a flourish of bayonets.

feet high, rushed through the rain clouds 5 'Who are you?' asked a private.

that hovered there, and then took another The Sergeant — Sergeant Willoughby,

nose-dip for earth. Troop C — stuck out a finger, pointed to

Far out toward the La Junta Road we the army service pin I wore in my coat
spotted what appeared to be a dry field. lapel, and grinned broadly.
After one minute's hesitation, 'We '11 risk 10 'He 's all right,' he said. 'Where are
it,' shouted the pilot. I nodded back con- you going?'

sent and the airplane shuddered, spun, <i want t0 get to military headquarters,'

and dropped earthward like a yellow ball 1 told him.

of fire in the faint rays of the sun. We 'Righto,' he answered, 'but it '11 be hard

glided above the ground for fifty yards, 15 without a pass. Say, take this rifle and
seeing that the field was muddy and come wjth me. You're with me, see?
bumpy. It looked like a certain spill. You '11 get through the lines that way.'
Then we struck. A moment's shock and So, with a rifle for a passport, I en-

we bounded across the field, coming to a tered Pueblo,
halt within a few yards of a fence. 20 Downtown was chaos. No man living

We climbed out and literally fell into could describe this city of the dead,
the arms of a dozen men who came run- Armed guards stood in water waist high
ning from a pond nearby where they were and caskets f rom an undertaking estab-

Jil1^ bodies. lishment were stacked on one corner.

Where are you from? they cried. 25 Rui h reigned everywhere.

Denver we grunted removing our Upturned automobiles, with perhaps

helmets and goggles and thanking Prov- h .* buried under ^ £

ld'ne WC^d ^ H °n<Tmn^v.r wLl °n ev^ry side in the flooded dis rict
Denver ! they cried. Is Denver wiped -,,, * c T 70 .

out? They said that Fifteenth Street 30 Where the Star-Journal office used to be

was ruined and thousands killed and that was a mass of wrecked machinery and a

the City Hall was gutted. What's the mountain of mud. Light poles down

news ?' across the street made our progress diffi-

'Denver's fine/ I replied. 'How many cult> and a thousand and one Special De-
are dead here ?' 35 Putv Sheriffs, American Legion men and

'A thousand' won't do it,' replied one volunteers rendered our journey a series
of the men. 'My wife is gone ; I saw her °* na^ts ano starts,
go. This is hell, isn't it?' 'Where are you going?' was the con-

' What's doing?' asked the Associated stant bawl.
Press man. 40 'Military with feed for the horses/

'Nothing/ said one onlooker. 'The sol- shouted back Sergeant Willoughby at
diers won't let you cross to the other side, each challenge, and after the hindering
You 're in South Pueblo now. You '11 official had eyed our heavy rifle equip-
have to stay.' ment we were motioned to go ahead.

On the tail of the Oriole, in the breeze 45 Time and again we sank into great
of the giant propellor, was written the first holes, and the water, reaching up eagerly,
dispatch out of Pueblo in eighteen hours. slopped over the doors of the car, so
I handed it to the pilot, who was ready that we had to hold our rifles chin-high,
to start back to Denver. to prevent wetting them.

'City Editor, Times/ I told him. He 50 Up Main Street we went. There was
nodded. no need for any man to say we were in

Then, while we watched the plane soar a living— or, at least, what had been— a
away into the skies, another roar went living hell. No adequate delineation is
up from the people. It was a roar this possible. Here was a breadwagon,
time; we were close enough to hear it in 55 jammed through a store window, there a
its volume. Then we started to walk, wade dead horse ; further on a bunch of mat-
and swim into Bessemer. Great new riv- tresses tangled in a network of wires,
ers blocked the way and a man had to be Household furniture predominated in the

36 WRITING OF TODAY

wreckage. Bedding lay in heaps, just as ing, moving, mudmen. Here we found
it was washed from the houses. S. M. Pressy, Chairman of the Citizens'

Troopers found a baby's body in a tan- Safety Committee,
gled blanket near Third and Main Streets, 'So you 're the fellow that came in by

they said, just as the waters receded. So 5 airplane?' he asked, looking up. 'Is Den-
fast had come the hurricane of water ver gone? We heard so.'
that many families in bed were whirled Assured that Denver was not gone, he

out into the flood stream and drowned like wrote out a pass good until seven o'clock in
rats. the evening. This pass, pinned beneath a

Like sentinels of the dead, great trees, 10 Denver police badge, took me by the
still lovely in summer foliage, stuck up pickets, who sprang up, rifles in hands, on
here and there from piles of trunks, mat- every corner as dusk came on.
tresses, carts and roofs. These trees had Down to the devastated district the

afforded a temporary refuge to many. Sergeant led the way and, through oceans
One man, a Santa Fe brakeman told me, 15 of slime, we plowed like so many truck
waited until his chin was on a level with horses, weighted down by mud and more
the water and then suddenly placed a pis- mud.

tol he had held for hours to his head and Efforts to get a wire out to Denver

pulled the trigger. His body splashed into were futile. The Western Union had
the dark flood like a bag of flour. Troops 20 tapped its wires at Mineral Park and,
took others from trees. running in a few makeshift connections,

On many corners stood huge piles of was trying to get in touch with the out-
charred lumber. It was this burning lum- side world.

ber that threatened Pueblo during the Meanwhile military automobiles were
flood. Ignited by the explosions in the 25 coming up Main Street, with corpses
yards and then carried away on the crest lashed on the running boards, while thou-
of the flood, these burning firebrands sancjs 0f whitefaced people lining the
bumped everywhere and carried death curbs wept) trembled, cursed— a bedlam
and destruction with them. Only the 0f terror>

steady rain that marked the flood saved 30 Darkness fell on the scene. It was
Pueblo from being gutted by this men- necessary to g0 back for a new pass,
ace alone. Had it not been for the rain, which was promptiy issued by Pressy.
Sergeant Willoughby said, it would not Meanwnile) however, Captain Dennis of
have been possible to save any portion of Denver had arrived and ranger patrols
the town at all. 35 f direction were assembling.

A.S we plodded through the mire we unassuming, but with a demeanor

could see the high-water mark on the » 1 «**««o & , *«--_

buildings, fourteen feet above the side- that ™ant . <^<* ^f' ftL * °°P'
walks. Innumerable automobiles stood un^Pen™', ^rll ee
with a ton of debris resting on their tops, 40 ^^^ttta is a
showing that they had been completely ^ «g J» t e' police

submerged by the flood. It was a scene g .. guard in Pueblo. You

of desolation, of death, in which no human ^^ tQ w^fy about any of them/

And over allay the filthy yellow slime <S «* ^ handed out the slip , <rf ! paper,
that characterizes Pueblo this morning. Cavalry patrols dashing through the
None can tell how many crushed humans ™d and throwing the spray high torch-
lie beneath this cloak of mud, as yet un- »ght processions of searchers for the dead,
searched lonS lines of looters, or alleged looters,

'There/ would point out Willoughby, 'is 5o herded t>y troopers weeping women and
where we found a dead woman and a baby.' straggling lines of children— all these

A pace or two further, he would point passed in the night,
out another gruesome detail, so that our Shortly before midnight a detachment
journey up Main Street to the Elks' Hall of newspaper photographers from Denver
was more like a funeral procession than 5S and movie men reached town, having
a trip of military detail. come in by handcar, auto and on foot

At length we reached the hall— four liv- from Colorado Springs. Two airplanes

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 37

followed ours into Pueblo, but refused to that newspapers are apt to be smaller than

risk a landing. their normal size and that there is room

The night grew darker, activities ceased. for an ampler interpretation of life and

events overseas. At the Foreign Office I

5 found men like Sir William Tyrrell, who

IX accompanied Lord Grey to Washington,

and Sir Arthur Willert, who gained his

THE RETURN OF A NATIVE experience in that city as correspondent

of The Times; but even in the Foreign
P. W. WILSON » Office, though humanized out of all re-

cognition, one was amused by the whimsi-

[North American Review, January, 1922. By caJ remark, 'The Spirit of Lord North is

permission. J , , , , ' r

not dead.

To revisit England after an absence of One noticed first how large and

three years — and especially three years of 15 crowded are the cities for so small a
the social turmoil that has followed the country. Here is population twice as
armistice — could not but be for an Eng- dense per square mile as that of Japan,
lishman an experience at once fascinating And for England, as for Japan, the funda-
and poignant. About the landscapes, so mental problem is how to maintain and,
familiar, there was now a strange un- 20 still more, how to raise to a higher level
familiarity, as if something — or some one the standard of life on an area so re-
— had changed — a change, not indeed in stricted. In the States, where poor men
those fields, by comparison with the can and do constantly become rich or at
prairies so curiously green, or in the least 'comfortably off/ you can talk plaus-
hedges that enclosed them, but in the eye 25 ibly to the wage-earner about production
itself which for the first time views them, and output and an opportunity for all, but
as it were, from a distance, objectively. in Great Britain where, broadly speaking,
One realized why it is that Englishmen, the coal and mineral fields are under full
after domicile abroad, whether in Asia, development — and some approaching ex-
Africa or America, — for in this respect it 30 haustion — there is not this sense of limit-
makes no difference, — can never again be less resources, still to be tapped. The
quite at home in England. These nomads English feel that for them there is so
have seen with their eyes what their much and no more to be spent and en-
people at home have not troubled as yet joyed per head, and the question how the
to imagine. They have looked over the 35 heritage is to be shared thus becomes vital
hedges to the horizons beyond, and in to every household. When politicians call
their gaze these far horizons must ever be upon the workers to increase production,
reflected. For every pilgrim who goes the workers have hitherto listened, if at
forth, the New World is a discovery, but all, with impatience. To them, output
for the American of seventy times seven 40 means export— commodities for others
generations the Old World remains, as than themselves to enjoy— and export, so
Rome remained to the Celts of Cornwall, they think, means higher profits for the
a sub-conscious memory— like a child's employer at stationary wages for the
sense of the mother who died at his birth, employed. Labor, thus arguing, is faced
The Old World can never know the New 45 this winter by a sad disillusionment. The
World as well as the New World knows idea that the markets of the world will
the Old. Pav anv Price asked by British industry,

Take Fleet Street, the proverbial haunt whether Capital or Labor, for British coal,
of the press. Of her newspapers, digni- irori^ or cotton, is slowly but surely dis-
fied, accurate, and restrained, Britain has 5o appearing under the harsh stress of un-
been justly proud. But in Fleet Street employment. France is getting her coal
to-day there is a crisis. While the price from Germany, and Germany is supplying
of paper in the open market has fallen, finished steel at a figure which Britain
many journals are tied to war contracts must demand for pig-iron. Hence the
which have still a period to run. Labor 55 great blast furnaces which I saw standing
is costly and the coal strike slumped ad- cold and silent — a spectacle all the more
vertisements, which source of revenue is significant because it is reported as
only beginning to recover. All this means general. That the iron industry will re-

38 WRITING OF TODAY

vive, every one believes. Railways, both confessed to me that the time had come
in Britain and in India, — to give one fac- for everybody to settle down to his task,
tor, — must have metal. But the business and in quarters where I should not have
has received, for the moment, a knockout expected it I found a strong conviction
blow, and at Mansfield, in the very heart 5 that industry requires a complete libera-
of a prosperous mining area, I watched tion from the barbed-wire entanglements
hundreds of men spending an idle day in of Trade Union rules. Some of these, as
the town square, where the only activity quoted to me, seemed almost inconceivable
was displayed by a newspaper boy, selling in their economic futility. With large
a sheet called The Early Bird, entirely 10 reserves of labor unemployed, there must
devoted to those sports which inspire bet- be of necessity a chance for the open shop
ting. There is among the English a pas- which the masters are advocating with
sion for glorious uncertainty which drives unaccustomed boldness. I gathered that
them into every quarter of the world, and objection is not taken to Trade Union
when they remain at their own fireside, *5 hours and wages so much as to the regula-
on humdrum money when Saturday comes tions which appear to waste the worker's
round, they find an outlet either in reli- energies and fritter away his time. For
gious emotion, as inspired by Wesleys and these regulations, it may be that em-
Whitefields and Moodys, or in games and ployers have only had themselves to
races — football, pigeon flying, celery- 20 blame. In many industries before the
shows, horses, dogs, fowls — any medium war unfair wages and hours provoked
for competition with prizes. In many among the workers their still existing un-
quarters, I heard regrets that the book- reasonable attitude. The reaction against
maker should have so thriving a business. organized labor is, however, none the less
It was pointed out that mathematically 25 severe on that account. A policy of
his must be an undertaking which, on strikes has impoverished the Unions, which
balance, draws money from the pocket of have had to realize their accumulated in-
the wage-earner — money not to be spared vestments at heavy depreciation. While
with ease by the wage-earner's wife and paying their dues, the members of the Un-
family. 30 ions have begun to ask what precisely, of

Unemployment has thus failed to limit recent years, have been the benefits accru-
expenditure— at any rate, to the extent ing t0 them as contributors to a common
one would have expected— or out of door fund. There is in Britain undoubtedly
recreation. Cricket and football are sup- what in the United States would be called
ported by a generous patronage. The 35 a 'radical' movement. Of this movement,
famous games at Grasmere drew to that the large circulation of The Daily Her-
charming village among the Lakes of ald— this despite its price raised to two-
Westmoreland an amazing train of char- pcnce or four cents— is evidence. But it
a-bancs and motorcars, most of them did not seem to me that the intellectuals
hired by persons of small means. Agri- 40 in British Socialism— men like Ramsay
cultural shows, improvised in remote Macdonald— were holding their own.
dales, gathered hundreds of pounds in an Mrs. Philip Snowden, after visiting Rus-
afternoon, at the gate. There are those sia and seeing things there for herself,
who believe that it will take one more has swung clearly from the left wing to
stern lesson this winter to teach the nation 45 the right. Her husband is no longer reck-
the duty of daily work; that with all the oned among the firebrands. Indeed, the
distress and anxiety, thrift has still to be fear in some quarters is that the re;
learned. My impression is that a salutary will sweep the country too far. Every
awakening has already come. At the reasonable person admits that the sweat-
various Trade Union congresses the pro- 5o ing system, as denounced by Charles King-
ceedings have been conducted in a very sley and immortalized to infamy in his
gentle tone. The miners, for example, Song of the Shirt by Tom Hood, — a sys-
are less than they used to be in the hands tern which condemned thousands of women
of their young and advanced rhetoricians, to toil for three cents an hour and even
and in negotiations they now refrain from 55 less, — was a blot on the industrial es-
pressing demands which, as they rightly cutcheon of England. A dozen year
perceive, must imperil their own — and in- Sir Herbert Samuel, then at the Home
deed all — industry. Railway men openly Office, established Trade Boards which

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 39

rescued these virtually enslaved workers. crated cynicism of Dean Inge. Socialists
The Trade Boards are now being assailed like Father Adderly of Covent Garden are
and their abolition is demanded, which, to heard with attention, and feminism — in-
be candid, seems an indefensible proposal. evitable where women are it* in excess of
It is not the io^d (21 cents) an hour 5 two millions — makes its influence felt es-
made payable to seamstresses that imperils pecially in a Church where the majority
British industry. At present rates of ex- of worshippers has long been drawn
change, it only works out at about seven from that sex. I am told, however, that
dollars a week. The attack on the Trade the progressive leadership in the Church
Boards does show, however, in what 10 of England has yet to penetrate rural
direction sentiment is moving. deaneries. There is a background even

While the middle classes have rallied here of intense conservatism. It is only
against insurgent Labor and with remark- in Wales that the Church is disestablished,
able success, there is throughout the na- and Welsh Episcopalianism promptly
tion a cheerful camaraderie. The very 15 voted itself an Archbishop. Also, an
retail tradesmen who suffered most se- acquiescent Prime Minister compelled
verely from the coal strike collected Parliament to nullify disendowment by
money to pay for meals to be given to grants of public money!
the miners' children. 'No boy or girl in That England is ripe for a great era

our district/ said one business man, 'went 20 of personal and national religion, is ob-
hungry.' Yet this business man was an vious. All that I am indicating is that
outspoken critic of the Trade Union the character of that era has not yet
leadership. There is, I think, a feeling declared itself. Many Churches are
that, after all, rich and poor in Britain crowded. On a weekday, there were at
have suffered and fought and died to- 25 least six hundred persons attending even-
gether, and that three years after the song in St. Paul's Cathedral. To the
armistice they are together confronted by lessons, as to the exquisite and unaccom-
common dangers. If the workers are panied singing, they listened with pro-
foolish, then, it cannot be claimed that found attention. The fact is, of course,
the thinkers have been altogether wise. 30 that the British are today a nation of
Among all classes there have been faults, mourners. Everywhere it is the same;
followed by an atonement of heroism. ^ children killed, or children sent on service

I cannot say that I found in Britain to the ends of the earth. Even today the
evidences of a religious awakening. The outpouring of the nation's best life is
great Brotheihood meetings and adult 35 wonderful. And with it there is a great
schools, which were such a feature in the zeal for higher education. Historic
Churches before the war, are still stagger- schools like Eton and Harrow and Win-
ing under the loss of their bravest and chester, which sent their boys by the thou-
best young men, killed or crippled. Dr. sand to battle and the grave, are crowded
Jowett, summoned from Fifth Avenue by 40 once more by a new generation. Oxford
command of the King and persuasion of and Cambridge are full of undergraduates,
the Prime Minister, has preached with so full that foreign students cannot al-
tender sympathy, but, at the moment, he ways find accommodation. As India is
is in the south of France, recruiting from discovering, the governing reserves of
ill-health. Veterans like Dr. Clifford of 45 England are gravely depleted, but the
the Baptists and Dr. F. B. Meyer of the gaps are already being filled, and it is
Congregationalists do not seem to have even said that some professions — medi-
successors. Indeed, the Free Churches, cine, for instance — are overcrowded,
which have lost Dr. Campbell to Anglican- I am not myself much inclined to aJmire
ism and are hardly represented by that 5© obelisks, and when I saw London's mem-
brilliant expositor, Dr. Orchard, appear orial to Nurse Cavell, I confess that I was
to be fighting a soldiers' battle for faith disappointed and even indignant. That
and reverence. The Established Church such a monument should have been reared
is in the exactly converse situation. On without including the immortal utterance,
social and industrial questions, the Arch- 55 'Patriotism is not enough,' among its in-
bishops and Bishops issue quite audacious scriptions, seemed to me an outrage upon
pronouncements and the pulpit of St. a great international martyr and heroine.
Paul's Cathedral rings with the conse- Londoners themselves are far from sat-

4o WRITING OF TODAY

isfied with this addition to their sights to live — were asserting once more their claim
be seen. But with the cenotaph in White- over the spirit of the nation,
hall, To the Glorious Dead,' I was im-
pressed far more deeply than I could X
have thought possible. I had not realized s

the touches of sombre radiant color, SEAGULLS IN LONDON

yielded by the flags, motionless as senti-
nels, or the banks of flowers, perpetually W. H. HUDSON
renewed by rich and poor — wreaths and ,~L T .

crosses and humble bunches of wild bios- 10 1°*"™'- Lon£™±erl^s-onJfnxl!iry ,6« I921
soms that for weeks at a time have

stretched across Whitehall and forced the On this subject, Mr. Reveirs-Hopkins

police to divert the traffic from that busy writes: 'Can any of our ornithologists
avenue. In the Abbey one heard, as tell us of a reasonable first cause for a
usual, the guides droning their rigmarole 15 change in a habit in a species whose hab-
about kings and queens long ago dead its are supposed to be as unchangeable as
and gone, but there did not need to be the laws of the Medes and Persians?'
any guide to the simple stone in the nave, The answer is that the gull's habits are
beneath which lay, in French soil brought more fixed and unalterable than any
with him, the ever unknown soldier. All 20 man-made laws, and that they have not
day and every day, crowds gather around changed. It only appears so to those who
that spot and linger over the grave, with do not know the gull, but do you know
faces bent and eyes often -.verted from that it is only in recent years the bird
observation. Very pathetic were these has become an annual visitor to Lan-
emotions among a people reckoned to be 25 don ?

so reserved as the English. The gull is a seabird admirably fitted to

Not that on the surface you would de- the conditions he exists in: webbed feet,
tect sorrow. On the contrary, what I a dense plumage, which makes him the
saw everywhere was a smile. It was the most buoyant of floating things, and pow-
kind of cheerfulness that pervades a 30 erful wings so fashioned and so controlled
hospital, where all are comforted because — so wind-wise, as it were — that flying
all share the same trouble. 'The reason against the wind the wind itself bears him
why people here are so happy,' said I to along. But he is not pelagic like his near
a friend, 'is that they have now no treas- or distant relations : petrels, albatrosses,
ures on earth, but only in heaven !' So 35 shearwaters, and others. They are more
heavy have been financial losses that the highly specialized; they pay but one visit
victims have nothing now to worry about; each year to the land, to lay an egg on
for thousands, it is a case of starting a rock, and when their young are reared
things afresh, from scratch. Hence, to go back once more to their home and
there is a new appreciation of those bene- 40 country — the rolling deep. The gull is
fits which money cannot buy. At the the seabird that does not like to lose sight
Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool — raided of the land, to which he can fly for refuge
by the unemployed a few days after I when the sea is too rough for him and
landed — no fewer than eight hundred per- the wind too violent,
sons daily passed the turnstile and studied 45 Being a seabird he eats fish but can't
the pictures. In the National Gallery, dive for them like the tern, gannet. and
fronting Trafalgar Square in London, I cormorant ; he can only snatch them from
found crowds of people, examining the the surface, where they are not alwavs
rearranged masterpieces of that collection, seen, and he is thus compelled to subsist
There and at Hertford House, where the $0 mainly on the dead fish matter the sea
Wallace Collection is again to be seen, casts up. That 's why he is called the
the roofs had been rearranged with a 'vulture of the sea.' When fish food. li\ -
view to better lighting, and lectures on ing or dead, fails him, he roams inland.
the art of which examples are shown and his wild eyes that search the sea are
were regularly delivered for any who 55 just as wide open to detect eatable things
wished to listen. It seemed as if 'ad- in the land. Thus it came to pass that
miration, hope and love' — by which we when the man who first invented the

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 41

plow plowed his first furrow a pass- with the remains of their dinners, and
ing gull noticed that worms were turned feeding the gulls soon become a popular
up, and down he dropped with a amusement all over London, for the gulls
joyful cry to devour them, and from that had also become visitors to the parks,
day he became a follower of the plow. 5 I think I can claim to be the first person
In like manner when the first ship was in London to feed them with sprats. At
launched, the gulls, idling about and sip- all events, I saw no one else doing it for
ping sea water as their custom is for several days after I started it. The very
want of something to eat, noticed that sight of a little silvery fish thrown up
some fragments of food were thrown over 10 would bring the birds screaming with ex-
by the mariners, and from that time they citement about me, and I would soon have
became followers of ships. a pushing crowd of people round me to see

In severe winters, when sea and sea- the fun. By and by others — ladies and
shore food fails them and the earth is gentlemen — began to come with their bas-
frost-bound, they suffer as much as other 15 kets and parcels of sprats,
birds. Four winters ago we had a severe Quite naturally, after having been re-

frost in West Cornwall, and when the ceived hospitably that winter, the gulls
field birds were perishing in numbers the returned the next season, which was not
gulls flocked to the village where I was a severe one, and as people continued to
staying and would come down into the 20 feed them they continued to come year
street and to the very doors of the cot- after year, up to the present time. Thus
tages to devour the scraps that could be one sees that it was not the gull but the
spared to them in that season of war and Londoner who changed his habits. Here
scarcity. But the food was not enough. in this 'most westernest part of all the
Close by there was a white band, a third 25 land,' where I write, the sentiment, com-
of a mile long, on the beach, composed of paratively new in London, is a very old
the gulls that had died in the water and one. The people generally are careless of
had been washed up by the tide. their little wild birds' lives or they would

At such seasons the gulls invariably as- not tolerate the bush-beating— a favorite
cend the estuaries and rivers to pick up 30 recreation of the village boys. But the
what they can, and that is how we come fisherman cherishes a tenderness for the
to have them in the Thames. Thus, dur- gull. It is his Little Sister,
ing a great frost in the late eighties of

last century (not twenty years ago, as XI

Mr. Hopkins says), when the river was 35

full of floating blocks and masses of ice, THE SECRET DOOR

the gulls came in unusual numbers. Then

the people of London, or some of them, CTT> •DATTT T.jnrvo

when walking on the bridges and the em- MK ^AUJ- DUKHb

bankment, noticed, apparently for the first 40 [Atlantic Monthly, July, 1921. Reprinted in
time, that the flying gull was an object "£ed, ,Dusk a?d the Morrow" by Sir Paul Dukes

of beauty-a thing to look at. And no SSS' Page & C°0' By permisslon of the
wonder, when even the dry-as-dust

ornithologist — Sebohm in this instance — Late at night I stood outside the

cries out in delight at its loveliness, and 45 Tauride Palace in Petrograd, which had
says that the uplifted white wings of the become the center of the revolution. No
gull have served the Christian artists from one was admitted through the great gates
the earliest times as a model in their rep- without a pass. I sought a place about
resentations of angels and celestial beings, midway between the gates, and, when no
Our Londoner then made the further 5o one was looking, scrambled up, dropped
discovery that the closer you see the bird over the railings, and ran through the
the more beautiful it looks and that you bushes straight to the main porch. Here
can bring it as near to you as you like by I soon met folk I knew — comrades of
feeding it. Every day at noon numbers of student days, revolutionists. What a spec-
men and boys from the warehouses and 55 tacle within the palace, lately so still and
shops and offices in the neighborhood dignified ! Tired soldiers lay sleeping in
would come down to Blackfriars Bridge heaps in every hall and corridor. The
and the Embankment to feed the gulls vaulted lobby, whence the Duma members

42 WRITING OF TODAY

had flitted silently, was packed almost to was driven to a building in a side street
the roof with all manner of truck, bag- in the vicinity of Trafalgar Square,
gage, arms, and ammunition. All night This way,' said the chauffeur, leaving the
long, and the next, I labored with the car. The chauffeur had a face like a mask,
revolutionists to turn Tauride Palace into 5 We entered the building, and the elevator
a revolutionary arsenal. whisked us to the top floor, above which

Thus began the revolution. And after? additional superstructures had been built
Every one knows now how the hopes of for war emergency offices,
freedom were blighted. Truly had Rus- I had always associated rabbit-warrens

sia's foe, Germany, who despatched the I0 with subterranean abodes; but here in
'proletarian' dictator Lenin and his satel- this building I discovered a maze of rab-
lites to Russia, discovered the Achilles' bit-burrow-like passages, corridors, nooks,
heel of the Russian revolution. Every and alcoves, piled higgledy-piggledy on the
one now knows how the flowers of the roof. Leaving the elevator, my guide led
revolution withered under the blast of the ,5 me up one flight of steps so narrow that
class war, and how Russia was replunged a corpulent man would have stuck tight,
into starvation and serfdom. I will not then down a similar flight on the other
dwell on these things. My story relates sjde, under wooden archways so low that
to the time when they were already cruel we had to stoop, round unexpected cor-
realities. 20 nerS) and again up a flight of steps which

j brought us out on the roof. Crossing a

short iron bridge, we entered another

My reminiscences of the first year of maze, until, just as I was beginning to fee^
Bolshevist administration are jumbled into dizzy, I was shown into a tiny room about
a kaleidoscopic panorama of impressions 25 ten feet square, where sat an officer in
gained while journeying from city to city, the uniform of a British colonel. The
sometimes crouched in the corner of impassive chauffeur announced me and
crowded box-cars, sometimes traveling in withdrew.

comfort, sometimes riding on the steps, 'Good-afternoon, Mr. Dukes,' said the

and sometimes on the roofs or buffers. I 30 colonel, rising and greeting me with a
was nominally in the service of the British warm hand-shake. T am glad to see you.
Foreign Office; but the Anglo-Russian You doubtless wonder that no explanation
Commission (of which I was a member) has been given you as to why you sh0uld
having quit Russia, I attached myself to return to England. Well, I have to in-
the American Y. M. C. A., doing relief 35 form you> confidentially, that it has been
work A year after the revolution I proposed t0 offer you a somewhat respon-
found myself in the Eastern city of Sa- sible t in the Secret inteiiigence

mara, training a detachment 01 Boy Service '

Scouts As the snows of winter melted, 1 gaSped. 'But,' I stammered, 'I have
and the spring sunshine shed joy and 40 never-M ay I ask what it i mplies?'
cheerfulness around, I held my parades, 'Certainly,' he replied. We have reason
and together with my American colleagues tQ believ/that r^ will not long con.
organized outings and sports. . b foreigners. W? wish

Then one day, when in Moscow, I was _ ~7 . * ** . ., * . . ^ „e

handed an unexpected telegram-'urgent' «* ??£ ™en } V^lo Uns' P
-from the British Foreign Office. 'You informed of the march of events.

are wanted at once in London,' it ran. . ?*>} Put f"» . ™7 P"*** ?orV? lt
I set out for Archangel without delay. « important, and if I drop it-
Thence by steamer and destroyer and tug We foresaw that objection, replied the

to the Norwegian frontier; and so, round So colonel, and I must tell you that under
the North Cape to Bergen, with, finally, a w.a.r regulations we have the right to requi-
zig-zag course across the North Sea, sition your services if need be. You have
dodging submarines, to Scotland. been attached to the Foreign Office. This

At Aberdeen the Control Officer had office also works in conjunction with the
received orders to pass me through by the 55 Foreign Office, which has been consulted
first train to London. At King's Cross a on this question. Of course,' he added,
car was waiting; and knowing neither my bitingly, 'if the risk or danger alarms
destination nor the cause of my recall, I you — '

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 43

I forget what I said, but he did not an edition of Thackeray's works in a dec-
continue, orative binding of what looked like green

'Very well,' he proceeded, 'consider the morocco. I used at one time to dabble in
matter and return at four-thirty tomor- bookbinding, and am always interested in
row. If you have no valid reasons for 5 an artistically bound book. I took down
not accepting this post, we will consider 'Henry Esmond' from the shelf. To my
you as in our service and I will tell you bewilderment the cover did not open, un-
further details.' til, passing my finger accidentally along

He rang a bell. A young lady appeared what I thought was the edge of the pages,
and escorted me out, threading her way 10 the front cover suddenly flew open of it-
with what seemed to me marvelous dex- self, disclosing a box. In my astonish-
terity through the maze of passages. ment I almost dropped the volume, and a

Burning with curiosity, and fascinated sheet of paper slipped out and fell to the
already by the mystery of this elevated floor. I picked it up hastily and glanced
labyrinth, I ventured a query to my young l5 at it. It was headed Kriegsministerium,
female guide. 'What sort of establish- Berlin, had the German Imperial arms
ment is this?' I said. imprinted on it, and was covered with

I detected a twinkle in her eye. She minute handwriting in German. I had
shrugged her shoulders and, without re- barely slipped it back into the box and
plying, pressed the button for the elevator. 20 replaced the volume on the shelf, when
'Good-afternoon,' was all she said as I the colonel returned,
passed in. 'A— the— a— Chief is not in/ he said,

Next day I found the colonel in a fair- <but you may see him tomorrow. You

S1Z?td ^JaJrtme?t' ^ eaSy SairS' am! are interested in books?' he added, seeing
walls hidden by bookcases He seemed *5 me looki at the shelves .j collect

to take it for granted that I had nothing them. That is an interesting old volume

to say. , . , on Cardinal Richelieu, if you care to look

I will tell you briefly what we desire, at it T icked it in Charing Cross

he said. Then you may make any com- Road fo/a shim > p
ments you wish and I will take you up to 30 The volume mentioned was immediately
interview-a-the Chief. Briefly, we aboye ,R EsmonaV I took it down

want you to return to Soviet Russia and n £j something uncommon to

to send reports on the situation there. 0CCU/'butPit wa| only a m*sty old voiume
We wish to be accurately informed as to p; £ J and soiled

the attitude of every section of the com- 35 r 4. a a <. u • *. *. a

munity, the degree li support enjoyed by **§£* ?8^ much el^^worfh
the Bolshevist government, the develop- . £fcre " ?ot^1mu1, e1^ .u , ,

ment and modification of its policy, what lookl^ * * thlnk> said the colonel
possibility there may be for an alteration casually.^ Well, good-by. Come in to-
of regime or for a counter-revolution, and 40 mo/"row. . # ,-v

what part Germany is playing. As to the I returned again the next day, after

means whereby you gain access to the thinking overnight how I should get back
country, under what cover you will live to Russia— and deciding on nothing My
there, and how you will send out reports, mind seemed to be a complete blank on
we shall leave it to you, being best in- 45 the subject in hand, and I was entirely
formed as to conditions, to make sugges- absorbed in the mysteries of the roof-
tions ' labyrinth.

He expounded his views on Russia, ask- Again I was shown into the colonel's
ing for my corroboration or correction, sitting-room. My eyes fell instinctively
and also mentioned the names of a few 5o on the bookshelf. The colonel was in a
English people I might come into con- genial mood. T see you like my collec-
tact with there. T will see if— a— the tion/ he said. 'That, by the way, is a fine
Chief is ready,' he said, finally, rising. T edition of Thackeray.' I felt my heart
will be back in a moment.' leap. 'It is the most luxurious binding I

The apartment appeared to be an office, 55 have ever yet found. Would you not like
but there were no papers on the desk. I to look at it?'

rose and stared at the books on the book- I looked at the colonel very hard, but

shelves. My attention was arrested by his face was a mask. My immediate con-

44 WRITING OF TODAY

elusion was that he wished to initiate me dences of scientific investigation served
into the secrets of the Department. I only to intensify an already overpowering
rose quickly and took down 'Henry Es- atmosphere of strangeness and mystery,
mond,' which was in exactly the same But it was not these things that engaged

place as it had been the day before. To 5 my attention as I stood nervously waiting,
my utter confusion it opened quite natu- It was not the bottles or the machinery
rally, and I found in my hands nothing that attracted my gaze. My eyes fixed
more than an edition de luxe, printed on themselves on the figure at "the writing-
India paper and profusely illustrated ! I table. In the capacious swing desk-chair,
stared, bewildered, at the shelf. There I0 his shoulders hunched, with his head sup-
was no other 'Henry Esmond.' Immedi- ported on one hand, busily writing, there
ately over the vacant space stood the life sat in his shirt-sleeves —
of Cardinal Richelieu as it had stood yes- Alas, no ! Pardon me, reader, I was

terday. I replaced the volume, and, try- forgetting! There are still things I may
ing not to look disconcerted, turned to the l5 not divulge. There are things that must
colonel. His expression was quite impas- stiH remain shrouded in secrecy. And
sive, even bored. one 0f them is — who was the figure in the

It is a beautiful edition,' he repeated swing desk-chair in the darkened room at
as if wearily. 'Now, if you are ready, we the top of the roof-labyrinth near Trafal-
will go and see— a— the Chief.' 20 gar Square on this August day in 1918.

Feeling very foolish, I stuttered assent I may not describe him, or mention even
and followed. As we proceeded through one 0f his twentv-odd names. Suffice it
the maze of stairways and unexpected to say that> awe-inspired as I was at this
passages, which seemed to me like a minia- first encounter, I soon learned to regard
tureHouseof Usher, I caught glimpses of 25 <the Chief, ^ feel; 0f the deepest
tree-tops, of the Embankment Gardens, the personal re?ard and admiration. He was
Thames, the Tower Bridge, and Westmm- a British Q^r and an English gentleman
ster From the suddenness with which the absolutely fearless and

angle of view changed, I concluded that .r, , ... ,. ■>• , r ,.,

in reality we were simply gyrating in one 30 ?lfted .™th ™1;™ted resources of subtle
very limited space; and when suddenly Jy™?* and I count it one of the great-
we entered a spacious study -the sanctum jst privileges of my life to have been
of '—a— the Chief,'-I had an irresistible brought within the circle of his acquaint-
feeling that we had moved only a few ancesnip.

yards, and that this study was immediately 35 l* ?,,ho"?te I saw myself motioned to
above the colonel's office. at chair The Chief wrote for a moment

It was a low, dark chamber at the ex- tnen suddenlv turned, with the unexpected
treme top of the building. The colonel remark, So I understand you want to go
knocked, entered, and stood at attention, pack to Soviet Russia, do you?— as if it
Nervous and confused, I followed, pain- 40 had been my own suggestion,
fully conscious that at that moment I The conversation was brief and precise,

could not have expressed a sane opinion Trie words Archangel, Stockholm, Riga,
on any subject under the sun. From Helsingfors, recurred frequently, and the
the threshold the room seemed bathed in names were mentioned of English people
semi-obscurity. The writing-desk was so *5 in those places and in Petrograd. It was
placed, with the window behind it, that on finally decided that I alone should deter-
entering everything appeared only in sil- mine how and by what route I should
houette. It was some seconds before I regain access to Russia and how I should
could clearly distinguish things. A row of dispatch reports.

half a dozen extending telephones stood 5° 'Don't go and get killed/ said the Chief
at the left of a big desk littered with pa- in conclusion, smiling. 'You will put him
pers. On a side table were numerous through the ciphers,' he added to the colo-
maps -and designs, with models of air- nel, 'and take him to the laboratory to
planes, submarines, and mechanical de- learn the inks and all that.'
vices, while a row of bottles of various 55 We left the Chief and arrived by a
colors and a distilling outfit with a rack single flight of steps at the door of the
of test-tubes bore witness to chemical ex- colonel's room. The colonel laughed,
periments and operations. These evi •• 'You will find your way about in course of

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 45

time/ he said; 'let us go to the laboratory stayed, looked him up, and presented my
at once.' note of introduction. I found Melnikoff

And here I draw a veil over the roof- to be a Russian naval officer of the finest

labyrinth. Three weeks later I set out stamp, and intuitively conceived an imme-

for Russia, into the unknown. 5 diate liking for him. His real name, I

•r-r discovered, was not Melnikoff, but in those

parts many people had a variety of names

I resolved to make my first attempt at to suit different occasions. My meeting
entry from the north, and traveled up to with him was providential, for it appeared
Archangel on a troopship of American sol- I0 that he had worked with Captain Crombie,
diers, most of whom hailed from Detroit. late British Naval Attache at Petrograd.
But I found the difficulties at Archangel In September, 1918, Captain Crombie was
to be much greater than I had anticipated. murdered by the Bolsheviki at the British
It was 600 miles to Petrograd, and most of Embassy, and it was the threads of his
this distance would have to be done on l5 shattered organization that I hoped to pick
foot through unknown moorland and up upon arrival in Petrograd.
forest. The roads were closely watched, Melnikoff was slim, dark, short, and

and before my plans were ready, autumn muscular, with stubbly hair and blue eyes,
storms broke and made the moors and He was deeply religious, and was imbued
marshes impassable. But at Archangel, M with an intense hatred of the Bolsheviki
realizing that to return to Russia as an — not without reason, since both his
Englishman was impossible, I let my beard father and his mother had been brutally
grow and assumed an appearance entirely shot by them, and he himself had escaped
Russian. only by a miracle. 'The searchers came

Failing in Archangel, I traveled down to 25 at night,' so he told the story to me. 1
Helsingfors, to try my luck from the di- had some papers referring to the insurrec-
rection of Finland. Helsingfors, the capi- tion at Yaroslavl, which my mother kept
tal of Finland, is a busy little city bristling for me. The searchers demanded access
with life and intrigue. At the time of to my mother's room. My father barred
which I am writing it was a sort of dump- 30 the way, saying she was dressing. A
ing-ground for every variety of conceiv- sailor tried to push past, and my father
able and inconceivable rumor, slander, and angrily struck him aside. Suddenly a shot
scandal, repudiated elsewhere, but swal- rang out, and my father fell dead on the
lowed by the gullible scandal-mongers — threshold of my mother's bedroom. I was
especially German and ancien-regime 35 in the kitchen when the Reds came, and
Russian — who found in this city a haven through the kitchen door I fired and killed
of rest. Helsingfors was one of the un- two of them. A volley of shots was di-
healthiest spots in Europe. Whenever rected at me. I was wounded in the hand,
mischance brought me there, I lay low, and only just escaped by the back stair-
avoided society, and made it a rule to tell 40 way. Two weeks later my mother was
everybody the direct contrary of my real executed on account of the discovery of
intentions, even in trivial matters. my papers.'

In Helsingfors I was introduced, at the Melnikoff had but one sole object left

British consulate, to an agent of the in life — to avenge his parents' blood. This
American Secret Service who had recently 45 was all he lived for. So far as Russia
escaped from Russia. This gentleman was concerned, he was frankly a monar-
gave me a letter to a Russian officer in chist; so I avoided talking politics with
Viborg, by name Melnikoff. The little him. But we were friends from the mo-
town of Viborg, being the nearest place of ment we met, and I had the peculiar feel-
importance to the Russian frontier, was 50 ing that somewhere, long, long ago, we
a hornet's nest of Russian refugees, had met before, although I knew this was
counter-revolutionary conspirators, Ger- not so.

man agents, and Bolshevist spies — worse, Melnikoff was overjoyed to learn of my

if anything, than Helsingfors. desire to return to Soviet Russia. He

Disguised now as a middle-class com- 55 undertook not only to make the arrange-
mercial traveler, I journeyed on to Vi- ments with the Finnish frontier patrols
borg, took a room at the same hotel at for me to be put across the frontier at
which I had been told that Melnikoff 'night, secretly, but also to precede me to

46 WRITING OF TODAY

Petrograd and make arrangements there under dramatic circumstances. But that
for me to find shelter. Melnikoff gave me comes later in my story,
two addresses in Petrograd where I might

find him — one of a hospital where he had HI

formerly lived, and the other of a small 5 I rose early the next day, but there was
cafe that still existed in a private flat not much for me to do. As it was Satur-
unknown to the Bolshevist authorities. day, the Jewish booths in the usually busy

Perhaps it was a pardonable sin in little market-place were shut, and only
Melnikoff that he was a toper. We spent the Finnish ones were open. Most articles
three days together in Viborg making 10 of the costume I had decided on were
plans for Petrograd, while Melnikoff already procured; but I made one or two
drank up all my whiskey except a small slight additions on this day, and on Sun-
medicine-bottle full, which I hid away. day morning, when the Jewish booths
When he had satisfied himself that my opened. Mfy outfit consisted of a Rus-
stock was really exhausted, he announced 15 sian shirt, black-leather breeches, black
himself ready to start. It was a Friday, knee-boots, a shabby tunic, and an old
and we arranged that I should follow two leather cap with a fur brim and a little
days later, on Sunday night, the twenty- tassel on top, of the style worn by the
fourth of November. Melnikoff wrote out Finns in the district north of Petrograd.
a password on a slip of paper. 'Give that 20 With my shaggy black beard, which by
to the Finnish patrols,' he said, 'at the now was quite profuse, and long unkempt
third house, the wooden one with the hair dangling over my ears, I was a sight,
white porch, on the left of the frontier indeed, and in England or America should
bridge.' doubtless have been regarded as a thor-

At six o'clock he went into his room, *5 oughly undesirable alien,
returning in a few minutes so transformed On Sunday an officer friend of Melni-

that I hardly recognized him. He wore koff's came to make sure that I was ready,
a sort of seaman's cap that came right I knew him by the Christian name and
down over his eyes. He had dirtied his patronymic of Ivan Sergeievitch. He was
face, and this, added to the three-days-old 30 a pleasant fellow, kind and considerate,
hirsute stubble on his chin, gave him a Like many other refugees from Russia, he
truly demoniacal appearance. He wore had no financial resources, and was trying
a shabby coat and trousers of a dark color, to make a living for himself, his wife, and
and a muffler was tied closely round his his children by smuggling Finnish money
neck. He looked a perfect apache as he 35 and butter into Petrograd, where both
stowed away a big Colt revolver inside were sold at a high premium. Thus he
his trousers. was on good terms with the Finnish pa-

'Good-by,' he said simply, extending trols, who also practised this trade and
his hand ; then stopped and added, 'let whose friendship he cultivated,
us observe the good old Russian custom 40 'Have you any passport yet, Pavel
and sit down for a minute together.' Pavlovitch?' Ivan Sergeievitch asked me.

According to a beautiful custom that 'No,' I replied; 'Melnikoff said the pa-

used to be observed in Russia in the olden trols would furnish me with one.'
days, friends sit down at the moment of 'Yes, that is best/ he said; 'they have
parting, and maintain complete silence for 45 the Bolshevist stamps. But we also col-
a few instants, while each wishes the lect the passports of all refugees from
others a safe journey and prosperity. Petrograd, for they often come in handy.
Melnikoff and I sat down opposite each And if anything happens, remember you
other. With what fervor I wished him are a "speculator." '
success on the dangerous journey he was 50 All are stigmatized by the Bolsheviki ns
undertaking for me ! speculators who indulge in the private

We rose. 'Good-by/ said Melnikoflj sale or purchase of foodstuffs or clothing,
again. He turned, crossed himself, and They suffer severely, but it is better to be
passed out of the room. On the threshold a speculator than a spy.
he looked back. 'Sunday evening/ he 55 When darkness fell, Ivan Sergeievitch
added, 'without fail/ accompanied me to the station and part

I saw Melnikoff only once more after of the way in the train, though we sat
that, for a brief moment in Petrograd, separately, so that it should not be seen

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 47

that I was traveling with one who was Red sentry. I left the bridge on my right,
known to be a Russian officer. and turned to look for the house of the

'And remember, Pavel Pavlovitch,' said Finnish patrols to whom I had been di-
Ivan Sergeievitch, 'to go to my flat when- rected.

ever you are in need. There is an old 5 Finding the little wooden villa with the
housekeeper there, who will admit you if white porch, I knocked timidly. The door
you say I sent you. But do not let the opened, and I handed in the slip of paper
house porter see you, — he is a Bolshevik, on which Melnikoff had written the pass-
— and be careful the house committee do word. The Finn who opened the door
not know, for they will ask who is visit- » examined the paper by the light of a
ing the house.' greasy oil lamp, then held the lamp to my

I was grateful for this offer, which face, peered closely at me, and finally
turned out to be very valuable. signaled to me to enter.

'We boarded the train at Viborg and 'Come in/ he said. 'We were expecting

sat at opposite ends of the compartment, 15 you. How are you feeling?'
pretending not to know each other. I did not tell him how I was really feel-

When Ivan Sergeievitch got out at his ing, but replied cheerily that I was feeling
destination, he cast one glance at me, but splendid.

we made no sign of recognition. I sat 'That 's right/ he said. 'You are lucky

huddled up gloomily in my corner, ob- 20 in having a dark night for it. A week
sessed with the inevitable feeling that ago one of our fellows was shot as we
everybody was watching me. The very put him over the river. His body fell
walls and seats seemed possessed of eyes. into the water and we have not yet fished
That man over there, did he not look at it out.'

me — twice ? And that woman, spying con- 25 This, I suppose, was the Finnish way of
stantly (I thought) out of the corner of cheering me up.

her eye ! They would let me get as far 'Has any one been over since ?' I que-

as the frontier; then they would send ried, affecting a tone of indifference,
word over to the Reds that I was coming. 'Only Melnikoff/

I shivered, and was ready to curse myself 30 'Safely?'

for my fool adventure. But there was no The Finn shrugged his shoulders,

turning back ! 'Forsan et hoec olim mem- 'We put him across all right — a dalshe

inisse juvabit' wrote Virgil. (I used to ne snayu [what happened to him after
write that on my Latin books at school — I that, I don't know].'

hated Latin.) 'Perhaps some day it will 35 The Finn was a lean, cadaverous-
amuse you to remember these things.' looking fellow. He led me into a tiny
Cold comfort, though, in a scrape, and eating-room, where three more Finns sat
with your neck in a noose. Yet these round a smoky oil lamp. The window
escapades are amusing — afterward. was closely curtained and the room

At last the train stopped at Rajajoki, 40 was intolerably stuffy. The table was
the last station on the Finnish side of the covered with a filthy cloth, on which a
frontier. It was a pitch-dark night, with few broken lumps of black bread, some
no moon. It was still half a mile to the fish, and a samovar were placed. All four
frontier. I made my way along the rails men were shabbily dressed and very rough
in the direction of Russia, and down to 45 in appearance. They spoke Russian well,
the wooden bridge over the little frontier but conversed in Finnish among them-
river Sestro. Great hostility still existed selves. One of them said something to
between Finland and Soviet Russia. Skir- the cadaverous man and appeared to be re-
mishes frequently occurred, and the fron- monstrating with him for telling me of
tier was guarded jealously by both sides. 50 the accident that had happened to their
I looked curiously across at the gloomy colleague a week before. The cadaverous
buildings and the dull twinkling lights on Finn answered him with some heat,
the other bank. That was my Promised 'Melnikoff is a chuckle-headed scatter-

Land over there, but it was flowing, not brain,' persisted the cadaverous man, who
with milk and honey, but with blood. The 55 appeared to be the leader of the party.
Finnish sentry stood at his post at the 'We told him not to be such a fool as to
bar of the frontier bridge; and twenty go into Petrograd again. The Redskins
paces away, on the other side, was the are searching for him everywhere in Pet-

48 WRITING OF TODAY

rograd, and every detail of his appear- 'Because the woods are patrolled, and

ance is known. But he would go. I sup- the outposts change their place every
pose he loves to have his neck in a noose. night. We cannot follow their move-
With you, I suppose, it is different. Mel- ments. Several people have tried to cross
nikoff says you are somebody important— 5 into the woods. A few succeeded, but
but that 's none of our business. But the most were either caught or had to fight
Redskins don't like the English. If I their way back. But this meadow is a
were you, I would n't go for anything. most unlikely place for any one to cross,
But it 's your affair, of course.' so the Redskins don't watch it. Besides,

We sat down to the loaves and fishes. 10 being open, we can see if there is any one
The samovar was boiling, and while we on the other side. We will put you
swilled copious supplies of weak tea out across just here,' he said, indicating a
of dirty glasses, the Finns retailed the narrow place in the stream at the middle
latest news from Petrograd. The cost of of the meadow. 'At these narrows the
bread, they said, had risen to about eight 15 water runs faster, making a noise, so we
hundred or a thousand times its former are less likely to be heard. When you
price. People hacked dead horses to get over, run up the slope slightly to the
pieces in the streets. All the warm cloth- left. There is a path that leads up to the
ing had been taken and given to the Red road. Be careful of this cottage, though,'
Army. The Tchrezvichaika (the Extraor- 20 he added, making a cross on the paper at
dinary Commission) was arresting and the extreme northern end of the meadow,
shooting workmen as well as the educated 'The Red patrol lives in that cottage,
people. Zinovieff threatened to extermin- but at three o'clock they will probably be
ate all the bourgeoisie if any further at- asleep.'

tempt were made to molest the Soviet 25 There remained only the preparation of
government. When the Jewish Commis- 'documents of identification,' which should
sar Uritzky was murdered, Zinovieff shot serve as passport in Soviet Russia. Mel-
over five hundred of the bourgeoisie at a nikoff had told me I might safely leave
stroke, — nobles, professors, officers, jour- this matter to the Finns, who kept them-
nalists, teachers, men and women, — and 30 selves well informed of the kind of papers
a list was published of another five hun- it was best to carry, to allay the suspi«
dred who would be shot at the next at- cions of Red Guards and Bolshevist police
tempt on a commissar's life. officials. We rose and passed into

I listened patiently, regarding the bulk another of the three tiny rooms that the
of these stories as the product of Finnish 35 villa contained. It was a sort of office,
imagination. 'You will be held up fre- with paper, ink, pens, and a typewriter
quently to be examined,' the cadaverous on the table.

man warned me ; 'and do not carry parcels 'What name do you want to have?'

— they will be taken from you in the asked the cadaverous man.
street.' 40 'Oh, any,' I replied. 'Better, perhaps.

After supper, we sat down to discuss let it have a slightly non-Russian smack,
the plans of crossing. The cadaverous My accent — '

Finn took a pencil and paper and drew a The cadaverous man thought for a mo-

rough sketch of the frontier. ment. 'Afirenko, Joseph Hitch,' he sug-

' We will put you over in a boat at the 45 gested ; 'that smacks of Ukrainia.'
same place as Melnikoff, ' he said. ' Here I agreed. One of the men sat down to

is the river, with woods on either bank. the typewriter and, carefully choosing a
Here, about a mile up, is an open meadow certain sort of paper, began to write. The
on the Russian side. It is now eleven cadaverous man went to a small cup-
o'clock. About three we will go out 50 board, unlocked it, and took out a boxful
quietly and follow the road that skirts of rubber stamps of various sizes and
the river on this side, till we get opposite shapes, with black handles,
the meadow. That is where you will 'Soviet seals,' he said, laughing at my

cross.' amazement. 'We keep ourselves up to

'Why at the open spot?' I queried, sur- 55 date, you see. Some of them were stolen,
prised. 'Shall I not be seen there most some we made ourselves, and this one—'
easily of all? Why not put me across he pressed it on a sheet of paper, leaving
into the woods ? ' the imprint 'Commissar of the Frontier

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 49

Station Bielo'ostrof — 'we bought from the institution that employed all the paid
over the river for a bottle of vodka.' hirelings of the Tsar's secret police to
Bielo'ostrof was the Russian frontier vil- suppress the last vestiges of the liberty
lage just across the stream. of the revolution !

1 had had ample experience earlier in 5 'Now for the signatures and seal/ said
the year of the magical effect upon the the Finn. 'Tihonov and Friedmann used
rudimentary intelligence of Bolshevist to sign these papers, though it does n't
authorities of official 'documents,' with matter much ; it 's only the seal that
prominent seals or stamps. Multitudi- counts/

nous stamped papers of any description 10 From some Soviet papers on the table
were a great asset in traveling, but a big he selected one with two signatures
colored seal was a talisman that lev- from which to copy. Choosing a suitable
eled all obstacles. The wording of the pen, he scrawled beneath the text of my
document, even the language in which passport, in an almost illegible slanting
it was written, was of secondary impor- 15 hand, 'Tihonov.' This was the signature
tance. A friend of mine once traveled of a proxy of the Extraordinary Commis-
from Petrograd to Moscow with no sion. The paper must also be signed by
other passport than a receipted English a secretary, or his proxy. 'Sign for your
tailor's bill. This 'document of indenti- own secretary,' said the Finn, laughing
fication' had a big printed heading with 20 and pushing the paper to me. 'Write up-
the name of the tailor, some English right this time, like this. Here is the orig-
postage-stamps attached, and a flourishing inal. Friedmann is the name.'
signature in red ink. He flaunted the Glancing at the original, I made an

document in the face of the officials, as- irregular scrawl, resembling in some way
suring them it was a diplomatic passport 25 the signature of the Bolshevist official,
issued by the British Embassy ! 'Have you a photograph ?' asked the

This, however, was in the early days cadaverous man.

of Bolshevism. The Bolsheviki gradually I gave him a photograph I had had

removed illiterates from service, and in taken at Viborg. Cutting it down small,

the course of time restrictions be- 30 he stuck it at the side of the paper.

came very severe. But seals were as es- Then, taking a round rubber seal, he

sential as ever. made two imprints over the photograph.

When the Finn had finished writing, The seal was a red one, with the same

he pulled the paper out of the type- inscription inside the periphery that was

writer and handed it to me for perusal, 35 printed at the head of the paper.

In the top left-hand corner it had this The inner space of the seal consisted of

heading: — the five-pointed Bolshevist star, with a

Extraordinary Commission of the Central mallet and a plow in the center. <

Executive Committee of the Petrograd So- lhat 1S y<>ur certificate of service, said

viet of Workers' and Red Armymen's 4<> the Finn ; 'we will give you a second

Deputies. one of personal identification.'

Then followed the text:- -4noJ;her Paper was quickly printed off

with the words, The holder of this is the
Certificate Soviet employee Joseph Hitch Afirenko,

This is to certify that Joseph Hitch Afi- 45 aged 36 years.' This paper was unneces-
renko is in the service of the Extraordinary sary in itself, but two 'documents' were
Commission of the Central Executive Com- always better than one.
mittee of the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' It was now after midnight, and the

and Red Armymen's Deputies, in the capac- leader of the Finnish patrol ordered us
ity of office clerk as the accompanying signa- &0 tQ He down for a short rest He threw
tures and seal attest. himself on a couch in the eating-room.

'In the service of the Extraordinary There were only two beds for the re-
Commission?' I gasped, taken aback by maining four of us, and I lay down on
the amazing audacity of the thing. one of them with one of the Finns. I

'Why not?' said the cadaverous man 55 tried to sletp, but couldn't. I thought
coolly; 'what could be safer?' of all sorts of things — of Russia in the

I burst into laughter as I realized the past, of the life of adventure I had
grim humor of pretending to belong to elected to lead for the present, of the

50 WRITING OF TODAY

morrow, of friends still in Petrograd paces away on either hand and in the
who must not know of my return — if background. On the left I could just see
I got there. I was nervous, but the the cottage of the Red Patrol, against
dejection that had overcome me in the which the Finns had warned me.
train was gone. I saw the essential hu- 5 The cadaverous man took up his station
mor of my situation. The whole adJ at a slight break in the thickets. A mo-
venture was really one big exclamation ment later he returned and announced that
mark. Forsan et hoec olim — all was well. 'Remember,' he enjoined me

once again, in an undertone, 'run slightly
IV io to the left, but — keep an eye on that cot-

The two hours of repose seemed inter- tage.'
minable. I was afraid of three o'clock, He made a sign to the other two, and

and yet I wanted it to come quicker, from the bushes they dragged out a boat,
to get it over. At last a shuffling noise Working noiselessly, they attached a long
approached from the neighboring room, 15 rope to the stern and laid a pole in it.
and the cadaverous Finn prodded each Then they slid it down the bank into
of us with the butt end of his rifle, the water.

'Wake up,' he whispered ; 'we '11 leave in 'Get into the boat/ whispered the leader,

a quarter of an hour. No noise. The 'and push yourself across with the pole,
people in the next cottage must n't hear 20 And good luck !'
us.' I shook hands with my companions,

We were ready in a few minutes. My pulled at my little bottle of whiskey, and
entire baggage was a small parcel that got into the boat. I started pushing, but
went into my pocket, containing a pair with the rope trailing behind, it was no
of socks, one or two handkerchiefs, and 25 easy task to punt the little bark straight
some dry biscuit. In my other pocket across the running stream. I was sure I
I had the medicine bottle of whiskey should be heard, and had in midstream the
I had hidden from Melnikoff, and some sort of feeling I should imagine a man has
bread. as he walks his last walk to the gallows.

One of the four Finns remained be- ^ At length I was at the farther side, but it
hind. The other three were to accom- was quite impossible to hold the boat
pany me to the river. It was a raw and steady while I landed. In jumping a-
frosty November night, and pitch-dark. shore, I crashed through the thin layer of
Nature was still as death. We issued ice. I scrambled out and up the bank,
silently from the house, the cadaverous 35 and the boat was hastily pulled back to
man leading. One of the men followed Finland behind me.

behind, and all carried their rifles ready 'Run hard!' I heard a low call from
for use. over the water behind me. D it, the

We walked stealthily along the road noise of my splash had reached the Red
the Finn had pointed out to me on paper ^ patrol ! I was already running hard when
overnight, bending low where no trees I saw a light emerge from the cottage on
sheltered us from the Russian bank. A the left. I forgot the injunctions as to di-
few yards below, on the right, I heard rection, and simply bolted away from that
the trickling of the river. We soon ar- lantern. Half-way across the sloping
rived at a ramshackle villa, standing on 45 meadow I dropped and lay still. The light
the river-bank, surrounded by trees and moved rapidly along the river bank,
thickets. Here we stood stock-still for a There was shouting, and then suddenly
moment, to listen for any unexpected two shots; but there was no reply from
sounds. The silence was absolute. But the Finnish side. Then the light began to
for the trickling of the river, there was 50 move slowly back toward the cottage of
not a rustle. the Red patrol, and finally all was silent

We descended to the water under cover again,
of the tumble-down villa and the bushes. I lay motioi less for some time, then

The stream was about twenty paces wide rose and proceeded cautiously. Having
at this point. Along both banks there 55 missed the right direction, I found that
was an edging of ice. I looked across at I had to negotiate another small stream
the opposite side. It was open meadow, that ran obliquely down the slope of the
but the trees loomed darkly a hundred meadow. Being already wet, I did not

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 51

suffer by wading through it. Then I social experiment the world has ever seen
reached some garden fences, over which did for the common crowd. And,
I climbed, and found myself in the road. strangely buoyant, I stepped lightly out

Convincing myself that the road was of the station into the familiar streets,
deserted, I crossed it and came out on 5
to the moors, where I found a half-
built house. Here I sat down to await XII
the dawn — blessing the man who invented

whiskey, for I was very cold. It began MY EXPERIENCE IN THE

to snow, and, half-frozen, I got up to 10 MOVIES

walk about and study the locality as well

as I could in the dark. At the cross- MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

roads near the station I discovered some

Soldiers Sitting round a bivouac fire, SO [American Magazine, October, 1920. By per-

I retreated quickly to my half-built house 15 mission.]

and waited till it was light. Then I ^ .

approached the station, with other There f* a &** deal .of curJ0Slty

passengers. ^ the gate ^ soldier was ^ft^S8^

^TZoTX^o^n^ for,0 (a) ^o the stars look like thei/pictures7?
the first time; but the examination (b) Do they draw their reported salaries?
was a very cursory one. The soldier (c) How does one write scenarios?
seemed only to be assuring himself that (d) How do *> iol instance, produce one of
the paper had a proper seal. He passed my own pictures?
me through and I went to the ticket- 25 The answers to these inquiries are :
office and demanded a ticket. (a) Some are even lovelier than their pic-

'One first class to Petrograd,' I said tures. Some are— not.
boldly. .(b) There is a good bit of exaggera-

There is no first class by this train, tion about moving picture salaries,
only second and third.' 30 Where there is a star, and especially

'No first? Then give me a second.' when that star has an interest in the pic-
I had asked the Finns what class I ought ture, vast amounts change hands. One
to travel, expecting them to say third, very high-priced star, for instance, works
But they replied, first, of course, for it for three months a year at a salary of ten
would be strange to see an employee of 35 thousand dollars a week. But she makes
the Extraordinary Commission traveling a good many pictures in that time, and
other than first class. Third class was works very hard. Another famous
for workers and peasants. woman whose contract is a yearly one,

The journey to Petrograd was about gets three thousand dollars a week for
twenty-five miles, and, stopping at every 40 fifty-two weeks. The rank and file get
station, the train took nearly two hours, good, but not exorbitant salaries. Extra
As we approached the city, the coaches people are paid by the day, and I believe
filled up, until people were standing in the the average for experienced extras is eight
aisles and on the platforms. There was a dollars a day. But except in costume pic-
crush in the Finland station at which we 45 tures they provide their own outfits. Of
arrived. The examination of papers was course 'extra' work is generally with the
again merely cursory. I pushed out with hope of being featured later. A test is
the throng, and looking around me on the taken of likely material and it is one of
dirty rubbish-strewn station, I felt a curi- the surprises of the screen that plain
ous mixture of relief and apprehension. 50 young women frequently photograph as

My life, I suddenly realized, had had types of supreme and often spiritual love-
an aim — it was to stand here on the liness, while girls of real beauty sink into
threshold of the city that was my home, commonplaceness.

homeless, helpless, and friendless, one of (c) It is not the scenario which mat-

the common crowd. That was it — one of 55 ters, but the idea behind it. The most
the common crowd. I wanted, not the perfect and slavish following of the text-
theories of theorists, or the doctrines of books on scenario writing will not put
doctrinaires, but to see what the greatest over a poor idea or an old one. On the

52 WRITING OF TODAY

other hand, a good situation or plot might the same time, or they are not good direc-
be written in twenty words, on the back tors. A juggler keeping seventeen china
of last year's calendar, and find accept- plates in the air at once has an easy task
ance. compared with them.

(d) Now, as to how I produce my own 5
pictures. After the day's 'take' is completed, and

Every now and then I have a conversa- the director is gradually becoming himself
tion like this: Some clever woman comes again and disentangling his personality,
to rre, and she says, 'I have such a lot of the 'take' goes to the laboratory. All
time, and I do want to do something. w over the lot (the 'lot' is a highly expen-
I 've thought of the moving pictures. sive property, boarded in from intrusion
What do you think about it ?' and as difficult to get into, past the gate-

'Do you know anything about acting?' keeper, as the well-known simile of the

'Mercy ! I did n't mean that. But I camel and the eye of the needle — by the
go to the pictures, and I see so many J5 way, the eye of the needle was a gate, too,
things that need correcting. And I know and into Jerusalem, I think), there are
something about decorating. Everybody other directors and camera men sending
likes my house.' in their day's 'take' to the laboratory.

There is much to be said about those

She is generally inarticulate, rather, *> laboratories, by the way. You wind into
but by this time I know what she feels parts of them in complete darkness, hold-
and is vaguely striving to put into words. ing to a hand ahead of you. It does n't
She is fastidious; she knows the customs particularly matter whose hand. And
of polite society, and what she means is when you get there it is still dark, but
that some pictures still show a lamentable 25 after a time you see three dull red objects,
lack of good taste. A lack of good taste which prove to be somebody's face and
in dress, in settings, and in morale. But two hands; but that is all you do see.
the average of this good taste is con- They tell you what is going on, but when
stantly rising. There are always defects you get out into the light of day you draw
to be found, of course, greatly to the de- 30 a long breath and decide that writing has
l'ght of those chronic protesters who, its advantages. There are vats to wet the
among magazine readers, for instance, film, big revolving drums to dry it, and
think nothing of a two-cent stamp if machines to print it. And in a sort of
they have caught me with a split infini- cold storage vault there are metal con-
tive. 35 tainers somewhat smaller than the steam

Shall I ever forget the time I accredited cooker of my childhood days,
a phrase to 'Bleak House' which should 'All we have to show, until we begin to

have gone to 'Nicholas Nickleby' ! print, of a picture that has cost a quarter

I generally sit down with these people of a million dollars, goes into one of those
who want to elevate the taste of the pic- 40 cans,' says the head of the laboratory,
tures, and I tell them of the amount of So the day's rushes are developed, a

effort and money being spent to do that print made, and the next day a board sits
very thing. In the gradual development in the projecting-room and does what my
of a new art — and the moving picture is enthusiastic visitor wanted to do.
the newest and most democratic of the 45 That board is more calloused than the
arts — it is necessary to develop the ar- palm of a professional grafter's hand.
tists. And ars longa. It takes time. (I wrote this 'golfer' but I think my sec-

Today the successful directors are gen- retary's interpretation of my writing is
tlemen who would no more countenance not bad!) It is as unemotional as Sena-
a white tie with a dinner coat than they 5° tor Lodge and as critical as an English-
would, for instance, count the cost of a man in America. It has left in it no
scene. And because to err is human, a thrills, no gooseflesh, no laughter, and no
check is kept even on them, for they have tears. It is a coroner's inquest. It is a
quite a number of things to do. They pathological inquiry, trying to find out
have to act every part in the picture, to 55 what is wrong. It is variously constitu-
show how they want it done. They have ted, but it generally includes the head of
to weep for the heroine and bark for the the scenario department, the scenario
dog. They have to be every part, all at writer of that particular story, the head

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 53

of the cutting department, the laboratory mediately check up the strange forms in
chief, and, of course, the producer or his which notes and letters are still occasion-
representative. Sometimes it includes an ally seen on the screen. She knows
author. The director of the picture is 'form/ which men seldom do.
probably out on the lot, again acting four- 5 Amazingly beautiful effects are worked
teen parts to the music of a folding organ out on the screen. One of the first things
the size of a bushel of potatoes, a violin, I had to learn was that the camera toler-
and a 'cello. Good music, too, quite often. ates no makeshifts. It scorns the imita-

It is fairly difficult to get by this skepti- tions which pass muster on the stage. A
cal group with any nonsense. They are 10 lot of nonsense is talked about the extrav-
there to pick flaws, and they find them. agance of making pictures; but the plain
Of course I am referring now to the best truth is that the camera is a ruthless and
type of studio, a place of great invest- cruel betrayer of shams. Doors and walls
ment financially, and of the knowledge have to be of wood, and solid wood. Iron
that only through quality lies success. 15 gates are iron gates. A spade is a spade,

I have mentioned the cutter. Now, and a Turkish carpet is a Turkish carpet,
quite a lot has been written about moving The art department is vitally impor-

pictures, but I have never seen the cutter tant. Here are made blueprints, and col-
treated with the consideration which is ored sketches, perspectives and plans,
his due. He is a most important element 20 Here, too, are worked out the matters of
in the making of a picture and he com- furnishings and hangings, with experi-
mands an excellent salary, which he as- enced interior decorators in charge,
suredly earns. It is not at all unusual to Have you noticed the change in the in-
have two hundred thousand feet of film teriors in the last two or three years?
taken in the development of a single story. 25 Do you remember the cluttered interiors
Some pictures run far above that. And 0f a few years ago? The figured wall
about the longest picture which an audi- paper? The rooms crowded with furni^
ence will sit through comfortably is seven ture ? Do you recall how the gowns of
thousand feet. Six thousand is better, the women in a ballroom and the lambre-
and I am inclined to think that even that 30 quins in the drawing-room used to blow
length will be reduced before long. about?

The day of the open stage is gone. The

The cutter has to reduce these two day of daylight, for pictures of interiors,
hundred thousand feet of material, or has gone. Even in southern California,
sixty thousand, or a hundred thousand, to 35 where daylight is the commonest thing
six or seven thousand! There is a task they have, next to oranges and moving
for you, to do that, and to lose nothing picture actors, it has gone. The stages
valuable ! He and the director work to- are all closed in now ; and when I say
gether over the cutting table, and how stages, I refer to buildings about the size
they live to tell the tale — in six thousand 40 of the hall in Chicago where a few
feet — is as mysterious as the way people months ago a number of clamorous gen-
go over cliffs in automobiles, in the pic- tlemen and a few women were indicating
tures, without injury. their choice for our next President.

But to go back to the coroner's inquest Temperamental directors go even further,
1 have mentioned. You may have no- 45 and barricade their own particular portion
ticed that it is an entirely masculine of that stage with screens, from the re-
board. With all her groping, my woman verse side of which the visitor, who has
visitor was right. An intelligent, observ- knocked down the gateman and got in
ant woman would be a highly useful addi- over his prostrate figure, can hear his
tion. There are decayed gentlewomen 50 wails of grief, his cries of joy, his tense
acting as supers today, giving a real air and emotional directions,
of distinction to ballroom scenes; women Listen, from behind the screen:

who know, as no man ever takes the trou- 'Lights ! Camera ! Enter Clara,

ble to know, how dinner tables should be (Clara presumably enters.) Slowly now,
laid, and orders of precedence, and how 55 Clara. Slowly. Slowly. . . . You have
an English butler is really liveried, and lost him. You will never see him
what are the duties of a second man. again. . . . Stop ! . . . Look at his chair.
Such a woman, for instance, would im- ... Go on. . . . Your heart is broken.

54 WRITING OF TODAY

Your — heart — is — broken. ... Sit down, melted into the consistency and appear-
. . . Think. Think. . . . Cut.' ance of the tar used for repairing road-

This last is to the camera man. Clara ways, she stuck a brush into it and ap-
is still sitting in her chair, nursing her proached me.

broken heart, and a young man steps 5 'What are you going to do now?' I
before the camera and holds up a slate demanded in alarm.

containing certain cabalistic signs. The 'Bead your eyelashes,' she said briskly,

camera man grinds a moment. 'Close your eyes.'

Now Clara looks rather wonderful un- The process consisted of painting my

der the Cooper-Hewitt lights. But Clara 10 eyelashes with the tar, which then ran
in daylight looks rather odd. down and congealed in small black tears

on the end of each lash. The effect was

Now I have been made up for a moving ravishing, from a distance, and I brought
picture. First I shall tell about that the frying pan home with me. When I
making up, and then about the picture. I 15 think of the wasted years when I have put
may say as a preamble, however, that vaseline on my eyelashes at night, I could
after seeing it I gave up any thought of weep.

playing in my own things. The making I then went to the stage and was mov-

up ran something like this, done by a ied, and spent a feverish night waiting for
feminine expert. 20 the rushes next day. I then discovered

(a) She covered my face with a thick that I would continue to be a writer to the
layer of grease paint. Grease paint is end of my days.

cream-colored and looks like a stick of

shaving soap. It obliterated the fine lines Now the reason for the picture was this :
around my eyes which I like to think are 25 A certain Eastern company desired to
the result of not wearing glasses, and make a picture of me, and to distribute
gave me an enigmatical and baffling ex- it throughout the country. It was to
pression which is quite foreign to me. show my normal life, and while I have

(b) She placed over that a thick layer not the text by me, this is the substance
of yellow powder. I immediately took on 30 of it. But don't be too hopeful. I did n't
a jaundiced look, with a tinge of malaria, do it.

and my face felt as mobile as the hood of

an automobile. First I was to be discovered bathing in the

(c) She took a brush and removed the sea. I was to emerge from the sea and sit on
powder from my eyebrows and lashes. 35 the beach under a sun umbrella. (Bathing

(d) She exaggerated the natural cupid's cofJ"i:!11e-) .. . , ,

bo^which >s% upper Up. and did not ^^tt^J&ZSZZ
redden the sides of either lip, thus reduc- the stage> one hundred and fifty miies north,
ing by about one inch the proportions of where a picture of mine was being made,
what I like to think is a humorous mouth. 40 Flash of message. An aeroplane has been

(e) She rubbed a black paste into my sent for me, and is even then waiting at the
eyelids. I now looked extremely tragic, aviation field. I decide to mount my favorite
and, I considered, something like Pauline horse and ride to the aviation field. (Riding
Frederick with a dash of Nazimova. Ow- c0SAtun£ l ?a"°P °ff;J T .nam tn fl .
ing to the fact.that I had a towel pinned « At ^avjagon field^I ^hange^ toeing
around my hair to keep it clean and a *way H(Aviation costume.)

sheet over my best silk sweater, I also had Reach aviation field near studio. Alight,
a certain nunlike look, and an expression Change to street garb and am seen entering
of peace, due to the entire elimination of studio. (Effective tailor-made costume.)
all my facial lines. 5o On stage directing picture. (Same cos-

'I rather like it/ I said, and licked my tume. There is evidence of weakness here.
Kps. Which necessitated doing my cu- V* t^^%^!J%£?Z
pid s bow again. . directors wear?)

(f) She produced a tin frying pan some Gq homc and show domcstic side of my
three inches across and filled with a black 55 nature by making a pie. (Becoming kitchen
solid. Under this she burned three outfit.)

matches, while I watched her with appre- It is now evening. And time for it, 1
hension. When the black material had should say. I am next to be seen in my draw-

A. DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES 55

ing-room. (Full evening costume.) Entertain- the way in which I should appear before
ing guests. (Full evening costume.) The the public. So we patched up a few odd
butler enters (livery) carrying cocktails (ap- scraps of film that had been made at vari-
propriately outfitted). Later he announces ous times, and the result is going around
dinner. Long shot of the dinner party. 5 the countrv. 1 have seen it in the billiard-
Fadeout. Good night. room at home^ and j know now that the

young girl who wrote and said she had
I took that outline to the Goldwyn seen me in the movies, and thought I was
Studio, which has charge of my moving a fine actress, has not seen this picture at
picture career, and they agreed with me 10 all, but is laboring under the impression
that it was a fine way to show my entire that I am the beautiful young thing who
wardrobe, but that it was not precisely plays the lead in my newest picture.

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES

The narrative article seeks above all else to give a vivid, accurate, and interesting account
of a series of incidents. It is frequently set off by a background and it often involves a per-
sonality as its motive force. Hence the narrative article usually includes a variable amount
of description of places and persons, and by this combination it gains in interest and uni-
versality of appeal. The ordinary 'newspaper story' has been omitted from consideration
here because its technique has become so specialized as to be unsuitable for general narrative
writing. The mechanical restrictions of the average newspaper 'lead' are unnecessary in the
freer writing of the longer narrative article, though both strive to answer as far as possible
the five fundamental questions involved in this type of article: Who? What? Where? When?
and Why?

The chief structural qualities which the narrative article should possess are: (1) Orderly
sequence in the successive steps of the series of actions or incidents ; this relation may be
either casual, where one step depends upon a required antecedent condition or upon a state
of mind, or else mechanical, where the article consists largely of a coherent account of steps
in a process already completely determined. (2) Unity of the subject as a whole, which
meets the Aristotelian demand that there be a beginning in which the action of the narrative
is really started, a middle in which the action is developed and consistently carried on, and
an end in which the various actions involved in the narration are brought to a satisfactory
and complete conclusion.

The qualities of treatment and style which the narrative article demands are: (1) Interest
arising partly from the nature of the actions related and partly from the interest which the
writer himself takes in his subject, as well as from the professional desire to arouse interest,
enthusiasm, or emotion in as many readers as possible. (2) Fidelity to fact, which allows
no accessible source of information to go unregarded, and which permits no slovenliness of
statement and no unjustified implication to pass uncensored, much less any actual misstate-
ment of fact knowingly to be made. (3) Craftsmanship in method, which comes partly
through constant practice and continuous effort, and partly from the careful and intelligent
analysis of the masterpieces of those who have been conspicuously successful in writing stories
that are compelling in interest, trustworthy in every detail, and noteworthy examples of the
writer's craft.

More important, however, was the
■*■ effect of the weather on dispositions. If

T1„,T^>TA,. ***** #-#*•*«• Arr, tne crowd that left Memorial Continental

INTERNATIONAL ORATORY AT Hall to go to lunch had had to go out into
THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE 5 a drivi*g rain> there might |ave been

somewhat less optimism about the lasting
ELMER DAVIb qualities of the new quadrangular treaty.

[New York Times, December ,., 1921. By PU!>Jic °V}n\™ is . aPl t0 gr0W fr0m th.e
permission of author and publisher.] inside Out, like ripples when a Stone IS

10 dropped into the water. Nobody could
Dec. 10.— Weather fair and warmer, walk out of the hall into the sunny crisp-
That is the first fact, and not the least ness of this belated Indian Summer day
important fact, in this the biggest day without the conviction that God was in
since the opening of the conference. That His heaven and that all was right with
means that those who held what are con- 15 the world.

ventionally called the coveted pasteboards, Having convinced the audience, the

those able to get into the plenary session, delegates may look forward with some
where for the first time something tan- assurance to convincing the world — with
gible and concrete was officially announced, more assurance, certainly, than if the day
were able to dress up — if they could. 20 had been dark and dreary and the tem-

56

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 57

perament of the spectators bilious and de- the khaki or horizon blue of military uni-

pressed. For, no matter how great the forms, the dark blue and gold braid of a

good will of the diplomats, it is n't always naval officer, or a flash of color from the

fair weather, even when good fellows get hat of a woman reporter,

together, with nothing on the table but 5 Up above in the galleries, more color,

agenda. more interest. The spectators eager, the

delegates impassive, the technical advisers

Apparently everybody was on the con- rather bored. General Pershing, sitting

ference floor who should have been, be- just behind Secretary Hughes, fixed his
sides a few who should not — an Ameri- *> glance severely, rather sternly, on the
can man and woman, sitting in the midst middle of the Secretary's back. Not
of a solid tlock of Japanese technical ad- much to see there, but there was nothing
visers, were delicately and discreetly put else to look at. Everybody knew that the
out by an usher during Mr. Hughes's preliminary business of China had to be
opening speech. The galleries were full, 15 got out of the way, even though it took
too, though there was room for consider- half an hour; but there were visible signs
able speculation as to the identity of some of relief when China was done with and
of the persons seated there. the road cleared for big business.

The pessimistic noted that at the open- «

ing of the session there were only three ao Mr. Hughes speaking again :
Senators in the Senate gallery, though a T shall now ask Senator Lodge to make

few more trickled in later. Taat is not a communication to the conference with
to say, however, that there were any va- regard to a matter not properly within the
cant seats; Senatorial wives and daugh- agenda, but which should be made known
ters and Senatorial Secretaries, filled the 25 to the conference.'

gallery, even though it was only what the Senator Lodge reads the treaty; it has

theatrical people call a 'paper house.' merits, many merits; not the least of

which is brevity. And there is applause

Loud applause for Charles Evans — wholehearted, enthusiastic applause as

Hughes when he walked in two minutes 3o he ends — 'and thereupon the agreement
before II, and again when he called the between Great Britain and Japan, which
conference to order at three minutes past, was concluded at London on July 13, 191 1,
There was no opening prayer — let that shall terminate.'

damning fact be noted for those Republi- Applause that begins in the galleries,

cans who alleged the absence of an in- 35 sweeps down to stir the stolid ranks of
vocation at the Paris conference as a rea- the technical advisers, and is echoed even
son for rejecting the Treaty of Versailles, by the French and Chinese delegates.
Everybody knew, of course, what the And then Senator Lodge begins his speech
big item of the day's news would be, but with a few words of exposition which
everybody waited patiently none the less 40 make these clear provisions still clearer,
while Mr. Hughes ran through the history The surest way to prevent war/ he

of the work done on Chinese questions says, 'is to remove the causes of war.
and proposed the various resolutions of This is an attempt to remove causes of
the Committee on Pacific and Far Eastern war over a great area of the globe's sur-
Affairs for formal ratification by the full 45 face by reliance upon the good faith and
conference. Scattering applause for his honest intentions of the nations which
reference to the four Root resolutions as sign the treaty.'

'a charter for China'; more applause, More applause for that, and with rea-

though likewise rather perfunctory, for son.

the ratification of the successive resolu- 50

tions. And then, his duty done, the Senator is

off for a trip through the South Sea Is-

Overhead the flags of the nine nations, lands and the world's best classics — an

jutting out from a central block, kept in oratorical trip, on which he carries his
motion by an electric current, swung 55 audience with him. We owe the Senator
round and round, a nine-fold fan. On the a good deal for that, for his oration bears
floor a black mass of cutaways or dark evidence of many weary hours spent over
business suits, broken here and there by Bartlett's 'Familiar Quotations' and

58 WRITING OF TODAY

Brewer's 'Dictionary of Literary Allu- a great experiment. When one hears
sions,' not to mention the latest Rand- Senator Lodge talking about great ex-
McNally atlas. For the Senator, begin- periments, in this year of 1921, it is pos-
ning with a modest confession that 'I do sible to believe that Saul also is among
not know what the total number of these 5 the prophets.

islands is,' hastens to explain for the However, it was quite an oration, and

honor of Boston that 'I am informed as so unexpected that one feels that the
to the Philippines, and it appears that this next thing in order is a vote of thanks
group alone contains over 3,100 islands, to the National Geographic Society,
of which 1,600 have names.' 10 But the habit of oratory has been started

'Good God !' one groans. 'Is he going and it must run its course. For we now
to recite them all ?' But he does n't. The have M. Camerlynck, the incomparable
Senator draws a long breath and does a translator of the French delegation, rising
swan dive into literature. They are all to turn Mr. Lodge's speech into French,
there, all the old friends — Stevenson, 15 as he did with that of Mr. Hughes. But
Herman Melville, Browning, Byron and not into mere French — into a French ora-
the 'Isles of Greece' — compared unfavor- tion. He has it all, every word of it, in-
ably, needless to say, with these South Sea eluding the quotations from the classics,
Islands so profuse in lava-lavas, leis, and and he puts it into rhythmic oratorical
mandates. 20 French.

The Senator becomes lyrical himself

when he thinks of these islands — 'atolls Well, the treaty is before the confer-
where there are no dwellers but the ence. True, it has already been accepted
builders of the coral reefs, or lonely rocks and signed by the four powers directly
marking the peaks of mountains which 25 concerned, duly acknowledged by its pro-
rise up from the ocean's floor through genitors. But it is something 'which ir-
miles of water before they touch the air.' regularly produced,' to quote the first and
'An undiscovered country/ the Senator greatest of American diplomats, 'may be
calls them; from whose bourne, one ex- attended with great inconvenience.' Let
pects him to add, no traveler returns with- 30 everybody have his say ; let all its sponsors
out writing a book which sells for $5 and stand up and be identified ; let every criti-
goes into twenty-seven large printings. cism be answered. Has anybody anything
to say? Ah, yes, M. Viviani.

With very little work, indeed, this ora- He rises at one corner of the quadrangle
tion could be set to music ; its sonorous 35 of green tables, to be greeted with more
cadences roll on until the hearer is al- applause than Senator Lodge or Secretary
most hypnotized into forgetfulness — until Hughes. Most of those who applaud will
he loses count of the passages from Bart- certainly be unable to understand a word
lett, and is quite unable to remember of what he says, but that is beside the
whether the Senator mentioned that most 40 point. Nobody knows what he is going to
remarkable of South Sea phenomena, the say, and nobody cares. He speaks for
nest of the fatu-liva bird, discovered by France, and France still means something
Captain Traprock. in American public opinion.

But at last the voyage is over, and the This sentiment for France, instinctive,

Senator comes back to the present. A 45 unreasoned though not unreasonable, is
few words abouf- 'this hour of trial and the despair of foreigners— to the British
darkness which has followed the war a stumbling block and to the Italians fool-
with Germany' — a passage that gives M. ishness, but a fact, and a fact which no
Viviani the text for his remarks soon to man who has to deal with American
follow— and then the Senator closes with So public opinion can afford to ignore,
a passage that makes one sit up and rub M. Viviani begins.

one's eyes and wonder who this is that is

speaking: 'If we enter upon this agreement, 'Messieurs!' There are ladies in the
which rests only on the will and the honor gallery, ladies on the floor, but no appeal
of those who sign it, we at least make 55 to 'mesdames,' not even that post-positive
the great experiment.' salutation which French speakers usually

There is a crippled, white-haired man give as if by way of after-thought. M.
in a house on S Street who also made Viviani, officially, is talking only to the

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES

59

gentlemen of the conference; officially he colleges which wanted this ambidextrous
does n't know that the galleries are there. and bilingual master of tongues to teach
But in a moment he has the galleries and their students his secret,
the floor as well listening to his speech. It has been a great oratorical festival,

Like Senator Lodge, he takes his audience 5 a sort of singing contest on the Wart-
away ; but where Lodge's wanderings were burg, a combat of champions. So far
in space, Viviani's are in time. He goes has it strayed from the business before
back to ancient history — back to August, the house that one expects Mr. Hughes,
1914. when he rises again, to ask if Brother

He is talking of this treaty, this self- 10 William Jennings Bryan is in the con-
denying ordinance, this appeal to public gregation, and if so, will he not say a
opinion and to moral force. He remem- few words.

bers those days just before the war, when But the conference is getting back to

France made her last effort to preserve business: Mr. Balfour is recognized,
peace, her last despairing attempt to 15 rises slowly, his thumbs sliding up to
give Germany no pretext for attack; the lapel of his coat.

when he, as head of the Government, took

the responsibility of abandoning French He talks about the treaty, the treaty

soil to the prospective enemy, of ordering which had run almost twenty years and
French troops to withdraw ten kilometers 20 had endured through two great wars,
behind the frontier, that there might be no 'When two nations have been united
'incidents' to set off the powder maga- in that fiery ordeal, they can't at the
zine. end of it take off their hats and politely

T waited until the last hour, the last part as two strangers who have met in
minute, I waited as long as there was a 25 a railway train/

gleam of hope left ; but at last France had Then more ancient history. Mr. Bal-

to go in ; she decided to take a chance and four reminds us that he was head of
fight, not only for her own dignity and the Government that first signed the
independence but for the liberties of the Anglo-Japanese alliance, the Government
world and the liberties of civilization.' 30 that first established the entente with

France; that all his life he had been

Applause, and more than applause. an advocate of Anglo-American friend-

The French spirit has seized the audience, ship. And now the four States had been
even those who know no French ; it is im- brought together in an agreement for
possible to speak of applause, one can 35 peace ; 'and nothjing could better pre-
think of it only as 'vifs applaudissements.' pare the way for that diminution of naval
More about the war — 'a revolution, not armaments which I hope will be one of
a war' — something about young nations our greatest triumphs.'
that must learn, to which forbearance The conference is back on earth again.

must be used, about the troubled state of 40

Eastern Europe. Irrelevancies, of course ; After the inevitable Camerlynck, Prince

we are not talking about land arma- Tokugawa, speaking in English, and win-
ments any more; the subject for discus- ning a roar of applause by almost his first
sion is the four-power Pacific treaty. But sentence : 'It is easy for me to say that
they are charming irrelevancies ; they 45 all Japanese will approve the consumma-
are what they wanted to hear. Vive la tion of this work.' 'As to the Anglo-
France ! Japanese agreement, which will soon ter-

inmate,' he goes on, T desire to associate

And now another oratorical outburst — myself with the words of appreciation so

Camerlynck again, the indefatigable Cam- 5o ably expressed by our distinguished col-

erlynck, whose stenographic pen has been league, Mr. Balfour/

busy, and who now turns Viviani's French There 's rosemary, that 's for reraem-

oration into oratorical English as readily brance. The Anglo-Japanese alliance

as he turned Lodge's English oration into passes into history.

oratorical French. A wonderful man, this 55 Mr, Camerlynck is translating more

Camerlynck; no wonder that he has had, rapidly now. Perhaps he only seems

since coming to Washington, the offer of more rapid by comparison with the ra-

great sums from a half dozen business ther slow, if excellent English, of those

6o WRITING OF TODAY

later speakers; perhaps he really is hur- that may present some difficulties,
rying up. Peace delegates, after all, There are already treaties of Washing-
are human, as Henry Ford found out; ton, and you can not very well call this
like other people, they notice that it the treaty of the State, War and Navy
is getting on toward lunch time. But 5 Building, or the Four-Power-Compact of
there are still some formalities. Memorial Continental Hall.

Senator Schanzer rises to explain that

the treaty read by Mr. Lodge was no It is left for Mr. Hughes to sum up.

surprise to the Italian delegation which 'Gentlemen, we have been dealing with

has already been fully informed and is 10 a very simple question. I doubt if in
happy to add its approval. Italy is the all the world there may be found a diplo-
only one of the five great powers not matic document of such great import,
included in the treaty, but Italy has no couched in such simple terms. I firmly
territorial interests in the Pacific. But believe that when ratification of this
Italy has 'been let in on it' in advance, 15 agreement takes effect, it will have done
an accessory before the fact. That fact more to secure enduring peace than any-
may be expected to count for something thing that has yet been done.'
in determining the reaction of Italian Amen ! For that consummation de-

public opinion. voutly to be wished a trip to the South

30 Seas with Henry Cabot Lodge is a cheap

Then Mr. Sze, the Chinese Minister, price.

who gets almost as big a hand as Viviani. And now the plenary session is over ;

He approved heartily of the treaty and Camerlynck's words tumble over each
trusts that 'this will be supplemented by other in the translation of this final
another convention to which all the pow- 25 benediction just as delegates and visitors
ers, including China, will be parties, which tumble over each other on the way to
will adjust conditions in the Far East on the cloak rooms. And everybody is off
a basis of justice.' to lunch. The end of a perfect day, and

It is no news that this is going to hap- not the least of its perfections is that
pen, but Mr. Sze's optimism is news, and 30 the afternoon is still before us. But
good news: T am convinced that a satis- what can you do with an afternoon, to
factory solution can be found for the say nothing of an evening, in Washing-
remaining questions respecting Chinese ton?

sovereignty and aspirations. China will

do what she can to bring about this re- 35 Marcarius Aloysius McGurk, the Ba-
sult.' conian cipher expert, announced this

evening that he had devoted intensive

Camerlynck talks faster and faster. study to the text of the treaty. T am

Now comes Jonkheer Van Karnebeek, not yet prepared,' said Mr. McGurk, 'to

head of the Dutch delegation, who also 40 make public the full result of my re-
approves, and hopes that this is the be- searches. It is sufficient to mention a
ginning of movements that will lead to curious and as yet unexplained combina-
a permanent and lasting peace and 'the tion of letters which I have discovered
restoration of confidence.' buried in cryptographic form, of course, in

After him Baron de Cartier de Mar- 45 the second clause of the treaty. The
chienne, the Belgian Ambassador, who combination is O K W W.'
looks so much like Karnebeek that one

wonders if they might not be twins cast jj

ashore by some cataclysm of nature on

opposite sides of the Scheldt. He speaks 50 TUr< mttTU m? CTMM T?T?TM
in French today— his speech at the first 1Hb B1R1H U1 MNJN 1<tlN

plenary session was in English— and he ct-ttatao u wamttc

concurs with all his heart. SEUMAS MacMANUS

Last of all Viscount d'Alte for Por- ... ... _. .. .

tugal, in whose English the Oxford ac- 55 W"° ^'W^^F '• ""•

cent still lingers.

The approval is unanimous. The treaty The first meeting of those terrible Irish
has been born, inspected and approved. IBolsheviki, who, a little later took to
Nothing left but the christening1, and themselves the title of Sinn Fein, and —

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 61

just think of it! — actually asked for When I reached Miss Gonne's cottage

freedom for their country, took place (next door, by the way, to that of 'A.
about sixteen years ago. And — tell it E.') in one of the pleasant suburbs of
not in Gath ! — a prime instigator of that Dublin, she informed me they were much
first meeting of those deplorable persons 5 alarmed lest Irish national principle
was George Moore ! should be compromised by a misleader,

That was shortly after the time when for what seemed to him to be a little
George made the world gasp by the alarm- material advantage. With some merri-
ing announcement that he was shaking ment she remarked that George Moore,
from his shoes the dirt of London and i0 terribly in earnest in his brand-new Na-
carrying his glory over to bequeath it tionalism, was particularly upset lest any
upon Ireland — which should henceforth appreciable portion of the Irish people
be the center of the universe. should be misled into giving a reception to

I turn from my narrative, for a mo- the King of England (we '11 suppose it to
ment, to record, for the benefit of the fu- l5 be the King), — something which they
ture historian, the amazing fact that, on had not even given to Mr. Moore — and
the great morning on which the repatriate, he had suggested her having a confer-
enwrapt in his radiance, stepped from ence of some of the bolder spirits
his ship upon the land that was now to be (among whom he evidently reckoned him-
immortal, the cocks crew at the usual ^ self) for formulating a plan to upset Mr.
hour, on their usual note, and the keenest Redmond's deal.

observer (to wit, the New Arrival) could In Miss Gonne's parlor, with walls won-

not detect the faintest ripple disturbing derfully painted by the poet, 'A. E.,'
the provokingly placid current of Irish with pictures of the strangely beautiful
life. 25 spirits which he saw and communed with,

But to our Sinn Fein. I found already assembled Edward Mar-

It was shortly after the foregoing sin- tyn (whom George Moore has immortal-
gular happening that I, in my Donegal ized in his books), Arthur Griffith, Henry
mountain cottage, one Saturday morn- Dixon, Alderman Tom Kelly, and George
ing received a telegram, which read: 3o Russell. ('A. E.') Hamlet only was mis-

'Want you without fail to be at my house sing. After we had waited a reason-
3 o'clock to-morrow afternoon. Meet Moore, able time and had at length audaciously
Griffith, and others, for very important con- concluded to go ahead without the Prince
ference. of Denmark, we heard the knocker of the

Maud Gonne.' ^ door resound — and Miss Gonne ushered
At that time either a King or a Queen in the redoubtable George Moore, spick
of England (I forget which) had threat- and span, and exhibiting perfection in
ened a visit upon Ireland— and there was every slightest detail. (How could he
a well-founded rumor abroad that the ever affect to consort with Bohemians?)
Government was making with poor Red- 40 He stuck to his hat and his cane as if
mond another of those slick deals by one held, and the other guarded, his
which they were regularly getting use reputation, while he was in this company
of him, without his ever getting the prom- of moral banditti. They could not be
ised quid pro quo. coaxed nor coerced from him. Neither

Though the Irish Parliamentary Party 45 could he be wheedled nor forced into a
machine was then going in perfect order, seat. He was as uneasy as a hen on a
and Mr. Redmond had three-fourths of hot griddle. Having recklessly taken a
all Nationalist Ireland (among which I header into Irish nationalism the day
was not) believing he was fighting for before, he now seemed suffering the re-
Irish independence, there was some grum- 50 morse of a man who had given way to a
bling among manv, even of the most shameful drunk and just got out of it.
faithful, in that he did not allay harm- Anyhow, the hopes with which George

ful rumors by an announcement that the had slept last night were drunk. He ex-
threatened visitor was to receive just ex- plained to us that he had carefully
actly the same respect as any other well- 55 thought things over— after all, he was a
conducted stranger touring our country. literary man, not a politician — this kind
I very well suspected that Maud Gonne's of thing was not for him to take active
conference was called to deal with this part in— he was sure we perfectly un-
subject. And I was correct. derstood— he sympathized with us— and

62 WRITING OF TODAY

—and— good day! good day! good day, that I (who, it seems, had suggested the
Miss Gonne and gentlemen! The fault- delegates) had adroitly left myself off the
lessly tailored and barbered Franco-Brito- honor roll, and insisted that I must join
Hibernian genius bowed himself out of them, and take my chances of death or
the room, and out of national and interna- 5 glory with the rest.

tional politics. Almost, that is. Which I had to agree. Until the meeting got

'almost' I '11 explain later. under way we took seats on the floor, con-

Miss Gonne was disgusted, Edward venient to the door. When the proceed-
Martyn enraged, and the rest of the com- ings started we went out and around into
pany heartily amused by George Moore's w the anteroom, off the stage, there waiting
newest comedy. until Mr. Redmond had well begun his

When Martyn's ruffled feelings had speech of the evening. I think that Tim
been smoothed, we got to business. We Harrington was Lord Mayor of Dublin
were aware that, for the Tuesday night at the time and was in the chair. All the
following, the faithful had been sum- x$ rest of the party, about eighty-odd Mem-
moned to meet, to hear, to indorse, and — bers of Parliament, were banked in rows,
chiefly — to finance Mr. Redmond and his like so many flourishing geraniums in a
Parliamentary Party in the great hall of hot-house, behind Redmond and Harring-
the Dublin Rotunda. The annual party ton, upon the platform,
collection was thus inaugurated by jam- so t When Redmond's fine voice was reach-
ming the Dublin shopkeepers with wind ing to every corner of the great and well-
while the flakes were being artistically filled Rotunda, and every eye and ear
peeled from their pocketbooks. And the was with him, a tall, elegant, beautiful
handsome start that the Dubliners gave woman and four hulking men made un-
to the party funds that night was, of «5 expected and resounding entrance upon
course, to be followed, next day, by all the stage and marched like a picket-guard
Ireland. Therefore, we decided that the to the table in the center.
Rotunda stage, and Tuesday night, were The audience gasped. The orator, in

the place and the time to compel from astonishment, ceased to orate. Tim Har-
Mr. Redmond a commentary upon the 30 rington jumped from his seat, seizing
King of England's coming. hold of the chair as the handiest re-

Miss Maud Gonne, Edward Martyn, senter of a holdup, and eighty Members of
Henry Dixon, and Tom Kelly were Parliament emitted eighty different notes
agreed upon as an uninvited delegation of pain, amazement, resentment, and rage,
that should walk upon the stage of the 35 Then for some moments there befell
Rotunda in the middle of the proceed- a dead silence in the great Rotunda,
ings and invite Mr. Redmond and the Mr. Redmond's gentlemanly instincts as-
Parliamentary Party to suspend the pro- serted themselves through his dumfound-
ceedings until they had asked, and he an- ment, and, though he loved Miss Gonne
swered, a question vital to Irish nation^ 40 as a rat loves a cat, he turned and po-
hood. We knew it would be a most pro- litely tendered to that towering lady his
voking, disorderly proceeding — but some own chair, which she, with queenly
such action was needed to block the deal, grace, refused, saying that we had come
To give the delegation some show of au- not to sit, but to transact a little business
thority, we, one woman and six men, in a 45 — to put to him an important question,
little cottage in Rathgar that afternoon, and get from him an answer,
formed the Irish National Council— The eighty-odd Members of Parliament
which was destined to make some Irish jumped to their feet, and all spoke at
history. one time, commanding that we should be

On Tuesday evening I was walking 50 thrown out. At least a thousand of the
down O'Connell Street with a friend— audience were on their feet, too, pre-
en route for a point of vantage in the ferring the request that we be handed
gallery of the Rotunda — when I met down to them. Mr. Redmond, with a
Henry Dixon, hastening and breathless, wave of his hand, stilling the storm that
who told me he had been searching for 55 was behind him, and the storm that was
me; that the delegation was waiting for before, asked for the questioning to be
me outside the Rotunda; that they had, deferred. We unanimously answered
on Sunday afternoon, overlooked the fact 'No !' An encouragingly large portion

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 63

of the audience answered 'No/ too, in drew up a Constitution, provided for
our support. But by far the larger por- spreading branches here and there over
tion roared an enraged 'Yes !' Ireland, and called a convention of Irish

Maud Gonne deliberately put her ques- Nationalists. Arthur Griffith, who for
tion, asking Mr. Redmond whether he 5 some years had been toiling up to this, and
would advise his followers to receive or trying to educate the country up to it,
to ignore the King of England on his formulated the Sinn Fein policy, a chief
forthcoming visit. plank in which was abstention of our rep-

Mr. Redmond, striking the table a ter- resentatives from the English Parlia-
rible blow, roared his refusal to yield 10 ment, a turning of our eyes from West-
his mind to the demand of brigands ! We minster to Ireland, a determination to
audaciously closed in on him, insisting save our own national soul,
that we would not yield our position until At either its second or third annual

he gave definite answer. convention the National Council, now

Then bedlam broke loose ! Eighty 15 grown from six to six thousand, formally
Members of Parliament, seizing hold of adopted the whole Sinn Fein policy of
their chairs, as being the only offensive Arthur Griffith — who was the brains,
items at hand, bore down upon us from and leader in, although not the President
the left. From the right, on the floor be- of, the National Council. By formal res-
low, several hundreds — or thousands — 20 olution we dropped the title of National
of devoted-to-death disciples of Mr. Red- Council and assumed that of Sinn Fein,
mond were climbing over each other in Our official organ, Arthur Griffith's

a fierce effort to reach, and to teach, us. paper, The United Irishman, soon also
We occupied a most perilous position, on changed its name to Sinn Fein. The
the edge of a very high platform — be- 25 young men and women of the country, all
tween the raging Parliamentary! devil the ardent ones, and all the thinkers, en-
and the surging Dublin deep sea. Other thusiastically thronged into the move-
several hundreds who revolted at Mr. ment, which, born in trouble and reared
Redmond's refusal to answer the pertinent in trouble, existed and grew (unobtru-
question asked him, reached and stormed 30 sively) fat upon trouble through the suc-
the further end of the platform with in- ceeding years.

tention to succor and rescue us, though And that little party, hastily formed in

we had done a reckless thing (because the a little cottage at Rathgar on a Sunday
occasion demanded recklessness) and afternoon, about sixteen years ago, and
were, of course, prepared to take the cer- 35 almost absquatulated when only two days
tain consequences. Take and give. old, has now absquatulated and buried the

On that memorable night the great an- great party which was rendered restless
nual public meeting of the Irish Parlia- by the bantling impudent. Out of 1,250,-
mentary Party, called for the starting 000 voters in Ireland last month, it got
of the Parliamentary Fund, was ended 40 the hearty support of more than 1,000,000.
before it was well begun. There was no It is holding the attention of the world,
more meeting that night and no fund.
The press of the three kingdoms next

morning blazoned forth the exciting ac- HI

count of the first Redmondite revolt ! 45

From that night forward Mr. Redmond THE STRANGER WITHIN

and his party, self-convicted of duplicity, OUR GATES

never afterward faced an open meeting

in Dublin. From that time Mr. Redmond AF>T?TANA ^PADONT

and the party began shedding their fol- So ADRIANA SPADONI

lowing, began the slow disintegration Wew York Evening Post> September 1<Jf I92U

which resulted last month in their final By permission of author and publisher.]

disappearance from Ireland's political

map. 'Good morning little Elsie,' said Grand-

A week later— without Mr. Moore, «S pa, 'have you seen the ducks this morn-
who was in congenial retirement, and also ing?'

without. 'A. E./ who dropped out — the He was at least fifty years old. He

infant National Council held a meeting, wore a rusty Prince Albert and a col-

64 WRITING OF TODAY

ored shirt. His lack of necktie was partly little Elsie," said Grandpa, "have you seen
concealed by a short, reddish beard and the ducks this fine morning?"'
the deep wings of a celluloid collar. She hurled the question into the air,

Behind his thick-lensed glasses the gentle as if it were a rubber ball after which
blue eyes looked timidly. 5 the Stupidest Immigrant must surely run.

'Pretty fair, Dr. Zimmerfeld,' shouted But he looked back with a happy smile,
the principal, 'but you must pronounce the gold hoop behind the black curls, and
the d's harder and the s's softer. It is demanded in a Calabrian dialect: 'What
not goot, but good.' She hurled the D at ducks?'

him as if it had been a brick, and I w Up one line and down another she
fancied that the doctor braced his shoul- went, patience personified, while forty-five
ders to receive it. 'And the s's — it is not -grown men, unfortunate enough to have
seen, but s-s-seen/ been born in other lands, stood, their

Like a bee the S buzzed about the right hands beside them, the inane primer
doctor and stung him to renewed ef- 15 in their lefts, and demanded of Little
fort. 'S-s-s-s-s-s !' hissed Dr. Zimmer- Elsie whether she had seen the ducks,
feld over and over. Grandpa chanted his barnyard query,

'There, there; that will do/ bellowed it, whispered and hissed; he

'S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s !' Like a persistent yel- gurgled and sputtered; he dragged it out
low jacket the hiss continued. ao of his innermost being; he hurled it forth

'Stop ! Enough ! No more ! Sit as something unclean ; he minced it deli-
down f Her large hands made violent cately, spewing aside the th's and ripping
gestures. Embarrassed and bewildered, out the c's and k's. He entangled a stolid
Dr. Zimmerfeld sat down. Norseman like a net, and the great, quiet

'Next !' 25 fellow went down into the sea after him.

Next was younger, not more than A dabber little Japanese sucked Grandpa
twenty- four. His patent leathers were UP lik« gravy, and an Athenian swallowed
very pointed; upon his plump hand he the old gentleman, ducks and all, and
wore a seal ring. gargled with them. A Spaniard from

'Now, Monsieur Gaston, let us see what 3° Barcelona pleaded with Little Elsie, so
improvement you have made.' that one almost heard the tinkle of a

Monsieur Gaston cocked his head to Pltar/ .wmle a White Russian seemed to
one side, as if getting the best angle be solving one of the philosophic knots
of attack, pursed his full, red lips, and s° dea£ to the Slavlc heart-
ejected Grandpa through the sparse hairs35 . lo nave seen, or not to have seen;
of a small, black mustache. ™iWas ,e ques,tlon- Jews, Gentiles,

'Very good, monsieur; very good, in- Moslems; clerks, lawyers, rabbis, ped-
deed. You will learn English quickly.' dlers, and hucksters; boys from the In-

Monsieur smiled, bowed, and sat down, dian 0cean; men from the Sray North
understanding nothing. *° ^' „ _, . . f

The third pupil rose. He was short, . |hfe n ™f Pnncipal turned to me
squat, and very dark, with a tiny gold S last .„Do the ,best y°u ™n- HaLf of
hoop in the lobe of his right ear. a>u "ever learn a thing anyhow,

'Stupidest type of immigrant/ she A ™**\* "? W,U g0flback \°*heir °Wn
whispered to me. 'Will never learn * WU"1 SJS TV* • ^ f ' the mon?'
English in a thousand years. Ought ^Zm f Jl u £ 1 °f """^ but
to be deported. Now!' she employed £* ^Tsoltutid > P ' S°met,meS'
her most encouraging tone. 'Go slowly.' ojL Iflf! T u

'Go-slowlee,' repeated the stupid- ,0 iJ^Ja!kr. "P ^ PaPe^^amed
est immigrant, triumphantly. 5° *r™Z effic!e"t s™,le' and indl^ted me :

'No, no-no. Repeat after me. This Vo? wr^^V8 iT* "C\ teaCc?n
way: "Good morning, little Elsie-" *S? Z J! 11 hg IlshAfrom hen §hc

«\t« «~ «~ ~~u u f tt wlH tel1 y°u all about America, so that

Now, rietro, now— Good morning, terward one of them told me they thought

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 65

I was a labor agent come to hire them sun which shone on the plaza and on New
en masse. York, and he visioned the whole of

'But you must study hard/ she warned, America as one solid stretch of brick
shaking the insulting primer at them. tenements, from the Atlantic to the Paci-
'You pay nothing; the country gives you 5 fie.

this chance; you must show you are And Dr. Zimmerfeld — it was difficult

worth it.' And on this crescendo she van- to probe what he felt, so deadened were
ished. the hopes with which he had come. Use-

I stood for a moment looking at my less to urge opportunity. He would shake
new pupils. Then I closed the primer. 10 his head and tap the primer. 'Opportu-
I put it in a drawer. I locked the drawer. nity is education, always, and understand-
A deep sigh of relief went round the ing and sympathy.' And, recalling the
room. My men looked at me and smiled. demands of Grandpa and the inborn scorn
I smiled back. 'Now/ I said very slowly of the Anglo-Saxon heart for the misfor-
and clearly, 'let us talk/ 15 tune of foreign birth, I could not con-

It went haltingly at first. Nor could tradict.
Little Elsie be entirely abandoned. Some And then, one night, The Duke came,

day, perhaps, a genius will arise to write and The Duchess, and The Beautiful
a text-book for foreigners and a Board of Princess, the last named smiling as if it
Education will be evolved with vision 2o had been a show got up for her amuse-
enough to adopt it. Until then this 'great, ment, like all the rest of life. With the
free opportunity we offer to the immi- rustle of rich materials The Duchess set-
grant' will still be presented to him via tied into the chair, handed her with a
Grandpa and Little Elsie. stately bow by Ramon, and sniffed the air.

But night by night we left the old gen- 25 The Duke took a throat lozenge, and The
tleman further behind ; and, with the small Princess giggled softly,
measure of English at their command, Isaac Greenberg was reciting. Isaac

dug deeper into their hopes and misunder- was stunted and dirty. He must have
standings and disappointments; unearthed shaved, at times; otherwise he would
the impulses that had torn them from 30 have had a patriarchal beard. But I
the clinging soil of Europe ; relit the had never figured out the day this miracle
hopes that had beckoned them to America, could have been accomplished ; for Isaac's
where now they found themselves carried blotchy face was always covered by a
along under the surface of our national three days' stubble. In his eagerness to
consciousness, despised, except at election 35 learn, Isaac was greedy, almost repellant.
time. He snatched at each morsel, and would

There was Dr. Zimmerfeld, who had have devoured alone the whole session
beaten his way up from a Polish ghetto if it had been possible,
to the degree of Doctor of Laws, only to Isaac had that evening seized upon

encounter the impregnable bastile of Gen- 40 and masticated the comparison of adjec-
tile prejudice. He had read Shakespeare tives, and not even the presence of the
and Balzac in Polish. He spoke and Royal Family deterred the process of di-
wrote Hebrew, Russian, and Esperanto. gestion. 'To have five cents is good/ he
He understood Lettish, Greek, and announced; 'to have ten cents is better;
Arabic. 45 and to have fifteen — ah, Jesus ! — that is

And there was Pietro, to whom the best.'
simplest question had to be translated The Duke stopped in the act of loosen-

into the dialect of a Calabrian village. ing his fur overcoat, while The Duchess
Pietro had come to America to get glanced hastily at The Princess. But,
$1,000 — 5,000 lire — and go back and sit 5° after all, great wealth has its responsibili-
in the sun of the public plaza and tell ties, and one cannot shirk all knowledge
of foreign wonders. of The Other Half.

Dr. Zimmerfeld made coats in an East They stayed fifteen minutes. They

Side sweatshop and never wanted to see heard Pietro declare: 'To catch no fish
Poland again. Pietro dug in the subway 55 is bad, but to work in the subway is
and counted off the days that separated worse/ To the worst Pietro could not
him from the sun-drenched plaza. Pietro go ; it was beyond his imagination, as well
did not really believe that it was the same as his grammar. At Pietro's reference to

66 WRITING OF TODAY

the subway The Duke looked grave and proved Nicholas, telling him that he
made a note in a little black book. should not make such sweeping statements.

When Nicholas Popoff announced that He apologized, admitting that it was 'not
the worst thing in life is to have no God, philosophic'

The Duchess nodded approval, and I was 5 As the days grew warmer and the nights
tempted to explain that Nicholas's God softer something in my men awoke. Even
had no home on Fifth Avenue, glorious the stolid, wooden face of Yamamoto
with stained glass and stately music, but yielded to a force working within. And
that he wandered among the poor, like Yamamoto wrote a poem, a very poor
Christ, and preached brotherly love. No w poem, altogether beyond his powers, about
doubt The Duchess would have thought the cherry trees.
him a Bolshevik. 'No good, teacher,' he apologized ; 'but,

At last the moment came when I had you see, for a long time I no see the
to turn from my pupils and answer The cherry trees.'

Duke's questions. Upon a tiny gold pen- 15 And there may have been something
cil he impaled my answers, shackling each in that.

fact in the little black book, to the mass Early in April Pietro came one night

he had already collected for his profound with a new green tie and a gardenia in
work, entitled 'The Immigrant.' his buttonhole. I thought he was going

'And do you find that they truly ap- «, to be married. Pietro laughed and shook
preciate the opportunity we give them?' his thick black curls.
His tone split to a hair my position half 'No, no, no! I go to Wyoming — to

way between the depths inhabited by make the railroad.'

Pietro and Nicholas and Ramon and the 'But I thought your work here lasted

heights from which he and The Duchess 25 all year, and the pay is just as good, isn't
looked down. it?'

'I think they appreciate every real op- Pietro shook his head. 'Non— no more
portunity we give,' I said, with a delicate de mon', but much air — much sun.'
emphasis quite lost on The Duke. Pietro's broken hands gathered all the air

He was very glad to hear it. He had 30 and sunshine in the world and offered
one page already ruled into divisions, and them to me. 'Ecco !'
was disappointed that I could not help 'Ecco !' I repeated, and we shook

him with this tabulation. hands.

'Which nation shows the greatest As the term drew to its close, in groups

power of assimilation V 35 the Greeks and Italians left for the fields

'To be assimilated?' I inquired. and railroads of the West. Isaac was

'Certainly, certainly,' said The Duke ; glad to see them go and said so. He did
then, thinking I had intended to be witty, not like them. He called them all wops
he smiled faintly. and guineys and said they were 'no goot.'

But I refused to betray my men. 40 They were 'lazy' — the crime of crimes in
Could I tell The Duke that Isaac would Isaac's eyes. Could he not peddle from
have come if I had been eighty, deaf, dawn till dark, come to school every even-
dumb, blind, and paralytic, so long as he ing, study half the night, all to enable him
could absorb a single fact? And that Ra- to send sooner for Rachel and the three
mon and Constantine knew whenever I *5 babies in their far-away village on the
changed my waist or the way of doing Volga? Did he ever get tired or waste
my hair? That to Isaac any land was a time writing poems or thinking about the
huge market place, while to Dr. Zimmer- sunshine? If Isaac had the power he
feld it was one long argument on subtle would have excluded all immigrants south
points of ethics, philosophy, and law? 5© of a fixed degree of latitude, a view which
That Oscar still wrote, after four years, would have astonished and horrified The
sad poems about the drear North Sea, and Duke and to which he would no doubt
Ramon about love, always about love, and have devoted an extra chapter, 'Strange
sunshine, and Spain? No, I could not Prejudices Among Immigrants.'
help The Duke on that. 55 The last to leave before the actual

When they had gone, Isaac said: 'Oi ! closing of the term was Hans, a heavy,
What a fine fur !' And Nicholas said : silent man from the Black Forest. Al-
'They have no God/ For which I re- ways better at writing than talking, per-

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 67

haps because he had first studied English spurious report from Paris to the effect that
alone in a hut among the trees and could an armistice had been effected between Ger-
never reconcile the sound of words with many and the Allies and that hostilities had
their look, Hans stumbled over good-by cease ■

and afterwards wrote me a letter : 5 it win not be difficult to recall that

Dear teacher: You have been very kind astounding November 7, when an allegedly
and patient with me, and I do not want that unemotional nation indulged in a demon-
you think I like not the school. It is the stration of universal and hysterical glad-
other calling, always, day and night, until ness such as the Parisian boulevards have
I go back to the humanity of the forest. 10 vet to equal.

There I am near God. I thank you for so The inside story of how that historic

great kindness and I will talk of you to God. occurrence came to pass has not j believe,

Very respectfully yours, ^ ever been told, due doubtless to the fact

that even to this day scarcely a handful

'Nicholas,' I asked a few nights later, x5 0f persons are acquainted with the facts.

'where is God?' Following immediately after the event,

'On Grand Street — and Forty-second there were a number of erroneous and in-

— and Broadway — and The Bronx; complete explanations in the press, soon

wherever there is people/ he answered lost sight of in the excitement of real

promptly. m ao armistice days, and never again revived.

Isaac heard and whirled round in his I feel, therefore, that the lapse of time

seat, scratching his unshaven chin. 'Dere has served to mellow interest in the affair

is no Gott. De world make herself, and to warrant my somewhat retrospec-

She ' His English gave way, and tive narrative. Perhaps what I am able

Isaac swam out on a billow of Yiddish, 25 to tell has actually some proper place in
into the sea of materialistic philosophy, the voluminous history of America's war-
Dr. Zimmerfeld joined, and they argued time.

violently of life and death and The Rea- I trust I may be pardoned a brief ex-

son For Being. planation of my humble place in the pro-

Such were the men for whom I was 30 ceedings. For a few months prior to
told to 'do the best you can. Half of November 7, 1918, I had been the army
them will never learn a thing, anyhow, intelligence officer of the military port
and the rest will go back to their own area based on Brest,
countries as soon as they get the money ; My duties, in addition to the major one

they 're so stupid.' 35 of conducting counter-espionage activities

within the base, called for the reception
and care of newspaper correspondents who
jy came to Brest. The reason for this at-

tention was principally one of courtesy,

INSIDE STORY Ob THiL FKb- lations with the supervision of war corre-

MATURE PEACE REPOR1 spondents, the base-intelligence officers

had nothing to do with the censoring of

ARTHUR HORNBLOW, JR. 45 press reports. This task was cared for by

„ , _, a special censorship branch of the intelli-

iCentury Magaztne,^ November, p.* By per- gence ^.^ ^^ officers ^ Chaumont

and Paris, and it is important to bear in

I quote from the New York Globe of mind that although Brest is the seat of the

November 8, 1918 : 5o French cables and the despatching-point

of all messages to the States, no message

'French troops resumed their advance along Gf importance could pass by its local cen-

the whole front this am.' sor that had nQt been approved by the

To-days report of military operations parjs censors
quoted above is the best commentary on the ttt, .« # 1.^.1 <-, :*

greatest and most cruel hoax in the history 55 . When, therefore, shortly after the ar-
of journalism, which yesterday deluded not rlval of the rapid e from Pans at nine
only New York City but every city and town o'clock on the morning of ^ November 7,
in the country into a delirium of joy by a Roy W. Howard's entrance into Brest was

68 WRITING OF TODAY

signaled by my gare control} I expected better speed if possible. Want to catch
to see him shortly thereafter. Most President Wilson in time to come over
newspaper men made a point of reporting here again in his party.'
promptly at the office of the local 'I. O.' in The man knew even then that the Presi-

order to hear if any news had broken 5 dent was coming. I sensed something of
locally, and to be facilitated generally in what goes to make the successful news-
getting around and seeing things and paper man.
people. By telephone I learned that the S. S.

I had heard of, but had never met, Leviathan was due to sail the following
Howard. I knew him to be president of 10 morning. As she made the trip across in
the United Press, an important news six days or so, Howard could save a week
association which serves a host of papers by waiting a day. Accordingly, arrange-
all over the world, principally in Amer- ments were made to shift him from the
ica. Furthermore, intelligence instruc- sailing-list of the one ship to that of the
tions as to the status of all correspondents 15 other.

in France, which included their standing That done, we discussed ways and

in the profession and the degree of atten- means of his killing time advantageously,
tion to which they were entitled wherever and Howard, inspired by some mischie-
they went, graded Howard among the vous fate, decided that he would like to
highest. Hence I looked forward to the 20 meet Admiral Henry B. Wilson, comman-
call of some one who approached the ex- der of the American navy in French
alted ranking of 'distinguished visitor/ a waters, whose headquarters were in Brest,
class of ambulatory and privileged beings I suggested strolling around to naval

who, having shaken hands with the com- headquarters, which were near by, and we
mander-in-chief, frequently felt justified 25 left my office about noon, it then being not
in emulating the manners of a German quite seven a. m. in the land across the sea
top-sergeant by demanding the attention that little suspected what had started to
and services of any junior officer. brew for it.

« As we turned from the rue du Chateau

■ 3° into the old public square, Place du Presi-

It was accordingly a matter for sur- dent Wilson, we paused before the office of
prise and gratification when Howard Brest's daily newspaper, La Depcche, to
strolled in casually shortly before noon examine the bulletin, and saw that the
and disclosed himself to be what we in Germans had evinced a desire to quit and
the army were wont to call a 'regular guy.' 35 that their plenipotentiaries were reported
(There is no higher form of decoration to be coming across the lines to sue for an
in the army short of the Congressional armistice. A small, excited crowd was
Medal.) Still in his early thirties, or discussing the tidings and waiting eagerly
seemingly so, Howard was the typical around for more. Oddly enough, a rumor
newspaper man, genial, natural in manner, 4° was seeping through it to the effect that
and alert. Slight of build, with something an armistice had already been signed, and
of the college boy still lurking behind his Howard told me that he had heard the
little brush mustache, and with a breezy same thing when he came in at the station
manner that dispelled formality, Howard that morning.

perched on the edge of my desk and in 45 The sight of La Depcche office in-
short order made me glad he had come. spired Howard to pay it a visit, due to his

He immediately laid the groundwork company having relations with it that I
for the historic occurrence that was to take was soon to hear about. We walked in-
place within a few hours by his expressed side and stopped first at the telegraph
desire to effect a change in the transporta- 5° room, which was nearest the door, and
tion plans that had been made for him in Howard entered animatedly into conversa-
Paris. tion with the operator on duty in a French

T 'm due to sail at two this afternoon that was as utilitarian as it was full of
on some ark that takes two weeks getting gestures. I gradually gathered a fact that
home,' he lamented. 'I 'd like to make 55 was to have tremendous bearing later on.

It seems that, apart from our own signal

1 Intelligence operators in civilian clothes posted lines, there Were Only tWO ways of COm-
at all important railroad depots to report the ar- • , . « '« « .J t» •

rival of any one who might interest the % o: municating by telegraph between Pans

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 69

and Brest. One was by the regular wires the command of all naval personnel in
of the public telegraph service; the other France. His was a job of enormous re-
was by the private wire of La Depeche. sponsibility and required an inordinate
Users of the public service — and this in- amount of wakeful attention. But there
eluded correspondents sending their com- 5 was about him at no time any of that
munications through to be cabled to the suggestion of rush and over-exertion corn-
States from Brest — had to wait their turn, mon to the smaller man with far fewer
a matter usually of several hours, and the cares. The navy knew that the meanest-
United Press had scored a brilliant 'beat' grade fireman could reach the admiral's
by getting the consent of La Depeche to 10 ear as easily as a congressman, perhaps
share its special wire, thereby avoiding easier.

delays in transmission to Brest and being But fate was still having its bizarre

able to gain the cables ahead of its com- way. The admiral was out, and his aide,
petitors. Ensign Sellards, made an appointment

Thus the system by which United Press 15 with Howard for four o'clock that after-
communications went through from Paris noon. On such slender threads as this
was as follows : first, it would pass does history hang ! Had the admiral been
through the necessary censorship, then it in when we called, and Howard had spent
would be put on the private Depeche half an hour or so with him at that time
wire and sent to Brest. It is highly im- 20 instead of later in the day, the famous
portant to note that the receiving-instru- armistice celebration of November 7
ment in La Depeche office was of would never have occurred,
the ticker-tape variety commonly used By the time I had shown Howard a

throughout France, being a machine few of Brest's sights (nothing much to
which typewrites its own messages on 25 see) and we had lunched at the Navy
paper ribbon. When the United ^ Press Club, it was after two o'clock. I then
communications were ticked off in La took him back to his hostelry, the Con-
Depeche office by the sending operator tinental, where he had been lucky enough
in Paris, the tape recording the message to find quarters, the place being packed
was cut up, pasted on the usual telegraph 30 to the roof with congressional Visiting
form, sent by messenger across the place committees,' known unpleasantly in the
to the post-and-telegraph office, and filed army as 'joyriders,' Y. M. C. A. workers,
for the cables. Long practice had ac- French demi-mondaines, hordes of quar-
customed the Brest cable censors to rec- termaster officers and naval paymasters,
ognize these United Press messages, 35 a few stray doughboys on special pass,
and, in view of their having already been an assortment of 'Swiss' salesmen of con-
censored in Paris, to accord them prompt siderable interest to my department, and
transmission without further censoring. an occasional, very occasional, French-
As will be seen, this habitual treatment man> bearing an apologetic air for seem-
of Pzris-Dcpcche telegrams had great 40 ing to intrude on so happy an American
bearing on, and is largely accountable for, family. Then, having my day's work
what is to follow. still before me, I left, cautioning Howard

After Howard had given greetings and to be punctual at the naval office if he
remercicments to everybody on La De- craved the admiral's love and respect.
peche staff, we went along to naval head- 45

quarters. I thought that Howard would § 3

be able to see the admiral at once, as the

latter was almost always in his office and At four-thirty or thereabout, as I sat

exceedingly easy to 'get to.' He was one at my desk mulling over some reports, I
of that small, but eminently successful, 50 heard a great shout go up somewhere in
group of service executives who, despite the general direction of the Place du
the stature of their war tasks, seemed al- President Wilson. Exuberant behavior of
ways able to see any one and for any all sorts being more the rule than the ex^
length of time. Admiral Wilson was at ception of the Yankee-burdened Brest of
the time directing all transport and fight- 55 those days, I paid no attention to the
ing activities in French waters, which in- racket; but shortly afterward one of my
eluded, of course, the delicate destroyer men entered with the report that official
operations against enemy submarines and news had been given out to the effect that

;o WRITING OF TODAY

an armistice had been signed and the that might have arisen in the minds of the
fighting had ended at the front. Had two men was justifiably dismissed by a
been given out, what is more, by naval consideration of the telegram's source.
headquarters! Naval officials are scarcely given to mak-

Astounded at the suddenness with 5 ing so flatly the report of a highly im-
which truth had been given to the odd portant fact unless it is based on truth;
rumor that -had hovered over Brest all much less so to the commanding naval
day, I started inquiries that quickly dis- officer in France, whose receipt thereof
closed what had occurred. It was not for might entitle him to believe that submarine
some time that I located Howard, who, 10 warfare had likewise terminated and that
with Major Cook of General Harries's his destroyers might relax their vigilance,
staff, was going from one official bureau It was incredible that, however surpris-
to another in his endeavor to procure ad- ing, the message might be fallacious,
ditional information. From him I learned No other official source, French or

that the armistice tidings had been pro- 15 American, appeared to have the great
nounced official by Admiral Wilson and news, and, desirous that the people of
that Howard had sent a cable to the Brest learn of it, Admiral Wilson des-
United States saying that the war was patched an orderly to bulletin the tidings
over. in the public square, where the naval band

If the news was true, Howard probably 20 happened to be giving its weekly concert,
had scored the biggest news beat of his- The tiny spark of news set a flame

tory. And from Howard's recital of the that within ten minutes had spread like a
facts there seemed to be no question of prairie fire from one end of Brest to the
the news being authentic. Back in my other. Into the streets pressed the people,
office, he told me what had happened, be- 25 stunned at first, literally dazed by the vic-
ginning by tossing on my desk a copy of tory that had come to France, then gradu-
his message to the States. It was ad- ally opening up into a mad rejoicing as
dressed to the United Press office in New the tragic repression of four terrible years
York City and read: rolled from their hearts. As Howard

__ . . 30 spoke, the crowds surged outside my win-

Urgent. Armistice allies Germans signed d laughing, screaming, sobbing, sing-

11 smorning hostilities ceased two safternoon. ing The* c*lebrated) ^ but \ w|s

It was signed 'Howard-Simms.' Simms a different sort of celebration to the gay-
was the United Press man in Paris. Ap- hearted, happy holiday and madcap car-
parently Howard wanted to let him share 35 nival into which, thanks to Howard's
the glory of his 'beat.' Where and how cable, America was at that very minute
the latter had arisen so suddenly in Brest, plunging.

several hundred miles from the front, I 'My cable will get there in time to

could not imagine. I looked up wonder- catch the afternoon editions,' reckoned
ingly and heard the story. 40 Howard, measuring the difference in time

Promptly at four o'clock Howard had on his fingers. 'There 's a day in history
been presented to Admiral Wilson. They for you !' Actually, the news flashed
had been chatting a while when the ad- from Brest to New York in six minutes
miral remarked that he had just received flat, thereby making special noon editions !
a message which might possibly interest 45 Howard had done what any other
Howard, and handed it to him for his skilled newspaper man would have done in
perusal. Howard beheld an official tele- similar circumstances. He had seen the
gram, signed by Commander Jackson of opportunity of his lifetime, of any war
Admiral Wilson's office in Paris and naval correspondent's lifetime. Here he was at
attache at our Paris embassy. It said: 50 Brest, the cable point, with hot news just

a .... .« «'.... .«.« • ,, off the official griddle that apparently no

Armistice signed this morning at 11 all ___ .__ ,, „ . Jfc_4 n^Unne. uJa ««* !.,«„

hostilities ceased at 2 p. m. today °"e ,e,se had' that perhaps had not even

yet been given to the press in Pans. He
Howard was amazed. So the war had could beat every competitor in the busi-
ended ! Rather suddenly, perhaps, but 55 ness on the biggest news break in history !
none the less surely. There could not He could get his message to the States
possibly be any doubt about it. Any ques- in time for the afternoon editions. The
tipn as to the authenticity of the report others might not get there until morning.

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 71

Admiral Wilson expressed his willing- Brest censor would not have passed so
ness that Howard should use the report. important a piece of news unless it had
In company, therefore, with Ensign Sel- been first passed by the Paris censor, fell
lards to assist him in arranging things, victim to the same fluke, and the damage
Howard rushed to the postes. But de- 5 was done. The general belief that the
siring to file a typewritten message so message had, in fact, come from Paris is
there would be no possible misunderstand- futher verified by the short extract from
ing or misreading by the French cable the New York Globe given above, in
operator, Howard dived en route into the which it is stated that the spurious re-
near-by telegraph room of La Depeche 10 port emanated 'from Paris.'
and demanded a type-writer, explaining It is an extraordinary fact that prob-

hurriedly his reason. ably, in view of the above facts, Roy W.

By a further coincidence the telegraph Howard was the only man in the world
editor undertook to type out Howard's who could have sent the message as it
message, and used his own telegraph in- 15 was sent or who could have sent it at all.
strument to do so, it being possible to As president of the United Press and in
type on the ribbon with the local tele- close touch with La Depeche, he pos-
graph key as well as with the transmit- sessed both the authority and the machin-
ting-key in Paris. ery wherewith to 'put the thing across.'

Then tearing off the tape, the obliging ao That he was actually in Brest on that day
Frenchman pasted it as usual on a tele- and in consultation with Admiral Wilson
graphic form and, lo ! the message was is a coincidence that staggers the imagi-
clear and ready for immediate filing. nation.

What is vastly more important, it looked Torn between believing and not believ-

exactly as though it had been transmitted 25 ing, wanting to be as exultant as the
from Paris, as were all other United throngs that were sending their songs up
Press messages, and had been censored to us from the crowded, narrow streets, I
there! was perturbed principally by the silence

§ 4 on the subject of an armistice that my

30 own department had maintained. It

Looking at it in the light of later re- seemed impossible that, if the news were
flection, I am convinced that it was this true, I would myself not be advised by
unintended strategy of Howard's that en- intelligence headquarters, in order that I
abled him to get his cable past the local might inform the commanding general of
censors. I say 'unintended' because it is 35 the base.

inconceivable that in the circumstances I called the Paris intelligence office by

any man, however alert, could have telephone and, to their apparent astonish-
thought up so extraordinarily clever a ment, explained what had occurred. No
device. Knowing that type of French word of any armistice had reached it;
official as I do, I am convinced that no 40 nothing more than that enemy plenipoten-
one in Brest, of whatever exalted rank, tiaries were expected to meet Marshal
could have caused the local French cen- Foch that afternoon at five. I requested
sors to let by so portentous a message the Paris 'I. O.' to get into immediate
without having the O. K. of either the touch with the French Ministry of War
Ministry of War or the Paris censorship 45 and advise me of consequences as soon as
office. possible.

I am further convinced that it was the But seeming set-back did not serve to

strange combination of circumstances that shake Howard's confidence. On the con-
led to the message's looking as if it came trary, it indicated to him that his 'beat'
from Paris. It was even signed, thanks 5o was all the bigger. He protested that the
to Howard's generosity, by Simms, the news was probably just out, and that the
man who signed all the messages that Paris embassy had received it before the
came from Paris, and with whose name T. O.,' a perfectly possible occurrence,
the Brest censors were familiar as being And always present was the incredibility
the stamp of proper procedure. That re- 55 of Admiral Wilson's office in Paris im-
sulted in its speedy transmission to Amer- parting such news to him unless it were
ica's noon editions ! And in New York true. There had been neither uncertainty
the censor, justifiably concluding that the nor doubt in its words. The armistice

72 WRITING OF TODAY

'signed,' all hostilities 'ceased'; nothing

equivocal about such expressions as § 5

those. Then suddenly came the crash, just as

During our luncheon and before the it had to come, out of a sky that was blue

storm had broken, Howard had asked me 5 and beautiful, out of a sky the horizon

to dine with him that night, little thinking clouds of which I had come near to for-

that he was, in effect, asking me to an getting. I had left word for any wire

'armistice celebration.' There was to be from Paris to be sent to me immediately,

no official army celebration of the 'vie- In the midst of a din that was getting

tory,' inasmuch as General Harries, after 10 louder momentarily, a signal-corps orderly

telephoning me to ask whether I had had entered the room unnoticed and made for

confirmation of the report from Paris or our table. A feeling of chilling appre-

Chaumont, declared that he would refuse hension seized me as I grasped and opened

to believe it until I did. the message that was handed to me. I

At Howard's request I had earlier in 15 felt Howard's eye on me as I read, and
the day rounded up a small band of the blood rushed to my head,
cronies, and six of us gathered around The communication was in intelligence
the tiny table that our host had managed code, and the process of translation was
to engage at La Brasserie de la Marine, slow and fearful. Finally it was done.
Brest's Delmonico, and that evening a 20 I had only to read it aloud to that scream-
pandemonium of gaiety. ing mob about me to be torn to little

It need hardly be said that some spirit pieces. The message said:
of that same unrestrained emotion that

was sweeping through our own home . Armistice report untrue. War Ministry

towns at that minute animated our little *5 ls?ue.s absolute denial and declares enemy

rru 1 i4- ~~^~a ;w plenipotentiaries to be still on way through

group The war over! It seemed im- g^ Cannot meet Foch ^ €yQJ w?c

possibly, wonaerfully true. Only a few full details of local hoax immediately.
weeks back it had seemed as though it

would never end. And now here it was— The message was signed by Major

'finie la guerre !' The famous doughboy 30 Robertson, my immediate superior at
phrase rang out on all sides. The bras^ Paris.

serie was alive with flags, confetti, and I shall draw a swift curtain over the

streamers that had leaped suddenly into cruel scene of reaction: Howard's white,
being from nowhere, and the usual clatter drawn face as he realized what he had
of dishes was replaced by the yells and 35 done, as he read in the words I handed
songs of several hundred unrestrained him his own doom and that of the United
throats. Press ; our filing out with him back to the

Two pretty girls danced recklessly on a Continental, leaving behind us, undisil-
narrow table packed tightly against ours, lusioned, the tragically joyous throngs
while their Yankee escorts roared a jazz 4° celebrating a peace that was not a peace
accompaniment. An orchestra played in — a peace whose morning after would
a far corner — played madly, furiously, but find men still killing one another monot-
no one heard it. A drunken sailor onously, hopelessly, as had every dawn
climbed up on the chandelier, fell off; the since August, 1914.

world shrieked with laughter. A near-by 45 A revival of hope, an inability to be-
French officer, turned martial by Moet, lieve even Robertson's definite words, im-
'cent quatre, exhorted a deaf multitude pelled Howard to go in search of Admiral
not to stop the war, and finally fell to Wilson. The two of us finally located
weeping on the table-cloth. Everywhere him dining en faniillc with a French local
noise, din, madness, a universe gone 50 official, and in answer to the inquiries we
drunk with a wine that knew no grape, sent inside Ensign Sellards came out to
Then came, as it had to come, born at the tell us that the admiral had heard from
same instant out of an hundred mouths. Paris that the news he had received that
'La Marseillaise.' I can hear it still, that afternoon concerning an armistice had
'Marseillaise,' twining around my heart 55 been 'premature.' Clinging to the faint
like some divine hand, lifting it up and belief that 'premature' meant 'true, but
up. not properly released/ Howard spent most

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 73

of the night trying to get information eighty-five thousand dollars should be pre-

from his own Paris office. When that sented to Howard for payment!

came, all hope crashed to the ground.

'Premature' meant untrue. The world § "

collapsed about Howard's ears. The big- 5 But if the Wilson statement exonerated

gest 'beat' in the history of journalism Howard, as it did and as it should have

had turned cruelly into its biggest done, for in my opinion he was somewhat

'bloomer.' less responsible for the false armistice

The blackest of black skies cleared con- celebration than the American newspapers
siderably for Howard the following morn- 10 who printed his cable as absolute truth
ing when Admiral Wilson, every inch the despite other conflicting despatches they
gentleman and the man, took upon his were in receipt of at the time, who was
own shoulders complete responsibility for to blame?

Howard's fateful cable. In the admiral's It is said that the wire signed by Corn-

statement, issued at once to the press, he 15 mander Jackson was based on information
did not even make mention of the official telephoned to the American embassy by
who had sent, or, at least, whose signature a person who purported to be speaking
was affixed to the erroneous communica- officially from the French Ministry of War.
tion from Paris. To the latter he re- Thus in a way we find ourselves face to
f erred simply as 'what appeared to be 20 face with an object of ultimate blame that
official and authoritative information/ is as mysterious as it is unknown, for

The career of a lesser man might very subsequent investigation showed that no
well have been marred by this brave as- one at the ministry had called the embassy
sumption of blame, but, then, a lesser man that day. There is a possibility, of course,
would probably not have made it. Not 25 that the embassy's anonymous informant
long after the closing of war-days, Ad- was nothing else than a practical joker,
miral Wilson was placed in command of This, however, is scarcely credible,
the Atlantic fleet, and just recently has Some other motivating force may very
been made commandant of the Naval properly be looked for than the mere de-
Academy at Annapolis. So it is seen 30 sire to jest.

that he has not suffered in consequence of I realize that I may regard the matter

his courageous protection of Howard, through spectacles somewhat tinted by
whose journalistic fate, without that pro- many months of service in the counter-
tection, would unquestionably have been a espionage section of the army, but, for
severe one. 35 reasons which I shall expound, it is my

As it is, it will be remembered that the belief that the naval office in Paris, Ad-
American press railed against the alleged miral Wilson, Roy Howard, and the en-
hoax and called loudly for those responsi- tire United States of America were the
ble to be brought to book. Branded as victims of one or more secret agents of
'either one of the most colossal fakes in 40 the German Espionage Corps,
history or an inconceivably bad blunder/ It will be recalled that, on the morning

the newspapers throughout the country of November 7, enemy plenipotentiaries
dwelt principally on the cruel disappoint- were reported to be coming through the
ment to the American people and 'espe- lines to sue for an armistice. It being a
daily those having husbands, sons, 45 principle of the German intelligence sys-
fathers, and brothers in the bitter fighting tern that 'fixed operators'— namely, spies
at the front.' Much emphasis was laid on permanent duty at one point— work
editorially on the fabulous cost of the actively on their own initiative and with-
'fake' to the country, a total running into out orders, taking into consideration the
uncomputable millions and resulting pri- 5o news and needs of the day, it is reason-
marily from the fact that work was able to suppose that an intelligent enemy
'knocked off' at noon in virtually every agent in Paris would set about doing his
office and plant from coast to coast and utmost on November 7 to create popular
not resumed until the following day. The desire and demand among the Allied
bill for street-cleaning after the celebra- 55 people for the German-sought armistice,
tion in the larger cities presented in itself The existence of such an attitude on

a staggering total. One New York paper the part of the people would make for a
declared that New York's own bill of more certain and swifter cessation of hos-

74 WRITING OF TODAY

tilities and an avoidance of the terrible had witnessed the demonstrations of Xo-

smashing blows that German arms and vember 7, reliable proof of the country's

Germany itself seemed doomed to receive. sentiment, and it is said that Wilsonian

From a psychological and somewhat typi- pressure was largely, if not entirely, ac-

cally German point of view the best pos- 5 countable for the granting of an armistice

sible way of making the public want an at a time when French and Allied military

armistice would be to tell them that there leaders were preparing to administer to

was an armistice, and let them taste of Germany the terrific smashing for which

the joy that would naturally await upon they had built up and to which they were

the news. 10 looking forward eagerly, exultantly.

Had the American people not been Who knows but what a still fight-
rewarded with a real termination of the hearted American people might not have
struggle a short time after their wild cried loudly for 'On to Berlin!' had not
celebration of the supposed, it must be the sweet branch of the olive-tree been
believed that the reaction of their dis- 15 placed prematurely in their hands and
appointment would have been both severe fOUnd to be much, very much, to their
and dangerous to home morale. The liking?
Globe quotes a prominent citizen as say-
ing on November 7, 'It will be a tragedy y
if this report proves untrue.' 20

A similar effort to stampede the French ENGLAND HONORS

press into announcing an armistice ap- UNKNOWN SOLDIER
pears also to have been made. It was

impossible, of course, to fool Paris, but SIR PHILIP GIBBS

St. Nazaire received the rumor, as did 25

Bordeaux, Marseilles,, Nice, Lorient, and r:Mew*orku Times November 12, 1920. CoPy-

Al t- v • ' Ti ' ... right, 1920, by the New York Times Company.

Other Trench points. It was present in By permission of author and publisher.]

Brest before Admiral Wilson's receipt of

the message from Paris. London had it, London, Nov. II. — It did not seem an

but its press was highly conservative in 3o unknown warrior whose body came on the
passing judgment on its credibility, and, gun carriage down Whitehall where we
with one unimportant exception, did not were waiting for him. He was known to
announce it to the people. Holland and us all. It was one of 'our boys,' not war-
parts of Belgium had it. Possibly, too, riors, as we called them in the days of
many other localities ; but I have named 35 darkness, lit by faith,
all that I know about save Mexico and To some women, weeping a little in the

parts of South America, where the cele- crowd after an all-night vigil, he was
oration was hilarious, but more probably their boy who went missing one day and
on the strength of the United Press re- was never found till now, though their
port. Holland's having the 'news' is 40 souls went searching for him through
strongly suggestive of enemy espionage dreadful places in night,
effort. To many men among those packed

Thus it would appear that an organized densely on each side of the empty street,
attempt was made to make the Allied na- wearing ribbons and badges on civil
tions cherish an armistice which, though 45 clothes, he was a familiar figure — one of
not yet existent, was within easy reach if their comrades, the one they liked best,
the people wanted it and showed clearly perhaps, in the old crowd who went into
that they wanted it. I should greatly the fields of death and stayed there with
like to see the intelligence reports of our the great companionship,
late enemy for November 7, 1918. The 50 It was the steel helmet, the old 'tin hat,'
scheme is worthy of the German service lying there on the crimson of the flag
in both ingenuity and execution, and does which revealed him instantly, not as a
credit to the one or more persons who mythical warrior aloof from common hu-
conceived it. manity, a shadowy type of the national

Who knows but what it may have had 55 pride and martial glory, but as one of
something to do with accomplishing their those fellows, dressed in the drab of
purpose? President Wilson cast his im- khaki, stained by mud and grease, who
portant decision for an armistice after he went into the dirty ditches with this steel

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES

75

hat on his head and in his heart the un- they stood in Whitehall to salute him, to
spoken things, which made him one of us keep silence in his presence, to render him
in courage and in fear, with some kind homage, more wonderful, with deeper
of faith not clear, full of perplexities, reverence than any General of them all
often dim in the watchwords of those 5 has had.
years of war. There were Princes there about the

So it seemed to me, at least, as I cenotaph, not only of England but of the
looked down Whitehall and listened to the Indian Empire. These Indian rajahs, that
music which told us that the unknown was old white-bearded, white-turbaned man
coming down the road. The band was 10 with the face of an Eastern prophet —
playing the old 'Dead March in Saul/ was it possible that they, too, were out to
with heavy drumming, but as yet the road- pay homage to an unknown British
way was clear where it led up to that soldier?

altar of sacrifice as it looked, covered by There was something of the light of

two flags, hanging in long folds of scar- 15 Flanders in Whitehall. The tattered
let and white. ruins of Cloth Hall at Ypres used to

About that altar cenotaph there were shine white. A mist, suffused a little by
little groups of strange people, all waiting wan sunlight, white as the walls and tur-
for the dead soldier. Why were they rets of the War Office in this mist of
there? 20 London. The tower of Big Ben was dim

There were great folk to greet the dust through the mist like the tower of Albert
of a simple soldier. There was the Arch- Church until it fell into a heap under
bishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of the fury of gunfire.

London and other clergy in gowns and Presently the sun shone brighter so

hoods. What had they to do with the 25 that the picture of Whitehall was etched
body of a soldier who had gone trudging with deeper lines. On all the buildings
through the mud and muck like one ant flags were flying at half mast. The
in a legion of ants, unknown to fame, not people who kept moving about the ceno-
more heroic, perhaps, than all his pals taph were there for mourning, not for
about him, not missed much when he fell 3° mere pageantry. The Grenadier officers,
dead between the tangled wire and the who walked about with drawn swords,
shell holes? wore crape on their arms. Presently

There were great Generals and Ad- they passed the word along, 'Reverse
mirals, Lord Haig himself, Commander in arms,' and all along the line of route
Chief of our armies in France, and Ad- 35 soldiers turned over their rifles and bent
miral Beatty, who held the seas ; Lord their heads over their butts. It was when
French of Ypres, with Home of the First the music of the Dead March came louder
Army and Byng of the Third, and Air up the street.

Marshal Trenchard, who commanded all A number of black figures stood in a

the birds that flew above the lines on the 40 separate group apart from the Admirals
mornings of enormous battle. and Generals, people of importance to

These were the high powers, infinitely whom the eyes of the crowd turned while
remote, perhaps, in the imagination of the men and women tip-toed to get a glimpse
man whose dust was now being brought of them.

toward them. It was their brains that 45 The Prime Minister and Ministers and
had directed his movements down the long ex-Ministers of England were there —
roads which galled his feet, over ground Asquith, Lord Curzon and other states-
churned up by gunfire, up duck boards men who in those years of conflict were
from which he slipped under his heavy responsible for all the mighty effort of
pack if he were a foot slogger, and what- 50 the nation, who stirred up its passion and
ever his class as a soldier ordained at emotions, who organized its labor and
last the end of his journey, which finished service, who won that victory and this
in a grave marked by metal disk — 'un- peace. I thought the people about me
known.' stared at them as though conscious of the

In life, he had looked upon these Gen- 55 task that is theirs, now that peace is the
erals as terrifying in their power 'for the test of victory.

likes of him.' Sometimes, perhaps, he But it was one figure who stood alone as

had saluted them as they rode past. Now the symbol of the nation in this tribute to

76 WRITING OF TODAY

the spirit of our dead. As Big Ben struck Presently there was a far-off wailing

three-quarters after ten the King ad- like the cry of a banshee. It was a siren
vanced toward the cenotaph, followed by giving the warning of silence in some
the Prince of Wales, the Prince's two place by the river.

brothers, and the Duke of Connaught. 5 The deep notes of Big Ben struck u
And while the others stood in line looking and then the King turned quickly to a
toward the top of Whitehall the King was lever behind him, touched it and let fall
a few paces ahead of them alone, waiting the great flags which had draped the altar,
motionless for the body of the unknown The cenotaph stood revealed, utterly
warrior who had died in his service. 10 austere except for three standards with

It was very silent in Whitehall. Be- their gilt wreaths,
fore the ordered silence the dense lines of It was a time of silence. What thoughts
people had kept their places without move- were in the minds of all the people, only
ment and only spoke little in their long God knows, as they stood there for those
time of waiting, and then as they caught 15 two minutes which were very long,
their first glimpse of the gun-carriage There was dead stillness in Whitehall,

were utterly quiet, all heads were bared only broken here and there by the cough.,
and bent. Their emotion was as though ing of a man or woman, quickly hushed.
a little cold breeze were passing. One The unknown warrior ! Was it youn<,'

seemed to feel the spirit of the crowd. 20 Jack, perhaps who had never been found?
Above all this mass of plain people some- Was it one of those fellows in the bat-
thing touched one with a sharp, yet soften- talion that moved up through Ypres be-
ing thought. fore the height of the battle in the bogs?

The massed bands passed with their Men were smoking this side of Ypres

noble music and their drums thumping at 25 One could see the glow of their cigarette
the hearts of men and women. Guards ends as they were halted around the old
with their reversed arms passed and then mill house at Vlamertinghe. It rained
the gun-carriage with its team of horses after that, beating sharply on tin hats,
halted in front of the cenotaph where the pouring in spouts down the waterproof
King stood, and every hand was raised to 30 capes. They went out through Menin
salute the soldier who died that we might Gate. Shelling began along the duck
live, chosen by fate for this honor which boards by Westhoek ridge, gas shelling,
is in remembrance of that great army of every old thing.

comrades who went out with him to no Fellows dropped into the shell holes

man's land. 35 full of water. They had their packs on,

The King laid a wreath on this coffin all their fighting kit. Some of them lay
and then stepped back again. Crowded there in pits where the water was reddish,
behind the gun-carriage in one long vista There were a lot of unknown warriors

was an immense column of men of all in the bogs by Glencorse Wood and In-
branches of the navy and army moving 40 verness Copse. They lay by upturned
up slowly before coming to a halt, and tanks and sank in slime. Queer how fel-
behind again other men in civilian clothes, lows used to drop and never give a sound,
and everywhere among them and above so that their pals passed on without
them flowers in the form of wreaths and knowing,
crosses. 45 In all sorts of places the unknown warv

Then all was still, and the picture was rior lay down and was not quickly found,
complete, framing in that coffin where In Boulon Wood they were lying after the
the steel hat and the King's sword lay battle among the river trees. On the
upon the flag which draped it. The soul fields of Somme they lay in the churned^
of the nation at its best, purified at this 5© up earth, in High Wood and Delville
moment by this emotion, was there an Wood and this side of Loupart Wood.
silence about the dust of that unknown. It was queer one day how the sun shone

Guns were being fired somewhere in on Loupart Wood, which was red with
the distance. They were not loud, but Autumn tints. Old 'Boche' was there
like the distant thumping of guns on a 55 then, and the wood seemed to have a
misty day in Flanders when there was thousand eyes staring at our lines newly
'nothing to report/ though on such a dug. An airplane came through the
day, perhaps, this man had died. fleecy sky, wonderfully careless of the

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES y?

black shrapnel bursting about it. Won- honor too great for him. In him, it
derful chaps, those airmen. pays its unstinted tribute of pride and

For the man afoot it was n't good to glory to all those sleeping in the far soil
stumble in that ground; barbed wire tore of France. It was their home-coming to-
one's hands damnably. There was a boy 5 day; their day of days in the heart of the
lying in a tangle of barbed wire. He nation, and they must have known it, for
looked as though he was asleep, but he the heartbeat of a nation defies the laws
was dead all right. An airplane passed of space, even of eternity,
overhead with a loud humming song. Sodden skies and a gray, creeping chill-

What is this long silence, all this crowd 10 ing rain all through the day seemed to
in London streets two years after the mark the mourning of this American soil
armistice peace? Yes, those were old and air at the bier of this unknown hero,
dreams that have passed, old ghosts pass- But no jot of the full meed of honor was
ing down Whitehall among the living. denied the dead on that account. From

The silence ended. Some word rang 15 the highest officials of this democratic
out, bugles were blowing, they were sound- government to the last soldier or marine
ing 'the last post' to the unknown warrior or bluejacket, rain and cold meant noth-
of the great war in which many men died ing beside the desire to do honor to the
without record or renown. Further than dead.

Whitehall sounded the last post to the 20 The ceremonies were brief today,
dead. Did the whole army of the dead They began when the far boom of salut-
hear that call to them from the living? ing cannon down the river signalled the

In the crowd below me women were coming of the great gray cruiser Olympia.
weeping quietly. It was the cry from The fog of rain hid her slow approach
their hearts that was heard furthest, per- 25 up the Potomac, but fort by fort, post by
haps. The men's faces were hard like post, the guns took up the tale of honors
masks, hiding all they thought and felt. for the dead as she passed.

Slowly the ship swung into her dock.
VI Along her rails stood her crew in long

<twt? TTMir\rnw\r qot tytft?' * lines of dark blue> riSid at attention and

™£SS A^t! R^tVirVtSi™ with a solemn expression uncommon to

ARRIVES AT WASHINGTON the young faces beneath the jaunty sailor

hats. Astern, under the long, gray muz-
KIRKE L. SIMPSON zle of a gun than once echoed its way into

, • j t, xt. , t> . xt 35 history more than twenty years ago in

[From the Associated Press Night Report, Nov- t\/t„„:i„ r>„„ i„„ *t,~ a„~ A\.n^^A „i ±

ember 9, «9«. % permission.] Manila Bay, lay the flag-draped casket.

Above a tented awning held off the drip-
Washington, Nov. 9. — A plain soldier, ping rain, the inner side of the canvas
unknown but weighted with honors as lined with great American flags to make
perhaps no American before him because 40 a canopy for the sleeper below. At at-
he died for the flag in France, lay tonight tention stood five sailors and marines as
in a place where only martyred Presidents guards of honor for the dead at each
Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley have corner and the head of hi? oier.
slept in death. Below on the cobbled sjvetch of the old

He kept lonely vigil lying in state 45 dock at Washington Nar/y Yard, a regi-
under the vast, shadowy dome of the ment of cavalry waited, sabers at 'pre-
Capitol. Only the motionless figures of sent', and the black-draped gun caisson
the five armed comrades, one at the head with its six black horses to carry the
and one facing inward at each corner of casket to the Capitol. The troopers
the bier, kept watch with him. 50 formed in line facing toward the ship as

But far above, towering from the great she swung broadside to her place and the
bulk of the dome, the brooding figure of gangway was lifted to her quarterdeck.
Freedom watched too, as though it said To their right a mounted band stilled
'well done' to the servant faithful unto its restless horses.

death, asleep there in the vast, dim cham- 55 On the ship, the trim files of her marine

ber below. guard stood at attention. Rear-Admiral

America's unknown dead is home from Lloyd H. Chandler, to whom had fallen

France at last, and the nation has no the duty of escorting this dead private

78 WRITING OF TODAY

soldier over the Atlantic from France, below. Again the pipe above wailed as
was garbed in the full, formal naval dress they stepped ashore at last and the un-
as were officers of his staff. known was again on American soil.

Just as the ship's bell clanged out the Slowly the Hag-draped casket moved

quick, double strokes of 'eight bells' the 5 down between the line of troops and mar-
sailors' four o'clock and the hour set for ines and under the eyes of the blue-
arrival, the bugles rang again and the jackets standing rigidly at the ship's rails
crew again lined the rails far above the high above. As they came abreast of
dock. The marine guard filed down the the ship's band, the dirge was stilled, a
gangway to face the troopers across the 10 marine bugler sounded four flourishes of
dock, the ship's band came down and salute to a general officer. Then the stir-
formed beyond the marines. On deck at ring, lifting strains of The Star Spangled
the gangway head, four sides-boys took Banner' rang out to the gray sky, the
their place on each side facing toward nation's own hymn of freedom,
each other, the boatswain waiting behind 15 Again the slow march to the waiting
them to pipe a dead comrade over the gun-carriage was taken up; again the
side with the honors accorded only to full wail of the funeral march, cut through
Admirals of the fleet. with the crash of the gun above, sounded.

Cars bearing Secretaries Weeks and The caisson waited in a space between the
Denby, Assistant Secretary Wainwright, 20 second and third squadrons of the full
General Pershing, Major General Har- strength of the Third Cavalry from Fort
bord, Admiral Coontz and Major General Myer and beside it stood the eight body
Lejeune, the Marine commandant, and bearers of the Army headed by Sergeant
their aides rolled up, with Secretary Woodfill, hero of heroes among Ameri-
Weeks on the right next to the gangway 25 cans who fought in France,
and Secretary Denby next, then General The soldiers took over the burden at

Pershing and Admiral Coontz; these the gun-carriage and then could be seen
highest officers of the army and navy a withered handful of flowers, the only
formed in line facing down the open decoration on the flag-wrapped casket,
space between the troops and marines. 30 They were the blooms with which this

On deck the bugles called attention. casket was chosen from others there in
A group of petty officers stepped forward France before the long journey home be-
to raise the casket. A forward gun gan. Through it all they have lain there
crashed to the first drumming roll of the above the breast of the dead, yellowing
minute guns of sorrow. The Olympia's 35 with each passing day. They will go
band sounded the opening chords of Cho- with the unknown to his last sleep in thY
pin's 'Funeral March' and to the slow stone crypt at Arlington,
half-step and carried high on the shoul- As the casket was strapped in place,

ders of his navy and marine corps com- an order rang out and the cavalry band
rades, the unknown was tenderly lifted 40 swung off to the left, playing 'Onward,
down the steep pitch to the dock. Christian Soldiers.' Behind them, sabers,

Admiral Chandler and his aides came cap brims and sodden colors dripping with
behind, cocked hats off in the cold rain rain, came the troopers four abreast, troop
and held across their breasts. Below the after troop. Then the caisson, the fol-
cabinet members also stood bare-headed in 45 lowing squadron, Secretaries Weeks and
the rain, the army and navy officers at Denby riding together in a closed car,
salute. General Pershing and Admiral Coontz,

Just as the casket passed out through and behind these the other officers and
the rails, overside to the plank, the wail officials.

of the bo 'sun's pipe sounded shrilling 50 The horses swung away at a slow trot,
the last salute of the sea to the dead. Ahead the winding road to the old gate-
It sounded oddly against the background way was lined on either side with marines
of the dirge and as the sound of the pipe at present arms and behind them, row af'
died away, the gun forward barked again ter row, were packed the thousands of
the passing of another minute. 55 just plain American citizens who had

Step by step the bearers labored down braved cold and rain for hours to stand
the plank, sanded against the slippery bare-headed as the body of this honored
murk of the rain, to the cobbled dock floor fellow countryman was carried by.

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 79

Out through the gateway the cortage it softly on the casket near the head and

clattered to find other crowds lining the gave place to Vice-President Coolidge and

way under the daylight of a fading Au- Speaker Gillett who moved forward to-

tumn day. It moved quickly on through gether to lay the tribute of Congress, a

the streets, ringing to the melody of the 5 wreath of pink roses and snapdragons, in

band and the drumming of the horses' place. Chief Justice Taft moved forward

shoes on the wet pavement. On it went, from the opposite side, bearing the floral

to swing at last into the great plaza be- tribute of the Supreme Court, a wreath

fore the Capitol and there troopers again of chrysanthemums and carnations,

drew up in line, facing the massive build- n Secretary Weeks laid the Army's token

ing with sabers at 'present' as the casket 0f remembrance, a wreath of white roses,

was lifted down and carried up the wide against the casket at the head and Secre-

stairway to be placed on the catafalque j-ary Denby placed the Navy's offering,

in the dim rotunda. The two Secretaries, chrysanthemums and roses, set on an easel,

bare-headed, followed and behind them the 15 at the foot of the bier. Over and to one

officers and others. side, against the wall, were placed the

There were few in the great hall. The great masses of pink blossoms that were

only lights were those high among the warmed to life by the sun of France to be

pillars above the sculptured walls and the carried all the long way Qn the 0hmpia,

last fading gleams of day through the *, Then General pershing stepped forward

high windows The waiting guard which tQ Jace his Qwn tribute and that o{ the

would stand through the long night about American Expeditionary Force on this

the bier, stood at present arms as the cas- unknown> allant comrade's coffin. It

ket was carried in and set in place on the wag wreath f . ink ch the_

high, black-draped structure on which the 25 m and as hes lac£ it th> officef

body of McKinley was last to repose in paused a moment) £hen stepped back a

st^e# .* ,., ,, • „ - pace or two and, drawing his figure to

There was a pause then until the ring of V$ ]ifted h;s ^ £ brjm

a command out on the plaza the flurry . J fc dead

of drawn steel as the sabers of the cavalry 30 T|* , f hes£ sim , ^

leaped oat again « -Present «awacmg > £ doorways

that President and Mrs. Harding had ar- . , , r~u . . , .. UJ

rived. The last rites of the day were at of the great chamber. The bright lights
iivcu. me laot j blazed for a few moments as the Presi-

As' the President and Mrs. Harding 35 dent and Mrs. Harding went out to re-
came into the dim chamber, brilliant light! «*>ve aga'n. formal honors from the troops
teaped up to make possible a picturing of ™*f below Then the Unknown was
the scene for all America to see. The left alone with his motionless guard of
cameras clicked. There was no other honor that was changed at frequent inter-
sound. About the bier the guard stood 40 vaU through the night , alone with his head

'th rifle butts grounded eastward toward distant France and at

WMrs. Harding stepped "forward, a wide his feet through a far window and the
white ribbon in her hand. She had end of a pillared corridor the twinkling
stitched it herself, and stepping up on the lights of Washington
base of the catafalque she laid it across 45 On either side of the doorway through
the casket, a slash of white across the which he might have gazed stand the
rain-sodden flag with its withered cluster statues of Lincoln and Grant, as though
of French flowers. As Mrs. Harding they also kept vigil. And as the lights
stepped down, the President took her were switched off and the great building
place and to the ribbon pinned a silver 5o was wrapped in the gloom of night, the
shield of the United States, set with dim twilight of the few scattered hidden
forty-eight golden stars. It is symbolic electrics let the shadows fall over the
of the heart of the nation that goes with bier and fill the vast cavern of the dome
this soldier to his tomb. above with a mystery and a peace that

Then a great wreath of crimson roses 55 will not be broken until daylight streams
was handed to Mr. Harding and he laid again through those high windows.

8o WRITING OF TODAY

pitch fearfully, that as it flew on its
VTT pitching must increase, until up went its

* A* nose, down went its tail, and it fell like

MY FIRST FLIGHT , » £"«; .w* K^fggewted- every J^l

5 bility of instability. We imagined that

H. G. WELLS when the airplane was n't 'kicking up

_ _ ahind and afore' it would be heeling over

[American Magac m^Becember, 1912. By per- tQ the Ughtest side wind< A sneeze

might upset it. We contrasted our poor
Hitherto my only flights have been 10 human equipment with the instinctive bal-
flights of imagination but this morning * ance of a bird, which has had ten million
I flew. I spent about ten or fifteen min- years of evolution by way of a start. . . .
utes in the air; we went out to sea, soared (The waterplane in which I soared

up, came back over the land, circled over Eastbourne this morning with Mr.
higher, planed steeply down to the water, lS Grahame White was as steady as a motor-
and I landed with the conviction that I car running on asphalt.)
had had only the foretaste of a great Then we went on from those anticipa-

store of hitherto unsuspected pleasures. tions of swaying insecurity to speculations
At the first chance I will go up again, about the psychological and physiological
and I will go higher and further. 20 effects of flying. Most people who look

This experience has restored all the down from the top of a cliff or high tower
keenness of my ancient interest in flying, feel some slight qualms of dread, many
which had become a little fagged and feel a quite sickening dread. Even if
flat by too much hearing and reading men struggled high into the air, we asked,
about the thing and not enough partici- 25 would n't they be smitten up there by such
pation. Fifteen years ago, in the days a lonely and reeling dismay as to lose all
of Langley and Lilienthal, I was one of self-control? And, above all, wouldn't
the few journalists who believed and the pitching and tossing make them quite
wrote that flying was possible — it affected horribly seasick?

my reputation unfavorably, and produced 30 I have always been a little haunted
in the few discouraged pioneers of those by that last dread. It gave a little under-
days a quite touching gratitude. Over tow of funk to the mood of lively curios-
my mantel as I write hangs a very blurred ity with which I got aboard the water-
and bad but interesting photograph that plane this morning — that sort of faint,
Professor Langley sent me thirteen years 35 thin funk that so readily invades one on
ago. It shows the flight of the first the verge of any new experience; when
piece of human machinery heavier than one tries one's first dive, for example, or
air that ever kept itself up for any pushes off for the first time down an ice-
length of time. It was a model, a little run. I thought I should very probably be
affair that would not have lifted a cat ; 40 seasick — or, to be more precise, airsick;
it went up in a spiral and came down un- I thought also that I might be very giddy,
smashed, bringing back, like Noah's dove, and that I might get thoroughly cold and
the promise of tremendous things. incomfortable. None of those things hap-

That was only thirteen years ago, and pened.
it is amusing to recall how cautiously 45 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 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 years 50 The finest motor-car in the world on the
to come it would be an enterprise only best road would be a joggling, quivering
for quite fantastic daring and skill. We thing beside it.

conjured up stupendous difficulties and To begin with, we went out to sea be-
risks. I was deeply impressed and greatly fore the wind, and the plane would not
discouraged by a paper a distinguished 55 readily rise. We went with an undulat-
Cambridge mathematician produced to jng movement, leaping with a light splash-
show that a flying-machine was bound to mg pat upon the water, from wave to
t Friday. August 2. 1913. wave. Then we came about into the

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 8l

wind, and rose; and looking over I saw a disagreeable quiver up one's backbone
that there were no longer those periodic from the wheels, and a real sense of fall-
flashes of white foam. I was flying. ing.

And it was as still and steady as dream- ( It is quite peculiar to flying that one is
ing. I watched the widening distance be- 5 incredulous of any collision. Some time
tween our floats and the waves. It ago I was in a motor-car that ran over
wasn't by any means a windless day — and killed a small dog, and this wretched
there was a brisk fluctuating breeze blow- little incident has left an open wound upon
ing out of the north over the downs. my nerves. I am never quite happy in
It seemed hardly to affect our flight at 10 a car now ; I can't help keeping an appre-
all. hensive eye ahead. But you fly with an

And as for the giddiness of looking exhilarating assurance that you cannot
down, one does not feel it at all. It is possibly run over anything or run into
difficult to explain why this should be anything — except the land or the sea, and
so, but it is so. I suppose in such matters 15 even those large essentials seem a beauti-
I am neither exceptionally steady-headed, fully safe distance away,
nor is my head exceptionally given to I had heard a great deal of talk about

swimming. I can stand on the edge of the deafening uproar of the engine. I
cliffs of a thousand feet or so and look counted a headache among my chances,
down, but I can never bring myself right 2o There again reason reinforced conjecture,
up to the edge, nor crane over to look When in the early morning Mr. Travers
to the very bottom. I should want to lie came from Brighton in this Farman in
down to do that. And the other day I which I flew, I could hear the hum of the
was on that Belvedere place at the top of great insect when it still seemed abreast
the Rotterdam skyscraper, a rather high 25 of Beachey Head, and a good two miles
wind was blowing, and one looks down away. If one can hear a thing at two
through the chinks between the boards one miles, how much the more will one not
stands on upon the heads of the people hear it at a distance of two yards. But
in the streets below ; I did n't like it. But at the risk of seeming too contented for
I looked directly down on a little fleet of 30 anything I will assert I heard that noise
fishing-boats over which we passed, and no more than one hears the drone of an
on the crowds assembling on the beach, electric ventilator upon one's table. It
and on the bathers who stared up at us was only when I came to speak to Mr.
from the breaking surf with an entirely Grahame White, or he to me, that I dis-
agreeable exaltation. And Eastbourne in 35 covered that our voices had became al-
the early morning sunshine had all the most infinitesimally small,
brightly detailed littleness of a town And so it was that I went up into the

viewed from high up on the side of a air at Eastbourne with the impression
great mountain. that flying was still an uncomfortable,

When Mr. Grahame White told me we 40 experimental, and slightly heroic thing to
were going to plane down, I will confess do, and came down to the cheerful gather-
I tightened my hold on the sides of the ing crowd upon the sands again with the
car, and prepared for something like the knowledge that it is a thing achieved for
down-going sensation of a switchback every one. It will get much cheaper no
railway on a larger scale. Just for a mo- 45 doubt, and much swifter, and be improved
ment there was that familiar feeling of in a dozen ways, — we must get self-start-
something pressing one's heart up towards ing engines, for example, for both our
one's shoulders and one's lower jaw up airplanes and motor-cars, — but it is
into its socket, and of grinding one's available today for any one who can
lower teeth against the upper, and then it 50 reach it. An invalid lady of seventy
passed. The nose of the car and all the could have enjoyed all that I did if only
machine was slanting downward, we were one could have got her into the passen-
gliding quickly down, and yet there was ger's seat. Getting there was a little diffi-
no feeling that one rushed, not even as one cult, it is true ; the waterplane was out
rushes in coasting a hill on a bicycle. It 55 in the surf, and I was carried to it on a
was n't a tithe of the thrill of those three boatman's back, and then had to clamber
descents one gets on the great mountain carefully through the wires, but that is a
railway in the White City. There one gets matter of detail.

82 WRITING OF TODAY

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 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 5 way of the flying tourist. Gladly would I
my First Ride in a Wheeled Vehicle. have set out for France this morning in-
And I suspect that learning to control a stead of returning to Eastbourne. And
Farman waterplane now is probably not 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 10 to India. And the East Indies. . . .
management of a motor bicycle. I cannot I find my study unattractive today,

understand the sort of young man who
won't learn how to do it if he gets half
a chance. VIII

The development of these waterplanes 15
is an important step towards the huge BY BOMBING PLANE TO

and swarming popularization of flying FRANCE

which is now certainly imminent. We

ancient survivors of those who believed R. P. HEARNE

in and wrote about flying before there 20

was any flying, used to make a great fuSS ISphere, London^ En^December 28f 1918.

about the dangers and difficulties of

landing and getting up. We wrote with On a clear, frosty morning we reached

vast gravity about 'starting rails' and the Lympne aerodrome. Lympne is one
'landing stages,' and it is still true that 25 of the finest air harbors I have even seen,
landing an aeroplane, except upon a well- and it bids fair to become the aerial Dover
known and quite level expanse, is a risky of England. Its position near Folkestone,
and uncomfortable business. But getting as well as its natural features, marks it
up and landing upon fairly smooth water out as ideal for the purpose of aerial
is easier than getting into bed. This 3© traffic.

alone is likely to determine the aeroplane To Lympne came every war plane pre-

routes along the line of the world's coast- paratory to flying to France. I am now
lines and lake groups and water-ways. able to mention the name of the place

The airmen will go to and fro over and give some account of the work done
water as the midges do. Wherever there 35 there which helped to beat Germany out
is a square mile of water the waterplanes of the air. Thoroughness has been the
will come and go like hornets at the mouth watchword of the R. A. F., and one saw it
of their nest. But there are much well demonstrated at Lympne, where
stronger reasons than this convenience for every machine is put to the final test ere
keeping over water. Over water the air, 40 leaving England. Great workshops exist,
it seems, lies in great level expanses; even where every detail is attended to with the
when there are gales it moves in great most scrupulous care, the aim being to
uniform masses, like the swift still rush 'tune up* each aeroplane to its highest
of a deep river. The airman, in Mr. Gra- pitch ere going into the war. Amongst
hame White's phrase, can go to sleep on 45 the many highly-skilled operations done
it. at Lympne is the final speeding-up of the

But over the land, and for thousands machine to its best pace,
of feet up into the sky, the air is more One comes away from witnessing this

irregular than a torrent among rocks; it operation, and finds hard by a machine
is— if only we could see it — a waving, 50 making its final gun test, pouring in ap-
whirling, eddying, flamboyant confusion, pallingly rapid discharges of machine -mm
A slight hill, a plowed field, the streets of fire at a target. A regular stream of
a town, create riotous, rolling, invisible spent cartridges and clips pour out from
streams and cataracts of air, that catch the side of the machine during each burst
the aviator unawares, make him drop dis- 55 of fire, and gives one some index to the
concertingly, try his nerve. With a pow- deadliness of the fusillade,
erful enough engine he climbs at once And now that the gunfire has ceased,

again, but these sudden downfalls are the there comes to us the deep roar of the

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 83

giant Handley-Page bombers, three of Clouds obscured the view up and down
which are getting ready for the cross- Channel, but very soon I caught sight ot
Channel trip. Leaving the fascinations the French coast, with Cape Gris Nez to
of the Lympne workshops all too soon, we our left. The sunlight grew brighter, the
hurry to the impatient machine and pre- 5 coast line came to view as a long strip of
pare to dress for the journey. The yellow matting, and then the hedgeless
R. A. F. provides an excellent outfit of fields of France were clear in sight, and
fur-lined leather helmet, goggles, leather the straight roads, the long low houses,
coat, and life-belt. When all these are and the absence of trees indicated the
donned one feels like Bibendum. There 10 bird's-eye differences from England, with
is no time to lose, for we are due to its richer and more varied but less sym-
lunch in France in half an hour. Our metrical patterns. France looks very log-
party bundles into the Handley-Page ically arranged from aloft, and yet it has
bombers, some climbing through the belly not geometrical harshness. But I prefer
of the machine and others into the bomb- 15 the English countryside,
chamber. The cockpit in the nose of the We go for some miles inland ; sheep can

machine, forward of the pilot and his nav- be picked out in the fields as the nose of
igation officer, falls to me — the choicest the machine tends earthwards in a gentle
position on the machine. A Lewis gun glide. The ground hurries up to meet us ;
is at hand as if to give me confidence. 20 we see aerodrome sheds despite their cam-
WTith a roar the great Rolls-Royce en- ouflage, and all too soon we are jolting
gines accelerate; the chocks are removed over French ground as we land at Mar-
from the wheels and off we go, bumping quise air harbor, which is the aerial Calais
over the ground. Suddenly the bumping of France. Our hosts at this R. A. F.
ceases, the roar of the engines becomes 25 station gave us a hearty welcome, and
louder, and there comes that delicious with appetites keen from the aerial trip
sense of smoothness which marks the de- we enjoyed an excellent lunch, one of the
parture from earth. I sometimes think choice appurtenances thereof being genu-
that dying must feel like that fractional ine French butter.

instant when the aeroplane lifts from the 3° Every cross-Channel aeroplane puts in
ground — I hope I am right in this be- at or sets out from Marquise air harbor,
lief. and thus in many ways it is the counter-

Climbing steadily we soon get a wide part of the Lympne station. But in addi-
panorama of typical English countryside, tion it has many special functions, as be-
with its irregular mosaic of hedged fields. 35 ing the base of the air force in France.
Then the sea comes into view, with light The arranging of the daily cross-Channel
mist and clouds limiting the horizon. A traffic through the air is in itself a big
long yellow streak of sand fringed with task which has to be carried out with
white comes under the aeroplane, and we great care.

know that the coast line has been crossed. 40 I could have spent days at Marquise ex-
Somehow, new sensations come to one amining all the wonderful work that is
when flying over the sea. Progress seems done there, but ominous clouds were filling
slower than on land, for one has no marks the sky to the north, and the short win-
to guess the speed by; but with the air- ter's day was on the wane. As we had
speed indicator and the height-meter at 45 planned to fly right back to London for
hand I could note that we were moving tea, it was necessary to start before the
at seventy-five an hour and steadily climb- rising mists became troublesome. But so
ing from 2,000 feet. But for these proofs great were the attractions of Marquise
of motion one feels that the machine is and the kindliness of our hosts, that it
making no headway. 5o was well after three o'clock before we

Down in the sea a couple of warships started,
the size of toy models come in view, and We found the Channel almost blotted

just then the nose of the aeroplane slowly out by great white clouds, which hung
rises and then sinks to its usual angle. low over the water. Again and again we
We have met an air bump ; and the re- 55 dived through them. There were beau-
mainder of the voyage over the water was tiful light and color effects with the sun
marked by a series of these invisible as it gave rosy hues to the fleecy clouds
waves of air swelling under the machine, floating up from the east. Vast islands

84 WRITING OF TODAY

of cloud passed close under us, looking so aerodrome west of London. Fog and

solid with their mountains and valleys of darkness fell on us like a pall ere we had

rose-colored snow that one felt tempted disembarked, after our journey of 106

to alight upon them. It was a veritable miles.

fairyland. Through breaks in the clouds 5

we caught enchanting glimpses of the

sunlit sea, gold and blue in a frame of IX

white. . SHOOTING THE RAPIDS

The English coast was only visible at
close range, and as the sun dropped rap- xo Christian Science ^^s°s^nN]ovember 23, 1920.
idly the clouds and mist took on a cold

gray tone which chilled one's feelings. On the Grand Trunk Railway as it

Ahead of us was a world of still colder runs through the Algonquin Park, in
and denser gray, which might mean snow Ontario, there is a station called Joe
or fog. I now realized how right our 15 Lake. There is no flourishing township
pilot — an intrepid bomber of Rhineland there; only a hotel, a supply depot, and
towns — was when he forecasted thick the little railway station, all close to the
weather. lake — that 's all there is of it.

Darkness was coming on quickly over There were four of us — Robert, Mrs.

the ground, though at our height we still 20 Robert, Peter Pan (that was what I
had fair light. I was now stationed in called her) and myself. It was after
the bomb-chamber looking out through a five when the train arrived at Joe Lake
little window. As the light waned I station, but we were not long in getting
noticed the exhaust pipe of one of the en- the canoe out of the baggage car and into
gines get cherry red and little sparks of 25 the water, as we wanted to be well on
incandescent metal flakes flew past. My our way before sunset. We had just
companion nudged me and pointed in one canoe, and in it we packed our kits,
some alarm at the red-hot pipe. We provisions, cooking utensils, and our little
stood between the big petrol tank and the white tent.

engine, and I think he was concerned 30 Robert got into the stern of the canoe,
about the proximity of the two things. Mrs. Robert and Peter Pan sat in the

We could not talk owing to the noise, center among the kit bags, while I pad-
but I longed to tell him that there was no died in the bow. This arrangement held
fear. I knew very well the work of the good right through the trip except when
man who designed that engine — F. H. 35 one of the others felt energetic and took
Royce; I knew also the work of the de- a paddle.

signer of the whole machine — F. Hand- It was about 5 130 when we started,

ley-Page ; and again I knew that the fuse- but it did not take us long to paddle
lage we stood in had been built by Michael down Joe Lake and Little Joe and then
Scarff of the Regent Carriage Company. 40 down the stream to the portage over to
Probably I had seen it in the building. Baby Joe: but the light was failing rap-
My confidence in these three men could idly when we finished pitching the tent
not be shaken, though that exhaust pipe on the shore of Baby Joe Lake. In fact,
got spitefully red as we forced the pace, by the time Robert and myself had made

And we had need, too, of every ounce 45 the last trip across with the canoe on
of speed. Swathes of fog blotted out the our shoulders it was quite dark. A big
country, and darkness was almost upon blazing camp fire, however, gave us light
the land. One of the most dangerous to make things 'comfy' for the night,
landings is that in an evening mist. If and also enabled Mrs. Robert to get
we crashed and a spurt of petrol got 50 supper ready.

on that hot exhaust pipe . . . well, I In the morning we may not have been

suppose it would win us a posthumous up with the dawn, but we were not far
paragraph ! behind, and a good fire soon made us

But then came a sudden lifting of the forget all about the sharp morning air.
mist. Our pilot dived rapidly, came up 55 Breakfast over, we soon got under way
again, spiraled, found his bearings to a again. By this time the sun was well
nicety, and in a lucky moment made a up, but, once started, it was not long be-
perfect landing at the great Whitehead, fore we got through Baby Joe and were.

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 85

paddling down the long stretches of Is- corner you saw belts of gaunt, charred
land Lake. Ours was not the only tree stumps. Sometimes we paddled
canoe on Island Lake, but the sight of across broad, smiling lakes only to pass
other camp fires and the gleam of an odd into a narrow river with the roar of
tent among the spruce trees only acted 5 approaching rapids filling one's ears,
as an incentive to push on. We were One found one's self almost uncon-
not sorry to reach the portage into Little sciously humming The Canadian Boat
Otterslide, but we were still more pleased Song' among such surroundings,
when the portaging was over and we
were once more afloat. 10 Row, brothers, row, the stream runs fast,

Portaging is a mixed blessing. This The rapids are near, and the daylight 's past,
was the way we worked it. Landing at

the beginning of a trail everything was at A shelter hut at the far end of Burnt

once dumped out of the canoe. On the Lake on a raw, damp morning was a
first trip Robert usually took the dun- 15 great find, and our joy can be imagined
nage bag which, among other things, when we saw smoke curling up from
contained most of the food. It was the chimney and two men came to the
like a glorified knapsack with a tump door to bid us welcome. They were
line which you put over your forehead. fire rangers, but they were as pleased to
Its chief redeeming feature was that it 20 see us as we were to see them. Callers
grew steadily lighter as the days went are few and far between,
by and the food was eaten up. My Our two new friends introduced them-

load usually consisted of another big selves as George and Charlie. They
haversack of tins and the roll of blan- were typical lumberjacks who had spent
kets across my shoulders, plus the ax. 25 almost all their lives in the woods, and
The small haversacks were carried by what they did not know about the woods
Mrs. Robert and Peter Pan. The pad- and the animals and birds would hardly
dies were divided among us. That us- be worth knowing. The hut was a log
ually made up the first load. The sec- cabin about 18 feet by 24 feet. At one
ond one was the canoe. 30 end was the stove, with its stovepipe led

We devised quite a drill for handling along under the roof for some distance
the canoe before we had completed the to give heat in cold weather. At the
trip. It was a case of one, two, three, end opposite the door were the sleeping
and we had lifted the canoe over our bunks. I slept on the floor the two
heads and rested it upside down on our 35 nights we were there, as there were not
shoulders with our heads inside. We enough bunks for every one. I have
were then ready for the trail. slept in worse places.

From Otterslide Lake into White The second night we 'turned in' early.

Trout Lake there were no less than four The hut was bathed in the moonlight,
portages running, so we thought we de- 40 when we were all suddenly wakened by
served a holiday by the time we had a sound that there was no mistaking. It
finished. We camped for two nights was wolves. They were fairly close, and
on a charming site on the point of a Charlie said be thought it must be a
little island in the middle of White pack of five or six howling at the moon.
Trout Lake. Here we spent a day play- 45 It was after we had bid farewell to
ing about in the canoe, bathing and George and Charlie that the exciting part
lolling about or listening to the loons of our trip began. We knew that there
calling to each other. From there we were rapids ahead of us, and their roar
paddled through Longer Lake, across told us that we were rapidly approaching
two portages to Red Pine and then on 5° them. Snowshoe Rapids was the first
to Burnt Lake. one, and this one we thought it wisest

The scenery was always changing, to lower the canoe down. Mrs. Robert
One minute a dense forest of stately and Peter Pan got out. A long rope
spruce seemed to roll like a wonderful was fastened to the stern of the canoe,
carpet of green from the high hills 55 Robert stayed on board and steered it
right down to the water's edge; at an- clear of the rocks as it swung down
other the trees, red pines or silver through the surging waters, while I
birches, and then swinging round a kept hold of the rope and prevented our

86 WRITING OF TODAY

frail bark getting out of hand. It was finished the last portage from the lake

exciting scrambling along the rocks, up to the little station at Brent, on the

sometimes in midstream pulling the other side of the Algonquin Park, and

canoe into deep water, other times learned that we were about the first

jumping from rock to rock in order to 5 people who had managed to make that

keep up with the canoe and at the same trip this year, we felt we had done

time not to let the rope slip. something not to be ashamed of.

When we came to Cedar and Catfish
Rapids, which were also on the same „

little river between Pearl and Catfish 10 ^

Lakes, Robert and I decided to shoot ADRIFT IN A BLIZZARD

them. Robert steered in the stern with

a long lumberman's pole, while I sat in [F. F. VAN DE WATER]

the bow with the oldest paddle warding

the canoe off the rocks as we Swept down 15 [New York Tribune, March 29, 1919. By per-

stream. I am afraid I shall feel too mission.]

blase ever to want to go down the water m_ ' ,

chute at the Earl's Court Exhibition in Three big navy tugs, the IVyossing,

London again. Aurora and Seabright, hurriedly slipped

The next night we camped on Cat- 20 their moorings just before noon yester-
fish Lake. When the moon rose we all d*y and went charging out to sea
went out in the canoe to watch the through the storm, full speed ahead,
beavers working. We noiselessly made The wireless at the Brooklyn Navy

our way to where they were busily en- Yard had picked up a call from the
gaged. It was most instructive. Un- 25 Sandy Hook lightship. Over miles of
fortunately, one of the family coming wind-torn water came the sputter of the
home found the canoe in his way and electric spark:

gave the 'take cover' signal. His tail 'Five barges with men, women, and

hitting the water as he dived sounded children aboard passed here driving out
like a pistol shot. Every sound stopped 3° to sea. Hurry.'

at once. What the 'all clear' signal The tugs hurried, for a ninety-mile
was we never found out. wind on which a blizzard was riding

A disappointment awaited us when was pushing five chalk-laden barges
we reached Narrow Lake. It was so with five men, five women, and fifteen
jammed with logs that there was hard- 35 children further away from land and
ly a clear inch of water to be seen, hope of rescue each moment.
There was nothing for it but to port- Late last evening they returned, buf-

age round. But 'here there was no reg- feted and battered by the tremendous
ular trail. Once when the others had seas. Only four of the barges came
gone on ahead and were well out of 40 back with them. The Atlantic had
sight I found that I could not get along overwhelmed the fifth, but the five men,
any further. I had lost the trail. I the five women, and the fifteen children
did the only possible thing— did a sharp were safe, thanks to the courage and
right-about turn and went back until I seamanship of Lieutenant Harry Den-
found a blaze mark on a tree. Then I 45 yse, who commanded the rescuing tugs,
managed to find the trail again. The wind that had been freshening

The trip down the Petewawa River all night became a gale at dawn yester-
was almost as exciting as shooting the day. Three Pennsylvania barges, one
rapids. On our map it showed the river New York Central, and one Jersey
impassable and a portage trail running 5o Central, had tugged at their anchors all
down its whole length. night long off Stapleton, Staten Island.

We had had enough portaging, so At 6 yesterday morning the wind tore
we decided to either shoot or lower the them loose and, aided by the waves and
canoe down the rapids. When we tide, began to drive them out to sea.
reached the broad expanse of Cedar 55 By the time the barge captains and
Lake in the afternoon we felt that our their families learned what had occurred
last day's trip had been a fitting climax the swirling snow clouds had cut them
to our many adventures. When we had off from land. The blast of the wind

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 87

swept away the feeble voices of their No small boat could have lived in the

horns and bells. turmoil of wind and wave. There was

Down through the Narrows the barges only one thing to do — run the Aurora
swept as though riding a millrace, and as close as possible to the foundering
then land dropped away entirely, and 5 barge and let the barge captain and his
they were driving out on to the Atlantic family jump for it.

on the shoulders of the worst storm of Accordingly the little group, the cap-

the year. tain, his wife, and four small children,

There was nothing that they could do scrambled to the bow of their sinking
except fly pitiful signals of distress that 10 craft and stood there while the Aurora
the snow made invisible at a hun- watched for a quiet moment when she
dred yards. The barges, heavily laden, might run in close and give them a
lurched and wallowed through the great chance.

waves and began to take in water. This came at last. For a moment the

Twenty- four hours at most would be 15 tug's and the barge's decks hung on a
their life in such weather. level and the man caught up his wife

And then something that the barge- and threw her into the arms of the blue-
men and their wives and children swear jackets at the tug's bow. Four times
was not just chance drove one of the he threw children to safety. Then he
five close to the lightship that stands 20 jumped.

sentinel in all weather at the harbor's The Aurora turned her head into the

gates. storm once more, and the sinking barge

Men of the lightship saw a dark clumsy dropped behind as the tug came plow-
shape go staggering past, half buried ing her way home, while in her cabin
in foam, and caught the words that set 25 a man, his wife, and four children cried,
the wireless operator hammering franti- and then laughed, then cried again,
cally on his key.

When they reached the open sea, the
powerful tugs had rough weather of it, XJ

for the waves were growing larger al- 30

most momentarily and the search for the A LETTER WRITTEN AFTER
barges in the middle of the blinding THE MESSINA DISASTER

snowstorm called for much turning and

twisting, quartering the miles of heav- [McClure's Magazine, May, 1909. By permission.]

ing sea like hunting dogs. 35

At last, to the bellowing of their I had- gone to Messina on the 26th,

sirens, there came a thin shout in an- to visit my friends, the Levis. I spent
swer, and four of the barges loomed out the day of the 27th with them, visiting
of the storm, splintered and leaking, but the city, a most beautiful one. To-
still riding -the waves. To these the 40 ward evening a heavy thunder-storm
Wyossing and Seabright passed lines came up, and we went home, where
and headed back for the harbor, and the Madame Gina Levi was seized with
Aurora went on alone through the dark- sudden illness. The doctor was called
ening world of water and snow on the in. We spent the first part of the night
trail of the missing Jersey Central 45 around her bed, tending her, trying to
barge, on which a man, his wife and quiet her in her nervous paroxysms,
four children were drifting out into the Finally we went to bed.
gathering night. I, lying on a cot near her, had no

Dusk was falling and the Aurora's more than a few minutes' unconscious-
crew had almost given up hope, when 5° ness at a time ; I would doze, wake up,
they finally found the missing barge, toss, cry out; I would speak to her, in
twenty miles off the lightship and leak- the effort to soothe her. At last, after
ing badly. The tug passed her a hawser a terrifying dream, which I do not
and turned her own bow toward shore. remember, I started up, broad awake.
Her engines strained desperately, but 55 The others were all up, standing about
with the waterlogged weight at her my sick friend's bed. Impelled by some
stern she could make no headway in the mysterious force I jumped out of bed;
face of the storm. I seized a dress and hurriedly put it on.

88 WRITING OF TODAY

Madame Levi said to me, Tut on your Then everything stood still, and for a
shoes and stockings.' I sat on the edge moment there was silence. Then whal
of the bed and put them on. Who was it? The cries began anew, the
would have believed that in that mo- shrieking, the mad attempts at flight. 1
ment, by that act, I was saving my 5 said over the names of all those I love
life? I cried them out aloud to the heavens

We could already hear the tinkling, choking with the bloody froth that rar
out in the street, of the goat-bells. The from my mouth and nostrils. I said then
servant-girl opened the window; she all over, the names of those, living and
bought milk. At that instant I was io dead, whom I love ; and my wits came
seized with a strange dizziness and back, and I did not lose them again until
violent nausea. The servant-girl offered the moment when I found myself on the
me a cup of coffee. I went into the train for Catania.

room where Gina was lying, and took I thought, 'Now I am going to escape

the coffee. At the last swallow, I felt 15 from this !' But I did not know the way.
myself lifted from the floor to the ceil- I found a man and said to him, 'Where

ing. The ceiling dipped, the bed rose, are we?'

and the horrible shaking began. We 'In Piazza Spirito Santo,' he answered,

were tossed up and down for several 'Can we escape?'

seconds ; then the earthquake changed 20 'Stay where you are. We are blocked,
its motion, hurled the sick woman from We are safe here as long as God pleases.1
her bed, clove the walls, and the down- And the earthquake began again. The
fall began. houses finished crumbling; they showered

I heard a sound as if of countless forth furniture, mirrors, wounded men,
paper tearing, stuff burning with crack- 25 dead bodies. Yells and infernal panic,
ling and explosions, and a deafening All suddenly caved in. We dropped face
roar, a terrific crashing. There were downward, and lay awaiting death. But
balconies falling, steeples, chimneys, before long we got up again, and in the
towers crumbling. I remember clearly dense dust found one another. Melina
that I was clutching my coffee-cup, try- 30 was trembling in the Professor's arms,
ing to set it safely on the washstand, What joy, in all that anguish, to ascer-
demented already, but calm. I thought, tain that we were all there — what joy !
'I will open the balcony door.' I could And joy over what? There were two
not do it; the ceiling gaped above my hundred of us, injured and whole, in that
head. 35 small space. At our right was a con-

I made a spring for the windows. Im- vent, the walls of which had dropped in,
possible to get them open. I was suf- but whose front, still standing, was a
focating. The air was charged with thick menace to us. At our left was a house,
dust which stopped respiration. I found burst open fanwise, ready to fall at the
the door. Behind me came the Levis, 40 next shock. Behind us the church of the
with a little girl, Melina, who habitually Spirito Santo, tilting forward, with a
spent the day and sometimes the night great triangular crack down its facade,
at their house. On the right there had Before us the houses of the Porta Im-
been, in its time, a balcony. The stair- periale, in fragments; broken and torn
way, the house, were in ruins ; the other 45 bodies dumped into the square among
wing of the house, too, was in ruins. gravel, blood, and wreckage. 'Let us

We all jumped from the balcony. We stay where we are/ we said, 'all close
were on the second story; the heaped de- clasped together, let us wait.' For what?
bris diminished the height of our jump. For death?

I fell. It was dark ; it was white all 5o A light broke above us, beyond the
around; beyond that, nothing. Ruins and ruins which we could dimly distinguish,
the cries of the dying. Cries, cries, because an occasional street-lamp, impos-
shrieks. Who was shrieking? We could sible as it seems, had remained alight
not see. Had the heavens fallen? What 'The dawn! The dawn!' we shouted,
had happened? My lips were tight shut 55 No; it was Messina burning,
in a spasm of agony. I ran. Where was Then we were seized with desperate
I running? Perhaps it was not I run- madness to flee. But whither? Oh, to
ning, but the earth running under my feet, the sea, to be drowned in it, to be buried

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 89

in the depths of the sea ! But fire, to die rested, strong, well, ready for everything,
by fire? Oh, God, what anguish! I We began to work for the injured. What
dumbly gazed at the heavens. I had endless numbers of th-jm ! What slaugh-
never seen them of so deep a purple-blue ; ter, what mutilations, what horrors ! A
and how many stars were falling ! A 5 woman was delivered of twins there in the
shower of stars, thick and shining. A square: one was dead, one alive; she died
benediction upon the ruins? Behind a later, of hemorrhage,
house, whose front wall alone was stand- A father, almost completely naked, tore

ing, the sky opened, somewhat suddenly, his face with his nails, desperate at having
and there poured down light, cold and 10 left his children behind among the ruins,
pallid, like moonlight. Daybreak ! Day- Meanwhile the miracles of life-saving

break! 'Addnma! Addumal' they cried, had begun. Two children slid down a
mad with the desire for light. table, placed slantwise, between a stump

And never was the sun so worshiped, of house and a heap of rubbish ; then came
so prayed to, so invoked, as in that tragic 15 the mother, then the father last. When
hour. Day broke, but, alas ! what a scene he had reached the bottom, he saw that
of sorrow it brought into view ! two were still missing. What weeping,

We looked at one another, to make sure what shrieks ! Oh, God, and who could
it was ourselves, to make sure we were comfort them? There were some stand-
alive. We were white with mortar ; we 20 ing by who had no one, no one left. Lit-
looked like ghosts, with hugely dilated tie children, totally naked, or with nothing
eyes staring like madmen's. Oh, the on but a little shirt, all blood, all mud;
dreadful ruin on every hand, the desola- girls and women, gone quite mad, calling
tion, the horror ! I believed that Catania out strange pet names and terms of en-
too had been destroyed. I supposed that 25 dearment : 'Catii! Bita! [My breath!
the disaster came to us from ^tna, and My life!] Catuzza e mamma beddat
I prayed that Bruno, my husband, who Meant for whom? Alas! for sons, hus-
was there, might have died at once, with- bands, scattered, dismembered, or perhaps
out knowing, without seeing. I made the still alive beneath huge mountains of
reflection that possibly Erminia, my maid, 30 masonry.

had been able to escape; she slept in a I saw a father searching among the

small chamber which I imagined was safe, wreckage for his children. He pulled out

And there passed before my eyes all one of them, dead. One of them, whose
the beloved faces 'that I shall never see head only projected from the horrible rub-
again, never again !' I said. 35 bish-heap, cried, 'Papa, papa, scte aio, sete

How, from what profound abysms of aio!' [I am thirsty! I am thirsty!]
the soul, was faith born again in me ? I And there was no water. The father bent
felt that some one had worked that mira- over the dying child and gave him his
cle for my sake, and I knelt down before saliva and all his soul in a kiss. The son
the church, which no longer was there, 40 closed his eyes and died,
but whose door stood sealed and intact, The earthquake continued. The walls

still guarding its mystery. What did I continued falling, mountains on top of
say? For whom did I pray? For my- mountains of stone and plaster. Preci-
sely for Bruno, for my dear ones far pices gaped and engulfed the surviving,
away? I do not remember; I know that 45 who had hoped perhaps to reach safety,
while I was praying two priests passed All that had been left standing after the
by. One had an august, aged face, hag- first horrible, unending shock now went to
gard with grief. He looked at me; I told pieces.

him everything in a look. He spoke over The instinct of life, however, love of

me the blessing for those about to die. 5° that miserable gift which misfortune had
He went about among the dying — how left us, sprang up again within us, and we
many of them ! He blessed them, and bethought us, poor wretches ! that night
went his way through the wreckage with would be coming on ; we bethought us of
his companion, who was weeping, to bless the morrow. We rummaged among the
other dead, calmly, without haste, walk- 55 ruins in search of food ; we tested the
ing under the toppling walls, and we saw earth, and trusted it, poor fools, to uphold
him no more. the tables which were to shelter us during

When I rose to my feet I felt light, the night that was closing down — last,

90 WRITING OF TODAY

immeasurable calamity. We made a hut. I live, that fragment of a man among the
And suddenly, as if a malign breath of fragments of a city. He explored the
insanity had overturned their reasons, — ruined city in every direction, to find a
whilst, all equally unhappy, all equally way of escape, to open a road for us. We
poor, naked, wounded, weeping, we were 5 could see him hanging like a mountain
awaiting death, — a small band of men, for goat over the edge of frightful precipices,
a loaf of bread found among the broken At night he never rested, unless it were
masonry, wrenched bars from an iron gate to make a pillow of himself for those who
and began whirling them among the did not know where to lay their heads,
crowd, to kill. Where could we flee? 10 amid the mire, the blood, and the ruin.

Two or three dropped down, felled; The name of this hero is Salvatore Stel-
they afterward died. That horrible dan- lario. What became of him when the
ger passed, too. Some went searching anguished fight for the preservation of
among the ruins for bread, food, clothing, life had ceased, and we saw the fire close
all that could keep off death — death 15 at hand, after a night spent under the
which we notwithstanding were calling rain, dreadful scourge, amid continual
upon to come quickly, and which came earthquakes, the horrors of darkness, cold,
not. Ah, the savage scenes over a chunk fear, the ever fainter moaning of the
of bread, over a sup of putrid water, gath- hurt ? They told me he sought safety in
ered as it dripped from the ruins, yellow, 20 the direction of the railway. Perhaps I
fetid, which was drunken after the dying shall see him again.

had refused to taste it. What struggles There is another whom I remember for
for a nut, for a chocolate drop (a ruined unparalleled self-control and equanimity
sweet-shop had been found, which saved — Nicola Sclepis, who could impose quiet
us by a few bottles, a few pots of pre- 25 by a gesture, who wore a look of fatalism,
serve), for a bone gnawed by dogs, picked yet had words of encouragement, of hope,
out of the refuse, for a mouthful of any- Cold, apparently unfeeling, he could stop
thing that could keep us from starvation ! a frenzied mob by a shout ; he could smile
I saw what the human brute is like when, while others were inquiring breathlessly,
all restraint removed, all shame cast off, 30 'When, where, how are we doomed to
every law forgotten, he stands forth with- die ?' Oh, how well I remember him !
out disguise. Horrible! Horrible! All I supposed him a skeptic; I thought him
the most bestial instincts, swarming up heartless. Later, I saw him clasp his
from the dregs of the soul, all the un- friends to his breast; I saw tears filling
bridled appetites, every baseness, every 35 his eyes while I told him my last will and
cowardice ! But I saw likewise what testament of love for those who would
treasures of self-renunciation, sacrifice, come to look for me. Shall I ever forget
human brotherliness, generosity, what him? He was saved, I know. He could
heroism, are in the depths of the human not die; I felt that, and for that reason
soul. 40 intrusted my last messages to him. He

A young man, whom I shall never for- listened to me, serious, kind. He bade me
get, a cripple, with only one leg, clam- not to move, when I wanted to go and try
bering with a crutch among the ruins, to find some way out of that horrible in-
saved scores of people. Untiringly he closure ; he prevented me by a look. Men
searched amon^ the wreckage, he brought 45 like Nicola Sclepis are rare indeed. One
back to us everything he could find; he possessed of such moral strength and cour-
took bits of chocolate out of his mouth to age is worthy, truly, of the name of hero,
put into the mouths, forever open, of the Evening came on again; it grew dark-

crying children. early: the light shrank away from the

A marvel, in truth, was the forethought So horrors of the catastrophe,
of this man. Where did he unearth a I had eaten a handful of oats, found I
crate of apples? He hid them, he de- do not remember where. I had an egg
fended them from the violence of the which a lady had refused. As I was eat-
greedy ; and through the night he went ing it, a woman came running, crying that
among the huts, distributing quarters of 55 she had no more milk for her baby. I put
apple to each one of us in his turn, with out the egg which I had so nearly swal-
calculating parsimony, with implacable lowed ; she caught it in her hands and fed
justice. I shall remember him as long as it to her infant. Water had been found;

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 91

it was yellow, thick ; it tasted, alas ! of de- I had in a little hand-bag, saved I know

cay, of death, of putrefaction : but I drank not how, my provisions for the days that
it. I was mad with thirst, with hunger. must pass before help came, or death.
I had in my hands a jar of marmalade, but Two walnuts, a few filberts, a nibbled bit
succeeded in no more than touching my 5 of nougat, and a chocolate watch, such as
lips with it. I distributed it among the we buy for children, which was presented
injured, feeding them with a hollow cane, to me by a little boy whom I do not re-
split in two. And so came the evening, member. He handed it to me unasked,
and the rain fell, and for hours and hours and ran away. I had with me my rail-
earthquake and rain and weeping; sighs 10 way-book. I placed it in the bosom of
of the dying, howls of desperate grief. my dress, thinking that perhaps by means
Oh, that tragic night ! How we wept and of it I might be identified when they found
how we prayed ! Some were seen barbar- my body. That was my great preoccupa-
ously beating themselves, to punish them- tion — to be found, to be identified, to
selves for being alive while their beloved 15 shorten the anxiety of my husband, who
were dead; and we wept in chorus, and was perhaps already looking for me, des-
sang in chorus. perate, amon<* the ruins.

I remember those lamentable chants: Nicola Sclepis told me to follow him

the passion of Jesus sung in Sicilian dia- and his caravan, headed for the moun-
lect, the sorrows of Mary, the praises of 20 tains ; he offered me his house, all he had,
the Child Jesus, — all the Christian leg- — at Santa Lucia, I think it was. There
ends, all the songs of infancy. And it I would certainly have been out of danger,
rained, it rained, and the earth continued but I would have had to wait to send
to shake, implacably, and the day was news,
slow in coming. 25 I hesitated for an instant. Then I re-

Oh, what eternal, what cruel waiting! fleeted that by way of the sea I would
When we were worn out with praying, soonest reach Catania. Death was per-
there was deathly silence; but every little haps lying in wait for me in that direc-
while a groan would bring us back to tion ; but go I must, and I went. My com-
dreadful consciousness, and we would 30 panions followed me a short way, then
start up and begin rushing about. But to we separated.

what purpose, for whose sake? The in- I lost my reason again, and I do not

jured would ask for a mattress, a pillow, know where I went. I was quite alone,
and water, water, water ! And we had alone among the ruins, the dead, the
nothing to give them but a few nuts, an 35 fallen houses. Where was I ? Near the
apple, a morsel of bread. And those who cemetery, they told me. Some told me
had fractured jaws, teeth which they spat near the sea, others near the railroad;
out with bloody foam, or injuries to their they did not understand what I said,
throats, they merely must die of hun- Some who were crazy, some who were
ger ! 40 dazed, some who were wicked, misdi-

We heard a whistle or two in the dis- rected me, sent me vainly wandering
tance. We supposed it must be some among the ruins, alone, forsaken, des-
steamer coming to help us; but no one perate.

came. The thought crossed my mind that I reached a place where the ruins had

a dirigible balloon might have gotten cog- 45 caught fire; I was forced to turn back,
nizance of the condition of Messina, but That had been a street, the handsomest in
that hope, too, was vain. We spent an- Messina; now the houses had fallen in,
other night in the mud; at daybreak the and the dead lay under them. Walking
rain stopped. As soon as the first light was easy there; but I could not bear to
appeared in the sky, there reawakened in 50 step on the wreckage ; I knew of the hu-
all the mad desire to flee. Whither, in man flesh throbbing beneath it; I caught
what direction, with what hope ? glimpses of clothing, scraps of black. Oh,

On this side the conflagration, on that, the horror of it !
mountains of masonry. The sea had with- I ran, I fell, I picked myself up; it be-

drawn. The steamers would take on no 55 gan to rain again, but there were no more
more ; people had killed one another to get earthquakes. I came to an open place,
aboard. Where could we go ? But go Perhaps there had once been a church. I
we must. shall never know.

92 WRITING OF TODAY

In the middle, a bronze Christ, maimed, sleep in bed. Then I was conscious of
wept, with his head bowed toward the waking up and hearing Phillips sending
right. In front of him a taper was burn- to Cape Race. I read what he was send-
ing. There were before me three roads, ing. It was traffic matter.
I took the one toward which the Christ 5 I remembered how tired he was, and
was looking. Some one told me that was I got out of bed without my clothes on
the right road. But what a road ! How to relieve him. I did n't even feel the
many crumbled houses, what destruction ! shock. I hardly knew it had happened
I reached a place that was all like a until the captain had come to us. There
marsh. I walked into it nearly to my 10 was no jolt whatever,
knees. When I came out I could no I was standing by Phillips, telling him

longer walk: my clothes clung to me. I to go to bed, when the captain put his
thought of taking them off, then I went head in the cabin.

down on my hands and knees, and crawled 'We 've struck an iceberg,' the captain

along like an animal. ... 15 said, 'and I 'm having an inspection made

to tell what it has done for us. You

better get ready to send out a call for as-

XII sistance. But don't send it until I tell

you.'
HAROLD BRIDE'S STORY OF » The captain went away and in ten min-
THE SINKING OF THE utes' * snou^ estimate the time, he came

TITANIC back. We could hear a terrible confu-

sion outside, but there was not the least

[New York Times, April a8. 1912. By permission.] £ing *? indicaJe that there was any trOU-

25 ble. The wireless was working perfectly.

To begin at the beginning, I was born at 'Send the call for assistance,' ordered

Nunhead, England, twenty-two years ago, the captain, barely putting his head in
and joined the Marconi forces last July, the door.

I first worked on the Haverford, and *What call should I send?' Phillips

then on the Lusitania. I joined the Ti- 30 asked.
tanic at Belfast. The regulation international call for

I did n't have much to do aboard the help. Just that.'
Titanic except to relieve Phillips from Then the captain was gone. Phillips

midnight until some time in the morning, began to send 'C. Q. D.' He flashed
when he should be through sleeping. On 35 away at it and we joked while he did
the night of the accident I was not send- so. All of us made light of the disas-
ing, but was asleep. I was due to be up ter.

and relieve Phillips earlier than usual. We joked that way while he flashed

And that reminds me — if it had n't been signals for about five minutes. Then the
for a lucky thing, we never could have 40 captain came back,
sent any call for help. 'What are you sending?' he asked.

The lucky thing was that the wireless 'G Q. D.,' Phillips replied,

broke down early enough for us to fix it The humor of the situation appealed to

before the accident. We noticed some-, me. I cut in with a little remark that
thing wrong on Sunday, and Phillips and 45 made us all laugh, including the captain.
I worked seven hours to find it. We 'Send "S. O. S.," ' I said. 'It 's the
found a 'secretary' burned out, at last, new call, and it may be your last chance
and repaired it just a few hours before to send it.'
the iceberg was struck. Phillips with a laugh changed the sig-

Phillips said to me as he took the night So nal to 'S. O. S.' The captain told us
shift, 'You turn in, boy, and get some we had been struck amidships, or just
sleep, and go up as soon as you can and back of amidships. It was ton minutes,
give me a chance. I 'm all done for with Phillips told me, after he had noticed the
this work of making repairs.' iceberg that the slight jolt that was the

There were three rooms in the wire- 55 collision's only signal to us occurred,
less cabin. One was a sleeping room, We thought we were a good distance
one a dynamo room, and one an operating away,
room. I took off my clothes and went to We said lots of funny things to each

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 93

other in the next few minutes. We Phillips for the last awful fifteen min-
picked up first the steamship Frankfurd. utes.

We gave her our position and said we I thought it was about time to look

had struck an iceberg and needed assist-, about and see if there was anything de-
ance. The Frankfurd operator went 5 tached that would float. I remembered
away to tell his captain. that every member of the crew had a

He came back, and we told him we special lifebelt and ought to know where
were sinking by the head. By that time it was. I remembered mine was under
we could observe a distinct list forward. my bunk. I went and got it. Then I

The Carpathia answered our signal. 10 thought how cold the water was.
We told her our position and said we I remembered I had some boots, and

were sinking by the head. The operator I put those on, and an extra jacket and I
went to tell the captain, and in five min- put that on. I saw Phillips standing out
utes returned and told us that the cap- there still sending away, giving the Car-
tain of the Carpathia was putting about 15 pathia details of just how we were do-
and heading for us. ing.

Our captain had left us at this time We picked up the Olympic and told her

and Phillips told me to run and tell him we were sinking by the head and were
what the Carpathia had answered. I did about all down. As Phillips was send-
so, and I went through an awful mass of 20 ing the message I strapped his lifebelt
people to his cabin. The decks were full to his back. I had already put on his
of scrambling men and women. I saw overcoat,
no fighting, but I heard tell of it. I wondered if I could get him into

I came back and heard Phillips giving his boots. He suggested with a sort of
the Carpathia fuller directions. Phillips 25 laugh that I look out and see if all the
told me to put on my clothes. Until people were off in the boats, or if
that moment I forgot that I was not any boats were left, or how things
dressed. were.

I went to my cabin and dressed. I I saw a collapsible boat near a funnel

brought an overcoat to Phillips. It was 30 and went over to it. Twelve men were
very cold. I slipped the overcoat upon trying to boost it down to the boat deck,
him while he worked. They were having an awful time. It was

Every few minutes Phillips would send the last boat left. I looked at it long-
me to the captain with little messages. ingly a few minutes. Then I gave them
They were merely telling how the Car- 35 a hand, and over she went. They all
pathia was coming our way and gave her started to scramble in on the boat deck,
speed. and I walked back to Phillips. I said the

I noticed as I came back from one trip last raft had gone,
that they were putting off women and Then came the captain's voice : 'Men,

children in lifeboats. I noticed that the 40 you have done your full duty. You can
list forward was increasing. do no more. Abandon your cabin. Now

Phillips told me the wireless was grow- it 's every man for himself. You look
ing weaker. The captain came and told out for yourselves. I release you.
us our engine rooms were taking water That 's the way of it at this kind of a
and that the dynamos might not last much 45 time. Every man for himself.'
longer. We sent that word to the Car- I looked out. The boat deck was
pathia. awash. Phillips clung on sending and

I went out on deck and looked around. sending. He clung on for about ten min-
The water was pretty close up to the utes, or maybe fifteen minutes, after the
boat deck. There was a great scramble 50 captain had released him. The water
aft, and how poor Phillips worked was then coming into our cabin,
through it I don't know. While he worked something happened

He was a brave man. I learned to I hate to tell about. I was back in my
love him that night, and I suddenly felt room getting Phillips' money for him,
for him a great reverence to see him 55 and as I looked out the door I saw a
standing there sticking to his work while stoker, or somebody from below decks,
everybody else was raging about. I leaning over Phillips from behind. He
will never live to forget the work of was too busy to notice what the man was

94 WRITING OF TODAY

doing. The man was slipping the lifebelt mind — to get away from the suction,
off Phillips' back. The band was still playing. I guess all

He was a big man, too. As you can of the band went down,
see, I am very small. I don't know what They were playing 'Autumn' then. I

it was I got hold of. I remembered in a 5 swam with all my might. I suppose I
flash the way Phillips had clung on — was 150 feet away when the Titanic, on
how I had to fix that lifebelt in place be- her nose, with her after-quarter stick-
cause he was too busy to do it. ing straight up in the air, began to set-

I knew that man from below decks had tie — slowly,
his own lifebelt and should have known 10 When at last the waves washed over
where to get it. her rudder there was n't the least bit

I suddenly felt a passion not to let that of suction I could feel. She must have
man die a decent sailor's death. I kept going just as slowly as she had
wished he might have stretched rope or been.

walked a plank. I did my duty. I hope ^ I forgot to mention that, besides the
I finished him. I don't know. We left Olympic and Carpathia, we spoke some
him on the cabin floor of the wireless German boat, I don't know which, and
room, and he was not moving. told them how we were. We also spoke

From aft came the tunes of the band, the Baltic. I remembered those things
It was a rag-time tune, I don't know 2o as I began to figure what ships would be
what. Then there was 'Autumn.' Phil- coming toward us.

lips ran aft, and that was the last I ever I felt, after a little while, like sink-

saw of him alive. ing. I was very cold. I saw a boat of

I went to the place I had seen the col- some kind near me and put all my
lapsible boat on the boat deck, and to 25 strength into an effort to swim to it. It
my surprise I saw the boat and the men was hard work. I was all done when a
still trying to push it off. I guess there hand reached out from the boat and
was n't a sailor in the crowd. They pulled me aboard. It was our same col-
could n't do it. I went up to them and lapsible. The same crowd was on it.
was just lending a hand when a large 30 There was just room for me to roll on
wave came awash of the deck. the edge. I lay there, not caring what

The big wave carried the boat off. I happened. Somebody sat on my legs,
had hold of an oarlock, and I went off They were wedged in between slats and
with it. The next I knew I was in the were being wrenched. I had not the
boat. 35 heart left to ask the man to move. It

But that was not all. I was in the was a terrible sight all around — men
boat, and the boat was upside down, and swimming and sinking.
I was under it. And I remember realiz- I lay where I was, letting the man

ing that I was wet through, and that wrench my feet out of shape. Others
whatever happened I must not breathe, 40 came near. Nobody gave them a hand,
for I was under water. The bottom-up boat already had more

I know I had to fight for it, and I men than it would hold and it was sink-
did. How I got out from under the boat ing.

I do not know, but I felt a breath of air At first the larger waves splashed over
at last. 45 my clothing. Then they began to splash

There were men all around me — over my head, and I had to breathe when
hundreds of them. The sea was dotted I could.

with them, all depending on their life- As we floated around on our capsized
belts. I felt I simply had to get away boat, and I kept straining my eyes for
from the ship. She was a beautiful sight 50 a ship's light, somebody said, 'Don't the
then. rest of you think we ought to pray?'

Smoke and sparks were rushing out of The man who made the suggestion asked
her funnel. There must have been an what the religion of the others was.
explosion, but we had heard none. We Each man called out his religion. One
only saw the big stream of sparks. The 55 was a Catholic, one a Methodist, one a
ship was gradually turning on her nose Presbyterian.

— just like a duck does that goes down It was decided the most appropriate
for a dive. I had only one thing on my prayer for all was the Lord's Prayer.

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 95

We spoke it over in chorus with the man

who first suggested that we pray as the XIII

Some splendid people saved us. They TELLING THE TALE OF THE
had a right-side up boat, and it was full 5 TITANIC

to its capacity. Yet they came to us and

loaded us all into it. I saw some lights ALEX. McD. STODDART

off in the distance and knew a steamship

Was Coming to OUr aid. [Independent, May 2, 1912. By permission.]

I didn't care what happened. I just 10 . _, ' . .,

lay and gasped when I could and felt the At 1.20 a. m., Monday, April 15 the

pain in my feet. At last the Carpathia cable editor opened an envelope of the
was alongside and the people were being Associated Press that had stamped on
taken up a rope ladder. Our boat drew lts face Bulletin. This is what he read:

near and one by one the men were taken l5 .■.;■, «

_ff nr ;t Cape Race, N. F., Sunday night, April 14.

r\ a a t nettf0A u'^ ^a —At 10.25 o'clock to-night the White Star

One man was dead. I passed him and Line stea^ship Titank *alIed <c Q D; to

went to the ladder, although my feet the Marconi station here, and reported hav-

pamed terribly. The dead man was jng struck an iceberg. The steamer said that

Phillips. He had died on the raft from 20 immediate assistance was required.

exposure and cold, I guess. He had been

all in from work before the wreck came. The cable editor looked at his watch.

He stood his ground until the crisis had It was 1.20 and lacked just five minutes

passed, and then he had collapsed, I of the hour when the mail edition goes

guess. 25 to press.

But I hardly thought that then. I 'Boy!' he called sharply,

didn't think much of anything. I tried An office boy was at his side in a mo-

the rope ladder. My feet pained terribly, ment.

but I got to the top and felt hands reach- . 'Send this upstairs ; tell them the head
ing out to me. The next I knew a ^ is to come ; double column and tell the
woman was leaning over me in a cabin, night editor to rip open two columns on
and I felt her hand waving back my hair the first page for a one-stick despatch of
and rubbing my face. the Titanic striking an iceberg and sink-

I felt somebody at my feet and felt the ing.'
warmth of a jolt of liquor. Somebody 35 Every one in the office was astir in a
got me under the arms. Then I was moment and came over to see the cable
hustled down below to the hospital. editor write on a sheet of copy paper:
That was early in the day, I guess. I lay

in the hospital until near night, and they Set acr°ss. tw? columns,
told me the Carpathians wireless man was .. Yitamc linking

getting 'queer/ and would I help. 4° m ^1^5'

After that I never was out of the wire-
less room, so I don't know what hap- 'Boy !' he called again ; but it was not
pened among the passengers. I saw noth- necessary — a boy in a newspaper office
ing of Mrs. Astor or any of them. I 45 knows news the first time he sees it.
just worked wireless. The splutter never 'Tell them that 's the head for the Ti-
died down. I knew it soothed the hurt tonic'

and felt like a tie to the world of friends Then he wrote briefly this telegraphic

and home. despatch, and as he did so he said to an-

50 other office boy at his side : 'Tell the
operator to shut off that story he is tak-
ing and get me a clear wire to Montreal.'
This is what he wrote to the Montreal
correspondent, probably at work at his
55 desk in a Montreal newspaper office at
that hour:

Cape Race says White Star Liner Titanic

96 WRITING OF TODAY

struck iceberg, is sinking and wants immedi- passenger list of the Titanic. She 's
ate assistance. Rush every line you can get. sinking off Newfoundland,' he said briefly
We will hold open for you until 3.30. t0 one

And to another: 'Write me a story of

'Give that to the operator and find out 5 the Titanic, the new White Star liner,
if we caught the mail on that Titanic on her maiden trip, telling of her mishap
despatch,' he said quickly to the boy. with the New York at the start.'

In a moment the boy returned. And to another: 'Write me a story of

'O. K. on both,' he said. Captain E. J. Smith.'

These night office boys can carry a 10 Then to a reporter, sitting idly about :
message to Garcia. 'Get your hat and coat quick; go down

The city editor, who had just put on to the White Star Line office and tele-
his coat previous to going away for the phone all you can get about the Titanic
night, took it off. At the copy desk sinking off Newfoundland.'
where all the local copy (as the report- 15 Then to another reporter: 'Get the
er's story is called) is collected, the night White Star Line on the 'phone and find
city editor and the telegraph editor stood out what they have got of the sinking
together, joined later by the night editor, of the Titanic. Find out who is the exec-
for the mail edition had left the compos- utive head in New York, his address and
ing room for the stereotypers and then 20 his telephone number.'
to the pressroom, and from thence to be And in another part of the room the

scattered wherever on the globe newspa- city editor was saying to the office boys:
pers find readers. 'Get me all the Titanic pictures you

The Titanic staff was immediately or- have and a photo or cut of Captain E. J.
ganized, for at that hour most of the 25 Smith.'

staff were still at work. The city editor Two boys instantly went to work, for

took the helm. the photos of men are kept separate from

'Get the papers for April 11 — all of the photographs of inanimate things,
them/ he said to the head office boy, The city editor selected three :
'and then send word to the art depart- 30 'Tell the art department to make a
ment to quit everything to make three three-column cut of the Titanic, a two-
cuts, which I shall send right down.' column of the interior, and a two-column

Then to the night city editor : 'Get of Smith.'
up a story of the vessel itself; some of In the meantime the Associated Press

the stuff they sent us the other day we 35 bulletins came in briefly. Stripped of
did not use, and I ordered it put in the en- their date lines they read:
velope.' (Morgue, obituary, call it what

you will are cabinets that contain en- Half an hour afterward another m e
velopes filled with newspaper, magazine came> reporting that they were sinking by the
and other clippings on every conceivable 40 head and that women were being put off in
subject, alphabetically arranged for im- the life-boats.

mediate call.) 'Play up her mishap The weather was calm and clear, the Fi-

at the start. Get up a passenger list tank's wireless operator reported, and gave
story and an obituary of Smith, her com- the, position of the vessel as 4146 north lati-
marider ' 45 tude and 5°'14 west lo«g»tude.

There was no mention of Smith in the -ThJttMarc^ni st^.on.a* CaPf Race notified
despatch, but city editors retain such ^^^^^^^^^
things in their heads for immediate use, ceeding to the sJne of the disaster P
and this probably explains in a measure The Virginian at midnight was about 170

why they hold down their jobs; also hav- 50 miles distant from the Titanic and expected
ing, it might be added, executive judg- to reach that vessel about 10 a. m. Monday,
ment, which is sometimes right. 2 a. If. Monday. — The Olympic at an early

'Assign somebody to the White Star nour tm's (Monday) morning was in latitude
Line and see what they 've got.' 40.32 north and longitude 61.18 west. She

The night city editor went back to the 55 ™as. ,n direct communication with the 77-
circular table where the seven or eight £™' and ,s now mak,n* a11 haste toward
men who read the reporters' copy were fhe steamship Baltk also reported herself
gathered. about 200 miles east of the Titanic and was

Get up as much as you can of the making all possible speed toward her.

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 97

The last signals from the Titanic were the Associated Press bulletins and writ-
heard by the Virginian at 12.27 a. m. ing a new head to tell the rest of the

The wireless operator on the Virginian story the additional details brought. The

says these signals were blurred and ended White Star Line man had a list of names

abruptly. 5 0f passengers of the Titanic and found

_ , , , t, „m_ „j that they numbered 1300 and carried a

Paragraph by paragraph the cable ed- ^

itor was sending the story to the com- meantime the proofs of all the

posing room. What was going on 1 up- m matt£r hJ been ^ wer£

stairs every one knew They were side- managing ed-

trackmg everything else and the copy- 10 * s.^ h;s

cutter »fc«Pmwniwt '.al * the >editori|, m;tten

mg out the story in takes, as they are f suggestions went through the city

called, of a single paragraph to each ^ « he J[

compositor. His blue pencil marked each went from desk to desk overlooking

individual piece of copy with a letter and hg wQrk &

number, so that when the dozen or so <T;me , , w ^ Q. rf. ^

men setting up the story had tewwk before hfi gj^ ^ ^ editor cried

finished the story might be put together {o ^ boy. ^ the two.column head

consecutively^^^^ , ^ ^ cab]e rf . stand and telI them t0 add this head. .

itor again to the office boy, 'to duplicate Titanic Sinking

that despatch I gave him to our Halifax in Mid-Ocean; Hit

man. Get his name out of the corre- Cjreat lceberg.

spondents' book.' And to this was added :

'Who wrote that story of the "Car- 2S M I22? this Morning Blurred Signals by

mania in the Icefield"?' said the night wireless Told of Women Being Put Off in

city editor to the copy reader who 'han- Lifeboats— Three Liners Rushing to Aid of

died' the homecoming of «the Carmania, 1,300 Imperiled Passengers and Crew of 860

which arrived Sunday night, and the Men.

story of which was already in the mail 3° <Did we catch it?> aske(j the caDle ed-

edition of the paper before nun The ;tQr of the b standing at the composing

copy reader told him. He called the re- rQom tube

porter to his desk. _ '^e did/ he said triumphantly.

Take that story/ said the night city <Qne big pull for the last, men/ said

editor, 'and give us a column on it. tne city editor. 'We're going in at 3.20.

Don't rewrite the story. Add paragraphs Let *s beat the town with a complete pa-

here and there to show the vast extent per »

of the ice field. Make it straight copy, fhe enthusiasm was catching fire,

so that nothing in that story will have Throughout the office it was a bedlam of

to be reset. You have just thirty min- 4 nojse — clicking typewriters, clicking tele-

utes to catch the edition. Write it in graph instruments and telephone bells

twenty/ ringing added to the whistle of the tubes

'Get the passenger lists of the Olym- that lead from the city room to the com-
pic and the Baltic' was the assignment posing room, the press room, the stereo-
given to another reporter, all alert wait- 45 type room and the business office, the lat-
ing for their names to be called, every ter, happily, not in use. But throughout
man awake at the switch. the office men worked; nobody shouted,

In the meantime the story from the no one lost his head, men were flushed,

Montreal man was being ticked off, and but the cool, calm, deliberate way in

on another wire Halifax was coming to 50 which the managing editor smoked his

life. cigar helped much to relieve the tension.

'Men/ said the city editor, 'we have 'Three-fifteen, men/ said the city ed-

just five minutes left to make the city, itor, admonishingly. 'Every line must be

Jam it down tight/ up by 3.20. Five minutes more/

Already the three cuts had been made, 55 The city editor walked rapidly from

the telegraph editor was handling the desk to desk.

Montreal story, his assistant the Halifax 'All up/ said the night city editor,

end, and the cable editor was still editing and three minutes to the good.'

98 WRITING OF TODAY

At the big table stood the city editor, ment of a story that was so different
cable editor, night city editor, and man- from the others as the city editor might
aging editor. They were looking over be interested in, and anything that might
the completed headline that should tell interest him generally, all of the clippings
the story to the world. It read: 5 clasped together and the schedule neatly

typewritten telling in a line the time, the

(Across three columns.) place and the thing.

New Liner Titanic Hits An Iceberg; As he handed it over he rema/ked to

Sinking by the Bow at Midnight; his chief. 'Practically nothing new on

WS?Wto 5 \^Tl Blurred. - the disaster; all the passengers were taken

(Single column.) off J? floats and are now on their way

Allan Liner Virginian to Halifax, says Franklin of the White

Now Speeding Toward Star Line. By the way, I had a letter

the Big Ship. from Hitchens today. He 's at St.

Baltic to the Rescue, Too. lS John's. Don't you think it would be a

The Olympic Also Rushing to good plan to send him over to Halifax

Glve w-u7ri5 PS even if h does break UP his vacation?'
ConJ&gd Bergs. .T-l ™d tell him to get a private
Reports French Liner Niagara wire when he reaches there.
Injured and Several Ships *> Get this off quick, he said, and he
Caught. handed the following telegrams to his as-
Big Titanic's First Trip. Bringing Many sistant. 'Better have the boy take them
Prominent Americans, and Was Due to the Marconi Wireless himself — 27
in New York Tomorrow. William Street,' he added.
Mishap at very Start. Narrowly Escaped These were th Marconigrams— in dup-
Colhsion with the American Liner H w T Stead M|. ArchilJd
New York when Leaving Port. ^ ^ Jacques ^^ .

That will hold 'em, I guess,' said the Please send wireless exclusive Titanic
city editor, and the head went upstairs. sinking; your own rates.

The men waited about and talked and 3° It wag gigned by differcnt names> not
smoked. Bulletins came in, but with no by the paper> because these men were
important details. Going to press at 3.20 known tQ the individuals and were
meant a wide circulation. At 4.30 the friends. To Butt's telegram was left off
Associated Press sent Good-night, but <Your Qwn rateg, and it was si d b
at that hour the presses had been run- 35 the name of the Washington correspond-
ning uninterruptedly for almost an hour. ent a personal friend of many years»

On Monday morning, at twelve o clock, standing
the city editor was at his desk half an Skipper wants to talk to you/ said

hour earlier than usual. His assistant the assistant t0 the cit editor) and he
already had read the morning papers 40 hed the bracket ,hone that both used
and the first editions of the afternoon tQward his chief <Ski , Js the thle
papers, known as the bulldog edition, in this offi and usua]1 in aU Qther
which is really the morning papers re- offi that {s iyen tQ the shJ news man
written with just a new angle on the <He s Franklin is not telling the
news In a poker way, the bulldog 45 truth> he believes, about the Titanic.
goes the morning paper one better. Write this name and address down/ said

We got out a corker this morning, the dt edit0 <amJ rush this despatch:»
said tne assistant city editor, although he

himself had been fast asleep and knew Can you get me the truth for private in-
nothing and did nothing until he picked so formation, about the Titanic?
up his morning paper at the railway sta-
tion, for assistant city editors, having day The despatch was sent to the head of
jobs, can live in the suburbs. But be- one of Canada's great railways,
fore noon the assistant city editor had dug Meanwhile the city editor was perus-
out of the morning papers such events as 55 ing the schedule of suggestions of his
would take place during the day as the assistant, to which he added his own. in
city editor might care to 'cover,' the more terse language. This is what it
'beats' the other papers had, the treat- looked like:

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 99

Scenes at White Star Office Burnet vate despatch/ he said, 'I have just re-
Passenger List Howard ceived from a friend in Canada, who says

First Steamer to Use Wireless *%£*¥. that the Titanic went down at 2.20 and

Cape Race a Graveyard . Wall the only ones savcd are practically

Description of Titanic Lynah and children/

Titanic Accident Insurance and Losses 3 . . .„.

Glover ^nd t^ien was begun the story telling
Noted Men and Women on Board ...Griff en the world Tuesday morning of the TV-
Skippers Warned of Ice Peril Bush tank sinking four hours after hitting

Career of Captain Smith Payne an iceberg, 866 being rescued by the

How the Republic Sank Off No Man's Land I0 Carpathia, with probably 1250 perishing

Kimpton jn the sea; with Ismay safe, and probably

Careers of Millet, Harris, Ismay, Butt, Stead, Butt, Astor, Smith, Stead, Guggenheim,

Futrelle, Straus, Astor, Hays, Guggenheim Millet, Harris, Futrelle, Straus and others

and Moore Brewster jess prominent sinking with the Titanic.

Northern Ice Packs Break up Early

Elmendorf l5 When the city editor arrived on Tues-

Arctic Glaciers the Cause Whitten day morning) again at noon, showing

Bulkheads at Fault Moors practically no wear of the eighteen-hour

\E2XS&£ ™1.::::.MBcD^ «* h^ had .gone through % reca.led

* Hitchens, now in Halifax, telling him to

And so the morning work was started. 20 'never mind' and proceed on his vaca-
The other local news, however, must tion, etc., for the Carpathia, 'the hospital
not be neglected, and there was no disap- ship/ was bound for New York where
pointment when, in looking over the as- everything would center,
signment book, it was found that, at least No reply came from Butt, Stead or

for the present, the following men were 25 Futrelle. Naturally. But what bothered
out of it: • the city editor was that the offer made

Hoe Book Sale Wilson b/ wireless to the wireless man aboard

Gaynor Says He Is His Own Boss . ..Poinier the Carpathia brought no response, not a

Thaw's Sanity to be Tested Brown word came in answer to the message to

Clark Offers Fund for Big Art Gallery. Ferris 30 Captain Rostrom, of the Carpathia, not a

Schumann-Heink Divorce ? Alger word from any passenger of the three

War Over $40,000,000 Estate : . ...... .Stuart WOmen who, it had been suggested to him,

Her $150,000 Suit Off; Luke Marries . .Riker mi ht be able <tQ wHte the gt ,

Ask Receiver for Manhattan Secuntie^Co.^ The ghip newg man wag ^ eady tQ

35 find out about the Carpathia, when she

And so the staff separated, all to turn would arrive, what men would board her,
in by five o'clock, when the copy readers what and when the revenue cutter would
should begin their work, the stories as- leave, how many men each paper might
signed to them earlier in the day. The be permitted to have on board, and ar-
organization must never go to pieces, no 40 rangements on the pier. This, some of
matter how big the news, the paper it for publication and some of it for office
must always take care of the other news, information, was hard to get because
no matter how greatly it is overshad- 'everything up in the air,' he reported,
owed. Tuesday brought by wireless the passen-

'My God !' said the city editor, as he 45 ger list, but not a scrap of information,
read a despatch at seven o'clock that night, Nevertheless there were half a dozen pages
'the skipper 's right. The White Star to fill, and this is the way the city editor
Line and Franklin have lied to us.' mapped out his story ; for certain things

'Here,' he said, calling to Burnet to were evident: That the Titanic knew of
come to his desk, 'go back to the White 50 the ice ahead (because she was warned
Star Line and tell Franklin he is a liar ! by the America; Astor, Straus, Stead
The Titanic sank at 2.20 this morning and Butt were given up for lost ;
and not more than 700 were taken off in there were not enough lifeboats; the Ti-
the boats. Tell it to him with my com- tank was not 'unsfnkable' ; these were
pliments, too.' 55 leads,' and so the staff got busy again.

Every one looked up, for the voice of There were the old stories to be cov-

the city editor was pitched high and he ered again: the scenes at the White Star
was angry clear through. 'Here 's a pri- Line offices, Titanic accident, and life

ioo WRITING OF TODAY

insurance of men and women lost, and sought both by the newspapers and those
these additional stories that the news re- desiring to stop publicity. The news-
ports suggested: Criticism of the north- papers won, and Secretary Nagel re-
ern route; young Astor to send ship to ceived instructions from the President to
seek his father; customs men to pass the 5 see that at least reporters were permitted
Carpathia without delay; American regu- to tell the world what had happened,
lations compared with British regulations Every newspaper would have been glad
as to lifeboat capacity; big Atlantic liners to have assigned twenty-four reporters to
that are now lacking in lifeboats; sea interview survivors, but at last it was de-
patrol suggested for the ice-region ; ves- 10 cided that the press associations should
sels not built that will not sink; scout be represented by six men each, the
cruisers rushed to scene of wreck; care morning newspapers by four men each,
of survivors when they arrive; steerage and the evening newspapers by two men
survivors to find aid; sea traffic not hurt each. Photographers were barred. Ad-
by the disaster ; facts about those on the 15 mission to the pier only was given.
Titanic; people from afar off coming to Previous to this newspapers were given a
New York; Congress likely to say 'more number of pier passes; these, however,
lifeboats'; triumph for wireless and why were canceled, and special tickets of the
was false news given out Monday night, number quoted were to 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 is

Tuesday midnight came. This query 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 25 Carpathia absolutely refused to give out
correspondent. '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 30 foundland. The whole of America
the scales, as it were, and then, reluc- wanted to know, the whole civilized
tantly, as if still in doubt, he said to the world wanted information, but this is
telegraph editor: what the Associated Press had to send

'Double-lead it; across two columns; to its clients, the newspapers of Amer-
put a four-column head on it and say in 35 ica :
the head that the tale is discredited.' ,TTr , , Ml

The city editor was taking no chances. We have no assurance that we will get

And so Wednesday morning brought six, £7 £&£& Tfu^ fiTttS an
seven and eight pages of the Titanic queries> Even President Taft's requests for
matter when the only news was the list 40 information, addressed to the Carpathia, have
of passengers reported by wireless. been ignored.'

Wednesday — another day with no How the city editor laid his plans to

news and with the plan of many en- get the Carpathia's story of the Titanic
gaged to thwart the newspapers and keep 45 disaster, with only four men to go on the
what news of the disaster they could pier, is interesting. First, as near to
from leaking out. The Carpathia, it the pier as he could get it, he arranged
was figured, would be in late Thursday for four private wires, direct wires, that
night or possibly Friday morning. Ab- would lead into the editorial rooms,
solutely no news was received, even her 50 These four wires were for the four men,
position being six, eight and ten hours be- the main men on whom he depended to
hind. It was definitely stated, however, get the great story of ^ the Titanic's
that no newspaper man would be per- foundering. They were picked men, no
mitted to board the vessel on her way up better, probably, than the rest, but luck
New York Bay, or at her pier in the 55 is always on the side of the man who is
Hudson River. Quick work was required a worker and is alert. In the office were
and the aid of President Taft, Mayor four men, with typewriters, with an in-
Gaynor and Secretary McVeagh was stryment held in place to the ear.

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 101

Whether the Carpathia got in at nine may go to pieces; but I imagine Waldo's
o'clock, or ten, or eleven, or twelve, or men will not let the crowd break loose,
even one, the story would, must, be told. But whatever happens, you will be up
Time alone would give more opportunity against a stiff game to get through the
as to whether the story could be told in 5 lines. We have established four tele-
two, four, six, eight, ten or twelve pages, phones, which are direct wires between
The Carpathia docked at 9.35 o'clock, this office and the building on the north-
but that is getting ahead of the story. east corner c*f Fourteenth . Street and

Where the four private telephones Eleventh Avenue." '»"

were installed was the headquarters of 1° The four.specia1 passes which I have
the staff. Two blocks away, out of the already giver out will, aidrpit I within the
way of the great crowd that should pier lines. The pier passes, which the
gather, were automobiles stationed to customs people say now are not good,
carry men to the office, the men who I have already given out. You may be
should write the advance stories of the 15 able to break through lines here and
crowds, the ambulances and other aid, there, but at any rate your police cards
the scenes on the pier, before the Car- will be recognized. As you know, the
pathia came in. main story is the arrival of the Car-

The moment the Carpathia docked the pathia, and the tales told by survivors
real story would begin. Before six *> and passengers who witnessed the res-
o'clock that night the four pier passes cues. The men with the special pier
were distributed to the four men selected ; passes will get the story of the four of-
the additional pier passes that were said fleers who were saved and particularly
to be of no use were also passed out, the story of the second Marconi operator
and in addition every member of the 25 who came through alive. It may be an-
staff had his police card, which permits other Jack Binns story and it may not,
the reporter to go within the police lines. but we 've got to get it. Also the story

At six o'clock that night sixteen men of the wireless operator of the Carpathia
gathered around the city editor. By must be had. These men ought to have
telephone or otherwise the men who 30 thrilling stories. Captain Rostrom's story
were to gather the story were told to should tell from the time he turned his
report promptly. They did. These six- vessel toward the Titanic till he reached
teen men were the flying squadron, upon the pier. Bruce Ismay must be seen. He
whom devolved the great task of the will give out a formal statement. It
night. Outside the group, as it were, 35 won't be worth the paper it is written
was the managing editor, who ordinarily on, but we '11 print whatever he says,
is in entire charge of the paper. The Ask him how he came to be saved when
night city editor, who is at the head of Astor, Butt, Straus and Guggenheim
men who edit the reporters' copy, was went down. That's the story we want
near him. And near by were the tele- 40 — no statement.

graph and cable editors, whose Titanic 'Mr. Burnet will see the second Mar-

work was practically finished, their work coni wireless man; and, if possible, the
having been done on the nights when first officer.

news really did come. Near by stood 'Mr. Howard will see the wireless man

the four men who were assigned to take 45 of the Carpathia and if possible the see-
the stories over the telephone and write ond officer.

them on the typewriting machines. 'Mr. Horry will see Ismay and the

Other members of the staff stood by to third officer, if possible,
hear how 'the chief,' as the city editor 'Mr. Wall will see Captain Rostrom

is sometimes called, intended to outline 5° and incidentally ask him why Taft's mes-
the story. sage was ignored.

He began in a leisurely tone, as if tell- 'In charge of the story will be Mr.

ing a story. And this is what he said: Burnet; you may have to ignore some of
1 'When the Carpathia docks to-night these assignments ; you men on the ground
which, as closely as I can figure it, will 55 will be the better judge. If you want
be between 9 and 9.15, there will prob- me, I'll be right here at my tele-
ably be thirty thousand people held phone.'
back by the police. The arrangements All the men were listening intently, for

102 WRITING OF TODAY

an unusual scene like this is rarely wit- 'In getting the story of survivors and

nessed in a newspaper office. of those on the Carpathia to whom the

'You four men upon whom I am de- survivors told their story, find out how
pending for the main story will see as Astor, Stead, Straus, Millet, Harris, Butt,
many survivors as you can ; get as many 5 Futrelle, Guggenheim and Smith died,
stories as you can and don't be afraid of Get every one to tell any story of heroism
duplicating. . I '11 take care of that. or cowardice he or she witnessed. Find

out how the crew acted and the panic in

'Every man will get survivors' stories; the steerage, if there was one.
I. repeat, don't be afraid of duplicating. w 'The men who do the theaters will first
I '11 take care of that. • send their stories over the telephone

'Mr. Lynah will write the story on the from the headquarters. If there is any
arrival of the ship at the pier and in- jam on telephone we have arranged for
terviews with survivors. three more wires at Twenty-third Street

'Mr. Glover will write the story of the 15 and Eleventh Avenue, the building on the
Senate committee that is on its way here, southwest corner. But I don't expect any
and which will arrive at eight o'clock, and great jam. Then these men will do the
interviews with survivors. hotels and telephone their story from

'Mr. Griffen will write the story of the whichever hotel they are in. The oper-
tugs that will go out to intercept the M ator has been instructed to use every
Carpathia and interviews. switch except one for the Titanic story,

'Mr. Bush will write the story of the so there will be lots of wires, with men
relief extended to survivors and get in- at each end to take stories. But it will
terviews. help if the stories can come over the four

'Mr. Payne will write the story of the 25 special wires,
crowd at the Battery and then follow the The way the telephones will be cared
boat to the pier and get interviews. for is this: When a man comes into

'Mr. Kimpton will write the story of headquarters, he will be told which tele-
the distribution of the money sent by the phone to use, so that the men at this
stock exchange, and get interviews. 3° end of the wire will not be interrupted.

'Mr. Brewster will write the story of That is to say, over one wire will
the autos and get interviews. come the story of the arrival of the Car-

'Mr. Elmdorf will get the story of the pathia.
crowds that will not get near the scene, _ *'•■'••■ t

and get interviews. 35 Over another wire will come the story

'Mr. Whitten will see Franklin and get of the wreck of the Titanic.
what the White Star Line has to say, Over a third telephone will come the

and get interviews. st0/y of the rescue work by the Carpa-

'Mr. Moors will get interviews and Mia. ,,.,.„ .,

then cover the hotels on Broadway be- 40 And over the fourth will come the
tween Twenty-seventh Street and Thirty- story of survivors,
fourth Street. As soon as a man gets into the office

cover

Mr. Bromiley will get interviews and he will write down the name of the per-
rer the hotels between Thirty-fourth son he has interviewed. This list will be

Street and Forty-fifth Street. 45 Postedf oveJ" each wire. If a reporter

'Mr. McDonald will get interviews and sees that the man he has interviewed is
cover the Fifth Avenue hotels, from the already posted, pass up the story.
Holland House to the Plaza, and includ- The dty editor stopped talking,
ing the Ritz-Carlton. <Are there any questions?' he asked.

'The autos for the men who are doing 50 <Hav€ T ma(je it clear what each man
these hotels will be parked at Eighteenth .g tQ do?»
Street and Eleventh Avenue. The chauf-
feurs of these machines will have a piece 'You're the goods!' said the youngest
of white paper in their hats and will of the group, marveling at this master
take instructions from any man who pre- SS mind that could see the whole scene long
sents his police card. Mr. Payne, who before it should be put into cold type and
will do the Battery first, will find his ma- placed before a million readers,
chine at the door. 'Then go to it !' said the city editor.

B. NARRATIVE ARTICLES 103

From these papers the following infor-
mation was gleaned: —
XIV The first death was that of Seaman Ed-

gar Evans, petty officer of the Royal Navy,
THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN 5 official number 160,225, who died on Feb-

SCOTT ruary 17 at the foot of the Beardmore

Glacier. His death was accelerated by a
LIEUT. E. R. G. R. EVANS, R.N. concussion of the brain sustained while

traveling over the rough ice some time

{New York Times, February 11, 1913. — Copyright. I0 before

By permission.] ^ ^ £ Q ^^ ^ ^ ^^ ^^

Christchurch, New Zealand, February killen Dragoons was the next lost. His
10. — Capt. Robert F. Scott's Antarctic feet and hands had been badly frostbit-
ship, the Terra Nova, on January 18, this ten from exposure on the march. Al-
year, arrived at Cape Evans, the base on 15 though he struggled on heroically, on
McMurdo Sound, where it was to meet the March 16 his comrades knew that his end
explorers on their return from the expedi- was approaching. He had borne his in-
tion in search of the South Pole and bring tense suffering for weeks without com-
them back, if they were ready. It was plaint, and he did not give up hope to the
learned from the shore party found at this 20 very end.

base that Captain Scott and the four men Captain Scott wrote in his diary this

With him had reached the Pole on January tribute to Captain Oates :
[8; 1912, but all had perished on the re- 'He was a brave soul. He slept through

turn journey, about the end of March. the night, hoping not to wake, but he
Their bodies were not found until a 25 awoke in the morning. It was blowing a
searching party discovered them on No- blizzard. Oates said. "I am just going
vember 12, nearly eight months after the outside and may be some time." He went
disaster. out into the blizzard, and we have not

Captain Scott, Dr. Edward A. Wilson, seen him since.'
chief of the scientific staff, and Lieut. H. 30 Another passage read : 'We knew that
R. Bowers had made their way back to Oates was walking to his death, but,
within 155 miles of Cape Evans, when they though we tried to dissuade him, we knew
were caught in a blizzard and were over- it was the act of a brave man and an Eng-
come about March 29. They were then lish gentleman.'

within eleven miles of One Ton Depot, 35 On March 16 Oates was really unable
where they would have found shelter and to travel, but the others could not leave
supplies. " him and he would not hold them back.

After his gallant death, Scott, Wilson, and

Bowers pushed on northward when the ab-

40 normally bad weather would permit them

The search party left Cape Evans after to proceed. They were forced to camp
the winter on October 30 last. The party, 0n March 1, in latitude 79 ° 40' S., longi-
which was organized by Surgeon Atkin- tude 1690 23' E., eleven miles south of
son, consisted of two divisions, Atkinson the big depot at One Ton Camp,
taking the dog teams with Garrard and 45 This refuge they never reached, owing
Demetri, and Mr. Wright being in charge to a blizzard, which is known from the
of a party including Nelson, Gran, Lash- records of the party at Cape Evans to
ley, Crean, Williamson, Keohane, and have lasted nine days, overtaking them.
Hooper, with seven Indian mules. They Their food and fuel gave out and they suc-
were provisioned for three months, as they 5o cumbed to exposure,
expected an extended search. In Captain Scott's diary, Surgeon Atkin-

One Ton Camp was found in order, and son found the following, which is quoted
all provisioned. verbatim:

Proceeding along the old southern route, message to the public

Wright s party sighted Captain Scott s tent 55 The cauges f ^ disaster are
on November 12. Within it were found faulty organization> but to misf0rtune in all
the bodies of Captain Scott, Dr. Wilson, risks which had to be undertaken,
and Lieutenant Bowers. They had saved 1. The loss of the pony transport in March,
their records, hard pressed as they were. 191 1, obliged me to start later than I had in-

104 WRITING OF TODAY

tended, and obliged the limits of stuff trans- have exceeded this last blow. We arrived
ported to be narrowed. within eleven miles of our old One Ton

2. The weather throughout the outward Camp with fuel for one last meal and food
journey, and especially the long gale in 83 ° S., for two days. For four days we have been
stopped us. - unable to leave the tent — the gale howling

3. The soft snow in lower reaches of gla- about us. We are weak, writing is difficult,
cier again reduced pace. but for my own sake I do not regret this

We fought these untoward events with a journey, which has shown that Englishmen
will and conquered, but it cut into our pro- can endure hardships, help one another, and
vision reserve. meet death with as great a fortitude as ever

Every detail of our food supplies, clothing, 10 in the past. We took risks, we knew we
and depots made on the interior ice-sheet took them; things have come out against us,
and over that long stretch of 700 miles to and therefore we have no cause for com-
the Pole and back, worked out to perfection. plaint, but bow to the will of Providence,
The advance party would have returned to determined still to do our best to the last,
the glacier in fine form ?.nd with surplus of 15 But if we have been willing to give our lives
food, but for the astonishing failure of the to this enterprise, which is for the honor of
man whom we had least expected to fail. our country, I appeal to our countrymen to
Edgar Evans was thought the strongest man see that those who depend on us are properly
of the party. cared for.

The Beardmore Glacier is not difficult in Had we lived, I should have had a tale to

fine weather, but on our return we did not 20 tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage
get a single completely fine day; this with of my companions which would have stirred
a sick companion enormously increased our the heart of every Englishman. These rough
anxieties. notes and our dead bodies must tell. the tale,

As I have said elsewhere we got into but surely, surely, a great rich cjuntry like
frightfully rough ice and Edgar Evans re- 25 ours will see that those who are dependent
ceived a concussion of the brain — he died a on us are properly provided for.
natural death, but left us a shaken party with (Signed) R. Scott

the season unduly advanced. March 25, 1912.

But all the facts above enumerated were
as nothing to the surprise which awaited us Surgeon Atkinson and his party

on the Barrier. I maintain that our ar- 30 gathered the records and effects of the
rangements for returning were quite ade- dead men and read the buHal seryice oyer
auate. and that no one in the world would .. . • «. , , , . ,

have expected the temperatures and surfaces *h™ bodies and erected a cairn and c™ss
which we encountered at this time of the to their memory over the inner tent in
year. On the summit in lat. 850, 86° we had 35 which they buried them. A record of the
-200, -300. On the Barrier in lat. 820, 10,000 finding of their bodies was left attached to
feet lower, we had -300 in the day, -470 at the cross.

night pretty regularly, with continuous head The party then searched for twenty

wind during our day marches. It is clear mjies south, endeavoring to discover the
that these circumstances come on very sud- bod o{ Captain 0ates. It was not found,
denly, and our wreck is certainly due to this 4© , J o„ ., *. •__ „ . m„«..j „r«M \„rL
sudden advent of severe weather, which does but another cairn and record were left
not seem to have any satisfactory cause. in the vicinity to his memory.
I do not think human beings ever came It should here most certainly be noted

through such a month as we have come that the southern party nobly stood by
through, and we should have got through in their sick companions to the end, and in
spite of the weather but for the sickening of 4S Spite of their distressing condition they
a second companion, Captain Oates, and for a had retained ever record and thirty-five
shortage of fuel in our depots for which I ^rt„„je rtr „^i,/L- 1 c.^„:„„„„ ,.,v,:~u
cannot account, and finally, but for the storm Pound? °f geological specimens which
which has fallen on us within eleven miles of proved to be of the greatest scientific
the depot at which we hoped to secure our final value. This emphasizes the nature of
supplies. Surely misfortune could scarcely 50 their journey.

INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL
SKETCHES

The interview generally deals with a particular moment rather than with a succession of
events — a personality rather than a life history. The two World interviews which are given
first place owe their interest not only to the importance of the personality evoked, but to
the public concern about that personality at the moment each interview was published. It
was a triumph in each of these cases to get an interview at all, and as great a triumph to
make such skilful and significant use of the opportunity. The two interviews from the
"New York Times, that with Henry James and that with Sir J. M. Barrie, are both master-
pieces 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 ;
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.

The personal sketch often relies more on narration than description, enabling the reader to
grasp what the man is from what he has done. Within the limited compass of a newspaper
or magazine article, it is no easy task to select those incidents in a man's life which will give
the most vivid realization of his characteristics. Many readers have no doubt some acquaint-
ance with the distinguished Americans here portrayed, and will be able to judge for them-
selves how far the writer has succeeded in producing a lifelike picture. The methods em-
ployed are various, and some of the examples were chosen precisely because they leave the
beaten track to arrive at their end by ways not generally recognized. Mr. Harold Begbie's
Lloyd Georpe and M. Jean Richepin's Joffre are conspicuous instances of the possibilities
of a mode of treatment out of the ordinary.

I in a visit with the citizens of the United

States for a discussion of those intimate

WOODROW WILSON'S RE- and personal topics which have no place

COVERY in the formal and official documents

5 through which he transacts the business of
LOUIS SEIBOLD the Nation.

The date for my visit to the President
World, New York June 18, 1920. Copyright, was originally fixed for the first of June,

1020, by the Press Publishing Co. (The New York 1 . . ° -• •- 1 <• * a+%

World). By permission. For this interview, which but at my suggestion it was deferred until

gave the American public its first full acquaintance 10 Tuesday last.

with President Wilson's condition of health and yr annnjnrTr,pn4. wift, tu~ PrAci'rlpnt wac

opinion after nine months of isolation due to his iViy appointment Wltn Uie .President Was

serious illness, the Trustees of Columbia University for IO.3O o'clock. At that hour I threaded

on the recommendation of the Advisory Board of fu„ cnrr\Anra nf fUe nfTW hnilHino- tr> flip

the School of Journalism awarded in 192 1 the prize tfle COmaorS OI tne Office DUllding tO tne

of $1,000, established by the will of the late Joseph west OI the White House proper, where

Pulitzer, for the best example of a reporter's work alert clerks and messengers, the regular

during the previous year, the test being strict ac- 3 . ... . . ., » > , ^-S" ■»*

curacy, terseness, the accomplishment of some public detail Ot Vigilant reporters that Cover

good commanding public attention and respect.' the White House and little groups of

The full interview gave the President's policies as . , . , , » *;. .

to the League of Nations in view of the approach- Sightseers provided a Scene OI activity

ing presidential election and occupied thirteen always fascinating to the Visitor,

columns of the first and second pages of the . J , &M , , ,

World; it is here given only in part.] 20 An attendant piloted me under a long

trellised arbor abutting the formal garden,
My interview with the President, dur- riotous in splashes of redolent magnolias,
ing which we discussed a wide range of hydrangeas, Duchess de Brabant roses,
subjects, was in the nature of a 'visit' on Japanese cherry trees and clinging clus-
his part to the people of the country. It 2* ters of Dorothy Perkins and Caroline
had been arranged in accordance with a Testout tree roses. Mr. Hoover, the ma-
suggestion made by me that the President jor-domo of the White House, escorted me
indulge (through the New York World) through the spacious corridors of the

105

io6 WRITING OF TODAY

nearest approach to an official palace we Grayson here and Mrs. Wilson think I
have in America. should not roam around yet, and of course

I found the President and Mrs. Wilson I have to obey their orders.'
on the south balcony, which juts in a semi- The President then excused himself

circle out from the mansion, is thirty feet 5 and turned to the consideration of some
deep, fifty in width, and looks out over an official business that awaited his attention,
impressive stretch of velvety green lawn While he was engaged in this task I had
hedged in with magnolias, Japanese a very good opportunity to study him at
quince, spruce pines, majestic maples and close range and to make mental note of
squat dogwood. 10 his system of working. The latter pri-

In the middle distance a fountain purled marily engaged my attention for the
and around the edge of it a dozen sheep, reason that the task before him seemed
recently sheared, cropped in lazy content. to require complete concentration and
In the further reaches towered the im- absorption.

pressive Washington Monument, daz- 15 Mrs. Wilson took from basket docu-
zlingly white, dizzily magnificent, but ments requiring the President's attention,
somber in majestic effect; to the right, Mr. Tumulty drew up a chair to the
through the space between the trees, the office table before which the President
antennae of the powerful wireless appara- sat and furnished explanations of the
tus linking the American capital with the 20 documents and circumstances of the sub-
far-flung spaces of the earth. From a ject matter when asked to do so.
giant plane soaring high up in the cloud- Admiral Grayson excused himself to

less blue vault came the muffled purr of attend to some professional business else-
a motor. where. At times Mrs. Wilson read to the

I still retain the impression that my 25 President from the paper in her hand or
eyes hurriedly swept the tranquil land- gave the document to him. He scruti-
scape, recalling charming vistas of per- nized it closely, asked a question or two
fectly plotted estates in English Kent and regarding it of Mr. Tumulty and then pro-
picturesque chateaux in Normandy, and ceeded to dispose of the matter with the
came to rest on the two figures silhouetted 30 same studied deliberation that has always
at the edge of the balcony against it. characterized his official methods.

One of these figures was standing. Sometimes he directed that the docu-

This was Mrs. Wilson, first lady of the ment be sent back for further or clearer
land, gentle in mien, charming in pose explanation. When he had reached the
and smiling a cordial welcome. The 35 decision he turned to Charles Swem, his
other figure was that of the President, confidential stenographer, standing with
seated in an office chair. Mrs. Wilson notebook in hand between the President
was standing with her left hand on the and Mr. Tumulty, and dictated rapidly his
back of this chair and her right arrang- conclusions or orders and there was no
ing some document in a square desk 40 suggestion of indecision in doing so.
basket. Later on, when the President had die-

Like most men I am not very strong at tated more than twenty letters, ranging
describing the costumes of women, but I in volume from three lines to four or five
feel reasonably safe in appeasing the hundred words, he turned his attention to
curiosity of the women readers of the 45 the disposition of documents that had
World by saying that Mrs. Wilson's frock already been reduced to typed writing and
was of white figured foulard, and that affixed his signature. At a distance of
she wore no jewels save her wedding ring, six feet, I could see that the President
After paying my respects to the smiling wrote firmly and without difficulty, and
chatelaine of the White House, I turned 50 left on the document before him the same
to the President. He extended his right copper-plate signature that can be found
hand and gave me a hearty grip, as he on more official instruments probably than
said : were ever signed by any other man living

'Seibold, I am very glad to see you. It today. He affixed his signature with me-
was nice of you to come and visit with 55 ticulous care and without the slightest
me. Sit down for a minute or two while trace of embarrassment. Once in a while
I dispose of these things, and then we the President collected a laugh out of the
frill have a visit with the country. Dr. documents that passed in review, Mr.

C INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 107

Tumulty to Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Wilson to months before. But there was a change,
the President. There was one telegram To assert that his face did not bear the
that caused the President to knit his marks of illness and suffering would be
brows, purse his lips and then ejaculate: not only disingenuous but wholly incorrect.
T wonder what he wants.' 5 It was the face of a man who had

The telegram was from a gentleman in suffered greatly but who had endured it
the West who requested the President to with a stoicism born of fine courage. It
give him some advice concerning a matter was the same angular face, quite as full
of which the President had no informa- in cheek, and not the least shrunken at
tion. 10 the temples. It was the same face that I

T wonder what he wants, Tumulty,' registered in a mental picture back eight
said the President. T mean, I wonder months before. Yet the marks of illness
what kind of advice he wants. Here is and confinement were unmistakably there,
something: about which he probably knows which even a healthy color surging
everything there is to know, but regarding 15 through the drawn gray skin could not
which I am absolutely in the dark. Per- entirely dispel.

haps you had better wire him and ask him The face seemed a bit sharpened, the
to stipulate exactly what kind of advice nose a trifle thinner and more accentuated
he wants. I have several kinds.' at the point of it. But the eyes were the

Sitting, as I was, six feet away from 20 Wilson eyes, all right, as they gleamed
the President, I recalled some of the through the unusually large eyeglasses
stories I had read in the newspapers re- steadily and kindly. They were unmistak-
garding his physical condition or had ably the Wilson eyes, keen, searching and
heard repeated by gossips of both sexes snappily intelligent.

in various parts of the country. My last 25 I had read articles purporting to de-
preceding conversation with the President scribe the face of the President as being
was on Sept. 27, in Southeastern Colorado, drawn on one side, I think it was the left.

That was the day before Mrs. Wilson I could not see anything to justify that
and Dr. Grayson induced the President statement in the direct glances or in the
to abandon the tour he had undertaken to 30 full features he turned on me at frequent
'report' to the people of the United States intervals during the three hours that I
on his work as the head of the American spent in his company. Certainly beyond
delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, the natural pallor and the manifest con-
It was apparent to every person who ac- sequences of protracted confinement there
companied the President on that tour that 35 was nothing in the Wilson face to war-
he had drawn too heavily against nature rant reports regarding the effect of his
and was not far from the point of physi- illness, as far as his face is concerned at
cal and nervous collapse many days be- least.

fore he was obliged to stop. So I still He sat in his chair, drawn to the office
held in my mind the picture of him return- 40 desk at which he worked with the assist-
ing to the train from a stroll with Mrs. ance of his cheerful and sympathetic help-
Wilson and Dr. Grayson down one of the meet and his loyal secretary, Mr. Tumulty,
country roads in the Missouri Valley, near It is worth noting, in passing, that every
which the doctor had directed a halt in person connected with the White House
order to give the President badly needed 45 with whom the President has come in
exercise. contact since his illness is thoroughly de-

The President's condition the next voted to him in every respect,
morning, when he was scheduled to give Drawn down over his head as I studied

an address at Wichita, Kan., fully justi- him on Tuesday was an old Panama hat
fied Mrs. Wilson and Dr. Grayson in 50 of the sort that men wear on the golf
cancelling the remainder of the trip and course, soft and light and crinkled in
directing his immediate return to Wash- rakishly after the cowboy style. The
ington. President was compelled to keep that on

The man I studied at a distance of six his head while at work in the open air
feet on the rear portico of the White 55 because he had indulged in a hair cut
House on Tuesday did not appear to have earlier in the day.

changed greatly in facial characteristics He was garbed in a dark gray business
since my last meeting with him eight suit, with a low cut, comfortable collar,

108 WRITING OF TODAY

under which was knotted a gray tie, in I would do so again, though the knowl-
the folds of which snuggled a gold eagle. edge of what would happen to me was

He had started to arise when I came even before me.
onto the balcony to receive his welcome, 'I am coming around in good shape

but Mrs. Wilson with restraining hand 5 and could do a lot more tilings now if
prevented him from doing so. While it Mrs. Wilson and Dr. Grayson would
is true that the President sat during the kindly look the other way once in a while,
first hour I spent in his company, I saw I suppose that such tender vigilance is
no indications of the complete paralysis justified, but I can tell you now that I
described by persons who have never seen 10 have been doing more amid this tranquil
him, yet it was quite obvious that the setting than I used to do when I spent my
President is forbidden by his physician to days in the office receiving all sorts of
move around any more than is considered people on all sorts of errands,
warranted by his condition. 'I have more time for deliberation and

I noticed a slight tendency on his part 15 can concentrate with better advantage on
to 'favor' his left side. His arm, how- the matters which come to me. This
ever, did not hang helplessly at his side, morning I was at my desk in my study
and he moved it frequently while I was at 9 o'clock going over matters that needed
with him, though with less freedom of attention. I affixed my signature to a
movement than he displayed in the use of 20 great many commissions, which is one of
his right. The fact that the President the penalities of being President. This
has been a frequent sufferer from neuri- afternoon I have a Cabinet meeting in my
tis affecting his left arm probably had study, and then later on I may go for a
much to do with the favor he displayed motor ride. I get some exercise that is
to that limb. Neuritis is no new enemy 25 helpful to me, but it is not as much as
to the President. He has at intervals I should like nor as much as I am going to
suffered from it for many years. Physi- indulge in later on.'

cal exercise prescribed for him by Dr. While Mrs. Wilson was engaged in the

Grayson has proved so satisfactory that supervision of her household, which em-
the President's physician is confident the 30 braces thirty-two rooms, the President
attendant discomfort will soon be con- 'visited' with the people of the country
quered. through me. I recalled to him an address

One has only to look at the President I had once heard him deliver. In it he
at short range to realize that Mr. Wilson had said that when he wanted to take
has been a very sick man. But his ap- 35 counsel with the people of the country,
pearance does not suggest any one of the he turned from the turmoil of the restless
organic afflictions that might be expected streets and permitted his eye and fancy
to result in complete physical incapacity, to wander to the South and West, past the
He is restrained from excessive exertion huge monolith over the murky Potomac,
while corrective measures are repairing 40 threading a brown ribbon between the
the damage resulting from his disregard municipal limits of the capital and the
of the rules of nature. Virginia hills, and centered his vision on

The President made only one reference far-away California, Florida, Oregon and
to the long illness through which he has Maine, and in between, in an effort to
passed. This was when I felicitated him *5 'feel the pulse' and probe the ambitions of
upon his recovery and expressed the hope the people, whose Executive he is.
that the improvement manifested in his 'One of the greatest discomforts of my

appearance would continue. He turned recent experience,' said the President, in
his kindly eyes full upon me and said commenting on this practice, 'has been
with fine courage : 5o that I am not permitted to indulge my

'There is no denying, Seibold, that I wish to make a personal call upon the
have had a hard time of it. I disregarded people directly. Perhaps that will come
the inexorable laws of nature by drawing later on. I am eager that it shall.'
too heavily on .my physical resources, The President laughed when I called
which were not strong enough to stand 55,his attention to the charges frequently
the strain. I regret that, of course, but made during the Senate debates that he
I did it in a cause that lay nearest my is an 'autocrat,' 'a dictator' and 'stubborn'
heart and that I could not ignore. And and several other disagreeable things.

C. INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 109

Laughingly, he said: 'You must remem- viki to the Entente and the possibility of
ber, we have a political campaign on. an understanding.

All kinds of criticisms and charges fill I felt certain that Lenine wants peace,

the air; investigations are the rule. The It was that feeling that took me to him.
purpose of them is easy to understand 5 All Moscow, indeed, had been drifting into
when you recall the fact that there is a almost certain knowledge that he had be-
political campaign in front of us. You come willing to comply with the prime
would think sometimes we were bewail- prerequisite of peace — namely, to pay the
ing a defeat instead of celebrating a vie- war debts contracted by the old regime,
tory.' 10 which had been repudiated by the Soviets

During the hour that the President and in the early days of their defiance.
I gossiped leisurely and visualized the In the note to President Wilson by

tranquil scene before us we emulated the Chicherin, the People's Commissary for
example provided by the philosophic Car- Foreign Affairs, the tone was undeniably
penter and the sagacious Walrus immor- 15 insolent, but tucked away under the suK
talized in the inimitable drollery of the phuric phrases one might detect a feeler
late Lewis Carroll. We talked of many as to the nature of the Allies' demands,
things. We even discussed the high price I had noticed that while its sarcastic word-
of shoes, dissected the policies of certain ing was accepted as orthodox by the So-
Kings, and indulged in speculations as to 20 cialist Party hacks, the more alert caught
the probable size of the cabbage crop, in the phrases a significant willingness to
But I do not recall that either one of us pay the debts.

mentioned sealing wax. I may say it is not easy for the Bol-

shevik chiefs to show any spirit of com-
*5 promise before the anarchist forces in
II Russia, which, while they are fast sub-

siding, yet remain much stronger than the
LLJNIJNI-hL men ^q are trying to rule Russia. I ap-

proached Lenine with a view of helping
ROBERT MINOR p him to pave the way for a definite answer

rTr, ,, -kt %, , i. to tne invitation to the various Russian

World, ^/^K^YY 4' I919' Actions to meet in conference with repre-

sentatives of the Allies at Princes'
I have just come from Moscow, where, Islands, in the Sea of Marmora. I said
a little more than one week ago, I had 35 to him I was leaving Russia and wanted
a talk with Lenine which bears materially something definite to carry away. He ex-
upon the present difficulty in which the changed glances with his collaborator,
Entente finds itself in relation to the Bol- Boris Reinstein, the former Buffalo soap-
shevik Government. Previously I had box orator, and slowly replied:
talked with him casually during my stay 40 'The Russian Government would be in-
of nine months in Russia. This time clined to pay its debts if by that means
Lenine knew he was giving an interview, the war against it could be stopped.' As
and he appreciated the effect it might have he spoke I wrote down the words and read
on the outside world. As far as I know, them aloud. 'That is correct/ he said,
it is the only interview he ever granted 45 After silence for a moment he went on:
since he has been in power in Russia. 'We want peace and have proposed peace

He couched his thoughts in terms of - many times, but' — pausing with an ex-
world revolution, as one riding wild pression of intense seriousness — 'we are
horses who felt that his hold in the saddle prepared to go on with the war, and are
depended on his maintaining the attitude 5o confident of victory. Our armies have
of the world's most uncompromising had fine successes since the capture of
rebel. Kazan and Samara, down to the present

It will be noticed, however, that while time. In the last few days we have heard
his intransigent phrases flow with rapid of nothing but new victories.'
automatic ease, his manner became dif- 55 Lenine evidently intended to rest with
ferent and much more deliberate when I that, and so I approached to the second
introduced the subject that had led me to point of the interview,
seek him — the relation of the Bolshe- 'What about the League of Nations ?

no WRITING OF TODAY

I asked him. 'Has the recent entry of the lutionary discipline, as the Bolsheviki call

Bolshevik leaders into the Government it, which contrasts as much as possible
affected the eligibility of the Soviets for with the former propaganda against obedi-
the League of Nations?' ence to orders.

Lenine caught me up before I had fin- 5 'What do you think of the decorations
ished, his usually mild voice becoming for the anniversary of the revolution?'
suddenly harsh. They are not forming Lenine went on. 4Do they look to you
a League of Nations,' he said, 'but a like the work of futurists, and if so, do
league of imperialists to strangle the na- they not promise for the revolution what
tions. President Wilson is a shrewd 10 futurism promises for art, after a period?
man,' he added dryly. How was it after the French Revolution ?

Turning to the other angle of the ques- You know France, and what chance there
tion he continued: is for a revolution there now.'

'The Menshevist Martoff came into the Then he asked me a question that aston-

Government because he saw he must 15 ished me, for the way he put it, rather
choose between the Russian Soviet and than for the words he used,
extreme reaction.' . 'How soon will the revolution get to

Lenine could not afford to tell the whole America ?' was his question. The tone
truth about the entrance of the non- was confident. He did not ask me if it
Bolsheviki into the Government, for he 20 would reach America, but when, as if he
must maintain the intransigent front. took for granted that some day the red
The main fact in the new situation is that flag would wave in Washington. I did
the so-called nationalization of Russian not reply, and he went on.
industry has put insurgent industry back T wonder how long,' he asked, 'Gom-

into the hands of the business class, who a5 pers can hold the labor unions as sub-
disguise their activities by giving orders servient to the imperialists as he is.
under the magic title of 'People's Com- Debs is an old man and in prison. I won-
missaries.' That is the only title that der if he will survive his term. It is a
commands obedience. Ignoring this es- shame he was condemned. What is he
sential fact, Reinstein mentioned the con- 30 like personally ? I have never seen him.
version of Maxim Gorky, and Lenine Why does n't the American Federation of
smiled. All the Russians make a god of Labor do anything about Big Bill Hay-
Gorky. There were other vital points wood's imprisonment? Is Jim Larkin a
concerning which I wished to press Le- man of intellectual power? He is in
nine, but he kept trying to interview me. 35 prison, too, is n't he ?'

'What are the Allies going to do with This reminiscent interest in America is

their troops in Russia?' he demanded, shared even by those who damn the Gov-
'Do they want to support the old feudal ernment. Every returned revolutionist
interest here, which is comparable to the retains affection for the country on
German Junker interests ? What are the 40 one ground or another. Lenine contin-
American soldiers like individually ; would ued :
they be susceptible to propaganda?' 'America is a great country, great in

In order to regain control of the inter- technical achievements. Marvelous devel-
view, I asked: opments are possible there. The Ameri-

'What will you do if the Allies send big 45 can Daniel De Leon first formulated the
armies against you?' idea of a Soviet government, which grew

'If they send anything short of very up in Russia on his idea. Future society
big armies,' he replied, 'we will defeat will be organized along Soviet lines,
them.' There will be Soviet rather than geo-

'And if they do send big armies?' 1 5o graphical boundaries for nations. Indus-
persisted, trial unionism is the basic state. That is

'Then they will make a very big war/ what we are building.'
he answered, smiling, but without mirth. I did not agree with Lenine's idea of

Suddenly changing the subject, he what he is building, but said nothing,
asked : 'What do you think of the Red 55 There is no more industrial unionism in
Army?' I said I thought the Red Army Lenine's highly centralized institutions
within a few weeks had submitted to the than in the United States Post Office.
most exacting discipline in the world, revo- 'What he calls industrial unionism is noth-

C. INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES in

ing but nationalized industry in the high- ancient seat of the Czars. As I came
est degree of centralization. away two smart limousines drew up and

This recent change has roused the bit- deposited several well dressed men of
ter antagonism of the anarchist-syndical- business type. This class had been lying
ists, the strongest opponents Lenine now 5 very low only a few months ago. They
has. Industrial unionism is a mere are of the type the Bolshevik creed de-
phrase in the Bolshevik dogma. I said to nounces as 'blood-thirsty minions of
Lenine I was going to Germany, and his predatory capital.'
interest quickened. There is a difference now. The busi-

'You will arrive in time for the second M ness types ride in fine automobiles as be-
revolution,' he said. Tf you get a chance fore, live in fine mansions, and are again
give my regards to Dr. Liebknecht, Rosa managing the old industries, with more
Luxemburg, and Clara Zetkaind.' authority than ever before. Now they

Lenine showed little interest in the pres- are 'People's Commissaries' — servants of
ent German control but said he was wait- 15 the proletariate — and the iron discipline
ing for the triumphs of Bolshevism. I of the army under red flags has been de-
remember once he had told me, in the veloped in order to protect them against
time of the Kaiser, how he had mechani- all annoyance. A rose smells as sweetly
cal devices for smuggling propaganda into to them under any other name.
Germany to disrupt the army. Now that ^
the German revolution had been accom-
plished without any show of warmth HI
toward Soviet Russia, I asked him:

'What do you think of the refusal by HENRY JAMES'S FIRST

the German Revolutionary Government of 25 INTERVIEW

the trainload of bread you sent there?'

'Scheidemann was a mere lackey of the PRESTON LOCKWOOD

Kaiser,' he replied testily. 'What could

the world expect of him? He will defeat iNew York Times, March ai, 1915. By permission.]

the German revolution if possible, just as 30

he did everything possible to prevent it; One of the compensations of the war,

but he is only a passing phase of the Ger- which we ought to take advantage of, is
man revolution. The revolution will have the chance p^iven the general public to ap-
natural development. proach on the personal side some of the

'What the capitalist rulers do not un- 35 distinguished men who have not hitherto
derstand — this is going to trip them up lived much in the glare of the footlights.
— is that they have no way of solving Henry James has probably done this as
economical problems which are piling up little as any one; he has enjoyed for up-
after the war. Failure to solve them will ward of forty years a reputation not con-
surely bring revolution. The capitalist 40 fined to his own country, has published a
system is bankrupt. There is no solution long succession of novels, tales, and criti-
but the Marxian. Exploitation of weak cal papers, and yet has apparently so de-
nations by strong capitalist nations cannot lighted in reticence as well as in expres-
continue; in its place there must be ex- sion that he has passed his seventieth
change of product for product, without 45 year without having responsibly 'talked'
exploitation.' for publication or figured for it otherwise

As Lenine talked to me he kept hitch- than pen in hand,
ing his chair nearer to mine until his Shortly after the outbreak of the war

knees touched mine, and his finger waved Mr. James found himself, to his professed
under my nose. I really felt submerged 5° great surprise, Chairman of the American
by his personality, which seemed to fill Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps, now
the room. at work in France, and today, at the end

The tiptoeing stenographers and the of three months of bringing himself to the
sentries about him are seemingly treated point, has granted me, as a representative
as his equals, but it struck me they 'held 55 of the New York Times, an interview,
him in greater awe than they had ever What this departure from the habit of a
felt toward the Czar. lifetime means to him he expressed at the

The interview was in the Kremlin, outset.

112 WRITING OF TODAY

'I can't put/ Mr. James said, speaking style and the structure of sentences, and
with much consideration and asking that all that appertains to the aspect and value
his punctuation as well as his words of words. Now and then in what here
should be noted, 'my devotion and sym- follows he speaks familiarly of these
pathy for the cause of our corps more 5 things for the first time in his life, not
strongly than in permitting it thus to by any means because he jumped at the
overcome my dread of the assault of the chance, but because his native kindness,
interviewer, whom I have deprecated all whether consciously or unconsciously,
these years, with all the force of my pref- seemed so ready to humor the insisting
erence for saying myself and without 10 inquirer.

superfluous aid, without interference in 'It is very difficult/ he said, seeking to

the guise of encouragement and cheer, diminish the tension so often felt by a
anything I may think worth my saying, journalist, even at the moment of a highly
Nothing is worth my saying that I cannot appreciated occasion, 'to break into
help myself out with better, I hold, than 15 graceful license after so long a life of
even the most suggestive young gentle- decorum; therefore you must excuse me
man with a notebook can help me. It if my egotism doesn't run very free or
may be fatuous of me, but, believing my- my complacency find quite the right
self possessed of some means of expres- turns.'

sion, I feel as if I were sadly giving it 20 He had received me in the offices of the
away when, with the use of it urgent, I corps, businesslike rooms, modern for
don't gratefully employ it, but appeal in- London, low-ceiled and sparsely fur-
stead to the art of somebody else.' nished. It was not by any means the sort

It was impossible to be that 'somebody of setting in which as a reader of Henry
else/ or, in other words, the person privi- 25 James I had expected to run to earth the
leged to talk with Mr. James, to sit in author of The Golden Bowl, but the place
presence of his fine courtesy and earnest- is, nevertheless, today, in the tension of
ness, without understanding the sacri- war time, one of the few approaches to
fice he was making, and making only be- a social resort outside his Chelsea home
cause he had finally consented to believe 30 where he can be counted on. Even that
that it woulo help the noble work of re- delightful Old World retreat, Lamb
lief which a group of young Americans, House, Rye, now claims little of his time,
mostly graduates of Harvard, Yale and The interviewer spoke of the waterside

Princeton, are carrying on along their Chelsea and Mr. James's long knowledge
stretch of the fighting line in northern 35 of it, but, sitting not overmuch at his ease
France. and laying a friendly hand on the shoul-

Mr. James frankly desired his remarks der of his tormentor, he spoke, instead, of
to bear only on the merits of the Ameri- motor ambulances, making the point, in
can Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps, the interest of clearness, that the Ameri-
It enjoys today the fullest measure of his 40 can Ambulance Corps of Neuilly, though
appreciation and attention; it appeals an organization with which Richard Nor-
deeply to his benevolent instincts, and he ton's corps is in the fullest sympathy, does
gives it sympathy and support as one not come within the scope of his remarks,
who has long believed, and believes more 'I find myself chairman of our corps

than ever, in spite of everything, at this 45 committee for no great reason that I can
international crisis, in the possible devel- discover save my being the oldest Ameri-
opment of 'closer communities and finer can resident here interested in its work;
intimacies' between America and Great at the same time that if I render a scrap
Britain, between the country of his birth of help by putting on record my joy even
and the country, as he puts it, of his 50 in the rather ineffectual connection so far
'shameless frequentation.' as "doing" anything is concerned, I

There are many people who are elo- need n't say how welcome you are to my
quent about the war, who are authorities testimony. What I mainly seem to grasp,
on the part played in it by the motor I should say, is that in regard to testify-
ambulance and who take an interest in 55 ing at all unlimitedly by the aid of the
the good relations of Great Britain and newspapers, I have to reckon with a cer-
the United States; but there is nobody tain awkwardness in our position. Here
who can tell us. as Mr. James can, about comes up, you see, the question of our

C. INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 113

reconciling a rather indispensable degree venturing to put to Mr. James a question
of reserve as to the detail of our activity 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 chal- 5 I seemed to invite, without childish injus-
lenges the whole claim for publicity; and tice to the various considerations by
I need hardly say that this general claim which a writer is moved. These determi-
has been challenged, practically, by the nant reasons differ with the context and
present horrific complexity of things at the relations of parts to parts and to the
the front, as neither the Allies themselves 10 total sense in a way of which no a priori
nor watching neutrals ha^ve ever seen it account can be given,
challenged before. The American public T dare say I strike you,' he went on,

is, of course, little used to not being able 'as rather bewilderedly weighing my
to hear, and hear as an absolute right, words; but I may perhaps explain my so
about anything that the press may suggest 15 doing very much as I the other day heard
that it ought to hear about; so that noth- a more interesting fact explained. A dis-
ing may be said ever to happen anywhere tinguished English naval expert happened
that it doesn't count on having reported to say to me that the comparative non-
to it, hot and hot, as the phrase is, several production of airships in this country indi-
times a day. We were the first American 20 cated, in addition to other causes, a pos-
ambulance corps in the field, and we have sible limitation of the British genius in
a record of more than four months' con- that direction, and then on my asking him
tinuous service with one of the French why that class of craft should; nt be
armies, but the rigor of the objection to within the compass of the greatest mak-
our taking the world into our intimate 25 ers of sea-ships, replied, after brief re-
confidence is not only shown by our still flection: "Because the airship is essen-
unbroken inability to report in lively in- tially a bad ship, and we English can't
stalments, but receives also a sidelight make a bad ship well enough." Can you
from the fact that numerous like private pardon,' Mr. James asked, 'my making an
corps maintained by donations on this 30 application of this to the question of one's
side of the sea are working at the front amenability or plasticity of the interview?
without the least commemoration of their The airship of the interview is for me
deeds — that is, without a word of jour- a bad ship, and I can't make a bad ship
nalistic notice. well enough.'

T hope that by the time these possibly 35 Catching Mr. James's words as they
too futile remarks of mine come to such came was not very difficult; but there
light as may await them Mr. Norton's was that in the manner of his speech that
report of our general case may have been cannot be put on paper, the delicate dif-
published, and nothing would give the ference between the word recalled and
committee greater pleasure than that some 40 the word allowed to stand, the earnest-
such controlled statement on our behalf, ness of the massive face and alert eye,
best proceeding from the scene of action tempered by the genial 'comment of the
itself, should occasionally appear. The ' body,' as R. L. Stevenson has it.
ideal would, of course, be that exactly the Henry James does not look his seventy

right man, at exactly the right moment, 45 years. He has a finely shaped head, and
should report exactly the right facts, in a face, at once strong and serene, which
exactly the right manner, and when that the painter and the sculptor may well
happy consummation becomes possible we have liked to interpret. Indeed, in fine
shall doubtless revel in funds.' appreciation they have so wrought. Der-

Mr. James had expressed himself with 50 went Wood's admirable bust, purchased
such deliberation and hesitation that I from last year's Royal Academy shown
was reminded of what I had heard of all by the Chantrey Fund, will be perman-
the verbal alterations made by him in ently placed in the Tate Gallery, and those
novels and tales long since published; to who fortunately know Sargent's fine por-
the point, we are perhaps incorrectly told, 55 trait, to be exhibited in the Sargent Room
of replacing a 'she answered' by a 'she in- at the San Francisco Exhibition, will re-
definitely responded.' call its having been slashed into last

I should, indeed, mention that on my year by the militant suffragettes, though

114 WRITING OF TODAY

now happily restored to such effect that depths that Mr. James considered a mo-
no trace of the outrage remains. ment and began:

Mr. James has a mobile mouth, a 'I, of course, don't personally know

straight nose, a forehead which has thrust many of our active associates, who nat-
back the hair from the top of his com- 5 urally waste very little time in London,
manding head, although it is thick at the But, since you ask me, I prefer to think
sides over the ears, and repeats in its of them as moved, first and foremost, not
soft gray the color of his kindly eyes. by the idea of the fun or the sport they
Before taking in these physical facts one may have, or of the good things they may
receives an impression of benignity and 10 make of the job for themselves, but by
amenity not often conveyed, even by the that of the altogether exceptional chance
most distinguished. And, taking advan- opened to them of acting blessedly and
tage of this amiability, I asked if certain savingly for others, though indeed if we
words just used should be followed by a come to that there is no such sport in the
dash, and even boldly added : 'Are you 15 world as so acting when anything in the
not famous, Mr. James, for the use of nature of risk or exposure is attached,
dashes?' The horrors, the miseries, the monstrosi-

'Dash my fame !' he impatiently re- ties they are in presence of are so great
plied. 'And remember, please, that dog- surely as not to leave much of any other
matizing about punctuation is exactly as ao ?tm"de over when intelligent sympathy
foolish as dogmatizing about any other has done its best.

form of communication with the reader. Personally I feel so strongly on every-

All such forms depend on the kind of thing that the war has brought into ques-
thing one is doing and the kind of effect *10n for ™ Anglo-Saxon peoples that
one intends to produce. Dashes, it seems *5 humorous detachment or any other thin-
almost platitudinous to say, have their n%ss °r tepidity of mind on the subject
particular representative virtue, their affects jne as vulgar impiety, not to say as
quickening force, and, to put it roughly, J"ank blasphemy; our whole race tension
strike both the familiar and the emphatic +b,ecame. io* me a sublimely conscious
note, when those are the notes required, 30 J*»J *rom thf moment Germany flung at
with a felicity beyond either the comma £■» her explanation of her pounce upon
or the semiccW though indeed a fine J*- ^^^^i&«*
sense for the semicolon, like any sort of „v™oa ^ j„™ ,~ n » ^^«"f=#J
sense at all for the pluperfect tense and £™« t0' damn y°u all> recorded in
the subjunctive mood, on which the whole 35 ^'pretension to smashing world rule
perspective in a sentence may depend, b a ^ , fa yirtue *f

seems anything but common Does no- f f « ^ g£ if d ^

body ever notice the calculated use by ^ ough/ ha' t0 ^found us more
French writers of a short series of sug- b * £ gr*tes^uenePss than t0 alarm us b
gestive points in the current of their * -ts ^ neyer do cherished £

prose? I confess to a certain shame for sessionS) wheth€r of the hand or oivtht
my not employing frankly that shade of spirit> become so dear tQ us as when Qv^
indication, a finer shade still than the shadowed by vociferous aggression. How
dash. . But what on earth are we talk- can one hdp seei that such aggressiori)
ing about? And the Chairman of the 45 if hideously successful in Europe, would,
Corps Committee pulled himself up in with as nttie loss of time as possible, pro-
deprecation of our frivolity which I rec- ce€d to apply itself to the American side
ognized by acknowledging that we might 0f the world, and how can one, therefore,
indeed hear more about tjie work done not feel that the Allies are fighting to the
and doing at the front by Richard Norton 50 deatn f0r the soul and the purpose and
and his energetic and devoted co-workers,- the future that are in us, for the defense
Then I plunged recklessly to draw my 0f every ideal that has most guided our
victim. growth and that most assures our unity?

'May not a large part of the spirit 'Of course, since you ask me, my many
which animates these young men be a 55 years of exhibited attachment to the con-
healthy love of adventure?' I asked. ditions of French and of English life,

The question seemed to open up such with whatever fond play of reflection and

C. INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 115

reaction may have been involved in it, the many-paged American newspaper of
make it inevitable that these countries the least mention of a European circum-
should peculiarly appeal to me at the stance unless some not-to-be blinked war
hour of their peril, their need and their or revolution, or earthquake, or other cat-
heroism, and I am glad to declare that, 5 aclysm has happened to apply the lash to
though I had supposed I knew what that curiosity. The most comprehensive jour-
attachment was, I find I have any number nalistic formula that I have found my-
of things more to learn about it. Eng- self, under that observation, reading into
lish life, wound up to the heroic pitch, is the general case, is the principle that the
at present most immediately before me, 10 first duty of the truly appealing sheet in
and I can scarcely tell you what a privi- a given community is to teach every indi-
lege I feel it to share the inspiration and vidual reached by it — every man, woman
see further revealed the character of this and child — to count on appearing there,
decent and dauntless people. in their habit as they live, if they will

'However, I am indeed as far as you 15 only wait for their turn,
may suppose from assuming that what 'However/ he continued, 'my point is

you speak to me of as the "political" simply my plea for patience with our en-
bias is the only ground on which the work terprise even at the times when we can't
of our corps for the Allies should appeal send home sensational figures. "They
to the American public. Political, I con- 20 also serve who only stand and wait," and
fess, has become for me in all this a loose the essence of our utility, as of that of
and question-begging term, but if we any ambulance corps, is just to be there,
must resign ourselves to it as explaining on any and every contingency, including
some people's indifference, let us use a the blessed contingency of a temporary
much better one for inviting their confi- 25 drop in the supply of the wounded turned
dence. It will do beautifully well if giv- out and taken on — since such compara-
ers and workers and helpers are moved tive intermissions occur. Ask our friends,
by intelligent human pity, and they are I beg you, to rid themselves of the image
with us abundantly enough if they feel of our working on schedule time or on
themselves simply roused by, and respond 3o guarantee of a maximum delivery ; we
to, the most awful exhibition of physical are dependent on the humors of battle, on
and moral anguish the world has ever incalculable rushes and lapses, on violent
faced, and which it is the strange fate of outbreaks of energy which rage and pass
our actual generations to see unrolled be- and are expressely designed to bewilder,
fore them. We welcome any lapse of 35 It is not for the poor wounded to oblige
logic that may connect inward vagueness us by making us showy, but for us to let
with outward zeal, if it be the zeal of them count on our open arms and open
subscribers, presenters or drivers of cars, lap as troubled children count on those of
or both at once, stretcher-bearers, lifters, their mother. It is now to be said, more-
healers, consolers, handy Anglo-French ^ over, that our opportunity of service
interpreters (these extremely precious), threatens inordinately to grow; such
smoothers of the way ; in short, after things may any day begin to occur at the
whatever fashion. We ask of nobody any front as will make what we have up to
waste of moral or of theoretic energy, nor now been able to do mere child's play,
any conviction of any sort, but that the 45 though some of our help has been ren-
job is inspiring and the honest, educated dered when casualties were occurring at
man a match for it. the rate, say, of 5000 in twenty minutes,

'If I seem to cast doubt on any very which ought, on the whole, to satisfy us.
driving intelligence of the great issue as In face of such enormous facts of de-
a source of sympathy with us, I think 50 struction — '

this is because I have been struck, when- Here Mr. James broke off as if these

ever I have returned to my native land, facts were, in their horror, too many and
by the indifference of Americans at large too much for him. But after another
to the concerns and preoccupations of moment he explained his pause.
Europe. This indifference has again and 55 'One finds it in the midst of all this as
again seemed to me quite beyond measure hard to apply one's words as to endure
or description, though it may be in a de- one's thoughts. The war has used up
gree suggested by the absence throughout words; they have weakened, they have

n6 WRITING OF TODAY

deteriorated like motor car tires; they 'The pipe he smokes?' I asked,

have, like millions of other things, been Brown is evidently a very truthful man,

more overstrained and knocked about and for he hesitated. 'That is the interview
voided of the happy semblance during the pipe,' he explained. 'When we de-
last six months than in all the long ages 5 cided to come to America Sir James said
before, and we are now confronted with he, would have to be interviewed, and
a depreciation of all our terms, or, other- that it would be wise to bring something
wise speaking, with a loss of expression with us for the interviewers to take notice
through increase of limpness, that may of. So he told me to buy the biggest
well make us wonder what ghosts will be 10 pipe I could find, and he practised hold-
left to walk.' ing it in his mouth in his cabin on the

This sounded rather desperate, yet the way across. He is very pleased with the
incorrigible interviewer, conscious of the way the gentlemen of the press have
wane of his only chance, ventured to taken notice of it.'

glance at the possibility of a word or two 15 'So that is not the pipe he really
on the subject of Mr. James's present smokes?' I said, perceiving I was on
literary intentions. But the kindly hand the verge of a grand discovery. 'I sup-
here again was raised, and the mild voice pose he actually smokes an ordinary small
became impatient. pipe.'

'Pardon my not touching on any such 20 Again Brown hesitated, but again truth
irrelevance. All I want is to invite the prevailed.

public, as unblushingly as possible, to 'He does not smoke any pipe,' he said,

take all the interest in us it can; which 'nor cigars, nor cigarettes; he never
may be helped by knowing that our bank- smokes at all ; he puts that one in his
ers are Messrs. Brown Brothers & Co., 5 m0uth to help the interviewers.'
9 Wall Street, New York City, and that <it has the appearance of having been

checks should be made payable to the smoked,' I pointed out.
American Volunteer Motor Ambulance <x blackened it for him,' the faithful

CorPS- fellow replied.

'But he has written a book in praise of
j,j. My Lady Nicotine.'

'So I have heard,' Brown said guard-

DADDT1? A-r t5av wLnm ed]y- '* lhink that was when he was

hJAKKlH Al MY: WHICH ^ hard up and had to write what people

WAS BROWN? wanted; but he never could abide smok-

, . ing himself. Years after he wrote the

[New York Times, October ,. ,9,4. By permission.] ^ook he . read fc. he had qujte forg0tten

As our reporter entered Sir James it, and he was so attracted by what it said
Barrie's hotel room by one door, the 4o about the delights of tobacco that he

next door softly closed. I was alone tried a cigarette. But it was no good;

(writes our reporter). I sprang into the mere smell disgusted him.'

the corridor and had just time to see 'Odd, that he should forget his own

him fling himself down the elevator. book,' I said.

Then I understood what he had meant 45 'He forgets them' all,' said Brown,

when he said on the telephone that he 'There is this Peter Pan foolishness, for

would be ready for me at 10.30. instance. I have heard people talking to

I returned thoughtfully to the room, him about that play and mentioning parts
where I found myself no longer alone. in it they liked, and he tried to edge them
Sir James Barrie's 'man' was there; a 5° off the subject; they think it is his shy-
stolid Londoner, name of Brown, who ness, but I know it is because he has
told me he was visiting America for the forgotten the bits they are speaking about,
first time. Before strangers call on him I have seen

'Sir James is very sorry, but has been him reading one of his own books hur-

called away,' he assured me without mov- 5 riedly, so as to be able to talk about it if

ing a muscle. Then he added : 'But that is their wish. But he gets mixed up,

this is the pipe,' and he placed a pipe of and thinks that the little minister was

the largest size on the table. married to Wendy.'

C. INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 117

'Almost looks as if he hadn't written reply on the piece of paper: 'Because it
his own works,' I said. is the President's wish.'

'Almost,' Brown admitted uncomfort- So anxious, I discovered, is Sir James

ably. to follow the President's bidding that he

I asked a leading question. 'You don't 5 has enjoined Brown to be neutral on all
suppose/ I said, 'that any one writes other subjects besides the war; to express
them for him? Such things have been. no preference on matters of food, for in-
You don't write them for him by any stance, and always to eat oysters and
chance, just as you blackened the pipe, clams alternately, so that there can be no
you know?' 10 ill-feeling. Also to walk in the middle of

Brown assured me stolidly that he did the streets lest he should seem to be fa-
not. Suddenly, whether to get away from voring either sidewalk, and to be very
a troublesome subject I cannot say, he cautious about admitting that one build-
vouchsafed me a startling piece of in- ing in New York is higher than another,
formation. 'The German Kaiser was on 15 I assured him that the Woolworth Build-
our boat coming across,' he said. ing was the highest, but he replied po-

'Sure?' I asked, wetting my pencil. litely, 'that he was sure the President

He told me he had Sir James's word would prefer him to remain neutral.'
for it. There was on board, it seems, a I naturally asked if Sir James had given
very small, shrunken gentleman with a 20 him any further instructions as to proper
pronounced waist and tiny, turned-up mus- behavior in America, and it seems that
tache, who strutted along the deck try- he had done so. They amount, I gather,
ing to look fierce and got in the other to this, that Americans have a sense of
passengers' way to their annoyance until humor which they employ, when they
Sir James discovered that he was the 25 can, to the visitor's undoing.
Kaiser Reduced to Life Size. After that 'When we reach New York/ Sir James

Sir James liked to sit with him and talk seems to have told Brown in effect, 'we
to him. shall be met by reporters who will pretend

Sir James is a great admirer of the that America is eager to be instructed by
Kaiser, though he has not, like Mr. Car- 30 us as to the causes and progress of the
negie, had the pleasure of meeting him in war; then, if we are fools enough to
society. When he read in the papers on think that America cannot make up its
arriving here that the Kaiser had wept mind for itself, we shall fall into the trap
over the destruction of Louvain, he told and preach to them, and all the time
Brown a story. It was of a friend who 35 they are taking down our observations
had gone to an oculist to be cured of some they will be saying to themselves, "Pom-
disease in one eye. Years afterward he pous asses."

heard that the oculist's son had been killed Tt is a sort of game between us and

in some Indian war, and he called on the the reporters. Our aim is to make them
oculist to commiserate with him. 4° think we are bigger than we are, and

'You cured my eye/ he said to him, theirs is to make us smaller than we are ;
'and when I read of your loss I wept for and any chance we have of succeeding is
you sir; I wept for you with that eye.' to hold our tongues, while they will prob-

'Sir James,' Brown explained, 'is of ably succeed if they make us jabber,
a very sympathetic nature, and he won- 45 Above all, oh, Brown, if you write to the
dered which eye it was that the Kaiser papers giving your views of why we are
wept with.' at war — and if you don't you will be the

I asked Brown what his own views only person who hasn't—don't be lured
were about the war, and before replying into slinging vulgar abuse at our op-
he pulled a paper from his pocket and 5° ponents, lest America takes you for an-
scanned it. 'We are strictly neutral,' other university professor.'
he then replied. There is, I learned, only one person in

'Is that what is written on the paper?' America about whom it is impossible, even
I asked. He admitted that Sir James had in Sir James's opinion, to preserve a neu-
written out for him the correct replies to 55 tral attitude. This is the German Ambas-
possible question. 'Why was he neu- sador, whose splendid work for England
tral?' I asked, and he again found the day by day and in every paper and to all

Ii8 WRITING OF TODAY

reporters cannot, Sir James thinks, be too perience comes at the end of a day the
cordially recognized. Brown has been afternoon of which has been spent in get-
told to look upon the German Ambassador ting an interview with the English writer,
as England's greatest asset in America 'I do not believe Merrick will be inter-

just now, and to hope heartily that he will 5 ested in giving you an interview on
be long spared to carry on his admirable American appreciation of foreign litera-
work. ture. You are much more likely to get

Lastly, it was pleasant to find that on with Merrick by asking from him an
Brown has not a spark of sympathy with appreciation of America's appreciation of
those who say that, because Germany has I0 him.' That was the warning given me by
destroyed art treasures in Belgium and the friend of Mr. Merrick who gave me
France, the Allies should retaliate with the note of introduction to him. In re-
similar rudeness if they reach Berlin. sponse to that note Leonard Merrick came
He holds that if for any reason best forth from hiding in the country, where he
known to themselves (such as the wish for 15 had gone for a rest. The first thing he
a sunnier location) the Hohenzollerns said, however, was that he did n't know a
should by and by vacate their present thing about formal interviews, did n't know
residence, a nice villa should be provided what to say, did n't like them, and
for them, and that all the ancestral stat- would n't it suit the writer just as well if
ues in the Sieges-Allee should be con- 20 the two just chatted like human beings?
veyed to it intact, and perhaps put up 'You see,' said Mr. Merrick, 'I was a

in the back garden. There the Junkers reporter once in America. I was a
could drop in of an evening, on the way mighty rotten one. I did n't know the
home from their offices, and chat pleas- first thing about reporting. What's
antly of old times. Brown thinks they 25 more> J was frightened stiff about go-
should be allowed to retain all their iron jng to people and asking them about the
crosses, and even given some more, with intimate details of their lives. I used to
which, after smart use of their pocket curl up inside with horror at the idea
combs, they would cut no end of a dash of intruding on their privacy. I was sent
among the nursemaids. 30 out once to cover a murder story. I went

As for the pipe, I was informed that to the house, presented my card, and in
it had now done its work, and I could take response to it a young girl whose face was
it away as a keepsake. I took it, but won- full of the story of a night of grief and
dered afterward at Brown's thinking he sorrow came down the stairs to see me.
had the right to give it me. 35 She was the daughter of the man who

A disquieting feeling has since come had been killed. How could I ask her
over me that perhaps it was Sir James I for the sordid details of the situation,
had been interviewing all the time, and feeling as she did? I didn't. I apolo-
Brown who had escaped down the ele- gized for intruding and left her. I went
vator. 4° hack to the office, reported to the city

editor and told him I was going. That

was the end of my career as a newspaper
V anan. I have never quite recovered from

the dread of the term "interview."
STORY STALKING WITH 45 'it is most certainly not to Americans

MERRICK that I object. It is the tone of that word

I dislike. There is a very good reason for

R. C. FELD my special fondness for Americans. My

English friends think I am a maniac on
INew York Times, J«ua«jr I. Ifttt. By pernus- ^ the subject They ^^ understand it

at all. Yet I suppose that it is due to
It is rarely one gets the sensation of America that I am here today. If it
living through a short story. It is rarer were n't for the American publications
still to get the sensation of living through that took my stuff twenty and more years
a Leonard Merrick short story with the 55 ago I should probably have died of star-
author himself right on the premises vation. That isn't exaggeration. I
to set the figures in motion. That ex- could n't sell my short stories in Eng-

C. INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES ng

land at all. Or, if I did, it was at the the path of their plans. I don't know,
enormous sum of four shillings and six- I was never very wise. Anyway, I did n't
pence a story. That 's about ninety cents do it.

at present exchange. After a great while 'To go on, however. While I was mak-

they raised my price to six shillings a 5 ing myself comfortable in the train one
story — a dollar and twenty cents. You of your nice, black-faced porters came
can't live on that, no matter how simple along and shouted: "Mistah Mayrick—
your needs are. Mistah Mayrick — call foh Mistah May-

'The stories were published in a weekly rick!" Nobody else answered, so I did.
magazine, the kind that is read by red- 10 A gentleman whom I had never seen stood
tablecloth families. I should never have in the passageway waiting for me. He
got anywhere if my stories had n't begun told me he was Mr. Montgomery, the
to go in America. It was my American husband of the lady to whom I had been
readers who made it possible for me to so kind on the boat, and would I honor
go on plugging in the hope of really ar- 15 him by staying at their home for a week,
riving some day. They had never seen me before, never

'There are other associations that make heard of me before, had accidentally dis-
America dear to me. When I was a covered my existence on a boat, and here
little over 20 I came to the United States they were opening their house to me. No
and stayed there for about nine months. 20 Englishman or woman would ever have
It was then I had my reportorial experi- dreamed of doing such a thing. I did n't
ence. I stayed in a boarding house on accept their invitation; I couldn't. You
West Fifteenth Street. What a boarding see, I was on the way to being turned into
house! Never have I seen another like a successful business man.
it and never do I hope to see another like 25 'The plan did n't work, and I came
it. It was a gem, a joy, an oasis in the back to London. Why, I don't know,
desert ! For $6 a week I had a jolly \ hate London. I think it is the dullest
little room, not too large, but quite com- city in the world. I don't know why any-
fortable and very clean. What remains body ever comes here. It's ugly, drab
most clearly in my memory, however, are 30 and stupid. The climate is rotten. It
the meals. Three meals " a day of the rains six weeks on end, and every morn-
kind that I shall never forget. There ing of the six weeks your porter at your
are people here who tell me that Ameri- hotel greets you with the words: "Nasty
cans do not know how to cook, but I— morning, sir, ain't it?" And when on
I know better. I was a very hungry boy 35 t.he forty-second morning you get dead
at the time— I had never had too much to *JJ«i of hearing the same thing and tell
eat in England. I most certainly was no .him that he 's said it for forty-one morn-
modest admirer at the table of that board- imJs before that, he looks hurt and un-
ing house. happy. The sight of the sun is such an

T came over to America a second time 4° unusual thing for him that for weeks
a few years later. On the boat I met on end he keeps on reminding you of its
an American woman whose name was absence. Added to that, every once in
Montgomery, I think. Montgomery is five or ten or fifteen or twenty years the
an American name, isn't it? She lived papers come out with an article about
in Rochester. You know the way people *5 London being the least attractive me-
get acquainted on a boat and the way tropolis of the world. Why do they have
they forget each other the minute they to write articles about it? I know it
step off the boat. I left the lady, never every day of my life and try to forget it.
expecting to see her again. I took my But what with porters and newspapers,
train to go out West, where I had some 5° you can't.

business to transact. At the time there # 'Paris, now — that 's the place to live
was an effort made by some well-inten- in. Yet they tell me that Paris, too,
tioned friends to turn me into a business is no longer the city I once knew. I
man. That was their way of telling me haven't been there since the beginning
most kindly what a rank failure I was as 5S of the war. I hear it 's you Americans
a spinner of tales. Maybe it would have who have changed Paris. You have the
been the wiser way to have continued in money and have turned it into the sort

120 WRITING OF TODAY

of place that Parisians think you want. ences. First of all, and not least im-
The Latin Quarter they tell me is full portant of all, is the fact that I didn't
of black, velvet-jacketed Americans. No- know what good food was when I was
body else, they say, has the courage or the young. If I had had better food in those
money to dress that way. 5 days I should probably be a stronger man

'Montmartre, too, has been turned into today. Piled on top of that came my
a quarter of amusement places for Ameri- experiences in the war. It was the war
cans and English. It 's not what it used that knocked me out completely. Every-
to be, I hear. And yet, I have a very thing went to smash — my home life, my
sure feeling that if I went there again xo health, my work. I was a special police-
I could once more find the real Paris, man. They put me into a uniform which
the old Paris. Nobody can take away the I had to buy and assigned me to night
thrill of walking through the streets of duty. I used to walk behind the gates
Montmartre in the early dawn and see- of Buckingham Palace. It almost always
ing Sacre Coeur arise out of the mists. x5 rained. That 's a habit the English
No, it was n't that I used to get up to weather has. I used to be soaked to the
see this glorious sight : it was ( on my skin periodically and then would sit
way home to bed that I would see its shin- around and wait for hours waiting to
ing dome in the distance. Virtue has be relieved. What good was I there,
its own rewards. Mine was the virtue of 20 a half-sick man in a wet uniform? you
knowing what to do with my Paris ask. I was guardin' me King and Queen,
nights.' That was part of the game, and had to be

It was 6 130 in the afternoon and the played. I don't know why I am speaking
waiters where we had been having tea about this except that I want to explain
began making significant noises with the 25 my interest in food.'

chairs and tea things. Mr. Merrick sug- The dinner came. It was a delight-

gested that we adjourn to some other ful surprise to the English author who
place for dinner. He asked me whether had been taken there by an American.
I wanted to go to a restaurant which all He looked around the walls, paneled with
Americans loved, a place where steam- 30 paintings of every modern school of art,
ing calves, almost entire, were wheeled an(i began asking questions. Leonard
down between the tables so that one could Merrick, the spinner of tales, was on the
choose what portion one wanted. I said alert. The waiter couldn't answer all
'No/ and rose in Mr. Merrick's estima- that was demanded of him. The propri-
tion. He then asked me for a sugges-35 etor came. It was then the material be-
tion, explaining that he had been^ away gan to be woven that some day will
from London so long that he did not surely appear in a story,
know the quieter restaurants. It was Francesco Barberi, the proprietor,

then the inspiration came around which, brought a book of autographs of his pa-
I am certain, Mr. Merrick will one day 40 trons to t^e table. W. B. Yeats was there
write a short story. Some English wjth a four-line poem; Lydia Lopokowa,
friends who had lived in Florence for drawn by a well-known English artist,
many years had the day before taken me was there; Russian Dukes and Princes,
to a little Italian restaurant in Soho. I Italian prima donnas and Isaac Marcosson
suggested this, the Isola Bella (the beau-45 were there. Mr. Merrick looked through
tiful island), to Mr. Merrick. We went it all, then turned to Mr. Barberi.
there. I had gone there before to eat; 'But yourself, tell me about yourself,

it was Mr. Merrick who discovered that How long have you been here, how did
there were charms to the place other than you get these people, what do you ex-
culinary. 5o pect to do with this?'

He ordered the dinner with the help 'Ah, that is another story, Signor. If

of the waiter. He asked the latter to you are interested I will te'll you. I am
'compose' a good meal. a Milanese. I was a waiter when I \

'I have discovered that there is much young. I start working when I was ioj/a
joy to be had in good eating,' said Mr 55 years old. That is not good for a child,
Merrick in explanation. 'I have arrived what, Signor? I am not satisfied in
at that state by virtue of many cxperi- Milan. I go to America when I am very

C. INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 121

young. I work in New York for nine in 1502, a book of Italian ballads printed

months. I do not like it. I go to San in 1581. There were other volumes.

Francisco. I stay there maybe six years. 'You are interested in these old things,

I grow homesick for Italy. I go to work Signor? I will show you something not

on a steamer and come back to Italy by go- 5 so old but also very beautiful.' He went

ing around all the world. But I no longer to a cabinet and brought out two pictures,

can live in Italy, I do not like to work They were of a very lovely young girl,

there. I speak English, so I come to 'My daughter. Now you have touched

England. I get a job as a waiter. I the warmest spot of my life. She sings,

marry. I have a baby. The waiters, 10 Signor. She is going to be a prima

they do not get much pay then, Signor. donna. She is now at Milan, where she

I am not happy. I like books. Always gives concerts. I know the music of my

I like books. I decide to open a book- country. I can tell from where a song

shop of old books, antiquarian, you call comes when I hear it. But, Signor, I am

them, Signor. I open a little shop. I J5 ignorant how music is made. Not so

know I cannot compete with people who my daughter. She sings and she makes

sell English books, but I know where I music. Some day she will be great. I

can pick up books in Italian and Span- will be very happy that day. I will give

ish. My little shop, it grow. I move up the restaurant. I will go back to the

into a bigger one. My wife is an angel 20 bookshop.'

and understands that I am happy now. I That was all. It was 10 o'clock, and

am not happy being a waiter. I am very we went home. Leonard Merrick had

happy being a bookseller. said if he returned to Paris he would

'But, Signor, the war comes. It changes once again find the romance of the boule-

everything. People no more are inter- 25 vards. It was easy to believe that, after

ested in buying things to fill the head. seeing him turn the restaurateur of Soho

My shop it is empty. I make no money, into a figure of romance.
We are poor. We are hungry. I have
a little money left. I know that people

may leave their heads without food but 30 * *■
never their stomachs. I tell my wife that

I go back to the restaurant. But not as IHHUDOKb ROOSEVELT

waiter, Signor, as owner. I open up this t vmam adrhtt

little place. I make up my mind that I LYMAN ABBU11

will give the best food that Italy Can 35 [Outlook, January 15, 1919- By permission.]

make, just as I have sold the best books Mr. Roosevelt was to me a wise coun-

that Italy has written. You like this selor, a courageous comrade, an inspiring
dinner tonight, Signor, I have succeeded. personality, and always a loyal and con-
Other people have liked the dinners I siderate friend. Writing on the day of
give them. You see their names in this 40 his death and under the shadow of a great
book. Will your guest and you have a sorrow, I will not trust myself to give
liqueur with me, Signor? I thank you. any expression to my personal feeling

'You are interested in old books? May- about him, who was the foremost states-
be you will do me the honor to come up- man of his time, and, because of his
stairs with me. I will show you some 4$ sterling virtues, was at once the best
rare old volumes. They have come out beloved and the most bitterly execrated
of my little shop on Charing Cross Road, of America's public men. But I may per-
Thank you, Signor.' haps do something to interpret to Out-

We went upstairs. Mr. Barberi under look readers the inspiration of his power
the encouragement of Leonard Merrick So and the secret of his extraordinary
brought out first a second edition of career.

Boccaccio's life of Dante printed in All good government is government of

1477, a fulty illustrated life of the Italian the worse elements by the best. How to
poet printed in March, 1497, the works secure this is still the unsolved problem
of Petrarch printed in 1478, the first $5 of society. Absolutism assumed that the
pocket edition of Dante printed in Venice king was 'the Lord's anointed/ chosen

122 WRITING OF TODAY

by Jehovah to rule his people, and there- When he was Civil Service Commissioner
fore possessed of a divine right. Aristoc- and Congress attempted to thwart Civil
racy assumed that a long course of heredi- Service reform by cutting down appro-
tary breeding would create a noble class priations, he appealed to the people by
fitted to govern the common people. The 5 abandoning examinations in those dis-
Puritans assumed that the religious men tricts whose representatives had voted for
should rule the world, and therefore reducing appropriations and continuing
vested political power in the church mem- examinations in> those districts whose
bers. Jeremy Bentham and his followers representatives had supported Civil Ser-
assumed that the people, if left to them- I0 vice reform. When he was Police Corn-
selves, would select wise rulers whose in- missioner, by his fairness he won the loyal
terest it would be to govern well that support of every honest policeman, and
they might be reelected. All these forms by the result proved that the rascals who
of government agreed that the few must had brought disrepute upon the Police
govern and the many must be governed, 15 administration were in a minority. When
though they differed widely upon the ques- he was elected Governor of the State of
tion of how these rulers should be selected. New York, he announced his intention to

Modern democracy denies the assump- consult with both Mr. Low and Mr. Piatt,
tion that the few must govern and the and faced the hostility both of the Old
many must be governed; and to Aris- 20 Guard and of the radical reformers be-
totle's three forms of government — gov- cause he did not wish to govern the Re-
ernment by the one, by the few, by the publican party, but to lead it. When he
many — it is gradually adding a fourth: became President, he was equally ready
self-government. For in lieu of govern- to confer with a cowboy or a college pres-
ment by the best class in the community 25 ident, a labor leader or a millionaire,
over the rest it is substituting govern- His tests of character were not conven-
ment by the best in every man over the tional; they were not learning, or culture,
worse elements in every man. or social position, or political influence,

In my judgment, no man in the history or wealth. They were the common vir-
of America, not even Abraham Lincoln, 30 tues — courage, frankness, political hon-
did so much as Theodore Roosevelt to esty, personal purity. His messages to
expedite the era of self-government. Congress were messages to the American

Entering politics at twenty-two re- people; and it has been well said of them
solved to make it his profession, Mr. that they were 'quite as often treatises
Roosevelt assumed from the outset that 35 on the moral principles of government as
politics is the science and practice of gov- they were recommendations for specific
ernment, and that to succeed in the legislation or administrative policies.' 'I
science and practice of government would am accused of preaching,' he once said to
require the best that was in him. He was a group of his friends ; 'but I have got
ambitious, not to govern, but to lead. He 40 such a bully pulpit.'
brought to his earliest campaign a frank- This habit of appeal to the best in every

ness and a courage which were novelties man kept Mr. Roosevelt in what his
in American politics. He had a keen critics sometimes called the 'middle of the
sense of moral values and a dominating road.' He denounced corruptionists,
faith in moral forces. With an inspired 45 whatever their position or political party,
instinct which men call genius, he per- He attacked, often in the same speech,
ceived that virtue and intelligence are 'malefactors of great wealth' and trade-
characteristic of the American people, sirable citizens.' He urged on the Senate
and to that virtue and that intelligence a general arbitration treaty more radical
he habitually appealed — never to their 5° than it was willing to adopt, and at the
prejudices or their passions, though he same time insisted that until an Interna-
never lacked the courage to rebuke those tional Supreme Court is firmly established
prejudices and confront those passions, the Nation must have an army and navy
His methods of appeal were sometimes in- adequate to protect the rights of its citi-
genious, but they were always courageous, 55 zens ; and when such a court is estab-
and his aim was always the same. lished the nations must be prepared to

C INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 123

maintain its decrees against any recalci-
trant nation. The last-published letter he

wrote illustrated the judicial poise of a VII

nature always controlled by a passion for

even-handed justice. 'We should insist/ 5 THE ROOSEVELT SPIRIT IS
he said, 'that if the immigrant who comes NOT DEAD

here in good faith becomes an American

and assimilates himself to us, he shall be TULIAN STREET

treated on an exact equality with every J

one else.' At that time he also Said:» {.Collier's, February t, ,1919. By author's permis-
'There can be no divided allegiance here. sion-l

Any man who says he is an American, but Re is a t mm who u what he is

something else also— he is not an Amen- from nature> and who never reminds us
can at all. We have room for but one 0f others.— Emerson.
flag, the American flag, and this excludes 15
the red flag/ We, whom Theodore Roosevelt used

This appeal of Mr. Roosevelt to the proudly and affectionately to call his 'fel-
American people for justice, equal rights, low Americans,' have always listened with
and a fair opportunity for all gives sym- great relish to characteristic stories of
metry and cohesion to his varied adminis- 20 him. His qualities, physical and spiritual,
trations as Civil Service Commissioner, were so utterly his own, his individuality
Police Commissioner, Assistant Secretary so intense and overmastering, that he
of the NavVj. Lieutenant-Colonel in the seemed somehow to be projected among
Army, Governor of New York, and Presi- us, to be intimately known even to those
dent of the United States. It made him 25 of us who had never touched his hand or
as bitter enemies in influential quarters even seen him. It was this curious feel-
as any public man in American politics ing as of personal acquaintance with him
has ever known ; but it also made him the that caused us so to delight in the flavor
most widely admired and best-loved of a typical Roosevelt story.
American of his time. 3° Ts n't that just like him !' we would

And it did more. It went far toward say, as we might of a story hitting off
converting American politics from a trade familiar traits of our own father.
to a profession; it inspired his colleagues But whereas, on the night of January

and his party associates; it summoned into 5, 1919, a Roosevelt story might by many
political activity followers in both parties 35 of us have been regarded merely as some-
and in all sections of the country. Men thing entertaining, the next morning wit-
had thought of politics as a traffic which nessed a great change. The wand of
no man could enter without dishonor. Death touching him gently as he slept, re-
His life proved to them that the highest leasing him to further high adventure, to
success is possible to honor, courage, and *° great, final explorations, transformed not
purity if mated to ability. It raised the him alone, but the environment and the
ideals and the standards of public life for legend of him. To every possession of
the entire American people. Its influence his, from the wife and children he loved
in creating the genuine and self-sacrific- to such small objects as that ink-stand,
ing patriotism which called the Nation 45 made from an elephant's foot, which stood
into this world war with a voice which upon his desk at Sagamore Hill, or the
love of ease and dread of war could not very pens and pencils there, thenceforth
resist cannot be estimated. And it has attached a quite new sacredness. And so,
done more than any other one influence, for us, his fellow Americans, new sacred-
if not more than all other influences com- 50 ness attaches now to the rich legacy of
bined, to inspire the citizens of this coun- wisdom he has left us, to every thought of
try with a real faith in the intelligence his that- we can learn, to every belief he
and virtue of their fellowmen, and so in held, and consequently to every authentic
the practicability of that self-government story that can in any way contribute to
which is the foundation of a true democ- 55 our knowledge of him.
racy because of a true brotherhood of In the vast amount of matter that has

man. been printed of the Colonel I do not re-

124 WRITING OF TODAY

call having seen any reference to a cer- seizing with one hand a hummock of slate
tain theory that he had (and, having it, of at the crest of the little precipice, offered
course he put it into practice) in connec- his arm as a bridge over which Alice
tion with the bringing up of children. It could step into the tree, whence it would
was a characteristic theory, and now it, 5 be no very difficult matter to climb down
like all else, takes on a new significance. to earth.

As long since as when he was Gov- The hummock was less secure than it

ernor of New York it was his practice to appeared. As she stepped upon his arm
go every Saturday afternoon for a tramp the slate to which he was holding broke
in the country with Mrs. Roosevelt and I0 away and his arm fell beneath her. She
the children. And it was understood be- had, however, managed to grasp with one
tween them that in the course of all such hand a branch, and to this she clung
tramps he would lead them to some physi- until he succeeded in catching her and
cal obstacle which must be overcome. drawing her safely into the tree.
Sometimes it would be merely the obstacle 15 In reaching the ground they discovered
of long distance over a difficult terrain, that the fallen mass of slate had struck
calling for sustained effort in face of the Colonel fairly on the head, laying
great fatigue ; sometimes it would be a open his scalp from the forehead to a cor-
wide brook to be crossed at a difficult responding point at the back of the skull,
place ; sometimes a deep ravine full of 20 Though the wound bled freely, they were
tangled underbrush to be traversed ; and immediately reassured by his smile. Find-
on one memorable occasion, less than a ing a brook, they washed the gash as
fortnight before the Colonel was nom- best they could; later a surgeon took a
inated for Vice-President — that nomina- dozen stitches in the Colonel's scalp; and
tion designed by political enemies within 25 when, some ten days after, he attended
his own party to terminate his political ca- the Republican National Convention he
reer — there was a steep cliff of crum- was none the worse for the accident,
bling slate to be ascended and descended. Few persons, indeed, knew of it at all, for

The idea that Colonel and Mrs. Roose- it was characteristic of him to avoid any
velt attempted to fasten in the children's 30 mention of his injuries or ailments, and if
minds was that life frequently presents forced to mention them he would invari-
obstacles comparable with those encoun- ably pass them off as being of no conse-
tered on these walks, and that it is the quence.

part of good manhood and good woman- Thus, for example, when it became

hood squarely to meet and surmount them, 35 known a twelve-month or so ago that he
going through or over, but never around. had been for many years stone blind in
Thus early the Roosevelt children, whose the left eye, as the result of a blow re-
later record has been so worthy of their ceived in boxing, the news came as a sur-
father and their mother, had begun to prise to numerous friends who knew him
learn primary lessons in resourceful- 40 well. Yet he had been blind in that eye
ness, perseverance, courage, stoicism, and when he shot lions in Africa. He was
disregard for danger — for sometimes, as not in the least sensitive about his blind-
in the Adventure of the Slate Cliff, there ness, nor do I think he tried particularly
was danger. to conceal it. It was simply that he had

The bank, soft and almost perpendicu- 45 an aversion, resembling that of the ab~
lar, at first appeared insurmountable, but original American, for the discussion of
after an hour and a half all but one of bodily ills; a contempt for the incon-
that day's walking party had managed to venience or suffering resulting from them,
climb up and down again. The exception And still, when others suffered physically
was Alice Roosevelt, then a girl of six- So or spiritually, he was the most solicitous,
teen, who, having reached the top, found the gentlest, the tenderest of men.
herself unable to descend. It was like him, too, that throughout the

On this day Elon Hooker, an old friend afternoon on which he went to the hos-
of the Roosevelts, was with them. Walk- pital for a grave operation, a year ago, he
ing along the base of the cliff, this young 55 continued to dictate letters to his secre-
man found a stout tree growing up beside tary, and that while dictating he had a
it. Climbing the tree, he leaned out and hemorrhage and fainted three times, only

C. INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 125

to revive and resume his dictation. And wonderful/ he said, 'about their going
until the doctor forbade it, he even con- to fight. We both realize that we have a
templated going that night to a dinner at very full, interesting, satisfying life to
which he had agreed to speak. look back upon. Whatever may come

On his hunting trips, when traveling, 5 now, we have had more than thirty years
and more lately when confined to his bed of happiness together, with all our chil-
in the hospital, he utilized every moment dren spared to us.'

of his time for work, study, and reflec- And again, less than a month ago, as I

tion; he would concentrate upon a book write, when I called the hospital, Mrs.
or a conversation while enduring pain to 10 Roosevelt — who always stayed there with
a degree that would have rendered it im- him — spoke in the same terms, though in
possible for most men to think consecu- the interim the blow had fallen. It was
tively, let alone converse upon important of Quentin, the eagle, that she spoke,
topics with a succession of visitors. 'We have been until now a singularly

He was afraid neither to live nor to die. 15 united family,' she said. This is the first
And in the purely orthodox sense he had loss from our immediate circle. Life has
no cause to fear death, for his soul was as been kind to us. We have much to be
clean as that of a little child. The ulti- thankful for.'

mate biographer of Roosevelt will not The story I have told of his walks with

have so much as one single item to gloss *o the children and the obstacles over which
over or conceal. And I am not sure that he led them was, until the morning of
that is not the finest thing that may be January 6, only a typical Roosevelt story,
said of any man. Since then it has become an allegory. For

Until a year ago I never heard him his feeling for us all was in a very fine

speak of death, but since then I have 25 sense paternal. He was the father; we

known him to speak of it more than once. the children. 'Face the obstacles,' he al-

I am wondering now if it merely hap- ways urged us. 'Go through or over;

pened so, or whether, as he lay there in never around.'

the hospital a year ago, and again in the Or to quote his own words, uttered in

last months of the year just past, he may 30 that great speech twenty years ago :

not have had a premonition that the end

was perhaps nearer than those about him , h fo you> fh countrymen

supposed. Certainly he knew a year ago, that our country caUs not for the ufe of

at the time of the operation for an ab- ease, but for the life of strenuous endeavor.

scess in the middle ear, which rapidly ex- 35 The twentieth century looms before us big

tended to the inner ear, that he was at with the fate of many nations. If we stand

death's door. Dr. Arthur B. Duel, his idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful

surgeon, told him so, and the Colonel e°se 7an<* ignoble peace, if we shrink from

promptly expressed a brave resignation. ^L^ /°f'$ n *a men must win at

t i_- • i.1. i. -4. 1 £ a ,~ hazard of their lives and at the risk of all

I saw him in the hospital a few days 40 they hoJ dear> then fhe hMef and str0Jnger

after the operation. He was reading a peoples will pass by us and will win for

book. After we had spoken a few words themselves the domination of the world.

he said: Let us therefore boldly face the life of

'Lying here, I have often thought how strife, resolute to do our duty well and

glad I would be to go now if by doing so 45 manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness

I could only bring the boys back safe to £* deed and by word; resolute to be both

A/r tj u » honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet

A' K°?sevelt- . :, '■' A ., t to use practical methods. Above all, let us

One day at luncheon last April, when not shrink from strife> moral or physicai

we all thought him as vigorous as ever, within or without the Nation, provided we
he spoke again of his boys, and there was So are certain the strife is justified; for it is only
in what he said as much apprehension through strife, through hard and dangerous
for them as he ever allowed himself to endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the
show— or perhaps I should say as much g°al °f true national greatness.
apprehension of the blow that the loss of

any one of them would be to the remain- 55 That, I believe, was the essence of

der of the family. Roosevelt's personal and national philoso-

'Mrs. Roosevelt has been perfectly phy. Simply he thought and spoke and

126 WRITING OF TODAY

lived and died. And that, without excep- marble. But such a thing, however glori-
tion, has been true of all our greatest men. ous, will mean much more to us than it
Like Lincoln and Franklin, he was one of could mean to him. We shall erect it to
us. When he spoke we understood him. give ourselves the mournful satisfaction
He never juggled thoughts or words to 5 of doing our dead hero honor. But let us
baffle us, confuse us, stupefy us with the not forget, meanwhile, that the one me-
brilliancy of his performance. Nor did morial he would have wished cannot be
he ever speak or write to mask a purpose built of tangible materials, but must be
or a lack of purpose. He never thought, made of thoughts and deeds,
as he tried to set down his ideas : 'Now I0 He has taken his last tramp with his
I am writing something that will live. own children, and with us. He has
Now I am making history/ He was im- guided them, and us, up to the last ob-
patient of such notions, just as he was stacle we were destined to meet and over-
impatient of the applause that interrupted come under his leadership. And the one
him when he was making public speeches. 15 thing he would ask of us is this : That
Time and again I have seen him hold up we go on without him. That we learn
his hand to stop applause. He wanted to the simple lessons he has taught by pre-
go on. It was the thing to be accom- cept and example. That we be fore-
plished that obsessed him. sighted, prompt, practical, honest, reso-

Thinking of the ingratitude that weao lute, courageous,

have sometimes shown him, and of the So, in ourselves, we will make his spirit

follies we have committed, on occasion, live,
in face of his exhortation to be brave and
prompt and ready, I once asked him how

he had kept from becoming cynical about 25 VIII
mankind.

'I am not cynical/ he said, 'because I MR. LLOYD GEORGE AT THE

have observed that, just when our people GUILDHALL
seem to be becoming altogether hopeless

they have a way of suddenly turnings HAROLD BEGBIE
around and doing something perfectly

magnificent/ {Daily Chronicle, London, Eng., November n, 1918.

What a prophecy that was! — for he

said it in the hour of our national shame, There was a flourish of trumpets from

when we were crying gratefully: 'He 35 outside, a sudden feeling of final excite-

kept us out of war!' ment in the crowded library, and then a

Well may we be thankful that Roose- burst of cheering reached us from people
velt lived to see his profound faith in us in the corridors and on the stairs which
justified; to see us at last take up arms lead to this beautiful apartment,
in answer to his repeated call ; to see us 40 The official at the far end, almost buried
quit 'the life of ease' for that of 'strenu- under a red and white sash, may or may
ous endeavor'; to see us spurn 'ignoble not have announced 'The Right Honor-
peace' and enter the 'hard contest where able David Lloyd George, Member of
men must win at hazard of their lives/ Parliament, Prime Minister of England';
That the poison of pacifism did not ruin 45 the second official, half-way up the library,
the nation is due to the fact that we had wearing a red and white rosette the size of
Roosevelt as an antitoxin. a good cabbage, may or may not have re-

Thus his greatest single service to his peated this announcement with becoming

country was performed, not while he was unction ; all we heard was the sound of
President, but in the last years of his life; 50 cheers, and all we cared about was to

not while he held the reins of govern- look at this little gray man of destiny ad-

ment, but as a private citizen whose un- vancing up the excited room, not as if he

official power lay solely in the nation's were unaware of his triumph, but as if

admiration for him; its faith in him and he were thinking of something else,
in his vision ; its heed to what he said. 55 I never saw him look more grim. He

There will, of course, be a memorial to came slowly up the room, his chin tucked

Roosevelt. It will be a noble thing of into the gold-laced collar of his uniform,

C. INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 127

his head down, his brows drawn together, ing string of titles, and immediately after
no wrinkles of laughter round his eyes, would give us, in exactly the same gran-
no gentleness of smile at his lips. His diloquent tones, 'The Chairman of the
eyes looked deliberately to right and left Metropolitan Water Board,' or 'The
of him, but without interest, without emo- 5 Master of the Haberdashers' Company.'
tion. He seemed cold and gray, buried in At one moment, in a roar of cheers, some
thought. gorgeous Ambassador, blazing with or-

One knew now that he had not come to ders, would pass handsomely up to the
be the bellman of victory. But why had Lord Mayor's dais; at the next, a little
he come ? Why had he not invented an 10 old paunchy alderman with a nice little
excuse and remained at his work? One matronly wife would come waddling
began to feel that he had felt himself along, talking energetically to each other
charged to come and give the world some for comfort, and comically bumping to-
message infinitely more solemn than a gether because they were so horribly nerv-
declaration of victory. zg ous.

Before his advent the pageant of the At the end of all this came the Prime

library had held us fascinated, and Minister, and his coming changed the
amused, for nearly an hour. The coming whole atmosphere of the pageant. In
of Venezelos had sent a wave of enthu- some way his aspect seemed to convey to
siasm through the great room. Arthur 20 an expectant world that he had a greater
Balfour, who has the secret of being able thing to say to it than the word Victory,
to exaggerate smile and bow without loss and that more hours of death and de-
of dignity, had passed up to the Lord struction must go by before mankind could
Mayor's dais like an operatic tenor at the draw its breath and say, 'The war is
height of his triumph. Eric Geddes, 25 over.'

tumultuously cheered, and looking like a But what had he come to say?

tug at full steam, had gone up between

those huzzaing people as if he intended to When he rose to speak in the Guildhall

give some guilty alderman a blow between the excitement was so tense that one was
the eyes. Winston Churchill and his 30 conscious almost of pain. The speakers
handsome wife had passed up the room preceding him had been too long with their
as if they were hurrying to a jolly supper words. The air was exhausted. Women
after a delicious dance. M. Cambon, who had looked fresh and beautiful an
whose appearance brought down the hour before were now pale and haggard,
house, advanced up the seething room 35 People had left the side tables and pressed
with a stately and ambassadorial dignity into the center of the hall, crowding
which the new diplomacy will find it hard against the guests seated at the principal
to improve upon. tables. Tobacco smoke hung heavily in

And with these great and splendid- the dense atmosphere. Old gentlemen
looking people, whose names were like 4° were inclined to close their eyes and let
the announcement of a victory, came un- their heads nod. Civic ladies had given
happy nonentities, who hurried up the up listening to speeches, and through
library in a freezing silence, horribly lorgnettes were studying the wonderful
ashamed of their unknown names, one pearls of the little slim Duchess of Marl-
tucking in the base of his spine till he 45 borough. On all sides people had begun
looked like a Derby dog ; another glancing to growl rather ominously. It was ten
wildly to left and right as if the police minutes past ten.
were after him, all of them staggering

up the dais in a state of partial collapse, The Prime Minister, standing under the

and then hiding themselves in the palms 50 oak canopy, with its mace and sword of
at the side, which were so unkind as to maintenance, had for his immediate back-
disarrange their hair. ground helmeted policemen, flunkeys with

Comedy watched her opportunity in this soaped hair, firemen, jaded waiters, and
pageant. The gentleman in the enormous one officer of the British Army leaning
red and white sash, whose pronunciation 55 wearily on a brass-tipped wand of office —
was like a stage nobleman, would call out Major Corbett Smith, author of The Re-
some historic name preceded by an unend- treat from Mons. The presence of this

128 WRITING OF TODAY

single officer with the Mons ribbon seemed romance of this man's career, his part in
to make one feel that behind the words of the mysterious providence which works
the Prime Minister were the valor and with and by and for humanity to ends of
glory and immortal honor of the British which the wisest can scarcely dare to
Armies. One began to know why he had 5 dream. Think of what he was, and what
come. He was here to remind the nation he has become, this Prime Minister of
of the Past: not to speak of triumph, but England who has held the world together
of the pain and faith and sacrifice by in the fierce hour of Armageddon,
which that triumph had been accom- His father was a village schoolmaster,

plished. 10 who died and left wife and children

I heard the great 'ramshackle empire' to the mercies of chance. An uncle re-
speech at the Queen's Hall, a speech of ceived that little homeless family under
unforgettable passion, in which every his roof, and to earn bread for them
word burned with scorn and flamed with worked harder than ever at his cobbler's
indignation ; that speech was the utterance 1$ bench. David stood beside his toiling
of a prophet, and it quivered with the uncle learning the great organ music of
lightnings of prophetic denunciation. But the English Bible ; the old man would
tonight another voice sounded from those pause in his work to read a passage, and
same Jips, another spirit inspired the the boy would repeat it after him. And
speaker's words : all the agony and bloody 20 behind the shop, David's mother, in the
sweat of four long years of calamitous kitchen, was striving so to economize this
war clothed him as with a garment; he and that that she might have a sixpence
was like Destiny lifting its head above the over at the end of the week. That was
ruins of unrighteousness and gazing up- my mother's life,' he once told me; 'a
ward to the pale stars of God. He was 25 never-ending anxiety to have sixpence of
very quiet, very composed, very solemn my uncle's money saved at the end of each
and reflective. week. It is the life of the poor.'

'Justice, divine Justice/ he cried, lift- And now tonight he announces the

ing his arm, 'must be satisfied/ overthrow of the Hohenzollerns !

'This generation will have passed away 30 This little David, of the Welsh hills,
ere the torture and suffering of this war more than any one man in the world, has
will have ceased.' And then, 'The coun- destroyed the Goliath of Prussianism.
try that recklessly plunged the world into He stands in the Guildhall telling man-
that agony must accept a stern reckon- kind that the Hohenzollerns have gone,
ing.' 35 that great and illustrious family whose

All through his speech one could hear pride had become immeasurable, and
that single voice, the voice of Justice. whose shining sword had seemed but four

He spoke of the debt we owe to our short months ago invincible. Facing him
immortal dead, to our heroic wounded, and are the statues of Wellington and Nelson,
to our unconquerable hosts still in the*0 all round those gray walls hang the gay
field. He bade us solemnly think of what banners of the Free Nations, and he is the
we owe to them, and then: 'Yea; also, voice of destiny in that ancient place of
what we owe to the mothers who bore civic splendor and outworn' pageantry,
them, to the wives who cherished them, this cobbler's nephew, telling us that the
and the fathers who have grown gray in 45 Hohenzollerns are gone— gone forever,
anxiety for their gallant boys in deadly What a romance!

peril/ Justice, divine Justice, had mind He speaks, almost with awe, of 'this

of those things. solemn moment of triumph, one of the

'It is a great hour,' he cried out, 'the greatest moments in the history of the
greatest of all history; it is the hour of 50 world . . . this great hour which rings
Justice/ in a new era . . . and which is going to

'I have waited/ he said, 'for this lift humanity to a higher plane of exist-
hour/ ence for the ages of the future.' And as

he speaks these words, this shepherd boy

When be uttered that last brief sen- 55 of democracy, one feels that more than
tence, slowly, quietly, and quite unboast- any one man it is he who has brought the
fully, one seemed to see the personal world to this solemn moment of triumph,

C. INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 129

he and none othen Is there any more

dramatic romance in the history of men? IX

President Wilson is the Voice of the JOFFRE

Free Nations. Lloyd George is the un- 5

conquerable Will of Democracy. History JEAN RICHEPIN

will give to President Wilson a just meed [of the French Academy]

of praise, and for all time his place in [Translated from Le Figaro> August 30> I9 j

the gratitude of the world will be one or

great honor and noble dignity; but to the 10 If I had the honor of counting among
humble Prime Minister of these ancient the intimate friends of General Joffre
islands, the mother of America, history before August, 1914, I should find the
must surely give the supreme place; for undertaking of this portrait a task of in-
he will ever stand, not above the con- superable difficulty. Indeed, I believe I
flict, but in the very midst of the whirl- 1$ should give it up at once, and that I should
wind, and he will live, not as a Voice, but not venture on even the vaguest sketch, I
as a passionate Will, not as an austere should be so certain of not getting a real
Virtue, but as a burning and a living likeness.

Faith. The fact is that General Joffre, such as

20 he was able to reveal himself six months

From the first hour until now he has ago, had nothing in common with the man
been the soul of the world's struggle with of the present hour. Nothing at all,
the Powers of Darkness. His reward is whether he likes it or not, and whether
certain. About his name storms will those about him are or are not conscious
rage for a little time ; mistakes will be 25 of the fact. There existed in the middle
brought up against him by small-minded of last year — General Joffre; let us say,
enemies; his faults of temperament will if you insist on it, — Generalissimo Joffre.
be exaggerated; and unscrupulous poli- What existed in the year 1915 is simply,
ticians will seek by every means to cover without title — Joffre.
and dissemble his triumph ; but history 3° Now the intimate friends of the former
will say that he inspired the democracies are evidently the least fitted to make us
of the world with faith, that he saw the acquainted with the latter. What they
first truth when it was hidden from the know of the one hinders them from tell-
wise and powerful, that in the darkest ing us about the other. They can hardly
hour he never wavered, that when strong 35 recognize their friend of yesterday in the
influences were tfrought against him to new figure of today. And this new figure
change his heart he remained unshakably is nevertheless the real figure, and the
steadfast, and that in order to overthrow only figure to be a likeness for us, since
the Hohenzollerns and storm the last it is under this figure Joffre takes his
stronghold of dynastic tyranny, this son 40 place in our presence and by our in-
of democracy first overthrew here in our strumentality, as a living person, not
islands political powers high in the public only in History, but also and already in
approval and military incompetence which Legend.

the nation had been hysterically led to And that is why I do not hesitate to

mistake for military strength. 45 undertake this difficult portrait. My abso-

lute ignorance of General Joffre is the
His solemn speech at the Guildhall source from which I draw all my courage
should bring home to the democracy of in the face of Joffre. And' if I do not
these islands, if they follow history from despair of making a likeness, it is because
the dark spring of this year to its glorious So I shall look at my sitter with the eyes of
autumn, that generations yet unborn will childhood which the poet keeps to his last
feel towards this statesman of freedom look, with the heart of the people which
and justice a reverence touched with won- is always open to receive the seeds which
der that any man among his contempo- flower into Legend.

raries was ungrateful for his service to 55 But, come to think of it, are there not
the world. eyes of childhood more childlike than those

3o WRITING OF TODAY

of the poet? Is there not a heart more son officer. The order of the great
entirely the heart of the people than leader to all the other great leaders of
mine? There are the eyes of children. the army had been the same, and it
There is the heart of the people. Instead said : —

of seeking in myself the lines, the accents, 5 'Attack ! Never cease attacking !'
the strokes of color of this portrait, sup- 'But if my men give way?'

pose I took them on the wing here in the 'Attack all the same.'

street, there in the trenches; everywhere 'And if there are none left?'

where in simpleness of heart among 'Attack ! Attack !'

humble folk, soldiers, children, women, 10 This one is a veteran of '70, who has
old men, there is talk of Joffre, our Joffre, four sons at the front; he does not com-
as they say! plain, for this reason: —

And I have taken them on the wing, T 'm not worried. They are led by

here and there, scattered traits of a por- some one who knows where he 's going,
trait which at the time I did not think of 15 Ah ! if we had had one like him at Metz
drawing. I gathered them without even in the old days !'

paying attention to the unconscious work At the so-called rest camp, where they

of my faithful handmaid, my memory, are to pass a few days before returning
which registered and put away in drawers to the trenches, two poilus, busy taking off
all these hasty impressions. And today at 20 the scales of clay which ensheath their
my first appeal the drawers are opened, cloaks, amuse themselves with the idea
the impressions are developed and offered that they have been moles,
to me pellmell, all together. I have only 'We must be fond of him to want to

to run over the proofs, all printed and stay in that mud because he wants us
wonderfully impressive. 25 to.'

Two little apprentice girls, from twelve 'But he wants us to because he has to,

to fourteen years of age, are admiring a you fool ! As Napoleon said, the thing is
large chromo in striking colors among to be the strongest at a chosen point, at a
others which transform a closed shop- chosen time.'
front into a gallery of pictures, the dear- 30 'Chosen by whom ?'
est of which is five cents. 'Why, by him.'

'Ah !' says one, 'does n't he look well, This time, the scene is at the front,

with his heavy eyebrows ! He looks as if in a trench. Three days before there had
he had two mustaches.' bravely perished a graduate of the ficole

'Yes,' answers the younger one, 'but un- 35 Normale and a clergyman, lieutenant and
der the upper mustache, look at his eyes, sergeant major of the same company,
how clever they are.' The men talked of their lost comrades,

'That's so,' responds the first. 'Clever whom they loved and respected for their
and kind. I hadn't noticed it.' valor and also for the charm of their

'Isn't it so?' adds the little one. 'Lit-*0 talk. They remembered that the two
tie elephant's eyes.' young scholars called 'him' sometimes

'Yes,' concludes the elder. 'An ele- Turenne and sometimes Fabius Cunctator.
phant which is also a poodle.' One innocent asked if these were his

In an ambulance a wounded man tells Christian names. A scamp of a Parisian
me about the battle of the Marne. He is 45 said 'yes,' and added seriously, after a
still bewildered by having withdrawn day moment's reflection:
after day, convinced that it was necessary, 'After all, he deserves them.'

and then having counterattacked, equally I come back to my Paris impressions

convinced that it was the right thing to and find myself in a sculptor's studio
do. 50 where a poor old model out of work asks

'Well, since he had seen it so, and for help. We give him something and
wanted it so, it must be so. He knows his ask him about the man whose country-
business, sure thing !' man he is proud to be.

Then there is this detail recounted by 'Yes, yes,' says he, 'a Catalonian, like

another soldier, a sergeant still at the 55 me. But mind you, a Catalonian of the
front, who received it from an auto- North. Not a talker, but a doer, quiet,
driver, that day the chauffeur of a liai- thickset, heavybuilt. They have patience

C INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 131

and perseverance in our parts. The soil all those who came to greet you. What

is heavy, red and thick. We plow with impression, Marshal, are you taking away

mules. But it produces a wine full of from a journey which will be recorded

sunshine. Yes, it is a good country in history?'

where he was born — and so was I — at 5 The Marshal answered:

Rivesaltes/ 'Wait , that is easy. I carry away with

Again on the Paris pavement, before me the memory of having seen a prodi-
another shop-front changed to a chromo gious country, but, understand me well,
gallery. It is an old grandmother who, this country is still more prodigious for
not content to admire the leader's likeness, 10 what it stores up for us in the future
begins to bargain, and draws from the than for what it shows us in the present,
bottom of her pocket the ten cents which > 'One night when I was crossing a State
buys the very largest portrait ; before roll- line, the Governor — I have forgotten his
ing it up carefully to carry it off for the name — came to meet me. I asked him:
adornment of her garret, she gives him a 15 "What is the area of your State?" He
smacking kiss as she says : gave me figures which indicated that it

'We can really love him, you know ! was equal to the area of France. I asked
He doesn't throw our boys' lives away!' again: "How many inhabitants?" He

These impressions in their succession answered: "Four millions." I kept on
and combination are moving ; the 20 asking : "Could you take more inhab-
unanimity of their testimony is evident itants? Could you feed forty millions
and significant. From them springs, fin- and give them work?" He replied:
ished, the legendary portrait. "Yes, I guess so." Well, this is Amer-

Don't you see it rise, finished all at once, ica ! It is today a country of one hun-
the legendary portrait ? It is the portrait 25 dred and twenty million inhabitants,
of a father at the head of an army which which may some day hold four hundred
he loves and spares as if every soldier millions.

were his only son; and it is at the same 'But it is not enough to register cit-

time the portrait of a leader who knows izens.

and can say with authority to every one 30 'One must assimilate them ; one must
of them when the hour strikes: give them the same soul. America does

'The time has come to sacrifice your this too. She knows better than any
life to save the honor of your mother.' other nation in the world how to sow

And that is why they all obey him with Liberty and make it spring up. She
a formidable tenderness, with the assur- 35 links with indestructible bonds the mil-
ance of victory, and with a smile. lions of human beings we do not know

how to keep with us and whom she knows

how to attract to her. Though I have

■£ gone through Italian, Polish, German,

4° Czech settlements, I have but seen Amer-

MARSHAL FOCH'S RETURN ArnlSricanemoldk"eaded ** **** *" ^

FROM THE U. S. A. The Marshal' puffed at his eternal pipe

and went on:
STEPHANE LAUZANNE 45 'Yes, a prodigious country, but also an

[Translated from Le Matin, December 10, «*,.! admirable COUtltry It has grown not

only in strength and numbers but also in
On board S\S\ Paris, December 18. — I feeling and ideals. I have gone all over
said to Marshal Foch: it from bottom to top and right to left,

'Monsieur le Marechal, you have trav- $0 passed through all its cities. Yet I have
eled over thirteen thousand miles, gone never been able to dismiss the thought of
through thirty-two States, seen twenty the War from my mind, and when I was
million men march past you, delivered at its farthest end, in San Francisco —
one hundred and sixty-four speeches, and, that mixture of Toulon, Naples and
from this ship which is carrying us to- 55 Constantinople, — even when I was at the
wards the shores of France, we can still antipodes of our continent, I could not
hear the last clamors of enthusiasm of help saying to myself: "Four years ago

i32 WRITING OF TODAY

men started from here. They made the me they have but one meaning, they
same enormous journey I have just made mean: "You have done your duty." ' Or
to go and fight by a ditch along the Meuse else he repeated to the crowds: 'If we
or the Somme. It was because an idea have resisted, it is because we were
as big as the world was pushing them for- 5 united. Let us remain united ; we will
ward, because they really believed they thus still resist.' Or again: 'You are
had set out for a crusade. Yes, (I said pleased with our work, that is good; but
to myself,) I remember that I saw them remember that one must work not only in
marching past me with their colors flying, war ; good work must also be done in
filled with what I thought was a breeze, 10 peace.'

but which was a sweeping wind that had This question of work, of good work

blown over a whole continent and a whole jn peace, haunted him ceaselessly ; to this
ocean.' he reverted time and again.

'It was also,' I broke in, 'because they The other day I heard him say, with

loved France, Monsieur le Marechal. is his strong but calm voice, to M. Viviani :
You, who have just seen them so near, 'What are we going to do? We have

do you believe that they love France?' bad tools in our hands. This treaty is a

'Yes/ said the Marshal, 'I believe in bad treaty, bad because it does not give
their affection as I believe in the light of France guarantees of safety, guarantees
the sun. I am not a man to be easily 20 0f being paid

moved, yet I have been moved as much by The guarantee of safety was the

the last reception I was given as by the Rhine There was our real frontier) a
first one. On the last day I was at Hart- frontier we could hold with nothing. I
ford (Connecticut). They took me out of had figured it out: one division at Cologne,
the train, ushered me into a little house, *5 Qne at Mayence) one at Coblentz, three

an,d„Said \° metl- Li ., others behind, six in all. With that I

Stand by this table. would have undertaken to hold and defend

'I ask why. Because (came the an- all the Rhine. With that we could have

swer,) at the same place, in the same disarmed

ytt t^ttttt3&mt ' sa* v^r it; Thbody listetl

of an hour and then went out. When I t0 ^e. And I did more than say * I
reached my train again, what did I see? wfrote * * each of Clemenceau s min-
ur,,. „ ' „^Am °( ' « „„ fllo„ t,„j isters. I told them and wrote them:
Fa I/-? ll V h™r *ey ha?3 5 "You are spoiling our victory, you are

bedecked it with flowers and foliage 135 treaty by which we shall be

ended my journey in a train which looked neither defended nor paid. A day will
aSJL Xt Tere.,m ^Iofsom' , . come when this country, seeing what you

Thus the Marshal runs over the strings have done, will rise with a start. For
of memory while the ship is bearing us myself in view of that day, I wish to take
across the Atlantic, and I wonder what I 40 all preCautions, and having a clear con-
should admire the more in him, his gen- sci T am anxious to have my papers
lus or his simplicity, for the modesty . Qrder as weH That is why t am writ-
of this man perhaps exceeds his genius. . and ke . of
Over there he was worshiped like a god. .* / * &
Women sent their children to touch his 45 , „*?; , 1 »» x/r
gray coat, as one would touch a sacred _ /ou are a factious general, M.
relic. Men called him Caesar, Alexander, T^u said t0, me one d^' , . . f
Napoleon, and bestowed on him the title 'This remark made me laugh-but
of the greatest conqueror in history. But ^V will not laugh on the day we go be-
ne, while the perfume of incense was 50 ^re the High [Court .of Justice,
rising to his nostrils, remained very calm, Yes, concluded M Viviani who had
his hand leaning on a poilu's cane, and he listened to Marshal Foch as he spoke
mumbled his eternal word: 'Wait, wait.' without hatred but without fear, but
Then his lips opened, and such simple after all, Marshal, there will be a slight
and quiet phrases as these issued from 55 difference betwen you and them— you wi!<
them: 'I thank you for your cheers. To go there only as a witness.'

C. INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 133

partly to a loss of flexibility in the mus-

XI cles of the right side, but almost from

moment to moment the general appear-

JOSEPH PULITZER: REM- c ance f th.e face moved ^tween a h*«£
TTVTTcrtrMrT7Q r>Tr a 5 gemal animation, a cruel and wolflike

QFrPFTAttV SCOwl and a heaVy and h°Peless deJec"

ibLKHlAKY tjon ]vj0 face was capabie 0f showing

ATTT?vm TDT7T A\m greater tenderness; none could assume a

ALLEYNL IRELAND more forbidding expression of anger and

[Reprinted by courtesy of the Metropolitan.! 10 contempt.

Before I had time to examine my sur- The well-known Sargent portrait is a

roundings Mr. Pulitzer entered the room remarkable revelation of the complex na-
on the arm of the majordomo. My first ture of its subject. It discloses the deep
swift impression was of a man very tall affection, the keen intelligence, the wide
and thin, with a noble head, a roughly x$ sympathy, the tireless energy, the deli-
pointed reddish beard streaked with gray, cate sensitiveness, the tearing impatience,
jet black hair, swept back from the fore- the cold tyranny, and the flaming scorn
head and lightly touched here and there by which his character was so erratically
with silvery white. One eye was dull and dominated. It is a noble and pathetic
half-closed, the other was of a deep, bril- *> monument to the suffering which had
liant blue, which, so far from suggesting been imposed for a quarter of a century
blindness, created the instant effect of a upon the intense and arbitrary spirit of
searching, eaglelike glance. The out- this extraordinary man.
stretched hand was large, strong, nervous, The account which I am to give of Mr.

full of character, ending in well-shaped 25 Pulitzer's daily life during the months
and immaculately kept nails. immediately preceding his death would be

A high-pitched voice, clear, penetrat- unintelligible to all but the very few who
ing, and vibrant, gave out the strange knew him in recent years if it were not
challenge: 'Well, here you see before prefaced by a brief biographical note,
you the miserable wreck who is to be your 30 Joseph Pulitzer was born in the village
host; you must make the best you can of of Mako, near Buda Pesth, in Hungary,
him. Give me your arm in to dinner/ on April 10, 1847. His father was a Jew,

I may complete here a description of his mother a Christian. At the age of
Mr. Pulitzer's appearance, founded upon sixteen he emigrated to the United States,
months of close personal association with 35 He landed without friends, without
him. The head was splendidly modeled, money, unable to speak a word of Eng-
the forehead high, the brows prominent Hsh. He enlisted immediately in the
and arched; the ears were large, the nose First New York (Lincoln) Cavalry Reg-
was long and hooked; the mouth, almost iment, a regiment chiefly composed of
concealed by the mustache, was firm and 4° Germans and in which German was the
thin-lipped; the length of the face was prevailing tongue.

much emphasized by the flowing beard Within a year the Civil War ended, and

and by the way in which the hair was Pulitzer found himself, in common with
brushed back from the forehead. The hundreds of thousands of others, out of
skin was of a clear, healthy pink, like a 45 employment at a time when employment
young girl's ; but in moments of intense was most difficult to secure. At this time
excitement the color would deepen to a he was so poor that he was turned away
dark, ruddy flush, and after a succession from French's Hotel in New York for the
of sleepless nights, or under the strain of lack of fifty cents with which to pay for
continued worry, it would turn a dull, 5° his bed. Twenty years later he bought
lifeless gray. French's Hotel, pulled it down, and

I have never seen a face which varied erected in its place the Pulitzer Building,
so much in expression. Not only was at that time one of the largest business
there a marked difference at all times be- buildings in New York, where he housed
tween one side and the other, due partly 55 the World.
tp the contrast between the two eyes and What lay between these two events may

134 WRITING OF TODAY

be summed up in a few words. At the where he could have been content to turn
close of the Civil War Mr. Pulitzer went his back upon life's conflict, he might
to St. Louis, and in 1868, after being in 'have found some happiness, or at least
various occupations, he became a reporter some measure of repose akin to that with
on the Westliche Post. In less than ten 5 which age consoles us for the loss of
years he was editor and part proprietor, youth. But his greatest misfortune was
His amazing energy, his passionate inter- that all the active forces of his person-
est in politics, his rare gift of terse and ality survived to the last in their full
forcible expression, and his striking per- vigor, inflicting upon him the curse of an
sonality carried him over or through all xo impatience which nothing could appease,
obstacles. of a discontent which knew no ameliora-

After he had purchased the St. Louis tion.
Dispatch, amalgamated it with the Post,
and made the Post-Dispatch a profitable ......

business enterprise and a power to be l5

reckoned with in national and state poli- This somewhat cynical outburst [as to

tics, he felt the need of a wider field in the accuracy of the New York papers]
which to manoeuver the forces of his brought down upon me an overwhelming
character and his intellect. torrent of protest from Mr. Pulitzer.

He came to New York in 1883 and pur- 20 'My God !' he cried, 'I would not
chased the World from Jay Gould. At have believed it possible that any one
that time the World had a circulation of could show such a complete ignorance of
less than twelve thousand copies a day American character, of the high sense of
and was practically bankrupt. From this duty which in the main animates Ameri-
time forward Mr. Pulitzer concentrated 25 can journalism^ of the foundations of in-
his every faculty on building up the pa- tegrity on which almost every successful
per. He was scoffed at, ridiculed, and paper in the United States has been
abused by the most powerful editors of founded. You do not know what it costs
the old school. They were to learn, not me to try and keep the World up to a
without bitterness and wounds, that op- 30 high standard of accuracy — the money, the
position was the one fuel of all others time, the thought, the praise, the blame,
which best fed the triple flame of his the constant watchfulness. I do not say
courage, his tenacity, and his resourceful- that the World never makes a mistake in
ness. its news columns. I wish I could say it.

Four years of unremitting toil pro- 35 'What I say is that there are not half
duced two results. The World reached a a dozen papers in the United States which
circulation of 200,000 copies a day and tamper with the news, which publish
took its place in the front rank of the what they know to be false. But if I
American press as a journal of force and thought that I had done no better than
ability, and Joseph Pulitzer left New 40 that I would be ashamed to own a paper.
York, a complete nervous wreck, to face It is not enough to refrain from puHish-
in solitude the knowledge that he would 'mg fake news, it is not enough to take
never read print again and that within a ordinary care to avoid the mistakes which
few years he would be totally blind. arise from the ignorance, the carelessness,

Joseph Pulitzer as I knew him, twenty- 45 the stupidity, of one or more of the many
four years after he had been driven from men who handle the news before it gets
active life by the sudden and final collapse into print; you have got to do much more
of his health, was a man who could be than that; you have got to make every
judged by no common standards. His one connected with the paper — your ed-
feelings, his temper, his point of view had 50 itors, your reporters, your correspondents,
been warped by years of suffering. His your rewrite men, your proofreaders — be-
health and his comfort were at the mercy lieve that accuracy is to a newspaper
of a thousand contingencies. what virtue is to a woman.

Had his spirit been broken by his trials, 'When you go to New York ask any of

had his intellectual power weakened un- 55 the men in the dome to show you my in-
der the load of his affliction, had his burn- structions to them, my letters written
ing interest in affairs cooled to a point from day to day, my cables ; and you will

C INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 135

see that accuracy, accuracy, accuracy, is person in a thousand who attacks the

the first, the most urgent, the most con- American press for being inaccurate has

stant demand I have made on them. ever taken the trouble to investigate the

'I do not say that the World is the facts,
only paper which takes extraordinary 5 'Now about this matter of sensational-
pains to be accurate; on the contrary, I ism: a newspaper should be scrupulously
think that almost every paper in America accurate; it should be clean; it should
tries to be accurate. I will go further than avoid everything salacious or suggestive,
that. There is not a paper of any impor- everything that could offend good taste or
tance published in French, German, or 10 lower the moral tone of its readers; but
English, whether it is printed in Europe or within these limits it is the duty of a
in America, which I have not studied for newspaper to print the news. When I
weeks or months, and some of them I speak of good taste and of good moral
have read steadily for a quarter of a cen- tone I do not mean the kind of good taste
tury; and I tell you this, Mr. Ireland, 15 which is offended by every reference to
after years of experience, after having the unpleasant things of life; I do not
comparisons made by the hundred, from mean the kind of morality which refuses
time to time, of different versions of the to recognize the existence of immorality
same event, that the press of America as —that type of moral hypocrite has done
a whole has a higher standard of ac- 20 more to check the moral progress of hu-
curacy than the European press as a manity than all the immoral people put
whole. I will go further than that. I together. What I mean is the kind of
will say that, line for line, the American Sood }*ste, which demands that frank-
newspapers actually attain a higher stand- J1?^ should be linked with decency; the
ard of news accuracy than the European 25 kind of moral tone which is braced and
newspapers; and I will go further than not relaxed when it is brought face to face
that and say that although there are in wl™ vlce- t r
Europe a few newspapers, and they are bome people try and make you believe
chiefly English, which are as accurate as that a newspaper should not devote its
the best newspapers in America, there are 30 sPac<: t0 lon§ an? dramatic accounts of
no newspapers in America which are so murders railroad wrecks, fires lynch-
habitually, so criminally stuffed with fake lnSs> Polltical corruption embezzlements
news as the worst of the European frauds, graft, divorces, what you will I
papers ' ^ou e^ are wr°ng, and I believe that

Mr. 'Pulitzer paused and asked me if 35 !f *«* t*T1Sht the thi"S °Ut ^ W°U'd
there was a glass of water ou the table- see that they are wrong. .

we were seated in his library-and after m We arf a democracy, and there is only
t u a u a a •<- a w. a u u a one way to get a democracy on its feet in

I had handed it to him and he had ^ >ef *f fa individua[ its sodal its

drained it nearly to the bottom at one > munici pal its state> its nat'ional cond'uct)
gulp, he resumed his lecture. I give it 40 and ^ £ k ^ informed

in considerable detail, because it was the about what ^ inf on/ There ig nQt
longest speech he ever addressed to me, a cri there is not a dod tW j not a
because he subsequently made me write trick> there is not a swindle there is not
it out from memory and then read it to a vi which does not Hve b secreCy.
him, and because it was one of the few <5 Get these ^ Qut fa the operij describe
occasions during my intercourse with thenij attack th ridicule them in the
him on which I was persuaded beyond a presSj and sooner or later bHc opinioll
doubt that he spoke with perfect frank- wju sweep them away,
ness, without allowing his words to be 'Publicity may not be the only thing

influenced by any outside considerations. 5° that is needed, but it is the one thing with-
'As a matter of fact/ he continued, 'the out which all other agencies will fail. If
criticisms you hear about the American a newspaper is to be of real service to the
press are founded on a dislike for our public, it must have a big circulation : first
headlines and for the prominence we give because its news and its comment must
to crime, to corruption in office, and to 55 reach the largest possible number of peo-
sensational topics generally ; the charge pie ; second, because circulation means ad-
of inaccuracy is just thrown in to make it vertising, and advertising means money,
look worse. I do not believe that one and money means independence. If f

136 WRITING OF TODAY

caught any man on the World suppress- several copies of each of the morning
ing news because one of our advertisers ob - papers, including the World, and some of
jected to having it printed, -I would dis- the evening papers. These were mailed
miss him immediately; I wouldn't care daily to Mr. Pulitzer according to cabled
who he was. 5 instructions as to our whereabouts. In

'What a newspaper needs in its news, addition to this a gentleman connected
in its headlines, and on its editorial page with the World, who had long experience
is terseness, humor, descriptive power, of Mr. Pulitzer's requirements, cut from
satire, originality, good literary style, all the New York papers, and from a
clever condensation, and accuracy, accu- 10 number of other papers from every part
racy, accuracy.' of the United States, every article that he

Mr. Pulitzer made this confession of considered Mr. Pulitzer ought to see,
faith with the warmth generated by an whether because of its subject, its tenor,
unshakable faith. He spoke, as he al- or its style. These clippings were mailed
ways spoke when he was excited, with 15 by the hundred on almost every fast
vigor, emphasis, and ample gesture, steamer sailing for Europe. In order that
When he came to an end and asked for there might be the greatest economy of
another glass of water I found nothing to time in reading them, the essential matter
say. It would have been as impertinent in each clipping was marked,
of me to agree with him as to differ from 20 So far as the World was concerned, a
him. copy of each issue was sent, with the

After all, I had to remember that he names of the writers written across each
had taken over the World when its cir- editorial, big news story, or special article,
culation was less than 15,000 copies a day; As we went from port to port we got

that he had been for thirty years and still 25 the principal French, German, Austrian,
was its dominating spirit and the final au- and Italian papers, and the World bureau
thority on every matter concerning its pol- in London kept us supplied with the Eng-
icy, its style, and its contents ; that he had lish dailies and weeklies,
seen its morning circulation go up to well Whenever we picked up a batch of

over 350,000 copies a day ; that at times he 30 American papers, each of the secretaries
had taken his stand boldly against popular got a set and immediately began to read
clamor, as when he kept up for months a it. My own method of reading was
bitter attack against the American action adopted after much advice from Mr.
in the Venezuelan boundary dispute, and Pulitzer and after consultation with the
at times had incurred the hostility of 35 more experienced members of the staff,
powerful moneyed interests, as when he and I do not suppose it differed materially
forced the Cleveland administration to sell from that followed by the others,
to the public on competitive bids a bond I read the World first, going over the

issue which it had arranged to sell pri- 'big' stories carefully and with enough
vately, at considerably below market value, 40 concentration to give me a very fair idea
to a great banking house. of the facts. Then I read the articles in

Before leaving the subject of news- the other papers covering the same
papers I may describe the method by ground, noting any important differences
which Mr. Pulitzer kept in touch with the in the various accounts. This task re-
news and put himself in the position to 45 solved itself in practice into mastering in
maintain a critical supervision over the considerable detail about half a dozen
World. articles — a political situation, a murder,

An elaborate organization was em- a railroad wreck, a fire, a strike, an im-
ployed for this purpose. I will explain it portant address by a college president, for
as it worked when we were on the yacht, 5© example — and getting a clear impression
but the system was maintained at all of the treatment of each item in each
times, whether we were cruising or were paper.

at Cap Martin, at Bar Harbor, at Wies- With this done, and with a few notes

baden, or elsewhere, merely a few minor scribbled on a card to help my memory, I
details being changed to meet local con- 55 turned to the editorial pages, reading each
ditions. editorial with the closest attention and

In the Pulitzer Building, Park Row, making more notes. •
New York, there were collected each day The final reading of the news served to

C. INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 137

give me from ten to twenty small topics St. Louis, at a spot where there was
of what Mr. Pulitzer called 'human inter- neither house, road, nor clearing. Before
est/ to be used as subjects of conversa- the marooned party had time to- realize
tion as occasion demanded. As a rule I its plight the steamer had disappeared,
cut these items out of the paper and put 5 A council of war was held, and it was
them in the left-hand pocket of my coat, decided that they should tramp back to
for when we walked together J. P. always St. Louis and put a summary termination
took my right arm, and my left hand was, to the agent's career by storming his office
therefore, free to dip into my reservoir of and murdering him. Whether or not this
cuttings whenever conversation flagged I0 reckless program would have been carried
and I needed a new subject. out it is impossible to say, for when, three

The cuttings covered every imaginable days later, the ragged army arrived in the
topic — small cases in the magistrates' city, worn out with fatigue and half-dead
courts, eccentric entertainments at New- from hunger, the agent was found to have
port, the deaths of centenarians, dinners I$ decamped.

to visiting authors in New York, accounts A reporter happened to pick up the

of performing animals, infant prodigies, story, and by mere chance met Pulitzer
new inventions, additions to the Metropol- and induced him to write out in German
itan Museum, announcements of new the tale of his experiences. This account
plays, anecdotes about prominent men and ao created such an impression on the mind of
women, instances of foolish extravagance the editor through whose hands it passed
among the rich, and so on. that Pulitzer was offered, and accepted

with the greatest misgivings, as he sol-
emnly assured us, a position as reporter
25 on the Westliche Post.

On rare occasions he talked of his early The event proved that there had been

days, telling us in a charmingly simple and no grounds for J. P.'s modest doubts,
unaffected manner of the tragic and hu- After he had been some time on the paper
morous episodes with which his youth had things went so badly that two reporters
been crowded. Of the former I recall a 30 had to be got rid of. The editor kept
striking description of a period during Pulitzer on the staff, because he felt that
which he filled two positions in St. Louis, if any one was destined to force him out
one involving eight hours' work during of the editorial chair it was not a young,
the day, the other eight hours during the uneducated foreigner, who could hardly
night. Four of the remaining eight were 35 mumble half a dozen words of English,
devoted to studying English. The editor was mistaken. Within a few

His first connection with journalism years J. P. not only supplanted him, but
arose out of an experience which he re- became half proprietor of that paper,
lated with a wealth of detail which

showed how deeply it had been burned 40 .....

into his memory.

When he first arrived in St. Louis he It was not only in regard to mental ac-

soon found himself at the end of his re- complishments, however, that J. P. pur-
sources and was faced with the absolute sued his plan of educating everybody
impossibility of securing work in that city. 45 around him. He insisted, among other
In company with forty other men he ap- things, that I should learn to ride, not
plied at the office of a general agent who because there was any lack of people who
had advertised for hands to go down the could ride with him, but because by means
Mississippi and take up well-paid posts on of application I could add a new item to
a Louisiana sugar plantation. The agent 50 the list of things I could do. After a
demanded a fee of five dollars from each dozen lessons from a groom I progressed
applicant, and by pooling their resources so far that, having acquired the ability to
the members of this wretched band man- stay more or less in the saddle while the
aged to meet the charge. The same night horse trotted, Mr. Pulitzer frequently took
they were taken on board a steamer which 55 me riding with him.
immediately started down river. At three We always rode three abreast, a groom

o'clock in the morning they were landed on J. P.'s right and myself on his left, and
on the river bank about forty miles below conversation had to be kept uo the whole

138 WRITING OF TODAY

time. This presented no peculiar diffi- I picked up the sheets I was astonished to
culties when the horses were walking, but find that I could hardly see the writing,
when they trotted I found it no easy task let alone read it. I thought it was prob-
to keep ray seat, to preserve the precise ably due to indigestion or to some other
distance from J. P. which saved me from 5 temporary cause and said nothing about it.
touching his stirrup and yet allowed me The next morning on my way downtown
to speak without raising my voice, and to I called in at an oculist's. He examined
leave enough of my mind unoccupied to my eyes and then ordered me to go home
remember my material and to present it and remain in bed in a darkened room for
without betraying the discomfort of my 10 six weeks. At the end of that time he
position. examined me again, told me that I had

During these rides, and especially when ruptured a blood vessel in one of my eyes,
we were walking our horses along a quiet, and ordered me to stop work entirely and
shady stretch of road, J. P. sometimes be- to take six months' rest in California,
came reminiscent. On one of these occa- 15 'That was the beginning of the end.
sions he told me the story of how he lost Whatever my trouble had been at first, it
his sight. As I wrote it down as soon as developed into separation of the retina in
we got back to the house, I can tell it al- both eyes. From the day on which I first
most in his own words. consulted the oculist up to the present

We had been discussing the possibility 20 time, about twenty-four years, I have only
of his writing an autobiography, and he been three times in the World building,
said, throwing his head back and smiling Most people think I 'm dead, or living in
reflectively: Europe in complete retirement. Now go

'Well, I sometimes wish it could be on and give me tfie morning's news. I've
done. It would make an interesting 25 had practically nothing, so you can just
hook ; but I do not think I shall ever do it. run over it briefly, item by item.'
My God ! I work from morning to night
as it is. When would I get the time?' ......

Then, suddenly changing his mood : 'It
won't do any harm for you to make a few 30 n n . iop _e TOTT w_ _11f • trk thp
notes now and then, and some day, per- °n °Tp/ rlLn9n ^ r? Viere was

S^rVo? Tel °U dnVo^b^ 35 ^ea/was eager' to A up the thread of
l8g87; The Worlds been conducting ™^^fSday Mr. Lathan, editor
a vigorous campaign against municipal ofVhcharIestongCoMyn>,, lunched'on the
corruption-* campaign which ended in d M p ,;' had an ani.

the arrest of **™««^}^J™&1 mated discussion about the possibilities of
the votes of aldermen in order to get a 4„ Democratic vict in , had never

^this'poim heTaused. His jaws set, seen I P. in a more genia. mood or
and his expression became stern almost m^fter .pints, ^ excitement

S5TCl a b"n\deartTandT-ande l" <5 of receiving a visitor whose conversation
He took a deep breath and continued as was so stimulating I do not know but on
though he were reciting an experience Friday, October 27 J P. was feeling so
i,;A i,» h^A hosrH rolat«1 of some m"ch out of sorts that he did not appear
which he had heard related ot some ^ ^ 0n Saturday he remained be]ow

Twas, of course, violently attacked, 50 °"lv %™?' Brocklebank who always
and it was a period of terrible strain for kept the closest watch over hi health
me. What with anxiety and overwork I Persuaded him to have a good rest before
began to suffer from insomnia, and that resuming the ordinary routme. J P
soon produced a bad condition of my was anxious to take up some bi sness
nerves One morning I went down to the 55 matters with Henderson but Brocklebank
World and called for the editorials which induced him to give up the idea,
were ready for me to go over. I always At three o clock in he morning of Sun-
read every line of editorial copy. When day, October 29, Brocklebank came to my

C. INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 139

cabin and, without making any explana- pages which have made up the simple,
tion, said: unpretentious record of his days and

'Mr. Pulitzer wishes you to come and years. In contemporary journalism the
read to him.' world has been taught that it must not

I put on a dressing gown, gathered up 5 expect to read, from day to day, the
half a dozen books, and in five minutes I carefully compiled product of the essay-
was sitting by Mr. Pulitzer's bedside. He ist, the studied conclusions of the scholar
was evidently suffering a good deal of and student, the wise ponderings of the
pain, for he turned from side to side and philosopher, or the adroit and convincing
once or twice got out of bed and sat in an 10 arguments of the diplomatist and political
easy chair. leader. And yet a combination of these

I tried several books, but finally settled is sometimes found in just the places
down to read Macaulay's essay on Hallam. where those who sought, carelessly and
I read steadily until about five o'clock, and without expectation, might have believed
J. P. listened attentively, interrupting me 15 they were searching in vain. When
from time to time with a direction to go it is discovered, it is recognized at once as
back and read over a passage. the product of that intensive pressure

About half-past five he began to suffer which is found nowhere outside the edi-
severely, and he sent for the yacht's doc- torial rooms of a daily newspaper. Into
tor, who did what was possible for him. 20 it there must have entered all the skill
At a few minutes after six J. P. said: and erudition of the literary alchemist,
'Now, Mr. Ireland, you 'd better go and the logic of the scholar, the keenness and
get some sleep; we will finish that this adroitness of the trained observer, the
afternoon. Good-by, I 'm much obliged wisdom and foresight, not alone of those
to you. Ask Mr. Schmidt to come to me. 25 who design and plan, but of those who
Go, now, and have a good rest, and for- build and of those who tear down. Such
get all about me/ accomplishments are approached, oc-

I slept till noon. When I came on deck casionally they are achieved. Few, sur-
I found that everything was going on prisingly few, in the somewhat brief his-
much as usual. One of the secretaries 30 tory of American journalism, have stood
was with J. P. ; the others were at work so long in the front rank, have maintained,
over the day's papers. by sheer force of sustained effort, the

At lunch we spoke of J. P. One man position of eminence gained and held
said that he seemed a little worse than by Henry Watterson.
usual ; another that he had seen him much 35 Distinctively, emphatically, and unal-
worse a score of times. terably of the old South, Mr. Watterson

Suddenly the massive door at the for- was for many years a national figure. It
ward end of the saloon opened. I turned is doubtful if those who knew him best
in my seat and saw the towering figure of ever referred to him as a genius. He
the head butler framed in the doorway, 40 was not, and such praise would not be
I faced his impassive glance and received fitting. He was, instead, a product of
the full shock of his calm but incredible that sturdy school, in his case the school
announcement : 'Mr. Pulitzer is dead.' of Americanism, though it may as well be

called the school of circumstance, for it

45 knows no single country or clime. In

XII it he was compelled to learn lessons which,

half appreciated, might have embittered

HENRY WATTERSON and narrowed him. He was, in his

younger days, the champion of a lost
[Christian Scien%yMp°^rs'sio^tmher 2*> ^21- 50 cause. For many years he was a leader

in the ranks of a political party whose

In American journalism there has been, policies some of his closest friends did
perhaps, no more forceful character, in- not care to defend. But he never was an
dividually, than Henry Watterson. Cer- iconoclast. He was a reconstructor, a
tainly there has been none more pictures- 55 builder, but by methods which seemed
que, none who has more indelibly im- sometimes to be peculiarly his own. He
pressed his identifying mark upon his opposed secession, but entered the Con-
work and the scattering, hurriedly-written federate army and rose to the rank of

140 WRITING OF TODAY

major. He was the friend or the implac- radiant green fields of the spring. As
able foe of politicians and statesmen from she rode through the town on an easy
the time of Lincoln, whom he admired gallop she kept waving at passers-by.
and reverenced. No other political She knew every one in town. For a
friendship was sacred to him. He would 5 decade the little figure with the long
follow no partisan leader beyond the limit pig-tail and the red hair ribbon has been
which he himself set, a limit which he familiar on the streets of Emporia, and
seldom if ever had occasion to excuse or she got in the way of speaking to those
to amend. It was this courage and this who nodded at her. She passed the
fearlessness, this unquestioned honesty, 10 Keers, walking the horse, in front of the
which made him feared and respected in Normal Library, and waved at them;
the councils of both the great parties. passed another friend a few hundred feet
His individuality has been stamped upon further on, and waved at her. The horse
more than one national party platform, was walking and as she turned into North
and his invisible mark has as certainly 15 Merchant Street she took off her cow-
been placed upon important papers of boy hat, and the horse swung into a
state and upon many treaties and conven- lope. She passed the Tripletts and waved
tions to which the government to which her cowboy hat at them, still moving
he was always loyal was a party. It gaily north on Merchant Street. A Ga~
has been said that those who find only 20 zette carrier passed— a High School boy
in the daily newspapers a channel for the friend— and she waved at him, with her
things they have to say, write but as on bridle nand; the horse veered quickly,
water. It can hardly be true. Surely plunged into the parking where the low-
the words of Henry Watterson will live, hanging limb faced her, and while she

25 still looked back waving, the blow came.

But she did not fall from the horse; she

XIII slipped off, dazed a bit, staggered and

fell in a faint. She never quite recovered
MARY WHITE consciousness.

30 But she did not fall from the horse,
WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE neither was she riding fast. A year or

[Emporia Gazette, May 16, 1921. By permission.] SO ago she used to go like the wind. But

that habit was broken, and she used
The Associated Press reports carrying the horse to get into the open to get fresh,
the news of Mary White's death declared 35 hard exercise, and to work off a certain
that it came as the result of a fall from surplus energy that welled up in her and
a horse. How she would have hooted at needed a physical outlet. That need had
that ! She never fell from a horse in been in her heart for years. It was
her life. Horses have fallen on her and back of the impulse that kept the daunt-
with her — "I 'm always trying to hold 'em 40 less, little brown-clad figure on the streets
in my lap," she used to say. But she was and country roads of this community and
proud of few things, and one was that built into a strong, muscular body what
she could ride anything that had four had been a frail and sickly frame dur-
legs and hair. Her death resulted not ing the first years of her life. But the
from a fall, but from a blow on the head 45 riding gave her more than a body. It
which fractured her skull, and the blow released a gay and hardy soul. She was
came from the limb of an overhanging the happiest thing in the world. And she
tree on the parking. was happy because she was enlarging

The last hour of her life was typical of her horizon. She came to know all sorts
its happiness. She came home from a 5o and conditions of men ; Charley O'Brien,
day's work at school, topped off by a the traffic cop, was one of her best friends,
hard grind with the copy of the High W. L. Holtz, the Latin teacher, was an-
School Annual, and felt that a ride other. Tom O'Connor, farmer-politi-
would refresh her. She climbed into cian, and Rev. J. H. J. Rice, preacher and
her khakis, chattering to her mother 55 police judge, and Frank Beach, music
about the work she was doing, and hur- master, were her special friends, and all
ried to get her horse and be out on the the girls, black and white, above the track,
dirt roads for the country air and the in Pepville and Stringtown, were among

C. INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 141

her acquaintances. And she brought home Everybody rode with Mary White — white
riotous stories of her adventures. She and black, old and young, rich and poor,
loved to rollick ; persiflage was her natural men and women. She liked nothing
expression at home. Her humor was a better than to fill the car full of long-
continual bubble of joy. She seemed to 5 legged High School boys and an occa-
think in hyperbole and metaphor. She sional girl, and parade the town. She
was mischievous without malice, as full never had a 'date/ nor went to a dance,
of faults as an old shoe. No angel was except once with her brother, Bill, and
Mary White, but an easy girl to live the 'boy proposition' didn't interest her
with, for she never nursed a grouch five I0 — yet. But young people — great spring-
minutes in her life. breaking, varnish-cracking, fender-bend-

With all her eagerness for the out-of- ing, door-sagging carloads of 'kids' gave
doors, she loved books. On her table her great pleasure. Her zests were keen,
when she left her room were a book by But the most fun she ever bad in her
Conrad, one by Galsworthy, Creative *S life was acting as chairman of the com-
Chemistry by E. E. Slosson, and a Kip- mittee that got up the big turkey dinner
ling book. She read Mark Twain, for the poor folks at the county home;
Dickens and Kipling before she was ten — scores of pies, gallons of slaw; jam,
all of their writings. She was entered cakes, preserves, oranges and a wilderness
as a student in Wellesley for 1922; was 20 0f turkey were loaded in the car and
assistant editor of the High School An- taken to the county home. And, he-
rnial this year, and in line for election ing of a practical turn of mind, she
to the editorship of the Annual next risked her own Christmas dinner by stay-
year. She was a member of the exec- ing to see that the poor folks actually got
utive committee of the High School 25 it all. Not that she was a cynic; she just
Y. W. C. A. disliked to tempt folks. While there she

Within the last two years she had be- found a blind colored uncle, very old, who
gun to be moved by an ambition to draw, could do nothing but make rag rugs, and
She began as most children do by scrib- she rustled up from her school friends
bling in her school books, funny pictures. 30 rags enough to keep him busy for a sea-
She bought cartoon magazines and took son. The last engagement she tried to
a course — rather casually, naturally, for make was to take the guests at the county
she was, after all, a child with no strong home out for a car ride. And the last
purposes — and this year she tasted the endeavor of her life was to try to get a
first fruits of success by having her pic- 35 rest room for colored girls in the High
tures accepted by the High School An- School. She found one girl reading in
nual. But the thrill of delight she got the toilet, because there was no better
when Mr. Ecord, of the Normal Annual, place for a colored girl to loaf, and it in-
asked her to do the cartooning for that flamed her sense of injustice and she be-
book this spring, was too beautiful for 40 came a nagging harpy to those who, she
words. She fell to her work with all her thought, could remedy the evil. The poor
enthusiastic heart. Her drawings were she had always with her, and was glad of
accepted, and her pride — always repressed it. She hungered and thirsted for right-
by a lively sense of the ridiculousness eousness; and was the most impious crea-
of the figure she was cutting — was a 45 ture in the world. She joined the Con-
really gorgeous thing to see. No sue- gregational Church without consulting
cessful artist ever drank a deeper draught her parents; not particularly for her
of satisfaction than she took from the soul's good. She never had a thrill of
little fame her work was getting among piety in her life, and would have hooted
her schoolfellows. In her glory, she So at a 'testimony.' But even as a little
almost forgot her horse — but never her child she felt the church was an agency
car. for helping people to more of life's abun-

For she used the car as a jitney bus. dance, and she wanted to help. She never
It was her social life. She never had a wanted help for herself. Clothes meant
'party' in all her nearly seventeen years 55 little to her. It was a fight to get a new
— would n't have one ; but she never drove rig on her ; but eventually a harder fight
a block in the car in her life that she to get it off. She never wore a jewel
did n't begin to fill the car with pick-ups ! and had no ring but her High School class

142 WRITING OF TODAY

———————— — ■

ring, and never asked for anything but

a wrist watch. She refused to have her XIV
hair up; though she was nearly seven-
teen. 'Mother/ she protested, 'you don't A ^pvttttq nT7 Tttt7 QunDT
know how much I get by with, in my 5 A ^WNIUb OF THE SHORT
braided pigtails, that I could not with STORY
my hair up.' Above every other pas-
sion of her life was her passion not to KATHLEEN NORRIS

grow Up, tO be a Child. The tomboy in [Cosmopolitan. September, 1918. By permission,

her, which was big, seemed to loathe tO 10 c°J1yright,1 I9l8» by the International Magazine

be put away forever in skirts. She omi)au>-

was a Peter Pan, who refused to grow up. Whenever I think of Fannie Hurst, I

Her funeral yesterday at the Congrega- think of the word 'genius.' Like every-
tional Church was as she would have body else, I have my own private defi-
wished it : no singing, no flowers save 15 nition of genius. A merely talented per-
the big bunch of red roses from her son is one who adapts his product to his
Brother Bill's Harvard classmen — Hea- market ; he gives the public what the pub-
vens, how proud that would have made nc wants, and is rewarded in a greater or
her ! and the red roses from the Gazette less degree. But the genius can only give
force — in vases at her head and feet. A » one thing, and that is so much a part of
short prayer, Paul's beautiful essay on himself that he cannot give more and will
'Love' from the Thirteenth Chapter of not give less. He offers it, and sometimes
First Corinthians, some remarks about the world is a long time accepting it, and,
her democratic spirit by her friend, John meanwhile, the genius starves, or lives
H. J. Rice, pastor and police judge, which 25 hungry, like Francis Thompson and Giss-
she would have deprecated if she could, mS and Poe. Starving talent is pitiful
a prayer sent down for her by her friend, and commonplace, but starving genius is
Carl Nau, and opening the service the sublime.

slow, poignant movement from Bee- Therefore, it is an extremely rare and

thoven's Moonlight Sonata, which she 3° pleasant thing to meet a genius that the
loved, and closing the service a cutting world has instantly and gratefully made
from the joyously melancholy first move- welcome — I might add that it is an ex-
ment of Tschaikowsky's Pathetic Sym- tremely pleasant thing to meet Fannie
phony, which she liked to hear in certain Hurst under any circumstances. She
moods on the phonograph ; then the Lord's 35 knows nothing of cruel editors and cold
Prayer by her friends in the High School, attics and dwindling pennies and thin
That was all. shoes, and the last words to be mentioned

For her pall-bearers only her friends m connection with her are 'bitterness'
were chosen: her Latin teacher, W. L. and 'starvation.' Among all the writers
Holtz ; her High School principal, Rice 4° in New York she is the exception, not the
Brown : her doctor, Frank Foncannon ; rule> and one studies her case with a sort
her friend, W. W Finney; her pal at of patient and unresentful wonder,
the Gazette office, Walter Hughes; and Where some of us climb, she flies, and
her brother Bill. It would have made where we are pleased occasionally to
her smile to know that her friend, Charley *5 touch the target's outside ring, she calmly
O'Brien, the traffic cop, had been trans- reaches the bull's-eye over and over
ferred from Sixth and Commercial to again. Her work is not like that of any
the corner near the church to direct her one else; it appeared unheralded and un-
friends who came to bid her good-by. known, and yet the actual interval be-
A rift in the clouds in a gray day threw 5o tween her first serious offering to her pub-
a shaft of sunlight upon her coffin as her lie and that public's enthusiastic reception
nervous, energetic little body sank to its of it was but a few months,
last sleep. But the soul of her, the glow- Her own story is quite as surprisingly
ing, gorgeous, fervent soul of her, surely usual as are the stories of many of her
was flaming in eager joy upon some other 55 characters, quite as humanly simple as
dawn. the material she almost always selects.

She never knew the incentive of want;
her childhood in St. Louis was pro-

C. INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 143

tected and prosperous; she was an only wrought copy are destroyed; but she her-
child; life was made very pleasant for self is its only tribunal, and when it leaves
her. When she finished college at home, her hands, she is satisfied that she can do
she was given a year or two in New York no better. Her happiest times, she tells
for post-graduate work, and to try her 5 me, come when the story is finished, and
wings in any fashion that seemed likely when she is pleased with it, before she
to satisfy her ambition. The stage al- gives it to the world. In its publication
ways interested her, and she tells me that and reception she has little interest; she
she wrote stories at ten, and fourteen, and is off again on the newer story that is
eighteen, and was not much encouraged in i0 going to come just a little nearer than its
writing them. predecessors to the garment's hem of True

1 didn't understand it then/ she said Romance. She gives a public of several
joyously — she is among the most joyous millions exactly what she would give a
of human creatures — 'but last year, at public of one, or what she would write for
home, I found some of my old stories, and 15 no public at all. Take it or leave it, it is
then I realized why the family thought it Fannie Hurst.

kinder to discourage me.' At present, she is apparently the only

But I don't believe that. I think that writer in the Union who is not confidently
even in the ten-year-old child's stories planning the Great American Novel. She
there must have been some hint of the ex- 20 loves just what she is doing and finds the
traordinary quality that marks her work medium of the short story the one that
today. At all events, when she came to suits her best. And it is hard to imagine
New York, she began to think of fiction her in any other field than this one which
seriously, and there was no more discour- she has made peculiarly her own. To
agement then. 25 analyze one of her stories is to arrive

That was about five years ago. The nowhere; it is the old mystery of the
first story was written, and the question flower in the crannied wall. Yet there
of placing it arose. Some friend sug- is technique as well as sheer instinct in
gested that she send it to a weekly maga- the way that it is done; the apparently
zine with an enormous circulation. Fan- 30 rambling conversations develop the plot
nie Hurst was also advised to put a price in a series of hammer-strokes, and the
on her story, and she priced it at one sobbing ejaculations, in their aimless
hundred dollars. A check for three hun- repetition, have a perfectly human fash-
dred was sent her instead, and since then ion of wringing the heart,
the popularity of her work and the size 35 There are certain stories among the
of her accruing checks have risen steadily twenty-five or thirty upon which this
together. Wherever writing folk gather, astonishing reputation rests that I never
Fannie Hurst and her work are discussed ; can read with dry eyes. There is some-
she has become a sort of literary Great thing about the hot kitchens, and the
Cham, and nothing is too fabulous to be 40 crowded basement-shops, and the shabby
believed about her. clothes, and the beauty of love and sacri-

Personally, she is extremely good to fice creeping up through the sordidness
look upon, cream-skinned and dark-eyed, that is always new. The angry, loyal love
still in the pleasant zone of the middle of a mother, the protecting sister-love, the
twenties, and interested in everything in 45 weak love of the parasite — sometimes I
the world inclusive. She lives, except think that it is the theme of love running
when she is visiting her home people, in through them all that is their real secret,
a distractingly attractive little apartment Two obscure forms emerge from a dingy
near Central Park, New York City, and doorway or a subway hood, and, lo ! we
has monastery doors, old rugs, steps up So have the strength of weakness and the
and down, Gothic windows, and a scatter- weakness of strength, selfishness turned
brained puppy to amuse her. I gather into beauty and courage, and false joy
that she works hard and slowly, producing stripped of its mask and crumbling into
with much doubt and difficulty the lines black despair.

that read as easily as if one were listening 55 So I use the word 'genius' for Fannie
to the speaker. Every line, every word is Hurst, and for no other writer of short
weighed and tested and changed intermin- stories — unless Mr. Conrad's novelettes
ably, and whole pages of the painfully come into that category — today. Other

144 WRITING OF TODAY

writers follow a certain formula, more or '—I wished to hear you here,' finished
less deliberately concede convention some- the maestro. To turn your voice inside
thing, pattern themselves, perhaps uncon- out and learn in the test of a few trial
sciously, upon Kipling or O. Henry or lessons whether we may substitute for
George Moore. She copies no one. 5 "possibility" a more encouraging word.'

A hundred years from now, when the Rosa's lips parted; her figure, which

children of a democratic world are pa- was femininely tall and in the lithe lines
tiently memorizing the dates of the Great suggestive of strength, seemed to trem-
War, it might be interesting to see what ble.

place Fannie Hurst will hold in American i0 ' "Probability," is that the word you
literature. I rather fancy that she will mean?'

not be in a group even then. She is The maestro inclined his head,

young, and may add riper work to this If this were fiction instead of fact,

first work, may try the novel, after all. the events could not be more colorfully

But even on the strength of those x5 romantic. An American girl renouncing
twenty-five stories, she is entitled to a vaudeville and a bank president's salary to
place of her own. heed the beckoning finger of Mistress

Xy Grand Opera possesses story possibilities.

In fiction there would be at least two
FROM VAUDEVILLE TO OPERA *> available avenues of development. The
IN A YEAR heroine might triumph gloriously over ob-

stacles and the villain, and after the thrill-
PIERRE V. R. KEY ing performance leave the opera house in

[Harper's Bazaar, February, 1919. By permis- ^ taxi with her sweetheart for the Little

sion. Copyright, 1919, by the International Mag- 25 Church Around the Corner. Or — she
azme Company.] might fail ignominiously, perhaps because

She walked into the maestro's studio the singing teacher proved himself (like
with the same insouciance which had been so many happen to be) a charlatan. Then,
the distinguishing characteristic of her en- with her ruined voice, she would retrace
trance upon the Riverside theater stage 3° her way sorrowfully to vaudeville only to
the night before. The maestro noted this discover that art had stripped her former
the instant his gaze rested upon the girl's powers clean of the trickery necessary to
face. Instinctively he felt again the same send into the seventh heaven those patrons
compelling influence that had brought who previously had clung to Rosa as a
him, a dozen hours earlier, into an erect 35 radiant star. Then Miss Ponselle would—
and alert position in his theater seat. or could, in the fancy of the author— stag-

The maestro quitted his chair and ad- ger to her dressing-room a crushed soul,
vanced toward his visitor. Her own Of course her faithful suitor would

frank smile drew the response from the appear presently to tell her it did n't mat-
man who happened to be one of the few 4<> ter. He had continued to love her. Now
understanding the singing voice. that she had failed he was in a transport

The girl's smile was such another as of joy; for they could be married, and
she had given by way of greeting to her with no career-clouds hovering ominously
vaudeville audience ; very like the one she over their little Bronx home happiness su-
later bestowed on them after she had 45 preme would be their lot.
sung her songs and, followed by her sis- But, Rosa Ponselle's case, it turned out

ter, withdrawn into the wings. very differently. Which after all gives

'Boshko advised me to come,' said Rosa us a story, because the truth of it is so
Ponselle simply. 'He said you liked my astonishing. In this instance, particu-
voice.' 5o larly, do we discover substantiation of the

The maestro nodded. statement that truth is stranger than fic-

'He told me the opera was a possibility tion and may be quite as interesting.
— for me. Did you say that?' Just a year ago the episode set forth at

'Such is my judgment/ replied the man. the beginning of this narrative actually
'After hearing you last evening I used 55 happened. The maestro, whose studio is
the word "possibility." That is why — ' in New York City, did hear Rosa Pon-

'Yes,' interrupted the girl. She was selle at a vaudeville performance, where
«\agerly nervous. he dropped in to relax a fatigued mind.

C. INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 145

Miss Ponselle and her sister Carmella it soars aloft. Somehow that was the
were part of that evening's 'bill/ way Carmella Ponzillo's voice behaved

The maestro was impressed with the after she had had a dozen lessons under
potentialities of both sisters. So much the tutelage of this maestro, who knew
that he mentioned his experience the next 5 his business. Rosa, hearing her sister
day to one of his pupils. Observe now practising in their New York home, began
how ordinary a thing may be the finger directly to be restless. She confessed to
of coincidence. This pupil, the 'Boshko' Carmella that she was undergoing a
of whom Rosa spoke, chanced to be living changed opinion about singing teachers —
in the same house that sheltered the Pon- M especially this one.

selle girls, whose family name by the way Then there ensued a suggestion to the

is Ponzillo. In Meriden, Connecticut, maestro that he accept a second pupil
where they were born, the name and the from the Ponzillo family. Somewhat re-
girls are well known. It was in Meriden luctantly the consent was given. The
that they began their careers — in restau- 15 maestro hesitated further, he admits, be-
rants, from which they graduated into cause he recalled Rosa's vocal flourishes
singers of songs in motion-picture the- during her vaudeville act; scales and
aters. tricks that had taken the real Rosa Pon-

Boshko, having heard the sisters more selle's voice from its natural groove, and
frequently than the maestro, was that *> brought about muscular interference in-
much more an ardent admirer. His be- side her throat. The maestro was n't so
liefs confirmed by one whose opinion sure, in his own mind, about the straight-
meant more to him than any other, Boshko ening of Rosa's vocal tangles,
became instantly and uncontrollably en- Of course he eventually yielded to Car-

thusiastic. Being a do-it-now young man, *5 mella's intercession and to Rosa's in-
he not only promised to send Rosa and gradating appeal. She was not easily to
Carmella to the maestro, but fulfilled be resisted; and the maestro's heart had
that promise so quickly after the com- its tender spot,
pletion of his lesson that before the So Rosa commenced her studies,

day's end Rosa had ventured calling upon 30 That was last December,
one of those persons (teachers of sing- In a month's time Rosa began to do

ing), for whom she had always held a things — or her voice did them — that
vague sense of distrust. caused her guide to lift the corners of his

Rosa did not go to the maestro's studio mouth in a way he does when things in his
alone. If she had, this story would not 35 studio proceed as they should. Not long
possess so odd a twist; because, you see, afterward Rosa found herself set at tasks
she would have focused upon herself all resembling the learning of arias from an
the attention, which is the opposite of opera and some of the duets. All this
what occurred during that introductory time Carmella, the mezzo-soprano, had
visit and on subsequent days. Carmella, 40 been keeping step in a singing way with
who went with Rosa, was much more con- her sister. One afternoon the girls' sang
cerned about singing teachers than her several arias each and finished with a duet
younger sister. And the maestro himself from Aida. After they left the maestro
rather fancied the mezzo-soprano voice of rubbed his hands, as a man will while in
Carmella. He held a peculiar notion also 45 the act of washing them,
about teaching two members of one fam- The half dozen experts, friends of the

ily. So for all his encouragement to Rosa teacher, who were invited on a winter
on that day of days the maestro had ears afternoon in 1918 to hear the two 'prom-
chiefly for the older Carmella; and very ising pupils,' went their ways when the
soon afterward she began her studies. 50 singing was over experiencing varied de-

Under right guidance some singing grees of enthusiasm. They were willing
voices which are defective progress very to guess, infer, and surmise that these
fast. As the defects become eradicated, two talents were something far enough
and the true position of each tone becomes above the common run to make a fuss
more nearly what it should be, the voice 55 over. Rosa, having a dramatic soprano
enhances in all the ways a voice should, voice, attracted their attention more par-
It is like releasing a bird that has nearly ticularly for the reason that the true
learned to fly ; with an easy rising motion dramatic soprano nowadays is like

[46 WRITING OF TODAY

the basso profundo — something, if you either of the previous two. This time,
please, that is as easy to find as a seat though, there was no collapse; and the
in a New York subway train during any Metropolitan judges were unanimously
rush hour. agreed. Several days later a ceremony

Besides Rosa happened, among other de- 5 took place that made Rosa Ponselle a
sirable qualities, to have the sort of tern- member of the Metropolitan and gave her
perament that sent shivers of satisfac- a contract; the sort of contract very few
tion racing along the spinal column of singers inexperienced in operatic routine
whomever heard her sing. She played ever have owned.

the piano too; she was an excellent musi- 10 But if by any chance the reader opines
cian and not only learned readily, but she that the worst was over this assumption
never seemed to forget what she once is both previous and erroneous. All last
lodged firmly in her mind. Also Rosa summer, and continuously until two days
had a strong body. She worked faith- before she made her debut as Leonora in
fully and with intelligence, and, once cor- 15 Giuseppe Verdi's La Forza del Dcstino,
rected, a fault in her work seldom made Rosa slaved — 'like a dog/ she will tell
its reappearance. you. It is true that she possesses inherent

Then the spring of 1918 came — and dramatic talent, and in a remarkable de-
Enrico Caruso. gree. Still, making a debut at the Metro-

The greatest singer of them all con- ao politan is an ordeal which has staggered,
sented to hear Rosa Ponselle (she was and will continue to stagger, the greatest
still 'Miss Ponzillo/ the professional and most eminent of singers — no matter
name 'Ponselle' having been chosen some where they come from. And Rosa, one
time later). Caruso's opinion did not dif- should not forget, was as fresh operat-
fer materially from other opinions al- 25 ically as so much paint ; as green in the
ready rendered; it merely carried added ways of the grand opera stage as early
weight because it was Caruso's. His ver- spring grass. Her gifts and vaudeville
diet settled certain matters. experience and nerve were assets that

It must not be presumed that Rosa Pon- swung the balance in the desired direc-
selle was engaged to sing leading roles 30 tion ; these things and an attractive youth-
by the Metropolitan Opera Company ful personality.

management after her first audition last By the time September arrived matters

spring. She sang three times. The ini- were moving in a manner to solidify Mr.
tial hearing was all general manager Gatti's confidence that he had not erred
Giulio Gatti-Casazza could have wished ; 35 in giving an unknown and untried Ameri-
far more than was anticipated by the can girl an almost unheard-of chance —
blase members of the company (conduc- to debut in a dominant role in the revival
tors and star singers), who were invited of an opera and with Enrico Caruso. Mr.
to 'sit in' at the audition. But Mr. Gatti was thus tranquilly cogitating when
Gatti wanted to make no mistake. He 40 there occurred something utterly unfore-
therefore asked to hear Rosa again — to seen or even dreamed of.
be sure that his ears and those of the Out of a clear sky and without warning,
others had not been tricked. Rosa contracted Spanish influenza.

At the second audition Rosa Ponselle, But the girl refused to die; she recov-

being slightly indisposed and laboring un- 45 ered. What worried her maestro, how-
der a mental strain, fainted dead away ever, and Mr. Gatti — and most of all
after the second aria. Carmella rushed Rosa herself — was the tardy return of
from the Metropolitan wings, where she the girl's usual strength. She could not
had been standing in anticipation of just seem to shake off a constant bodily weak-
what occurred, barely in time to catch her 50 ness or a general feeling of listlessness.
sister before she fell in a heap to the Worse and worse, her voice appeared to
stage. have lost its former endurance. It tired

Yet it is common belief, when a singer quickly and did n't stand up under the
succeeds in opera, that to get and stay strain of the extremely difficult music
there is comparatively easy. 55 Verdi wrote for Leonora. Then Mr.

Naturally the thing had to be done all Gatti began to worry, quite privately, and
over again; which meant a third audition, to ask himself repeatedly a question begin-
likely to be more trying upon nerves than ning with the word 'if?

C. INTERVIEWS AND PERSONAL SKETCHES 147

Mid-October brought an improvement The girl opened her mouth and made

in Rosa's physical well-being, and when the tone. But it was not the Rosa Pon-
November had rolled round the soprano selle voice that these two persons heard,
was more nearly her normal self. The They assert stoutly, each of them, that the
days passed, and at length arrived the 5 feeling this tone gave them was as coming
morning that was to tell part of the story, from another person. It sounded like a
the morning of the always-to-be-dreaded tone 'dead' and nothing at all resembling
dress rehearsal. For many artists it is the velvety resonance which she was ac-
more difficult than an actual performance ; customed to giving forth on that note,
all the hard-shell critics of every sort at- zo T swear to you/ said Rosa's maestro in
tend a Metropolitan dress rehearsal — and telling the story, 'that if a knife had cut
one who sings misses the stimulating en- deep into any part of my flesh at that mo-
couragement of that fourth-dimension of ment I would have felt no sensation. I
a performance, an audience. was mummified ! Could such a thing be,'

The writer was among those in the 15 I asked myself, 'that having gone thus far
Metropolitan that morning. He had we were to have seemingly certain victory
heard Rosa Ponselle ten months before, pulled grimly from us?
when she commenced her operatic start; 'Neither of us spoke. We couldn't,

and perhaps eight or ten times thereafter. Rosa just stood there looking at me, her
That morning she surpassed every ex- 20 eyes more eloquent than any words she
pectation. She had only to attain, two could have uttered.

evenings later, seventy per cent, of that 'The tenseness ended in a half a dozen

vocal and dramatic achievement to write seconds, though at the time I seemed to be
high and large her chosen name. Rosa living through agonizing years. I got
and self-possession appeared the only 25 myself together somehow,
things Rosa had to concern herself about, 'Rosa,' I said, 'your voice is not re-

until she should step before her audience. sponsive, but you will sing to-night, and

But on her way home in a taxicab, the you will succeed. You can sing, even in
soprano felt the need of fresh air. She your condition. I have in you supreme
was still warm from the excessive exer- 30 confidence, because of your intelligence,
tion of her rehearsal and its nervous ex- This is your first great obstacle in your
citement. A lowered window, a draught career; you must and you will overcome
of cold air and . . . next morning Rosa's it. I will go get a spray for your throat,
neck was too stiff to permit the turning of and then we will work the voice slowly to
her head ! 35 the point where it will respond. '

The girl breathed with relief when the As for the rest — it is operatic his-

stiffness yielded to treatment ; and on Fri- tory. Rosa Ponselle did in the Metropol-
day evening, November twentieth, at six itan Opera performance of La Forza del
o'clock Rosa Ponselle reached her dress- Destino that night what no other debu-
ing room on the north side of the Metro- 40 tante ever did before in that famous in-
politan Opera House stage. The supreme stitution. Not in many years has any dis-
moment was near; she was confusedly tinguished artist of ripe experience sur-
jubilant and restrained. There remained passed, and few have approached, the
nothing to be done, preparatory to don- achievement of this twenty-two-year-old
ning her first-act costume and making up, 45 American girl. She has been the subject
other than to warm the voice into proper 0f opera veterans' discussion ever since,
elasticity — the voice which the singer They pronounce her, with but little dis-
had not attempted to use since the dress sent, a marvel— a singer with potentiali-
rehearsal. ties which should make her in a compara-

Rosa's maestro was with her. Out- 5o tively short time one of the greatest sing-
wardly he was smilingly confident. He ers of her time.

sat down at the piano in the soprano's Which is n't such an unfiction-like end-

room, sounded a chord, and indicated that ing, even though it happens to be pure
his star pupil should begin her first gentle fact,
exercise. 55

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 Committeejm 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. . . . Tne
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 composed
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.

Williams, at Columbia University. Here

j is an outline of what might be said, among

other things, on this subject:

THE EDITORIAL WRITER'S Writing for a newspaper is merely talk-

OPPORTUNITY 5 inS wholesale. Instead of talking to one

man, or a hundred at one time, we talk
[ARTHUR BRISBANE] through newspapers to five millions or

more.
w^b/wmIX!?9 Jownait Novcmbcr «* The editorial writer's opportunity is the

10 opportunity to say something.
We have been asked to express an It is the greatest and most generally

opinion as to ' the opportunity ' of the edi- neglected opportunity in the world,
torial writer, for the benefit of young men Young men who intend to write editorials
3tudying journalism under Dr. Talcott might learn bv heart Boileau's lines

148

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 149

'Ma pensee au grand jour partout s'offre et slow moving hour-hand. But it does not

s'expose. , . exaggerate, considering the needs of the

'Et mon vers, bien ou mal, dit toujours individual reader.

quelque chose. por jf tne newspaper is the second-hand

_, . , , ,, , , ,. ,. . .-. 5 'in the clock of history/ the individual

Particularly the last line, which means: .g the second_hand in fte clock of hu_

'My verse, good or bad, always says some- ^^ The .nation is the minute-hand,
thing/ and the race is the hour-hand.

The journalistic second-hand in its

The editorial writer's opportunity is the 10 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 15 things :
bad/ it is highly important to the country. Teach,

Among other things, the newspaper's Attack,

editorial column takes the place of the Defend,

public square at Athens, where one man Praise,

could talk to all the citizens. 20 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 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. 25 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 fool- neglected by editorial writers,
ish misunderstanding of newspaper work, Praise also is neglected, except in a

may be found in one short quotation from partizan sense without meaning.
Schopenhauer's essay, 'Some Forms of 30 The newspaper is not as Schopenhauer
Literature': says, 'a shadow on the wall/ although

. ■ , many a newspaper is a mere shadow of

The newspaper is the second-hand in the what a newspaper should be.
clock of history; and it is not only made of A r "• mirror r^fWrina- rr.f>

baser metal than those which point to the A newspaper is a mirror reflecting the

minute and the hour, but it seldom goes right 35 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 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 40 individual more or less accurately,
the object of Journalism is to make events *o Some mirrors and some newspapers are

as far as possible. Thus it is that all jour- nrPcervPfi ao ir.reresrir.P- nld r^lir* al
nalists are, in the very nature of their call- PreSer,V *! interesting old relics, al-

ing, alarmists; and this is their way of giv- ^ough they have ceased to reflect any-
ing interest to what they write. Herein they thing.

are like little dogs— if anything stirs they 45 And some newspapers startle the unac-
immediately set up a shrill bark. customed public with the accuracy of the

Therefore, let us carefully regulate the at- reflection shown, and the public takes
tention to be paid to this trumpet of danger, time to get used to it
so that it may not disturb our digestion The newSpaper does about what the

bul "aS riu'f y^in^Vas^Tur^ery ato^n * P«"Kc does ; it is the public, not the news-

merely a shadow on the wall. PaPer> thatf sets the Pace- . ,

If you have every newspaper in 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 55 playing baseball and accomplishing noth-
importance, otherwise the seconds could ing useful in a 'championship series,' you
not be counted. may be sure that the public is con-

It exaggerates, in comparison with the centrated on that game.

150 WRITING OF TODAY

If you have newspapers devoting space He was more successful than the re-

to the secret, pre-arranged murder of a spectable clergymen, because he deserved
gambler by other gamblers instigated by to be more successful !
a police officer, you may know that the First have something to say. Then say

public's mind is concentrated on that 5 it so that people will see it, read it, under-
crime and not on the proceedings of some stand it, and believe it.
scientific convention. Those are the four things; the reader

The opportunity for the editorial writer must see, he must read, he must under-
is the greatest opportunity that exists. stand, he must believe.
For men have developed as men only w If you want to write an editorial de-
since language gave to the individual the fending Moses against the attack of
power to transfer his thought complete to Rabbi Hirsch, who denounces some of
the brain of another. Moses's teachings, you can put almost

The power to transfer your thought any kind of a heading on your editorial,
and make it effective is the greatest 15 If you head it 'Analysis of the Dietetic
power, excepting the exceptional power Teachings of the Ancients,' 90 per cent,
to discover new scientific truth. of those that 'see' the heading won't

It is possible for the editorial writer read,
now to talk to at least five millions every You can write the same editorial, head
day. That actually happens. 20 it, 'Be Kind to Poor Moses, He Had No

With our newspaper machinery as it Icebox,' and 90 per cent, of those that see
exists it will be possible to talk to the will read,
entire reading public every day. No

power can be greater than that. The ed- II

itorial writer's power is the power of sug- *5

gestion and the power of repetition— very THE LU SIT AN I A ANNI-

great forces. VERSARY

The opportunity of the editorial writer
is wasted usually It is true that nearly [FRANK H. SIMONDS]

always the so-called leading article or 30

editorial 'is the chorus tO the drama of {New York Tribune, May 7, 1916. By permis-

naQQino- pvptiR ' Rut that is not alwavs sion- For this editorial the Trustees of Columbia
passing events. I3Ut mat IS nor. dlWdyb University on the reCommendatiori of the Advisory

true and It Will be true leSS and leSS as Board of the School of Journalism awarded in

the newspapers and newspaper readers 1917 the prize of $500, established by the win

,. t • 1 , j i. «i. of the late Joseph Pulitzer for the best editorial

realize their duty and Opportunity. 35 article written during the previous year, 'the test

The newspapers are like the Churches. of excellence being clearness of style, moral pur-

rr., • 4.1 4.~ui~ *~^~~U pose, sound reasoning and power to influence public

There are eminently respectable preach- opinion in the right direction.']

ers that say nothing and less numerous , .

preachers that say something. On the anniversary of the sinking of

In the days of slavery the Episcopal 40 the Lusitania it is natural and fitting that
Church in New Jersey rejected a picture Americans should review all that has
offered as a frontispiece for a prayer happened since a wanton murder first
book, because it showed kneeling at the brought to this side of the Atlantic a
feet of Christ, with the widow and the nascent realization of the issue that was
orphan, a black slave in chains. The 4S being decided on a world battlefield,
good religious gentlemen said that such There will be no anger and no pas-

a picture might be misconstrued as an sion in American minds. We have never
attack on slavery and stir up hard feeling, asked, never desired, that the slaughter
Those good gentlemen were 'the con- should be avenged. No portion of the
servative press' of their church. 50 American people or of the American press

At about the same time Henry Ward has clamored for vengeance, no man or
Beecher, in his church in Brooklyn, put political party has demanded that there
up a runaway slave girl in the pulpit and should be German lives taken because
sold her at public auction, the proceeds to American lives had been ended,
be devoted to the work of freeing the 55 It is not too difficult to reconstitute our
slaves. own minds as we stood in the presence of

He was the *ye^ow journalist' of the that supreme atrocity. The horror that
church. seized a whole nation in that moment has

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 151

no counterpart in our history. We have common humanity. The Germans who
known war, we have fought Great Britain slew our women and our children flung us
twice, we have fought Spain and Mexico ; back the challenge that they and not we
within our own boundaries we have con- possessed the true civilization, and that
ducted the most desperate civil war in 5 their civilization, their Kultur, was ex-
human history. pressed in their works, which were alto-

But it was not the emotion provoked by gether good and right,
war or the acts of war which moved Slowly, steadily, we have been learn-

Americans. It was not even the emo- ing. We still have much to learn, but the
tion stirred by the sinking of the Maine w primary truth is coming home to many
nearly two decades ago. It was certainly day by day. This German phenomenon
something utterly remote from the feel- which fills the world is a new thing and
ings of our fathers and grandfathers on an old thing; it is new in our generation,
the morrow of the firing on Fort Sumter. it is new in recent centuries; but it is as

The Lusitania Massacre was not an act 15 old as that other barbarism which, de-
of war. The victims were not soldiers, scending upon the Roman civilization,
only a portion of them were men. Es- beat upon it and spread destruction until
sentially the thing was a new phenomenon it was conquered and tamed amidst the
to the American people. It was at first ruins and the desert it had created,
incomprehensible, unbelievable. Despite 30 The French, who see things as they are,
the solid and inescapable evidences of have beheld and appraised the German
death, men's intelligence doubted what phenomenon justly. The British, like
their senses told them. ourselves, have partially and temporarily

So for days and weeks the American failed to understand the nature of the
people stood doubtful and puzzled. They 25 German assault. We have insisted upon
waited for that evidence they expected, applying to the German mind our own
they believed would come; that there had standards and upon believing that the
been an accident, a mistake, the blunder Germans thought as we thought, believed
of a subordinate which would be repudi- as we believed, but were temporarily and
ated by a government, the crime of a 30 terribly betrayed by a military spirit and
navy which would be disavowed by a by dynastic madness.

people. But instead far borne across the Nothing is less true, nothing more fatal

seas they heard the songs of triumph of to a just appreciation of the essential
thousands of German men and women, fact in the world in which we live,
who hailed the crime as a victory, the 35 These things which we name crimes are
eternal disgrace as an everlasting honor. neither accidents nor excesses; they are

Day by day, week by week, we Ameri- not regretted or condemned by a major-
cans have since then been learning what ity or even a minority of the German
Europe has known for nearly two years, people. They are accepted by Kaiser and
We have been learning that we are not in 40 peasant ; they are practised by Crown
the presence of a war between nations, a Prince and private soldier; they are a
conflict between rival powers; that we are portion of what Germany holds to be her
not the agonized witnesses of one more right and her mission,
conflagration provoked by conflicting am- The Lusitania Massacre should have
bitions of hereditary enemies. We have 45 been a final illumination for us. Blazing
been learning that what is going forward up as it did, it should have revealed to us
remorselessly, steadily, is a war between the ashes of Belgium and the ruins of
civilization and barbarism, between hu- Northern France. We should have seen
manity and savagery; between the light in our slain women and children the sis-
of modern times and the darkness of the 50 ters and fellows in misfortune of those
years that followed the collapse of Rome, who died more shamefully in Louvain and

Time and again Americans have been a score more of Belgian cities. We
murdered, time and again our govern- should have seen the German idea work-
ment, our people, have had recourse to ing here as there and revealing in each
the ordinary machinery and the ordinary 55 incident the same handiwork, the same
conceptions of civilized life. But each detail. All these things were similar as
time we have beheld the utter collapse of the different impressions left by a. single
every appeal based upon reason, justice, stamp.

152 WRITING OF TODAY

We did not see. We have not yet as a the broad daylight by German naval of-
nation, or as a people, perceived that the fleers and men whose countrymen hailed
German phenomenon is an attack upon the killing as the supreme evidence of
civilization by barbarism, a barbarism German courage, manhood, and Kultur.
which combines the science of the labora- 5 But as we view the thing without pas-
tory with the savagery of the jungle, but sion we must see it without illusion. If
a barbarism because it denies all those the German idea prevails, all that we be-
doctrines and principles which have been lieve in government, in humanity, in the
accepted after long years as the proof of thing we call civilization, is doomed. If
human progress and the glory of man- xo Germany succeeds in this war then it is
kind's advance. not again time, as Pitt said after Auster-

In France the people will show you the litz, 'To roll up the map of Europe,' but
atrocities of Germany committed not it is time to burn our ancient parchments
upon human beings, but upon inanimate and dismiss our hard won faith. All that
things, the destruction of the village f5 there is in the German idea was expressed
church and the Rheims Cathedral, of the in the Lusitania Massacre, it was ex-
little thing of beauty quite as well as the pressed in the killing of women and chil-
larger and more famous thing, with far dren, innocent of all offense, entitled to
more emphasis than they will recount the all protection as helpless, unoffending, as
horrors suffered by women and children. » the children of a race not at war, at least
In the assault upon things beautiful be- entitled to immunity which hitherto was
cause they are beautiful, an assault pro- reckoned the right of women and chil-
voked neither by lust nor by passion, they dren, neutral or belligerent,
recognize the revelation of that which is The war that is being fought in Europe

essential barbarism. 25 is a war for civilization. The battle of

For us the Lusitania Massacre was a Great Britain, of France, of Russia, is
beginning. It was only a beginning, but our battle. If it is lost, we are lost. If
it was not possible then, it is hardly it is lost, we shall return to the standards
possible now, for men and women, living and the faiths of other centuries. The
in peace, under the protection of laws 30 truth of this is written for us in the Lusi-
framed to protect human liberty and hu- tania, it is written in the wreck of Bel-
man rights, living in the full sunlight of gium and the desert of Northern France
this Twentieth Century, to believe that for those who may see. Where the Ger-
suddenly there has broken out from the man has gone he has carried physical
depths the frightful and the all-destroying 35 death, but he has done more, he has car-
spirit of eras long forgotten. ried spiritual death to all that is essential

We have been learning — we must con- in our own democratic faith, which de-
tinue to learn. The road of suffering and rives from that of Britain and France,
humiliation is still long. But the Lusi- This war in Europe is going on until

tania was a landmark and it will endure 40 the German idea is crushed or conquers,
in American history. Our children and The world cannot now exist half civilized
our children's children recalling this an- and half German. Only one of two con-
niversary will think of it as did the Ro- ceptions of life, of humanity, can subsist,
mans over long generations, after the first One of the conceptions was written in the
inroads of the barbarians had reached 45 Lusitania Massacre, written clear beyond
their walls. all mistaking. It is this writing that we

Today is not a day for anger or pas- should study on this anniversary; it is this
sion. It is not in anger or in passion fact that we should grasp today, not in
that civilized men go forth to deal with anger, not in any spirit that clamors for
wild animals, to abolish the peril which 50 vengeance, but as the citizens of a nation
comes from the jungle or out of the dark- which has inherited noble ideals and gal-
ness. We do not hate Germans and we lant traditions, which has inherited liberty
shall not hate Germans because on this and light from those who died to serve
day a year ago American men, women them, and now stands face to face with
and children were slain wilfully, wan- 55 that which seeks to extinguish both
tonly, to serve a German end, slain with- throughout the world
out regard to sex or condition, slain in

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 153

divine and bids the world to worship, or

III die-

From the beginning the issue was not

VAE VICTISf ^ess ours t^lan °^ ^e countr*es fifSt en~

5 gaged. Each may have had ends of its

xjt7mt?v wattt7T?qhm own to serve. Nor were these ends pre-

LLUJNJKY WAillLKiUIN dsdy aHke At ^^ France_tQ ^hom

[Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky, April 7, we Owe all that we have of sovereignty
1917. By permission For this and another edi- an(J freedom — and Belgium, the little
torial, 'War Has Its Compensations, published in „ . , - ,T . r °, / . .
the same paper, April 10, the Pulitzer Prize for the 10 David of Nations— fought tO resist in-
best editorial article written during the year was vasion, wanton, Cruel invasion I to avert
awarded in 1918 by the Columbia Trustees, under _invprv Mv™ nitifeea cIsvpi-v Vpf
the same conditions as are indicated at the head Slavery, Savage, _ pitiless Slavery. Y et,

of the preceding selection.] whatever the animating purpose — what-

'Rally round the flag, boys'— Uncle Sam's ever the selfish interests of England and

Battle song; *5 Russia and Italy — the Kaiser scheme of

'Sound the bold anthem! War dogs are world conquest justified it.

howling; In us it sanctifies it. Why should any

Proud bird of Liberty screams through the American split hairs over the European

•**» rights and wrongs involved when he sees

— The Hunters of Kentucky. 20 before him gHm and ghastly the mailed

It is with solemnity, and a touch of sad- figure of Absolutism with hand uplifted
ness, that we write the familiar words of to strike Columbia where these three
the old refrain beneath the invocation to years she has stood pleading for justice,
the starry banner, the breezy call of hero- peace, and mercy? God of the free
breeding bombast quite gone out of them ; 25 heart's hope and home forbid !
the glad shout of battle; the clarion note Each of these three years the German

of defiance ; because to us, not as to Nick Kaiser was making war upon us. He was
of the Woods, and his homely co-mates of making war secretly, through his emis-
the forest, but rather as to the men of '6i, saries in destruction of our industries, se-
comes this present call to arms. 30 cretly through his diplomats plotting not

We may feel with the woman's heart merely foreign but civil war against us,
of Rankin of Montana, yet repudiate with and, as we now know, seeking to foment
manly disdain the sentimental scruples of servile and racial insurrection; then
Kitchin of North Carolina. openly upon the high seas levying murder

There are times when feeling must be 35 upon our people and visiting all our rights
sent to the rear; when duty must toe the and claims with scorn and insult — with
line; when the aversion brave men have scorn and insult unspeakable — at this
for fighting must yield to the adjuration, moment pretending to flout us with igno-
'Give me liberty, or give me death !' miny and contempt. Where would the
That time is now upon us. 40 honest passivist draw the line?

Unless Patrick Henry was wrong — Surely the time has arrived — many of

unless Washington and the men of the us think it was long since overdue — for
Revolution were wrong, that time is upon calling the braves to the colors. Nations
us. It is a lie to pretend that the world must e'en take stock on occasion and
is better than it was ; that men are truer, 45 manhood come to a showdown. It is but
wiser; that war is escapable; that peace a truism to say so.

may be had for the planning and the ask- Fifty years the country has enjoyed sur-

ing. The situation which without any passing prosperity. This has over-com-
act of ours rises before us is as exigent mercialized the character and habits of
as that which rose before the Colonists 50 the people. Twenty-five years the gospel
in America when a mad English King, of passivism, with 'business is business'
claiming to rule without accountability, for its text, has not only been preached —
asserted the right of Kings and sent an indiscriminately — oracularly — without let
army to enforce it. A mad German or hindrance, but has been richly financed
Emperor, claiming partnership with God, 55 and potentially organized. It has estab-
again elevates the standard of right lished a party. It has made a cult, jus-

154 WRITING OF TODAY

tifying itself in a fad it has called Hu-
manity— in many ways a most spurious

humanity — and has set this above and IV

against patriotic inclination and duty.

Like a bolt out of the blue flashed the 5 LAW AND THE JUNGLE

war signal from the very heart of Eu-
rope. Across the Atlantic its reverbera- H. E. NEWBRANCH
tions rolled to find us divided, neutral, and

Unprepared. For fifteen years a body of tEvening World-Herald Omaha, Neb., September

^ r ^ . . ,. r . .^. 30, 1919- Awarded Pulitzer Prize for the year

German reservists disguised as Citizens 10 as above. By permission of author and publisher.]

have been marching and counter-march-
ing. They grew at length bold enough to There is the rule of the jungle in this
rally to the support of a pan-German world, and there is the rule of law.
scheme of conquest and a pro-German Under jungle rule no man's life is

propaganda of 'kultur,' basing its ef- 15 safe, no man's wife, no man's mother,
frontery in the German-American vote, sister, children, home, liberty, rights,
which began its agitation by threatening property. Under the rule of law protec-
us with civil war if we dared to go to tion is provided for all these, and pro-
war with Germany. There followed the vided in proportion as law is efficiently
assassin sea monsters and the airship 20 and honestly administered and its power
campaign of murder. and authority respected and obeyed.

All the while we looked on with either Omaha Sunday was disgraced and

simpering idiocy or dazed apathy, humiliated by a monstrous object lesson
Serbia? It was no affair of ours.. Bel- of what jungle rule means. The lack of
gium ? Why should we worry ? Food- 25 efficient government in Omaha, the lack
stuffs soaring — war stuffs roaring — ev- of governmental foresight and sagacity
erybody making money — the mercenary, and energy, made the exhibition possible,
the poor of heart, the mean of spirit, the It was provided by a few hundred hood-
bleak and barren of soul, could still plead lums, most of them mere boys, organized
the Hypocrisy of Uplift and chortle : 'I 3° as the wolf-pack is organized, inflamed
did not raise my boy to be a soldier.' by the spirit of anarchy and license, of
Even the Lusitania did not awaken us to plunder and destruction. Ten thou-
a sense of danger and arouse us from the sand or more good citizens, with-
stupefaction of ignorant and ignoble self- out leadership, without organization,
complacency. 35 without public authority that had made an

First of all on bended knee we should effort to organize them for the anticipated
pray God to forgive us. Then erect as emergency, were obliged to stand as on-
men, Christian men, soldierly men, to the lookers, shamed in their hearts, and
flag and the fray — wherever they lead witness the hideous orgy of lawlessness,
us — over the ocean — through France to 4° Some of them, to their blighting shame
Flanders — across the Low Countries to be it said, respectable men with women
Koln, Bonn and Koblenz — tumbling the and children in their homes, let them-
fortress of Ehrenbreitstein into the Rhine selves be swept away by the mob spirit,
as we pass and damming the mouth of the They encouraged if tfiey did not aid the
Moselle with the debris of the ruin we 45 wolf-pack that was conspiring to put
make of it — then on, on to Berlin, the down the rule of law in Omaha — that rule
Black Horse Cavalry sweeping the Wil- which is the sole protection for every
helmstrasse like lava down the mountain man's home and family,
side, the Junker and the saber rattler fly- It is over now, thank God !

ing before us, the tunes being 'Dixie' and 50 Omaha henceforth will be as safe for
'Yankee Doodle,' the cry being 'Hail the its citizens, and as safe for the visitors
French Republic — Hail the Republic of within its gates, as any city in the land.
Russia — welcome the Commonwealth of Its respectable and law-abiding people,
the Vaterland — no peace with the Kaiser comprising 99 per cent, of the population,
— no parley with Autocracy, Absolutism SS will see to that. They have already taken
and the divine right of Kings — to the steps to see to it. The first step was
Hell with the Hapsburg and Hohenzol- taken when the rioting was at its height
lern.' —taken belatedly, it is true, because they

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 155

had placed reliance on the public author- ing his duty as chief magistrate in resist-
ities to safeguard the order and good ing the wolf-pack.

name of Omaha. The blistering disgrace It would be impossible to speak too

of the riot has aroused them. There strongly in condemnation of the rioters
will be no more faltering, no more feck- 5 or in the uncompromising demand for
lessness, no more procrastination, no their stern and swift punishment, who-
longer the lack of a firm hand. The ever they be, wherever they can be
military aid that has been called in is only found. They not only foully murdered
temporary. It serves to insure public a negro they believed to be guilty. They
order and public safety for the day, for 10 brutally maltreated and attempted to raur-
the week. But the strengthening of the der other negroes whom they knew to be
police force of the city, its efficient or- innocent. They tried to lynch the mayor,
ganization under wise and competent They wantonly pillaged stores and
leadership, is a policy that public senti- destroyed property. They burned the
ment has inaugurated and that it will *5 court house. In the sheer spirit of an-
sternly enforce. As to that there will be archy they pulled valuable records from
neither equivocation nor delay. Nor will their steel filing cases, saturated them
there be any hesitancy or laxness in the in gasoline, and burned them. They
organization, and rigid use if need be burned police conveyances and cut the fire
of civic guards to keep the streets and 20 hose, inviting destruction by fire of the
homes and public places of Omaha se- entire city. Their actions were wholly
cure. vile, wholly evil, and malignantly dan-

The citizenship of Omaha will be anx- gerous. There is not a one of them, who
ious that the outside world should know can be apprehended, and whose guilt can
what it was that happened and why it 25 be proved, but should be sent for a long
happened. Let there be no mistaking the term to the state prison. And toward
plain facts. The trouble is over now. that end every effort of every good citizen
It was a flare-up that died as quickly as as well as every effort of the public au-
it was born. Omaha is today the same thorities, from the humblest policeman to
safe and orderly city it has always been. 30 the presiding judge on the bench, must
It * will be safer, indeed, hereafter, and be directed. There can be no sentimen-
more orderly, because of the lesson it has talizing, no fearful hesitancy, no condon-
so dearly learned. And the flare-up was ing the offense of these red-handed crim-
the work — let this fact be emphasized — inals. The pitiful bluff they have
of a few hundred rioters, some of them 35 put up against the majesty of the law,
incited by an outrageous deed, others of against the inviolability of American
them skulkers in the anarchistic under- institutions, must be called and called
brush who urged them on for their own fearlessly.

foul purposes of destroying property and To the law-abiding negroes of Omaha,

paralyzing the arm of the law. If the 40 who like the law-abiding whites are the
miserable negro, Brown, had been re- vast majority of their race, it is timely
moved from Omaha in time, as he should to speak a word of caution as well as a
have been; if, failing to remove him, the word of sympathy and support. Any
public authorities had taken vigorous effort on the part of any of them to take
measures to prevent the congregation and 45 the law into their own hands would be as
inflaming of the mob, the riot would never culpable and as certainly disastrous as
have occurred. An organized and in- was the effort of the mob. In the
telligently directed effort in advance running down and maltreating of un-
would have preserved the good name of offending men of their color, merely be-
Omaha untarnished. It would have pre- So cause they were of that color, they have
vented the lynching. It would have saved been done odious wrong. They nat-
our splendid new court house from being urally and properly resent it. They nat-
offered up in flames, its defense with the urally and properly resent having been
mob-victim in it, a costly sacrifice on the confined to their homes, in trembling fear
altar of law and order. There would 55 of their lives, while red riot ran the
have been no thought, even, of the streets of the city. But their duty as
amazing attempt to lynch the mayor of good citizens is precisely the same as that
Omaha, bravely and honorably discharg- of the rest of us, all of whom have been

156 WRITING OF TODAY

outraged and shamed as citizens. It is

to look to the law for their protection, V

for their vindication, and to give the law

every possible support as it moves in its MY IDEAL OF THE TRUE

course. The law is their only shield, as 5 UNIVERSITY

it is the only shield of every white man,

no matter how lowly or how great And WOODROW WILSON

it is the duty of all, whites and blacks

alike, tO Uphold especially the might of [Delineator, November, 1909. By permission of

the law — to insist, if need be, on its full 10 author and publisher.]

exercise— in protecting every colored The word <university' means, in our

citizen of Omaha in his lawful and con- modern usage> SQ many different things
stitutional rights. ( that aimost every time one employs it it

For the first time in many years-and seems necessary to define it. Nowhere
for the last time let us hope for many l5 has it so meanings as in America,

years to come-Omaha has had an ex- where institutions of all kinds display it
penence with lawlessness. We have seen in the titles th bestow themselves,

what it is We have seen how it works School coU and universit are readily
We have felt, however briefly, the fetid e h distinguishable, in fact, by those
breath of anarchy on our cheeks We 20 who take the ins t0 look int0 the s
have experienced the cold chill of fear and methods of their teachings; but they
which it arouses. We have seen, as m are ite indistinguishable, oftentimes, in
a nightmare its awful possibilities We name Th are as Hkd as not all t0
have learned how frail is the barrier Dear tne san^e t-tje

which divides civilization from the primal 25 But practice is always the best definer;
jungle— and we have been given to see and practiCe is slowly working out for us
clearly what that barrier is. in America a sufficiently definite idea of

It is the Law ! It is the might of the what a university is. It is not the same
Law, wisely and fearlessly administered! idea that has been worked out in England
It is the respect for and obedience to the 30 or Germany or France. American uni-
Law on the part of the members of versities will probably, when worked out
s0^ty , r r •, **n to the logical fulfilment of their natural

When these fail us all things fail. When development, show a type distinct from all
these are lost all will be lost. Should the others. They will be distinctive of what
day ever come when the rule that was in 35 America has thought out and done in the
Omaha Sunday night became the domin- field of higher education. Those which
ant rule, the grasses of the jungle would are aiready far advanced in their develop-
overspread our civilization, its wild den- ment even now exhibit an individual and
izens, human and brute, would make their characteristic organization,
foul feast on the rums, and the God who 40 The American university as we now see
rules over us would turn His face in {t consists of man parts. At its heart
sorrow from a world given over to bes- stands the college> the school of general

tial!rty' it e o j • 1 . • 1 training. Above and around the college

May the lesson of Sunday night sink stand the graduate and technical schools,
deep ! May we take home to our hearts, 45 fa which ial studies are prosecuted and
there to be cherished and never for a preparation is iven for particuiar pr0-
moment forgotten, the words of the feSsions and occupations. Technical and
revered Lincoln: professional schools are not a necessary

'Let reverence of the law be breathed part of a university, but they are gener-
by every mother to the lisping babe that 5<> ally benefited by close association with a
prattles on her lap; let it be taught in university; and the university itself is un-
schools, seminaries and colleges ; let it mistakably benefited and quickened by the
be written in primers, spelling books and transmission of its energy into them and
almanacs; let it be preached from pulpits the reaction of their standards and ob-
and proclaimed in legislative halls and 55 jects upon it. As a rule the larger urn-
enforced in courts of justice ; let it become versities of the countries have law
l\ie political religion of the nation." schools, divinity schools and medical

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 157

schools under their care and direction; 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 wide
ural part of their work. Schools of me- range of powers, a quick and easy varia-
chanical, electrical and civil engineering 5 tion of careers, men excelling in busi-
have of late years become as numerous nesses for which they never had any
and as necessary as the schools which special preparation— these are among the
prepare for the older professions, and most characteristic marks of American
they have naturally in most cases grown life, its elasticity and variety, the rapid
up in connection with universities because 10 shifting of parts, the serviceability of the
their processes are the processes of sci- same men for many different things,
ence, and the modern university is, among and the quick intelligence of men of
other things, a school of pure science, many different kinds in the common under-
with laboratories and teachers indispen- takings of politics and in public affairs of
sable to the engineer. But the spirit of 15 all kinds. If the American college were
technical schools has not always been the to become a vocational school, prepar-
spirit of learning. They have often been ing only for particular callings, it would
intensely and very frankly utilitarian, and be thoroughly un-American. It would
pure science has looked at them askance. be serving special, not general, needs,
They are proper parts of a university 20 and seeking to create a country of spe-
only when pure science is of the essence cialized men without versatility or general
of their teaching, the spirit of pure sci- capacity.

ence the spirit of all their studies. It is The college of the ideal American uni-

only of recent years we have seen thought- versity, therefore, is a place intended for
ful engineers coming to recognize this 25 general intellectual discipline and enlight-
fact, preach this change of spirit ; it is enment ; and not for intellectual discipline
only of recent years, therefore, that tech- and enlightenment only, but also for moral
nical schools have begun to be thoroughly and spiritual discipline and enlightenment,
and truly assimilated into the univeristy America is great, not by reason of her
organization. 3° skill, but by reason of her spirit — her

There is an ideal of everything Ameri- spirit of general serviceableness and in-
can, and the ideal at ttie 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
thorough introduction of the student to 35 we do not, they may forget their own
the life of America and of the modern true function, which is to supply America
world, the completion of the task under- and the professions with enlightened men.
taken by the grammar and high schools I have described the university as a

of equipping him for the full duties of place with a college at its heart, but with
citizenship. It is with that idea that I 40 graduate schools and professional schools
have said that the college stands at the standing about and around the college,
heart of the American university. The The difficulty about thus associating teach-
college stands for liberal training. Its ing of different kinds, is that the spirit
object is discipline and enlightenment, of the graduate and professional schools
The average thoughtful American does 45 should not be the same spirit as that of
not want his son narrowed in all his gifts the college, and that there are certain
and thinking to a particular occupation, dangers of infection to which the college
He wishes him to be made free of the and schools of advanced and professional
world in which men think about and un- study are both alike exposed by the asso-
derstand many things, and to know and to 5° ciation. Look, first, at the danger to the
handle himself in it. He desires a train- college. It is in danger of getting the
ing for him that will give him a con- point of view of the graduate and profes-
siderable degree of elasticity and adapt- sional schools, the point of view of those
ability, and fit him to turn in any direction who prosecute study very intensively
he chooses. 55 along special lines. Their object, if they

For men do not live in ruts in Amer- be thorough, is technical scholarship,
ica. They do not always or of necessity That should not be the object of the col-
follow the callings their fathers followed lege. Its studies, as America has con-

158 WRITING OF TODAY

ceived the college (and I am sure she themselves. The college should be a place
has conceived it rightly), are not prose- 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- 5 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 xo 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 15 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- 20 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 25 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- 30 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
introduced to them only by sample. He get to the bottom of what you are trying
can be, and should be, given a thorough 35 to do.

grounding in mathematics, in his own The ideal college, therefore, should be
language and in some language not his a community, a place of close, natural,
own, in one of the fundamental physical intimate association, not only of the young
and natural sciences, in the general con- men who are its pupils and novices in va-
ceptions of philosophy, in the outlines of 40 rious lines of study, but also of young men
history, and in the elements of correct with older men, with maturer men, with
political thinking; and it is very desirable veterans and professionals in the great
that he should go beneath the surface in undertaking of learning, of teachers with
some one of these subjects, study it with pupils, outside the classroom as well as
more than ordinary attention and thor- 45 inside of it. No one is successfully edu-
oughness, and find in it, if he can, some cated within the walls of any particular
independence of judgment and inquiry, classroom or laboratory or museum; and
Students in a modern college can not all no amount of association, however close
follow the same road, and it is not de- and familiar and delightful, between mere
sirable that they should do so. Besides $0 beginners can ever produce the sort of en-
the thorough drill in a few fundamental lightenment which the lad gets when he
subjects which they should all have, they first begins to catch the infection of learn-
should be encouraged to make the spe- ing. The trouble with most of our col-
cial, individual choices of particular fields leges nowadays is that the faculty of the
of study which will give them an oppor- $S college live one life and the undergradu-
tunity to develop special gifts and apt!- ates quite a different one. They are not
tudes and which will call out their powers members of the same community ; they
of initiative and enable them to discover constitute two communities. The life of

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 159

the undergraduate is not touched with the over to athletics and amusements. Ath-
personal influence of the teacher: life letics are in themselves wholesome, and
among the teachers is not touched by the are necessary to every normal youth,
personal impressions which should come They give him vigor and should give him
from frequent and intimate contact with 5 the spirit of the sportsman — should keep
undergraduates. The teacher does not him out of many things of a very de-
often enough know what the undergradu- moralizing sort which he would be inclined
ate is thinking about or what models he to do if he did not spend his energy out-
is forming his life upon, and the under- of-doors and in the gymnasium. Amuse-
graduate does not know how human a fel- 10 ment, too, is necessary. All work and no
low the teacher is, how delightfully he can play makes Jack not only a dull boy, but
talk, outside the classroom, of the subjects a very unserviceable boy, with no spirit,
he is most interested in, how many interest- no capacity to vary his occupations or to
ing things both his life and his studies make the most of himself,
illustrate and make attractive. This sep- 15 But athletics and amusement ought
aration need not exist, and, in the college never to become absorbing occupations,
of the ideal university, would not exist. 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 work is relieved, the powers refreshed and
students and teachers alike will take part 20 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 ural and interesting. Knowledge, study,
vitality as places of serious training, be 25 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 ing and companionable, are thrown into
modern achievement — only by such an or- 30 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-
very formal and empty things; recitations sociation of studies and persons is the
generally prove very dull and unreward- proper prescription.

ing. It is in conversation and natural in- 35 Turn from the college, which lies at the
tercourse with scholars chiefly that you heart of the university, to the graduate
find how lively knowledge is, how it ties and professional schools which lie about
into everything that is interesting and im- the college and are built upon it, and you
portant, how intimate a part it is of every- are discussing an entirely different mat-
thing that is 'practical' and connected 40 ter, looking for different principles and
with the world. Men are not always made methods. Their right relationship to the
thoughtful by books ; but they are gen- college, moreover, is a very difficult ques-
erally made thoughtful by association with tion to determine. Both the college and
men who think. the high school are trying to do two things

The present and most pressing problem 45 at once — two things not entirely consis-
of our university authorities is to bring tent with each other. The majority of pu-
about this vital association for the benefit pils in the high school — the very large
of the novices of the university world, the majority — do not intend to carry their
undergraduates. Classroom methods are studies any further. They must get all
thorough enough ; competent scholars al- 5° the schooling they are going to get before
ready lecture and set tasks and superin- they leave the high school. They must be
tend their performance ; but the life of the given the best training, the completest
average undergraduate outside the class- awakening within the field of knowledge
room and other stated appointments with that the school can give them, for that is
his instructors is not very much affected 55 to be their final preparation for life. A
by his studies; is almost entirely disso- small minority, however, must be pre-
dated from intellectual interests. pared to enter college. Majority and min-

It is too freely and exclusively given ority must be handled, in some circum-

i6o WRITING OF TODAY

stances in different ways, and it is very What is called the graduate school in

hard indeed to arrange the courses of study our universities is not, strictly, a profes-
in a way that will be suitable for both. sional school. As a matter of fact most
The high school is clearly justified in shap- of its pupils will be found to be looking
ing its policy and its methods to the needs, 5 forward to the profession of teaching; but
first of all, of the majority. Exceptional graduate schools of the higher type do not
arrangements must be made, if possible, keep that profession in mind. Their ob-
for the minority. ject is to train scholars whether in the

Similarly, in the college the great ma- held of literature, or science, or philos-
jority of the undergraduates mean to go 10 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 process a stage farther and seek to induct
go on to more advanced university studies* their students into the precise, exacting
A minority on the other hand — a larger methods of scholarship. They not only
minority than in the schools — do intend 15 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- searches of their own, strike out into in-
cial training is necessary. The difficulty 20 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 their professors being little more than
possible or desirable to offer. But the ma- 25 their guides and critics. They are not
jority must determine its chief charac- taught how to teach ; there is no profes-
teristics 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. independently, and to make scholars of

It is evident, therefore, that the college, 30 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
them, as their support and feeder, but also a proper plane, schools of scholarship, are
alongside of them; would be necessary if professional schools, and have in all their
they did not exist ; furnishes the only in- 35 instruction the professional point of view,
troduction our young men desire or need Their object is not only to introduce their
to the wider fields of action and ex- students to the mastery of certain sub-
perience which lie beyond it. It is, first jects, as the graduate school does, but also
of all and chiefly, a general fitting school to prepare them for the 'practice' of a par-
for life. Its social organization and in- 40 ticular profession. They devote a great
fluence are almost as important as its deal of attention to practical method — to
classrooms. It is not a subordinate the ways in which the knowledge acquired
school, but the chief, the central school of is to be used in dealing with diseases, with
the university. For the professional disputes between men over their legal
schools it is, at the same time, an indis- 45 rights, and with the needs and interests of
pensable foundation. That profession is men who should be helped with spiritual
clearly impoverished which does not draw guidance. They are frankly and of neces-
to its special studies men bred to under- sity professional. The spirit of the doc-
stand life and the broader relations of tor's or of the lawyer's office, of the pulpit
their profession in some thorough school 50 and of the pastor's study, pervades them,
of general training. In these higher They school their men for particular tasks,
schools the atmosphere is changed; an- complicated and different, and seek to
other set of objects lies before the stu- guide 'hem by many practical maxims,
dent; his mind has already begun to cen- Similarly, the technical schools are pro-
ter upon tasks which fill the rest of his 55 fessional schools, their objects practical,
life. He can not, there, seek the things definite, utilitarian. Their students must
that will conned him with the more gen- not only know science and have their feet
eral fields of learning and experience. solidly upon the footing of exact knowl-

D. EXPOSITORY AND .EDITORIAL ARTICLES 161

edge, but must acquire a very thorough eral study, and should wish to have as
mastery of methods, a definite skill and many of her young men as possible sub-
practice, readiness and precision in a score jected to its influences. She should de-
of mechanical processes which make them mand that her professional schools be
a sort of master-workmen. The practical 5 grounded in such studies in order that her
air of the shop pervades such schools, as professional men may see something more
the practical air of the office pervades the than individual interest in what they do.
law school. They are intent upon busi- It is best, therefore, that professional
ness, and conscious all the time that they schools should be closely associated with
must make ready for it. 10 universities, a part of their vital organi-
In the professional schools of an ideal zation, intimate parts of their system of
university nothing of this practical spirit study. That very association and inclu-
would be abated, for such schools are, one sion should make them more thorough in
and all, intensely and immediately prac- their particular practical tasks. They
tical in their objects and must have prac- 15 should be the better schools of technical
tice always in mind if they would be truly training. The ideal university is rounded
serviceable; but there would always lie out by them, and their roots are enriched
back of their work, by close association by her fertile soil of catholic knowledge
with the studies of the university in pure and inquiry. The ideal university would
science and in all the great subjects which 20 consist of all these parts, associated in
underlie law and theology, the impulse and this spirit, maintained always in this re-
the informing spirit of disinterested in- lationship.
quiry, of study which has no utilitarian,
object, but seeks only the truth. The

spirit of graduate study, and of under- 25 yj
graduate, too, would be carried over into

all professional work, and engineers doc- MATERIALISM AND IDEALISM

tors, ministers, lawyers, would all alike be TAJ a A/r-rr-pT/^A

made, first of all citizens of the modern liN AMJiKlLA

intellectual and social world — first of all, 30 n?nv>rT? qamtavama

university men, with a broad outlook on GLOKCjE SANTA YANA

the various knowledge of the world, and • , . _ ,

then experts in a great practical profes- tL«.d«or*f London .^Eng. ^ January, X9I9. By

sion, which they would understand all the

better because they had first been grounded 35 The language and traditions common to
in science and in the other great bodies of England and America are like other fam-
knowledge which are the foundations of ify bonds; they draw kindred together at
all practice. That is the service the uni- the greater crises of life, but they also
versity owes the professional schools as- occasion at times a little friction and fault-
sociated with it. The parts should be vi- 40 finding. The groundwork of the two So-
tally united from end to end. cieties is so similar, that each nation,

The professional schools, in their turn, feeling almost at home with the other,
do the university this distinct and very may instinctively resent what hinders it
great service, that they keep it in con- from feeling at home altogether. Dif-
scious association with the practical 45 ferences will tend to seem anomalies that
world, its necessities and its problems. have slipped in by mistake and through
Through them it better understands what somebody's fault. Each will judge the
knowledge, what kind of men, what schol- other by his own standards, not feeling,
arship, what morals, what action, will best as in the presence of complete foreigners,
serve the age for whose enlightenment 5o that he must make an effort of imagina-
and assistance it exists. Our universities tion and put himself in another man's
should be 'ideal' chiefly in this — that shoes.

they serve tie intellectual needs of the In matters of morals, manners and art

age, not in one thing, not in any one way the danger of comparisons is not merely
only, but all around the circle, with a 55 that they may prove invidious, by rang-
various and universal adaptation to their ing qualities in an order of merit which
age and generation. America can never might wound somebody's vanity; the dan-
dispense with the enlightenment of gen- ger is rather that comparisons may distort

162 WRITING OF TODAY

comprehension, because good qualities all made largely adequate to the facts; be-
differ in kind, and free lives differ in cause, if there are immense differences
spirit. Comparison is the expedient of between individual Americans — for some
those who cannot reach the heart of the Americans are black — yet there is a great
things compared; and no philosophy is 5 uniformity in their environment, customs,
more external and egotistical than that temper, and thoughts. They have all been
which places the essence of a thing in its uprooted from their several soils and an-
relation to something else. In truth, at cestries and plunged together into one
the center of every natural being there is vortex, whirling irresistibly in a space
something individual and incommensur- 10 otherwise quite empty. To be an Amer-
able, a seed with its native impulses and ican is of itself almost a moral condition,
aspirations, shaping themselves as best an education, and a career. Hence a
they can in their given environment. single ideal figment can cover a large
Variation is a consequence of freedom, part of what each American is in his char-
and the slight but radical diversity of souls 15 acter, and almost the whole of what most
is what makes freedom precious. Americans are in their social outlook and

Instead of instituting, then, any express political judgments,
comparisons, I would invite you, in so far The discovery of the new world exer-

as such a thing is possible for you or for cised a sort of selection among the in-
me, to transport yourselves with me into 20 habitants of Europe. All the colonists,
the inner life of the American, to feel and except the negroes, were voluntary exiles,
enact his character dramatically, and to The fortunate, the deeply-rooted, and the
see how it dictates to him his judgment lazy remained at home; the wilder in-
on himself and on all things, as they ap- stincts or dissatisfaction of others tempted
pear from his new and unobstructed sta- 25 them beyond the horizon. The American
tion. is accordingly the most adventurous, or

I speak of the American in the singular, the descendant of the most adventurous,
as if there were not millions of them, of Europeans. It is in his blood to be
north and south, east and west, of both socially a radical, though perhaps not in-
sexes, of all ages, and of various races, 30 tellectually. What has existed in the past,
professions and religions. Of course the especially in the remote past, seems to
one American I speak of is mythical; but him not only not authoritative, but irrele-
to speak in parables is inevitable in such a vant, inferior and outworn. He finds it
subject, and it is perhaps as well to do so rather a sorry waste of time to think
frankly. There is a sort of poetic inepti- 35 about the past at all. But his enthusiasm
tude in all human discourse when it tries for the future is profound ; he can con-
to deal with natural and existing things, ceive of no more decisive way of recom-
Practical men may not notice it, but in mending an opinion or a practice than to
fact human discourse is intrinsically ad- say that it is what everybody is coming
dressed not to natural existing things but 40 to adopt. This expectation of what he
to ideal essences, poetic or logical terms approves or approval of what he expects
which thought may define and play with, makes up his optimism. It is the neces-
When fortune or necessity diverts our at- sary faith of the pioneer,
tention from this congenial ideal sport Such a temperament is of course not

to crude facts and pressing issues, we turn 45 maintained in the nation merely by in-
our frail poetic ideas into symbols for heritance. Inheritance notoriously tends
those terrible irruptive things. In that to restore the average of a race and plays
paper money of our own stamping, the incidentally many a trick of atavism,
legal tender of the mind, we are obliged What maintains the temperament and
to reckon all the movements and values of 50 makes it national is social contagion or
the world. pressure — something immensely strong in

The universal American I speak of is democracies. The luckless American who
one of these symbols ; and I should be still happens to be born a conservative, or
speaking in symbols and creating moral who is drawn to poetic subtlety, pious
units and a false simplicity, if I spoke of 55 retreats, or gay passions, nevertheless
classes pedantically sub-divided, or indi- has the categorical excellence of work,
viduals ideally integrated and defined. As growth, enterprise, reform, and prosper-
it happens, the symbolic American can be ity dinned into his ears; every door is

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 163

open in this direction and shut in the idealism of single ladies in reduced cir-
other ; so that he either folds up his heart cumstances who can see the soul of beauty
and withers in a corner — in remote places in ugly things, and are perfectly happy
you sometimes find such a solitary gaunt because their old dog has such pathetic
idealist — or else he flies to Oxford or 5 eyes, their minister is so eloquent, their
Florence or Montmartre to save his soul garden with its three sun-flowers is so
— or perhaps not to save it. pleasant, their dead friends were so de-

The optimism of the pioneer is not voted, and their distant relations are so
limited to his view of himself and his rich.

own future ; it starts from that ; but feel- 10 Consider now the great emptiness of
ing assured, safe, and cheery within, he America, not merely the primitive physi-
looks with smiling and most kindly eyes cal emptiness, surviving in some regions,
on everything and everybody about him. and the continental spacing of the chief
Individualism, roughness, and self-trust natural features, but also the moral empti-
are supposed to go with selfishness and 15 ness of a settlement where men and even
a cold heart, but I suspect that is a prej- houses are easily moved about and no one,
udice. It is rather dependence, insecurity, almost, lives where he was born or be-
and mutual jostling, that poison our placid lieves what he has been taught. Not that
gregarious brotherhood; and fanciful the American has jettisoned these impedi-
passionate demands upon people's affec- 20 menta in anger ; they have simply slipped
tions, when they are disappointed, as they from him as he moves. Great empty
soon must be, breed ill-will and a final spaces bring a sort of freedom to both
meanness. The milk of human kindness soul and body. You may pitch your tent
is less apt to turn sour if the vessel that where you will; or if ever you decide
holds it stands steady, cool and separate, 25 to build anything, it can be in a style of
and is not too often uncorked. In his your own devising. You have room, fresh
affections the American is seldom passion- materials, few models, and no critics,
ate, often deep, and always kindly. If it You trust your own experience, not only
were given me to look into the depths of a because you must, but because you find
man's heart, and I did not find goodwill 30 you may do so safely and prosperously;
at the bottom, I should say without any the forces that determine fortune are not
hesitation: you are not an American, yet too complicated for one man to ex-
But as the American is an individualist plore. Your detachable condition makes
his goodwill is not officious. His instinct you lavish with money and cheerfully
is to think well of everybody, and to wish 3S experimental ; you lose little if you lose
everybody well, but in a spirit of rough all, since you remain completely your-
comradeship, expecting every man to self. At the same time your absolute initi-
stand on his own legs and to be helpful in ative gives you practice in coping with
his turn. When he has given his neigh- novel situations, and in being original; it
bor a chance he thinks he has done 40 teaches you shrewd management. Your
enough for him; but he feels it is an ab- life and mind will become dry and direct,
solute duty to do that. It will take some with few decorative flourishes. In your
hammering to drive a coddling socialism works everything will be stark and prag-
into America. matic; you will not understand why any-

As self-trust may pass into self-sufn- 45 body should make those little sacrifices to
ciency, so optimism, kindness and good- instinct or custom which we call grace,
will may grow into a general habit of The fine arts will seem to you academic
doting on everything. To the good Amer- luxuries, fit to amuse the ladies, like Greek
ican many subjects are sacred; sex is sa- and Sanskrit; for while you will per-
cred, women are sacred, children are 50 fectly appreciate generosity in men's pur-
sacred, business is sacred, America is sa- poses, you will not admit that the execu-
cred, Masonic lodges and college clubs tion of these purposes can be anything but
are sacred. This feeling grows out of the business.

good opinion he wishes to have of these Unfortunately the essence of the fine

things, and serves to maintain it. If he 55 arts is that the execution should be
did not regard all these things as sacred generous too, and delightful in itself;
he might come to doubt sometimes if they therefore the fine arts will suffer, not so
were wholly good. Of this kind too is the much in their express professional pur-

164 WRITING OF TODAY

suit — for then they become practical gressive society, and he actually does so.
tasks and a kind of business — as in that Ideals clinging so close to nature are al-
diffused charm which qualifies all human most sure of fulfilment. The American
action when men are artists by nature. beams with a certain self-confidence and
Elaboration, which is something to ac- 5 sense of mastery; he feels that God and
complish, will be preferred to simplicity, nature are working with him.
which is something to rest in; manners In America there is a tacit optimistic

will sutler somewhat; speech will suffer assumption about existence, to the effect
horribly. For the American the urgency that the more existence the better. The
of his novel attack upon matter, his zeal 10 soul-less critic might urge that quantity
in gathering its fruits, precludes meander- is but a physical category, implying no ex-
ings in primrose paths; means must be cellence, but at best an abundance of
economical, and symbols must be mere opportunities both for good and for evil,
symbols. If his wife wants luxuries, of But the young soul, being curious and
course she may have them, and if he has 15 hungry, views existence a priori under the
vices, that can be provided for him too; form of the good: its instinct to live im-
but they must all be set down under those plies a faith that most things it can be-
headings in his books. come or see or do will be worth while.
At the same time the American is im- Respect for quantity is accordingly some-
aginative; for where life is intense im- 20 thing more than the childish ioy and won-
agination is intense also. Were he not der at bigness: it is the fisherman's joy
imaginative he would not live so much in in a big haul, the good uses of which he
the future. But his imagination is prac- can take for granted. Such optimism is
tical and the future it forecasts is imme- amiable. Nature cannot afford that we
diate; it works with the clearest and least «5 should begin by being too calculating or
ambiguous terms known to his experience, wise, and she encourages us by the pleas-
in terms of number, measure, contrivance, ure she attaches to our functions in ad-
economy, and speed. He is an idealist vance of their fruits, and often in excess
working on matter. Understanding as he of them ; as the angler enjoys catching
does the material potentialities of things, 30 his fish more than eating it, and often
he is successful in invention, conservative waiting patiently for the fish to bite misses
in reform, and quick in emergencies. All his own supper. The pioneer must devote
his life he jumps into the train after it himself to preparations ; he must work for
has started and jumps out before it has the future, and it is healthy and dutiful
stopped and he never once gets left be- 35 of him to love his work for its own
hind or breaks a leg. There is an en- sake.

thusiasm in his sympathetic handling of At the same time unless reference to an
material forces which goes far to cancel ultimate purpose is at least virtual in all
the illiberal character which it might his activities, he runs the danger of be-
otherwise assume. The good workman 40 coming a living automaton, vain and
hardly distinguishes his artistic intention ignominious in its mechanical constancy,
from the potency in himself and in things Idealism about work can hide an intense
which are about to realize that intention, materialism about life. Man, if he is a
Accordingly his ideals fall into the form rational being, cannot live by bread alone
of premonition and prophecies ; and his 45 nor be a laborer merely : he must eat and
studious prophecies often come true. So work in view of an ideal harmony which
do the happy workmanlike ideals of the overarches all his days, and which is
American. When a poor boy, perhaps he realized in the way they hang together
dreams of an education, and presently he or in some ideal issue which they have in
gets an education, or at least a degree: he $° common. Otherwise, though his techni-
dreams of growing rich, and he grows cal philosophy may call itself idealism, he
rich — only more slowly and modestly, is a materialist in morals: he esteems
perhaps, than he expected; he dreams of things, and esteems himself, for mechani-
marrying his Rebecca, and even if he cal uses and energies. Even sensualists,
marries a Leah instead, he ultimately finds 55 artists, and pleasure-lovers are wiser than
in Leah his Rebecca after all. He dreams that, for though their idealism may be
of helping to carry on and to accelerate desultory ' or corrupt, they attain some-
the movement of a vast, seething, pro- thing ideal, and prize things only for their

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 165

living effects, moral though perhaps fugi- American talks about money, because that
tive. Sensation, as I have already sug- is the symbol and measure he has at hand
gested, when we do not take it as a signal for success, intelligence, and power ; but
for action, but arrest and peruse what it as to money itself he makes, loses, spends,
positively brings before us, reveals some- 5 and gives it away with a very light heart,
thing ideal — a color, shape, or sound; To my mind the most striking expression
and to dwell on these presences, with no of his materialism is his singular preoccu-
thought of their material significance, is pation with quantity. If, for instance,
an esthetic or dreamful idealism. To you visit Niagara Falls, you may expect
pass from this idealism to the knowledge 10 to hear how many cubic feet or metric
of matter is a great intellectual advance, tons of water are precipitated per second
and goes with dominion over the world; over the cataract; how many cities and
for in the practical arts the mind is ad- towns (with the number of their inhabit-
justed to a larger object, with more depth ants) derive light and motive power from
and potentiality in it ; which is what makes 15 it ; and the annual value of the further
people feel that the material world is real, industries that might very well be carried
as they call it, and that the ideal world is on by the same means, without visibly de-
not. Certainly the material world is real ; pleting the world's greatest wonder or
for the philosophers who deny the exist- injuring the tourist trade. That is what
ence of matter are like the critics who 20 I confidently expected to hear on arriving
deny the existence of Homer: if there was at the adjoining town of Buffalo: but I
never any Homer there must have been a was deceived. The first thing I heard
lot of other poets no less Homeric than instead was thaj there are more miles of
he; and if matter does not exist, a com- asphalt pavement in Buffalo than in any
bination of other things exists which is 25 other city in the world,
just as material. But the intense reality Nor is this insistence on quantity con-

of the material world would not prevent fined to men of business. The President
it from being a dreary waste in our eyes, of Harvard College, seeing me once by
or even an abyss of horror, if it brought chance soon after the beginning of a term,
forth no spiritual fruits. In fact it does 30 inquired how my classes were getting
bring forth spiritual fruits, for otherwise on ; and when I replied that I thought they
we should not be here to find fault with were getting on well, that my men seemed
it, and to set up our ideals over against to be keen and intelligent, he stopped me
it. Nature is material, but not material- as if I was about to waste his time: 'I
istic: it issues in life, and breeds all sorts 35 meant,' said he, T meant what is the num-
of warm passions and idle beauties. And her of students in your classes.'
just as sympathy with the mechanical Here I think we may perceive that this

travail and turmoil of nature, apart from love of quantity often has a silent part-
its spiritual fruits, is moral materialism, ner, which is diffidence as to quality. The
so the continual perception and love of 40 democratic conscience recoils before any-
these fruits is moral idealism — happiness thing that savors of privilege; and lest it
in the presence of immaterial objects and should concede an unmerited privilege to
harmonies, such as we envisage in affec- any pursuit or person, it reduces all things
tion, speculation, religion, and all the as far as possible to the common de-
forms of the beautiful. 45 nominator of quantity. Numbers cannot
The circumstances of his life hitherto lie; but if it came to comparing the ideal
have necessarily driven the American into beauties of philosophy with those of An-
moral materialism: for in his deal- glo-Saxon, who should decide? All
ings With material things he can hardly studies are good — why else have uni-
stop to enjoy their sensible aspects, which 50 versities ? — but those must be most en-
are ideal, nor proceed at once to their couraged which attract the greatest num-
ultimate uses, which are ideal too. He is ber of students. Hence the President's
practical as against the poet, and worldly question. Democratic faith, in its diffi-
as against the clear philosopher or the dence about quality, throws the reins of
saint. The most striking expression of 55 education upon the pupil's neck, as Don
this materialism is usually supposed to be Quixote threw the reins on the neck of
his love of the almighty dollar; but that Rosinante, and bids his divine instinct
is a foreign and unintelligent view. The choose its own way,

1 66 WRITING OF TODAY

The American has never yet had to
face the trials of Job. Great crises, like VII

the Civil War, he has known how to sur-
mount victoriously; and when he has sur- JAPAN'S THWARTED EMI-
mounted the present crisis victoriously 5 GRATION
also, it is possible that he may relapse,

as he did in the other case, into an appar- WALTER WEYL

ently complete absorption in material en-
terprise and prosperity. But if Serious [Asia, May, 1918. Republished in Tired Radicals,
and iYremedlable tribulation ever over- 10 N> Y' I921' B* w* Huebsch« Inc- B* permission.]
took him, what would his attitude be ? It The Japanese emigrant is permitted to
is then that we should be able to discover go wherever he cannot thrive. He is not
whether materialism or idealism lies at permitted to go where he can thrive,
the base of his character. Meantime his This is the crux of the whole Japanese
working mind is not without its holiday. 15 emigration question.

He spreads humor pretty thick and even It is an ironic choice that is presented

over the surface of conversation, and to the emigrant from Japan. The rela-
humor is one form of moral emancipa- tively empty lands where pioneers might
tion. He loves landscape, he loves man- build up a new civilization are locked
kind, and he loves knowledge ; and in 20 and barred and double-barred. They are
music at least he finds an art which he un- locked to the Japanese and opened to the
feignedly enjoys. In music and land- white man. On the other hand, Japan
scape, in humor and kindness, he touches may people Korea or Formosa if she can.
the ideal more truly, perhaps, than in his Only she cannot. Or she may enter
ponderous academic idealisms and busy *5 China and displace the Chinese. The
religions — for it is astonishing how much privilege is as valuable as the right to
even religion in America (can it possibly emigrate to Mars.

be so in England?) is a matter of meet- There was a time when the Japanese

ings, building-funds, schools, charities, had no wish to emigrate. During the
clubs, and picnics. To be poor in order 30 seventeenth century Japan adopted a pol-
to be simple, to produce less in order that icy of complete isolation. All foreigners
the product may be more choice and beau- were forbidden to enter, with the excep-
tiful and may leave us less burdened with tion of a few Dutch traders, tolerated in
unnecessary duties and useless posses- the little island of Deshima. 'So long as
sions — that is an ideal not articulate in 35 the sun warms the earth,' declared the
the American mind; yet here and there I Japanese in 1640, 'any Christian bold
seem to have heard a sigh after it, a enough to come to Japan even if lie be
groan at the perpetual incubus of busi- King Philip himself or the God of the
ness and shrill society. What does it Christians, shall pay for it with his head.'
profit a man to free the whole world, if his 40 Simultaneously the Nipponese were for-
soul is not free ? Moral freedom is not bidden to leave the country, and no vessels
an artificial condition, because the ideal is might be built except for coast-wise trade,
the mother-tongue of both the heart and Japan was willing to live unto herself,
the senses. All that is requisite is that we Nor was emigration essential to Japan

should pause in living to enjoy life, and 45 at this time. So long as the population
should lift up our hearts to things that remained stationary, and was willing to
are pure good in themselves, so that once live as its ancestors had lived, room could
to have found and loved them, whatever be found at home in the crowded little
else may betide, may be a happiness that islands. Since the Restoration, however,
nothing can sully. This natural idealism 50 the population of Japan Proper has in-
does not imply that we are immaterial creased to fifty-six millions, and the birth-
but only that we are animate and truly rate, unlike that of European and Ameri-
alive. When the senses are sharp and can countries, is steadily rising. Emi-
joyous, as in the American, they are al- gration is always from poor to rich
ready half liberated; and when the heart 55 countries, from lands of small to lands of
is warm, like his, and eager to be just, its great industrial opportunity. Japan is an
ideal destiny is hardly doubtful. Time ideal land from which to emigrate. It is
and its own pulses will give it wings. small, poor and crowded. Its people are

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 167

hard-working, economical and reasonably new language is structurally so difficult,
ambitious. They need to get out. It is He encounters social opprobrium and eco-
difficult for them to get out. nomic discrimination. He cannot conceal

Of course there is some emigration, the color of his skin and would not if he
as there has been during each of the last 5 could. Uncomfortable and even unsafe
thirty years. On June 30, 1914, official alone, he comes in groups, works in
statistics revealed some three hundred and groups, lives in groups, and because of
sixty thousand Japanese living abroad. this group life he fails to be easily assim-
Of these almost one-half (48 per cent.) ilated to the larger life of the community
lived in the United States (including the 10 to which he goes. The external barrier
Hawaiian Islands) ; about a third (34 creates an internal barrier; emigration is
per cent.) in China and the remainder stifled by the opposition of the white races
chiefly in other Asiatic countries and in which hold the large and relatively empty
South America. Essentially emigration lands, and this opposition produces in turn
has been to the Pacific islands and littoral. 15 a reluctance to emigrate and a clannish-

In absolute numbers this total emigra- ness among those who have already emi-
tion seems reasonably large; obviously grated.

there are many more Japanese in foreign Into the question of Japanese immigra-

lands than there are Americans abroad. tion into the United States, into the rights
Yet as an outlet for the ever-increasing 20 and morality of this intricate problem, I
Japanese population, emigration has not do not propose here to enter. I am con-
counted at all. After immense effort, sidering merely how the American re-
both individual arid collective, during fusal to open the door wide to Japanese
several decades to find outlets for surplus immigrants reacts upon conditions in
population, the entire number of Japanese 25 Japan. That America will continue to
abroad is far less than is the net increase erect barriers against a free Nipponese
in the population every six months. In immigration is highly probable. The rea-
the coming decade Japan's population will son is that at bottom we discover here the
probably increase by from seven to eight possibility of a critical racial conflict, in
millions. To find homes abroad for even 30 which the economic advantages are all on
half this increment would require an in- one side. Were the Japanese to be ad-
crease of over 1,000 per cent, in the num- mitted to the Pacific Coast with absolute
ber of Japanese living abroad. freedom and allowed to compete on fair

The relative insignificance of the emi- terms with Americans, there can be little
gration from Japan may be seen by com- 35 doubt that within two or three generations
paring the total number of Japanese living the country west of the Rocky Mountains
in foreign countries with the number of would be Japanese, and not American, as
Poles, Greeks, Norwegians, Danes, Hun- the Hawaiian Islands are Japanese. The
garians, Slovaks or Italians in foreign impetus of an unrestricted Japanese immi-
lands. Out of every thousand Nipponese 40 gration would be overwhelming. Wages
in the world only seven are to be found in Japan are about one-fifth of Ameri-
in foreign countries; out of every thou- can wages and the expansive force of
sand Italians no less than one hundred these low wages would rapidly people the
and seventy live under alien flags, and of western coast. That the wages of the
these the majority are emigrants or chil- 45 Japanese actually in the United States are
dren of emigrants. It is true that past high is not a decisive fact, for these wages
and present social habits make it more are high only because immigration is im-
difficult for the Nipponese than for the peded. They are monopoly wages. If,
Italian to acquire the habit of emigration however, Japanese were allowed to enter
— and emigration is a habit — but the chief 5° by the hundreds of thousands, wages
obstacle lies abroad. Japanese immigra- would fall, native workmen would be dis-
tion is opposed, frustrated. The Jap- placed, and step by step the race with the
anese laborer in the United States and in lower economic standard would drive out
several other countries meets with dis- the race with the higher standard, as,
trust and ostracism. He finds it difficult 55 for example, the colored people of
to learn the language, not only because he Jamaica are gradually driving out the
is a poor linguist (as compared with the whites. For the world at large it might
Korean or the Chinese), but because the be better or worse to have California and

168 WRITING OF TODAY

other Western States thus Orientalized, Macao is more Chinese than ever; after
but no race and no nation thinks in terms decades of British rule, Hongkong is a
of ultimate world good. The question is thoroughly Chinese city. Japan governs
not only an economic but a race question, Formosa at will, but she cannot people
involving hatreds, prejudices and obscure 5 Formosa, for the Chinese are already
and primitive instincts. Whatever its there — to stay.

ultimate issue, we may rest assured that The same obstacle meets the emigrant

for the time being the emigration of Jap- to Manchuria. Japan, following in
anese to the United States will be limited. Russia's footsteps, has given law and

The forces at work in California, Wash- i0 order to that distracted country and has
ington and Oregon operate equally in opened it to immigration. But Chinese
British Columbia and Australia. Every- come as well as Japanese, and in greater
where there is an instinctive Exclusion numbers ; they underbid and underlive the
Policy, an attempt on the part of the white Japanese. You can hire Chinese laborers
races to monopolize the five continents l5 for a little over half of what you must
and to leave to the yellow men, 'beloved pay Japanese workmen. As a con-
of the sun,.' only a portion of one con- sequence the Chinese get the jobs, and
tinent. Whether or not certain of the they live in Manchuria and breed there
South American countries will ultimately and their children will breed there. Un-
join in this restriction policy cannot yet 20 doubtedly there is room in all parts of
be determined. Nor is it yet a crucial China for the trained Japanese, for the
question for them. For the time being, skilful artisan, the business man, the
the emigration of Japanese to Latin professional worker. But there is no
American countries is difficult, costly, and room for the only class that counts — for
small ; the conditions of immigration are 25 the great bulky mass of unskilled and un-
not entirely inviting. The entire Japanese differentiated workmen and peasants,
population of the American mainland (in- Neither in China, nor in those Malay

eluding Latin America) represents only States where Chinese immigration is per-
about two months' increase in the popula- mitted, nor in Formosa, nor in the United
tion of Japan, and all the Japanese in 3o States, Canada, Australia, or Europe is
Europe combined are equal only to the there at once a free economic and a free
excess of births over deaths in a single legal right to emigrate in sufficient num-
day. The door to the Western world is bers to relieve the pressure of the ever-
shut, increasing Japanese population. The

There remains Asia — China, Manchu- 35 birth-rate of Japan rises; the farm-land
ria, Siberia, the Malay Islands. China is taken up ; emigration is thwarted, either
presents no legal obstacle to Japanese by the exclusion policy of the whites or
immigration ; Japan may export a million by superior Chinese economic tenacity,
men annually to the neighboring Republic The Japanese population is thrown back
without evoking protests from the Chinese 40 upon itself.
Foreign Office. But there is an obstacle)
far more insurmountable than any legal

prohibition. In going to China Japan VIII

strikes against the Chinese Wall. It is

not a wall of brick and mortar and granite 45 TRE pROBLEM OF LIVING
blocks like that which defended the THTWf^

Chinese from the Northern nomads. It inii\iu^>

is a human wall, the immense resistance TrtII„ ^ttt^~tt^tto

of a dense population of ill-paid, hard- JOHN BURROUGHS

working, abstemious and capable men 5o Und d 0ctober 2> 19IJ. ^ permis5ion.1
Into China the Japanese emigrant cannot

force his way, just as we Americans could All living bodies, when life leaves tluni,
not, if we wished, force our way into go back to the earth from whence thejf
Japan. After decades and even centuries, came. What was it in the first instance
no non-Chinese race has ever succeeded 55 that gathered their element* from the
in displacing the Chinese; on the contrary, earth and built them up into such wonder-
each race ends in being displaced by them, ful mechanisms? If we say it was na-
After three centuries of Portuguese rule, ture, do we mean by nature a physical

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 169

force or an immaterial principle? Did end of the problem, but also the end of
the earth itself bring forth a man, or did our boasted science.

something breathe upon the inert clay, Science is at home in discussing all the

and it became a living spirit? material manifestations of life — the parts

Such inquiries bring us at once face to 5 played by colloids and ferments, by fluids
face with the question of the nature and and gases, and all the organic compounds,
origin of life — a question which is the and by mechanical and chemical princi-
source of a good deal of mental activity pies; it may analyze and tabulate all life
in our time, both among scientific men processes and show the living body as a
and philosophers. 10 most wonderful and complex piece of

As life is a physical phenomenon, ap- mechanism, but before the question of the
pearing in a concrete physical world, it origin of life itself it stands dumb, and,
is, to that extent, within the domain of when speaking through such a man as
physical science and appeals to the scien- Tyndall, it also stands humble and rever-
tific mind. Physical science is at home 15 ent. After Tyndall had, to his own satis-
only in the experimental, the verifiable. faction, reduced all like phenomena to
Its domain ends where that of philosophy mechanical attraction and repulsion, he
begins. It cannot go behind visible phe- stood with uncovered head before what
nomena and ask 'Why?-' or 'Whither?' he called the 'mystery and miracle of vi-
This is the province of philosophy. It is M tality.' The mystery and miracle lie in
incompetent to discuss the question of the the fact that in the organic world the
origin of life from no life, or of some- same elements combine with results so
thing from nothing, because here its different from those of the inorganic
method of verification cannot be applied. world. Something seems to have inspired
Science is held by the biogenetic law — life «5 them with a new purpose. In the inor-
only from antecedent life. Until it can ganic world, the primary elements go
bring about the reaction called life in its their ceaseless round from compound to
laboratories, it is tethered by this law. compound, from solid to fluid or gaseous,
In order to make a start at all, it is com- and back again, forming the world of
pelled to assume the potentiality of life 30 inert matter as we know it, but in the
in matter itself, as most recent .bio- organic world the same elements form
physicists do, and to regard its advent thousands of new combinations unknown
into this world as a natural and not a to them before, and thus give rise to the
miraculous event — as natural as the birth myriad forms of life that inhabit the
of a baby, inscrutable as are the mysteries 35 earth,
that lie back of it. The much debated question of the na-

So far as life involves a psychic prin- ture and origin of life has lately found
ciple or force, it is beyond the scope of an interesting exponent in Professor
positive science, and falls within the do- Benjamin Moore of the University of
main of philosophy. 40 Liverpool. His volume on the subject

The question of how life arose in a in the 'Home University Library' is very
universe of dead matter is just as baffling readable, and, in many respects, con-
a question to the ordinary mind, as how vincing. At least, so far as it is
the universe itself arose. If we assume the word of exact science on the
that the germs of life drifted to us from 45 subject it is convincing; so far as it
other spheres, propelled by the rays of the is speculative or philosophical, it is or
sun, or some other celestial agency, as is not convincing, according to the type
certain modern scientific philosophers of mind of the reader. Professor Moore
have assumed, we»have only removed the is not a bald mechanist or materialist like
mystery farther away from us. If we 50 Professor Loeb, or Ernest Haeckel, nor is
assume that it came by spontaneous he an idealist or spiritualist, like Henri
generation is as miraculous as any other Bergson or Sir Oliver Lodge. He may
then we are only cutting a knot which we be called a scientific vitalist. He keeps
cannot untie. The god of spontaneous close to lines of scientific research as
generation, as Haeckel and others assume, 55 these lines lead him through the maze of
god. We cannot break the causal se- the primordial elements of matter, from
qence with a miracle. If something came electron to atom, from atom to molecule,
from nothing, then there is not only the from molecule to colloids, and so up to

170 WRITING OF TODAY

the border of the living world. His anal- or stages from the depths of matter by
ysis of the processes of molecular physics which life arose, lead up from that imag-
as they appear in the organism, leads him inary something, the electron, to the in-
to recognize and to name a new force, or organic colloids, or to the crystallo-col-
a new manifestation of force, which he 5 loids, which are the threshold of life, each
hesitates to call vital, because of the stage showing some new transformation
associations of this term with a pre- of energy. There must be an all-potent
scientific age, but which he calls 'biotic energy transformation before we can get
energy.' chemical energy out of physical enc

Biotic energy is peculiar to living I0 and then biotic energy out of chemical
bodies, and 'there are precisely the same energy. This transformation of inor-
criteria for its existence/ says Professor ganic energy into life energy cannot be
Moore, 'as for the existence of any one traced or repeated in the laboratory, yet
of the inorganic energy types, viz., a set science believes the secret will sometime
of discrete phenomena ; and its nature is 15 be in its hands. It is here that the ma-
as mysterious to us as the cause of any terialistic philosophers, such as Profes-
one of these inorganic forms about which sors Moore and Loeb, differ from the
also we know so little. spiritualistic philosophers, such as Berg-

'It is biotic energy which guides the son, Sir Oliver Lodge, Professor Thomp-
development of the ovum, which regulates 20 son, and others.

the exchanges of the cell, and causes such Professor Moore has no sympathy with

phenomena as nerve impulse, muscular those narrow mechanistic views that see
contraction, and gland secretion, and it is in the life processes 'no problems save
a form of energy which arises in colloidal those of chemistry and physics/ 'Each
structures, just as magnetism appears in 25 link in the living chain may be physico-
iron, or radio-activity in uranium or chemical, but the chain as a whole, and
radium, and in its manifestations it un- its purpose, is something else.' He draws
dergoes exchanges with other forms of an analogy from the production of music
energy, in the same manner as these do in which purely physical factors are con-
among one another.' 3ocerned; the laws of harmonics account

Like Professor Henderson, of Harvard, for all ; but back of all is something that
whose volume on The Fitness of the En- is not mechanical and chemical — there is
vironment has lately appeared, Professor the mind of the composer, and the per-
Moore concedes to the vitalists about all formers, and the auditors, and something
they claim — namely, that there is some 35 that takes cognizance of the whole effect,
form of force or manifestation of energy A complete human philosophy cannot be
peculiar to living bodies, and one that built upon physical science alone. He
cannot be adequately described in terms thinks the evolution of life from inert
of physics and chemistry. Professor matter is of the same type as the evolu-
Moore says this biotic energy 'arises in 40 tion of one form of matter from another,
colloidal structures,' and, so far as bio- or the evolution of one form of energy
chemistry can make out, arises sponta- from another — a mystery, to be sure, but
neously and gives rise to that marvelous little more startling in the one case than
bit of mechanism, the cell. In the cell in the other. 'The fundamental mystery
appears 'a form of energy unknown out- 45 lies in the existence of those entities, or
side life processes which leads the mazy things which we call matter and energy/
dance of life from point to point, each out of the play and interaction of which
new development furnishing a starting all life phenomena have arisen. Organic
point for the next one.' It not only leads evolution is a series of energy exchanges
the dance along our own line of descent so and transformations from lower to
from our remote ancestors — it leads the higher, but science is powerless to go be-
dance along the long road of evolution hind the phenomena presented and name
from the first unicellular form in the dim or verify the underlying mystery. Only
paleozoic seas to the complex and highly philosophy can do this. And Professor
specialized forms of our own day. 55 Moore turns philosopher when he says

The secret of this life force, or biotic there is beauty and design in it all, 'and
energy, according to Professor Moore, is an eternal purpose which is ever pro-
in the keeping of matter itself. The steps gressing/

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 171

Bergson sets forth his views of evolu- Moore still does, we are paying homage
tion in terms of literature and philosophy. to a power that is super-material. Life
Professor Moore embodies similar views came to our earth, says Professor Moore,
in his volume, set forth in terms of molec- through a 'well regulated orderly devel-
ular science. Both make evolution a ere- 5 opment,' and it 'comes to every mother
ative and a continuous process. Bergson earth of the universe in the maturity of
lays the emphasis upon the cosmic spirit her creation when the conditions arrive
interacting with matter. Professor Moore within suitable limits/ That no intelli-
lays the emphasis upon the indwelling po- gent beings appeared upon the earth for
tencies of matter itself (probably the same 10 millions upon millions of years, that for
spirit conceived of in different terms), whole geologic ages there was no creature
Professor Moore philosophizes as truly as upon the earth with more brains than a
does Bergson when he says 'there must snail possesses, shows the almost infinitely
exist a whole world of living creatures slow progress of development, and that
which the microscope has never shown us, z$ there has been no arbitrary or high-
leading up to the bacteria and the proto- handed exercise of creative power. The
zoa. The brink of life lies not at the pro- universe is not run on principles of mod-
duction of protozoa and bacteria, which ern business efficiency, and man is at the
are highly developed inhabitants of our head of living forms, not by the fiat of
world, but away down among the colloids, 20 some omnipotent power, some superman,
and the beginning of life was not a fortu- but as the result of the operation of
itous event occurring millions of years forces that balk at no delay, or waste, or
ago and never again repeated, but one failure, and that are dependent upon the
which in its primordial stages keeps on infinitely slow ripening and amelioration
repeating itself all the time in our genera- 25 of both cosmic and terrestrial conditions,
tion. So that if all intelligent creatures We do not get rid of God by any such

were by some holocaust destroyed, up out dictum, but we get rid of the anthropo-
of the depths in process of millions of morphic views which we have so long
years, intelligent beings would once more been wont to read into the processes of
emerge.' This passage shows what a 30 nature. We dehumanize the universe,
speculative leap or a flight the scientific but we do not render it the less grand and
mind is at times compelled to take when mysterious. Professor Le Dantec says,
it ventures beyond the bounds of positive 'Life is only a surface accident in the
methods. It is good philosophy, I hope, history of the thermic evolution of the
but we cannot call it science. Thrilled 35 globe/ and Professor Moore points out to
with cosmic emotion, Walt Whitman us how life came to a cooling planet as
made a similar daring assertion: soon as the temperature became low

enough for certain chemical combinations

There is no stoppage, and never can be stop- to appear. There must first be oxides

page, 4o and saline compounds, there must be car-

If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or bonates of calcium and magnesium, and

upon their surfaces, were this moment +ua \:ua a. +t,^ <.«w«„ r~** £ u '

reduced back to a pallid float, it would ™V™ As the, temPerature falls, more
not avail in the long run, *" more complex compounds, such as

We should surely bring up again where we Ui\ requires, appear; till, in due time,
now stand, 45 carbon dioxide and water are at hand,

And surely go as much farther, and then far- and life can make a start. At the white
ther and farther. heat of some of the fixed stars, the pri-

mary chemical elements are not yet
Evolution is creative, whether it works evolved ; but more and more elements
in matter as Bergson describes, or 50 appear, and more and more complex com-
whether its path lies up through electrons pounds are formed as the cooling process
and atoms and molecules, as Professor progresses.

Moore describes. There is something 'This note cannot be too strongly
that creates and makes matter plastic to sounded that as matter is allowed ca-
its will. Whether we call matter 'the 55 pacity for assuming complex forms, those
living garment of God/ as Goethe did, or complex forms appear. As soon as ox-
a reservoir of creative energy, as Tyndall ides can be there, oxides appear ; when
and his school did, and as Professor temperature admits of carbonates, then

172 WRITING OF TODAY

carbonates are forthwith formed. These is bound to ask questions about that,

are experiments which any chemist can Gravity pulls matter down; life lifts it

to-day repeat in a crucible. And on a up ; chemical forces pull it to pieces ; vital

cooling planet, as soon as temperature forces draw it together and organize it;

will admit the presence of life, then life 5 the winds and the waters dissolve and

appears, as the evidence of geology shows scatter it; vegetation recaptures it and

us.' When we speak of the beginning of integrates and gives it new qualities. At

life, it is not clear just what we mean. every turn, minds like that of Sir Oliver

The unit of all organized bodies is the Lodge are compelled to think of life as a

cell, but the cell is itself an organized i0 principle or force doing something with

body, and must have organic matter to matter. The physico-chemical forces will

feed upon. Hence the cell is only a more not do in the hands of man what they do

complex form of more primitive living in the hands of Nature. Such minds,

matter. As we go down the scale toward therefore, feel justified in thinking that

the inorganic, can we find the point where t$ something which we call 'the hands of

the living and the non-living meet and be- Nature,' plays a part — some principle or

come one ? 'Life had to surge a long force which the hands of men do not hold,
way up from the depths before a green

plant cell came into being.' When the IX
green plant cell was found, life was M

fairly launched. This plant cell, in the SCIENCE FROM THE SIDE-

form of chlorophyll, by the aid of water LINES

and the trace of carbon dioxide in the irnwAwn t? qt nQQrnsj

air, began to store up the solar energy in LDYVARD L. SLOSSON

fruit and grain and WOOdy tissue, and *5 [Century Magazine, January, 1922. By permis-

thus furnish power to run all forms of sion-l

life machinery. o 1

The materialists or naturalists are right
in urging that we live in a much more Science is advancing more rapidly than

wonderful universe than we have ever im- 30 ever and is more quickly applied to the
agined, and that in matter itself sleep needs of life. But the scientific habit of
potencies and possibilities not dreamt of mind is not common or commonly re-
in our philosophy. The world of com- spected. The material contributions of
plex though invisible activities which sci- science to our comfort and luxury are
ence reveals all about us, the solar and 35 accepted as a matter of course with little
stellar energies raining upon us from thought about the prolonged process of
above, the terrestrial energies and influ- research that precedes the practical
ences playing through us from below, the application.

transformations and transmutations tak- Science is more than the father of in-

ing place on every hand, the terrible alert- 40 vention. We can get from the reading
ness and potency of the world of inert of science not only new things to think
matter as revealed by a flash of light- about, but, what is more important, new
ning, the mysteries of chemical affinity, ways of thinking about things,
of magnetism, of radio-activity, all point Any one who desires to keep in touch
to deep beneath deep in matter itself. It 45 with the progress of the world naturally
is little wonder that men who dwell habit- wants to know in a general way what is
ually upon these things and are saturated being done in the various fields of science,
with the spirit and traditions of lab- But, unfortunately, he does not find it so
oratory investigation, should believe that easy to follow current movements in
in some way matter itself holds the mys- 50 science as he does in literature, art, music,
tery of the origin of life. On the other politics, and other forms of human activ-
hand, a different type of mind, the more ity. Science is mostly printed in a for-
imaginative, artistic and religious type, eign language not only when it appears in
recoils from the materialistic view. French, German, Russian, or Japanese,

The sun is the source of all terrestrial 55 but also when it seems at first sight to be
energy, but the different forms that en- in ordinary English. Translators of for-
ergy takes — in the plant, in the animal, eign tongues are common and competent,
in the brain of man — this type of mind but there are comparatively few writers

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 173

engaged in the interpretation of technical side-show tents to see the two-headed calf
literature for the layman. and the bearded lady. They may even

go as far as to wonder why the calf is

§ 2 bicephalous and the lady pogoniastic, but

5 they do not even raise the more important

Science is more than a wonder-worker. question why most calves have only one
Wonders never cease, but we soon cease head and most ladies no beard. They
to wonder at them. Wonder is a f u- listen with eagerness to the tales ^ of
gitive emotion. A 'nine-days' wonder' is travelers, like Herodotus and MandeviUe,
the normal longevity, and there is no I0 who have been, or profess to have been,
reason why it should live longer, for there in remote regions. They are curious of
are more profitable attitudes. Even when all customs except their own, which, be-
science surprises us by depriving a famil- ing customary, require no explanation,
iar thing of some attribute deemed essen- 'Why do they act so?' they ask about
tial we do not miss it long. We are quite 15 foreigners, but never, 'Why do we act
accustomed to the idea of wireless tele- so?' though that is a question that they
phones, smokeless powder, horseless might more easily answer. Man began
trucks, voiceless drama, fatherless frogs, his study of the world with the more
leatherless soles, strawless straws, tonsil- distant things. He gazed long at the
less children, caffeineless coffee, kickless m stars before it occurred to him to look at
drinks, seedless oranges, and typeless the ground on which he stood, and longer
printing. yet before he tried to turn his attention

When a baby sees a strange object, — inward to find out what was going on in-
and to a baby all objects are strange, — he side of his own head. Astronomy was
first opens his mouth and stares at it; 25 well grown before geology was born, and
next, he sticks out his finger and tries to psychology has only recently been ad-
touch it ; third, he grabs it and tries to mitted to the family of the sciences,
do something with it. These are the

three stages through which persons and § 3

races pass in their attitude toward the un- 30

known in nature: wonder, curiosity, Ignorance is commonly referred to as

utilization. The first sentence of each 'darkness/ but it is not so easy as that
new chapter of the 'History of Human would imply. The darkness of space
Progress' (by various authors, Published offers no impediment to the penetration
in Parts) ends with ! Later sentences may 35 of light, but the human mind often op-
be punctuated with ? and finally perhaps poSes a specific resistance to the entrance
with $. of a new idea. Especially, if it is a big

Some persons and peoples remain al- idea that requires some rearrangement
ways in the earliest infantile attitude of 0f the mental furniture before room can
empty awe, and take pride in it. They 40 be found for it.

do not even attempt to pass to the stage There are those who love darkness

of idle curiosity, as does the normal child. rather than light, not because their deeds
From the open mouth to the open mind are ev^ but just because they like to sit
is often a long and toilsome progress in around in the dark and tell ghost-stories
the history of the race. The ancient 45 to one another. They prefer mystery,
Athenians had passed from the 'Oh!' where they can imagine whatever they
stage to the Why? stage, but never wish> and they fear that science will
reached the What for? stage. That is

why they were overwhelmed by the bar- Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
barians, who did not know so much, but 50 Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine,
knew how to kill people quite as well. Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made

In the earlier culture stages people are The tender-personed Lamia melt into a
curious only about 'curiosities.' They shade,

are not interested in the ordinary. It is

the 'Wonders of Science' period in lit- 55 They even seem to regard God, quite
erature. The museums are jackdaw blasphemously, as a great conjuror whose
nests of pretty stones, queer shells, and tricks may be exposed by some imper-
outlandish trinkets. Crowds flock to the tinent scientist who turns too much light

174 WRITING OF TODAY

upon the phenomena of nature. They at the Pacific from a peak in Darien, as
do not know the simple geometrical prin- well as how Keats felt on first opening
ciple that as the area of enlightenment Chapman's Homer. The lives of explor-
enlarges, it lengthens the circle of the ers are always exciting whether they
surrounding darkness. 5 penetrate to the heart of Africa, like

The method of science is economy of Livingstone, or to the heart of the atom,
thought. The aim of science is control like Bohr.

of the future. A science arises from At a base-ball game there may be five

some human need, and returns to earth thousand spectators and only one man at
to satisfy some, often some other, human I0 the bat, but do not imagine he is the only
need. It may soar so high into the em- one having any fun. He alone can feel
pyrean as to be out of our sight, but it the whack on the wood that tells him that
always comes back in the course of time, he has made a three-base hit, but the five
bringing food, like Elijah's ravens. thousand participate by proxy in his

So do not believe a mathematician^ pleasure, their muscles tense, and their
when he boasts that his newly discovered pulses quicken.

theorem is of no possible use to anybody. There is also fun to be found in sitting

Before he knows it some mechanic will on the side-lines of science and watching
snatch it out of his hand and set it to the international game. Those who are
work in the shops. No occupation 20 not musicians may get delight from
seemed idler than the study of geometry music ; those who are not architects, from
of four dimensions when anybody could architecture; those who are not cooks,
see that there were only three; yet now from food. It is not necessary to be a
all of a sudden the symbols of the fourth scientist to get pleasure and profit from
dimension appear in astronomical and 25 scientific researches. This is not a fac-
physical calculations, and are likely to get ulty confined to a few. It is common to
into chemistry and biology soon. all who have any capacity for intellectual

enjoyment, and those who do not avail

§ 4 themselves of it are curtailing their op-

30 portunities for happiness. Appreciation

One cannot, of course, become a sci- of good music was supposed to be over
entist by merely reading science, how- the ears of the masses until the phono-
ever diligently and long. For a scientist graph brought Beethoven and Wagner to
is one who makes science, not one who every farm-house and tenement,
learns science. A novelist is one who 35 Science, too, needs to be democratized
writes novels, not one who reads them, and brought within reach of the many,
A contortionist is one who makes con- not as a task forced upon children, but as
tortions, not one who watches them, a lifelong recreation. That is one dif-
Every real scientist is expected to take ficulty with our excellent school system;
part in the advancement of science, to go40 it is so comprehensive that if you suggest
over the top at least once in his life; when to a person that he might find it interest-
he takes his Ph. D. degree, if never again, ing to study, say, botany or chemistry,
But of course the number of those who he is apt to reply that he 'had it' when he
are in reserve or in training must always was a boy, implying that, like the mumps
outnumber those at the front. 45 or measles, he could never catch it again.

The highest reward of science, the He does not realize that the sciences are
secret satisfaction of standing where no making such rapid progress that even if
mortal man has ever stood before, is it 'took' well in the first place, the imnui-
rightly reserved to those who contribute nity would not last longer than ten years,
most to its advance. The pure thrill of 5<> The investigator does not like to be
primal discovery comes only to the ex- bothered when he is busy any more than
plorer who first crosses the crest of the other people. If you lean over his
mountain-range that divides the unknown shoulder and jog his elbow when he is
from the known. But if we cannot all picking a chromosome out of a cell with
feel that thrill to the full, we can at least 55 a Barber pipette, he is apt to say : 'Run
catch a resonance of it in our own souls away, child ! You could not understand
by reading about it, as we know some- what I 'm doing if I explained it to you.'
thing of how Balboa felt when he stared Doubtless you could not if he explained

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 175

it to you in his own language. But some- tion C and hear his paper on 'The Internal
body else who did understand what he Strains of the Molecule of Cyclo-
was doing and who spoke your language hexane - spiro - cyclopentane - dicarboxylic
could explain it to you in a way that Acid/ Just so in polite conversation you
would be very interesting. This transla- 5 may see a person listening with flattering
tion of technical terminology into the attention to an unintelligible tale in the
vulgar tongue is quite another man's job, hope that he may earn like courtesy when
— no easy job at that, — and the few men his turn comes. The scientific specialist
of each generation who have the ability requires the services of an interpreter as
and opportunity to do original research 10 much as the layman, and he needs it
of a high order ought not to be expected more, for he has all he can do to keep up
to take time off for such secondary work. with the voluminous literature of his own

But the fact that scientists have been subject; yet he must keep an eye out for
compelled to construct a trade language what is going on in all other fields, even
of their own is undoubtedly one reason 15 the most remote, for something may hap-
why they are commonly misunderstood pen there that will throw light on his
and disesteemed. It is hard not to feel own problems.

that a foreigner who does not speak our Then, too, there is danger that the in-

language is a bit stupid or crazy. Then, vestigator may become so absorbed in his
too, our pride comes into play and con- ao subject that he will lose sight of its wider
structs a defensive mechanism for us. aspects, its human interest, its practical
Our subconscious self suggests to us to possibilities, its relation to the world at
say, 'Well, if he can't put it into plain large. If one keeps his eye too closely
English, I guess it does not amount to fixed to a microscope, or even a telescope,
much, anyway.' This is the time to be 25 he is apt to become a trifle near-sighted,
reminded of an observation by Quiller- A botanist, for instance, may concentrate
Couch: his attention so exclusively upon ques-

tions of taxonomy that it might be said
I hold there is no surer sign of ill- of him
breeding than to speak, even to feel, slight- 30

ingly of any knowledge oneself does not A primrose by the river's brim

happen to possess. Primula flava was to him,

And it was nothing more.
§5

35 § 6

If there were only one language of sci-
ence, the layman might learn it once for The popularization of science does not
all in order to get access to the whole of mean falsification, but its translation from
its literature. But 'science' is one of technical terms into ordinary language,
those abstract collective terms that get us 40 Popular science need not be incorrect, but
into trouble. It would be safer always to has to be somewhat indefinite. It differs
speak of 'the sciences' rather than of from the exact sciences in being inexact,
'science,' since there are many of them The scientific mind is set at too sharp
and they are not all on speaking terms a focus for ordinary use. The would-be
with one another. Corridor conversa- 45 popularizer is always confronted by the
tions at a session of the American As- dilemma of comprehensible inaccuracy or
sociation for the Advancement of Sci- incomprehensible accuracy, and the fun of
ence sound like a Balkan peace con- his work lies mainly in the solution of
ference, for each is speaking in his own that problem.

tongue. If a chemist gets by mistake 50 It is amusing to see that scientists are
into Section F, and hears a paper being stricter with others than they .are with
read on 'Ecdysis in the Teleostean themselves, though this is a common hu-
Agriopus,' the chances are that he does man failing. For instance, the bacteriol-
not understand any more of it than ogist is very insistent that the layman shall
you or I would, and, between you and 55 not confound protozoa and bacteria, but in
me, he is just as much bored by it, the laboratory he himself calls them all
though he may grin and bear it, hoping alike 'bugs.' The electrician is particular
that the biologist will happen in at Sec- that other people shall use volt and am-

176 WRITING OF TODAY

pere properly, but he tells his assistant becoming increasingly difficult to put it in
'to turn on the juice.' 'a tongue understanded of the people,

The humanist and the scientist may to use the Prayer-Book expression, but
think they are quarreling when they are there is still some playground left,
merely saying the same thing in different 5 'Studies,' said Lord Bacon, 'serve for
words. Take, for instance, the phenom- delight, for ornament, and for ability.'
enon known as 'the vernal erethic diathe- The kind of studies classed as natural
sis' or, in other circles, as 'spring's awak- sciences are, as he was the first clearly
ening' : to point out, the most useful of all, and

T xl_ . - ,. . A< I0 their pursuit gives to the mind the same

turns to thoughts of love r &, ., , V , .. r

fessed that they do not serve so well for

is the way it is put by the poet (Tenny- 'ornament,' which may in part account
son\ J \ for their comparative unpopularity. It

i5 is not easy to steer the conversation

In the spring the chief activating gland around to the point where one can quote
of the kinetic system, the thyroid, shows a quadratic equation or a chemical for-
a distinct enlargement mula with effect and without affectation,

and when one does, it is likely to be no
is the way it is said by the scientist 20 more intelligible than a chorus ending
(Crile). from Euripides. It is true that one may

The so-called 'conflict between science for the moment lightly refer to Einstein
and religion' is largely a question of or Freud in conversation, and thereby
using words in a technical or a general give an impression of erudition that one
sense. Volumes have been written on the 25 by no means possesses, but that moment
question of whether 'the great fish' which will soon pass, if indeed it has not already
the Lord prepared to swallow Jonah might passed. In any case, one may only men-
be a whale, and, if so, whether 'the whale's tion their names in common conversation,
belly' could be interpreted to mean his for if he attempted to explain what either
lungs, where the imprisoned prophet would 30 man meant, he would for one reason or
find plenty of air, rather than the whale's another be suppressed,
stomach, where he would be in danger of
digestion.

The ordinary man wants to include X

whales among fish and potatoes among 35

roots. The zoologist and the botanist JOHN DEWEY'S PHILOSOPHY
want to confine these words to the stricter

meaning that they have imposed upon RANDOLPH S. BOURNE

them. If the question of the use of these

Words were put Up to a COUrt Composed of 40 [New ReP«*>lic, March 13,1915. By permission of
,.,,., *\ 1 «j it • •*. * author and publisher.]

philologists to decide the issue on its

historic grounds, the common man would Nothing is more symbolic of Professor
win his case. But it is never good policy Dewey's democratic attitude towards life
to quarrel about words. The writer of than the disintegrated array of his pub-
popular science will be wise to evade the 45 lished writings. Where the neatly uni-
issue by using, where he can, words to form works of William James are to be
which scientists have not given a restric- found in every public library, you must
ted meaning. He may speak of 'ocean hunt long and far for the best things of
life' or 'the denizens of the deep' to avoid the man who, since the other's death, is
getting entangled with the distinction be- 50 the most significant thinker in America.
tween mammalian and non-mammalian Pamphlets and reports of obscure educa-
pelagic forms, and he is still allowed to tional societies; school journals, univer-
talk about 'The underground parts of sity monographs, and philosophical jour-
plants' without going too deep into radical nals limited to the pedant few ; these are
nomenclature. Since science has appro- 55 the burial-places of much of this intensely
priated so many common words and has alive, futuristic philosophy. For the best
created a language of its own over which educational essays one had to look until
it has original proprietary rights, it is very recently to a little compilation made

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 177

by an unknown London house. The 'Edu- As we discover in the essay on Maeter-
cational Creed/ in style and conciseness linck, where he shows himself poet as
and spirit the most admirably popular of well as philosopher, his tolerant democ-
all his writings, is, I think, still lost in racy loves all human values, and finds
an out-of-print cheap bulletin in some in- 5 nothing so intolerable as artificial in-
nocuous series for elementary teachers. equality. He hates nothing so much as
'School and Society,' with some of the the preacher who tells others how bad
wisest words ever set to paper, frightens they are arid what they must do to re-
one away with its infantile cover and its form. Yet his philosophy is a great ser-
university chaperonage. Only some het- 10 mon, challenging in every line, in spite of
erogeneous essays, brilliant but not hold- his discreet style, our mechanical habits
ing the exact kernel of his thought, and of thought, our mechanical habits of edu-
his 'How We Think/ in which is shown cation, our mechanical morality. A
that scientific method is simply a sub- prophet dressed in the clothes of a pro-
limely well-ordered copy of our own best 15 fessor of logic, he seems almost to feel
and most fruitful habits of thought, have shame that he has seen the implications
been launched in forms that would reach of democracy more clearly than anybody
a wide public. No man with such uni- else in the great would-be democratic so-
versally important things to say on almost ciety about him, and so been forced into
every social and intellectual activity of 20 the unwelcome task of teaching it.
the day, was ever published in forms more Orthodox philosophical thinking has

ingeniously contrived to thwart the in- usually gone along on the comfortable
terest of the prospective public. assumption that words always have the

Professor Dewey's thought is inacces- same meaning, and that they stand for
sible because he has always carried his 25 real things, that logic is the science of
simplicity of manner, his dread of show thinking correctly, that reason is eternal,
or self-advertisement, almost to the point that if you can only get your ideas con-
of extravagance. In all his psychologv sistent you have then a true picture of
there is no place for the psychology of what you are trying to interpret. We
prestige. His democracy seems almost to 30 have taken for granted the old view,
take that extreme form of refusing to which goes back to Aristotle's logic, that
bring one's self or one's ideas to the at- our mental life was a receiving and con-
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 35 the true symbols.

silver-gray hair and drooping mustache, 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, 40 tion, nor a logic-machine for building up
flowing and exact and lucid when read, 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- 45 strument by which we solve problems,
ting yourself over to the people who want 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 5° towards our doing something or feeling
situation of a revolutionist with an innate 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 thought, pie and things presents to us. Our life
the customs and institutions in which our 55 is a constant reaction to a world which is
societv has been living for centuries. constantly stimulating us. We are in
He allies himself personally with every situations where we must do something,
democratic movement, yet will not preach, and it is for the purpose of guiding this.

178 WRITING OF TODAY

doing from the point of view of what has trol, and society now intensely self-con-
happened or what is likely to happen, that scious of its imperfections, is still very
we think. We are not bundles of thoughts helpless towards controlling its destiny,
and feelings so much as bundles of at- Life is a modification of the present with
titudes or tendencies. We act usually 5 reference to the conditions of the future, a
before we 'perceive'; the perception is conflict between the habits engendered in
only important as it enables us to act the past and the new aims and purposes,
again. We remember what we use, and clearly envisaged, to be worked for.
we learn what we occupy ourselves with. It is in showing the unity of all the

Our minds are simply the tools with which I0 democratic strivings, the social movement,
we forge out our life. the new educational ideals, the freer

If we are to live worthily and happily, ethics, the popular revolt in politics, of all
it is not necessary that we should 'be' the aspects of the modern restless, for-
anything or 'know' anything, so much ward-looking personal and social life, and
as that we should be able to meet the sit- x5 the applicability to all of them of scien-
uation in which developing life places us, tine method, with its hypotheses and bold
and express our capacities in our activity. experimentation, that Professor Dewey
Our social problem as well as our per- has been the first thinker to put the moral
sonal problem is to understand what we and social goal a notch ahead. His phi-
are doing. This is almost the whole law *> losophy has the great advantage of mak-
and the prophets. In the ideal home we ing nonsensical most of the writing and
should have learned as children, through thinking that has been done in the old
social converse and the household occupa- terms. See how much of this can be
tions and solution of the problems which truthfully called anything else than a
our curiosity and our work brought us, as juggling with the symbols of learning.'
how to adjust ourselves to the demands of See how much of the energy of the mold-
life. But the home can no longer effect ers of opinion in politics, industry, edu-
this and the school must step in. But the cation, religion, morality, goes to the
school is only really educative if it is squaring up of the activity of individuals
helping the child to understand the social 30 and groups with certain principles which,
situations in which he finds and is to find however much they may once have been
himself, and to regulate his impulses so solutions of genuine problems and inter-
that he can control these situations. The pretations of genuine situations, are now
ideal school would be an embryonic com- mere caked and frozen barricades to ac-
munity life, where the child would sense 35 tivity and understanding,
the occupations and interests of the larger Professor Dewey has given us a whole

society into which he is to enter and so new language of meanings. After read-
have his curiosity and practical skill ing him, you can see nothing again in the
awakened to meet and conquer them. old terms. And when I see college presi-

In its larger social, implications, Pro- 40 dents and publicists who have cultivated
fessor Dewey's philosophy challenges the the arts of prestige, expressing their views
whole machinery of our world of right on every question of the day in the old
and wrong, law and order, property and caked and frozen language, thinking along
religion, the old techniques by which so- the old lazy channels, I feel a swage in-
ciety is still being managed and regulated. 4Sdignation that Professor Dewey should not
Our institutions have been made as scales be out in the arena of the concrete, him-
and measures to which we bring our ac- self interpreting the current life. I am
tions, rigid standards by whose codes we conscious of his horror of having his ideas
are judged, frameworks to whose lines petrified into a system. He knows that it
we strive to mold ourselves. All the rev- 50 will do no good to have his philosophy
olutionary strivings of the past have been intellectually believed unless it is also
away from these institutional authorities thought and lived. And he knows the
towards greater freedom. But in spite of uncanny propensity of Stupid men to turn
all the freedom we have won, society was even the most dynamic ideas into dogmas.
probably never more deeply unhappy than 55 He has seen that in his school world,
it is to-day. For freedom is not happi- Meanwhile his influence goes on increas-
ness; it is merely the first negative step ing to an extent of which he is almost
towards happiness. Happiness is con- innocently unconscious.

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 179

of what is to be in both countries in a
happier time. It is what we have desired
XI in the past of silly wrangles and mis-

understandings, and now we know that
FRANCE 5 our desire is fulfilled.

For behind all those misunderstandings,

TA. CLUTTON BROCK] and inu sPite of the differences of char-

L 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. Metnuen and iW ,. , 7., ,,„ -L. -~, ... „.,

Co., who have republished this article with others Other battles. When bir Philip Sidney

by Mr. Clutton Brock in book form under the title spoke of France as that sweet enemy, he

Thoughts on the War.^ made & phrase for ^ EngUsh fee,-g 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 15 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. 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. 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 25 French were frivolous ; and they said that
the German, that Germany would be con- we were gloomy. Now they see the gai-
quered on the seas and from her eastern ety 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 30 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 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 35 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 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 40 hopes of the revolutionary wars ; 1870 is
England. between them and her; she has learnt,

That is also revealed in the praise which like no other nation in Europe, the great
the French have given to our army, lesson of defeat, which is not to mix ma-
There is no people that can praise as they erial dreams with spiritual ; she has passed
can; for they enjoy praising others as 45 beyond illusions, yet her spirit is as high
much as some nations enjoy praising as if it were drunk with all the illusions
themselves, and they lose all the reserve of 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- 5° 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- 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 55 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 and kept their strength. It is that they
and wine and flowers, is only a foretaste have a kind of strength new to nations,

i8o WRITING OF TODAY

such as we see in beautiful women who the glory of France to be the guardian
have endured great sorrows and outlived nation That is not an accident, for
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, 5 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 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 I0 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; 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 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 20 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 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 *5 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 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 30 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 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 35 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- 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 neoples, England 40 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 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- 45 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 Nations crying to the earth : —
checked before Paris there was an equal t ^ she that was thy sign and standard-
check to the German idea. Then the bearer,
world, which was holding its breath, knew 5© Thy voice and cry:
that the old nations, the old faith and She that washed thee with her blood and left
mind and conscience of Europe, were still thee ***";![»
standing fast and that science bad not . - The same a™ I-
utterly betrayed them all to the new bar- Are fal?en an^ fed^hee" "
barism. Twice before, at Tours and in 55 a en anThcse han(js defiie(p
the Catalaunian fields, there has been such Am not I thy tongue that spake, thine eye
a fight upon the soil of France, and now that led thee,
for the third time it is the heavy fate and Not I thy child?

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 181

Europe from the fall of the Bastille to the

fall of Napoleon. In four years and four

XII months we have passed through an age

more wonderful and terrible than all
A RETROSPECT OF THE WAR 5 these; and the sequel is a vista going be-
yond sight. Posterity will be interested
[J. L. GARVIN] forever in knowing what manner of men

and women we were, in our traits and
[Observer, London, Eng., November 17, 1918. By habits as we lived, and may much exag-

permission.] ^ gerate ug Qr may ^ Wg ^^ ^^

What shall it profit to have seen the great- We had t0 be- We may have
whole world and forget— to have entered b£en Sreatey than we know. Much even
into all passion and wisdom only to lose about. ourselves that will be clear to his-
both the golden and the iron keys to the tory ls dim to us- Let us look back,
things which have been. They are of the *5

life of our life. Unless we grasp both THE prelude

keys now we shall never know the mind's

true return to the secrets of its strength ; lhlf Journal and its readers have

we shall forfeit that which is part of the 5as*ed together through nearly two hun-
best force and depth of existence. The » dred and thirty weeks of these unparal-
war seemed to destroy many memories leJed happenings and vicissitudes. Out
of what went before it. The absorptions of the vast welter of the struggle as it
of the future will soon tend to destroy came and Passed let us only evoke by
many memories of the war. For the sake Posing glimpses again the things that
of the future itself let us give at least this 25 chiefly shook our pulses and startled im-
day to recollection. The difference be- agination. The prelude was very long,
tween one human being and another, as It lasted more than twenty years. The
between man and all other creatures, is present writer vividly remembers when
largely a difference in power of remem- Bismarck was dismissed. The world felt
brance — whereby we do not mean the 3° a superstitious thrill, but soon forgot,
lively mental retentiveness so often prized, The old Titan groaned and prophesied
and not without reason, but that moral only to a pitying time which saw his
seizure and imaginative hold which can weakness, but could not understand his
turn the meaning and color of past somber, far-reaching vision of fatality,
experience into the very stuff and hue of 35 The young^ Emperor, born in an evil
character. hour to be the wrecker of mankind, filled

What is there not to remember? 'We the stage and cast himself in turn for
live in thoughts not years, in deeds not every part. Strutting and gesturing, de-
breaths, in actions not in figures on a dial.' claiming and orating, threatening and
By that measure, we of this age who re- 4° wheedling, he meddled with everything
main have all lived more than any in the and bottomed nothing. With vivid folly,
times before us. We have crowded into busy presumption, ungovernable impulse,
a few years emotions, efforts and ordeals, he reversed the Bismarckian precepts,
tragedies and achievements, catastrophes Half-Parsifal ^ in his medieval moods,
and triumphs, convulsions of mankind and 45 half-bagman in his modern, and ego-
changes of the world such as were for- maniac in all, he aspired to be the suzerain
merly stretched over generations or cen- of the world. Throughout the first decade
turies. Once we had all dreamed of what of this man's reign glad mothers, not
it might have been to have lived with knowing, were bringing forth those boys
Pericles or Alexander, with Hannibal or 50 of all countries who are dead.
Caesar; to have known the early Crusades

or their efflorescence in the thirteenth cen- 1914

tury ; to have had part in the Renaissance

or the Reformation, in the age of discov- The shadow stole over the world. The
ery, or in that of Elizabeth ; to have 55 more the shadow darkened and widened.
breathed and stirred when Cromwell and the more the world deceived itself by ar-
Chatham did; or to have gone forward iificial lights. As the crisis drew very
with events through the whole epic of near, our Britain seemed at the worst

182 WRITING OF TODAY

point of domestic faction and social trivi- Could Paris be saved? Our hearts

ality. All who loved her feared for her. hung on the question. Do you remem-
We talked civil war, suffragettes, and ber? The struggle was to be worse than
tango. Had peace continued, we might the most somber prophet had conceived,
have been undone with ignominy. Who 5 Then came the battles of the Marne and
can tell ? Then what all men dreaded and of Nancy — the days of suspense when
what had been so long delayed and con- our pulses seemed almost to stop beating
jured anxiously away several times came — the deliverance. The invasion was
with the suddenness of an explosion. The stemmed. It was a crowning mercy foi
Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated. i0 defense. But in their joy most amongst
All combustible matter heaped in Europe the Allies were deceived. On the other
for over forty years went up in thunder side of Europe the gallant Russian march
and flame. The camarillas of Potsdam into East Prussia to help the Western Al-
and Vienna forced the issue and risked lies — and it helped them — had been an-
the war. A dozen men in secret conclave l5 nihilated at Tannenberg. But in Galicia
were able to resolve this horror. The the Grand Duke was battering down the
final decision of the German Emperor main Hapsburg armies. In Britain Lord
alone was able to pronounce sentence of Kitchener had set up the standard and by
doom upon millions and millions of hu- hundreds of thousands our men were roll-
man lives and hearts. It was the red 20 ing up for war faster than they could be
summer at last. Serbia, France, and equipped. From the Dominions and from
Russia were engaged for the death- foreign lands, from the furthest ends of
grapple. the Empire and the earth the fighters 01

On that first ever-memorable Sunday of our blood were rallying to the cause.
August, 1914, we published our article, 25 Nothing would ever be the same again.
'Honor or Shame.' Luxemburg was in- Moltke minor is said to have told his

vaded, Belgium violated. Three Cabinet master after the Battle of the Marne that
Councils were held. It was a day of the war was lost. But now Germany
solemn feeling, of almost unbearable ten- made her second effort, and it was greater
sion. In the evening the die was cast. It 30 than the first. It was in some ways her
was to be Honor, not Shame. Whatever greatest. She added improvisation tc
might betide, we were then spiritually preparation. She expanded her old ar-
saved. The British Fleet — greatest and mies faster than Britain could raise new
surest of all services — had already con- ones. Her arsenals and factories poured
centrated. Swiftly, silently, while all 3s out guns and munitions. With mightier
Germany was stamping and vaunting, it masses she renewed. In the incredible
had grasped the power of the seas. The sequel to the Marne the battles rolled out
world, too, was saved beyond our knowing northward from the Aisne to the sea.
then. Antwerp fell. The Allies had failed to

That August was the month of pure 40 outflank the Germans. In the battles of
faith and fervor and inspiration which Arras and Ypres, the Germans threw
we shall all remember to our latest breath, themselves on the Allies' barrier and sac-
It lifted us above. We had found the rificed hundreds of thousands of men in
heights of our souls again. The German dense assaults, but could not break
hosts were sweeping down on France by 45 through. Never had Britain thought to be
all avenues, but chiefly through Belgium, moved as she was moved when our own
What comes back? The crashing of thin line strove and held and the Channel
Liege — the firing of Louvain — the tre- ports were saved. Never, never can we
mendous array of the German march remember it enough. At sea Coronel was
through Brussels — the sudden seizure of 50 more than redeemed at the Falkland
Namur — the retreat from Mons. All Islands. The Zeppelins attacked Eng-
early hopes were shattered, but the stuff land on the Christmas Eve of 1914. Sub-
of the breed was already proved by the marine piracy was soon to begin. The
beloved 'Old Contemptibles.' We were first phase was over. Armageddon was to
heroic yet. But we would need all our 55 be yet worse and worse, stranger and
heroism, and France hers. The French stranger than man had conceived. But
armies swung back and back from the the scale of heroism, effort, invention rose
northern frontier. When would it stop? with the scale of devilry and horror.

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 183

We have yielded to temptation in dwelling visions of our new army were now in
on those early days. But this is a reverie, France. The Allies, though too late for
not a record. The rest must condense the immediate purpose, had landed at
years into paragraphs. Salonika, the key to much. The first sub-

5 marine menace was well dealt with. All
191 5 the while the blockade and slaughter were

wearing down the enemy. Slowly the
The first winter had darkened. The mills of God were grinding,
mud had deepened. The deadlock of

trench warfare was fixed. We ourselves 10 ,

held that it would remain fixed for many 9

a day. There was to be no break through

by either side in the West. That was This was in a military sense a year of

why we advocated the collateral and au- supreme drama, only equaled in that char-
dacious employment of free strategy in 15 acter by the furious opening of the war
the East to help the West. The hopes and by its astonishing close. Writh the
raised by Neuve Chapelle were a false Grand Duke Nicholas's capture of Erze-
dawn. The Western offensives in 1915 rum light seemed to break from the East,
were all bloody and abortive. It was a Again, false dawn. Hope and agony were
year of glory and disaster. We remem- 20 to struggle to the end as never before in
ber the second battle of Ypres, the Cana- the fortunes of men. Much else may we
dians, the poison gas. It is like yester- be tempted to forget in the times to come,
day. We remember the desperation of but never the deadly peril and immortal
Loos, which first showed what the civic defense of Verdun — never our New Ar-
armies of Britain in this war might yet 25 mies' contempt of death, their outpouring
be. The cry of the women and children of blood, that triumph of soul-stuff and
when the Lusitania sank is still in our body-fiber in their first full grapple with
ears. We shall never cease to hear it. the German armies. Never can we for-

In the East there was wide catastrophe get the epic of France, the epic of Britain,
just stopping short of total and irre- 30 And we drove back the German Fleet in
trievable destruction. The Russian front the Battle of Jutland. Brussiloff swept
was burst on the Dunajetz. The Grand the Austrians before him, capturing hun-
Duke's armies were shattered right and dreds of thousands of prisoners. Italy
left, driven back into the heart of their stopped the invasion from the north and
land. Fortresses were smashed like crock- 35 turned to storm Gorizia. Verdun was
ery. This was huge adversity for the saved. Roumania entered the war. It
Allies. By the autumn the retreat was seemed that the hour had come for the
stayed and Russia held a line. But a Salonika expedition to strike in unison,
towering expectation of the early part By now Germany's colonial empire was
of the war had toppled and disappeared. 40 totally extinguished.

We could have no more hope of a Rus- Never had the Allied prospects shone so

sian advance on Hungary and Silesia, on bright. German confidence shook to its
Vienna and Breslau, and Berlin. In spite foundations. We remember August, 19 16,
of the glory of the Lancashire landing, of as like the fair face of Heaven. In six
the Anzac fighting, and many glories, the 45 weeks it was black with cloud. Germany
Dardanelles expedition ended in the dis- made her third great effort. Hindenburg
aster of withdrawal. The Serbs, after and Ludendorf were called to the head
holding their own brilliantly for more of affairs with practically absolute powers
than a year, were crushed by Austria- of dictatorship over military and civil af-
Hungary and Bulgaria together. The 50 fairs alike. The Roumanians were swept
first advance on Bagdad ended in the re- out of Transylvania and crushed utterly,
treat to Kut. Extraordinary efforts of standardized con-

It was a hard year. When it closed struction prepared the means for the
conscription was still delayed, in spite of greatest danger this country had ever
Mr. Lloyd George's passionate struggle. 55 faced — the crowning submarine cam-
The formation of the Coalition Govern- paign. Never in the war had there been
ment had at least made him Minister of a more somber and difficult hour than
Munitions. It was the saving change, when Mr. Lloyd George became Prime
Italy had entered the war. Many di- Minister nearly two years ago.

184 WRITING OF TODAY

I917 I9l8 ANNUS MIRABILIS

After nearly three years of it, when we Of latest things we will say least, but

thought every capacity for wonder and history will dwell as amply on the events
emotion well-nigh exhausted, possibility of this year as upon any in the range of
seemed to reach the climax of amazement time. Where all these war-years were
and happiness when Tsarism disappeared 5 years of wonders, this 1918, which is still
in a night and America entered the war. with us, was chosen to surpass. It will
The effect of these two things coming to- tower by itself like a landmark in all hu-
gether was beyond expression. We all man annals. When it opened, the worst
remember that we felt it so. The hour was still to come. Nothing in the records
which America's entry made the deepest 10 of war approaches the stupendous revul-
was the least articulate. But of these sions of fortune in the last phase. Strained
twin prodigies, the promise of the one now close to the very limit of endurance,
would take at least a year to mature into Germany was still capable, with all her
righting shape ; the promise of the other concentrated force, of one further mighty
veiled an abyss. Submarine piracy was i$ effort, and no more. The British were
in frightful swing. Accompanied by driven back; the Channel ports were in
ghastly destruction, the Hindenburg re- peril. The French were driven back ;
treat to new fortifications was a most mas- Paris was in danger of being laid waste
terly and formidable manceuver. We quarter by quarter. Nearly four years of
could not compensate for this by Vimy 20 it had brought us in all outer appearance
and Messines, splendid as they were, still only to the supreme ordeal. Yet in less
less by the dull self-murder of the Pass- than four months from the middle of July
chendaele offensive. At Cambrai stroke the whole Central League had crashed and
was matched by counter-stroke. General disappeared in one engulfing chaos of sur-
Nivelle's offensive had come short in a 25 render and revolution. From Palestine
way that laid lead on the heart of France, and Mesopotamia, through the Balkans
Russia collapsed in wild anarchy. Russia and Italy to the West, victory on victory
was out of the war. for the Allies and America accomplished

Everywhere amongst the Allies the in a hundred days the military annihila-
nerves of the feeble gave way within 30 tion of every enemy,
them. Joining the defeatists, they raised In the West, without the speeding-up
a white flag of parley with 'Stockholm' of the American reserves and without
written on it. They called for the peace their battling manhood, the Allies could
by negotiation which could have been never have done it. Without the French
nothing but a German victory. After 35 and British Armies at the top of their
three years' fighting that was the deadliest skill in leadership and their stern gran-
hour of moral danger. Thank God for deur in action, the Associates never
ever that the heart and will and fiber of could have done it. Without the British
the nation held firm then under its in- Fleet no member of the League of Lib-
domitable leader, the Prime Minister. He40erty could have done anythingtin the luin-
was able to wrest the talisman of victory dred days of triumph and amazement,
out of the very jaws of disaster. After But every people, great and small, in that
the Italian armies were broken on the League helped to do it. But, above all,
Isonzo — soon to rally on the Piave — the Coalition conquered at last in four
he secured the interknitting of the Allies' 45 months because with the old lamp in their
Western forces and the first definite meas- hands all the while, at last they rubbed it
ures towards a unified command. At the and the spirit appeared. After nearly
same time the glorious veteran, M. Clem- four, years they established on Mr. Lloyd
enceau, became Prime Minister of France. George's initiative the unified command,
The British had captured Bagdad in the 50 and found in Marshal Foch a genius to
spring of the year and Jerusalem at the wield it. War shall perish, but while the
end of it. But when it closed the Brest- world lasts never shall die the influence of
Litovsk negotiations had begun. Russia these examples of heroism and energy, of
and all the East far towards the ap- sacrifice and fortitude, of long, stark en-
proaches to India were at the feet of Ger- 55 durance, tested unto the darkest hour and,
many, and America was not yet ready. when found faithful, then crowned by the

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 185

radiance of achievement. From this the nothing at all on the bourses of Lisbon
unceasing generations will draw strength and Hamburg.

for duties far other than that dread but War, revolution, or a failure of the

sacred task which has been fulfilled sources of the national wealth generally
through our hands. It is done. 5 begins the depreciation of a paper cur-

rency. But the recovery of this money
to its former value need not result when
vttt the original calamity has passed away.

* A recovery can only come about by the

10 deliberate policy of the Government, and
WILL MARKS EVER RECOVER? there are generally weighty reasons

against adopting such a policy. In the
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES case of the money of the French revolu-

tion, the depreciated notes were simply
[New York Evening Post April 9 1921 Copy- x- swept away, and their place taken by a

right 1921, by New York Evening Post, Inc. By J „._ „..-., ^J^ ^r „ ij t j j.

permission.] new currency 01 gold. I do not remem-

ber any case in history in which a very

London, March 27. — The object of this greatly depreciated currency has subse-
article is to deal with a popular mistake quently recovered its former value. Per-
about the foreign exchanges which seems 20 haps the best instance to the contrary is
to be extremely common. It is popularly that of the American greenbacks after
supposed that the future of the exchange the Civil War, which eventually recov-
value of a country's currency chiefly de- ered to their gold parity ; but in their case
pends upon its intrinsic wealth in the the maximum degree of the depreciation
form of natural resources and an indus- «5 was moderate in comparison with recent
trious population, and that a far-sighted instances. The various sound currencies
man is right to expect an ultimate re- existing throughout the world in the years
covery in the value of its money if the before the war had not always existed,
country looks likely to enjoy in the long and had been established, many of them,
run commercial or industrial or agricul- 30 upon the debris of earlier irretrievable
tural strength. The speculator in Ru- debasements.

manian lei keeps up his spirits by thinking For it may not be in a country's interest

of the vast resources of that country in to restore its depreciated money, and a
corn and oil, and finds it hard to believe suppression of the old money may be bet-
that Rumanian money can in the long 35 ter than its resuscitation. A return even
run be worth less than the money of, say, of former prosperity may be quite corn-
Switzerland. The speculator in German patible with a collapse in the value of the
marks bases his hopes on the immense former currency to nothing at all.
industry and skill of the German people, Let me apply some of these considera-

which must, he feels, enable her to pull 40 tions to the case of the German mark,
round in the long run. As I write, there are about 250 marks to

Yet this way of thinking is fallacious. the pound; but within the last twelve
If the conclusion of the argument was months the rate has been as high as 360
that, in the long run, the Rumanian peas- and as low as 120. As the par value of
ant and the Rumanian proprietor ought 45 the mark is 20 to the pound, German
to be able to live comfortably; or that banknotes are now worth less than a
an industrial nation like Germany must tenth of their nominal value. Even with-
be able to survive, the conclusion might out a Bolshevik Government matters can
be sensible. But the conclusion that cer- be much worse than this; for the bank-
tain pieces of paper called banknotes 50 notes of Poland or Austria are worth less
must for these reasons come to be more than a hundredth of their nominal value,
valuable than they are now is a different But for the purposes of our argument
kind of conclusion altogether, and does let us take the less extreme case of
not necessarily follow from the former. Germany.

France was the richest country in the 55 Now it is well known that at the pres-
world, not excepting England, when in ent time there are many causes at work
the last decade of the eighteenth century which are tending to make the value of
her paper money, the assignats, fell, after the mark progressively worse even than
five years' violent fluctuations, to be worth it is at present. The expenditure of the

[86 WRITING OF TODAY

Government is about three times its if it were to increase tenfold — the money
revenue, and the deficit is largely made burden of the service of this debt would
up by printing additional notes, a process remain the same, but its real burden would
which every one agrees must diminish the be proportional to the increase in the
value of the notes ; Germany's commercial 5 value of the mark. The portion of the
exports (i.e., excluding deliveries under German revenue (measured in goods)
the treaty), although showing some sub- which would have to be paid over as
stantial recovery from the worst, are still interest to the holders of the German
short of her absolutely essential imports, national debt, would be increased in the
and thus the balance of trade is against » same proportion. That is to say, German
her; the economic condition of her neigh- resources, which would otherwise be avail-
bors, Russia and the fragments of the able, in part at least, for reparation,
former Austro-Hungarian Empire, which would be diverted to the German proper-
used to be her best customers, make im- tied classes. , The Allies would hardly
possible any early revival of trade with l5 allow this. Yet the only alternative, a
them on the pre-war scale ; and these very partial or complete repudiation of the
adverse conditions are present and opera- German debt, is a precedent which they
tive, in spite of the fact that as yet Ger- might hesitate to encourage,
many is not making current payments on Furthermore, the holders of the Ger-

account of reparation up to the standard, 20 man public debt, who are mostly Germans,
or anything like it, of even the most mod- are not the only persons into whose pock-
erate proposals for a settlement of the ets an improvement in the value of the
Allies' demands. If and when these de- mark would put a great deal of money,
mands materialize in payments, the difn- There are also the foreign speculative
culties of the budget and the difficulties «5 holders of German currency. It has been
of the trade balance are certain to be estimated by the experts of the German
aggravated. Government that the amount of German

But let us put aside these considerations money held abroad and of credits granted
for the moment and look a little further to Germany by foreigners, by far the
ahead. Most of those who look for a 30 greater part being in terms of paper
recovery of the mark are not thinking of marks, amounts to about 70 milliards of
this year, or even, probably, of next. They paper marks, of which something less
believe that ultimately Germany will pull than half is held in the form of actual
round, and that when this occurs the mark German paper money. We can probably
will recover also. 35 reckon, therefore, that the amount of Ger-

Now, though the process of the depre- man bank notes and bank balances held
ciation of money (i. e., the rise of prices) more or less speculatively outside Ger-
is easy though painful, the reverse proc- many is not less than 50 milliards of pa-
ess of appreciation (i.e., the fall of per marks. At the rate of exchange (250
prices) though difficult, is also painful. 40 marks equalling £1) these holdings are
The upset to the economic organization worth £200,000,000. But at par they
of a country caused by falling prices is would be worth £2,500,000,000, and even
quite as bad, as we have all been finding at 100 marks equalling £1 they would be
out lately, as the upset caused by rising worth £500,000,000. As a speculative
prices. Both are bad ; but once we have 45 holding of German notes yields the holder
suffered the evils of rising prices, they are no interest, he presumably does not intend
not obliterated by following them up with to keep them as a permanent investment,
the evils of falling prices. This applies and is only waiting for an opportunity of
everywhere, but in Germany there are realizing them at a profit. A permanent
two special considerations which it is my 5o improvement in the value of the mark
particular purpose to emphasize in this would entail, therefore, paying over to
article. foreign speculators very large sums of

Germany has a national debt which money which would otherwise be avail-
now amounts to 350 milliards of paper able for reparation. There would be no
marks, and is likely to amount to a still 55 great advantage to Germany in this : and
higher figure before equilibrium has been the Allies would hardly allow the claims
obtained in her national finances. If the of the speculators to rank in front of
mark were to double in value — far more reparation.

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 187

In addition, therefore, to all the usual undertake the honorable duty of propos-
difficulties of reinstating a fallen cur- ing the health of our guests and giving
rency, there are strong reasons in the case them a warm welcome on the occasion of
of Germany for thinking that a reinstate- their visit to this country. We rejoice
ment cannot be undertaken. Germany 5 to see them amongst us, and we particu-
has two classes of foreign creditors to larly rejoice because the moment of theit
deal with — the Allies who have repara- visit has been happily timed to coincide
tion claims which are expressed in terms with what I think we may call without
of gold marks; and the foreign spec- undue or arrogant optimism a most fa-
ulative holders of German bank balances i0 vorable moment in the military develop-
and of German currency which are in ment of the situation. Great indeed is
terms of paper marks. To increase the the change between March and October,
value of the paper mark in relation to the I do not know that in any six or seven
gold mark benefits the latter at the ex- months of history so great and dramatic
pense of the former. It is not partic- ^ a transformation has taken place on so
ularly in the interest of the German Gov- heroic a scale for dealing with issues so
ernment to pay over huge sums to foreign momentous for the future of the world,
speculators, and it is decidedly contrary We are all fortunate in being witnesses
to the interests of the Allied Govern- of it, and I think we may say that our
ments. Whatever temporary fluctuations 2o friends and guests who have come from
there may be, it is therefore extremely the United States at such a moment are
unlikely to happen. fortunate in the occasion of their coming.

I do not expect, therefore, a permanent I do not pretend for a moment that our

recovery in the value of the German pa- difficulties are at an end or nearly at an
per mark. Possibly it might be stabilized 25 end. I shall be profoundly disappointed
at some very high figure to the pound indeed if the tide of victory now rising
sterling. But if the Allies persevere with strongly in our direction ever receives a
their reparation demands, the mark is serious set-back from the efforts of our
much more likely to continue its fall, until enemies. I am confident that what we
the final stage is reached, when the sim- 3° began to do so successfully in July and
plest and most sensible course will seem carried on with increasing good fortune
to be to discard it altogether in favor of in August, September, and the early part
some new unit. Many a small holder of of the present month, is no accidental or
mark notes all over the world will keep momentary success, but in truth rep-
them, I do not doubt, until, not for the 35 resents the growing strength of the Allies
first time in the history of paper money, as compared with the waning strength of
they have become a valueless curiosity. our opponents, and if that be so, and if
And all this may happen, even though in my estimate of the situation be not too
the end Germany recovers a considerable sanguine, then the problem before us is
measure of her economic strength. 40 not to resolve whether we shall or shall

not make up our minds as to whether we

YTV S^a^ °r S^a^ not wni tne war' *or tnat

AiV seems ever clearer, but whether we shall

TT1T? T7TTTTTPT7 rn? ttjt? wrMDT T-* ever use victorv that is within our grasp
1Hh FUTURE OF THE WORLD 45 for the best purpose, for the moment, for

r>ATT7rkTTT? t^ie next few difficult years, and last but

aj.ual^uuk not least> for p0Sterity> whose fate de-

LLandmark, London, Eng., January, 1919. By Pends UP0n 0Ur efforts.

permission.] We have to make a right peace, and I

™ . . . .. . . •_; 5o do not think that a right peace is of itself

[This speech was delivered by Mr. Bal- a very easy thing to make.

^ists^^u^hTr^f^ O" eTies' T,ho' ;■ mf renth,ed-

of a luncheon given to a group of Amer- cally remark, are attempting to change their
ican Editors at the Criterion Restaurant on constitution, appear to have no notion that
Friday, October 11, 1918.] 55 what we want is not so much a change of

the formal apparatus of Government, as a

As President of this Society and as change in the hearts by which that Gov-

Chairman this afternoon, it falls to me to ernment is to be directed and animated,

i88 WRITING OF TODAY

and if we are to judge, and surely we may I was going to speak. I was led from the
judge without unfairness of a man's course of my speech, such as it was, by
heart by what he does, I would ask you the reflection suggested by this most tragic
whether those who have made mankind and deplorable episode. What I rather
pale with horror over their early barbar- 5 wanted to say to you and to say to our
ities and brutal excesses in Belgium, show friends and guests is, that, as peace ap-
the least sign after four years of war that proaches, when peace comes to be con-
they have in any material respect im- sidered, and when that period of recon-
proved their disposition. Brutes they struction comes when peace is arranged,
were when they began the war, and as far 10 all sorts of new difficulties are bound to
as I can judge, brutes they remain at the arise which it will require the tact and
present moment. the judgment of statesmen to get over,

I speak perhaps with a warmth of in- and, if I may say so, to our guests, the
dignation, unbefitting a Foreign Secre- cooperation, the loyal and effective coop-
tary, but with the news of this outrage in 15 eration, of the great newspapers of the
the Irish Channel, of which I have just world, to see it carried through,
been getting — I won't say the details, The poet, as we all know, has said that

but a rough outline from my gallant friend peace has her victories as well as war.
on my left, Admiral Sims, I confess that I Let me say that the victories of peace will
find it difficult to measure my epithets, 20 be at least as hard to accomplish as the
for if I rightly understand the story, this victories of war. They will put a great
Irish packet boat, crammed as it always strain upon all the higher moral and in-
is with men, women and children, in broad tellectual qualities of the peoples con-
daylight, was deliberately torpedoed by a cerned, and even the great struggle in
German submarine. It was carrying no 25 which we have all been engaged,
military stores ; it was serving no military I know, and I think you all know that I

end. It was pure barbarism, pure fright- know, from watching to the best of my
fulness, deliberately carried out, and one ability the utterances of the German
would have thought that those who after Press, that what they count upon now,
all brought in America to their own undo- 30 and what they have always counted upon,
ing by crimes of this sort, would have is jealousy and disagreement between their
shrunk a little from repeating them at a opponents. It is the sort of calculation
moment when their fate is to be decided which appeals to them. It is a sort of
by America perhaps even more than by calculation which has a kind of external
any of the other co-belligerents. 35 plausibility, and unless it be watched, may

I cannot measure the wicked folly of even have an element of reality in it.
the proceedings of which they have been They say to themselves the union of the
guilty, and yet let us not forget that that great English-speaking peoples is the
is only one and not the most destructive, most formidable factor we have had to
most cowardly, or most brutal thing 40 deal with in this war, but that won't last,
which, at this moment, when they are ask- There are old causes of difference between
ing for peace, they are perpetrating upon these two great branches of one civiliza-
the helpless civilians or still more help- tion. Both are at the moment great com-
less prisoners of war. mercial and industrial nations. Both pos-

I wish I could think that these atrocious 45 sess and aim at — and rightly aim at — a
crimes were the crimes of a small domi- commerce spreading over the world,
nant military caste. I agree that the di- Britian, which used to be supreme in the
rection of policy, the direction of national matter of mercantile marine, now sees
policy, may be in the hands of a small growing up on the other side of the At-
caste, but it is incredible that crimes like 50 lantic a mercantile marine of unlimited
this, perpetrated in the light of day, size. Here, say our German friends,
known to all mankind from one end of the here are elements which in a short time.
civilized world to the other, should go on when the first intoxication of victory
being repeated month after month through is over, may well produce differences of
four years of embittered warfare, if it did 55 opinion between our opponents, from
not commend itself to the population which which we shall profit. I believe myself
commits them. that there never was a shallower mis-

However, gentlemen, it was not of that calculation.

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 189

We members of the English-speaking to humanity carried out with brotherly
Union do not regard ourselves as the mis- cooperation. That consciousness all of
sionaries and apostles of a losing or diffi- us have now in the highest measure,
cult cause. We regard ourselves as sim- That consciousness will grow and history
ply embodying, in an organization, a real 5 will embalm it. It will become part of
union which already exists — a union our national and international tradition,
which exists, which is growing and which, and it will make happier, easier, and far
to the infinite benefit of the world, as I more glorious that union which we exist
think, is predestined to grow for genera- to promote, that union which is based
tions. I am one of those who believe that 10 upon mutual respect, a common love of
civilization is to be ministered to by per- freedom, a common language, common
mitting nations of different genius each to laws, common literature, and which has
develop that genius in their own way, in it such infinite potential good for the
each, therefore, to contribute intellectual benefit of mankind.

and moral pleasures of mankind, and I J5 Ladies and gentlemen, I beg to ask you
therefore do not wish to see all the world to drink with me to the health of the rep-
molded into one form of culture, and if I resentatives of the great American Press
had the power I would not attempt to do who are now over here upon their visit,
what the Germans attempted to do, which May every good fortune attend them, and
is, to spread one particular type of culture 20 may they go back with kindly thoughts of
over the whole of a reluctant humanity, the country which desires nothing more
That I think is folly. than to give them generous hospitality.

But at the same time, let me add this,
that while there are, and doubtless will

always be, differences of outlook between 25 XV

the various branches of the English-speak-
ing peoples, whether they belong to TRADITION
the peoples of the United States or to these

small islands, or to the great self-govern- JOSEPH CONRAD

ing Dominions of the British Empire, 30

there will always be difference, born of Waily Mail, London, Enp., March 8, 1918. By
differences of environment, born from his- pe misslon-

torical causes, born of the countless subtle Work is the law. Like iron that lying

elements which do gradually produce that idle about degenerates into a mass of use-
curious entity, national character. 35 less rust, like water that in an unruffled
Granting all that, there is, I believe, pool sickens into a stagnant and corrupt
such a thing as the English-speaking state, so without action the spirit of men
method of looking at the great affairs of turns to a dead thing, loses its force,
mankind, and that that outlook is of infi- ceases to inspire us to leave some trace
nite value to the freedom and progress of 40 of ourselves on this earth. The sense of
the world, and can only be truly accom- the above lines does not belong to me. It
plished if there be inner harmony, inner may be found in the note-books of one of
affection and inner regard between all the the greatest artists that ever lived, Leo-
elements of all the great English-speak- nardo da Vinci. It has a simplicity and
ing communities, of which everybody in 45 a truth which no amount of subtle com-
this room is a citizen and member. ment can destroy.

That is my conviction, and if there was The Master who had meditated so deeply
or could be any doubt that that intimate on the rebirth of arts and sciences, on
union is natural, is right, is fruitful for the inward beauty of all things — ships'
the good of the world, and if there could 50 lines, women's faces — and on the visible
have been any doubt that that union of aspects of nature was profoundly right
hearts was destined to be permanent, those in his pronouncement on the work that is
doubts would surely be dissipated by the done on the Earth. From the hard work
events of the last few months. of men are born the sympathetic con-

Nothing after all binds people closer to- 55 sciousness of a common destiny, the fidel-
gether than the consciousness of great ity to right practice which makes great
deeds done in common, great acts of hero- craftsmen, that sense of right conduct
ism performed side by side, great services which we may call honor, the devotion to

1^0 WRITING OF TODAY

our calling and the idealism which is not Merchant Service, the great body of mer-
a misty, winged angel without eyes, but a chant seamen, had failed to answer the
divine figure of terrestrial aspect with a call. Noticed or unnoticed, ignored or
clear glance and with its feet resting commended, they have answered invari-
firmly on the earth on which it was born. $ ably the call to do their work, the very

And work will overcome all evil, except conditions of which made them what they
ignorance which is the condition of hu- are. They have always served the na-
manity and, like the ambient air, fills the tion's needs through their own invaria-
space between the various sorts and con- ble fidelity to the demands of their special
ditions of men, which breeds hatred, fear, 10 life; but with the development and com-
and contempt between the masses of man- plexity of material civilization they grew
kind and puts on men's lips, on their inno- less prominent to the nation's eye among
cent lips, words that are thoughtless and all the vast schemes of national industry,
vain. Never was the need greater and the call

Thoughtless, for instance, were the 15 to the service more urgent than to-day.
words that (in all innocence, I believe) And those inconspicuous workers on
came on the lips of a prominent states- whose qualities depends so much of the
man making in the House of Commons an national welfare have answered it without
eulogistic reference to the British Mer- dismay, facing risk without glory, in the
chant Service. In this name I include 20 perfect faithfulness to that tradition which
men of diverse status and origin, who live the speech of the statesman denies to them
on and by the sea, by it exclusively, out- at the very moment when he thinks fit
side all professional pretensions and social to raise their courage . . . and mention
formulas, men for whom not only their his surprise !

daily bread but their collective character, 25 The hour of opportunity has struck —
their personal achievement, and their in- not for the first time — for the Merchant
dividual merit come from the sea. Those Service; and if I associate myself with all
words of the statesman were meant kind- my heart in the admiration and the praise
ly ; but, after all, this is not a complete which is the greatest reward of brave men
excuse. Rightly or wrongly, we expect 30 I must be excused from joining in any
from a man of national importance a sentiment of surprise. It is perhaps be-
larger, at the same time a more scrupulous cause I have not been born to the inheri-
precision of speech, for it is possible that tance of that tradition which has yet fash-
it may go echoing down the ages. His ioned the fundamental part of my char-
words were : — 35 acter in my young days that I am so con-

Tt is right when thinking of the Navy sciously aware of it and venture to vindi-
not to forget the men of the Merchant cate its existence in this outspoken man-
Service, who have shown — and it is more ner.

surprising because they have had no tradi- Merchant seamen have always been

tions towards it — courage as great, etc., 4° what they are now, from their earliest
etc' days, and before the Royal Navy had been

And then he went on talking of the exe- fashioned out of the material they fur-
cution of Captain Fryatt, an event of un- nished for the hands of kings and states-
dying memory, but less connected with the men. Their work has made them, as
permanent, unchangeable conditions of sea 45 work undertaken with single-minded de-
service than with the wrong view Ger- votion makes men, giving to their achieve-
man minds delight in taking of English- ment that vitality and continuity in which
men's psychology. The enemy, he said, their souls are expressed, tempered and
meant by this atrocity to frighten our measured through the succeeding genera-
sailors away from the sea. So tions. In its simplest definition the work

'What has happened ?' he goes on to of merchant seamen has been to take ships
ask. 'Never at any time in peace have entrusted to their care from port to port
sailors stayed so short a time ashore or across the seas; and, from the highest
shown such a readiness to step again into to the lowest, to watch and labor with de-
a ship.' 5$ votion for the safety of the property and

Which means, in other words, that they the lives committed to their skill and
answered to the call. I should like to fortitude through the hazards of innumer-
know at what time of history the English able voyages.

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 191

That was always the clear task, the boats. Hard days. Ages ago. And now
single aim, the simple ideal, the only prob- let me mention a story of today,
lem for an unselfish solution. The terms I will try to relate it here mainly in the

of it have changed with the years, its words of the chief engineer of a certain
risks have worn different aspects from 5 steamship which, after bunkering, left
time to time. There are no longer any Lerwick bound for Iceland. The weather
unexplored seas. Human ingenuity has was cold, the sea pretty rough, with a stiff
devised better means to meet the dangers head wind. All went well till next day
of natural forces. But it is always the about 1.30 p. m., the captain sighted a sus-
same problem. The youngsters who were 10 picious object far away to starboard,
growing up at the sea at the end of my Speed was increased at once to close in
service are commanding ships now. At with the Faroes and good look-outs were
least I have heard of some of them who set fore and aft. Nothing further was
do. And whatever the shape and power seen of the suspicious object, but about
of their ships the character of the duty 15 half-past three without any warning the
remains the same. A mine or a torpedo ship was struck amidships by a torpedo
that strikes your ship is not so very dif- which exploded in the bunkers. None of
ferent from a sharp, uncharted rock tear- the crew was injured by the explosion,
ing her life out of her in another way. and all hands, without exception, behaved
At a greater cost of vital energy, under 20 admirably.

the well-nigh intolerable stress of vigi- The chief officer with his watch man-

lance and resolution, they are doing stead- aged to lower the No. 3 boat. Two other
ily the work of their professional fore- boats had been shattered by the explosion,
fathers in the midst of multiplied dangers. and though another life-boat was cleared
They go to and fro across the oceans on 25 and ready, there was no time to lower it,
their everlasting task ; the same men, the and 'some of us jumped while others were
same stout hearts, the same fidelity to an washed overboard. Meantime the cap-
exacting tradition created by simple toil- tain had been busy handing lifebelts to the
ers who in their time knew how to live men and cheering them up with words and
and die at sea. 30 smiles, with no thought of his own safety.'

Allowed to share in this work and in The ship went down in less than four min-
this tradition for something like twenty utes. The captain was the last man on
years, I am bold enough to think that per- board going down with her, and was
haps I am not altogether unworthy to sucked under. On coming up he was
speak of it. It was the sphere not only 35 caught under an upturned boat to which
of my activity but, I may safely say, also five hands were clinging. 'One lifeboat/
of my affections; but after such a close says the chief engineer, 'which was float-
connection it is very difficult to avoid; ing empty in the distance was cleverly
bringing in one's own personality. With- manceuvered to our assistance by the stew-
out looking at all at the aspects of the La- 40 ard, who swam off to her pluckily. Our
bor problem, I can safely affirm that I have next endeavor was to release the captain,
never, never seen British seamen refuse who was entangled under the boat. As
any risk, any exertion, any effort of spirit it was impossible to right her, we set to
or body up to the extremest demands of split her side open with the boat hook,
their calling. Years ago — it seems ages 45 because by awful bad luck the head of the
ago — I have seen the crew of a British ax we had flew off at the first blow and
ship fight the fire in the cargo for a whole was lost. The work took thirty minutes,
sleepless week and then, with her decks and the extricated captain was in a piti-
blown up, I have seen them, still continue able condition, being badly bruised and
the fight to save the floating shell. And at 50 having swallowed a lot of salt water,
last I have seen them refuse to be taken He was unconscious. While at that work
off by a vessel standing by, and this only the submarine came to the surface quite
in order 'to see the last of our ship,' at close and made a complete circle round
the word, at the simple word, of a man us, the seven men which we counted on
who commanded them, a worthy soul, in- 55 the conning tower laughing at our efforts,
deed, but of no heroic aspect. I have seen 'There were eighteen of us saved. I

that. I have shared their days in small deeply regret the loss of the chief officer,

192 WRITING OF TODAY

a fine fellow and a kind shipmate show- die), and the chief engineer cannot ex-
ing splendid promise. The other men lost press the feeling of gratitude and relief
— one A. B., one greaser, and two firemen they all experienced when they set their
— were quiet, conscientious, good fellows.' feet on the shore. He praises the un-

With no restoratives in the boat, they 5 bounded kindness of the people in Hills-
endeavored to bring the captain round by wick. Tt seemed to us all like Paradise
means of massage. Meantime the oars Regained/ he says, concluding his letter
were got out in order to reach the Faroes, with the words :

which were about 30 miles dead to wind- 'And there was our captain, just his

ward, but after about nine hours' hard 10 usual self, as if nothing had happened,
work they had to desist, and, putting out as if bringing the boat that hazardous
the sea-anchor, they took shelter under journey and being the means of saving
the canvas boat-cover from the cold wind eighteen souls was to him an everyday oc-
and torrential rain. Says the narrator: currence.'

'We were all very wet and miserable, 15 Such is the chief engineer's testimony to
and decided to have two biscuits all round. the continuity of the old tradition of the
The effects of this and being under the sea, which made by the work of men has
shelter of the canvas warmed us up and in its turn created for them their simple
made us feel pretty well contented. At ideal of conduct,
about sunrise the captain showed signs of 20
recovery, and by the time the sun was up

he was looking a lot better, much to our XVI

relief.'

After being informed of what had been MANNERS MAKYTH MAN

done the revived captain 'dropped a *5

bombshell in our midst' by proposing to [New York Times, April 16, 1921. By permission.]

make for the Shetlands, which were only

150 miles off. 'The wind is in our favor/ William of Wykeham has somewhat

he said. T will take you there. Are lost caste in a democratic age because
you all willing ?' This — comments 'the 3° of his insistence upon manners as the
chief engineer — 'from a man who but a maker of manhood, but he had this in
few hours previously had been hauled his favor, that the institutions he founded
back from the grave !' The captain's were calculated to develop not merely
confident manner inspired them, and they the social graces but hearty character,
all agreed. Under the best possible con- 35 His school at Winchester and his 'new'
ditions a boat-run of 150 miles in the college at Oxford fixed a type of educa-
North Atlantic and in winter weather tional life that England has since de-
would have been a feat of no mean merit, veloped but has hardly been able to better.
but in the circumstances it required a man In President Emeritus Eliot's remarks
of uncommon nerve and skill to make such 40 before the Harvard Dames the censure of
a proposal. With an oar for a mast and modern manners, dwells almost exclu-
the boat-cover cut down for a sail they sively upon proprieties,
started on their dangerous journey, with As a greeting over the telephone Dr.

the boat compass and the stars for their Eliot characterizes 'Hello, Bess!' as 'un-
guide. The captain's undaunted serenity 45 heard of in my youth.' So also, he adds,
buoyed them all up against despondency, was the telephone. But it was during
He told them what point he was making his prime that the telephone extended its
for. It was Ronas Hill — 'and we struck hold on life. If we have now no bet-
it as straight as a die.' ter word than 'Hello!' for establishing

The chief engineer commends also the 50 vocal connection, are the youths of today
ship steward for the manner in which he to blame? The locution is firmly grounded
made the little food they had last, the in our usage, even the best usage;
cheery spirit he manifested, and the great nor would it be easy to improve on it.
help he was to the captain by keeping the On the grounds of clearness and force
men in good humor. That trusty man had 55 it is preferable to the rather futile 'Are
'his hands cruelly chafed with the row- you there?' of the English, as also on the
ing, but it never damped his spirits.' ground of thai simplicity and ease which

They made Ronas Hill (as straight as a are the essentials of what rhetoricians

D. EXPOSITORY AND EDITORIAL ARTICLES 193

strangely call 'elegance.' But perhaps of no age or generation, but apparently an
the offense is in the abbreviation of the incident of our teeming democracy. The
lady's name. struggle against it is so arduous that per-

It cannot be denied that men nowadays haps it might better be abandoned. That
smoke all over the house and even in the 5 at least was the conclusion of one man of
street or in an automobile in the presence gentle aspirations who held the door of a
of ladies. Yes, even some gentlemen do shop open with admirable forbearance —
so. But surely the Harvard Dames are but ended by letting it fly full in the face
aware that the use of tobacco by women is of a gentlewoman with a gold mesh bag
becoming similarly ubiquitous, and that 10 and lorgnette,
when a gentleman keeps to his cigar it is
with the advice and consent of the women

folk. The difference is not so much XVII

of manners as of custom. It is likewise

true that young folk are given to a racy 15 EARLY SOUTH DAKOTANS
vernacular which may fairly be called

slang; that boys and girls 'touch, tap and [New York Times, April 24, 1921. By permis-
even shove each other,' and that many sion.]

topics are discussed between them which

were taboo in the days of Victoria. But 20 In the dark backward and abysm of
here again one must be careful to dis- time, when the area of warm weather
tinguish between a mere difference of stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to
custom or convention and essential bad the Arctic, South Dakota had a marvel-
manners. Drunkenness may be less a ous menagerie. Dr. O'Harra, President
matter of shame than it was, but it is far 25 of the South Dakota School of Mines,
less prevalent— and was so before pro- tells us all about it in his meaty and
hibition. This modern mood of youth charmingly illustrated book on The
is a theme as yet unresolved; one must White River Badlands. The name, bor-
wait a while before condemning it as mere rowed from the French and Indians,
cacophony. Least of all can one condemn 30 means merely a country hard to travel
it as essentially bad manners because it in.^ The White River Badlands are main-
was once unheard of. ty in Southwestern South Dakota. Their

There are, however, certain respects in most original and striking scenery, the
which manners, and the manners that in- Big Badlands, is between the White and
dicate qualities of character and of heart, 35 the Cheyenne, southeast of the Black
are clearly in a decline. Many years ago, Hills. Sheep Mountain and the Great
under the Presidency of Dr. Eliot, a Har- Wall are its most famous monuments,
vard senior took note of the first time the Those pinnacles and towers and turrets,
library door was allowed to fly in his face those canyons and rock temples and cathe-
by the man who went in before him. It 40 drals, those fantasies of erosion and many-
was the era in which the old New England colored brilliancies, are among the won-
college became a truly national univer- ders of the United States and the world,
sity. Today in any of our cities one In the long result of geological time the

may hold open a door and an endless salt sea disappeared, marshland and delta,
stream of women will flow by with no 45 river and forest came ; and distinguished
hand extended to take up the torch of early South Dakotans amused themselves,
courtesy. In trolley and subway the man Of these, the Titanothers are our personal
who gives up his seat is a curiosity — and favorites. They were about the size of
is generally regarded by his fellow-males modern elephants, copious of such teeth
as an offense. Some men have the shame 50 as vegetarians needed. The fellow in the
to hide behind their newspapers. The de- American Museum of Natural History
vice has its dangers, as one passenger must have been 14 feet long and 8 feet
found when a lurch of the car broke down high. The Titanother looks somewhat
his disguise by throwing his wife into his like a rhinoceros. He is said to have been
lap. But many or most take the chance. 55 stupid. The world has always been un-

All this is a matter of what William of just to giants. The Brontotherium, or
Wykeham meant by manners — a matter of thunder beast, deserves his name. He is
character and sensibility. It is the fault not pretty in his photographs. One

194 WRITING OF TODAY

would n't care to meet him, but there were a dry world complain that they have too
no humans to have that privilege. few. By the way, if we may travel into

The Titanothers are a warning against Northwestern Nebraska, there we rind
precocity. They developed too quickly. those curious tapering upright spirals
We only know them for perhaps half a 5 known as Devil's Corkscrews. The cork-
million years. Then they went. No ad- screw is often taller than a man. How
mirer of cats could ask for anything better did such accursed remembrances get into
than the saber-tooth tiger, with his two Mr. Bryan's State?

sword-like canine teeth of the upper jaw. One would like to linger over the South

Hoplophoneus, about as big as a leopard, 10 Dakotan 'ruminating hog,' but the camel
was the most gifted of these pets. Be- is now the only beast, the only true em-
sides his dental battery he 'had a strong blem of our time. He is a native Amer-
body, stout neck and legs, and highly de- ican. He is one of our oldest families,
veloped strong retractile claws.' Even South Dakota and its neighbors used to
the dogs had cats' claws in those days. 15 be full of primitive camels, then guilt-
Our saber-tooth friend seems to have less of rubber pads for their feet, 'fleshy
picked a fight with everything that came humps for their backs and water pockets
in his way and his favorite dish was for their stomachs.' A camel without
the thick-skinned rhinoceros. The Bad- a water pocket — think of that and rejoice
lands were rich in rhinoceroses. The *> in evolution ! The one-humped and the
early, true rhinoceros was light-limbed two-humped camel of Africa and Asia are
and hornless, built like a tapir. Another emigrants from the United States. Here
early South Dakotan rhinoceros was their ancestors lived for millions of years,
much like our hippopotamus. The mod- From the United States, too, the other
ern rhinoceros is not particularly engag- 25 tribe, the llamas, emigrated to the South
ing, but one must venerate him, according American highlands,
to the Upanishads and Josiah Royce, for All the Badlands horses save one kind

he is the model of a philosopher from his had three toes. How many million years
passion for solitude. did it take for the horse to condense his

Moropus cooki, a sort of horse-rhi- 30 toes and perfect his teeth and grow from
noceros, with stalwart claws for defense the size of a rabbit? For millions of
and pulling down trees, is perhaps as years millions of them roamed the plains,
'quaint-looking' a thing as ever came out There was nobody to ride them. Con-
of actual natural history or even the templating the ample and leisurely history
medieval bestiaries, if we except Syn- 35 of life, can't one learn to take 'the calm
dyoceras cooki, a ruminant with two and long view' ? Remembering this inter-
pairs of horns on his ingenuous counte- minable succession of ages and knowing
nance, one above his eyes and curving to- that the sun's candles will not be burned
ward each other, the other half way be- out for some time yet, we Americans, so
tween the nostrils and the eyes and curv- 40 eager and impatient, always expecting
ing away from each other. If he ever the millennium to begin next week, sharp,
fell into the habit of regarding his beauty by act of Congress or act of Legislature,
in the brook-mirrors of the period, need to ponder Mr. Emerson's question:
he must have pined away like Narcissus. 'Little man, why so hot?'
He had too many horns. The wicked in 45

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 every 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, begar
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, to the comparatively brief paragraph about so trivial a subject as 'Hairpins'
or 'The Porter's Tip.' 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 provocative of thought by suggestion rather than by explicit didactic method.

three-pronged oyster fork and looking into
the ashes of his smothered fire. Theology
I will have none of him. Genial clergy of

ample girth, stuffed with the buttered
THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP 5 toast of a rectory tea, are preaching him
SEA °.ut °* existence. The fires of his mate-

rial hell are replaced by the steam heat of
STEPHEN B LEACOCK moral torture. This even the most sensi-

tive of sinners faces with equanimity. So
[University Magazine, December, 1910. By per- 10 the Devil's old dwelling is dismantled and

mission of author and publisher.] „4.„„j„ u ii. j • j ».i • 1 1

stands by the roadside with a sign-board
The Devil is passing out of fashion. bearing the legend, 'Museum of Moral
After a long and honorable career he has Torment, These Premises to Let.' In
fallen into an ungrateful oblivion. His front of it, in place of the dancing imp
existence has become shadowy, his out- 15 of earlier ages, is a poor, make-believe
line attenuated, and his personality dis- thing, a jack-o'-lantern on a stick, with a
pleasing to a complacent generation. So turnip head and candle eyes, labeled 'De-
he stands now leaning on the handle of his mon of Moral Repentance, Guaranteed

195

196 WRITING OF TODAY

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 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- 5 ical college ; morality is the province of
formed. There he stood for ages a sim- the moral philosopher who is prepared to
pie and workable basis of human moral- pelt the intruder back over the fence with
ity ; an admirable first-hand reason for be- a shower of German commentaries. Igno-
ing good, which needed no ulterior ex- ranee, in its wooden shoes, shuffles around
planation. The rude peasant of the Mid- 10 the portico of the temple of learning,
die Ages, the illiterate artisian of the stumbling among the litter of terminol-
shop, and the long-haired hind of the ogy. The broad field of human wisdom
fields, had no need to speculate upon the has been cut into a multitude of little pro-
problem of existence and the tangled skein fessorial rabbit warrens. In each of these
of moral enquiry. The Devil took all that 15 a specialist 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 locutor at a grotesque conversational dis-
amateur night in the vaudeville houses advantage.

'gets the hook.' Humanity, with the 20 May I digress a minute to show what I
Devil to prod it from behind, moved stead- 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 boarding 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- 25 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 nature and of its beauties, of the stars and
hilltops without any fixed idea of goal or why they were so far away — we did n't
direction. 30 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 double-shotted sentimentalism sprung from
riddle of the universe. How are we get- huckleberry pie and doughnuts, we even
ting along without the Devil? How are 35 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? 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 40 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 randa, somebody said how beautiful the
references to pragmatism, transcendental- sunset was. Then the man from Oberlin
ism, and esoteric synthesis — leaving his 45 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 atmos-
quite unable to adopt. I do not know what phere.' 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 50 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 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- 55 cisely correspond with Nitch's idea' (he
a-dav? we are overridden in the specialties, meant, I suppose, Nietzsche, but he pro-
eao!i in his own department of learning, nounced it to rime with 'bitch') 'of the
with his tags, and label, and his pigeon- dominance of man over fate?' Mr. Heze-

E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 197

kiah Smith who kept the resort looked repudiated the Devil as too difficult of be-
round admiringly and said, 'Ain't he a lief.

terrf He certainly was. While the man We have, it is true, moved far away

from Oberlin stayed with us, elevating from the Devil; but are we after all so
conversation was at an end, and a self- 5 much better off? Or do we, in respect of
conscious ignorance hung upon the ve- the future, contain within ourselves the
randa like a fog. __ promise of better things? I suppose that

However, let us get back to the Devil. most of us would have the general idea
Let us notice in the first place that because that there never was an age which dis-
we have kicked out the Devil as an absurd 10 played so high a standard of morality, or
and ridiculous superstition, unworthy of a at least of ordinary human decency, as our
scientific age, we have by no means elim- own. We look back with a shudder to the
inated the supernatural and the super-ra- blood-stained history of our ancestors ; the
tional from the current thought of our fires of Smithfield with the poor martyr
time. I suppose there never was an age 15 writhing about his post, frenzied and hys-
more riddled with superstition, more cred- terical in the flames ; the underground cell
ulous, more drunkenly addicted to thau- where the poor remnant of humanity
maturgy than the present. The Devil in turned its haggard face to the torch of the
his palmiest days was nothing to it. In entering gaoler; the madhouse itself with
despite of our vaunted material common 20 its gibbering occupants converted into a
sense, there is a perfect craving abroad show for the idle fools of London. We
for belief in something beyond the com- may well look back on it all and say that,
pass of the believable. at least, we are better than we were. The

It shows itself in every age and class, history of our little human race would
Simpering Seventeen gets its fortune told 25 make but sorry reading were not its every
on a weighing machine, and shudders with page imprinted with the fact that human
luxurious horror at the prospective vil- ingenuity has invented no torment too
lainy of the Dark Man who is to cross her great for human fortitude to bear,
life. Senile Seventy gravely sits on a In general decency — sympathy — we

wooden bench at a wonder-working meet- 30 have undoubtedly progressed. Our courts
ing, waiting for a gentleman in a 'Tux- of law have forgotten the use of the
edo' jacket to call up the soul of Napoleon thumbkins and boot; we do not press a
Bonaparte, and ask its opinion of Mr. criminal under 'weights greater than he
Taft. Here you have a small tenement, can bear' in order to induce him to plead;
let us say, on South Clark Street, Chicago. 35 nor flog to ribbands the bleeding back of
What is it? It is the home of Nadir the the malefactor dragged at the cart's tail
Nameless, the great Hindoo astrologer. through the thoroughfares of a crowded
Who are in the front room ? Clients wait- city. Our public, objectionable though it
ing for a revelation of the future. Where is, as it fights its way to its ball games,
is Nadir? He is behind a heavily draped 40 breathes peanuts and peppermint upon the
curtain, worked with Indian serpents. By offended atmosphere, and shrieks aloud its
the waiting clients Nadir is understood to chronic and collective hysteria, is at all
be in consultation with the twin fates, Isis events better than the leering oafs of the
and Osiris. In reality Nadir is frying po- Elizabethan century, who put hard-boiled
tatoes. Presently he will come out from 45 eS&s in tneir pockets and sat around upon
behind the curtain and announce that the grass waiting for the 'burning' to be-
Osiris has spoken (that is, the potatoes are gin.

now finished and on the back of the stove) But when we have admitted that we are

and that he is prepared to reveal hidden better than we were as far as the facts of
treasure at forty cents a revelation. Mar- 50 our moral conduct go, we may well ask as
velous, is it not, this Hindoo astrology to the principles upon which our conduct
business? And any one can be a Nadir is based. In past ages there was the au-
the Nameless, who cares to stain his face thoritative moral code as a guide — thou
blue with thimbleberry juice, wrap a red shalt and thou shalt not — and behind it
turban round his forehead, and cut the 55 the pains, and the penalties, and the three-
rate of revelation to thirty-five cents, pronged oyster fork. Under that influ-
Such is the credulity of the age which has ence, humanity, or a large part of it,

198 WRITING OF TODAY

slowly and painfully acquired the moral The same creed has its physical side,

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 5 effected by it but presumably as an end in
the surface to the ideas underneath, we 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 i0 virtue of submission. He was of course
sections of the moral tendencies of our very wrong and very objectionable. But
time. 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- 15 and the correct rhythmical contraction of
tains in reality nothing but the Old Selfish- 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 ao exemplified this point of view. He used
gives a shilling to a starving man, not that 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
being sympathetic. The whole of his vir- 25 poor to develop his sympathy with poverty,
tue and his creed of conduct runs to a He read the Bible regularly in order to
cheap and easy egomania in which his cultivate the faculty of reading the Bible,
blind passion for himself causes him to use and visited picture galleries with painful
external people and things as mere reac- assiduity in order to give himself a feeling
tions upon his own personality. The im-30 for art. He passed through life with a
moral little toad swells itself to the burst- 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 35 He died presumably in order to cultivate
expansion. The votary is haunted by the 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 40 through the actions which it induces, be
on himself as on a sort of moral accordion, 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 45 we are brought face to face with another
self-sufficiency which he induces, his re- 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 50 one, of a general meaning and movement
moral factors which have replaced the au- 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 55 further still. Evolution, as the natural
progress as the effort to lift one's self in 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-

E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 199

ganic relation. It assumes no purposes planation of morals is meaningless, and
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. 5 Biology has nothing to say as to what

The social philosopher who adopts the 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 10 where the humming-bird has died. In bi-
great writers whom he has not read, that 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 length- 15 burglar ought to be presented by society
ened its neck by conscientious stretching; with a nickel-plated 'jimmy,' and the
the frog webbed its feet by perpetual starving cripple left to die in the ditch,
swimming; and the bird broke out in Everything — any phase of movement or
feathers by unremitting flying. 'Nature' religion — which succeeds, is right. Any-
by weeding out the short giraffe, the in- *> thing which does not is wrong. Every-
adequate frog, and the top-heavy bird thing which is, is right ; everything which
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. 25 On such a basis, we might expect to find,

Here, too, when the theory is taken over 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- 30 with his oyster fork was commissioned to
raffe's neck. A manifestation such as the inculcate was essentially altruistic. Things
growth of Christianity is regarded as if were to be done for other people. The
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 amceba breaks out into a stomach. 35 to evolve, to measure things by their suc-
With this view of human relations, noth- 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 40 ness in place of the discredited Goodness,
as an evolutionary stage towards free cit- 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 Strong Man, the easy pardon of the Un-
force tending towards the survival of the scrupulous, the Apotheosis of the Jungle,
Booker Washington type of negro. 45 and the Deification of the Detective.

With his brain saturated with the chlo- Force, brute force, is what we now turn
roform 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 50 cinematographs itself silly with the pic-
finds them all of the same length. Where- 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- 55 dispensation, with his worn alpaca coat
vival of the fittest.' 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

2oo WRITING OF TODAY

more than his own, not merely as Head

Stoker, but as what is called an End in TT

Himself. "

I knew a little man called Bliggs. He cvqttttvjt A7T7T?cttc ct tddfdc
worked in a railroad office, a simple, dusty, 5 bYblLM VERSUS SLIPPERS
little man, harmless at home and out of it

till he read of Napoleon and heard of the GEORGE BURWELL DUTTON

thing called a Superman. Then some- [Unpopular Review, April, 1915. By permission of

body told him of Nitch, and he read as author and Publisher.]

much Nitch as he could understand. The 10 The doctrine of efficiency is a modern

thing went to his head. Morals were no offshoot of the doctrine of total depravity,'

longer for him. He used to go home drawled my neighbor.

from the office and be a Superman by the I looked incredulous. I knew that was

hour, curse if his dinner was late, and the way he wanted me to look. But I

strut the length of his little home with a 15 did n't have any difficulty in conforming to

silly irritation which he mistook for moral his desires.

enfranchisement. Presently he took to 'Ye-es,' he continued, 'it all goes back

being a Superman in business hours, and to the doctrine of total depravity. Man

the railroad dismissed him. They know is born to sin, as — as the sparks fly up-

nothing of Nitch in such crude places. It ao ward,' he concluded triumphantly.

has often seemed to me that Bliggs typi- 'Trouble, not sin, is, I think, the Bibli-

fied much of the present moral movement. cal phrasing,' I interposed mildly.

Our poor Devil then is gone. We can- 'All amounts to the same thing. Man

not have him back for the whistling. For is born to trouble. Trouble is the result
generations, as yet unlearned in social a5 of sin. If there were no sin there would
philosophy, he played a useful part — a be no trouble. Ergo, man is born to sin,
dual part in a way, for it was his func- — and so forth.'
tion to illustrate at once the pleasures and He stopped to puff at his pipe,

the penalties of life. Merriment in the 'But the doctrine of efficiency? —

scheme of things was his, and for those 3° How — '

drawn too far in pleasure and merriment, T was coming to that. What does the

retribution and the oyster fork. doctrine of efficiency mean? Only this:

I can see him before me now, his long, Just naturally you do a thing the wrong
eager face and deep-set, brown eyes, pa- way. You have to struggle, to discipline
thetic with the failure of ages — carry- 35 yourself, to overcome your natural tenden-
ing with him his pack of cards, his am- cies, in order to do a thing the right way:
her flask, and his little fiddle. Let but the that is, with the smallest expenditure of
door of the cottage stand open upon a win- energy. You are naturally perverse,
ter night, and the Devil would blow in, wasteful — which is, economically speak-
off ering his flask and fiddle, or rattling 4° ing, sinful. You are all born in economic
his box of dice. sin, and you live in economic sin, till 'long

So with his twin incentives of pain and comes the doctrine of efficiency and
pleasure he coaxed and prodded humanity teaches you system, and so plucks you, a
on its path, till it reached the point where brand from the burning. It corrects your
it repudiated him, called itself a Super- 45 wasteful ways, it teaches you how to con-
man, and headed straight for the cliff over serve your energies, it makes you live an
which is the deep sea. Quo tfadimus? economically righteous life. The doctrine

of efficiency is based upon an economic
statement of the doctrine of total deprav-
50 ity. The theological doctrine says, all
men are by nature sinners; the economic
says, all men are by nature inefficient —
that is, are economic sinners. Even sin
is economic in this age. All men by na-
55 ture do their tasks wastefully, lins
matically ; but they may be saved by adopt-
ing the methods of efficiency. There :
that 's modern theology for you/

E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 201

And he knocked the ashes out of his paying for it ! The prodigality of the man
pipe and went home. who carried in my coal filled me with

I am not certain about my neighbor's despair,
view of the doctrine of efficiency. He Nay, more, I made some small effort

may be right, and then again he may not. 5 to apply the doctrine of efficiency to my
But this I do know, that the preachers own pursuits. I am a humble teacher of
of the doctrine of efficiency are many — English in a small New England college,
and efficient. Plan and system are ex- I have many themes to correct. I had
tended to all things. One cannot take up contented myself with taking up a pen and
a magazine without being confronted by 10 indicating errors and corrections with red
reproachful directions for increasing one's ink — 'squirting the red ink,' my students
efficiency. Busy-bodies' Magazine tells vulgarly called it. But this was not sys-
you of the tremendous waste of time in- tematic; it was not efficient; it was too
volved in the present methods of peanut- natural. So I became self-conscious in
roasting. Dunce's Monthly proclaims 15 my work. I studied it. I analyzed it.
loudly the benefits to humanity that will Soon I found that there were certain
infallibly result from adopting more effi- criticisms and directions that I wrote and
cient methods of operating a hurdy-gurdy, rewrote many times daily. So I purchased
Diagrams and pictures stare at us from rubber stamps. Then I found that I
every page. We learn the waste of en- 20 wasted much valuable time in laying hold
ergy and the number of useless motions of the right rubber stamp ; so I purchased
involved in the ordinary way of getting on little hooks, and hung the rubber stamps
a street-car. We find out how to carve a in a row, and assigned a definite hook to
turkey with the fewest possible slashes. each stamp, and memorized the positions
Now, all this may be desirable and nee- 25 of the stamps on the hooks, and looked
essary. We may be so 'rushed for time,' upon my work, and thought it good. This
to use the expressive colloquialism, that involved the expenditure of much time and
every energy must be conserved. Never- energy, but I was introducing system, I
theless, I object; I am economically de- was becoming efficient,
praved. I long for the looser ways of my 3a Turning my attention to other details, I
forebears. System chafes me. It is un- found that I wasted much time — often
yielding. Like a dress shirt, it holds me two minutes — in looking for papers. So
clamped. I prefer a dressing-gown and I had the college carpenter construct a
slippers — blessed symbols of mild unre- case of pigeon-holes and place it beside
straint. Perhaps I ought not to feel this 35 my desk. I devoted an afternoon to label-
way. Perhaps I ought not to object to ing the pigeon-holes and filing my papers,
learning the proper method of filling my Then I spent fifteen minutes a day — by
fountain-pen — that is a task, the sooner this time I had a clock in my little office
over, the better. Perhaps, I ought not to and timed my every action — fifteen min-
object to learning the least exhausting 40 utes a day in filing new letters and docu-
way of buttoning my collar — though ments — sometimes it was only thirteen
every right-minded man prizes the privi- minutes, roughly speaking. But I did not
lege of indignation at a recalcitrant but- begrudge this time, for it meant that I
ton — and what button is recalcitrant was taking another step toward efficiency.
once the appropriate system is mastered? 45 What need to relate in detail all of the
But, be all this as it may, I do protest seri- other measures that I took for the efficient
ously against having to learn the most effi- administration of my duties? I installed
cient way of filling my pipe ! files for all of the themes. I moved my

I was not always of this mind. Like books from my home into my little office,
other misguided mortals of limited vision, 50 lining the walls with shelves — where they
I was disposed to welcome the new doc- were not already lined with pigeon-holes,
trines. I read with avidity the proper I had a swinging shelf constructed for my
method of shoveling snow. I rejoiced at typewriter, and attached it to my desk,
finding out just what and how few mo- I bought a machine for sharpening pen-
tions it was necessary to go through to 55 cils. I introduced the latest approved
connect a water-pipe. I was filled with pattern of a card-index file. There was
indignation when I observed how waste- a place for everything, and everything in
ful of his energy was my plumber — and I its place — though it took most of my time

202 WRITING OF TODAY

to put it there. But I was introducing stamps. The pigeon-holes gaped, ready
efficiency into my work ; system and order to devour their prey in orderly fashion,
are the first laws of efficiency; and I Variegated inks and pencils lay on the
spared no labor in putting them into ef- desk ready for use at a moment's notice,
feet. 5 It all looked so business-like ! To be sure,

Recently, however, a slave of efficiency for a moment I recalled uneasily my
visited me, and I have received a rude neighbor's remark. 'You can't always tell
awakening. I have discovered that I am from a cat's looks how far it will jump.'
not really efficient. But this 'cat' did have such an impressive

My friend is a man with surprised hair K appearance. I felt sure it could jump far
and peering eyes. He has the appearance — and efficiently. Everything had an air
of seeing everything — and he does. He of preparedness, like that of a fire-en-
came with me to my recitation room one gine in an engine-house. I expanded in
morning, and looked around in seeming anticipation of praise,
idleness while I was busy planning the 15 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 was not properly placed ; I had to turn
wall blink in the electric light, and scenes 20 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.
However, my friend received no imagina- My clock was behind me, and I had to
tive stimulus. He was blind to all that. crane my neck to see it. My desk was
But Spencer's ruff and Johnson's wig — ■ *5 not in the best light. I was dumbfounded,
these called forth his scorn. How could He continued relentlessly. My pigeon -

a man work, handicapped by such frills? holes were placed too high. They were
I mildly pointed out that the gentlemen indeed beside my desk, but I had to rise
concerned did accomplish something of to reach them. That meant a loss, on an
importance, but he ignored me. He went 3° average, of two and three-fifths seconds,
up to an old print of 'The Fortune Play- There were sixteen pigeon-holes. Per-
house,' of which I am decidedly fond. In haps I had to use each an average of three
the foreground two men are loading a times in the course of a day's work. My
cart with kegs. Did my friend admire friend is what he would term 'a handy
the ancient architecture of the building? 35 man' with figures. He reckoned for a
Did he appreciate the quaint garb of the few moments. — That meant a loss of one
men? Did it all serve to make the past hundred and twenty-five seconds a day!
more intimate, to bring it a little nearer? 'Think of it!' he cried. 'One hundred
Not at all. His indignation was aroused, and twenty-five seconds ! In less than
The cart was parallel with the walk. 4° one-tenth of the time you waste here a
Why wasn't it backed up to the walk? man could run a hundred yards, and — '
Think of how much effort was wasted in 'But I don't want to run a hundred
rolling those kegs around in the street to yards,' I interposed, somewhat resentfully,
the end of the cart! He could not see 45 'and if I did, / couldn't run it in that
the theater for the cart ! time.'

I was somewhat impatient at his atti- 'Never mind.' He brushed aside my
tude. But after all, could he be blamed? objections, and continued his calculations.
He thought in terms of efficiency, because There are six days in a working week —
efficiency was his business. Others could 5o I refuse to work Sundays, although some
admire quaintness, others could dream teachers have to — and thirty-six working
themselves into the past, but he was an weeks in a year — and how many years
apostle with a flaming mission: to see and one might use in the reckoning, who can
to correct all waste of energy. And in- tell? Why, by properly placing those
deed I had that which he could appreci- 55 pigeon-holes, I might save enough time
ate. I ushered him into my little office, to take a trip to Europe, according to this
There it was, in immaculate order. The efficiency agent. — Of course. I haven't
fresh April sunshine gleamed from the money enough, and if I had, how to com-
polished handles of the rows of rubber bine these scattered moments into a uni-

E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 203

fied whole would offer another problem — relax and yield himself to passive enjoy-
but that is all beside the question. The ment. He did n't have to correct themes,
moments were there, in potential empti- Why should n't he enjoy himself ? But he
ness. One doesn't refuse a cup because couldn't. That terrible doctrine of em-
one lacks the wine to fill it. 5 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 He carried it into all his pleasures —
a shelf, across the room. Abjectly I 10 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 reverie or gossip. I play a lei-
had n't that shelf been placed lower? surely game, a comfortable sort of a
How many tenths of a second had I lost game, a slouching, be-slippered, relaxing
by that upward reach? I shivered, and 15 game, restful beyond words. If I happen
clumsily knocked down a book. I had to to forget that my partner played a jack of
stoop to pick it up. More time lost! I clubs three tricks previous, and conse-
took up the themes again, savagely. The quently neglect to take the proper meas-
rubber band was old. It broke under the ures, I don't mind, and I don't want others
unwonted strain of my fervor. There 20 to care. But my friend would have none
was a flutter of white papers. Blunder- of this. He had complicated 'leads' and
ingly I bent forward to gather them up. elaborate systems. He played feverishly
Why was n't the floor built higher ? and snapped at me constantly for my
Stupid piece of inefficient planning. — neglectfulness. Cards were real, cards
Why was I so high above it ? Why 25 were earnest, and there was no idle
wasn't I built more efficiently? dreaming permitted. I gasped a sigh of
Red-faced and scant-breathed I arose relief when a game was ended. He
and threw the themes on my desk. My played, as he worked, relentlessly,
friend had considerately turned his back; One day we went on a tramp in the
but even that was eloquent. ? hills. I am not systematic on a tramp.
'Oh, hang the themes!' I burst out. I don't like to plan my route in advance;
'And — and — let 's go for a walk !' I prefer to follow the unexpected allure-
That episode was bad enough, but it ment of shady by-paths, the invitation of
was n't the worst. My friend stayed with an unknown winding road, the beckoning
me several days, and they were stirring 35 of unexplored fields. To be sure, I usu-
days for me. Ostensibly he had come for ally get lost, and frequently get bedraggled
a rest — nerves all frayed — wanted to by some unforeseen stream or slough;
vegetate for a while — thought he 'd come but I like to get lost ; it has such inviting
to a quiet place. Now our college com- possibilities. Not so my friend. He de-
munity is quiet, in all conscience. They 4° manded maps, a definite objective point,
tell the story of one man who once cut a clear itinerary, and no side-trips. I
some figure in the world of affairs, who yielded, but with rebellion smoldering in
was prevailed upon to accept a professor- my heart.

ship and live among us, that he announced 45 Now I suppose I shall lay myself open
that he was going to 'give up active life to the reproaches of a multitude of very

and " retire " to teach at College.' worthy persons when I confess that my

I think that was a somewhat undeserved dislike of system and rigidity is not con-
slur on our faculty. I know I have to fined to my choice of routes. Far from
work, and I know my colleagues do. We 5o it. I abhor system in appreciation. I can
don't feel that we have retired from active enjoy the contour of a hill without know-
life. Still, I must admit that there is n't ing its geological formation. The soft
quite the same tension prevalent in what glow of green in the April landscape
a visiting President of the United States brings me pleasure which would be con-
tritely termed 'these academic shades,' as 55 taminated by conscientious attempts to re-
there is, say, in the Stock Exchange, or in call the scientific explanation of the func-
Congress at the culmination of a tariff tion of chlorophyll in bud and blade. I
debate. Consequently I had hoped that love to watch the great clouds drifting
my friend would be soothed, and would lazily through a blue sea of air; but I

204 WRITING OF TODAY

don't care to master the nomenclature of know its name and use. If I paused to

meteorology. Nay, worst of all in these hear the music of a tumbling brook, he

days of widespread 'bird-lore,' I can enjoy wanted to estimate its volume and be-

the dark flash of a bluebird's flight, but moaned the waste of power. To the

am only irked by classified lists of names 5 spiritual significance, the soothing influ-

and descriptions; and I am infuriated by ence, of rural sights and sounds, he was

the attitude of those who make of every insensible. At my lack of systematized

walk a contest to see how many new knowledge he was disgusted. That walk

varieties of birds may be identified and was not a success.

classified — as if the great Kingdom of xo Well, my friend has left me. I can't

Out-of-doors were a mere museum of say I 'm sorry. I like him, of course —

specimens and curiosities, to be grouped but at a distance. A great peace has

and labeled by every observer ! Out upon fallen upon me. I can correct my themes

those misguided creatures who mistake in my office without nervously counting

nomenclature for knowledge and classifi- 15 my every motion. I can relax once more,

cation for understanding; who strut cast aside the rigid garb of systematic ac-

through a starry evening, proud because tivity, and once more don smoking- jacket

they can clap Arcturus on the back and and slippers, down-at-the-heel preferably,

call him familiarly by name. I can sit down in the evening and listen

„,, t1 ,. , , . , ,. , 20 to the gobbling croak of a frog without

These earthly godfathers of heaven s lights, bei reproached for my inability to clas-

Save ^r^oreTro^t Sttffi nights **£ «■ accurately in the' animal 'kingdom.
Than those that walk and wot not what they My next-door neighbor is a great corn-

are. f°rt to me. He 'came over' last night,

Too much to know is to know nought but 25 and while we sat before the open fire that
fame; robbed the sharp evening air of its chill,

And every godfather can give a name. we discussed the whole matter comfort-

Of course I do not scorn the labors of ,£• . ,, , . . -

my scientific colleagues; their work, which Jt Syste™ in recreation! he exclaimed
goes far deeper than names, is necessary 3° disgustedly when we had talked a while
and beneficial. I merely sympathize with To play by plan! Why, your friend
them because to them so much of the uni- would destroy all the spontaneity of life,
verse is a symbol of labor. And I fail to lts( nne> careless rapture,
see the necessity of making it a symbol 'Do you recall what Dr. Johnson said

of labor for myself, when I may rather 35 of such a man?' I queried. "'Sir, he is
see in it a garden of beauty and a place an enthusiast by rule." I despise enthusi-
of contemplation and rest. In all this I asts Dv rule.'

suppose I am an ignoramus blindly stum- 'But of course that is n't all there was

bling through unsuspected riches of wis- to your experience/ my neighbor remarked
dom. I suppose I am a sinner turning my 4° presently. 'Your visitor, after all, was
back upon the road of repentance. But more concerned with work than play.
I am perverse. I abominate those busy- And in work, method and system have
bodies who would filch from us our few their place.'

remaining careless hours and would rob More place than they deserve,' I grum-

them of the wayward prodigality that is 45 bled. 'Enthusiasts by rule infest all our
their charm. For my part, I refuse to activities. Systematization has become
card-catalog my pleasures. over-systematization. Too often we can't

Needless to say, my friend was dis- see the product for the machinery. We
gusted with me. He was as innocent of are victims to a pseudo-efficiency that
classified knowledge of the countryside as 5o merely clogs and retards achievement;
I, but he felt that he was excusable. He that defeats its own ends/
had spent his life in the city, and there 'On the other hand,' replied my friend
he had observed with care the phenomena mildly, 'I suppose that system, rightly
that had fallen under his gaze. I had used, does save time. I suppose that
not made similar good use of my oppor- 55 genuine efficiency does permit of greater
tunities. If I admired the delicate trac- production. However, its advocates don't
ery of a silhouetted tree, he wanted to consider all sides of the question. In

E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 205

some pursuits increase of production 'Not at all,' I exclaimed with some heat,

would be a calamity. Shall our factories, Then I smiled at my own fervor. 'Dilet-
by increased efficiency, be enabled to pro- tantes are beneath defense. But my plea
duce more phonographs? Heaven forbid ! is for moderation; for a truer sense of
Their efficiency is already terrible !' 5 values. I protest against a misplaced em-

'And there are many occupations,' I phasis upon output, a feverish demand for
broke in, 'in which the time saved to the results, at no matter what expenditure of
workman by system would be useless, be- nervous energy. I protest, too, against a
cause it comes in titbits. It can't be systematization that would reduce indi-
massed. And it must be massed, to be 10 viduals to automatons; a mechanical effi-
most effective. Suppose,' I added petu- ciency that stereotypes the workman and
lantly, 'that I could go to Europe in the standardizes his product. To offer freer
time I might save by correcting themes piay to personality may well be worth the
efficiently ; I can't go to Europe for ten sacrifice of a little efficiency.'
minutes a day. And I 've got to use my 15
ten minutes on the day I save them.

They can't be stored up each day, till a jjj

respectable quantity accumulates.'

'No, of course. Yet, my friend, one t>tt-c r\i nrcT t T-trrvr^

might pick holes in your argument. The 20 iHE poVnTTATF

minutes may not be valueless, even though UKAUUAltL

they can't be spent in Europe.' rc _ _ _ , _ ■»_'...'.

(i., ±. ~ 1 1 .!• 1 a. ISun, New York, January 30, 1901. Reprinted in

Oh, there are some good things about Casual Essays of the Sun, 1905. By permission.]

efficiency,' I hastened to interpose. T

presume I might add the ten minutes to 25 _ The King has no solitary preeminence
my daily game of golf.' in never dying. He shares his mortal im-

'Still, you object?' mortality with another potentate and great

T object to excess of efficiency. Ulti- public character, the Oldest Graduate,
mately, the time saved by introducing There is always an Oldest Graduate; and
more system into work is to be used in 30 always there are heirs waiting for the
recreation. Why not strain less at our succession. Mr. Benjamin D. Silliman,
work, and make recreation of it?' distinguished and fortunate in so many

My friend nodded thoughtfully. other regards, was also for some time the

'At any rate,' I continued, 'if I want Oldest Living Graduate of Yale ; and now
to do my allotted task in leisurely fashion, 35 that honor belongs to Judge Cutler of '29,
occasionally lingering over it to enjoy the who lives in Waterbury, where they make
fine flavor of achievement, I claim the the watches. May these be wound up for
right to do so. I take the time from my many a day before he yields his crown to
golf, but after six hours of work I go to the heir apparent. At ninety-three the
my golf with steadier nerves than the man 4© Oldest Living Graduate is or should be
who has worked five hours at high ten- but a boy. After waiting seventy-odd
sion. Your five-hour man with his super- years for his title, he will be in no hurry
ficial efficiency is victim of an obsession: to give it up. He should enjoy it to the
speed. He spends himself in his work in full, be merciful in his reminiscences, and
order that he may gain time for — a sana- 45 look with an indulgent pity on the lads of
torium. He loses sight of his goal. To ninety and ninety-one who want his job.
change a little the somewhat antiquated For, flower unloved of Amaryllis

refrain, he does n't care where he 's go- though it be, this honor is greatly prized,
ing; he is satisfied if he is speeding on his The survivor in this Tontine has beaten
way.' 5° all his contemporaries at college. He can

I stopped, a bit out of breath with my say to Time, as Beranger said:
earnestness. My friend was silently star- «*•-•« -,- -,- , , *

ing into the heart of the leisurely fire. Old Postilion hold up, hold up;

After a moment he turned to me quiz- Let us dnnk a stirrup cup'

zically. 55 It is too much for this glory to go to a

'Is this to be a defense of dilettante- man otherwise famous, as Mr. Silliman
ism?" was or as Horace Binney was. The lat-

206 WRITING OF TODAY

ter, an illustrious lawyer whose fame is thing. I have little property and less hair,
perhaps as dim now as that of most great But I think I can outlive every man In my
lawyers who have not held high political class and I mean to do it. Let them last
office, was graduated at Harvard in 1797, into the nineties if they can. I '11 take an
if we remember well, and he was the old- 5 even hundred, and one to carry, if neccs-
est living Harvard man for some time be- sary.'

fore he was cut off in '95. An Oldest The young chaps just out of college may
Living Graduate who has no other fame not know this harmless ambition at first,
than that is to be preferred. Such was They are too young — confound 'em ! We
Joseph Head of Harvard, of 1804. He 10 remember hearing George Bancroft, sixty
lived in some little town. With his bent years after his graduation, imparting the
form, his Van Winkle beard, his long fact to a freshman. The freshman gaped
staff, he looked what he was as he and gasped in wonder. How was it pos-
marched among the younger generations sible for a man to have been graduated
in the yard on Commencement Day, 'the 15 sixty years ago? If Nebuchadnezzar had
oldest living grad-oo-ate,' as he pro- come into the room and tried to sell a book
nounced it after the fashion of his rural on vegetarianism, that freshman could not
youth. Good old Joseph Head, if that have been more surprised. But youth 's
was his name ! One thinks with kindness the stuff will not endure. It does n't
of him, and all his predecessors ; and of 20 take the truly wise graduate long to find
his successors in the procession. the most reasonable object of desire.

In every college from A to Z something He nourishes the gentle vision in his
of affection attaches to the college elder heart. He sees himself a well-preserved
and leader of the line. Of ordinary dis- ancient of ninety-eight, with a face like a
tinction the graduate may grow tired, be 25 Baldwin apple and still tolerable legs. His
it his or that of a classmate. Of the goldheaded cane is less a staff than a part
class of 1825 at Bowdoin, of 1829 at Har- of his make-up; 't is a representative of
vard, of 1853 at Yale, it has been possible the monumental pomp of age. He wears,
to hear too much. At Brunswick, in 1875, for effect, a tall hat of the fashion of fifty
Mr. Blaine happily expressed the weari- 30 years before. He prides himself on the
ness which the constant celebration of the cut of his frock coat. His surviving hair
celebrated brings. T am glad to hear/ is soft and white. A perfect gentleman of
he said, 'that those members of the class the old school. 'Young gentlemen/ says
of 1825 who are illustrious on earth are the Oldest Living Graduate, 'I ascribe my
happy in heaven.' 35 remarkable health and long life to the

The graduate whose ambition it is to fact that for seventy-five years I have
become the Oldest Living Graduate scorns never smoked nor drank. Boys/ he says
all loud and easier fames. In seclusion to a few striplings of ninety-odd assem-
and with perfect modesty of spirit, he sets bled around the punch bowl, 'I attribute
before himself early the high goal. He 40 my good health and looks to the fact that
accepts philosophically all detriments for eighty years I have taken a nip of
which Fate and Fortune send. 'I am no good old stuff regularly every day. But I
longer young/ he says to himself, 'but never overdid it as you do/
why should I wish to be? Everybody We once knew an Oldest Living Grad-
who stays in the game must get old, and 45 uate who would walk on the railroad
how few can become the Oldest Living track, although he was nearly a hundred
Graduate! I am not handsome, witty, and deaf as a post. This is encouraging
eloquent, or even popular. I don't have for beginners, as it seems to show that the
to be, in my business, which is that of liv- O. L. G. is born, not made by training,
ing to be the O. L. G. My classmate, 5o Only a very few years ago there happened
Hooker Haynes, has made most of the to live in the same town the Oldest Living
money there is in the world. My class- Graduate and the next-to-the-oldest living
mate, Brattle Holyoke, has married most graduate. They were great cronies and
of the rest. I don't need money in my as lively as crickets. But each watched
business. Byles is a bishop, Dwight is a 55 the distressingly robust health of the other
senator. Bill Trumbill is a trust. I with some alarm. 'William is looking 1
haven't any office. I don't direct any- leetle peaked,' John would say; I'm

E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 207

afraid he won't live through the winter.' mometer showed several degrees of fever.
'John 's failin',' William would say ; 'he 'Oh, I '11 give you all you want, and

ought n't be out in the cold so much at his lots of mosquito-netting, too,' Jones said,
age.' And both lived in health to the very 'You can make your bed just as you like;
edge of the hundred. The man who will 5 that 's half the fun of the thing.'
devote himself with a single mind to be- 'Ah, yes.'

coming the Oldest Living Graduate de- Way down in my heart I had a fore-

serves to be happy. boding that it would be rather more than

half the fun. 'Wonderful !' I simulated.
T 10 'I have n't slept outdoors for years.' 1

■*•* 'Good!' said Jones.

ct t^ot-nt^ ATTrnAADC Through the long evening I kept a stout

bLLLrllNLr UU lJJUUKb heart and a cheery face; I even joked cal-

lously about the coming night, just as men
FREDERICK LEWIS ALLEN I$ sometimes joke about death and insanity

[Century Magazine, November, 1913. By per- and the dentist. I ate a heavy dinner, for

misslon,] breakfast looked very, very far away.

The most overrated summer sport in the Then I played three-handed auction with
world is outdoor sleeping. Jones and his wife. I was as merry as

I speak on this subject with some feel- 20 ever. No one should say that I had
ing, as, in August last, I tested it on a blanched with fear. At nine-forty, Jones
week-end visit with my friend Jones at his yawned.

little mosquito ranch in the White Moun- 'Why, it 's nearly ten/ said Mrs. Jones,

tains. I can now understand why sleep- T had no idea it was so late/
ing under a roof, in a real bed, is insuf- 25 'I Was just going to suggest turning in,'
ferable to a man who has been camping Jones observed. T '11 get your blankets
all summer: what he misses is the keen and netting, if you like.'
excitement, the constant entertainment, I rose, and with a steady voice bade my

the suspense, of a night in the woods. As hostess good night. The time had come,
soon as he lies down in a real bed he be- 30 Jones got the things, and we went out
comes so utterly bored that he promptly on the sleeping-porch, where he dumped
falls asleep, only to wake up in the morn- them on my cot. The temperature had
ing and find that he has missed the whole gone down a degree or two, but the air
night. was still a long way from cool. The

The moment I arrived at Jones's camp 35 winds were still slumbering. A mosquito
on Saturday afternoon I realized that he was meditatively volplaning about,
was the victim of the outdoor-sleeping fad. Ts there anything else you want?' said

He was so under its spell that he imme- Jones as he left me in what, in reasonable
diately took me out to show me my cot. circumstances, would have been my bed-
It was a frail, anemic canvas thing that <° room, but was now merely the world at
screamed and creaked protests whenever large.

it was moved or sat upon. It stood on a 'Nothing/ I said, with fortitude.

roofless sleeping-porch. Over it was the 'Good night.'

branch of a tender tree and over that was I went into the house and ten minutes

the open sky. 45 later I emerged, attired in a neat, but

'Here,' said Jones, expansively, 'is gaudy pair of pajamas. A lamp lighted
where you 're to sleep. This region is the my labors. The game was on ; the mos-
most wonderful place for sleeping in all quitos and I were alone,
the world. I get actually to look forward I shall withhold the tedious details of

to the nights ; I tumble in eagerly at ten 5o bed-making. Suffice it to say that I fol-
o'clock, and don't know another thing till lowed the golden rule of the art : don't let
morning.' the feet escape; sacrifice everything else.

'You never know very much,' I medi- If a single toe projects, the blankets will
tated inwardly, picking a yellow caterpil- be up and about your neck before you
lar off my cot. 'How about blankets and 55 know it. Then I folded a spare blanket
things?' It took a vast amount of imagi- , s true> though x had spent seyeral night3

nation to think of blankets, for the ther- outdoors.

208 WRITING OF TODAY

into a pillow. Next came the magnum about mosquitoes awhile, moved up four
opus — hanging the mosquito-netting. inches, thought about pillows, and then

Here I confronted several alternatives. suddenly, with a great start, realized that
First, there is the Romanesque style, in I was n't asleep. The fact stood out in my
which one hangs the netting on a hoop and 5 brain in huge, staring capitals : you are
then projects the face precisely under the wide awake; you are not even sleepy.
hoop, keeping it there all night. This It was clear that my nerves needed sooth-
style is somewhat like sleeping with an in- ing if I was to get any sleep at all.
verted waste-basket on the face, and is People recommend many ways of sooth-

based on the fallacious notion that insects 10 ing the nerves, but at times they are all
bite only the head. Now I could show you disappointing. I thought of sheep jump-
— but never mind. ing over a fence until all the sheep in my

Then there is the Renaissance style. head had gone lame. I counted up to
You suspend the netting gracefully by one three hundred and seventy- four, which
or two points from a branch or some such J5 must be pretty nearly the world's record,
supposed fixture, and let it depend in ele- but I noted no good results. At the end
gant festoons to the floor, securing the of an hour I was wider awake than ever
corners by lamps, vases, pitchers, or shoes. and considerably more uncomfortable.
This method adequately answers the ques- About this time I began discovering

tion, 'What shall we do with the wedding 20 laws of physics,
present Aunt Alice gave us?' I. When a man lies on his side on a

There is also the Perpendicular Gothic cot, his weight is evenly distributed be-
style — four posts erected at the corners between his ear and his hip-bone,
of the cot, with netting draped over them. II. For every dead mosquito in the

This, I decided, required too much con- as hand there are two live ones in the bush
struction, and I swung back to the Renais- that will be along presently,
sance. Securing some string, after a III. The use of netting rests on the

short, dark, and eventful journey in the theory that it offers an obstruction to
house, I hitched the string to the netting, mosquitoes. This was first proved false
tied it to a branch, made a beautiful pyra- 30 in 1066, but people still —
midal tent, and squirmed inside with all Well, to tell the truth, that 's as far as

the delicate deliberation of a jackstraw- I got. I inadvertently fell asleep in the
player. At last I was on the creaking cot, middle of law number three. Physics is
and my tent still stood ! the loser. I blame only myself.

The laws of physics tell us that breezes 35 At dawn, which in summer occurs
pass through netting. This merely goes to shortly after bedtime and lasts for several
show that physics has a big future. I had hours, I was awakened by the birds, which
distinctly felt a slight zephyr outside; but were making a dreadful din above me in
now, as I balanced on my shoulder-blades the trees. I found that four mosquitoes
on a Spartan blanket, I thought that the 40 were perched on the netting about four-
heat had become even more breathless; I teen inches from my face — great, hungry
felt that I was being suffocated. fellows, regular eagles. They stared at

Is n't there some wild animal that me till I could have hidden myself for em-
builds itself a house and then crawls in barrassment. Presently a friend of theirs,
to die? 45 bloated with drink, sailed down and sat

But I was not going to give up; I beside them, singing a triumphant blood-
forced myself to draw a long sigh of re- lust song in a harsh, drunken tenor. He
lief, and said to myself: 'Oh, what won- was plainly a degenerate going the pace
derful air! How I shall sleep!' Yes, that kills,
how? 50 They say that if you look a wild animal

I humped about a few times— creaking in the eye he will turn away uneasily. I
as I have never creaked before — till I tried this on Macbeth, the new arrival —
thought I was more comfortable, pulled I called him Macbeth because he murdered
up a blanket cautiously, kicked it off sleep — but he was unabashed. I
warmly, rolled back into my original posi- 55 spoke to him sternly, told him to go home
tion, moved down six inches so that my and take his friends away with him.
head just reached the pillow, thought him what sort of place this was for a chap

E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 209

with a family ; I appealed to his better self. This worried me not so much on my

Macbeth's only reply was to crawl inso- own account as on Jones's; I hated the

lently through a tear in the netting and thought of ! is coming out with his wife at

come straight at me. His song of triumph breakfast-time and finding me dead of a

rose in sharp crescendo till he struck my 5 sunstroke on his porch.

nose; then it ceased. I was just reaching Then I remembered that people don't

to kill him, even at the risk of disfiguring die of sunstroke. They only fainted and

myself for life, when suddenly and with- lost their minds.

out warning the netting gave way com- Shortly after this I must have fainted,

pletely and fell about my ears. Can you 10 for I woke up to find I had been uncon-

imagine a worse predicament than to scious for at least two hours !

be pinned under so much wreckage with a The last thing I remembered, before the

mosquito that you personally dislike? coma set in, was killing a spider on my

Well, I climbed out, rearranged my tent stomach at five forty-five,
(while Macbeth's friends got at my an- 15 It was now eight o'clock. The sun had
kles), sneaked in under the edge again, moved round and I could hear the kitchen-
lay down once more, and looked about pump going, and see the housemaid, in-
warily for Macbeth. He was nowhere to doors, hiding matches, and sweeping the
be seen. I suspected some treachery, and dust under the rugs.

on the off chance slapped the back of my 20 I felt sleepy, but otherwise moderately
neck quickly and with tremendous force, well.1
but with no corpse to show for it. Presently Jones came out in his bath-

From that moment to this I have never robe, and asked me how I had slept. I
seen Macbeth. It is all very sad. I al- told him that that was just what I 'd been
most wish now that I had n't been so harsh 25 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
discovered a delightful game, called In- joked about the night as though it were
sides versus Outsides. At 4 a. m. the 30 the funniest thing in the world,
score stood as follows: insides, three That's the way in such crises, when the

mosquitoes, one spider; Outsides, one ant, terrible strain is over,
one daddy-long-legs, two mosquitoes. A I avoided another night's excitement by

vigorous campaign then began, the In- telegraphing myself to come home at once
sides trying to get out, the Outsides try- 35 on the most urgent business,
ing 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 ing for me on the porch. I explained that
mosquito ; Outsides, one wasp, six mo- *° my business would be very exacting for a
quitoes, two unclassified. (Mind you, few years, and I doubted if I would ever
I 'm no etymologist ; I don't pretend to be able to get away again,
know these eight-legged, hairy lads by I still cling to the old-fashioned idea

name.) that night is the time for sleeping, and not

The list of dead and injured was sim- 45 for hunting and recreation,
ply appalling.

After awhile I tired of this game, but
the mosquitoes were all for keeping it up V

indefinitely. Only when a breeze sprang

up did they begin to reel home in twos and 5o HAIRPINS

threes to sleep off their jag. Then, once

again, I shut my eyes in the hope that [S«», New York, May 19, 1902. Reprinted in Cas-

sleep would knit the 'ravell'd sleave of ual Essays of the Sun' I9°s- By Permi«io"-3
care.' It seemed, however, that the ele- The comprehensive merits of the hair-

ments were all against knitting. The sun 55 pin are known to all observant men. Its
at that moment came up through the trees , . .

and shone straight into my eyes. fatah™ °f physlCS: SUnStr°keS ate ** ******

2io WRITING OF TODAY

special value in surgery is asserted by a she can do what she wants to; she needs
writer in American Medicine. It seems no other instrument.

that a surgeon can do almost anything If a woman went into the Robinson

with a hairpin. He can wire bones with Crusoe line she would build a hut and
it, probe and close wounds, pin bandages, 5 make her a coat of the skin of a goat by
compress blood vessels, use it 'to remove means of the hairpin. She will revolu-
foreign bodies from any natural passage,' tionize surgery with it in time. Mean-
and as a curette for scraping away soft while the male chirurgeons are doing the
material. And no doubt the women doc- best they can; but it is not to be believed
tors can do a great deal more with that 10 that they have mastered the full mystery
most gifted and versatile of human imple- of the hairpin,
mcnts. Anthropologists have never done
justice to the hairpin. It keeps civiliza-
tion together. In the hands of girls en- VI
tirely great it is much mightier than the *5

sword or, for that matter, the plow. THE IMPROVED BABY

What is the plow but a development of

the forked Stick, and what is the forked [Sun, New York, September 2, 1903. Reprinted in

stick but a modification of the hairpin? Casual Bu*9* of the Sun, 1905. By permission.]
If there was any necessity, a woman could *> The chief experts in child study and
scratch the ground successfully now. In infant psychology are men. The amount
fact, there is no work or play in which 0f valuable advice and directions given to
something may not be accomplished by mothers by good, motherly men is sur-
means of it. prising. Whenever there is a Congress of

Dullards will tell you that women 25 Mothers, Dr. Granville Stanley Hall and
are n't so inventive as men, don't take out Dr Hamilton Wright Mabie are sure to
so many patents. They don't have to. unioad stores of mother lore upon their
With the hairpin all that is doable can be listeners. Such is the unfailing wisdom
done. With a hairpin a woman can pick of men The mfants Gf today must be old
a lock, pull a cork, peel an apple, draw out 30 before their time. Much is expected of
a nail, beat an egg, see if a joint of meat babes to whose welfare so many great
is done, do up a baby, sharpen a pencil, masculine minds are contributing,
dig out a sliver, fasten a door, hang up a Dr. H. C. Carpenter lectured at a meet-

plate or a picture, open a can, take up a ing of Philadelphia mothers the other day.
carpet, repair a baby carriage, clean a 35 He told them 'How to Take Care of the
lamp chimney, put up a curtain, rake a Baby/ and he showed that usually the
grate fire, cut a pie, make a fork, a fish- baby is far from well taken care of.
hook, an awl, a gimlet, or a chisel, a paper- Mothers are not serious enough :
cutter, a clothespin, regulate a range, ■ "Don't play with the baby." Nothing

tinker a sewing machine, stop a leak in the 4° could be more injurious to the infant's
roof, turn over a flapjack, caulk a hole in nervous system than to excite it with the
a pair of trousers, stir batter, whip cream, customary entertainments with which fond
reduce the pressure in the gas meter, keep mothers and admiring friends bore the
bills and receipts on file, spread butter, cut helpless victim. It is a common error to
patterns, tighten windows, clean a watch, 45 imagine that because the child responds
untie a knot, varnish floors, do practical with a wonderlook, a laugh, or even a
plumbing, reduce the asthma of tobacco shriek of apparent delight, that it is being
pipes, pry shirt studs into buttonholes too amused. Quite the contrary— it is not
small for them, fix a horse's harness, re- only being plagued, but is sustaining, in
store damaged mechanical toys, wrestle 5° nine cases out of ten, an irreparable in-
with refractory beer stoppers, improvise jury.'

suspenders, shovel bonbons, inspect gas Why are there not more Shakespeares,
burners, saw cake, jab tramps, produce ar- Bacons, Mabies, and Carpenters? Be-
tificial buttons, hooks and eyes, sew, knit, cause most babies are irreparably injured,
and darn, button gloves and shoes, put up 55 Baby's intellectuals are not properly and
awnings, doctor an automobile. In short, systematically developed. He may seem

E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 211

to be enjoying himself when he coos and ing car, hits at some important props in
crows and shrieks with apparent delight, our economic welfare,
but he is not. He is pained. In isolation Chairman Walsh and the committee on

and aloofness he is trying to study his sur- industrial relations evidently suspect that
roundings and the psychology of his nurse 5 an evil hides behind this quarter which the
and relations. ' They will not let him average traveler deposits with the person
think. They interfere with the growth of who dusted him thus effectively. It may
his mental processes. They turn him be making the Pullman company rich by
away from his lofty cogitations by their making possible an avoidance of paying
impertinent and trivial endearments, w proper wages. It may be destroying the
They warp his nature from its solemn self-respect of the porter, but we doubt it,
bent. They kill his mind. Let him grow experience never having discovered one
and meditate. He has the floor. Give who did not look as if he had all the self-
him the opportunity to develop himself, respect of a person with a bank account.

'Don't talk baby talk,' says Dr. Carpen- i5 We suspect that the first sleeping car
ter. Certainly not. Why should a baby porter who got the first two bits from a
understand broken, any better than whole, traveler nearly fell over in astonishment
English? Why will mothers use that and was unable to express himself ade-
strange nursery Chinook, 'Did um shakum quately. We suspect that the whole sys-
dady,' and so on ? The man's vocabulary ■ tern was originated by the travelers them-
is shrunken on account of this habit. His selves and that they will continue to hand
bump of language is flattened. Long out two bits in the morning regardless of
words for Little Ones ; that 's the talk, what changes are made in the wage scale.
'John Henry, my valued progeny, I shall Naturally we want the money to go to

discourse to you for a few moments on 25 the porters and not to the Pullman com-
the subject of Conservation of Energy.' pany, and for that reason we might insist
'Marthy Ann, let me dissuade you from that the company pay wages that would be
your fruitless conation to ingurgitate your adequate if there were not gratuities or
rattle. The impenetrability of matter is would refund the latter to the passenger
one of the earliest subjects which should 30 in the form of lower rates,
engage your attention.' But we also suspect that the habit of

'One should avoid telling young chil- tipping the porter is something not to be
dren such exciting stories as "Jack the explained by any orthodox economic the-
Giant Killer."' Explain, if you choose, ory; that it inheres in the grandiloquence
that it is absurd to suppose that Jack or 35 of the average traveler who wishes to con-
anybody else would kill giants. Giants sider himself a person important enough,
get large salaries. They are too valuable in the peculiarly important circumstances
to kill. Don't tell stories of any kind. of his travel, to hand out two bits to an
Read the Gazetteer to Baby. It will calm obliging gentleman of color and that he
his nervous system and give him much 40 would resent any legislative fussiness
statistical and geographical information. which deprived him of this expression of

his own generosity and solvency. As to
Yjt the colored person who takes the tip, we

suspect that his self-respect is proof

TTTF Pni?TFT?'Q TTP 45 against this subtle suggestion. Anyway

iniiruKimiiir he earns the f ^ and {t makes gracious the

[Chicago Tribune, May 9, 191 5- By permission.] person who gives it.

There are very few remnants of the
Probably the two bits which the spend- feudal system. Why destroy the one con-
thrift American traveler, having luxuri- 50 venient method by which a person of mod-
ated under blankets of a peculiar rigidity, est income and small authority can, for a
the composition of which is known only moment, attain and realize the subtleties
to the Pullman company, and having of the grand estate? Purchasable at two
dressed without fracturing his skull, be- bits the sensation is cheap. Many a man
stows upon the porter who tendered such 55 has spent a $20 bill and had his egotism
creature comforts as may exist in a sleep- flattered less.

2I2 WRITING OF TODAY

'No. i. Those I can read, but nobody
else can.
VIII 'No. 2. Those I can't read myself

after two days.
HOW TO THROW OFF AN 5 'No. 3. Those my typist can read.

ARTICLE 'This story is about a certain Brigade

Major who is an inveterate leg-puller.
[Punch, London, En^issiJ^n]uary 8' I919- By Some Americans are expected to be com-
permission. ^ .^ ^ instruction. Well, before they ar-

'Do you really write?' said Sylvia, gaz- I0 rrve tne Brigade Major has to go up to
ing at me large-eyed with wonder. I ad- the line, and on his way he meets a man
mitted as much. with a very new tin hat who asks him in

'And do they print it just as you write a certain nasal accent we have all come
it?' to love if he has seen anything of a party

'Well, their hired grammarians make a 15 0f Americans. Spotting him as a new
few trifling alterations to justify their ex- chum, the Brigade Major offers to show
istence/ ? him round the line, and proceeds to pull

'And do they pay you quite a lot?' his leg and tells him the most preposter-

'Sixpence a word.' ous nonsense. For instance, on a shot

'Oo! How wonderful!' 20 being fired miles away he pretends they

'But not for every word,' I added has- are jn frightful danger, and leads him
tily, 'only the really funny ones.' bent double round and round trenches in

'And they send it to you by checks?' the same circle.'

'Rather. I bought a couple of pairs of 'What a shame!'

socks with the last story ; even then I had 25 'Was n't it ? Well, when he gets tired
something left over.' ? he asks the American if he thinks he has

'And how do you write the stories?' learnt anything. The American says,

'Oh, just get an idea and go right "Gee, I 've been out here two years now,
ahead.' but I guess you 've taught me a whole heap

'How wonderful ! Do you just sit 30 I did n't know. I 'm a Canadian tun-
down and write it straight off?' neller, you know, and I've got to show
I just — only just — pulled myself up some Americans our work, but I guess
in time as I remembered that Sylvia was I Ve had a most interesting time with
an enthusiast of twelve whose own efforts you."
had already caused considerable comment 35 'Ha ! ha !'

in the literary circles described round the 'Well now, to put the story into its

High School. I felt this entitled her to form. Here's Copy No. 1, on this old
some claim on my veracity. envelope. "Americans coming — Brigade

'Sylvia,' I cried, 'I shall have to make a Major sees American looking for party —
confession. All those stories you have 40 pulls his leg — pretends to being in fright-
been good enough to read and occasionally ful danger — American is Canadian who
smile over are the result of a cold-blooded has been out two years." See? Copy
mechanical process — and the help of a No. 2. Here we begin to fill in. Describe
dictionary of synonyms.' Brigade headquarters and previous leg-

'Oo! How wonderful! Do show me 45 pulls of Brigade Major. Make up details
how.' of what he tells the American — "That 's

'Very well. Since you are going to be a trench. That thing you fell over is a
a literary giantess it is well that you coil of wire. This is a sunken road — we
should be initiated into the mysteries of sunk it, etc., etc." Copy No. 3, additions
producing what I shall call the illusion of 50 and details, little touches of local color,
spontaneity. Now take this story here. revision of choice of words, heartrending
Here on this old envelope is the idea.' erasions. And here, my child,' I con-

'Oo! Let me see. I can't read a eluded, bringing out the beautiful, clean,
word.' smooth typed copy — 'here is the finished

'Of course you can't ; nobody could. 55 work itself, light, pleasant, fluent, humor-
Rough copiejs are divided into classes as ous and, most important of all, spontane-
f ollows : — ous.'

E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 213

'Oo ! But how awfully cold-blooded. artist, or anybody else who can appreciate
I thought you smiled to yourself all the it, still has the right to enjoy it,
time you wrote it.' though he may not be able to do so

'My dear girl, it takes hours. If I as frequently as the gentleman who bought
smiled continually all that length of time 5 it.
the top of my head would come off.' This is a delicate point which permits

'Is n't it wonderful ? Fancy building it of much argument and cannot be settled
all up from jottings on an old envelope ! either by stubborn insistence on the rights
What 's that piece of paper you took out of the purchaser or by the sound and
of the typed copy?' 10 fury of the Italian artists who burned

'Oh, that 's nothing to do with the lit- Lord Leverhulme's effigy in the public
erary side of it,' I said, crumbling up the square and finished a perfect day by lay-
little memorandum, which said that the ing a wreath on the altar of St. John,
Editor presented compliments and regret- apparently under the impression that he
ted that he was unable to make use of the 15 was the patron saint of the artist in ques-
enclosed contribution. L. tion. Yet it can easily be held that no-

body has the right to destroy a work of
yY art — even the artist himself. How much

less a mere industrial magnate whose

TT^ * ^ , ^TT^ ^ . ^t^^t^^tt^tt^ 20 on^Y connection with the arts is the un-
HEAD AND BACKGROUND gr£eiul one of patron ,

T7 . _. XT , „ Of course, we don't know why the peer

{New York Times, November 4, 1920. By per- , .« « ' - , ,, ^11

mission.] saved the head and threw away the back-

ground. A psychoanalyst might tell us

Direct action is spreading. In the boy- 25 that it indicated an ego-centric tempera-
cott of Hungary and the attempted boy- ment which was willing to consider it-
cott of Poland international labor brought self as such, but not in relation to even a
the sympathetic or antipathetic strike into small proportion of the cosmos. No doubt
international politics. Now it has invaded Lord Leverhulme has respectable reasons
art. For twenty-four hours all the art- 3° for this performance, as he seems to
ists and artistic craftsmen of Italy re- have had for most things he has done;
mained idle as an expression of their sym- but he has awakened a great issue. Mean-
pathy for Mr. Augustus John, the Brit- while many artists will find it possible
ish painter. to rebuke him sharply at the cost of next

It is a curious case. John was com- 35 to no interference with their own settled
missioned to paint the portrait of a gen- habits. They can merely refuse to buy
tleman who had slid into the British peer- soap,
age on a cake of soap. He did so paint it
and sent it to the subject, who cut the head >*rV^

out of the picture, kept it, and sent the 4° X

rest of the canvas back to the artist with

the observation that he might have some SAYING IT WITH FLOWERS

use for it. Philistines not gifted with the FRANKLIN P ADAMS

power of appreciating John's pictures may

think the peer would have done better to 45 Warper's Monthly Magazine April, 1921. By
Send back the head and save the margin. Permission of author and publisher.]

However, the artist was infuriated and I am not of the patronizing sort that

talked of a damage suit. A painter, he doesn't read — or affects not to read —
maintained, was not in the position of an the boxing news, the Gossip of Film-
author, who can keep a copy of his book 50 land, the Frank Crane stuff, the syndi-
and continue to get his own pleasure out of cated 'How to Keep Well' articles. I
it whether it suits the world or not. Of read them all and they do me good, for
each picture there is only a single speci- I take them seriously. In fact, I owe
men, and John contends that the mere pur- my clean-limbed young Americanism
chase by the sitter, or by anybody else, 55 chiefly to my adherence to advice that I
does not wholly destroy the artist's rights. read a few years ago in The Life of
The picture has been created, and the Jess Wiliard. Mr. Willard advised me

214 WRITING OF TODAY

— I always think the author is looking up against matrimony, and that makes her
straight at me — to do certain exercises rich in happiness/

daily, and every day since the morning I 'The woman' — by this time the train

read that counsel I have done those had got to Fourteenth Street, and the
strengthening exercises. Somebody told 5 crowd of eager, merry homegoers, ardent
me, a few days after I began to emulate to arrive at their joyous apartments,
Mr. Willard, that Mr. Willard didn't made reading difficult — 'who has looked
write those pieces at all, but that they from the lovely gown and soft furs in a
were written by Mr. George Creel. It show window to her own shabby frock,
was like telling me there was no Santa 10 and known that she could afford nothing
Claus. I think I cried a little, but I better because the children had to have
kept right on with the exercises, and shoes and the coal was nearly out; the
now anybody that says a word against woman who has wrestled with pots and
George Creel has me, with five or six pans and the washtub all day, while the
years of unremitting training, to fight. x5 baby howled and the other children

I take, as I said, the printed word seri- fought, until her nerves were raw — will
ously. A dealer myself in the printed she be soothed by her husband's treating
word, it never occurs to me that any one her as an equal when he comes home at
might read my own carefully chiseled night, and conversing with her about the
phrases and say, 'Yes, but is it true ?' 20 Federal Reserve bank and the railroad
or, 'Oh, well, I doubt it,' or even, 'What situation? I trow not.'
of it?' 'But if — and this took me from Seven-

I am like Ernest in the old Ade fable, ty-second Street to Cathedral Parkway —
who had been Kicked in the Head by 'he puts his arms about her, and pats her
a Mule when young and Believed every- 25 on the shoulder, and says, "There, there,
thing he Read in the Sunday Papers, now," and tells her she is the dearest,

And so this evening — my passion for bravest, most wonderful little woman in
truth makes me refrain from saying the the world, and he just wishes he had the
other day, because it was n't the other money to doll her up and show people that
day, though it will be when this appears 30 his little wifekins has got any of those
— I read, among other things on the living pictures backed off the screen, why,
woman's page (and what I started out to somehow, the tiredness goes out of her
say was that I am not of the patronizing back, and the envy out of her soul, and
sort that pretends not to read the worn- the sun's come again in her heaven, and
an's page) an 'article/ as they call 35 she is ready to go down on her knees and
them, by Dorothy Dix. It was entitled, thank God for giving her such a hus-
'Do Women Want to Be Petted?' and, band, even if he isn't a money maker.'
with my habit of answering every ques- I emerged from the subway, and, soft

tion, rhetorical or not, that is put to me, I and glowing with the romance Miss Dix
said, 'No/ and added, with a revealing 40 had suffused me with, I stopped at a
candor that I use in meditation, 'At any florist's. 'How much,' I asked, 'are those
rate, not by me.' violets?' 'Two dollars,' he said. He

Well, I read this piece of Miss Dix's, wrapped them with the contemptuous air
which told of the sufferings and sacri- florists have for men who carry their
fices of the average married woman. 'The 45 offerings with them. They, I take it, are
only thing that can repay her/ I read, as the transient trade. Your real wooer, it
I stood in the warm, well-lighted sub- came over me in a flash, never brings his
way train, speeding along through the flowers.

night, after a jolly day spent in the joys of I entered the house with the airy tread

literary composition in a room full of re- 50 of youth, adventurous and confident. The
porter-pounded type-writers and thrill- Little Woman, as I call her in my lighter
ingly noisy telegraph Instruments, 'is the moments, was seated at her desk writing
tenderness of her Kusband. His kisses, checks — struggling, I mused, with the
warm with love, and not a chill peck of problem of inelastic currency,
duty on the cheek, his murmured words of 55 'See/ I said, pointing with modest tri-
endearment, are the magic coin that set- umph to the violets,
ties the long score that a woman charges 'Where did you get them?' she asked

E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 215

'Well,' she said — and I have no doubt sir. What stout parties like you want is
she was right — 'if you paid more than a something with lines in it, sir, to make
dollar you got stuck. You always let a them look longer.'

florist give you anything. Go and put When I got up to give a lady a seat in

them in the ice box.' 5 the subway, whoever happened to be with

'There, there, now,' I said, quoting Miss her always sat down, too.
Dix. 'You are the dearest, bravest, most I said to Grantland Rice, 'I wish you

wonderful little woman in the world. would give me a little preliminary advice,
I just wish I had the money to doll you Grant; I 'm thinking of taking up golf in a
up and show people that my little wifekins 10 serious way.'

has got any of those living pictures backed And Grant looked at me, and said, with

off the screen.' an allusion to my rotundity, 'Why don't

'Since when,' asked the Little Woman— you join the Holy Rollers?'
and she is the bravest, as Miss Dix says, These things, of course, hurt my van-

1. w. in the world — 'since when have liv- J5 ity — and a fat man weighing two hun-
ing pictures gone into the movies, and is dred and fifty pounds has more vanity
that where you go in the afternoon when than two slim men weighing one hundred
I call the office at three and they say that and twenty-five pounds each,
you 've left for the day ? No wonder you My vanity was hurt ; but my vanity

never make any money. . . . Do you know 20 alone would never have led me to do it.
why Wabash Preferred A and those other As I said before, I was scared into it.
railroad stocks don't go up ? It 's partly When I walked up a flight of stairs my
because of the full-crew law and partly be- heart got as fluttered and hysterical as a
cause of the Federal Reserve, and my high-school girl who has just been kissed
whole interest in the railroad situation is 25 for the first time behind the hall door,
in whether a train I am on or am waiting And then it would quit, quit entirely for
for is on time or late.' a while. And I would sit down wherever

I am about a good deal, looking for I happened to be, and wait for it to start
what my admirers call Material for my up again.

Little Articles, and I meet lots of people. 30 Also, I had neurasthenia, neuritis, and
If I ever meet Miss Dix, I am going to neuralgia. There is an erroneous notion
introduce her to the Little Woman. that fat men are placid, stolid, serene

persons. I was n't.
-jrj My nerves were chronically in such a

35 condition that they used to stick out of

t-at- tm->txtt^ * >m t> i- Tv t t- t> t» t r my skin m the mornings like pin feathers

EAT, DRINK, AND BE MERRY— on a chicken. I used to have to lathe-

FOR TO-MORROW YE DIET myself all over and shave the ends off with

a safety razor in the mornings before I
DON MARQUIS 40 could put my clothes on.

rA „ . _ . ., . Also, I had what the doctors call

lAmerican Magazine, October, 1921. By perrnis- nc^An onm'no ««• fol^ „♦,«.:„„ 4.^ :„

sion of author and publisher.] pseudo-angina, or false angina pectoris.

This is some darned thing that takes hold

I was scared into it, or I never would 0f your heart and twists it, just as you
have tried it. My blood pressure looked 45 take hold of a fountain pen that won't un-
like Babe Ruth's batting average, and screw, and unscrew it anyhow.
my latitude was beginning to exceed my Doctors take false angina very lightly,

longitude. Few doctors have had it, evidently. As

The hostess at literary tea fights would far as I can make out, the chief difference
say to her husband, 'Dear, don't give Mr. 5o between false angina and true angina is
Marquis one of those flimsy little morris that true angina kills you about the second
chairs. We want him to be comfortable. or third time it strikes, while false angina
... Take the sofa, won't you, Mr. Mar- kids you along and scares you to death
quis?' thirty or forty times before it finally gets

And sales-persons would say, T 55 down to cases,
would n't advise a fancy waistcoat with Besides all this, my heart was fat. All

checks into it for stout parties like you, the good, healthy heart muscle that I had

216 WRITING OF TODAY

inherited from generations of hard-pray- 'In fact, I eat scarcely any breakfast at
ing, pessimistic Presbyterian ancestors all. All I eat is some orange juice and
had been turned into fat by my own care- some cereal and two or three cups of
less life of light and laughter. At any coffee with sugar and cream and a couple
moment this fat heart of mine was likely 5 of eggs and a few pieces of toast and four
to burst and spread like a cut of Boston or five slices of crisp bacon. I always
cream pie in the hands of a four-year-old have the bacon crisp, Doctor, because I
child. am afraid that if it is dripping with fat it

There were other things the matter might have a tendency to increase my
with me, including my digestion. I don't 10 fleshiness.'

mean that I had indigestion. I mean that 'What do you eat for lunch?'

I had such a digestion that everything I I had him there, I felt,

ate turned to flesh at once. 'Some days,' I said, 'when I eat a late

As far as I can make out, this perfect breakfast, I don't eat any lunch at all.
digestion of mine is what well-nigh ruined 15 I cut out lunch entirely, and just take
me. It sat right in the center of my being, a snack along in the middle of the after-
and worked overtime, day and night, noon some time — two or three bottles of
turning everything that came its way into near-beer and a few sandwiches and may-
flesh, be a piece of pie or two, but never any-

Vitamines, calories, carbohydrates were 20 thing to eat, really. I am a very light
all one to my digestion. If it found that eater. I sometimes think that if I could
somebody had inadvertently dropped a only force myself to eat more I would get
golosh into the goulash, it did not kick; rid of all this trouble with my nerves and
it went joyously about its work of turning heart, and my trouble in breathing would
that golosh into fat ; and into fat it was 25 disappear. I told you, did n't I, that I
turned, whether it had originally been have an asthmatic tendency?'
made of Brazilian rubber or Chilean 'What do you eat for dinner?'

caoutchouc. 'Dinner is the only meal of the day

Well, as I said before, I was scared into that I have any appetite for, Doctor. But
it. 30 if I have had lunch, I eat a very simple

The doctor said, in effect, 'Diet or die !' dinner — just a cocktail and a bottle of

When I say, 'the doctor,' it is to be beer, maybe, and some meat and vege-
understood that I don't mean any one tables and things and some dessert and
particular doctor. I had enough doctors maybe some cheese. But, of course, if I
at one time or another to reach, if laid in 35 have n't had any lunch, I eat more.'
a row, ivory to ivory, from Esculapius to 'Do you eat again before you go to

Rochester, Minnesota, where those merry bed?'

little cut-ups, the Mayo brothers, play 'Frequently, but not always. Some-

tunes upon the human duodenum all day times I have a Welsh rabbit before I go
long. When I say the doctor, I mean a 4© to bed, or something simple and nourish-
composite of them all, a sort of synthetic ing like that.'
doctor. 'Is that all you eat?'

'What do you mean, diet?' I asked. 'Sometimes I take a little snack during
'Why, Doctor, I am a very moderate the night, Doctor. You see, I do a great
eater. I eat hardly anything.' 45 deal of my writing along between mid-

I have never known a fat man who night and three in the morning. I get up
would admit that he ate much. The point to do it when everything is quiet. And
of view of the fat is: Some persons are intellectual work gives one an appetite,
born to be fat; some are born to be thin; But I never allow myself much during the
it is all with Providence — What can I 5° night. ... If there is a custard in the ice
do? box I may eat it, along with a few cold

'What do you eat for breakfast?' potatoes and some left-over chops and 1
asked all the doctors — asked the syn- couple of bottles of beer, and some pie.
thetic doctor. You see, I got the same But I doubt if it does me much good. I
judgment from eight or ten of them be- 55 think one reason, Doctor, that I am not
fore I would believe it. able to eat a really good breakfast is be-

'I eat a very light breakfast,' I said, cause I eat during the night. I am think-

E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 217

ing seriously of cutting it out, so that I seemed to me then — food; practically all

can do myself justice at breakfast.' food.

'Do you eat anything between three I laughed at him. I laughed at them

in the morning and breakfast?' all. But the thing that brought me to it

'Of course not ! Do you take me for a 5 was a nervous smash that happened last

glutton !' I always regarded this question summer, complicated with the usual heart

as an insult. trouble, and a suggestion of something

'When you eat lunch — you have said else — apoplexy. I had never had apoplexy

that you do not always eat lunch — do you before. It is the new thing that gets your

eat anything between breakfast and i0 goat. I was scared into it, I tell you. And

lunch?' I sought the doctor again . . . sought

'Not unless I happen to be doing some another segment, so to speak, of the

writing at home in the morning, Doctor. synthetic doctor. And we went all

Then, of course, I get hungry between through it again.

breakfast and lunch, and take a little 15 'Here,' he said, 'eat this for a while,

snack. Sometimes, if I am on my way to and nothing more. But you won't do it.

the office after breakfast, I drop in at a The d — dest fools are the fat fools. They

lunch-room for a bite. I never go to a have no moral fiber. They lack character,

real restaurant at this time of day. In the They are spiritually lazy. They stuff

old days, if I found myself in a barroom at 20 themselves till they die. I always think

this time of day, of course I would eat a it is better for the world when one of them

bit of free lunch.' does die. They are no good in the world.'

'In the afternoons, on the days when Humbly I took the diet list that he had

you do not eat lunch but have a snack, written. I was in no mood to resent any-

do you eat anything between the snack 25 thing. I remembered how my neck had

and dinner time?' felt the day before, when it swelled

'Very seldom, Doctor, unless I see some- against my number eighteen collar. I

body else eating. If I should happen to was scared into it.

be at the club at that time of day, of And here is what I was scared into:

course I usually eat something. But 1 30 Breakfast ■

am not at the club oftener than four or 0ne orange or raw apple, or one dish of

rive days a week. prunes.

'About how much bread do you eat One cup' of kaffee-hag, with a small lump

with each meal ? I mean at what you call of sugar and no cream,

your regular meal — not your snacks be- 35 One piece of wheat bread, toasted ; or two

tween meals.' pieces of bran bread.

'Not more than eight or ten slices of 0ne e%S> if neither meat nor egg is taken

bread, Doctor.' at luncheon.

'Do you eat many potatoes?' Luncheon:

'A very small helping, always. Never 4© Lettuce without oil dressing or may-
more than four or five potatoes, unless c °nna£se-

there is gravy. Of course, if there is %P™*£jS ITl tV™/^ •
gravy, I eat more. And with regard to °bran bread ' ** PWCCS °f
the bread, too Doctor, I do not wish to de- Uncooked fruit; one apple or one pear,
ceive you— when there is gravy, I always 45 One egg, if none has been eaten for break-
eat five or six pieces of bread and gravy, fast,
besides the other bread I told you about.' Dinner:

How I love to write these things down! Two tablespoonfuls of any two vegetables

Merely to write them down and to think such as peas, carrots, turnips, tomatoes,

of them ! Oh, the old days, the old days ! 5© asparagus. No rice, no potatoes, no

It has been ten months since I had a hominy grits.

potato ! I am reformed, physically to a °"e slice of wheat bread or two slices of

certain extent ; but mentally ! . . . c °ran, breacJ-

The doctor got solemn. To make a fat f?™0}:™ L^' u t

story lean, he cut off, with one stroke of 55 0l?e ,sllce of lean beef or mutt°n> ?our

k,-o ;L~ 4. u it! vi atruKe or inches square and a quarter of an inch

his pen, tobacco, alcoholic beverages of all thick

sorts, tea, coffee, tobacco, and— so it If an egg has not been taken either for

218 WRITING OF TODAY

breakfast or luncheon, an egg or a bit Says my Body to my Soul, 'I can stand

more meat or another slice of bread may it if you can! You let me be! You 've
be taken for dinner. starved me all morning and I have n't said

Then the battle began. a word. But I ain't gonna go without my

I went to it. ... I ate my breakfast the 5 tobacco !'
next day, and settled down to write. It Then — I drew myself up to my full

was all right for five minutes, and then breadth ; and the Spirit snatched that pipe
I knew something was the matter. I from the Flesh and flung it into the pond,
had n't had my coffee. The man from whom we rented the place

'Very well/ I said grimly, 'I will see I0 told me a couple of days later that the
whether I am the master of my fate, the eels were dying of some strange new
captain of my pylorus, or whether my malady. It was an old and favorite pipe
peristaltic motion bosses me.' — but that has nothing to do with this

All went well for another five minutes story,
after this declaration, and then I caught 15 I settled myself to write again. I was
my right hand doing something that my working on some stuff for the New York
left hand pretended it knew nothing Sun; something intended to be light
about. and tripping and full of joy — a set of

It was lighting a match, was my right gladsome verses. What was my astonish-
hand, and applying it to a pipe, and the 20 ment to find them turning, entirely with-
pipe was full of tobacco and in my mouth. <>ut mY own volition, into a tragedy in

I swear by the beard of the Prophet and vers hbre under my hand i later l sold
the grammar of Ring Lardner that I do them to one of the high-brow periodicals,
not know where that pipe had come from, that is trying to save the world by spe-
My subconscious mind, of my subliminal 25 cializing in despair.

self, or maybe Old Doc Freud in person, And l was aware of something strange

had sneaked up and filled it and stuck it in 8om8 on at. ab?ut the Point where m?
my mouth without me, myself, my Real hypotenuse impinges on my perimeter
Ego No. 1, being in the slightest degree ] .ca" onl>r desc"be it as a feeling of
aware of it— and here was my right hand 3° ^endlessness and sorrow,
impudently lighting it before my face. ** ¥*' lf y°u Set what I ™ean' as lf m>;

Right here is where I stop and register d^estlvAeT orSans ,were Puttl?^ on °ne of
my first appeal for sympathy from my ^ose Maeterlinck plays. I could even
fellow men. I can do with anything, or hearf * kl»<! of ambling dialogue, that
without anything, if I can smoke at the 35 w^ llkj; tms- „

same time. Booze doesn't matter to me £ing Pylorus: I am so sad . . . so sad!
-well, not much. And I can get along T QUEEN Duodenum: Woe! . . . Woe! . . .
without food, and .not mind it any more ^^'J^ ' Dear Father! Dear
than osing my right arm. . But to- Mother! T am SQ sad _ SQ sad!

bacco! You know! If you don t even 4° KmG pYL0RUS. t feei aS if it were a
Dante could n t get it to you. And Dante s universe full of hopeless longing . . . hope-
inferno is a failure, anyhow, when I come Jess longing .

to consider it ; it has no hell in which the Prince Pancreas : I, too, am yearning
torture consists in going without tobacco. ... the twilight here where I am is full of

I was living in the country, and there 45 yearning . . . there are cries of pain!
was a tide-water pond in front of the Queen Duodenum: There is no ray of
house. 1'ght or nope . . . never again will there be

Says my Ego to my Subliminal Self, 'I "Sj* or hope in this dungeon!

am Boss! Take that pipe and throw it £R™CE Pancreas: If only a little bit .of

;«f« *u<> *™a i» r« a fish would come my way! Only a mm-

into the pond! ,T * now . . . only a little fish!

Says my Subliminal Self to my Ego, 1 KlNG PvL(/RUS: Yes, a little sardine ... a

would, but I dont want to get all wet little innocent sardine . . . full of hope and
groping for it in the dark along about joyj
midnight to-night P Queen Duodenum : It would be welcome

Says my Soul to my Body, Lout ! 55 . . . even if it had ptomaine poisoning.
Loafer! Low-life! Coward! Do you Prince Pancreas: I am so sad that I

want to die?' would prefer it with ptomaine poisoning!

E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 219

Queen Duodenum: Hark! Someone is The disappointment jarred me loose

coming! from my faith in man, medicine, and the

King Pylorus : It will not matter ... it nebular hypothesis ; and in a rage of anger

will be nothing good for us. Never again j sat down and ate a big meal. Even the
will anything happen that will be good for $ little dieting I had done, however, had

us- _, ~ ~ ., , changed my stomach's point of view, and

Prince Pancreas: Cheer up, Father! ft ir5medi/tely whispered something to

KiLUpVLOR°us:r ' A stranger comes ! ?Y pneumogastric nerve, which regis-

Queen Duodenum: I do not dare to tered a complaint to my fat and feeble
hope! I0 neart-

Prince Pancreas: Hope, Mother . . . And then my Conscience got to work.

Hope, Father . . . hope . . . Always, throughout my periods of back-

Queen Duodenum: You are young yet sliding, and they have not been few, my
. . . you dare to hope. . . . But here comes Conscience has got to work — a little late,
the stranger ... l5 buj- j suffer as much spiritually now,

King Pylorus: It is as I thought... when I over-eat, as if I had violated six or
nothing good will ever happen to us ... it seven of the Ten Commandments,
is only a drink of water. ... ,~ . , . „ , .

Queen Duodenum : Nothing good . . . Quitter ! said my Conscience. I knew

only a drink of water . . . nothing good could you did n't have it in you !'
ever come to us . . . 20 'Shut up !' I said to my Conscience.

Prince Pancreas : I am so young to per- 'Where were you when the meal was
ish . . . only a drink of water . . . nothing going in?'
good will ever come to us. . . . 'Coward !' said my Conscience. 'You

Well, you can imagine how melan- are only forty-two, and you would look
choly a person would get after listening 25 sixty — if anybody cared to look at you!'
to his inwards talk like that for a couple T 'm not as fat as some fellows,' said I.

of hours, can't you? And it kept right up 'You look like a cartoonist's model for

until lunch time. And lunch . . . lunch ... an End-Seat Hog," said my Conscience.

Well, look at the schedule yourself. Is 'In another year you will need a caddy
it, or is it not, your idea of something to 30 with a washtub to carry ^your embonpoint.'
eat? 'I'm happy/ said I. 'I'm jolly —

Spinach I had always looked upon as everybody says so ! I 'm a Jolly Fat
something they made jokes about, not Man !'

as an article of food. You may believe it 'You are a three-chinned chunk of

or not, but by the time I had been upon 35 Camembert !' said my Conscience,
this accursed diet for ten days, I actually 'You lie !' I cried, stung through all

began to regard a dish of spinach as a my dermal layers, pinked to the quivering
friend. center of my obesity.

It is a temptation to follow my days 'Don't get emotional,' warned my

and nights in detail, but I spare you the 40 Conscience. 'Heart ! Remember your fat
particulars of my suffering. I weighed heart won't stand the strain of emotion !
two hundred and twenty-five pounds, Apoplexy ! Remember you '11 break a
naked as I came from the hands of Nature, blood vessel in your brain !'
when I started to diet. After three days 'You let me be,' I said, cowering and

of the most intense suffering I hopped on 45 whimpering, 'and I '11 go right back to it
the scales, expecting to find that I had in the morning.'
lost at least twenty-five pounds. This conversation is the epitome of

And then I got my first jolt, which led many that I have had with my Con-
to my first backsliding. Apparently I had science, for I have backslidden many,
not lost one single ounce in weight. I was 50 many times. It has been told me that
not yet aware of the fact that a man after a while one gets to the place where
normally varies three or four pounds in one does not mind the light diet at all.
the course of every twenty-four hours. I That may be so for some persons, but it
had weighed 225 pounds earlv in the has not been so for me. I have been hun-
morning, before breakfast, of the day I 55 gry, continuously and ravenously hungry,
began to diet ; and after three days of the almost all the time since July, 1920. Dur-
torture I weighed 225 pounds still : but it ing the first seven months of that period I
was in the evening. took off fifty pounds in weight. But dur-

220

WRITING OF TODAY

ing the last three months I have sat down,
like a darned fool, and eaten fifteen
pounds back onto me.

I am starting to work to get that fifteen
pounds off again. So I am not writing 5
from any mere memory of sorrows past
and gone, from any recollection of old un-
happy days and battles long ago ; I am
writing out of a deep, profound and
present grief; out of an active hunger that 10
is at this very moment staging another
Maeterlinckian drama just south of my
diaphragm. If I were to allow myself I
could eat the paper on which I write. I
know how goats feel when they go for old 15
cans ; I know how cats feel when they
wail to the moon. The song of the mid-
night cat is not all of love and war; my
ear has detected the note of famine in his
voice. I lean out of my chamber window 20
at nights, sometimes, and sob and call him
Brother.

The schedule of meals which I have
given is not one that I got from any one
doctor. It represents what I worked out 25
for myself out of conversations with a
number of physicians, and after perusal
of a number of books. It will take off
about four pounds a week if it is rigidly
adhered to. But that is too much to take 30
off. Two pounds a week is enough, until
you have taken off twenty-five or thirty
pounds, and after that about one pound a
week.

Personally, I found it a great deal 35
easier to take off four pounds a week by
very rigid dieting and then to let up on
myself for a couple of days, and eat about
what I pleased and permit two pounds to
come back on again. I would rather fight 40
hard, for a time, and make a struggle and
a drama of it, and get rid of more flesh
than is actually necessary; and then relax
almost entirely from the struggle. I find
that I enjoy the struggle, and the series of 45
small moral triumphs during the period of
struggle, and I enjoy the blithe period of
eating at the end of five or six days of the
struggle . . . look forward to it as repre-
hensible and iniquitous Old Soaks, so I 50
have been informed, used to look forward
to their periodic drunks in the old, bad
days when so many persons were happy.

There are compensations for all these
pains and perturbations. I can go up a 55
flight of stairs now, for the first time in
several years, without resting half a
dozen times. My hair, which was quite

gray, is coming in black again in spots.
I wear a sixteen-and-a-half collar instead
of an eighteen collar. I hope to get down
to fifteen-and-a-half in the next year. I
had fallen arches, and they have spruced
up again. I am not nearly so short of
breath as formerly. I have not had a
really bad attack with my heart for some
months.

But best of all is the feeling that I am a
human being again, if you get what I
mean. Or, at least, that I will be a hu-
man being again when I get rid of that
fifteen pounds that I let come back on me,
with five or six more pounds to boot.

It would be a disgrace to die fat !

XII

THE LADY BUM

BY ONE OF THEM

[New York Times, January i, 1922. By permis-
sion.]

How 'Three Penniless Days Make a
Bum' was told in a recent article in The
Sunday Times, by the person best able to
tell — the bum himself.

He was a man bum.

A lady does not become a bum in three
days — it takes her a week, for reasons
that I can authentically give, having just
recovered from being a lady bum myself.
And there are plenty more like me, only
many of them have n't recovered.

The chief difference between the down-
and-out man and the down-and-out girl is
this. The d.-a.-o. man sleeps on a park
bench and looks like a bum. The d.-a.-o.
girl sleeps in an unpaid-for furnished
room and looks very respectable. The
man spends what little change he has —
if he has any — for food and sleeps on a
bench. The girl spends what little change
she has — if she has any — for a room and
goes without food.

Not because she has more pride than the
man has. She has n't. But because cops
haul in girls who would sleep on benches,
and well-meanirrg organizations 'rescue'
girls who look down and out. A pretty
face and worn-out soles are a signal for
those who would save girls from the peril-
ous path, whereas an anemic face in a

E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 221

stylish coat and a pair of polished French pawnbroker level his lens on your most
heels can go far unmolested. precious personal belongings and tell you

Heels, by the way, are a barometer of how little they are worth in cold cash
a girl's pocketbook. You can tell how that makes you feel you are begging the
low a girl has sunk by the layers off her 5 money instead of paying a good rate of
heel, just as you can tell how low a man interest on it.
has sunk by the layers on his collar. My self-respect and my turquoise ring

It was a week before my heels wore went at the first shop. After that it was
off — and I became a bum. easy. I got so that I could haggle over

I came to New York last September 10 the number of karats in a gold signet ring
from the Middle West, to give Irvin S. without caring at all because the broker
Cobb and Ring Lardner a run for their thought I had stolen it.
fame. I was a humorist — not only self- The pawnshops left me with enough

acknowledged but so called by the pro- money for carfare and Automat sand-
motion department of the paper back 15 wiches, but none for room rent. I went
home, where I was hired for a sob sister out to look for a job. Any kind of a job.
and used as a columnist. I answered fourteen ads for selling

My idea in coming to New York was to propositions. I could n't get any one of
get rich. them to pay me a small salary or even my

I must have struck a bad season. I 20 expenses. They were all strictly on corn-
did n't believe it, the first fifty-four times mission, and the better places demanded a
they told me, but on the fifty-fifth time 1 $5 deposit to cover the sample carried. I
began to suspect it was true. realized it was impossible for me to be-

I registered at the Martha Washington come a saleswoman.
Hotel, consoling myself it would be good 25 Also a waitress. I saw a sign 'Girl
enough there until I added to my savings Wanted' on one of our big chain
and could afford an apartment in the Vil- restaurants, and I went in and applied,
lage or on Riverside. I spent my first two The man in charge asked me for the name
weeks in the city looking for a job on the of my former boss. I gave him the name
staff of a New York newspaper, and at 30 of the managing editor on the paper back
the end of two weeks I checked out of the home and he laughed.
Martha Washington Hotel. 'What are you trying to pull, an

I took a room by the week at a Brook- expose?' he asked,
lyn Y. W. C. A. and spent the week look- I told him I was trying to pull the price

ing for a job on a Brooklyn newspaper. 35 of a meal ticket. And he laughed again.
At the end of that week I made arrange- By this time I had to sneak past the

ments to pay for my room by the day in- desk where the girls paid their board at
stead of by the week. the Y. W. C. A., because I was afraid the

Then I tried magazines, publicity, ad- Secretary would ask me for the check
vertising and everything where experience 40 which I had told her I was expecting in
in writing might possibly secure work. every mail.

By the fifth week I was almost broke. This, by the way, is one place where

I visited my first pawnshop and it was the down-and-out girl has the advantage
then that I began to sink. You begin to of the down-and-out man. She can let
lose some of your self-respect, if you are 45 her bills run longer. Not that she would
a woman, when you hit the long trail to be turned out in the street from a
the Three Balls. For the first time in Y. W. C. A. She would n't. She would
your life you are eyed suspiciously. And be turned over to a committee who would
the reason you begin to lose your self- 'investigate,' which would be worse.
respect is because you know you have no 50 Right here let me say that all of this
come-back. There is no real claim to in- time I looked perfectly respectable. I
dignation on your part when the pawn- looked just like the girl who was hanging
broker looks at the initials 'M. W.' on your on the strap next to yours coming home
locket and a?ks you what your name is — on the subway this evening. I was n't
and yet you find yourself assuring your- 55 richly dressed, but I was dressed in good
self over and over again that your name taste and my clothes were average good
really does correspond with those initials, clothes.
There 's something about having the At the end of the week I found a note

222 WRITING OF TODAY

in my mail box when I came home. It be active yourself, that makes you want
requested me to call at the office imme- to be near it. Especially activity that is
diately. I knew that this meant I was to not of people, but mechanical activity,
be questioned and my 'case' was to be You don't want to be stareJ at by hurry-
investigated. My relatives would be 5 ing crowds of busy people, but you like
looked up and I would be sent to them as to watch busy engines switch or tugs plod
a charity proposition. along. Then, too, you become imaginative

I went out. As I passed the big when you are idle, because you have no
Assembly Room the Bible Club was hav- cause to be practical. You like to im-
ing their weekly meeting. They were 10 agine where the trains are going instead
singing 'Rescue the Perishing.' I never of getting a timetable to find out.
returned. When it got dark I walked home and

I found a cheap room in a cheap washed my one handkerchief and my
Brooklyn rooming house. The landlady collar and pasted them on the mirror,
was suspicious about taking me without 15 There is another place where the lady
my trunk, which, of course, I had left at bum has it on the man bum. There was
the Y. W. C. A. She was doubly sus- no soap in the bathroom, but there was
picious when I told her I would pay her plenty of water, and I could keep from
at the end of the week instead of in looking dirty.

advance. But she looked at my fur coat 20 The next day I walked over the bridge
and took a chance on me. It was a long again. I saw men and girls hurrying
chance. by to jobs, and I envied them for their

The next day I went out early, with earning power. They looked at me —
20 cents between me and the poorhouse. some of them — but without interest. It
I walked across Brooklyn Bridge and 25 surprised me at first, because I was get-
watched my chance to snatch a paper, so ting nearer to the stage of being a bum,
that I could see the want ads. I found where you don't want to be seen. But I
one in a refuse can at the Brooklyn reminded myself that I looked just like
Bridge surface car station. I felt like a they did — outwardly, although I felt so
woman of the streets as I reached into 30 different inside.

the can, but I reached in boldly and I believe I shall always wonder, years

smiled as I pulled it out, and several peo- hence, when a well-dressed woman passes
pie who saw me do it smiled, too — in- me, if she is hungry. Writers have played
dulgently. up the fact that a fur coat covers a multi-

There is another thing. A girl can get 35 tude of sins, but the truth of the matter
away with a lot of things that a man is that fur coats cover a multitude of
can't, if she does them seemingly in the empty stomachs.

spirit of adventure. She can even taste You will argue that any woman with

candy in the department stores if she does an empty stomach and a fur coat ought
it boldly and with a smile. Especially if 40 to sell the coat for a shabby one and
she has on a fur coat, good gloves and spend the money for food. That is be-
does n't look hungry. I know. cause you have never been a lady bum.

I picked up the paper and looked at A fur coat gets her places that a full
the front page. I saw in large type the stomach never would. It is her entree
words 'Armistice Day.' 45 into hotel washrooms when she is dirty

I walked back across the bridge, know- from job hunting. It gets her into de-
ing there would be no place to look for a partment store rest rooms when she is
job on Armistice Day. I sat down by the sore of foot. And in the last stages it
harbor and watched the tugs come and gets her help from a certain class of
go along the East River. I wondered 50 people who would be glad to help her if
where they were going and what the she had suddenly lost her purse, but who
places were like where they went. never would if she had never had a purse.

That is a strange thing. I had read And then, most important of all. it

of people, men usually, who were down- helps her to hang on to her last scraps of
and-out hitting the railroad tracks or 55 self-respect.

loafing by the wharves, and wondered As I walked over the bridge I realized
why. Now I know. There is a sort of how hungry I was. I had had no break-
fascination about activity, when you can't fast and I felt weak. I looked down at

E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 223

the water as I walked, and tried to im- and I ate them at intervals during the day
agine the sensations of women who had while I answered ads for office girls which
jumped off the bridge and hit the cold I had torn out of a paper in the bakery
water. I took a certain delight in the fel- store where I bought my buns,
lowship of these women. Yet I had no 5 I came home that night wondering
desire to leap and join them. where I could go to look for a job next.

I knew that, in spite of the fact that As I came in the door I heard the man

these men and girls who were hurrying who has the hall room next to mine say :
past me had put down breakfasts of, say, 'Well, to-morrow 's another holiday,

waffles and honey, buckwheat cakes and 10 eh?'

sausages, ham and eggs, I could conjure 'Yes,' said his friend, 'we're off all day.'

up pictures of the most varied breakfast There are a lot of holidays in New

menus, and I linked them up with the York compared to the Mid-West. It
various people who passed me — I knew never occurs to you when you have a
that, in spite of this, there was just one 15 job, but it is tough when you are out
step between me and them, a job. looking for one.

I walked over to one of the type-writ- Instead of my daily walk over the

ing places where girls register for posi- bridge next morning, I walked over to
tions. I can use the typewriter, and I Fort Greene Park and found a bench,
registered as a typist. There were about 20 I decided to stay there all day. I knew
150 other girls waiting. They didn't I had sunk far; but I was glad they let
look as the movies show the girl out of a ladies sit on benches, even if they could n't
job. And they didn't look like men out sleep there.

of a job look. They were clean and And just here occurred something

fresh, up to the minute so far as style 25 which will no doubt strike me as funny
goes, many of them even prosperous ap- later on — much later,
pearing. They were girls like myself — About 4 o'clock a man came along,

girls who know that the worst thrhg a 'Want to see a show?' he asked,

down-and-out girl can do is to look the I did n't answer. I had n't come to that,
part. 3° T did n't mean to offend you,' he said.

I waited an hour and a half, and then 'I just happened to have this free pass to
I walked about sixteen blocks to another admit one to the theater up the street. I
typewriting place. There were about have to catch a train.'
fifty girls waiting there. I was too weak He dropped it in my lap and hurried

to go further, so I decided to take my 35 on before I could thank him.
chance along with the fifty. A theater ! What a wonderful place

I sat next to a girl with too much pow- to lose yourself for a while — to forget,
der and too little skirt. After we had I looked at the address. It was about
waited an hour she turned to me. twelve blocks up the street and I hurried

'Been out long, miss ?' she said. 4° along. I wondered if it should be hot in

'Quite a while,' I replied. the theater, if I might faint.

'It 's gettin' worse all the time,' she The play was to be, 'The White Headed

said. Boy.'

After another fifteen minutes she turned I presented my pass at the box office,

to me again. 45 'Twenty cents war tax/ the man said.

'Goin' out to lunch ?' she asked. 'I '11 come back in a minute,' I replied.

'No, I believe not,' I said. Up the street I passed a woman. I

She smiled. T didn't go out yester- handed her the pass. 'I have to catch a
day,' she said, 'but I 'm fixed now. Come train,' I told her.
on and have a bit with me.' 50 As I was going to the bakery the next

I did n't wait to be urged, and I did n't morning for a loaf of bread with my
care how she got 'fixed.' last nickel — there are nickel loaves now if

The next day I spent 10 of my last 15 you know where to go — I looked down at
cents for buns. I had thought first of my foot. I did n't mind the hole in my
buying bread, but I saw an old woman 55 stocking, for I could push it in my shoe,
on a box near the bakery eating pieces of But the worst had come ! My heels were
a loaf of bread. I tried to think that I worn off completely. I was a bum.
was n't that far gone. So I bought buns, I wanted to lie down and cry, but there

224 WRITING OF TODAY

was no place to lie. I thought of waiting geous, never-to-be-forgotten seats for the

rooms with couches, and I walked over to Opera ... so it is decided that Pa will take

the waiting room in the Hudson tubes. Ma • • -to hear 'Madame Butterfly'

Some one had the couch. I sat down in *«?• wel1' wont, Ma have .\h* comfortable

a rocking chair and fell asleep. Pretty S ^^see S^J^^^^ W0U^

soon the matron came along and woke me if you could only look inside of him and set

UP- what he is thinking.

'Ain't permitted/ she told me. I was a
bum by that time and I felt like a bum Scene I.

and I did n't care a lot. I just wished they 10

would let me sleep. I stretched out my The Potter seats are right down in the

feet — the feet with the worn-off heels, middle of the dress suit section . . . acres

Suddenly I noticed a woman sitting op- of white shirt fronts and gleaming shoul-
posite me. She regarded me with great ders ... Pa and Ma came 'as is' . .
interest. I hated her for her neatly pol- 15 everybody seems to stop talking to look then
ished heels and her pretty stockings. I °^Qr • • • f <;el terribly embarrassed . . . wish
stared back at her insolently. Then she they j1*™* come • • Pa has that sam<
came toward me and I knew she was go- ™™ ^ «5J~ -cry *£ £«*
mg to offer me a dime. it off with a gay flow of light comment , §

I shuddered. I was afraid she was — 20 does n't sound so gay . . . does n't seem sc
and I was afraid she was n't. light.

'Pardon me/ she said in a low, sweet
voice, 'I have never done this before — PA (squaring his shoulders and looking
but I 'm going to ask you if you could straight ahead) :

spare me 50 cents.' 25 Gosh: what a mob . .

Fifty cents ! For the first time in a Gee ! what a crowd !

week I laughed. I saw she was embar- MA (gayly):
rassed. Not so loud . . . sh-h-h

'Don't think I 'm laughing at you/ I not so loud,

hurried to explain. 'I 'm laughing at the 30 PA (half to himself) :
idea of my having 50 cents.' Lookit all the musicians

She smiled, and we talked things over. they got.

She wanted some place to sleep and to- Gosh, that gang must cosl

morrow she was going to get a money- a lot !

wire and a job. She came out that night 35

to sleep in my bed, and I went with her (Starts to figure it out . . . counts all th<

the next day to get her money-wire. violins first . . . then the horns . . . wonden

It was for $25 and she lent me $5. She what the variously shaped wood-winds an
told me of a department store where she called . . . decides to give it up . . . count!
was going to get a job that day. She 40 UP to sixty and loses count . . . starts al
had worked there before, and she recom- over a*ain • ■ ; h8hts S° outu and conductoi
«nended me comes in . . . loses count when he stops tc

t ™f *i,* \«% ™a t >™ un„;n„ ™ *A u applaud . . . starts in again and gets up tc

I got the job— and I m hanging on to it. sixty.five , wonders if he missed bad

45 row ... 'at ten dollars a night apiece thai

XIII would be about seven hundred dollars foi

the orchestra alone' . . . decides that is en

t«iltt- T>/~v'rT>T-r»c r» a a \m tv/ta r r\ tirely too much . . . half that many musi-
THE POTTERS: PA AND MA GO cians could make just as much nois/if thcj

1U iniL UrUKA. worked harder . . . watches bass viol player!

T P McEVOY *° an(* decides ne 'd fire three or four oi

f" ' them . . . they don't seem to do anything

[Chicago Tribune, January i, 1922. except saw a little when the conductor hap

By permission.] pens to look over their way and catches then

loafing . . . curtain goes up on 'Hill Neai
prologue. 55 Nagasaki—A Japanese House, Terrace, anc

Into each life a pass may fall, and into Garden.'
Pa Potter's has fallen a pair of them . . . tjtxtv-tttdt/^xt
none of your ordinary little flea-bitten god- ^UNKJiKlUIM :
helpus passes, either, but a couple of gor- E soffito . . . e pareti . .

E. HUMOROUS AND OCCASIONAL ARTICLES 225

MA (to Pa): stage . . . wonders what it is . . . watches

What's he saying? for it in a fascinated way. . . .)

Ma): How should I know? MA (" P^erton in the person of For-

GORO • 5 r Lamont bounces a high one off the

. . . nello stesso locale ceiling): _ .

Alternar nuovi aspetti Isi?t rt wonderful how

Ai consueti . . . t^ can sing?

(Which nobody can deny, least of all the You <J never believe they

Potters.) 10 - could do such a thing.

And do it so easy . . .

MA (as Goro slides the partitions of the it just ripples out . . .

Japanese house in and out): I do wish I knew what

The Japanese sure are they're singing about.

(They ought to be b/thlstime, with Ivery- * PINKERTON (offering Sharpless a drink
body telling them so.) . . . an, at Last this is something Pa can

understand) : ,

PA (with conviction that lends strength • • • dizzar ai dolci voli

to his voice) : 20 dell'amor !

They're a pretty tricky Whisky?

gang, I'll say, pA (triumphantl } .

But an American s v r *Y „ „ , ,.

smarter any day. He,s*Yi? dof t y«nt a

MA (dubiously): *S drink of whisky

( ^ Well, I don't know. I * beginning to catch on

£A (decisively): to this now.

Well, I '11 say so. BUTTERFLY'S VOICE (off rfo^ej ;

. Ancora un passo or via.

(A number of shushes are directed at Pa, 30
who subsides and suddenly notices some Jap- MA (excitedly) :

anese servants and a Japanese maiden are on Is n't ^at beautiful ?

the stage.) My> oh My ,

i>» •'".'■'" 1 I'm sure that must be

MA (sotto voce): 35 Butterfly.

Dye suppose that s What d 'ye suppose she 's

Butterfly over there? saying now?F
j. i\. .

That girl over there? PA (exasperated):

MA: 40 I don't know French,

That one over there. Ma . . . holy cow !

(There's only one on the stage, but, of (And so, as the program has it, after

course, it's necessary to indicate which one Sharpless warns Pinkerton his marriage to
it is . . . it being Irene Pavloska at her 45 Butterfly, which he takes so lightly, is a very
Suzukiest, than who there is no Suzukier.) serious matter to her, the relatives arrive, the
C,TT„TTT^T r>. , marriage contract is signed with due cere-

SUZUKI (to Pinkerton): mony, and while the guests are joyfully

Sorride Vostro Onore ? — drinking the newly wedded pair's health a
II riso e f rutto e fiore 50 weird figure suddenly appears on the scene

Disse il savio Ocunama ; shouting and cursing wildly. It is Butterfly's
PA (trying to guess what she's talking uncle, the Bonze (Japanese priest), who has
about and qivinq it up in disgust) : discovered her renunciation of faith and has

If that's the one you ^Pme +to curse her all Butterfly's rela-

™<>o« ^.ro*. ±u~*.~ tlves turn on her, but Pinkerton turns the

mean over tnere 55 whole lot out of his house, and they depart

I don t know and I don t shaking the air with their imprecations.
care« Butterfly is left weeping bitterly, and Pinker-

ton proceeds to comfort his poor little Jap-
( Notices, for the first time, something dart- anese wife. He soon woos her back to
ing in and out of the prompter's shell on the smiles and happiness, and a passionate love

226 WRITING OF TODAY

scene follows. And so we leave this strangely American wife, but they don't show . . .
assorted pair, the American naval lieutenant suspects something wrong . . . doesn't sus-
and the Japanese geisha girl, on the threshold pect the truth, however, that he read the
of their life together. Curtain. Applause.) synopsis for the last half of the second act

c instead of the first half.)
Scene II. 3

(During the intermission, which seems in- BUTTERFLY (singing):
terminable to the Potters . . . maybe all • • • u.n bel ™, vedremo

these dressed up snobs will take a good look Levarsi un fil di fumo

while they are at it . . . anyway, Pa puts in I0 sull'estremo

his time reading the synopsis of what is to Confin del mare,

come . . . this time he's going to be all MA (excitedly):

loaded for them.) Listen, we 've got that on

MA (confidently . . . didn't Pa read all the? phonograph at

about it during the intermission?) : i$ home.

Now, tell me, Pa, what pA (it was such a hok QS fhis thaf shone
it s all about. on the noble face of Christopher Colum-

PA (dubiously): < . bus wnen ne discovered America):

Wait a bit, Ma, till I So we have-well, £eU

figure it out. 20 well ,

(Suzuki is praying before the image of
Buddha. Butterfly is standing behind her

. . . there is no baby . . . and yet the pro- (bure enough, next to the Caruso record,

gram said : °ne Fine Day»' from 'Madame Butterfly,' is

The weary night has passed, and the break- 25 the Potters' most cherished musical posses-
ing dawn discovers Suzuki and the baby fast S1?n- ," !s always trotted forth for company,
asleep .while Butterfly still stands waiting, who having the same record at home, lmme-
watching ') diately recognize it. . . . 'Ah! they exclaim,

'Madame Butterfly' ... I just adore 4Mad-

PA (baffled): ame Butterfly,' don't you? ... it 's so touch-

I don't see any baby 3° ing where she sits at the window watching

there all night for her American husband to re-

MA (in a flutter): £»' • • • many an American wife has done

Has she a baby? I de- that and never saw ^thmS touching in it.)

clare ^
I once' saw some cute 35 MA (as Butterfly, Edith Mason, climbs up
little Japanese boys— °» ^highest note in the place and set-
tles there, presumably for the even-
NEIGHBOR: ing):

Sh-h-h, Sh-h-h, stop that Is n't that wonderful ?

noise. 40 ... Is n't that grand ?

._ '• , ._ € I do so hope they'll give

(Ma nudges Pa to be quiet. Pa glares at her a hand.

Neighbor, who is intrenched behind a blind-
ing white shirt front, over which he stares

icily at Pa . . . combination of superior stare (Give her a hand, is it? They nearly tear

and dazzling shirt bosom is too much for 45 down the house. Well, that was really worth
Pa, who subsides and concentrates earnestly while. . . . Later, Ma, through tear-dimmed
on the stage.) eyes, sees Butterfly dress her little desert ed

.'a-.'-..., baby in his pitifully gay finery, put an Amer-

MA (as Suzuki and Butterfly hold long ican flag in his handt and then kin herself

confab): with her father's sword, which bears the in-

What in the world are S° scription :

they talking about? To die with honor

You read it, Pa. Can't When one can no longer live with honor.

you figure it out? »'.'*. , -> „ 1 t>

Is that Ma crying? Yes, and Pa seems to

(According to what Pa read, this is about be blowing his nose rather loudly . . . poor

the place where Pinkerton comes back with 55 Butterfly . , .)

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES

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 'a
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 to VI) discusses the
relation of the press agent to the newspapers and to the public ; and the third
deals with the burning issue of the behavior of the modern girl. 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 antagonist. 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, undoubtedly,
is to have a good cause to fight for, or at least one that commends itself to the writer's in-
most conviction; but he must also know how to defend his cause according to the art of war.

'Well, my friend, Mr. Barnato made a
I large fortune; you have the same oppor-

tunities as Mr. Barnato ; go and make that
THE CASE FOR EQUALITY fortune,' at which Mr. Barnato would

5 smile; but it is of no use at all to the beg-
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW Sar- The fact is that you cannot equal-

KJ ., „ . „ fc lze anything about human beings except

[Metropolian,^ December, ^^Reprmted by cour- their incomes. If in dealing with the sub-
ject you would only begin by facing that
When I speak of The Case for Equality I0 fact, it would save you a very great deal
I mean human equality ; and that, of of trouble in the form of useless specula-
course, can only mean one thing: it means tion. I have chosen this subject for to-
equality of income. It means that if one night because it is an extremely practical
person is to have half a crown, the other and important political subject. You have
is to have two and sixpence. It means that « been for a long time using the power of
precisely. You, Mr. Chairman, have Parliament to redistribute income in this
spoken of equality of opportunity. The country more or less. The very moment
difficulty about that is that it is entirely the Income Tax was introduced by Sir

and completely and eternally impossible. Robert Peel, somewhere in the 'forties

How are you going to give everybody in 20 1842, I think— from that moment you were
this room equal opportunities with me of beginning to effect a redistribution of in-
writing plays? The thing is, I say, a come. If you just glance over the subse-
ghastly mockery. In one sense it might quent succession of Chancellors of the
be said : 'Well, any of us are welcome to Exchequer, you will find them all redis-
try our hands at play-writing.' I might 25 tributing income unconsciously, until you
say that and smile. But I am quite safe in come to Sir William Harcourt with his
saying that to the majority of you it is death duties, Mr. Asquith with his dis-
just exactly like saying to a beggar: crimination between earned and unearned

227

228 WRITING OF TODAY

income, and Mr. Lloyd-George with his week. The recipients of that 5s. a week
Supertax, all doing it consciously. The included among them every possible vari-
object of supertaxation, and the object ety of character. They all have exactly
of the threatened land taxation, is to ef- the sum of 5s. a week, no more and no less,
feet a further redistribution of income in 5 Here is a process which has begun, and a
this country. There is another point process which we all know is going to go
which has not been quite so closely ob- on. We know that that 5s. a week will not
served as that. The working classes have remain at 5s. a week. We know that it
been using their power, at first indirectly, will be presently 10s. a week. (Dissent.)
and of late years directly through the 10 I should have thought that everybody here
Labor Party in Parliament, to effect a present would know that in New Zealand
redistribution. This used to be a redis- at the present time it is 10s. a week; and
tribution in kind. Instead of getting that the Labor Party know it ; and that it
money, the working classes got munici- is 10s. a week at an earlier age than the
pal dwellings; they got education; they l5 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, 20 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- 25 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 30 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 35 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 40 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 your-
out regard to the differences between one selves what is the final level to be? I am
person and another. It was not given ex- 45 here to-night to say that I have quite made
clusively to the people who were poor, ex- up my mind as to the only possible solution
cept that there was a certain limit of in- of the question. I am going to show you
come, which was really rather a conces- that my solution, which is the solution of
sion to the snobbery of the people who did an equal distribution, is one which has
not like to take it than a real essential dif- 50 overwhelming practical arguments in its
ference of principle. The fact remains favor.

that a few years ago the Chancellor of the Perhaps the strongest argument to peo-

Exchequer began to put his hand into the pie who are not very fond of abstract
national pocket, and to give every person thought, is that equality of income is the
aged seventy of the working class, without 55 only plan that has ever been successful,
reference to his ability or sex, if he the only plan that has ever been possible,
claimed it and had not a certain income at It is the plan that has always prevailed;
the time he claimed it, the sum of 5s. a • and it is prevalent at the present time to a

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 229

greater extent than any other rule of dis- You would have to treat human capacity
tribution. The moment you begin to try as a measurable thing; but you know per-
and think of any other, you are met with fectly well it is not a measurable thing,
such difficulties and such absurdities that, Taking some person whom we will call X,
however reluctant you may be to come to 5 an average man, you may think I am fifty
the solution of equality, you are finally times as clever as X; and you may think
driven to it by the elimination of every that I, perhaps, ought to have fifty times
other solution, except, of course, the solu- as big an income. But if anybody asks
tion of the mere brute scramble that we you: 'Where did you get that numerator
have at the present time. If you take our 10 of fifty from, and what does your denom-
Civil Service and our Military Service, inator represent ?' you will be compelled to
you find that equal pay is the rule. If you give it up. You cannot settle it. The
take our trades, you find in every class of thing is impossible. You cannot do it.
society a certain conception of what con- Every attempt you make in that way re-
stitutes a becoming livelihood in that class 15 duces itself to absurdity in your hands;
of society ; and everybody in it aims at and that silly dream of the nineteenth cen-
and claims an income representing that tury which began with: 'The career open
standard. Nobody seriously asks to have to the talents/ the idea that every man
more than the other persons of his class. could get his value; all that is the vainest
Every soldier of the same rank gets prac- ao Utopian dream ; and the most ridiculous,
tically the same pay ; every policeman of the most impracticable idea that ever came
the same rank gets the same pay; every into the head of men. The reason it has
colonel gets the same pay ; every general been talked about so much, is that the peo-
gets the same pay; and every judge gets pie who were talking about it had no seri-
£5,000 a year. You do not find Mr. Jus- 25 ous intention of ever bringing it into prac-
tice Darling getting up and saying : T tice and never pleaded it in practice except
really think that because I have put a little as an excuse for giving somebody less
humor into the proceedings, I ought to than themselves. It would have been far
have an extra allowance.' Nor do you find more sensible to go at the question in the
that the judges who put a little extra stu- 30 old mystic, religious way; when you would
pidity and cruelty into the proceedings, have immediately seen that all human
ever suggest that their salaries should be souls are of infinite value, and all infinities
reduced on that ground ; nor do the people equal.

who admire and uphold their cruelty and It is now plain that if you are going to

stupidity propose that they should get any 35 have any inequalities of income, they must
more. be arbitrary inequalities. You must say

Now suppose you do not agree, suppose flatly that certain persons are to have
you think there should be some other more than others, giving no reason for it.
standard applied to men, I ask you not to I am quite sure again, from the expression
waste time arguing about it in the abstract, 40 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. 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 45 bodies of men are willing to obey other
average of mankind in talent. You men, even by executing orders that they
laugh ; but I presume you are not laughing do not themselves understand. That is the
at the fact, but only because I do not bore real foundation of our traditional feudal
you with the usual modest cough, and pre- inequality. In order to make a common
tend to consider myself stupid. Very well. 50 man obey some other man, you had to take
Take myself as an absolute, unquestion- some means of making that other man an
able case. Now pick out somebody not uncommon man ; and the simplest way was
quite so clever. How much am I to have, to set him apart from common men by giv-
and how much is he to have? I notice a ing him more money, by putting him in a
blank expression on your countenances. 55 different sort of dress, by making him live
You are utterly unable to answer the ques- in a different sort of house, by setting up
tion. In order to do so, you would have a convention that under no circumstances
to compare us in some quantitative way. could his son marry the daughter of the

230 WRITING OF TODAY

common man, or the common man's son there is a still more overwhelming eco-
marry his daughter. In short, you re- 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 5 weighs all the others,
idolatry served its turn; but I suggest to Let us take, to begin with, the political

you that modern democracy and modern objection. As long as you have in-
conditions are exploding it. The very equality of income, you may have Fran-
idols themselves have made the fatal mis- chise Acts, and you may have votes
take of allowing the invention of pho- 10 for men, and votes for women, and you
tography and the half-tone process to de- may have votes for babies if you like, but
stroy the glamour on which the whole so- there will be no such thing as real democ-
cial structure is based. So long as you racy in this country. There will be class
have a peer or millionaire who is known government of the very worst description,
only by name and by reputation, people 15 There will be class government based on
may believe him to be a great man, quite plutocracy, as there is at the present time ;
unlike themselves ; but the moment you put and there will be no possible real repre-
his portrait into the papers, it is all up: sentation of the people in Parliament. It
the show is given away. The time has does not matter how high the characters
gone by for the old privacy, the old mys- ao of the members may stand. I will take
tery, the old seclusion ; that is how our two gentlemen who are at the head of Par-
idols are beginning to get found out in all liamentary life at the present time. Take
directions. The whole movement of Lib- Mr. Asquith on the one hand, and Mr.
eralism in the history of the world — I do Balfour on the other. How can Mr. Bal-
not mean the Liberalism of Parliament, or 25 four or Mr. Asquith represent men with
the Liberalism even of this Club, which, £300 a year; much less men with £50 or
as you know, has very little to do with £60 a year ? How can they pursue in Par-
Liberalism at all — the history of Liberal- liament the interests of men with only a
ism in the world, when you understand it very small fragment of their income? I
thoroughly, has been the history of Icono- 30 say, furthermore, that even if they wanted
clasm. In America they will not allow to do it, they would not be let do it. I
their ambassadors to put on the uniform say they are subject to public opinion. I
that European ambassadors wear; and say that public opinion is manufactured at
they will not allow their judges to assume the present time by newspapers ; and I say
the ridiculous costume our judges put on 35 that the newspapers are absolutely in the
to persuade people that a judge is not hands of the plutocracy. The extent to
a man, but Justice incarnate; and they do which they are in the hands of the plu-
not allow their President to put a crown tocracy I could illustrate in fifty ways;
on his head, in order to produce illusions but you cannot be so destitute of intelli-
as to its interior. I think you will admit 40 gence — I have no right to assume that
that nowadays, in spite of the costumes of you are lacking in intelligence at all — as
our judges, and in spite of our crowns, not to feel this every day of your life. If
there is very little of such illusion left, you do not feel it, there is nothing that I
As a matter of fact, the popularity of our could say which would convince you of it;
last two monarchs has been due, I think 45 but the extent to which our newspapers
you will agree with me, not at all to a be- are under the personal control of the plu-
lief in them as extraordinary and super- tocracy, I may illustrate by a harmless
natural persons, but to the precisely con- little incident.

trary belief in them as rather good fellows A little while ago I had the pleasure of

much like ourselves. I am glad you agree 5° holding a public debate in Queen's Hall
with me; because that disposes of the last with Mr. Hilaire Belloc. It was reported
and only argument in favor of inequality at some length in all the newspapers of
of income : absolutely the last and only one. London. It was considered an event of
Now I come to the objections to inequal- ufficient public importance to occupy from
ity, which have been too little considered 55 one to three columns — the three columns
in this country. I am going to show you were in a highly conservative paper in
that there is an overwhelming political ob- London. All over the country the news-
jection to it. I will then show you that papers had reports. But there were two

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 231

papers that made absolutely no mention of trade. The consequence was that in the
the debate. One of them was the Times Times next day my speech was reported at
and the other was the Daily Mail. It has full length; and the only thing that was
remained a profound mystery why those mentioned about the bishop was that 'the
papers took absolutely no notice of a de- 5 Bishop of Kensington then addressed the
bate of which they were informed, and at meeting/ When Bishop Gore, who was
which they were represented by their re- then Bishop of Birmingham, delivered a
porters. The only conjecture that was most eloquent protest in London against
made on the subject was based on the fact the assumption that political science, any
that one of the speakers, by an unfortunate i0 more than religion, was on the side of in-
slip, mentioned Lord Northcliffe not as dustrial sweating he fared worse than the
Lord Northcliffe but as Mr. Harmsworth. Bishop of Kensington: for he was not
Now, gentlemen, I am not so absurd as to mentioned at all except by one morning
suppose that Lord Northcliffe went down paper, which shortly afterward changed
to the offices of these two papers of his, l5 its editor.

and said: This blasphemer has called me Gentlemen, leaving the question of the

"Mr. Harmsworth," as if I were not Lord press, you know that every one of you
Northcliffe; never mention him in my wants to get into Parliament. I have
papers again.' I do not believe anything never yet met a member of the National
of the kind ; but I am perfectly prepared 20 Liberal Club who did not intend to get into
to believe that the gentlemen in his em- Parliament at some time, except those
ployment may have been so under the in- who, like our Chairman, are there already,
fluence of Lord Northcliffe's position, and Well, most of you will get no further than
may have been themselves so unjustly taking part in other men's election meet-
mistrustful of Lord Northcliffe's breadth 25 ings. You will hardly ever have an op-
of mind, that they may have thought it portunity of speaking on behalf of a man
safer on the whole not to mention the de- who really represents your opinions,
bate, in which they would have had to Nine times out of ten, for the sake of what
report that deplorable slip ; and so got out you call the Liberal Party, you will be
of the difficulty by not mentioning it at all. 3° speaking on behalf of a rich man. You
Any of you who are in public life must will be answering for his magnificent Lib-
know that the moment you take part in eral principles; you will be explaining his
any anti-plutocratic movement you are views on the Welsh Church, and on Home
boycotted by the newspapers. Nothing is Rule, and on Free Trade. And the gen-
reported and worked up in the newspapers 35 tleman on whose behalf you are speaking,
except the interests of the plutocracy. and who will be returned if your oratory
Those papers form public opinion. Public is successful, will be sitting there on the
opinion cannot be formed in any other platform wondering what on earth you are
way. The consequence is that you have talking about, but perfectly prepared to
no genuinely popular government in this 4° foot the bill, to pay the expenses, to bribe
country. the constituency on the chance of getting

I will give you just one other instance into Parliament. Doubtless, when he gets
which comes back to memory: it is into Parliament, he will go into whatever
also a personal one. I once went to a lobby the Liberal whip tells him is the
meeting on the temperance question. 45 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, Now I come to the economic objection;

the bishop is very fully reported ; and I 50 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
thing, being a lifelong teetotaler, and the a political economist. I have studied the
meeting talking a great deal of nonsense thing. I understand Ricardo's law of rent
about the publicans, in defense of the pub- 55 and Jevons's law of value. I can also
lican. The bishop did not speak in de- tell you what in its essence sound economy
fense of the publican. He spoke in the means for any nation. It means, gentle-
conventional manner against the liquor' men, just what sound economy means for

232 WRITING OF TODAY

any individual; and that is that whatever class to fall below the level of the vital
powers the individual has of purchasing or necessities of subsistence, and at the same
producing, shall be exercised in the order time allow the purchasing power of
of his most vital needs. Let me illustrate. another class to rise considerably above it
Suppose you find a man starving in the 5 into the region of luxuries, then you find
streets. You are sympathetic: you give inevitably that those people with that
that man sixpence. Suppose that man, in- superfluity determine production to the
stead of buying some bread and eating it, output of luxuries, while at the same time
buys a bottle of scent to perfume his hand- the necessities that are wanted at the other
kerchief with, and then dies of starvation, 10 end cannot be sold, and are therefore not
but with the satisfaction of having his produced. I have put it as shortly as pos-
handkerchief perfumed! You will admit sible; but that is the economic argument in
that that man is an unsound economist, favor of equality of income. All the argu-
will you not? You will even declare that ments which have been brought forward
he is a lunatic ? Well, allow me to tell 15 against it, and all the more personal con-
you, gentlemen, that is exactly what this siderations in favor of inequality, seem to
country is doing at the present time. It me, as an economist, to be practically
is spending very large sums on perfuming swept away by the overwhelming weight
its handkerchief while it is starving, and of that economic objection,
while it is rotting. How are you going 20 I now come to the biological reasons for
to remedy that ? As long as you have in- equality. I do not know, gentlemen, what
equality of income, that mad state of may be the outcome of your experience in
things is compulsory. If one man has not progressive political work, but I must con-
enough money to feed his children prop- fess to you here that I, having devoted
erly, and another man has so much that 25 more than thirty years, the most active
after feeding and clothing and lodging part of my life, to political questions in
himself and his family as luxuriously as their most serious aspect — not to the
possible he has still a large surplus fund, ridiculous game, not half as interesting as
you will find that the richer man will take golf, which you call party politics and
his surplus purchasing power into the mar- 30 with which you debauch your intellects
ket, and by that purchasing power set the and waste your time, but to the genuine
labor of the country, which ought to be problems of the condition of the country
devoted to producing more food for peo- and the condition of the people: in short,
pie who have not enough food, to the pro- to the life of the country — I must confess
Suction of 80 horse-power motor-cars, and 35 to you that all my experience and all my
yachts and jewels, and boxes at the opera, thought on the subject have left me with
and to the construction of such towns as very grave doubts as to whether mankind,
Nice and Monte Carlo. The thing is in- as it exists at present, is capable of solving
evitable. the political and economic problems which

Production is determined by purchas- 40 are presented to the human race by its
ing power and always will be. If you own multitudinous numbers. If you take a
were to attempt to do away with money few persons like ourselves, and put them
and with purchasing power, then you into a new colony, in a climate which is
would have, in order to satisfy your not too rough, to make little pioneer vil-
nation, to ascertain what every man par- 45 lages like the pioneer villages in the days
ticularly wants and likes; and as that before Capitalism overwhelmed America,
would be impossible, you would have to 'in that village you may get a reasonable
give every man exactly the same thing, and decent kind of life; a rough life, but a
with the consequence that the man who natural life; not in any very high sense a
wanted a race-horse as a luxury would get 5o 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
tion according to their own tastes, you to create the complicated political, social
must give a man his income in the shape 55 and industrial organization required by
of purchasing power. By that purchasing our great modern empires and cities, the
power he determines production; and if human constituents of these communities
you allow the purchasing power of one are hopelessly beaten by fhe problems ere-

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 233

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 5 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 i0 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- l5 is why I doubt whether these problems
stantly assuming that these evils are being can be solved by us, brought up in that
get 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 20 Eugenics. Ever since the time of Plato
a 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. 25 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 30 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 hewas 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 35 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 40 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 45 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 5° 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
see that this was blasphemy; but in my that will go round a race-course in a
opinion the doctrine that the wholesaler 55 shorter time than any other horse. Or
should excommunicate the retailer was a you want a horse that will carry a hun-
much more dangerous blasphemy. At all dredweight more than any other horse
events, when you are brought up, as you you can get hold of. It is quite simple,

234 WRITING OF TODAY

because you know the sort of horse you less of any other human being. There
want. But do you know the sort of man may be some men of low type, who are
you want? You do not. You have not nearly indiscriminate in their appetites;
the slightest idea. You do not even know but I am perfectly certain, with regard to
how to begin. You say: 'Well, after 5 the great majority of men, that they may
all we do not want an epileptic. We do very often walk down Oxford Street with-
not want an alcoholic' (It is a barbar- out meeting one single woman to whom
ous word, but drunken people are now they could tolerate the idea of being mar-
called alcoholics.) But for all you know ried; and they will in any case be fortu-
to the contrary, the Superman may be a 10 nate (because I like the sensation when
self-controlled epileptic, fed exclusively it comes to me) if, on the most crowded
on proof spirit, and consuming perhaps day and in the finest weather, they meet
ten gallons a day. You laugh ; but the two women for whom they feel that curi-
thing is entirely possible. You do not ous physiological attraction which we all
know what a healthy man is. All your i$ recognize as the sex attraction. That at-
doctors are not able to tell you. All they traction means something. If that attrac-
can tell you is that if you bring them a tion meant something destructive and
healthy man, they will very soon have him ruinous to the human race, the human race
in bed. Still less do you know, gentlemen, would have been wiped out of existence
what is a good man. Take a vote as to 20 long ago. It is what you call the Voice
whether I am a good man or not. Some of Nature. You fall in love, as the say-
people will tell you that my goodness ing is. You see a woman whom you have
is almost beyond that of any other living never spoken to, about whom you know
person. They will even tell you that I absolutely nothing at all ; you do not know
am the only hope of religion in this coun- 25 her character, and you do not know her
try. You will not have to go very far to aims; but you look at her and fall in love
find persons who are of exactly the con- with her. If you were a free person in
trary opinion. I tell you that you really a free society, you would feel very strongly
do not know. I think the very first thing in love with her ; but nowadays you sel-
you have to do is to face the fact that 30 dom feel more than that timid little — what
you do not know, and that in the nature shall I call it? — sort of sinking feeling,
of things you never can know. Your which is about as much as, in our present
capacity does not run to it. You have society, is left of any of our natural emo-
no clue, as far as your own judgment tions. But you do feel some attraction.
is concerned; and, therefore, you are 35 My contention is that this attraction is the
thrown back on the clue that Nature gives only clue you have to the breeding of the
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- 40 possible sexual selection; until you make
morrow in the afternoon, if it is a fine 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 45 a woman who takes my fancy. I fall in
along and to take a note of how many of 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 5© tract me very strongly, and if you are
Oxford Street, are so wildly and irresist- 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,
them from instant rapine. I cannot imag- 55 Probably when I meet that woman, she is
ine how any man gets himself into such a either a charwoman and I cannot marry
<!eplorable condition of mind as to be- her, or else she is a duchess and she will
lieve that this is true of himself, much not marry me. I have purposely taken the

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 235

charwoman and the duchess; but we cut
matters much finer than that. We cut our

little class distinctions, all founded upon H

inequality of income, so narrow and so

small that I have time and again spoken 5 THE CASE FOR INEQUALITY
to English audiences of all classes

throughout the Kingdom, and I have said LINCOLN STEFFENS

to every man and woman in the audience :

'You know perfectly well that when it tMetr°Polita\™™aTfce Ip9ufcsh^spr]inted by cour*
came to your turn to be married, you had »

not, as a young man or a young woman, The only difficulty I find in answering

the choice practically of all the unmarried Mr. Shaw when he is wrong is that I don't
young people of your own age in our want to. It is sport to hear his purpose-
forty million population to choose from. ful fallacies running over the innocent sins
You had at the outside a choice of two J5 of his generation, and mine. It 's a cruel
or three ; and you did not like any of sport, but it 's sport. And who would be
them very particularly as compared to a spoil-sport? Not I; not if the Super-
the one you might have chosen, if you had man would limit his hunting to his own
had a larger choice.' That is a fact which country, where the libel laws make muck-
you gentlemen with your knowledge of 20 raking an intellectual game and British
life cannot deny. The result is that you complacency requires that it be played by
have, instead of a natural evolutionary artists. But over here, in our country,
sexual selection, a class selection which is muckraking is serious business. We are
really a money selection. Is it to be won- running down the truth that shall make us
dered at that you have an inferior and 25 free. Mr. Shaw, addressing the Liberal
miserable breed under such circum- Club of England on The Case for Equal-
stances ? I believe that this goes home ity,' is a gentleman shooting over his own
more to the people than any other argu- preserves; the same man with the same
ment I can bring forward. I have im- case in the Metropolitan Magazine is a
pressed audiences with that argument who 3o poacher. He is fair game for any of us ;
were entirely unable to grasp the eco- big game, but fair. I protest that Mr.
nomic argument in the way you are able Shaw should either stay at home, where
to grasp it, and who were indifferent the greater the truth is the greater the
to the political arguments. I say, there- libel, or get down here with us to the
fore, that if all the other arguments did 35 hard but honest labor of raking up and
not exist, the fact that equality of income marketing said truth. And why should he
would have the effect of making the not deal in that precious commodity?
entire community intermarriageable from The truth divine is funnier than any

one end to the other, and would practically man-made joke.

give a young man and young woman his 4° His joke on the Liberal Club shows
or her own choice right through the popu- that. The truth about the case for equal-
lation — I say that that argument only, ity is more entertaining than Mr. Shaw's
with the results which would be likely to argument for it.

accrue in the improvement of the race, 'When I speak of the Case of Equality/

would carry the day. 45 he begins, 'I mean human equality.'

I am sorry there are no ladies present Now the joke in this thesis, the humor-

here. There ought to have been, to have ous truth divine about human equality is
full justice done to the last argument. that we don't want it. By 'we' I mean
But the final argument which prevails not merely the editorial I; not myself
with me is that it is half-past nine. I 5° alone; I mean Mr. Shaw also; and not
hope I have given you enough to talk only him and me, but Nature and human
about for some little time. I hope you nature. And I certainly would include
understand that equality means equality of under that impersonal pronoun all those
income. In justification of equality of in- who agree with him and me when I shall
come, I have given you a political argu- 55 have made over for him the Superman's
ment, I have given you an economic argu- case for the Superman,
ment, I have given you a biological argu- For my contention is that Mr. Shaw's

ment; and now make what you can of it. case for human equality is an argument

236 WRITING OF TODAY

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 5 the time, however, he has it right; most
the opposite: human inequality. Not de- of his case is an argument for the solu-
mocracy ; aristocracy is what we are after; tion of our economic problem with a view
or, to be more precise, aristocracies. to the 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 10 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 15 If Mr. Shaw (or anybody else) can't
compels us to. see that, I shall have to extend to him the

Nature is working toward the develop- invitation he gave to the 'congenitally
ment of variations in all species. incapable' 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 ao 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,
develop them into greater and greater in- to hold him to his exact words when we
equalities. Hence my conclusion: 25 can, by an effort, get at his thought.

It is human inequality, not human equal- Let 's do 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. 30 it means equality of income.' And, as if
Shaw says it, sometimes; he says it in to clinch my case, he adds: 'The fact is
the bewildering course of his case for you cannot equalize anything about hu-
'equality, meaning human equality.' man beings except their incomes.'

T must confess,' he confesses, 'that all So I will correct his thesis for him, and

my experience and thought have left me 35 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 eco-
numbers. ... To solve them you need a 40 nomic 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 45 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 50 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
to get our Superman. But of this later, of men. And it gives Mr. Shaw's solu-
What I want to fix now is the point upon 55 tion : economic equality. 'Equality of in-
which Mr. Shaw and I and Nature agree: come' is his phrase, and he goes on to

We all want human inequality. show that he means equal pay. 'It

And that's why Mr. Shaw wants eco- means,' he says, 'that if one person is to

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 237

have halt a crown, the other is to have results likely to accrue in the improve-

two-and-sixpence. It means that pre- ment 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- 5 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 rea- no precise equality occurs in Nature; not
son we have no aristocracies now is even among crystals; and, as for incomes,
because we have only plutocracies. His 10 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 15 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 ao 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 25 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 30 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. 35 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, 40 could establish. And even if that were
and Bernard Shaws ; and I think the day done, it would n't stay done unless we had
may come when we shall know how to economic equality. And why attempt the
continue some such transmissible human impossible?

inequalities. But I accept the main argu- We can prevent excessive individual

ment, that we cannot improve the stock 45 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 5o 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-
would have the effect of making the entire mocracy; by giving us what he despises:
community intermarriageable from one 55 equal opportunities — not to get rich, but
end to the other and would practically to develop each his own gifts or inequali-
give a young man or woman his or her ties freely. No man could get rich if he
choice right through the population with had access to no value except that which

238 WRITING OF TODAY

he produced, and I think that few would sion in craft and greed. There is growth
want to. m all such matters. The individualism of

Men's activities and desires are deter- the Tweed Ring type would have seemed
mined, not only by economic conditions, both commonplace and meritorious to the
but by resultant social ideals, and long 5 Merovingian Franks, where it was not en-
before economic equality was reached, tirely beyond their comprehension; and so
with the passing of the sources and ex- in future ages, if the world progresses as
ample of distinguishing riches, we would we hope and believe it will progress, the
be free; free from the fear of poverty standards of conduct which permit indi-
and power; free to form some other ideal xo viduals to make money out of pestilential
than money. The aristocratic few seek tenements or by the manipulation of
distinction or satisfaction now in service stocks, or to refuse to share with their
or skilful work. Some such ideal would employees the dreadful burdens laid upon
soon spread through a free society, and the latter by the inevitable physical risks
free the sex instinct to further by natural 15 in a given business, will seem as amazing
selection, human, instead of economic, in- to our descendants as we now find the
equalities. standards of a society which regarded

Clovis and his immediate successors as/

preeminently fit for leadership.
HI ao With those self-styled Socialists to

whom 'Socialism' is merely a vaguely
SOCIALISM conceived catchword, and who use it to

express their discontent with existing

TTUT7rM^rM?T7 t> nr* CTr\n?T t wrongs and their purpose to correct them,

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 25 there .g nQt much need of discussion> So

[Outlook, March 20 and 27, 1909. By permission far as they make any proposals which are
of author and publishers.] not f00iish) and which tend towards bet-

1— where we cannot work with terment, we can act with them. But the

socialists reaL, logical, advanced Socialists, who

30 teach their faith as both a creed and a
It is always difficult to discuss a ques- 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 35 their teaching.

versus Individualism in the abstract. 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 40 there be, of an unlimited individualism,
only unanswerable ones are those which 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 45 ent time a greater number of visionaries,
of private property; that is, until men pass 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 5° portunist, type, however, is that those of
labor of the latter produces. But it is 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
fettered the individualism which found ex- 55 in the eyes of any upright and sensible
pression in physical violence, and we are man. The doctrinaire Socialists, the ex-
now endeavoring to put shackles on that tremists, the men who represent the doc-
kind of individualism which finds expres- trine in its most advanced form, are, and

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 239

must necessarily be, not only convinced affairs aimed at would in actual practice
opponents of private property, but also bring about the destruction of the race
bitterly hostile to religion and morality; within, at most, a couple of generations;
in short, they must be opposed to all those and such destruction is heartily to be de-
principles through which, and through 5 sired for any race of such infamous char-
which alone, even an imperfect civiliza- acter as to tolerate such a system. More-
tion can be built up by slow advances over, the ultra-Socialists of our own coun-
through 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 10 far as law and public sentiment will per-
especially to domestic morality, a position 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 15 said, the article in the Boston Congrega-
been cautious about stating frankly that 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 2o the Nation of Fatherless Children, a book
the continent of Europe, however, they 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 25 any one who is for the moment confused
away with both prostitution and marriage, 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 30 These same Socialist leaders, with a
Socialist, states their position exactly: 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 35 each man is to do what work he can, or,
accompanied by no child bearing or rear- 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 40 remuneration with every other man, no
future will in no wise interfere, but when 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' 45 229 and 300, or indeed almost at random
upon the father of her children, the chil- 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 50 or qualified, for Socialist leaders usually
his own realm, is as worthy of serious think confusedly, and often occupy fncon-
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
logical scientific Socialism would really 55 workers' ; and one of her colleagues, that
come to. Aside from its thoroughly re- 'the whole of our creed is that industry
pulsive quality, it ought not to be neces- shall be carried on, not for the profit of
sary to point out that the condition of those engaged in it, whether masters or

24o WRITING OF TODAY

men, but for the benefit of the community. 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- 5 would, as a literal fact, follow any capi-
cialism Made Plain, a book officially circu- 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- 10 quence to insisting that no man shall have
borer could exchange the wealth he pro- 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 187 1, it
necessary to point out that the pleasing 1$ is inevitable that the movement, ushered
idea of these writers could be realized 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- morality, licentiousness, and murderous
cialism, therefore, or communism, the gov- violence. In theory, distinctions can be
ernment 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. 25 in 1871, the apostles of all three act to-
Of course in practice such a system could 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- 30 poor and the helpless, especially women
isting form of city government would and children, would be the first to die out,
seem 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- 35 social development would have to begin
fied State free-lunch counter and State 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 ; 40 kind of one-man tyranny that was corn-
while in place of what Socialists are 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 45 resentatives in this country who have
iron despotism over all workers, compared 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 50 cialists, and the like, be they lay or cleri-
of declaiming against patriotism, or an- cal, deserve scant consideration at the
nouncing their movement as international, hands 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
would not stand for one moment the test 55 last presidential election they nominated
of actual experiment. If the leaders of and voted for a man who earns his liveli-
the Socialist party in America should to- hood as the editor of a paper which not
day endeavor to force their followers to merely practises every form of malignant

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 241

and brutal slander, but condones and en- 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 5 of every man who holds within his breast
without regard to whether that man is 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 all his might to bring about a better con-
for the so-called Christian Socialists who dition of things. But he will never bring
associate themselves with this movement, 10 about this better condition by misstating
they either are or ought to be aware of 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- 15 duced by manual workers, that the entire
ment that in this country accepts as one 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 20 could not exist without both ; and if all
eagerly by some men bowed down by the 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 25 appreciate its folly it is merely necessary
preachers of the Gospel or professors in 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. 30 tween Ninth and Tenth Streets, is a huge

I wish it to be remembered that I speak 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 abie New York merchant. It pros-
have ever before me, and for their sakes 35 pered. He and those who invested under
I would do anything, except anything him made a good deal of money. Their
that is wrong; and it is because I believe employees did well. Then he died, and
that teaching them doctrine like that certain other people took possession of it
which I have stigmatized represents the and tried to run the business. The man-
most cruel wrong in the long run, both to 40 ual labor was the same, the good-will was
wage-worker and to earth-tiller, that I the same, the physical conditions were the
reprobate 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 45 shut, and all the employees, clerks, labor-
cannot be improved. The wildest or 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 5° same as before, the physical conditions
Mr. Flinders Petrie's Janus, a book which 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
desire that this particular archaeological 55 as had never been the case before. With
shoemaker should stick to his early-Egyp- such an instance before our very eyes,
tian last. There are dreadful woes in with such proof of what every business
modern life, dreadful suffering among proves, namely, the vast importance of the

242 WRITING OF TODAY

part played by the guiding intelligence in 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 5 sink if they grow habitually to rely upon
all wealth is produced solely by the work 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- 10 In short, it is simply common sense to
uct to be handed over to the manual labor- 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, 15 basis of justice and wisdom. Service is
than a painters' union could paint a Rem- 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 20 to the shiftless or vicious poor man who
in its crudest form. Much of what we are 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 25 are exceedingly valuable forms of service
of the streets of a great city without pay- 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 30 for their betterment. The test of a man's
form of a stock-gambling operation which 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 35 cialism which was propounded by Proud-
of illegal, or, if not illegal, then anti-social, 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 40 only indifferent, but at bottom hostile, to
put into a common store what he can and 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 45 personal ownership of capital, and, in the
the earnings cl the intelligent, the fore- 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 5o 11 — where we can work with socialists
self-respect and self-reliance. The worst

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-
those who would degrade labor by sapping 55 tion. Yet the converse is also true. Ruin
the foundations of self-respect and self- faces us if we decline steadily to try to
reliance. The Roman mob, living on the reshape our whole civilization in accord-
bread given them by the State and clamor- ance with the law of service and if we

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 243

permit ourselves to be misled by any em- war on private property with a bitterness
pirical or academic consideration into re- but little greater than that with which
fusing to exert the common power of the they war against the institutions of the
community where only collective action home and the family, and against every
can do what individualism has left un- 5 form of religion, Catholic or Protestant,
done, or can remedy the wrongs done by The Socialists of this moral type may in
an unrestricted and ill-regulated individ- practice be very good citizens indeed, with
ualism. There is any amount of evil in whom we can at many points cooperate,
our social and industrial conditions of to- They are often joined temporarily with
day, and unless we recognize this fact and 10 what are called the 'opportunist Socialists'
try resolutely to do what we can to remedy — those who may advocate an impossible
the evil, we run great risk of seeing men and highly undesirable Utopia as a matter
in their misery turn to the false teachers of abstract faith, but who in practice try
whose doctrines would indeed lead them to secure the adoption only of some given
to greater misery, but who do at least rec- 15 principle which will do away with some
ognize the fact that they are now miser- phase of existing wrong. With these two
able. At the present time there are scores groups of Socialists it is often possible for
of laws in the interest of labor — laws put- all far-sighted men to join heartily in the
ting a stop to child labor, decreasing the effort to secure a given reform or do away
hours of labor where they are excessive, 20 with a given abuse. Probably, in prac-
putting a stop to unsanitary crowding and tice, wherever and whenever Socialists of
living, securing employers' liability, doing these two types are able to form them-
away with unhealthy conditions in various selves into a party, they will disappoint
trades and the like — which should be both their own expectations and the fears
passed by the National and the various 25 of others by acting very much like other
State Legislatures ; and those who wish to parties, like other aggregations of men ;
do effective work against Socialism would and it will be safe to adopt whatever they
do well to turn their energies into secur- advance that is wise, and to reject what-
ing the enactment of these laws. ever they advance that is foolish, just as

Moreover, we should always remember 30 we have to do as regards countless other
that Socialism is both a wide and a loose groups who on one issue or set of issues
term, and that the self-styled Socialists are come together to strive for a change in the
of many and utterly different types. If we political or social conditions of the world
should study only the professed apostles we live in. The important thing is gen-
of radical Socialism, of what these men 35 erally the next step. We ought not to
themselves like to call 'scientific Social- take it unless we are sure that it is advis-
ism/ or if we should study only what ac- able ; but we should not hesitate to take it
tive leaders of Socialism in this country when once we are sure ; and we can safely
have usually done, or read only the papers join with others who also wish to take it,
in which they have usually expressed 40 without bothering our heads overmuch as
themselves, we would gain an utterly to any somewhat fantastic theories they
wrong impression of very many men who may have concerning, say, the two hun-
call themselves Socialists. There are dredth step, which is not yet in sight,
many peculiarly high-minded men and There are many schemes proposed

women who like to speak of themselves as 45 which their enemies, and a few of their
Socialists, whose attitude, conscious or un- friends, are pleased to call Socialistic, or
conscious, is really merely an indignant which are endorsed and favored by men
recognition of the evil of present condi- who call themselves Socialists, but which
tions and an ardent wish to remedy it, and are entitled each to be considered on its
whose Socialism is really only an ad- 5o merits with regard only to the practical
vanced form of liberalism. Many of advantage which each would confer,
these men and women in actual fact take Every public man, every reformer, is
a large part in the advancement of moral • bound to refuse to dismiss these schemes
ideas, and in practice wholly repudiate the with the shallow statement that they are
purely materialistic, and therefore sordid, 55 'Socialistic' ; for such an attitude is one of
doctrines of those Socialists whose creed mere mischievous dogmatism. There are
really is in sharp antagonism to every prin- communities in which our system of state
ciple of public and domestic morality, who education is still resisted and condemned

244 WRITING OF TODAY

as Socialism ; and we have seen within the 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 5 bound to remember that he is in very truth
railways by the government on the ground 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 10 its motto, 'What is thine is mine,' we op-
digging and enlarging of the Erie Canal 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 15 or her own interests, shall yet act on the
the unfortunate individual on whom, saying, 'What is mine I will in good meas-
through no fault of his, it happened to fall. ure make thine also.'
As communities become more thickly set- Socialism strives to remedy what is evil

tied and their lives more complex, it grows alike in domestic and in economic life, and
ever more and more necessary for some 20 its tendency is to insist that the economic
of the work formerly performed by indi- remedy is all-sufficient in every case. We
viduals, each for himself, to be performed should all join in the effort to do away
by the community for the community as with the evil; but we should refuse to
a whole. Isolated farms need no compli- have anything to do with remedies which
cated system of sewerage ; but this does 25 are either absurd or mischievous, for such,
not mean that public control of sewerage of course, would merely aggravate the
in a great city should be resisted on the present suffering. The first thing to rec-
ground that it tends toward Socialism. ognize is that, while economic reform is
Let each proposition be treated on its own often vital, it is never all-sufficient. The
merits, soberly and cautiously, but without 30 moral reform, the change of character —
any of that rigidity of mind which fears in which law can sometimes play a large,
all reform. If, for instance, the question but never the largest, part — is the most
arises as to the establishment of day nur- necessary of all. In dealing with the
series for the children of mothers who marriage relation the Socialist attitude is
work in factories, the obvious thing to do 35 one of unmixed evil. Assuredly woman
is to approach it with an open mind, listen should be guarded and honored in every
to the arguments for and against, and, if way, her rights jealously upheld, and any
necessary, try the experiment in actual wrong done her should be regarded and
practice. If it is alleged that small groups punished with severe judgment; but we
of farmers have prospered by doing much 40 must keep in mind the obvious fact that
of their work in common, and by a kind of equality of consideration does not mean
mutual insurance and supervision, why of identity of function. Our effort should be
course we should look into the matter with to raise the level of self-respect, self-con-
an open mind, and try to find out, not trol, sense of duty in both sexes, and not
what we want the facts to be, but what the 45 to push both down to an evil equality of
facts really are. moral turpitude by doing away with the

We cannot afford to subscribe to the self-restraint and sense of obligation
doctrine, equally hard and foolish, that the which have been slowly built up through
welfare of the children in the tenement- the ages. We must bring them to a moral
house district is no concern of the com- 50 level by raising the lower standard, not by
munity as a whole. If the child of the depressing the high. It is idle to prattle
thronged city cannot live in decent sur- against the 'economic dependence' of
roundings, have teaching, have room to woman upon man. In the ideal household
play, have good water and clean air, then — an ideal which I believe, though very
not only will he suffer, but in the next 55 far from being universally realized, is yet
generation the whole community will to a now more generally realized than ever
greater or less degree share his suffering. before — there is really complete economic

In striving to better our industrial life interdependence, as well as the high

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES

245.

spiritual and moral interdependence which service ; and, mankind being composed as
is more nearly attained in happy wedlock, it is, there will be inequality of service for
in a permanent partnership of love and a long time to come, no matter how great
duty, than in any other relation of life the equality of opportunity may be; and
which the world has yet seen. Rights 5 just so long as there is inequality of serv-
should be forfeited by neither partner; ice it is eminently desirable that there
and duties should be shirked by neither should be inequality of reward,
partner. The duty of the woman to be We recognize, and are bound to war

the child-bearer and home-keeper is just against, the evils of to-day. The rem-
as obvious, simple, and healthful as the 10 edies are partly economic and partly spir-
duty of the man to be the breadwinner itual, partly to be obtained by laws, and in
and, if necessary, the soldier. Whenever 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- 15 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- 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 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- 25 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 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- 30 T-r-r

ferent needs occasioned by different condi- ■*■ *

tions, which needs are so diverse that THE MENACE TO JOURNALISM
they must sometimes be met in totally dif- J

ferent ways. ROSCOE C. E. BROWN

We should do everything that can be 35
done, by law or otherwise, to keep the ave- [North American ^mSonj°Vember' 1921' By
nues of occupation, of employment, of

work, of interest, so open that there shall A new journalism is abroad in the land,

be, so far as it is humanly possible to To the reading public it is often indis-
achieve it, a measurable equality of op- 40 tinguishable from the old journalism,
portunity, an equality of opportunity for Like some of the parasitic fungi, whose
each man to show the stuff that is in him. spores penetrating the cells of their host
When it comes to reward, let each man, change its substance to their own tissues,
within the limits set by a sound and far- but in turn shape themselves into the
sighted morality, get what, by his energy, 45 outward form of the original plant, the
intelligence, thrift, courage, he is able to new journalism has fastened upon the old,
get, with the opportunity open. We must used it for its own purposes, and masked
set our faces against privilege; just as itself in the appearance of the independ-
much against the kind of privilege which ent and self-determining press. This par-
would let the shiftless and lazy laborer 50 asite is propaganda. Its instrument of in-
take what his brother has earned as fection is the press agent. Its result is
against the privilege which allows the an organ of public opinion more or less
huge capitalist to take toll to which he is completely, according to the extent of the
not entitled. We stand for equality of op- process, transformed from an unbiased, or
portunity, but not for equality of reward 55 at least autonomous, expression to a sug-
unless there is also equality of service. gested and not disinterested utterance.
If the service is equal, let the reward be Twenty-five years ago, the press agent

equal; but let the reward depend on the was known to newspaper men as the ge-

246 WRITING OF TODAY

nial distributor of circus tickets, and as more to distribution, less of news than of
the facile chronicler of the wonders of the what somebody wishes to be considered
jungle and the romances of the fat woman. news.

He kept reporters apprized in gor- The war gave a great impetus to propa-

geous fashion of the coming of new plays 5 ganda. Surrender to it by the newspa-
and took a kindly interest in recovering pers was a form of patriotic service.
actresses' lost jewels. For the rest, he Mr. Creel's mental treatment, his sug-
left the reporters to go their way unaided gestions of what the American people,
to get their news as best they could, and to help win the war, should believe about
to present it with that approximation to i0 fights with submarines or building air-
truth that comes from the detached ap- planes, were faithfully transmitted to
praisement of conflicting statements and them by a mobilized press. For that the
dug-out facts. He was the scarcely rec- press need not apologize. Even public
ognized poor-relation of the journalist. opinion must goosestep in a military move-

To-day the press agent belongs to a 15 ment, though it may know it is being
numerous, well recognized and well paid fooled. The creation of a certain state
profession. His handsomely furnished of mind was as necessary as the equip-
oflke is next door to that of the president ping of an army, and the newspapers did
of the great corporation; he is the con- their part to create it, without inquiring
sultant of the organizers of great philan- 2o too curiously behind official statements,
thropies, the mouth-piece of political Nevertheless this meant an adjournment
leaders, the window-dresser of govern- of the free play of public opinion, and un-
ment departments. He lays upon the fortunately it has not reconvened. Semi-
desks of the leading newspapers every day official propaganda claimed succession to
enough copy to fill their pages, news, 25 the privileges of the official propaganda,
editorial and advertising, twice over. and too often obtained it. Organized
And he succeeds in getting enough of this movements of every sort, religious, politic
printed to earn his salary to the satisfac- cal, philanthropic, selfish, realized as never
tion of his employer, to establish his own before the potentialities of the press
importance in the eyes of publicity 30 agent, and found the newspapers habitu-
seekers, and to color effectually the pic- ated to unbelievable hospitality and fre-
ture of American life and its supposedly quently, it might seem, to unbelievable
spontaneous movements presented to the innocence. For to an extent never be-
American people. fore seen, at least since the dark era of

The press agent commands a higher 35 the party newspaper dependent on politi-
salary, strictly measured by his success cians in the first third of the nineteenth
in circulating propaganda disguised as century, the American press is taking
news, than he could obtain in the direct things at second hand and allowing arti-
service of a newspaper. Consequently ficially stimulated sentiment to appear as
trained writers that are ready to forego 40 the expression of natural public opinion,
the journalist's ideal and give their pens Yet the war did not give birth to the

to the service not of society but of a era of the publicity agent. His sway be-
patron's ends tend in increasing numbers gan when some of the railroads and other
to forsake the editorial room for the pub- large corporations awoke to the fact that
licity office, to the impoverishment of 45 unpopularity did not pay. Alexander J.
newspaper staffs. Their systematic and Cassatt, if not the discoverer of this truth,
extensive preparation of pre-digested was one of the earliest of the railroad ex-
news is in turn changing the conditions of ecutives to realize the consequences of the
news gathering. They stand guard at hostile feeling that was growing up
many sources of news, fending off the too 50 against corporations. He not only tried
keen inquirer and leaving the newspaper to persuade his fellow railroad presidents
the choice of letting itself be spoon-fed or to meet half way the demands for regula-
going empty. The inevitable result must tion, but also sought to put their aims and
be the decay of reporting in its more diffi- methods in a favorable light before the
cult and for public purposes most impor- 55 people. One of his earliest approaches
tant aspects, the growth of a race of mere was to a newspaper writer of distinction,
retailers of ready-made intelligence, and who declined what seemed to him a
the turning of the newspapers more and princely salary, not because he did not

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 247

sympathize with Mr. Cassatt's wish for clined to quixotic standards, declares that
better understanding between business the newspapers are not meeting major
and the public, but because, for himself, problems and are not driving at the heart
he would have no client but the public. of things, but are 'skimming the surface,
Writers were found, however, who under- 5 and it is only now and then that a reporter
took to give newspapers information about gets under the skin of these great events.'
corporation doings, and the old habits of Another sort of propaganda, not new

silence gave way to positive volubility — but growing, is that which seeks free ad-
in one tone. The newspapers welcomed vertising. Sometimes it is plain puffery
this hospitality and were in turn hos- 10 for commercial purposes. As often it is
pitable; but before they realized it they extensive free publicity for enterprises,
had opened the gate to a wooden horse. good, bad and indifferent, from an Inter-
They allowed the press agent to gain con- church World Movement to the creation
trol of whole fields of news. Whereas of a personality for a nonentity with poli-
the reporter formerly could gain access to 15 tical or social ambition. Against the ad-
corporation heads, make his own inquiries, vertising space-grafter the American
and ask questions that gave him insight Newspaper Publishers Association has
even if unanswered, now these men will been for some time making a campaign,
rarely see reporters and screen themselves The legitimate advertising men have
behind prepared statements. In a busi- 30 found themselves more than once about to
ness crisis or industrial dispute — for the close a large contract when a press agent
labor unions have not been slow to adopt stepped in and persuaded the would-be
the new method — it is almost impossible advertiser that for a small sum advertis-
to bring a joined issue before the court of ing could be dressed up as news and cir-
public opinion, because statements that *5 culated free to the limit of his desires,
are not responsive are frequently all that A few months ago a highly-colored story
can be obtained. of the escape of a Turkish heiress from

In the lobby of the National Press Club Constantinople filled columns of space in
in Washington, according to the Editor American newspapers, only to prove a
and Publisher, there is a table much like 3° piece of publicity for a motion picture.
a free-lunch counter. On it are displayed No paper that had not blunted its news
every day the mimeographed copies of the instincts by the habitual acceptance of
hand-out articles, official and unofficial, press-agent concoctions could have failed
that the press agents hope will prove bait to scent a selfish purpose in such a tale,
for the correspondents. With a paste-pot 35 When a leading automobile company,
and a little rewriting a brave show of cov- after the annual shows in New York and
ering the Capital can be made. If that Chicago, publicly boasts that 'more than
were all, it would not much matter. The twenty thousand dollars' worth of free
conscientious and enterprising correspond- publicity in the news columns of the New
ent would show the difference between 40 York and Chicago newspapers was the
news and propaganda. But unfortunately proud record obtained' by its advertising
the persons for whom the press agents division during the shows, it is no wonder
work have learned that, if they stand on that the publishers are aghast at their
propaganda statements alone, and make own fatuity in letting columns of adver-
no other, the newspapers will take them ; 45 tising disguised as 'human interest' stories
and so they have shut the door on the in- pass their desks. When a publicity agent
dependent investigator. Moreover, the undertakes to raise a $10,000 charity fund
press agents are clever enough to dress up on a $2,500 commission, and does it with
for their own purposes matter that has the aid of $26,000 worth of free reading
real news interest, or seems to an editor 50 matter,, the newspapers may well ask
to have when he sees it in a rival paper; themselves who are really supporting the
and so the reporter, by the pressure of philanthropies.

external circumstance and to meet the Sometimes, it is true, the editor grows

short-sighted demands of his own office, suspicious that he is being used; but then
is driven to be the mere mouthpiece of 55 the propagandist is ready for him. No
biased statement. This has gone so far more revealing exhibition of his methods
that Mr. Frank I. Cobb of the New York of creating a false appearance of spon-
IVorld, a practical editor by no means in- taneous public sentiment can be found

248 WRITING OF TODAY

than appears in a letter of the National will contract to put upon the map of pop-
One Cent Postage Association that fell ular thought anything from a railroad rate
into the hands of the American Newspaper campaign or a political program to a
Publishers Association shortly before the prayer-meeting or a charity fund. The
war. It read: 5 Editor and Publisher reports that in one

day last year 189,350 words of 'publicity

In conjunction with the prosecution of our matter' were received by the Washington
campaign for one cent letter postage, we find Herald, which equals 24 newspaper pages,
we secure invaluable assistance from the Tf „__,. r„m poi;„ • ,lc 0 . «,,^i:rf» ZZZ.
newspapers by their publishing articles in J* c*m* ^orn/e hgious and uplift organ-
regard to one cent letter postage. 10 nations, political parties, government de-

We also find that if we send these articles partments, ana commercial and miscel-
direct they are often disregarded, while if laneous sources of every sort. This was
we secure some of our friends to send the an average day, and that paper was not
articles to them, the newspapers use them exceptionally favored by the press agents,
very promptly. l5 How much of this was used does not ap-

Because of this fact, we are asking the pear> but a great mass of such material
assistance of friends of the movement to is regUlarly used or it would not be pre-
secure publicity for -our work. I am | • > increasing volume. The

taking the liberty of enclosing herewith an 1 -n 1 1 j \ \ • •

article which I have had prepared, and in slfllled newspaper reader can detect it in
which I have had your name inserted, and 20 almost every paper he sees. Already the
would appreciate it very much if you would ulterior purpose behind what appears to
place this in the hands of one of your local be innocent news is frequently questioned,
newspapers. If the general body of readers shall be

Call up the city editor of your best paper, driven to share that suspicion, to look
and the one most likely to use the article, 25 upon the newspaper record of life as arti-
and tell him to send a reporter around to fidal and cease to find fa j, the mirror of

^T^J^y^^ l^r^Z their own thought and action the old
about, but simply request that the reporter journa ism will be dead and the new
call and see you. When the reporter does journalism will be bankrupt,
come tell him that to save him the trouble 3o From one point of view all this is highly
you have written the story out yourself. flattering to the press. It is a tribute to
Then hand him the enclosed interview. its power. When bank and factory,

He will be glad to get it in this shape, and church and college, official and reformer,
will doubtless use it in aboul .the same man- all systematically scheme to make the
file ^^e^^on^V^ * P.™ P«sent their interest and their ver-
territory and should prove of great assist- S10n of news not as their own, but as its
ance to us in the creation of public sentiment own they acknowledge in act what they
in favor of one cent letter postage. so often deny in speech, that the voice of

the newspaper is really the voice of the

Surely, the editor needs to be as wise 40 community talking to itself,
as the serpent and as cynical as Satan, if No longer can even the greatest take

he is going to safeguard himself against the attitude of the Duke of Wellington,
propaganda and make his columns a chron- who, when the editor of a leading London
icle of real happenings and a reflector journal asked permission to view the coro-
of authentic, un-'accelerated' thought. 45 nation procession of William IV from the

Shortly before the war, Mr. Cobb has roof of Apsley House, answered that it
said, the newspapers of New York took a was of no possible interest to the Duke
census of the press agents who were reg- whether the editor saw the procession or
ularly employed and regularly accredited, not. The propagandist has this c
and found that there were about 1,200 of So for fastening himself as a parasite on the
them. There are doubtless many more newspapers: It is almost his only chance
to-day, and they have, as he pointed out, to reach the ear of power. When Hol-
seized control of many of the direct chan- ingbroke employed Nicholas Amhurst as
nels of news of business, social and polit- his press agent for warfare on Walpole,
ical activity, and closed them, except as 55 he had to reach only a handful of men,
information is filtered through themselves, who made the public opinion of England,
Great firms and corporations carry on and a small edition of a tiny sheet an-
publicity as a profession, and for a fee swered his purpose. Hamilton put the

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 249

Federalist into the mind of America of 'publicity matter' that is offered by
through a little paper of possibly 1,500 parties in interest to the newspapers and
circulation. Anybody with the aid of a accepted by them has news value, and
hand press could then publish a news- deals with worthy enterprises entitled
paper on substantially equal terms with 5 to notice. But that does not make the
anybody else. But all that is changed. prevailing habit of opening newspaper
Not only has the cost of producing any- columns to press agents' productions less
thing that can possibly hold its place as dangerous. Indeed it makes it more dan-
a newspaper become enormous, but in a gerous. Propaganda must have news
democratic society the public to be reached 10 value, real or apparent, to gain publica-
is so vast that nothing but the great tion and then win attention. Its news
established machinery of publicity is value, disguising its insidious purpose,
adequate to the task. The existing is the tool needed to break into the public
journals have a practical monopoly of mind. And the insidious purpose is al-
public attention, and only through them 15 ways there. Great corporations and or-
can it be effectively arrested. ganizers of campaigns do not pay large

Of course it is easy and is much the salaries to able men just to save the
fashion to lay the blame for the sway of newspapers the expense of getting their
propaganda upon some mysterious 'sys- own news, benevolent as their professions
tern,' to complain that some malevolent 20 0f 'saving the reporter trouble' may seem,
and super-intelligent group of men are What they want is free advertising, other-
with a common purpose seeking to con- wise 'publicity,' for some scheme or opin-
trol the press. But that is mere witch- jon 0f their own, and the press agent's
hunting. It gets nowhere. The simple offering, either by distortion, suppression,
fact is that all movements dependent on 25 unwarranted emphasis, or sheer inven-
mass sentiment must be organized. tion, achieves not a judicial summing up
Propaganda is as old as society. Only 0f the facts, but an attorney's special
it has come to a new intensity, danger- piea for his client.

ous to the public and to the press itself The press agent will say, perhaps

because of its parasitic nature. It has 30 wjth some truth, though probably no edi-
taken a leaf out of the book of business tor will admit it, that the newspaper has
efficiency. No 'system,' no group, has made him a necessity by failure of enter-
deliberately set out to poison public opin- prise, by neglect to exploit really impor-
ion. The world in general, which means tant matters outside of the day's concrete
a great number of individuals, each 35 happenings, by an unfair attitude toward
seeking his own ends, has discovered the business enterprises, and by teaching pub-
value of publicity in a democracy and Hc speakers that, no matter how much
has sought it with the practicality char- worth while what they have to say may
acteristic orf the age. Everybody de- be, it will receive scant attention unless it
siring access to the public mind ^ has 40 is handed out in typewritten slips. How-
adopted the ideas of a commercial civiliza- ever that may be, the newspapers cer-
tion to obtain it. The same business tainly opened the door, taught the fabri-
method inspires the bank's press agent cators of propaganda their trade, fell into
and its cashier. The publicity bureau of the habit of taking things at second
a political party or a college endowment 45 hand, and are now in danger of being
committee studies the psychology of the overwhelmed by the flood,
sales manager, adopts h4s slang, and What is the remedy? Nothing but the

starts out to 'sell' an idea to the commun- absolute refusal to recognize the press
ity. And it was not long ago that a agent, or to publish news that is not pre-
great body of religious leaders also be- So pared by the editorial staff itself and its
came enamored of business efficiency and disinterested agents. Some of the lead-
dreamed that with a large bank account, ing publicity men themselves admit the
a huge office force, expert administration present abuses and advise editors to
and unlimited drafts on newspaper pub- verify more carefully press-agent ofifer-
licity, they could 'sell' to the world the 55 ings, and to exclude concealed advertis-
Sermon on the Mount, if not the Apostles' ing, or whatever seems to be unduly
Creed. colored. But that does not go to the

Undoubtedly a great deal of the mass root of the evil. In many cases, espe^

250 WRITING OF TODAY

daily with matter coming from a distance, E. Brown discussed what he was pleased
verification is impossible, and the protec- to call The Menace to Journalism, with
tion of advertising space against grafters, a mind as impartial and in a tone as
commercial or philanthropic, is not the calmly judicial as was possible once he
chief concern of the public. If the news- 5 had selected a title which left little to be
papers want to give away thousands of said except to pass sentence upon the
dollars every week in free advertising, guiity culprit. The 'menace' to which he
that is mainly their affair; though the referred is publicity or propaganda — us-
community does have a right to read ing the terms interchangeably — and the
news as news and advertisements as ad- 10 offenders are the press agents, or public-
vertisements, and not be fooled into read- fry men — likewise considering these as
ing one for the other. But nothing synonyms, which they have long since
short of a rule: Exclude all 'publicity,' ceased to be — who are represented as
will shut up the propaganda bureaus, stop being parasites who have colonized in
the deluge of tainted news, and once more 15 great numbers on the Fourth Estate,
open the closed doors to the disinterested Apparently the only distinction that Pro-
reporter, fessor Brown would make is that the old-

The essence of the mischief in propa- time and smilingly tolerated press agent
ganda is not its falsity in any particular of the circus 'left the reporters to go their
case, but its origin. The essence of 20 Way unaided to get their news as best
journalism is its autonomous expression they could, and to present it with that
of itself as an interpreter of society. The approximation of truth that comes from
editor who is entitled to confidence, and the detached appraisement of conflicting
who alone in the long run will get it, is statements and dug-out facts'; whereas,
he whose every utterance is his own. 25 the modern publicity representatives of
Neither the accuracy of a journal's news great corporations, banking interests, pub-
nor the justness of its opinions is half lie movements or philanthropies 'stand
as important to society as certainty that guard at many sources of news, fending
whatever it publishes is the result of its off the too keen inquirer and leaving the
own independent outlook on the world in 30 newspaper the .choice of letting itself
the capacity of a public watchman. That be spoon-fed or going empty.'
is its profession; that is its trust. That the guileful, often amusing and

Unless the American press rescues it- usually harmless tactics of the old-time
self from this growing tendency to be press agent have been developed of late
the mouthpiece of extra-sanctum prepara- 35 years into a well paid and unusually busy
tions of news and 'accelerations' of senti- profession of publicity as applied to large
ment, and by its own self-contained enter- interests, may not be denied, and the
prise seeks out everything that is im- first reflex is naturally upon the making
portant for men to know and presents it of a modern daily newspaper. It has
as appraised and interpreted disinter- 40 emerged from under the flap of the circus
ested1^ by itself, it will cease to be the tent and from the narrow confines of the
Fourtn Estate. Its claim to that distinc- theater box-office, until it holds a place
tion and influence rests on its perfor- of considerable dignity and importance
mance of a public function, and it will in the public activities of today. It is
not endure the abdication of trusteeship *5 only in comparatively a few editorial
and the loaning of the instruments of sanctums, though in many publishers'
current intelligence to the irresponsible offices, that the modern publicity man is
agents of propaganda. looked upon as an outlaw, conducting a

kind of guerrilla warfare against which
V 50 the advertising department must arm it-

PUBLICITY-AND ITS ETHICS ^For a number of years the American
ATHERTON BROWNELL Newspaper Publishers' Association has

maintained a standing committee to fight
[North American ^'^on February, 1922. By 55 this fancied menace to its revenues, sus-
pended in its activities only during the
In the November issue of the North war when it was considered to be a
American Review Professor Roscoe C. patriotic duty to lend the power of the

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 251

press to the propaganda work of the preparation of real news that is 'predi-
Government in its many forms. Yet it gested' — rather than hastily gathered anci
may be possible to show that so far from hurriedly thrown together, given to the
being a detriment to the material interests public half-baked and not only undigested
Df the publishers, the work of the intelli- 5 but actually indigestible?
gent and resourceful publicity man may We may not necessarily go so far as

be and can be a direct stimulant to the to agree entirely with the newspaper
creation of great national advertisers, cynic who defined 'news' as 'any violation
thus dovetailing with the purpose of the of any one of the Ten Commandments/
publishers and the advertising agents. 10 but it is indisputable that in common prac-

Professor Brown, however, dignifies the tice that which is compelling news, that
discussion by placing it upon a higher which bears the editorial blue pencilled
ethical plane for consideration than has 'must' across its face, is of some sensa-
hitherto been attempted, and also by re- tional happening, something picturesque
moving it — as it should be removed — 15 and attention-arresting, something that
from the business offices of the news- can be made into a 'story' and the more
papers into the editorial field, thus bring- of 'human interest' it possesses the better,
ing it into the broader light of the public Bad news flies fast — it meets the reporter
welfare. In thus stimulating an open dis- more than half way. Good news is often
cussion of the subject on higher ethical ao retiring and conceals itself. The func-
g;rounds than its effect upon the adver- tion of the real publicity man is to give
tising revenues of the newspapers, Pro- it wings. The news prepared by the
fessor Brown has rendered a service that modern publicity man is the news of
places all parties at interest in his debt. construction. It has been sought out

To the mind of the layman, not par- 25 from a mass of data or other information
ticularly versed in the details of the ques- in which it is so deeply imbedded that
tion, but viewing it with a natural shrewd- it could never be found by the hurried
ness and innate common sense, there may reporter seeking the news that shrieks
come the query as to why it is true, aloud to be told.

as Professor Brown says, that 'trained 30 This is the interesting point that Pro-
writers are ready to forego the journal- fessor Brown raises, and which may
ist's ideal and give their pens to the serv- broadly cover the entire field of activity
ice not of society but of a patron's ends' of what we may call purposeful pub-
and, he admits, 'to the impoverishment licity, that 'whereas the reporter formerly
of newspaper staffs.' Is it true that all 35 could gain access to corporation heads,
these men^are apostates, lacking in any make his own inquiries, and ask ques-
idealism that cannot be made subservient tions that gave him an insight even if un-
to the greater monetary temptations that answered, now these men will rarely see
are held out to them, that they have 'for- reporters and screen themselves behind
saken the editorial room for the pub- 40 prepared statements.'
licity office'? Access to great corporation heads un-

Are the old methods of news-gathering doubtedly is more difficult today than it
so perfect that they cannot be changed was formerly, and equally undoubtedly
in any respect to advantage ? Is it not these corporation heads speak with greater
within the bounds of reasonable possibil- 45 care when they speak at all. When the
ity that these men of superior attain- great anthracite strike of a dozen or so
ments, having lived in daily intimacy with years ago was pending, there were eight
present-day conditions of news-gathering, or ten corporation heads all being con-
and partly disillusioned thereby, have per- stantly sought by dozens of reporters,
ceived that there is a function to be per- 50 more or less competent, from as many
formed that has little chance of develop- different local papers. Aside from the
ment in the rush and hurry of the produc- loss of time from executive duties, noth-
tion of a modern daily newspaper, but ing but confusion resulted in the public
supplementing it? May it not be that mind from the various digests and inter-
there is another ideal that is worthy of 55 pretations of many not specially informed
consideration, equally in the interest of reporters from the disjointed statements
society and of the best journalism, this of these several corporation heads. Since
taking the form of the search for and the the importance of public understanding

252 WRITING OF TODAY

of the situation was recognized to be collision of interviewing, as it is prac-
important, one man was selected — a ticed, with that ideal of journalism which
trained newspaper man — who became the which would 'leave the reporters to go
spokesman for all, thus saving time and their way unaided to get their news as
clearing the atmosphere of a mass of 5 best they could, and to present it with
ignorant speculations. As a rule, the that approximation of truth that comes
man who is important enough to be from the detached appraisement of con-
sought by the newspapers, and who has flicting statements and dug-out facts.'
any respect for accuracy, has learned A man of many millions and of great
that his only safety lies in the prepared 10 achievements in the industrial world had
statement — not as a shield to protect placed himself at the head of a new cor-
himself from saying things that he does poration which had a 'vision.' It was
not want to say, but as a preventative a vision of vast profits, perhaps, but it
from being made to say things that he also from .its nature possessed a public
has not said. 15 service value that caused it to be 'news.'

The strict executive, who will not per- For many months its plans had been pre-
mit a letter carefully dictated to a com- pared and merely hinted at publicly in
petent and tried stenographer to leave his detail. Each step in preparation had been
office without re-reading before signing, scrutinized by the publicity man for its
is expected to deal in an off-hand way 20 reaction upon the public. The news-
with the most vital of topics whenever papers were keen for the 'story.'
asked to do so by a reporter, and then With infinite pains and much rewrit-

to permit his views to go out to the world ing, — 'predigesting!,' if you please, — the
through the mediumship of a man he has entire plan had been reduced to the form
perhaps never seen, who relies upon his 25 of an interview with the head of the cor-
memory only for faithful transcription, poration and had finally been initialled
who has no fundamental knowledge of by him as evidence of his approval after
the subject to permit of accurate com- careful study and weighing. In this in-
pression of the essentials into newspaper stance it is possible that many news-
space and who does not permit the sub- 30 papers would have accepted the state-
ject of the interview to see what he is ment had it been sent to them by mail,
to be committed to saying before its pub- but the publicity man recognized fully
lication. This is one of the conditions of what Professor Brown means when he
news-gathering that Professor Brown charges that access to heads of corpora-
would not have changed, yet it is neither 35 tions is often denied,
fair nor just to place the entire re- Since it was quite out of the question

sponsibility for misquotation upon the for a man of so many interests to give
shoulders of the reporter. The plea of up the time to meeting all of these repre-
having been misquoted is as often, per- sentatives of the metropolitan newspapers
haps, because of the fault of him who 40 and of the various press associations
is interviewed as it is that of the news- singly, it was arranged that he should
paper man. Few men of great execu- visit New York and receive them all at
tive ability — few men, in fact, of any once at his hotel. Including trade pa-
kind — possess the faculty of talking for pers, there were sixty or more news-
publication, accurately, interestingly and 45 seekers present, and of this number there
intelligently. It is an art in itself, usu- was but one who declined to accept the
ally acquired only by cultivation although, prepared statement that was awaiting
like genius, it is born in a few. Few men them. This single exception seemed to
who have become authorities on any sub- be inspired by Professor Brown's stric-
ject great enough to be sought by the news- 50 ture upon what he call 'spoon-fed' jour-
papers still retain the thought that others nalism and branched off into side-issues
not so familiar with it require a primary and absolutely extraneous subjects when
exposition of the fundamentals if a clear he asked his questions,
understanding is to be the result. Although unprepared for this and taken

A single case in point may serve to 55 unawares, the subject of the interview
illustrate more clearly the function of courteously submitted to the heckling and
the publicity man in corporation work; arose to the emergency. His answers
and also the result, in one instance, of the were short and to the point. They ad-

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 253

mitted of little or no possibility of mis- again submitted himself to a newspaper
understanding and there was but one man interviewer.

within his hearing who did misunder- In the case of the other a very different

stand. It was unfortunate, to say the policy was followed. His publicity man,
least, that this should have been the re- 5 knowing the psychology of the newspaper
porter who was questioning him and that mind, carefully rehearsed his principal
the readers of his paper the following in a little drama that was calculated to
morning should have been given a false- win great applause at the final curtain,
hood in the place of truth, while every The cast was a small one, consisting
other paper that did not follow Professor 10 of the railroad man and the President
Brown's ideal had a perfectly accurate and of the United States, with the Inter-
truthful story. state Commerce Commission acting as
A number of years ago — it was during a kind of chorus. Act I showed the pub-
President Roosevelt's second term — two licity man calling on the President and,
prominent railroad magnates were each 15 in the course of the conversation, cas-
seized simultaneously with a desire to say ually mentioning that Mr. So-and-so, his
something to the public regarding the principal, had a carefully worked out
railroad problem that was then vexing plan for the settlement of the railroad
Congress and the public. To get his question.

views and opinions widely before the 20 'Is that so?' inquired Col. Roosevelt,
public unexpurgated and in digestible That 's bully ! I 'd like to talk it over
form, each of these two magnates re- with him !'

tained a publicity specialist, and these men 'Why don't you invite him to come

followed methods that were essentially down ? He 'd come.'

different. Both principals were men who 25 Act II showed the railroad man accept-
were known to be hard to interview: the ing the President's invitation and arriv-
one because of a quick impatience that ing in Washington thoroughly 'in charac-
permitted of no slowness of comprehen- ter,' as a reserved and more or less un-
sion or inquiry into essential detail; the approachable magnate, traveling in his
other, because of a diffidence that stood 30 private car. This car was, of course,
in the way of expression by words. Both quickly identified by the local reporters
were required to reduce their ideas to with the result that it was surrounded by
writing, which were then edited and care- correspondents when the principal — with
fully 'predigested' so that each in his no publicity man in attendance — returned
own way said just what he wanted to 35 to it from the White House. To all eager
say, in the fewest possible words, and inquiries as to the subject of his con-
with the greatest possible newspaper ference no answer was given, except
story value. The first, accompanied by that it would be entirely improper and dis-
his publicity man, went to Washington courteous to the President to give out
where the national correspondents gather. 40 anything, unless it emanated from the
They were invited to come to the hotel Executive Mansion.

to meet the magnate and came eagerly, Act III shows the railroad man's car

for the fact that this man was willing to again rolling into Washington and a repe-
talk was news in itself. They listened tition of the previous proceeding, while
to his humorous stories, smoked his cigars 45 the word passes around that some 'big
and probably partook of his hospitality news is going to break.' On his return
otherwise. They plied him with questions to his car the railroad man seems to be
and they politely took his prepared state- more willing to speak but still holds his
ment away with them. The next day, reserve, and then follows the master-
all over the country, this railroad man 5o stroke of the little drama, with the advice
had all the publicity he wanted, but not and consent of Col. Roosevelt, who thor-
of the kind that he desired. His state- oughly enjoyed the little play. As the
ment was largely ignored, since the real train began to pull out, leaving the corre-
story was that at last he had seen the light spondents with long faces, the railroad
and was not only willing but eager to take 55 man leaned confidentially from the plat-
the public into his confidence. That was form of his car and said with a smile,
the 'news' as it was developed. To the 'It 's a wonder you boys don't know where
day of his death this railroad man never the office of the Interstate Commerce

^54 WRITING OF TODAY

Commission is !' and was gone. No rumor and kill it. The advertising agent's
faster, however, than the race for the advice was to call in a publicity man
offices of the Interstate Commerce Com- since to meet the situation by advertis-
mission which at once started, and there, ing a denial would be to spread the
carefully prepared and edited, fully 'pre- 5 damaging rumor more widely. This was
digested, the statement was found to be on late on a Thursday afternoon. The fol-
file waiting to be read, laboriously copied lowing Sunday morning virtually every
and telegraphed to all parts of the coun- newspaper in New York carried an illus-
try. trated story on its first page detailing,

The wiles and the artful practices of 10 with many picturesque episodes, the in-
the press agent to advertise his client, spection of the work made the day be-
regardless of any public interest in his fore by an Athenian Prince, several
subject, are so indefensible that it would French army engineers and other notable
be a waste of time to discuss them. This scientists from Europe, and the following
is not the form and character of publicity 15 day the financial press of the country
that has been brought to the light of carried it in condensed form,
this discussion by Professor Brown, but This space could not have been pur-

there is one argument that comes from chased at any price. No 'influence,'
the advertising office that deserves more however strong, except that of actual
than a passing word. 'You can say any- 20 news value, could have obtained it. The
thing in the advertising columns that you price that the publicity man paid for that
can say in the news columns, and just space was in the only coin that passes
as effectively' is a favorite statement of current in the editorial department. Nor
publishers which is largely, yet not 100 was it spurious coin, even though he
per cent., true, as a single instance will «5 had created the superficial news value
show. by the introduction of the Prince into the

A great work of a semipublic nature, in- situation. The real news lay in the fact
volving engineering problems having no that the work was going on uninter-
precedent, had been undertaken in New ruptedly ; the rumors of its cessation were
York. It was being financed by its 30 false and that the investors were not in
bankers through the sale of short term danger of loss of their money. The re-
notes as a temporary expedient. An suit was to dam the stream of lying
issue of these notes was close to maturity rumors and to accomplish a piece of
and it was the expectation of the bankers constructive work that otherwise would
that a new issue would immediately be 35 not have been done. It saved the work and
taken up by the holders of those which it created, on its completion, an ad-
expired. About ten days before this ma- vertising patron which has turned many
turity period there appeared in Wall thousands of dollars into the coffers of
Street and in the financial centers of the papers.

Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago 40 To many minds the word 'publicity*
and elsewhere, where the notes were means the 'putting over' of something
heavily held, a rumor that could be traced improperly. It would be a useless waste
to no starting point. It was one of those of space to berate at length all of the
'whispering campaigns' that are usually schemes and wiles of the unconscionable
the cloak of crooked finance and stock 45 publicity man or press agent that really
manipulation and its source could be have for their purpose the exploiting of
suspected though not proved. It was to something under the guise of news that
the effect that the engineering difficul- should not be exploited at all, or that are
ties in this work had proved to be in- otherwise as indefensible as are many of
superable and that the project had been 5© the newspaper practices that are not in
virtually abandoned. The object in view keeping with the highest ethics of jour-
was perfectly apparent, and was the dis- nalism. It is a fact that has to be met
crediting in advance of the new note issue and reckoned with that out of its fantastic
in order to bring ruin upon the entire beginnings there has arisen a new pro-
enterprise. 5S fession that, properly governed and regu-

The banker sent for his advertising lated, is essentially in the interest of the
agent and placed the problem before public and which has been forced into
him with the request that he answer the existence by the failure of the press in

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 255

many important particulars to live up to on the 'guilty culprit/ whether of the
its highest ideals. editorial or the publicity office. But it

is far less important to pass such judg-

VI ments than to diagnose conditions. The

5 writer's purpose has not been to con-

A COMMENT demn men of either calling for what is

the result, not of any wrongful purpose
ROSCOE C. E. BROWN on their part, but of business and social

Worth American Review, February, if*. By developments with which journalism and

permission.] 10 the intellectual interest of a large body

Mr. Atherton Brownell illuminates with °\th? reader* °" wbich {t dePend* have
interesting incidents the conditions that no* be^n able t0 keep pace. It has
have created the publicity business, with- ™tber been *° ?"sidej; the journalistic
out challenging the public's right to news TC tendencies thus fostered, with a view to
from independent and disinterested sour- * ^e newspaper s future prestige and in-
ces. Nor does he deny that matter written flJ?e nce. as a trusted leader and interpreter
to serve private purposes in increasing °f society to itself. Mr. Brownell con-
volume masquerades as news. The arti- firms behef in the menace of those tend"
icle in the November issue of the North enJles; . ... . . .

American Review, which evoked his dis- * Modern civilization has become too vast
cussion, thus foreshadowed his explana- and complicated for many newspaper or-
tion of the sway of publicity: gamzations. Only the greatest news-

_t .„ . . , papers can afford to cover it adequately

The press agent will say, perhaps with or expertly. And too often their cir-
S -rlhU thUgn probably, n° edjtor will 25 culadon j amo thQSe wh d . h

admit it, that the newspaper has made him a , n. „ . 1 •• -u j c

necessity by failure of enterprise, by neglect least, care to have it thus covered. So
to exploit really important matters outside whole fields are left to the publicity man
of the day's concrete happenings, by an un- and doubtless will be left to the publicity
fair attitude toward business enterprises, man until the newspapers, either singly
and by teaching public speakers that, no mat- 30 or by associated effort, send out larger
ter how much worth while what they have staffs of men and women highly trained
to say may be, it will receive scant attention to deal of their own initiative with these
unless it is handed out in typewritten slips. complicated matters. A beginning of

Mr. Brownell goes further than this such independent news investigation has
and pictures the newspapers not only as 35 been made in the field of science,
failing to get for themselves what he The methods and aims of news-gather-

calls 'news of construction' and stupidly ing today leave much to be desired, and
or perversely bungling such news when the conditions that promote such mis-
it comes their way, but also as forcing representation as Mr. Brownell describes
the 'publicity specialist' of a great rail- 40 and that he says the writer would not have
road man to resort to tricks worthy of changed, far from being left unchanged,
a mere press agent seeking some free should be radically reformed. But the
advertising, in order to circulate that 'search for and preparation of real news/
financier's views at a moment when the supplementing the chronicle of the rou-
President of the United States himself 45 tine and the sensational, which Mr.
was giving them attention. Brownell points to as the function of the

It is doubtful if this defense of public- publicity man, ought to be so carried on
ity will tend to endear the publicity man by the newspaper itself that there would
to the editor. If Mr. Brownell's anec- be no need to depend on the self-inter-
dotes were to be accepted as typical either 5o est of publicity seekers for the due en-
of the newspaper's sense of real news lightenment of society. And as for that
and attitude toward it, or of the methods 'good' news that is too retiring to meet
of the high-class corporation publicity the reporter unchaperoned by the press
man, whom he is so careful to differenti- agent, it is too good to be true,
ate from the old-time press agent, famous 55 While the tendency of newspapers to
for disguising private schemes as public make themselves the retailers of ready-
news, then, indeed, a critic might think made news and opinions is easily ex-
there was little to do but pass judgment plained, while the publicity man does an

256 WRITING OF TODAY

otherwise undone work, the fact remains aware of the danger that this sort of
that the all-important function of a news- thing will speedily lead to very few homes,
paper is to report the world as it sees and those not good ones, and almost no
it, and not as some party in interest wishes children at all.

it to be seen. The publicity expert may, 5 'This sort of thing,' I say. Every one
indeed, have an enduring place. He may who can read knows what I mean. I
tell corporations how to conduct them- mean just what we have been witnessing
selves so as to deserve public confidence; between girls and boys of seventeen to
he may help their managers to speak so twenty-five: reckless speech, unchap-
as to catch the public ear; but he should I0 eroned parties of the wildest freedom,
never be permitted to put his story, writ- smoking, the 'hip-pocket flask' at after-
ten from the point of view of a private noon and evening dances, the demand for
interest, into a newspaper in the guise incessant extravagant amusement, and
of its report as an independent instrument the wearing of immodest dress,
of public intelligence. When that is per- l5 We all know the stories, and distracted
mitted the newspaper surrenders itself to mothers write me new ones in every mail ;
propaganda and invites loss of faith. fr0m Wichita and Sioux Falls, and Paris,

Me., and Galveston, Tex. There seems to
be no end to the gaspin0 and the shocks.
VII 20 And there seem to be no noticeable geo-

graphical limits to the contagion. Truly, it
IS THE GIRL OF TO-DAY AS was in the biggest city that a debutante
BAD AS SHE IS PAINTED? with a boy friend, last Winter, rented a

'INDEED SHE IS !' small furnished apartment down-town,

25 and entertained their friends there in
KATHLEEN NORRIS what I believe to be a perfectly innocent

manner, with lunches, teas, and early

[Pictorial Review, January, 1922. By permission.] dinnerSj entirely without the knowledge of

Be it therefore their elders. The little girl was always

Resolved : That the modern young 30 home at night, and for the rest, her
woman in America is frivolous and im- mother said easily, she was always 'with
moral beyond all bounds, and beyond her own crowd.' This was in New York ;
anything ever known in the history of but it was in a small Western town that
girlhood; that she drinks, smokes, and the story of the abandonment of stays
flirts to excess, and that her dress and 35 at dances started, and it was from a Ken-
her manner of dancing are entirely im- tucky city that a woman wrote me that
proper; and be it further h«r son's little group, children of the

Resolved: That because of these nicest families in town,' called their small
things she is absolutely unfitting herself dancing club The Twin Beds Club. A
for wifehood and motherhood, and there- 40 conservative Boston gentleman reproached
by jeopardizing the safety and the con- his wife in my hearing with their
tinuance of the race. daughter's intoxication at her coming-out

That is about the' way that press and tea, and to my own knowledge a Califor-
people, old ladies in porch-rockers, men nia debutante found herself, on the morn-
in clubs, and preachers from their pul- # ing after her imposing presentation ball,
pits have summarized the situation. More with several boy friends at a country
has been said and written about the rising hotel.

generation, and more agitatedly and des- So that the thing seems wide-spread,

pairinglv said and written, than of any and of no particular group or place. And
other rising generation that ever danced 5° that it is a very real danger, and a very
and flirted. real reproach upon ourselves as parents

The thing has become a universal and a and guardians, we are all bound to admit,
public scandal; and we are beginning to The girlhood of a nation, its purity, san-
see in it a real national menace. For if ity, and self-control, are one of that na-
ever a nation needed good wives and good 55 tion's most valuable assets, and nothing
mothers, and good homes and good chil- can replace that girlhood misdirected and
dren. this nation does at this moment, despoiled,
and we are becoming more and more If our young persons are indulging in

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 257

all sorts of excesses now that will make her nursery, and what is fine in music,
quiet home life and parenthood distaste- literature, and home-making, he would
ful and almost impossible to them — and characterize her as an 'egg.'
there seems to be no doubt that they are At a debutante dance a few months ago

— then we older persons should rise as 5 I asked a young girl why one of the young
at a call to war and bend all our energies men was dancing with a two-dollar bill
toward a cure. rather conspicuously displayed in his

The old soothing platitudes, that this hand,
is just youth, and that they must have 'Because he wants somebody to cut in

their fling, and that there is a great deal 10 and dance with that girl — she's an egg !'
of smoke for a very little fire, do not was the innocent reply,
apply here. They are routed by the The 'egg' happened to be the daughter

facts; that home life has grown increas- of the hostess, but that is perhaps an ir-
ingly difficult and thankless, that chil- relevant detail.

dren have grown fewer and fewer, and 15 Now, let us ask ourselves as older, if
that the modern standard of extravagant not much wiser, men and women, what
hospitality — motor-cars, dances, card- the result will probably be when the mod-
games, manicure, hair-dresser, and a ern girl, after three or four years of
thousand other luxuries — ruins a girl's incessant dashing about in expensive cars,
simplicity before she is married at all, 20 drinking, dancing, flirting to the danger-
makes the thought of a child, or of chil- point, dressing expensively, strewing
dren, utterly unwelcome, and goes far to money casually about among manicures
wreck her marriage almost before it has and beauty specialists, making what
begun. friends she chooses, and in every particu-

We all know — we older people — that 25 lar of manners and morals being a law
marriage is a serious business. It is a unto herself — let us ask ourselves what
problem that takes everything we have her marriage must be.
of temperance, self-control, patience, and -. Of any marriage, the first six months
strength. There are times, even in the is not important, to the world, at least,
happiest marriage, when silence, gen- 30 There is everything to make it pleasant,
tleness, self-denial, and resolute courage the new name, the new house, the new
must be forth-coming, or the whole gal- dignity. The bride and groom entertain
lant little vessel goes on the rocks, and all their less blissful friends, and the car
one more tragedy is added to a world too and the dancing and the general excite-
full of tragedies now. 35 ment continue unabated.

Where is the modern girl to learn But then the real problems begin,

silence, gentleness, self-denial, and pa- Perhaps a too indulgent father stops the
tience? Her days are merely a feverish allowance; perhaps patient tradespeople
round of pleasure-seeking. If a man is begin to hint at more regular settlements;
shabbily dressed, and has no motor-car, 40 perhaps the girl wants a fur coat at the
and does not dance well, he simply does very moment that the boy wants to join
not exist for her. She bases her friend- a new club.

ship on material things; she is 'crazy' < Both are going, drinking, eating, danc-
about the new young man because he is a ing, talking, and laughing almost to the
'perfect sport,' he drives a stunning car, 45 point of insanity. The telephone is al-
he apparently has 'tons' of money. He ways ringing, the crowd is always ar-
knows everybody, movie stars, and the riving; it is time to eat and they are
amateur tennis and golf champions, and dancing as well as eating; it is time to
the head waiters at the big hotels. rest and their engagements and appoint-

What more could any woman ask in a 50 ments are three deep ; it is time to sleep
husband? If a real man walked into her and for them the night is just beginning,
presence — a man who was to be the Human nerves and bodies will not stand

Abraham Lincoln, or the big scientist, the strain; presently the boy is telling a
or the great writer of ten years hence, lawyer his story, and he is not to blame,
she would look upon him with horrified 55 And the girl ^ is telling another lawyer
contempt. And if her rich young man, hers, and she is not to blame,
her golf-player and dancer, really met a 'And goodness knows/ we fathers and

fine and good and simple woman, whose , mothers say plaintively, 'that we are not
interest in life was to be her husband, and to blame !'

258 WRITING OF TODAY

So we find ourselves turning into a prefer their friends to their family, when
nation of failures, unhappy marriages, they slip away day after day and evening
and empty nurseries on all sides ; we after evening to their unwholesome pleas-
know no more quiet, contented women ures, and when nothing plain, nothing
whose holidays are all the more wonder- 5 normal and moderate, suffices to amuse
ful for being rare, whose interests are them. A picnic with the younger chil-
tenderly bound up in the interests of the dren — a dinner with Grandma and Uncle
little lives about them, and whose homes Tom — a theater party with the family —
are centers from which radiate all the oh, Heaven forbid ! Their own mad little
homely, wholesome, essential virtues that 10 group, with its bobbed heads and its ab-
are the real bulwark of a great nation. breviated skirts, its cocktails and ciga-

It is all lost — the delight of simple liv- rettes, its racy stories and racier trips, is
ing, the sunny gardens with small rom- waiting — what can we possibly offer as a
pers staggering about them, the planned counter-attraction?

hospitalities that are so much sweeter l5 We are too late. But our time came,
than all the shrieking, crowding motor- and went, ten years ago, when the debu-
trips that ever tore through a Summer tante of today was a stupid little girl of
night. nine; when she was troubled over her

The chase for pleasure and distraction arithmetic, when she longed for mother's
and amusement grows madder year after 20 society, and cried because she was not
year, and the secret of real happiness included on the Sunday motor-trip. How
remains just where it was before, hidden easily she could have been influenced
away in the miracle of seven words, then — how easily she could have been
'Whoso loses his life shall gain it.' built into the structure of the family life,

Two generations ago the question used *5 always to take her standards and her
to be, 'What are they going to name it ?' ideals from mother and dad !
To-day the question— and one may ask it They manage these things better in

of almost every young married pair one England, and in Europe. There is a
knows— is, 'I hear that there is trouble social background there for the growing
there ?' 30 girl. She is only a part of a great, well-

I say 'two generations ago,' because rooted structure; her parents' friends,
this new national trouble of ours, this flat her grandmother's friends, form a ram-
refusal of our young women and men part about her jjer life is a part of their
to grow into rational, self-respecting, lives; she can not tear }t away an(j iive
home-making, and family-raising citizens, 35 lt as a separate thing. The men she
is no mushroom growth. knows at twenty she knew at three years ;

We are to blame, almost entirely to dinners are delightful meetings of per-
blame, we of the generation that raised SQns of aU evening parties have

them and made their world what it is for d d onl as a sort of side-issue,
them to grow in We «e the onw who 40 ^ ^ somebody asks the boy

have hedged about home-making and the Louise is / somebody else

raising of children with endless diffi- - . he id . a general converse

culties and absurdities, and who have JjuJT

mmmwmm

Where there is money we follow her daughter by too radical a restriction.
blindly. We do not shut our doors to 50 Dare- ! There is nothing a good Eng-
the fabulously wealthy man because he £h mother would not dare if she saw
is not also a decent man. We do not sell the need Behind her are a thousand
our motor-car because the doctor's bill years of devoted and self-sacrificing
has been a year unpaid, or wear the 1918 mothers, a thousand years of good homes,
coat iust because it is still warm and 55 where childhood is loved and welcomed.
wriole and where truth and honor are built into

They break our hearts now, these dear little characters while bread and milk are
and lovely and precious girls, when they built into their little bodies. The girl

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 259

who would risk the loss of such a home hands. We are all descendants of pio-
knows well that she risks everything else neers; from one European country or
in life too — friends, self-respect, and another our forefathers had the courage
future. And that is the power of such to set forth into the unknown, hoping for
un environment. 5 better things than they could find at home.,

We had such homes once, in America. for their children, and their children's
And we can have them again, even children. Ours is as great and as rich a
though the spacious old Virginia and nation, if not the richest and the greatest,
Massachusetts mansions, under their elms, in all the world ; it is the youngest nation,
are gone forever, and the old ways of 10 the most cosmopolitan in its composition,
spinning and baking, leisurely ambling We must still be pioneers, and as we have
behind the family bays, and weekly led the world in great movements, we
gathering in the family pew, are gone must lead it in this. We must devise some
forever, with them. system of so educating, and so employing,

But they must be made for our young 15 and so inspiring our national girlhood as
people before they can be made by them. to turn it naturally and simply from what
And even without being too violent in our is wasteful and debasing and dangerous,
innovations we can take tremendous steps If their schooling has been defective, then
toward them; in time perhaps to help it must be changed; if they are too idle,
even this generation. 20 then we must find them avenues for self-

We can try to make home the one place expression,
in the world where our girls really love But immodesty, intemperance, impurity

to be. of speech and dress, and coarseness and

We can weed out of our own lives all familiarity where the sacred things of
the extravagances and superfluities that «5 life are concerned, bring them no happi-
are keeping us from being real women, neSs now, and jeopardize their chance of
fit to guide real girls. _ < ever finding real happiness in the future.

We can at least prohibit liquor, with its And we might better put out their eyes,
accompanying law-breaking, from our and iet them face life with merely a
own homes, so that the eighteen-year-old 30 physical handicap than allow this sort of
may never retort to an admonition, 'Well, thing to go — as it must by its very nature
you do it!' go — from bad to worse.

We can study the changing conditions Only— don't blame the girls. It was a

of American life, the domestic service hundred years ago that Wordsworth
problem, the rent problem, the dress prob- 35 wrote :
lem, and perhaps find, in our superior

wisdom and experience, various simpler O Friend! I know not which way I must
and more economical ways of handling look

them. For comfort, being, as I am, oppressed,

We can learn ourselves, perhaps, to 40 To think that now our life is only

think less of money, of big motor-cars „ , dressed

a o- + :~o It ^:„i i„rt,;+;nn nnA For show; mean handy-work of craftsman,

and expensive trips, of social position and cook

empty display, and to think more of what 0r gr00m!— We must run glittering like a

is real; of the quiet holiness and happi- brook

ness of married life, and of the exquisite 45 In the open sunshine, or we are unblest:

miracle of babyhood. Over these two The wealthiest man among us is the

things, even in the plainest setting, there best:

lies a glory that makes the most spectacu- No grandeur now in nature or in book

lar of yachting trips— the most sensational Dellg!jts us. Rapine, avarice, expense,

of fancy-dress balls, seem what it is, a 50 This is idolatry; and these we adore:

u * • 1 4.4. L 4. 4-u «->-**»* Plain living and high thinking are no

mere hysterical attempt, on the part of more:

stupid people, to convince themselves The homely beauty of the good old cause

that they are having a glorious time. ts gone; our peace) our fearful innocence,

What we can not do is to continue to And pure religion breathing household

sit back and do nothing except wring our 55 laws.

2<5o WRITING OF TODAY

circumstance, but the young girl's mother

VIII powders, paints, and works the 'lip-stick.

I have no doubt that she would also boh

IS THE GIRL OF TODAY AS her hair if she had enough of it to bob

BAD AS SHE'S PAINTED? 5 Of course, the young girl should set hei

'I SHOULD SAY NOT!' mother a better example, but since this

is such a reversion of the relation between

CORRA HARRIS mother and daughter, probably she hai

r„., ., D . T w , never realized that this was her duty

[Ptctarua Revtew, January, i9a* By permission.] ^ she ^ foUowed her mother>s example

I shall not begin this defense of the as usual,
young girl by attempting to justify her And while I may be breaking a sacrec

manners, morals, or dress ; but my purpose confidence which was never given me, il
is to offer an explanation of her develop- is a secretly notorious fact that young
ment, to place the blame where it belongs, 15 men have become addicted to the pink-
and to suggest the only possible means paste pots which enhance the complexion
by which she may be recovered and re- They have degenerated to the practice oi
stored to her friends and family. feminine arts upon their faces. It is dis-

Not all the charges against her are gusting. One wonders what form oi
suitable for polite discussion. This is 20 decadence they represent. But one know*
true of most people if they only knew it. why the girls rouge. They do because
We may defend ourselves against robbers 'everybody does/ including their mother*
and assassins, but there is no possible and their beaus. If these silly vanities
defense against the evil mind which fre- are to be charged against those who prac-
quently exists in the most respectable 25 tice them, why single out the young girl
men and women. The young girl has who is the least guilty, and omit the
become the object of this kind of gossip mothers and the men?
and inquisition. Out of respect for her, By far the greater number of com-

and a profound compassion, this writer plainants against the modern young gir
will endeavor to keep on the side of this 30 are men. I can not believe in view of the
discussion nearest propriety and decency, example they set her that their argu-
even if she fails to mention all the accusa- ments against her and their strictly virtu-
tions promulgated against the young girl. ous horror of her conduct are inspired b)
A lot of our best people live and die with- the subliminal uprush of their own mora
out having their faults published in the 35 natures. My shrewd suspicion is that il
Sunday papers. is all due to an occult masculine selfish-

One of the lighter indictments is that ness. Potentially speaking, they own ro-
she has made a mockery of her maiden mantic stock in these wayward maidens
countenance. She bobs her hair, picks They resent the damaging of this stock
her brows, powders excessively, rouges 40 If it were not so distressing for the girh
still more excessively, uses a 'lip-stick/ it would be funny when one considers
and perfumes the palms of her hands. that they are only trying to attract ant

Personally, I do not think it is morally please the men. And it is evident thai
wrong to bob one's hair. All men do it. they have the right 'dope,' because the)
I do not think so even if certain business 45 do attract more attention from men thar
firms refuse to employ girls with bobbed ever before.

hair, claiming that this brevity of the hair The trouble is that it is a sort of uni-

indicates a frivolous mind. Maybe so. versal attraction, not complimentary bul
But even so, it certainly is hypocritical ardent. What a man wants is for a gir
to refuse her a position behind the per- 50 to please him, not every man. He is
fumery, cosmetics, and curling-tongs jealous.

counter because she uses the goods ad- I have always wondered why men were

vertised and sold there. considered reasonable and why women

The trouble is that we concede hypoc- were regarded as unreasonable when the
risy as one of the legitimate methods in 55 whole history of their relationship to eacr
this very business which flourishes upon other proves the contrary. Men are in-
the decadent vanities of girls. variably most strongly attracted to womer

This is not recorded as an extenuating . these days by the very qualities, fashions,

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 261

and vanities which they condemn in were planned and produced by modistes
women. Meanwhile the modern girl has without the knowledge of the young girl,
discovered what attracts men and she or her approval. Not that she is not
makes herself the image of that, regard- game to approve and wear anything
less of his purely ethical views. She is 5 offered. She is. They are daring. — My
astoundingly rational about this. Her dear brethren and sisters, the modern girl
logic is what makes her capable and un- will not take a dare ! — Later she and her
scrupulous. She knows what he wants equally modern mother go down-town to
and she does not care the snap of her buy a frock. They purchase half a frock
fingers what he thinks. This is the view 10 because no whole ones were being shown
taken by the demi-monde, as are the fash- this season.

ions of the clothes she wears and the It is easy to understand why the girls

'toddles' she dances. But who introduced buy these things. They are young, con-
the ideals of the demi-monde to this young ventional. They naturally wish to look
girl? By nature she is the most deli- 15 at least as smartly dressed as possible,
cate, sensitive, and modest being born into And they know how much more interested
this world. men are in this kind of clothes than they

Somebody is responsible. Not long have ever been. This is reason enough
since a prominent society woman in a in all conscience, and even without con-
certain city overheard her daughter re- 20 science, to account for the way the mod-
fuse to accept the escort of a young man ern girl dresses,
for a dance. What I can not understand is this. If a

'Why did you decline to go with him?' dairyman sells polluted milk or skimmed
she asked. milk in a city, there is a great hue

'Because he is rude ; he is familiar. 25 and cry. He is stealing the substance of
He puts his hands on me,' the girl re- life from children ; he is killing the
plied. babies. He is prosecuted. He may be

'Other girls stand it. Are you any bet- mobbed. But when was any one prose-
ter than they are?' was this mother's re- cuted for selling garments to women de-
tort. 30 liberately planned to destroy modesty,

Two strangely eccentric parents at a decency, and virtue? It is not done,
fashionable resort this Summer exercised Yet the crime committed is a worse
a mild supervision of their young daugh- crime.

ter, a lovely and attractive girl. They We can offer no excuse for the ex-

would not permit her to attend public 35 hibition the young girl makes of her legs,
dances where the 'toddle' and the 'Chicago' Still, some good may come from the ex-
were the favorite numbers. The old and posure. For one thing it may cure men
middle-aged women in that hotel were in- of a senseless curiosity they have always
dignant to a man. They were sorry for sneakingly indulged about these members
this poor young girl. They were merci- 40 of the feminine body. But you must
less in the criticism of her parents. hand it to the young girl. Nothing in
They represented what we call the 'cream this turgid situation so nearly approaches
of society' in several States. And they comedy as the horror with which all man-
were the propagandists of conditions kind has thrown up its hands at the sud-
which make young girls what they are. 45 den revelation girls have made of these

The charge is made that the young girl stems of their being without the slightest
dresses immodestly. Her frocks are cut concern for every man's outraged sense
too low at the top and too brief at the of propriety. It is not she who is con-
bottom. She wears no corsets, rolls her scious of them, I am firmly convinced,
stockings and shows her knees when she 50 but these men. They have been suddenly
pleases. deprived of their curiosity. It is a singu-

This is the truth. She does all these lar but very real loss. Consider how
things. So does her mother. If you are many ages women have been worried
a decent person, it is very sad. If you and nobbled in the effort to keep their very
have the sensitively immoral mind, it is 55 ankles a secret. I hope all prudes will
positively shocking, and gives you some- forgive me, but I can not help thinking
thing deliciously scandalous to talk about. that these candidly confessed legs are the

But who designs these fashions? They pentameters of poetic justice, so to speak..

262 WRITING OF TODAY

As for rolling her stockings, she has dinners to dances. She smokes, she
simply revived the custom of her lady drinks, and she 'vamps.' Her manners are
grandmother, who always did. This bad, her conversation bold, and she is
writer lives in a remote mountain com- never ashamed of herself nor anything
munity where manners and customs have 5 else.

not changed for fifty years. One week The chief reason why I am inclined to

ago, on the Lord's Day, I saw a very good believe she is guilty of cheating, swin-
woman, forty years old, and a member of dling, and disorderly conduct generally is
the primitive Baptist Church, descend that men are mortally afraid of the young
from her buggy in front of this church 10 girl. They distrust her as formerly
door. As she did so she revealed a stout, young girls were warned not to trust
durable leg with the stocking rolled six men. They spend extravagantly to win
inches below the knee. No one in this her favor and suffer anguish because they
county would question that woman's ex- do not know how many other young men
ceedingly stern sense of propriety nor her 15 are doing the same thing. If she seems
right to roll her stockings. It distresses to care for one of them, he is on guard
me almost as much as it does any man to at once. He dares not believe that she
see a girl with her hose rolled, but I am loves him. He fears she is 'stringing1
bound to admit that she has the best him.
authority for doing it. 20 In the old days there was about one

The difference, of course, is in the coquette to a town of five thousand, not
length and width of her skirt as compared assigned, but developed. A sort of gen-
with that of her grandmother's. ius, she was, for winning lovers. Now

When we who are now middle-aged nearly every young girl in a town of this
women were girls, mothers, men, *5 size on up to cities of any size is a 'vamp,'
preachers, and doctors were teetotally or practising to become one.
against the idea of our wearing corsets. I am not sure what a 'vamp' is. I have

I remember the first one I ever had was asked a number of young men, and they
stolen from a young lady aunt. I put invariably become heated, indignant, and
the thing on and wore it to school. But 30 incoherent. The dictionary gives this
it was so much too long for my pudgy definition, 'Something added to give an
little-girl waist that I could not sit down old thing a new appearance.' I suppose
in it. I was obliged to slip out of the the coquette is the old thing to which the
schoolroom, crawl under the Presbyterian powers and charms of the 'vamp' have
church which was adjacent, and take it 35 been added. It is a fearful combination,
off after a fearful struggle. Probably But I call your attention to the strength

the steel ribs of it are there yet just be- of this young girl's character. I do not
low the floor of the pulpit. say what kind of character it is ; I merely

Now the young girl has discarded the contend that it is an invincibly strong
corset, and all modern society professes 40 one. She has overruled the authority of
to be shocked. A good many of us are. her parents, she has remodeled society
She did not take the thing off for reasons without regard for what is good for soci-
of health or wider respiration. The ety, and now she is striding barelegged
reason most frequently assigned is that through this civilization with her nose in
men prefer to dance with a girl when she 45 the air as indifferent to her reputation as
does not wear one. Not only that, but the average young man has always been
they call her 'Iron sides' if she does, and to his reputation. She has accomplished
they will not dance with her. This is this scandalous emancipation without
not a moral reason, but it is a natural one. propaganda or 'leagues' or petitions to
Girls want partners at a dance, and 50 Legislatures for her rights. She is the
lovers, and husbands because they have smartest thing this nation has ever pro-
never had husbands, so they do the best duced and the least fearful of the con-
they can to please these possible partners, sequences. She is the object of univcr-
lovers, and prognosticated husbands. sal criticism.

The crowning accusation brought 5s Literally no one approves of her.
against her is that she is extravagant, does she blench, blush, or repent? She
that she is a 'dead-beat,' using her wits does not. She appears to have reached
and charms to get what she wants from the conclusion that modesty and innocence

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 263

are unprofitable assets, and that the price where their daughters are at all times.'
paid in restrictions for a good reputation They might as well have urged that
comes too high. This is astounding when parents know where their sons are at all
you consider how many ages women have times. This is where the trouble really
been the timid slaves of public opinion. 5 began. Parents have failed to keep in
The slightest breath of scandal was fatal. touch with their sons. These young men
They spent their whole lives preserving have formed strange tastes in manners,
their neatly bleached reputations. This morals, love, and marriage. The young
was necessary because without a proper girls simply conform to the doubtful types
reputation neither girl nor woman was 10 they demand and marry them. They
acceptable socially, and no self-respecting have less difficulty getting married than
man would marry her. Now all that is any generation of girls we have ever pro-
changed. Men are not so particular. duced.

And society is very liberal. It must be, Always in every age and in every con-

to exist at all with such material for its x5 dition of society, the quality and charac-
foundations. ter of women are determined by men.

This is the explanation of the young When they have demanded chastity, mod-
girl of today. She cheats in love as a esty, and dignity of women, women have
man might cheat at cards because she has been chaste, modest, delicately clean in
discovered the modern man. She is his 20 mind and spirit. They have been truly
comrade and his mate. She is not modest and ineffably good. Now they make no
because he despises a prude. She drinks such demands. They are more masculine,
because she is a 'good fellow' and because less moral. They marry fast girls faster
she likes to show off. She gets publicity than they do good girls. The latter are
that way. — Publicity or death is one of 25 too tame. They do not appeal to the
the mottoes of American life. — It is not jaded romanticism of modern men. Be-
peculiar to the young girl. Too much sides, there is always the divorce court,
attention is paid to her. She should be They both know that; keep it like a card
stricken from the printed page, especially up their sleeves at the very altar where
the society page, for a year. This would 30 they swear their marriage vows. And
go far toward sobering her. after the divorce they both return to the

The American parents abdicated long game. Recently this comment was made
ago. They no longer control their sons upon a man whose wife had just divorced
or daughters. They only bring them up, him, and who was immediately the avowed
produce them, you may say. 35 lover of a young girl, 'Well, he did very

Recently a committee of physicians well by his wife. She had no difficulty
called on a committee of mothers in a cer- about alimony. He provided handsomely
tain city. They gave information and for her.' This was the feather in his cap,
urged that these mothers look more care- gave him a sort of strut as a lover thus
fully after the health and character of 40 recommended for his second courtship
their daughters. The mothers were very and marriage. On the other hand, the
dignified. They washed their hands of young divorcee is invariably more popu-
these girls. They said it was the times lar than the young girl. She has more
and modern ways, and that they were partners in the dance, and quicker lovers,
helpless. Indeed they are. When you 45 So long as men place the premiums they
are going the same gait your wayward do upon the faults and perversities of the
daughter goes you may be her rival but young girl, she is not likely to improve her
not her mentor nor her confidante. manners or morals. I do not know what

No special session of a Legislature has will become of her, but every thoughtful
been called yet to consider the problem of 5° person must know that she is the victim,
the young girl, because Legislatures make not the criminal. She may be more or less
laws; they can not make characters. But abandoned, but she was abandoned first,
two weeks ago the Grand Jury of a cer- And I stick to it, she is intelligent, she is
tain suburban county met. Among other game, and she has a stronger character
presentments in the report they made 55 than her mother or her lovers. As for
there was a paragraph which begins with her father, he dares not show his dimiij-
this sentence, 'We urge that parents know ished head.

264 WRITING OF TODAY

process now popularly rendered 'to doll

IX UP-'

It is idle to question the women as to

T^-k \\Tr\-K/rTr^i nnr-cc -rr\ their purposes. We have to deal with the

m SfSI 5 real ™aS°"- With "1C b3Sic CaUSe' "0t With

rLHAblL m£.N . YH,b explanations offered by these much-

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN adorned ladies Little reck they of biolog-

. '__ „ , , , ical laws. They may modestly repudiate

[Century Magazine, March, ,9«. By perrmss.on.] and honestly Qr angrily deny any conscious

A pile-driver, having thoroughly per- 10 effort to attract. They may lay the blame
formed its task, would be no more sur- or the praise for their garniture on a var-
prised to see a battered, submerged vie- iety of immediate pressures, as, for in-
tim pop lightly up again than was I to stance, that 'it is so hard to get nice shoes
note the reappearance of a long-buried without high heels;' but that does not
fallacy in a recent article in The Cen- 15 touch the underlying fact that those in-
ury Magazine. adequate curvilinear supports for the

To doubt a dogma, a doctrine, a mir- human frame are designed in obedience
acle, is bravely praiseworthy, but what to man's admiration for a 'feminine foot.'
shall be the meed of him who doubts a The hoof of a mare is 'feminine,' the

natural law? 20 paw of a lioness is 'feminine,' yet in ef-

That women dress to please men is so ficacy they are as good as male ones. Our
obvious, so conspicuously visible, so 'feminine' foot is so ostentatiously decor-
plainly recognized by the man in the ative that it can neither stand, walk, nor
street, that one wonders at any linger- run as well as if it were shod like a
ing doubt of it. Yet this most patent 25 human foot instead of a female one.
fact is airily denied by a no less author- The excessive and conspicuous sex ap-

ity than Alexander Black. peal of women's shoes may be submitted

To one who has shown, taught, re- to by individual wearers for a variety of
iterated, and proved through an argu- reasons, but its cause is the approval of
mentative lifetime that women do, this 30 men for the ultra-feminine, for something
buoyant assumption that they do not smaller, feebler, more slenderly curved
dress to please men seems unbelievable; than what they consider 'masculine.'
yet there it is. Do not look for direct Of the five main reasons for wearing

assertion, — that is not this graceful clothes, protection, warmth, modesty,
writer's way, — but the heresy is there 35 decoration and symbolism, it is the last
none the less, thus set forth: two we are here considering. The other

three apply to both sexes, and that 'solely'

It is not alone the failure in man's must not serve as a way of escape by
sense of humor that induces him to think referring to them.

she is dressing solely for him. That i° The 'dress' of women, as here used,
blunder has a remoter explanation. refers to the sharp distinction between us

and other creatures which shows the

A blunder, is it? The pile-driver be- human female as the only one carrying
gins again. that excess of ornament known as 'sex

To clamp the victim firmly, we must re- 4$ decoration.' In other species, where some
move that qualifying 'solely,' his only added splendor appears beyond the racial
excuse for wabbling. No one could as- beauty common to both, it is seen upon the
sert that Eskimo ladies wear furs 'solely' male. To him belong the lordly crest, the
to please men, unless in the strained sense bulbous wattles, the floating plumes, the
that it would not please them to have all 5° spreading tail, the gorgeous hues,
their women frozen to death. Furs are And all this beauty or would-be beauty

worn by arctic savages for two compelling — for sometimes his blue-painted callost-
reasons: one that they must be warmly ties miss the mark as widely as do the
clothed or die; the other, that the skins corpse-white noses of our women — does
of beasts are the only fabric available. 55 serve to please the female. Whether de-
No, the verb 'to dress,' in this discussion, veloped by her conscious selection or not,
does not mean wearing clothes, but the it is patently used by her strutting suitor

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 265

to attract her attention and to win her needs, deliberately set themselves to please
favor. men, making full use of dress. Even the

So with the human male, in so far as a wife, desiring to win some special indnl-
ruthless economic pressure leaves him any- gence from her husband, not only pro-
thing which can be called decoration, such 5 vides the dinner he likes best, but wears
as gay cravats and richly harmonious the dress he likes best, if she has one.
socks, his demand for these adornments Kipling, surely a most masculine type,

appears with a rush when first he seeks freely acknowledges this motive, as in
to please the other sex and continues long- his story 'Three and an Extra.' It starts
est in those individual men or classes with 10 with a Punjabi proverb. 'When halter
whom pleasing women is a permanent and heelropes are slipped, do not give
interest. chase with sticks, but with grain.' He

Observe the hasty adornments of a underlines grain. The woman whose
group of cow-boys when ladies, especially husband neglected her and was 'annexed'
unattached young ladies, arrive at the 15 by Mrs. Hauksbee took heart of grace
ranch. Note even in the tedious reiter- and 'spent a week designing' a costume
ance of habits in 'the movies' the demeanor that the author thus feelingly describes :
of the young man when 'she' is about to Tt was a gorgeous dress — slight mourn-
appear. In the adjustment of coat and ing. I can't describe it, but it was what
waist-coat, the settling of collar and tie, 20 The Queen calls 'a creation' — a thing that
he seeks to please through his attire. hit you right between the eyes and made

We have here an overwhelming mass you gasp.'
of evidence that 'dress' in this sense of She wore it to a party to which he had

extra-decoration is used to attract the taken Mrs. Hauksbee. It worked. 'The
other sex by .all males. If women, the 25 men crowded round her for dances,' her
only females so empowered, use it for husband stared at her from doorways,
other purposes, the burden of proof is on 'and the more he stared the more taken
them. was he.' Mrs. Bremmil recovered her

The reason that the female of the human stray with that one dress,
species is saddled with this extra burden, 30 Another line of evidence is found among
in addition to her human activities and the earlier authors who lectured women on
large demands of motherhood, is clear their duties, frequently rebuking them for
enough. Other females have no need for a laxity, even slovenliness, of dress after
the male except as a mate and co-parent, marriage. It was all too evident that
but we women need men as 'providers.' 35 these ladies took great pains to 'make
As was definitely stated in The Wizard their market,' as the phrase went, and
of Oz, 'even the fairest face must be fed.' quite naturally relaxed their efforts when

Painfully plain is the case a priori; but it was made. The obverse is familiar to
we must follow it among the many cor- us in the classic tale of the man who
roborative proofs a posteriori. If the lab- 40 was censured for not showing the same
oratory method could be employed, it gallant attentions to his wife that he had
would be finally convincing. This would to his sweetheart.

require the segregation of numbers of 'Why should I run for the car,' he

women of similar type and equal oppor- protested, 'after I have caught it?'
tunities, but cut off from men's society 45 Perhaps the clearest and least pleasing
altogether; and the comparison of their proof that women dress to please men is
dress with that of a group other- given by the class who do that for a liv-
wise identical, but allowed masculine so- ing, and who, to our shame, are responsi-
ciety. Failing such conclusive experiment, ble for many of our fashions. These,
we find some approximation to it in the 5o making a business of attraction, dress as
dress of women in an undermanned fascinatingly, as conspicuously, and as
summer resort during the week compared varyingly as they can, for man loves vari-
with their sudden efflorescence on Satur- ety. They cannot let up in their efforts to
day night, when the men arrive. please, as they never catch the car, but

Still more convincingly it appears when 55 must continually chase it.
mercenary mothers for the sake of their In direct opposition to this instance is

daughters, or other women for personal the character of clothing worn that is es'

266 WRITING OF TODAY

pecially intended not to attract. In the They are let alone. They are not
black-swathed women of the veiled East, danced with, not walked with, not in-
as in the garb of nuns or Shakers, we vited about. A man hates to be seen
find the same requirements — concealment, with a woman who is not, in his sense,
monotony, and lack of color. This surely 5 well dressed, smart, and conventional,
indicates that revealment, variety, and There must be something in the minds
bright hues are attractive. of those who can for an instant ques-
Men have always showed a critical in- tion so obvious a position. It is prob-
terest in the dress of women, which ap- ably this: they are considering not why
parently has as much power to displease i0 women dress, but why women think
as to please them. Their displeasure was they dress, which is quite a different
usually based on a too great attractive- thing. As a matter of dressing, the
ness. Greek, Roman, and Hebrew dis- human mind is past master in draping
course upon it ; we know the strictures of many graceful illusions over a biological
Isaiah and St. Paul. In the later days 15 fact ; but the fact remains,
there flows a constant stream of advice,
praise for the garments men admire, cen-
sure for those disliked. In 'Peter's Letters ,,
to His Kinsfolk,' published in Edinburgh -**•
about 1820, great objection was made to *> -.^ -lTr^,,T^-VT ^^^^^ —^
the 'short waist' and to what Peter calls DO WOMEN DRESS TO
'the truly Spartan exposure of. the leg.' PLEASE MEN ?— NO
This he declares 'is, in my judgment, the

most unwise thing in the whole world; ALEXANDER BLACK

for any person can tell from the shape *5 [Cenfury Magaxine> March> IQ22 Reprinted in

Of the IOOt and ankle, Whether the limb a collection of essays by Alexander Black entitled

be or be not handsome; and what more B^pefmlstJnj"5 (Harper & Brothers» copyright),
would the ladies have?'

'Moreover,' he continues with increasing An eminent sociologist might be pre-

acerbity, claiming that while there may 30 sumed to speak with authority, and when,
be difference of opinion as to beauty in a matter concerning women, the emin-
of face, there can be none as to beauty of ent sociologist happens to be a woman
form, which is clearly established in and one of the world's foremost expo-
picture and statue, 'the fashion has not nents of the feminine side, no man who
been allowed to attain its ascendancy 35 retorts can avoid a sense of hazard. Even
without evident detriment to the interests a man arrogant enough to feel the en-
of the majority; for I have never yet tomologist who knew all that it was pos-
been in any place where there were not sible to know about ants without being an
more limbs that would gain by being con- ant must still be aware that the odds are
cealed than by being exposed.' 4° against him ; and I waste no time in deny-

Sensitive and critical are men to the ing any such arrogance,
dress of women, responding without analy- Yet it may be said that the entomolo-

sis, and often criticizing unwisely, yet al- gist knew some things about ants which
ways affected by it. A man will often in- the ants did not know about themselves,
tellectually condemn some feminine habit 45 I need not proceed to expand this point,
of dress, yet succumb to its influence as though there is, I venture to think, much
promptly as if he liked it. of significance in it, and there would be

A further proof remains, patent and mere hypocrisy in ignoring the fact,
pathetic. Some women there are who, You will already have suspected me of
urged by personal convictions as to 5° believing that a possible way to know
beauty, health, or comfort, rebel against certain things about one sex is to belong
this masculine demand, and do not 'dress' to the other. I don't say that this sug-
in the decorative sense at all. For them gestion need be directly applicable to a
the reasonably comfortable shoe, low- question of dress; yet it may have a
heeled and broad of toe; the easy gar- 55 relationship.

ments, suited to their own demands. Then there is that complicated question

What happens to them? of instinct and motives. Few, if any, of

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 267

our acts or habits have a single causation, called 'the privileged detachment of a
and most of us are poor witnesses as to cultivated mind.'

our own motives. We have an instinct, I will concede, too, all of Mrs. Gilman's

and label it with a motive. Over a bunch biological deductions as to primitive
of these little motive labels we paste a 5 women. I take the risk of admitting any-
large label called a principle. The thing as to early women and early men,
instincts keep right on ignoring the labels, and that devices of sex attraction are no
and letting the labels do the talking. more obsolete than sex rivalry. But I

For this reason I cannot logically or cannot concede that because women
confidently quote the circumstance that 10 began decorating themselves to please
many women have assured me that women men they still decorate themselves wholly
do not dress to please men. Quite aside or even generally for that same simple
from the fact that a great many women reason. It will not do to rally the support
have assured me of things that are not so, of Havelock Ellis or any of the other
I must admit this other fact about human 15 scientists who assure us that such primi-
motives as advising a certain caution. tive complexes have long been super-
And it will be prudent to indicate in some seded. Mrs. Gilman has no awe for sci-
appropriate way that I did not acquire entists, especially when they chatter
the theory Mrs. Gilman criticizes by about women. Nevertheless, I venture
any admissions or protests of women 20 to suggest that there are various signs
themselves. If I were willing to accept plain to every one that the dress of
such testimony at face- (or figure-) value, women, like many another institutional
I might go on thinking that Mrs. Gilman function, has strayed far from its begin-
had been outvoted. For the moment I nings.

ignore the testimony. Denial not only 25 It is conceivable that the orthodox
does not remove suspicion, but often in- Jewish woman who dons a harsh wig
spires it. I could concede without a and tries to look old and settled after her
qualm that there are reasons why women, marriage, and the fashionable Christian
speaking to a man, might find it comfort- woman who tries after her marriage to
able and salutary to deny dressing to 30 look as unsettled and as young as possible,
please men. Looking at the matter are both willing to please men. Mrs.
calmly, or as near calmly as any man Gilman sees a relaxing of dress coquetries
may hope to look in such a tight place, I after marriage. Undoubtedly, the same
can see that denying motives of this sort abandonments appear in many men.
might arise from a sense of need to take 35 Courtship is a highly competitive game,
some of the conceit out of men. Even more competitive than it used to be, and
a clever concealment of one motive might artifices of dress are as common as arti-
gather excuse from the promptings of fices of conduct, on both sides of the
another so praiseworthy. house. But the proportion of women

On the other hand, Mrs. Gilman herself 40 who abandon pretty clothes after mar-
must have a motive. I am sure that her riage for any other reason than because
motive is to establish the truth. If the they can't get them, or haven't a chance
truth convicted men, I am sure, too* that to wear thein, is surely very small. There
she would not be unduly gratified. Since must be, also, some evidential weight in
it is possible that I also might be accused 45 the fact that the most extravagantly
of having a motive, I will concede at once decorative clothes are very often worn
that, in view of the history of feminine or- by women who have accomplished mar-
nament, some men might feel sharply hurt riage. These women might have sense
by proof that they were responsible for enough to know that pleasing men, and
the way women dress. Yet, if it were 5° particularly a man, is still good strategy,
permissible to argue, it would be only It will be a sad world when the pleasing
fair to point out that no amount of proof of one woman by one man and the pleas-
showing that most men are biased is ing of one man by one woman stops
really proof that I am. Though I never being instinctive or profitable. But the
could be free of suspicion, I might claim 55 signs go quite beyond that. An ex-
to have gained my knowledge while cessive splendor so often persists long
simply enjoying what Mr. Comrad has after domestic groaning begins, so often

268 WRITING OF TODAY

long after even bankruptcy sets in, that one dazzle women, and now find a more
would often have to eliminate the husband imperative reason for dressing well in
at least from the list of pleased men. the fact that it is good business, why
The notorious fact that husbands, not to may it not be assumed that women have
consider particularly the stingy ones, 5 found in the same function a far different
are as a class unobservant and unap- and a far wider expression than any
preciative of partner decoration, might primitive instinct could have prophesied?
not disprove the continued need for the Nothing is clearer than the primitive
coquetry. It certainly would not prove reason for daily labor, but who does not
that an art fails of effect even where its 10 know men who set out to get money with
technic is unobserved. And it has a which to live, and who long ago lost
tendency to imply that women are aware sense of anything but the money?
of the fact that there are other men. But The dress of women has lost no ex-

it rather hampers proof that women have pression it once had, but it has gained
any singleness of need for masculine 15 many others. It has become a great art,
approval. often practised for its own sake. What

The slump after marriage which Mrs. was once primitively personal has become
Gilman regards as significant would look artistically .social. In my opinion the
like support for a theory that women man, referred to by Mrs. Gilman, who
thought in terms of one man. Thinking 20 would not go forth with his wife without
in terms of one man, in the matter of the crinoline was not influenced by male
clothes or anything else not involving the instinct or by thought of other men. He
basic union, is about the last thing one was influenced by the thing that influences
would care to ascribe to the American us all more than any other thing — social
woman. It ought to be unpleasant to 25 pressure. There is a social expectation
ascribe it to any woman. that women will be highly decorated and

However, I must not overlook the fact that men will not be highly decorated,
that Mrs. Gilman does not insist that It does n't make much difference how
women are thinking of men or of a man that expectation came about. It is there,
in the concrete sense. It is, she implies, 30 I believe that for a woman this pressure
in a large way that the primal impluse is felt as exerted mostly by other women,
foliates, whatever women may say or If designed merely to please men, dec-
even think. A feeling with regard to the oration might be just as assertive, but it
opposite sex began it, and that feeling, would scarcely need to be so fine an art
secretly or openly, consciously or uncon- 35 as it now is. The Saturday-night em-
sciously, dominates the expression. That phasis at a summer colony may be oc-
is the contention. casioned by men, but men may be an

To believe this, we should have to over- occasion without being a cause. They
look many a related circumstance. The may, for instance, be an excuse,
primitive woman may have decorated and 4© It may please a man to marry him, but
drudged (she was a wonderful bundle- it would be absurd to say that a woman
carrier, and was permitted to carry all is necessarily thinking of nothing else, or
the bundles) to please a man. The civil- is intuitionally prompted by nothing else,
ized parallel is far from perfect, and at when she does marry him. There is
one of the imperfect points the free or 45 no need to expond the other social or
freer woman slips through. A great purely personal impulsions that might
many things she once did simply to please make pleasing him, either as a man or as
a man she now does to please humanity an economic factor, about the last thing
or to please herself. I am not thinking in her mind.

of the exceptional woman at the head of 5° After all, I may end where Mrs. Gilman
a big corporation, or of any less excep- began, with that word 'solely.' I do not
tional woman who may be wage-earning think my reference was so poorly safe-
head of a family with a useless man in guarded as she pretends. 'Solely for him'
it. I am thinking of the average Ameri- cannot be made to mean solely as to the
can woman, still decorating herself and 55 elements or functions of clothes. It must,
carrying burdens of some human sort. If I think, be taken to mean solely as to
men began by decorating themselves to women's instincts or motives.

F. CONTROVERSIAL ARTICLES 269

I believe that some women 'doll up' and because, as an art, it must always be

almost solely to please men. I believe influenced more by its specialist criticism

that many others have never had any than by its spectators, and women are the

such motive, latent or conscious. I be- specialists; but because most women have

lieve that most women are willing that 5 other business in life, and pleasing other

their decorations should incidentally women has become as important to them

please men. It is doubtless a matter of as pleasing men, in a vast number of cases

percentages. Of course the percentage more important.

must be altogether a matter of opinion, I do not believe that the special sense

whether it is estimated by a man or by 10 or humor which women illustrate in their

a woman. I took my fling at the com- clothes is equally distributed among all

placency that permits some men to think women. Some women, it is quite evident,

that the whole fuss has had men for its do not see the clothes pleasantry at all.

special and ultimate mark. The notion Every artist is under the hazard of a

that modern woman lives her life, in any x5 blind spot. Yet I am still quite sure that

particular and to any absorbing extent, men (and this was my contention) usually

specifically to please men, still seems to me miss not only the art implications, not oniy

quite fantastic. the subtle difference between pleasing and

I don't believe women 'dress' solely to teasing, but the secret reservations that

please men, not only because they don't *° must ever establish the ultimate point of

have to take that much trouble, not only the joke,
because dress is so satisfying in itself,

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. The article by Professor II. S.
Canby, literary editor of the New York Evening Post, which heads this section, offers Bom*
very useful and practical warnings in this connection.

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 characterize it
in only the briefest and most general way. Such a notice is usually unsigned, and as ita
purpose is less serious than that of the larger reviews of the next class, its literary 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 critical 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 contributions to critical
literature.

j mass and form a union which stands as

one man against the world. Professions

THE SINS OF BOOK are different. They rise by decentraliza-

REVIEWERS tl0n> anc* ky specializing within the group.

5 They gain distinction not only by the
HENRY SEIDEL CANBY achievements of their individual members

Editor, The Literary Review but J>y a curious splitting into sub-types

of the species. Law and medicine are
[Bookman, October, 1921. By permission.] admirable examples. Every time they

I have known thousands of reviewers » develop a new kind of specialist they gain
and liked most of them, except when they in prestige and emolument,
sneered at my friends or at me. Their pro- A reviewer, however (unless he pub-

fession, in which I have taken a humble lishes a collected edition and becomes a
share, has always seemed to me a useful, critic), has so far remained in the eyes of
and sometimes a noble one; and their con- i5 the public just a reviewer. In fiction we
tribution to the civilizing of reading man, have been told (by the reviewers) of ro-
much greater than the credit they are mancers and realists, sociologists and
given for it. We divide them invidiously ethicists, naturalists and symbolists, ob-
into hack reviewers and critics, forget- jectivists and psychologists. Are there
ting that a hack is just a reviewer over- *> no adjectives, no brevet titles of literary
worked, and a critic a reviewer with distinction for the men and women who
leisure to perform real criticism. A good have made it possible to talk intelligently
hack is more useful than a poor critic, about modern fiction without reading it?
and both belong to the same profession My experience with reviewers has led

as surely as William Shakespeare and as me to classify them by temperament
the author of a Broadway 'show.' rather than by the theories they possess;

The trouble is that the business of re- and this is not so unscientific as it sounds,
viewing has not been sufficiently rec- for theories usually spring from tempera-
ognized as a profession. Trades gain ments. No man whose eliminatory proc-
in power and recognition in proportion 30 esses function perfectly ever is a pessi-
as their members sink individuality in the mist, except under the compulsion of

270

G. LITERARY CRITICISM 271

hard facts. No sluggish liver ever believes The academic reviewer is besotted by

that joy of living is the prime quality to facts, or their absence. The most pre-

be sought in literary art. And by the cious part of the review to him is the last

same eternal principle, moody tempera- paragraph in which he points out mis-

ments embrace one theory of criticism; 5 spellings, bad punctuation, and inaccura-

cold, logical minds another. I identify cies generally. Like a hound dog in a

my classes of reviewers by their habits, corn field, he never sees his books as a

not their dogmas. whole, but snouts and burrows along

But in order to clear the ground let me the trail he is following. If he knows

make first a larger distinction, into myth- 10 the psychology of primitive man, primi-

ical reviewers, bad but useful reviewers, tive psychology he will find and criticize,

bad and not useful reviewers, and good even jn a book on the making of gardens,

reviewers. Like the nineteenth century if his specialty is French drama, French

preacher I will dispose of the false, dwell drama he will find> even in a f00tnote,

upon the wicked, and end (briefly) with « and root it out and nuzz\e it j remember

that heaven of literary criticism where when a famous scholar devoted the whole

all the authors are happy and all the re- of his review of a two volume magnum

viewers excellent. 0pus upon a great historical period, to

The reviewer I know best never I ^ criticism of the text of a Latin h

profoundly believe, has existed and I * dted fa a footnote , The academic re-

mnLrnefigureW1 of EngiishfUd -moo^ ™™ 0* ^ch I do not mean the uni
iiiiiiai iguit kj s versity reviewer, since many such are not

erately young, a bachelor, with a just , J . . ,, 1 j 1 • 1 t

insufficient income in stocks. Oxford or acade™c ™ th^ b*d sense which I am
Cambridge is his background, and his *5 &™8 *? the word) demands an index,
future is the death of a rich aunt or a His. "views usually end with There is
handsome marriage. In the meantime, no index, or, There is an excellent index,
there is always a pile of books waiting in Tlje reason is plain. The index is his
his chambers to be reviewed at 'a guinea sole Smde t0 reviewing. If he finds his
a page,' when he has leisure, which is 30 Pet toPlcs there he can hunt them down
apparently only once or twice a week. remorselessly. But if there is no index,
The urban pastoral thus presented is one he " cast adrift helpless, knowing neither
which Americans may well be envious of where to begin nor where to end his
^otium cum dignitate. But I have never review. I call him a bad reviewer, but
encountered this reviewer in London. I 35 useful, because, though incapable of esti-
fear he exists only for the novelists, who mating philosophies or creations of the
created him in order to have a literary imagination^ he is our best guarantee
person with enough time on his hands that writers' facts are facts,
to pursue the adventures required by the My acquaintance with the next bad,

plot. Yet in so far as he is intended as a 40 but occasionally useful, reviewer is less
portrait of a critic, he stands as an ideal extensive, but, by the circumstances of the
of the leisured view of books. There case, more intimate. I shall call him the
has been no leisured view of books in ego-frisky reviewer. The term (which
America since Thoreau, or Washington I am quite aware is a barbarous corn-
Irving. Even Poe was feverish. Our 45 pound) I am led to invent in order to
books are read on the subway, or after describe the phenomenon of a critic whose
the theater, and so I fear it is in London ego frisks merrily over the corpus of his
— in London as it is. book. He is not so modern a product

Coldly, palpably real is the next critic as he himself believes. The vituperative
of my acquaintance, the academic re- 5o critics of the Quarterlies and, earlier
viewer. He does not write for the news- still, of Grub Street, used their ene-
papers, for he despises them, and they mies' books as a means of indulging their
are rather scornful of his style, which needs for self-expression. But it was
is usually lumbering, and his idea that wrath, jealousy, vindictiveness, or polit-
1921 is the proper time in which to re- 55 ical enmity which they discharged while
view the books of 1920. But you will seated on the body of the foe; whereas
find him in the weeklies, and rampant the ego-friskish critic has no such bile
in the technical journals. in him.

272 WRITING OF TODAY

He is in fact a product of the new ful as fountain pens. The dull reviewer,
advertising psychology, which says, 'Be like Chaucer's drunken man, knows where
human' (by which is meant 'be personal') he wants to go but doesn't know how to
'first of all.' He regards his book (I get there. He (or she) has three favor-
know this, because he has often told me 5 ite paths that lead nowhere, all equally
so) as a text merely, for a discourse devious.

which must entertain the reader. And The first is by interminable narrative,

his idea of entertainment is to write about 'When Hilda was blown into the arms
himself, his tastes, his moods, his re- of Harold Garth at the windy corner of
actions. Either he praises the book for 10 the Woolworth building, neither guessed
what it does to his ego, or damns it for at what was to follow. Beginning with
what it did to his ego. You will never this amusing situation, the author of
catch him between these extremes, for The Yellow Moon develops a very in-
moderation is not his vice. teresting plot. Garth was the nephew

The ego-frisky reviewer is not what 15 of Miles Harrison, Mayor of New York,
the biologist would call a pure form. After graduating from Williams, etc.
He (or she) is usually a yellow jour- etc. etc.' This is what he calls summariz-
nalist, adopting criticism as a kind of ing the plot.

protective coloration. The highly per- Unfortunately, the art of summary is

sonal critic, adventuring, or even frol- 20 seldom mastered, and a bad summary
icking among masterpieces, and record- is the dullest thing in the world. Yet
ing his experiences, is the true type, even a bad summary of a novel or a
and it is he that the ego-friskish imitate. book of essays is hard to do; so that
Such a critic in the jovial person of when the dull reviewer has finished, his
Mr. Chesterton, or Professor Phelps, or 25 sweaty brow and numbed fingers persuade
Heywood Broun, contributes much to the him that he has written a review. There
vividness of our sense for books. But is time for just a word of quasi-criti-
their imitators, although they sometimes cism: 'This book would have been better
enliven, more often devastate review- if it had been shorter, and the plot is
ing. 30 not always logical. Nevertheless, The

Alas, I am best acquainted among Yellow Moon holds interest throughout.'
them all with the dull reviewer, who And then, finis. This is botchery and
is neither good nor useful. The excel- sometimes butchery, not reviewing,
lent books he has poisoned as though The dullest reviewers I have known,

by opiates! The dull books he has made 35 however, have been the long-winded
duller! No one has cause to love him ones. A book is talk about life, and
unless it be the authors of weak books, therefore talk about a book is one re-
who thank their dull critics for expos- move more from the reality of experi-
ing them in reviews so tedious that no ence. Talk about talk must be good
one discovers what the criticism is about. 40 talk, and it must be sparing of words.

The dull reviewer has two varieties: A concise style is nearly always an in-
the stupid and the merely dull. It is teresting style: even though it repel by
the stupid reviewer who exasperates crudity it will never be dull. But con-
beyond patience the lover of good books. ciseness is not the quality I most often
He is the man who gets a book wrong 45 detect in reviewing. It is luxurious to
from the start, and then plods on after be concise when one is writing at space
his own conception, which has no refer- rates; and it is always harder to say a
ence whatsoever to the author's. He is thing briefly than at length, just as it is
the man who takes irony seriously, misses easier for a woman to hit a nail at the
the symbolism when there is any, and 5© third stroke than at the first.
invariably guesses wrong as to the I once proposed a competition in a

sources of the characters and the plot. college class in English composition.

There are not many really stupid re- Each student was to clip a column news-
•viewejrs, for the most indolent editor paper article of comment (not facts) and
cleans house occasionally, and the stupid 55 condense it to the limit of safety. Then
are the first to go out the back door, editorials gave up their gaseous matter
But merely dull reviewers are as plenti- in clouds, chatty news stories boiled away

G. LITERARY CRITICISM 273

to paragraphs, and articles shrank up to book like a crystal ball in which he sees

their headlines. not only its proper essence in perfect

But the reviews suffered most. One, clarity, but also his own mind mirrored.

I remember, came down to 'It is a bad He must — ... In other words, the good

book,' or to express it algebraically, (It 5 reviewer deserves an essay of his own.

is a bad book)3. Another disappeared He is a genius in a minor art, which some-

entirely. On strict analysis it was dis- times becomes major; a craftsman whose

covered that the reviewer had said noth- skill is often exceptional. I will not

ing not canceled out by something else. put him in the same apartment with re-

But most remained as a weak liquor of 10 viewers who are arid, egoistic, or dull,
comment upon which floated a hard cake
of undigested narrative. One student

found a bit of closely reasoned criticism jj
that argued from definite evidences to a

concrete conclusion. It was irreducible; 15 THE ORGANIZATION OF

but this was a unique experience. MODERN BUSINESS *

The long-winded are the dullest of dull

reviewers, but the most pernicious are the Wew York Evening Post, ^December 31, 1921.

wielders of cliches and platitudes. Is y Permisslon-

there somewhere a reviewer's manual, 20 Ever since business began to be busi-
like the manual of correct social phrases ness, probably, one group of tired busi-
which someone has recently published? ness men, theatrical producers, on serv-
I would believe it from the evidence of ice bent, have served up behind the foot-
a hundred reviews in which the same lights stimulating stuff for their tired,
phrases, differently arranged, are applied 25 taxed colleagues. The business journals
to fifty different books. I would believe are trying to help, too. They begin early
it, except for the known capacity of man in the morning, before the tired business
to borrow most of his thoughts and all man gets tired. Commerce and Finance
of his phrases from his neighbor. I facetiously suggests 'this simple regimen'
know too well that writers may operate 3- of 'exercises for the tired business man' :
like the Federal Reserve banks, except <(i) Stand in the middle of room, raise
that in literature there is no limit to arms slowly overhead, take deep breath
inflation. A thousand thousand may use and say "Damn the government," low-
'a novel of daring adventure,' 'a poem ering arms in attitude of despair. Ten
full of grace and beauty,' or 'shows the 35 times. (2) Kneel, wring hands, meditate
reaction of a thoughtful mind to the facts upon the labor unions, and groan one hun-
of the universe/ without exhausting the dred and fifty times. (3) Collapse on
supply. It is like the manufacture of floor. Grovel vigorously, think of the in-
paper money, and the effect on credit come tax and gnash teeth in anger. Ad
is precisely the same. 4° libitum.' The firm of consulting indus-

So much for the various types of re- trial engineers of which Mr. Basset is a
viewers who, however interesting they member reprints this prescription — and
may be critically, cannot be called good. possibly a certain seriousness tinctures
The good reviewers, let an uncharitable their humorous appreciation of it.
world say what it will, are, thank heaven ! 45 But Mr. Basset has done the business
more numerous. Their divisions, tern- man a service of a sane and constructive
peramental and intellectual, present a sort which, among other happy results,
curious picture of the difficulties and the ought to make vaudeville, and possibly
rewards of this profession. Yet I can- even the morning maledictions, much less
not enter upon them here, and for good 5o necessary. He has written a book for
reasons. him, setting forth, with apt illustration,

The good reviewer is like the good some leading principles of business or-
teacher and the good preacher. He is ganization and management. His sug-
not rare, but he is precious. He has gestions carry the more weight because
qualities that almost escape analysis and 55 ^y are tne outgrowth of years of experi-
therefore deserve more than a compli- % Thg 0rganisation of Modem Business. By Wii-
mentary discussion. He must hold his liam R. Basset. Dodd, Mead $ Co. 1921. $3,

274 WRITING OF TODAY

ence — gained, as he states in his preface, how much may be accomplished in the
'in consultation with more than a thou- way of eliminating them by better manage-
sand clients.' ment — improved, scientifically coordinated

In a dozen chapters the author drives production. Eliminated waste means the
home, very clearly and forcefully — though 5 possibility of lower prices, higher profits,
at times in language really too Rotary higher wages — so it is grist to Mr. Bas-
Clubish — nearly as many guiding princi- set's mill. But the grinding should not
pies for the organization and carrying on be interfered with by either (i) the Gov-
of a business enterprise. The theme is ernment, with its 'sinister rulings,' with
coordinated production, with finance and 10 price fixing and profit fixing, or what not ;
speculation shown their (ancillary) places, (2) the trade unions, with their restric-
with the Government shown its place — tive and waste producing regulations, or
still more ancillary. The business man's the speculator, with his subordination of
objective, frankly, is business profits. manufacturing and selling to the irre-
The means to that end is efficiency — co- 15 sponsible whims of the stock market,
ordinated plant efficiency. The highest

efficiency (and therefore the greatest HI

profit) results, Mr. Basset thinks, from THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC *

a business policy based upon high wages

for labor and low prices for the COmmod- 20 [Christian Science Monitor, January 4, 192a. By
1 1 t-» .1 1 • 1 permission.]

ity or service produced. Both high wages

and low prices are made possible through 1

low unit costs attained by carefully An arctic with much dry land, meadows,

planned production. The acid test is serv- flowering plants of various sorts, includ-
ice to the community — and that service the 25 ing the poppy, heather, sedge, and the
author believes to be the most effectively bluebell, with edible mushrooms, birds
rendered by keeping prices low and wages and animals, such as geese, gulls, and
and profits high. His book outlines the tern, caribou, bears, and ovibos — this
policies believed to be calculated to bring is the arctic of which Stefansson writes,
about this end. One reason that prices 30 and it is indeed a region quite different in
skyrocket is that so many manufacturers its details from what people who have
sell goods, then make them — are stam- read the usual books on polar exploration
peded by the selling end of the game. or attended the usual lectures have mis-
Don't do it, says Basset. 'First make conceived conditions there to be. The
— then sell.' Again, instead of borrow- 35 possibilities of living in arctic lands, and
ing more money, see whether that money even on the arctic ice, Stefansson pre-
cannot be squeezed out of the plant it- sents, partly in the form of straight nar-
self by eliminating excess equipment — rative of his experiences, and partly in
that is to say, finance the business 'from the form of explanation and argument to
the inside,' so far as possible ; 'make the 4° develop his thesis.

capital small in proportion to the sales Much of his story makes decidedly ex-

and then make that capital move rapidly' ; hilarating reading, largely because of
concentrate on a single product 'and cash his own sustained enthusiasm. To him
in on it'; run the plant continuously, polar exploration includes comparatively
neither employer nor employee in the end 45 few real hardships, since he is ever de-
benefits from a shutdown; don't try to termined to enjoy the very circumstances
mix speculation with manufacturing and that might seem hardships to others. Set-
selling; don't take too seriously the maxim ting out to prove for himself the essential
'money makes the wheels go round' — 'the friendliness of the northern regions, he
management of finance is subsequent ... 5© has kept himself awake to find oppor-
to the management of production.' tunities where other explorers have found

Mr. Basset was a member of the com- only problems. He may be excused for
mittee on elimination of waste in indus- the pride with which he tells of his suc-
try of the Federated American Engineer- cesses, for his very pride is like that of
ing Societies, whose report has just been 55
published. He knows how stupendous ex- .„• ™'J™/XZ"'% T&$S« gffi»£K

i^ting industrial wastes are. He realizes New York: The Macmillan Company. $6,

G. LITERARY CRITICISM 275

the farmer of South Dakota who has that was strange. Especially on such de-
achieved successful crops after a season lightful and care-free journeys as we were
that was not without its difficult details. now making it is difficult to realize that
The whole book, in fact, gives just the this land is not only assumed to be barren
sort of details that an ardent rancher or 5 by those who do not know it, but has ac-
pioneer in other kinds of work in any tually appeared so to men who have been
part of the world might recount for there. Certainly it would take keen eyes
the benefit of skeptical friends. to read between the lines of McClure's

Despite his pride in the triumph of narrative of hardship and heroism the
his own theory, he tries to be fair to 10 soft beauty and homelikeness of Banks
all those in any way associated with Island as I see it.'

him. His fairness is, indeed, of a ruth- Thus his is a very natural originality

less sort which sets down facts in se- consisting of the intensive discovery of
quence, whether these facts are to the what others had regarded cursorily. In
credit or the discredit of those concerned 15 this it marks a new period in arctic ac-
in them. In setting them down, however, tivity, a period in which development
he shows himself a not unsympathetic rather than mere adventure must be the
analyst of human nature, aware that in- main motive. His reiterations of the
dividuals have not been responsible for the differences between what he found and
fears and misconceptions of the north 20 what others reported that they found are
in accord with which they have acted or necessary because of the persistence of
refused to act, but have needed to be the old impressions, and need to be ap-
awakened to the wisdom of rejecting predated in order that the comprehension
what never had any real basis. of the north as a tremendous opportunity

n 25 may be hastened.

This volume differs from most books III

on polar exploration _ in that it deals The main thesis of his book is, as he

mainly, not with the discovery of utterly informs us over and over again, that
new regions, but with the learning how 30 the arctic regions, like other parts of the
to live on land and ice that might, or earth, can be made to furnish the essen-
might not, have been visited before. One tials of living, if one will but face the
of the especially interesting chapters, for conditions as they are and make the most
instance, tells of the reaching of the point of them by using the ways and means
farthest north on Prince Patrick Island 35 actually adapted to the north, rather than
that was attained by the expedition under ways and means learned in what are sup-
F. L. McClintock, in 1853, 62 years earlier. posed to be more civilized lands. Thus
Here, as elsewhere, Stefansson compares he explains with care enough to convince
his own observations, experiences, and any one, it would seem, that fresh water
conclusions with those of his predeces- 4° [s practically always available even on
sors. Thus he remarks particularly on the ice, since 'sea ice becomes fresh dur-
McClintOck's limited understanding\ of ing the period intervening between its
polar resources when the latter wrote, formation and the end of the first summer
'But no fuel of any kind could be got (in thereafter.' His whole experience was a
Prince Patrick Island).' 45 continual demonstration of the previously

In an earlier chapter on Banks Island doubted fact that seals could nearly al-
Stefansson says, in a typical passage: ways be found, if one knew how to look
'Since I began to know the north its for them, to supply food, clothing, and
beauty, freedom and friendliness have fuel. Shelter of an entirely adequate
continually grown upon me. They were 50 kind was furnished him by the snow it-
there from the first, but my eyes were self, which he readily learned to make
holden and I could not see them, for even into houses of the old-fashioned Eskimo
in that clear air I walked wrapped in the kind, houses not at all fragile, easy to
haze of my bringing-up. With southern keep warm and properly ventilated, and
feelings and an assumption of the inferior- 55 as commodious as one might wish in the
ity of that which is different, I failed to circumstances.

see the resources and values where they 'When the snow dome has been other-

lay before me, and distrusted everything wise finished/ he writes, 'a tunnel is dug

276 WRITING OF TODAY

through the drift into the house, giving north, he says, There are few things
a sort of trap door entrance through considered more certain than that the
the floor. Most Eskimos, failing to under- ocean is salt, and there is no inference
stand certain principles of thermody- more logical (although no inference is
namics, use a door in the side of the 5 ever really logical) than that the ice of
house. But it is obvious that if a door salt water must also be salt.'
in the wall is open and if the interior To be open-minded about new condi-

of the house is being artificially heated, tions, he shows repeatedly, is needful if
then warm air being lighter than cold, one is really to make himself at home in
there will be a continual torrent of heated 10 the polar regions. Many would doubt-
air going out through the upper half of less feel that never could they wish to
the doorway, and a cold current from out- make themselves at home there ; but Ste-
side entering along the floor. If the door fansson shows that this is an unreasonable
is on a level with the floor or a little be- prejudice, as absurd as the old prejudices
low it, the warm air from the house can- 15 against trips to Alaska or other misunder-
not go out through the door, even with stood places. Sooner or later every part
the door open, because warm air has no of the earth must be proved to be impor-
inclination except that of rising. Simi- tant in some useful way; so Stefansson
larly cold air cannot come in through the is doing the world a large service by
door in the floor so long as the house 20 emphasizing what he believes to be the
above is filled with warmer air, for two importance of the arctic,
bodies cannot occupy the same space at One who has an aversion to snow-

the same time.' houses, cold, and an unvaried diet, may,

Then he goes on to tell in detail how the moreover, according to him, find none
top of the dome may be made thicker or 25 of these 'hardships' in many a land, within
thinner so as to keep the house at the the arctic circle, during at least the sum-
right temperature. To a reader who has mer months. He gives plenty of pictures
never camped out far away from settled of dry land, vegetation, birds, and animals,
communities, it may be astonishing to see to illustrate the actuality in place of what
how engrossing these details of living be- 30 people have imagined of the north,
come in a book of this sort where they There are passages also about Eskimo

are represented in utter simplicity,, with- superstitions, about the stones showing
out any of the complexities of modern where camp circles have been in the past,
city conveniences. The friendliness of about the arctic noises, caused by the
the arctic regions to Stefansson arises 35 crushing of the ice, by birds and animals,
from the facility with which he has been and by winds and storms, about the
able to convert to his immediate needs construction of sledboats, about the en-
just what he has found at hand. joyment of the night as well as the day,

the winter as well as the summer. There
40 are explanations of the skill of Eskimo

In some respects the most interesting seamstresses, of the habits of seals, bears,
parts of the book are those passages which foxes, wolves, and caribou, of the manner
deal with the usual mental attitudes of of living in comfort that is possible in the
people toward the arctic, and with the arctic, and of geographical facts dis-
manner in which false attitudes may be 45 covered. Stefansson gives a record, in
changed. Generalizing, he says, for in- fact, of how he continuouslv had to re-
stance, 'an educated man of diversified place the old concepts of arctic living with
experience has the mental equipment to new concepts of his own based on the
meet "hardship"; the ignorant are fitted actuality.

to meet easily only those "hardships" that 50 Of the book as a whole, it mav be said
are native to them.' Again he remarks, that it is perhaps rather more ponderous
concerning the 50 whalers that have than it ought to be. Some points arc
been lost in the Beaufort Sea, 'The 50 amplified long after the reader has beer
ships lost might not have been lost at fully convinced that they are true. There
all but for the timidity through which they 55 are some needless repetitions of thought
had usually been abandoned by their and experience in various parts of the
crews.' Of the argument against the pos- volume. Then, too, for the average
sibility of getting fresh water in the far reader the distance covered and the time.

G. LITERARY CRITICISM 277

elapsing from chapter to chapter may notables have any such luck. In my
not be sufficiently clear. Dates and dis- whole life I 've read the perfect inter-
tances might be given at the top of each view just once. This was in January,
page, so that one could tell at a glance how 1895, not long after the first performance
much of the journey was accomplished 5 of An Ideal Husband, when the London
between any two or more events. The Sketch published Gilbert Burgess's inter-
whole volume, however, is fluent and ani- view with Oscar Wilde. Mr. Burgess
mated, with a style which, though rarely was a man who knew the difference be-
distinguished by any special literary quali- tween questions and questions. He asked
ties, is always adequate. It is certainly w the right ones:

praise to say that the style is that of the ^ afe ft exact ^. b n fi

enthusiastic talk of a man completely in- crature and the drama?,
terested in his subject < 'Exquisitely accidental. That is why I

The final paragraph gives in a few think them so necessary.'
words the import of the whole volume. « 'And the exact relation between the actor
'This expedition has contributed materi- and the dramatist?'

ally toward making easy what once was Mr. Wilde looked at me with a serious

difficult, and safe the things that used to expression which changed almost immedi-
be considered dangerous. It is human ately into a smile, as he replied, 'Usually a
nature to undervalue whatever lands are 20 little strained.'

distant and to consider disagreeable what- .But s«reJy y°u reeard the actor as a cre-
eper is different But we have brought ^JP*^ Mr. Wilde with a touch of
the north a good deal closer and have thos' in ft, voi <terribl creative-terri-

made it look more than it used to like £« creative!'
Michigan or Switzerland. To the mem- 25

bers of our expedition the glamorous and The interview is republished in the vol-

heroic polar regions are gone and in their time called Decorative Art in America
place is a friendly but a commonplace (Brentano's, 1906), and is still as fresh
country. To the reader the same will as ever, after twenty years. I turned
be true in proportion as he succeeds in 30 back to it the other day, after reading
seeing, either through this narrative or here and there in two small blue volumes
through our technical volumes, that it is published in 1909, Speeches of William
the mental attitude of the southerner that Jennings Bryan, Revised and Arranged
makes the north hostile. It is chiefly our by Himself, and wondering whether Mr.
unwillingness to change our minds which 35 Bryan would ever fall into the ideal in-
prevents the north from changing into a terviewer's. hands. You, for example,
country to be used and lived in just like could not interview Mr. Byran properly,
the rest of the world.' nor could I. We should feel both super-

This is certainly a theme that was cilious and intimidated. The man for

worth developing, both in actual experi- 4° the job is somebody who could mediate

ence and in writing, and the development fearlessly between the remote Bryan

of it as a whole should be entertaining and period and the present time. Does such

profitable to many. Others will find it a man exist? By accident I have hit

worth while to read much in the book here upon the right party — Hector Malone.

and there to supplement the understand- 45 Of Hector his creator has written, in the

ing gained from Stefansson's magazine stage directions to Man and Superman,

articles and his lectures in which he has that 'the engaging freshness of his per-

presented in briefer form the same ideas. sonality and the dumbfoundering stale-

TV ness of his culture make it extremely dif-

5o ficult to decide whether he is worth know-

MR. BRYAN'S SPEECHES ing; for whilst his company is undeniably

T , T pleasant and enlivening, there is intel-

F|_rill.m MiUJii-M lectually nothing new to be got out of

[New Republic, December 5, 1914. By permission him.' You already perceive a certain

of author and publisher.] 55 affinity between Hector Malone and Mr.

Every man, people say, gets the inter- Bryan. Now for their unlikeness: when
viewer he deserves. It is not true. Few Hector 'finds people chattering harmlessly

278 WRITING OF TODAY

about Anatole France and Nietzsche, he do good in their context. They and theii
devastates them with Matthew Arnold, context have helped thousands upon thou-
the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, and sands of Chautauquan early risers to be
even Macaulay/ cheerful and industrious and unselfish and

It is an affair of proportion. As Nietz- 5 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 w the secret of life. With an easy, happy
seem about as dumbfounderingly stale flow the make-believe thought comes out
to Hector Malone as Hector's does to in sincere and shallow sentences, which
a generation fed on Anatole and Nietz- make one respect Mr. Bryan's good inten-
sche. Hector is too modern and sophisti- tions, and admire his sweetness and good
cated to quote Gray's Elegy, The Deserted 15 will. Thousands of good men and women
Village, Tom Moore and William Cul- have grown better on this thin food,
len Bryant. He knows that people don't Blessed are those who mean well, for they
do such things. But Mr. Bryan does shall be spared the labor of thought,
them, and adds other incredibilities. Like It sounds patronizing, my attitude, and

Tennyson's brook, Demosthenes has said, 20 it is. Although you and I can no more
Rollin tells us, Muelbach relates an inci- write significantly of life or death than
dent, as Plutarch would say — here they Mr. Bryan can, yet we have a superficial
are, and more of the same, in these two sophistication, we have acquired a sus-
blue volumes. Looking backward, Mr. picion that twaddle exists and may be dis-
Bryan quotes 'breathes there a man with 25 tinguished from its opposite. Therefore
soul so dead' and 'truth crushed to earth/ do we smile complacently, in our offensive
Looking forward, he says that after Alex- way, when Mr. Byran sets forth 'the rea-
ander and Napoleon 'are forgotten, 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 3o 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?

In reality all of them have the same age. Chronic good will, courage, a capacity

They all taste of 'das Ewig-gestrige, das 35 for sudden formidableness, an early per-
Flache.' In 1904, Mr. Byran gives 'the ception of important discontents, sympa-
reasons which lead me to believe that thy with the unprivileged average — in
Christ has fully earned the right to be this mixture, I suppose, we must seek the
called The Prince of Peace/ and meditates explanation of his hold upon his followers,
thus upon eggs : 'The egg is the most 40 His size and importance were measured
universal of foods and its use dates from at the Baltimore convention in 1912, and
the beginning, but what is more mysteri- again in the following spring, when Previ-
ous than an egg? . . . We eat eggs, but dent Wilson, afraid to leave him outside
we cannot explain an egg.' From its con- and hostile, turned him into a third-rate
text in a lecture on 'Man/ delivered at 45 secretary of state and a useful backer
the Nebraska State University in 1905, of presidential legislation. One likes to
and also at Illinois College, I take this: imagine him sitting in the state depart-
'Ask the mother who holds in her arms ment, mellowed by his popularity, set free
her boy, what her ideal is concerning him from old jealousies, showing an unex-
and she will tell you that she desires that 5o pected capacity for team play, frock-coat-
his heart may be so pure that it could be edly glad-handing and kind-wording a
laid upon a pillow and not leave a stain; hundred callers a day, always glib and
that his ambition may be so holy that it sunny and sincere. Is he a shade more
could be whispered in an angel's ear. . . / acquisitive than you 'd think to find such a

If there is already too much supercili- 55 very popular hero? Perhaps. Is he, for
ousness in the world such passages do a man with exactly his reputation, a little
harm. They do good if there is not super- too smooth, too unrugged, too deficient in
ciliousness enough. In either case they homely humor? Why not? In every

G. LITERARY CRITICISM 279

reputation, however explicable, there is a come almost every week for a stipulated
residuum of mystery. 'What,' as Mr. two hours of 'the classics and their dis-
Bryan himself says, 'is more mysterious cussion.' Mrs. O'Shea knew George
than an egg?' Meredith well, and I dare say he, behind

5 his badinage and 'effectiveness,' knew

that flashing spirit rather better.

y In 1880, Willie O'Shea was urged to

v stand for an Irish constituency. 'I wrote

TDADATT7TT1 back *to<to&7 encouraging him,' says

.FAKJNJiLL. io Mrs. Parnell, 'for I knew it would give

him occupation he liked and keep us

F[RANCIS] H[ACKETT] apart-and therefore good friends. Up

^ „ . . to this time Willie had not met Mr. Par-

[New Republic, December 5, 1914- By permission 11 >

of author and publisher.] lien.

15 At this time Parnell was thirty-four
Married in her twentieth year or there- years of age. The actual leader of the
abouts to a cornet in a sporting regiment, Irish Parliamentary Party, he had al-
Katherine O'Shea had lived thirteen years ready broken away from the 'fine reason-
with Willie O'Shea and borne him three ableness' of Isaac Butt at which 'the Eng-
children before she met Charles Stew- 20 Jish parties smiled and patted the Irish
art Parnell. Her relations with O'Shea indulgently on the head,' and he had ini-
had long been unsatisfactory. Handsome, tiated his policy 'of uncompromising hos-
gay, sarcastic, self-assured, O'Shea was a - tility to all British parties and of unceas-
spoiled and rather dictatorial specimen of ing opposition to all their measures until
the petty aristocracy. Already bankrupt 25 the grievances of Ireland were redressed.'
through mismanagement of his racing Because he disliked all social inter-

stable, he spent a great deal of his time course with Saxons, Mrs. O'Shea's at-
away from Mrs. O'Shea engaged in tempts to secure Parnell for her dinners
patching up his fortunes, being absent as were repeatedly unsuccessful, but, a de-
long as eighteen months at a time on 30 termined lady, she eventually decided to
mining ventures in Spain. When they deli.ver her invitation in person at the
were together O'Shea was rather jarring House. 'He came out, a tall, gaunt fig-
and possessive, easily made jealous, ure, thin and deadly pale. He looked
insisting on visits, visitors and entertain- straight at me smiling, and his curiously
ments his wife disliked, with which he al- 35 burning eyes looked into mine with a won-
ternated periods of undependability and dering intentness that threw into my
neglect. His wife's impulsiveness and brain the sudden thought: "This man is
mettle he did not understand, and before wonderful — and different." ' Mrs. O'Shea
the entry of Parnell into their lives 'the planned a theater party for his distrac-
wearing friction caused by our totally 40 tion, and 'he and I seemed naturally to
dissimilar temperaments began to make fall into our places in the dark corner of
us feel that close companionship was im- the box. I had a feeling of complete
possible, and we mutually agreed that he sympathy and companionship with him,
should have rooms in London, visiting as though I had always known this
Eltham to see myself and the children at 45 strange, unusual man with the thin face
week-ends.' and pinched nostrils, who sat by my side

Mrs. O'Shea's father was an English staring with curious intent gaze at the
clergyman, Sir John Page Wood. She stage, and telling me in a low monotone
was the youngest of a family of thirteen. of his American tour and of his broken
Brought up in a household where men 50 health . . . and his eyes smiled into
like Trollope, the older Cunninghame mine as he broke off his theme and began
Graham, John Morley came to visit, she to tell me of how he had met once more
spent a great deal of her life with an in America a lady to whom he had been
august aunt at a Georgian lodge in El- practically engaged some years before.'
tham to whom George Meredith used to 55 A few months later, when Mrs. O'Shea

1 Charles Stewart Parnell, His Love Story and Was in great distress Over the death of

Political Life. By Katherine O'Shea (Mrs. Char- Lucy Goldsmith, her lifelong friend and

les Stewart Parnell). New York: George H. At_ r r> ii> r

Doran Company nurse, the tenor of Parnell s notes from

28o WRITING OF TODAY

Dublin revealed the truth. 'I cannot keep afraid, but his mind was clear. Tut
myself away from you any longer, so away all fear and regret for my public
shall leave to-night for London.' They life. I have given, and will give, Ire-
did not meet, but Mrs. O'Shea pictures land what is in me to give. That I have
the subsequent weeks. 'And my aunt 5 vowed to her, but my private life shall
would doze in her chair while I dropped never belong to any country, but one
the book I had been reading to her and woman. There will be a howl, but it will
drifted into unknown harmonies and color be the howling of hypocrites ; not alto-
of life . . . and I was conscious of sud- gether, for some of these Irish fools are
den gusts of unrest and revolt against 10 genuine in their belief that forms and
these leisured, peaceful days where the creeds can govern life and men; perhaps
chiming of the great clock in the hall was they are right so far as they can expe-
the only indication of the flight of time.' rience life. But I am not as they, for
Tn the autumn of 1880 Mr. Parnell they are among the world's children. I
came to stay with us at Eltham.' There 15 am a man, and I have told these children
he fell ill, brought near to death's door what they want, and they clamor for it.
by 'his exertions on behalf of the famine- If they will let me, I will get it for them,
stricken peasants of Ireland,' and Mrs. But if they turn from me, my Queen, it
O'Shea nursed him back till he was matters not at all in the end. . . . You
nearly strong. Hovering over him as he 2o have stood to me for comfort and strength
slept, 'pulling the light rug better over and my very life. I have never been able
him/ she recalls his murmur: 'Steer care- to feel in the least sorry for having come
fully out of the harbor — there are break- into your life. It had to be, and the bad
ers ahead.' times I have caused you and the stones

Next year Captain O'Shea came to Elt- 25 that have been flung and that will be
ham without invitation, found Parnell's flung at you are all no matter, because
portmanteau there, sent it to London and to us there is no one else in all the world
left declaring he would challenge Parnell that matters at all — when you get to the
to a duel. The challenge was accepted bottom of things.'

but 'Willie then thought he had been too 30 Between O'Shea and Mrs. O'Shea there
hasty.' Parnell's real emotions seem to were friendly relations till the end of
have centered on his portmanteau. 'My 1886. She induced Parnell to work for
dear Mrs. O'Shea,' he wrote, 'will you his parliamentary candidacy in 1886, and
kindly ask Captain O'Shea where he left while O'Shea was willing to use Parnell
my luggage? I inquired at both parcel 35 to further his own necessities (he seems
office, cloak room, and this hotel, and they to have been a tool of Joseph Chamber-
were not to be found.' But the incident lain) he hated and railed against the im-
cemented the fate of O'Shea. 'From perturbable Parnell. All during their in-
the date of this bitter quarrel Parnell and timacy, Mrs. O'Shea acted as an inter-
I were one, without further scruple, with- 40 mediary between Parnell and Gladstone
out fear, and without remorse.' in negotiations which she vividly re-

in 1881 Parnell was arrested for his counts. Whenever Gladstone sought Par-
Land League activities, and was in Kil- nell in an emergency he sent for him
mainham at the will of Gladstone until to Mrs. O'Shea's house. The pious sur-
the following May. It was a period of 45 prise of Gladstone when the crash came
unremitting agony for Mrs. O'Shea, and was characteristic hypocrisy,
for him on her account. In February, ' Mrs. O'Shea was married to Parnell in
1882, she bore Parnell a daughter whom June, 1891. Worn out by his campaign
he saw for the first and last time for a against his own former adherents, now
day in April. 'My little one's paternity 50 under the dictation of Gladstone and the
was utterly unsuspected by the O'Sheas.' priests, Parnell succumbed in October.
From that time till 1890, the year of the He died October sixth, less than four
divorce case, Parnell and Mrs. O'Shea months after his marriage, in his forty-
lived their double life. A 'volcano seventh year.

capped with snow,' Parnell endured se- 55 Now a woman of nearly seventy, Mrs.
crecy and deception, and she with him, Parnell has been induced to reveal her
for the sake of the Home Rule bill, intimate life for the sake of Captain
When the crash came Mrs. O'Shea was O'Shea's child, her eldest son. That

G. LITERARY CRITICISM 281

young man, whose psychology is not lines by the British Weekly as an outrage
worth discussing, is 'jealous for his fath- against decency, a 'glorification of adul-
er's honor,' and it is ostensibly to prove tery . . . the foulest treachery and vice.'
that Captain O'Shea was not a willing be- It is quite in keeping with the Gladstone
neficiary of her relations with Parnell 5 tradition and, indeed, with English right-
that these two volumes were written. eousness in general, that this work, which
The real motive, however, is the deep hu- the British Weekly 'would fain consign to
man motive of self-vindication. Mrs. oblivion,' is now offered to us in this
Parnell loved one of the great men of his country by the agents of the British
generation. She loved him purely, pas- 10 Weekly in America,
sionately, consumedly. Possessing the
great treasure of his love in return, she

has been unwilling to die without rebutt- yj
ing all the slander, all the contumely, all

the belittlement and reproach and vilifica- 13 TOHN SYNCF 1

tion that were the price she paid for seem- •*

ing to have cheated Ireland of her un- qwfrmam

crowned king. Writing these two vol- STUART P. SHERMAN

UmeS 'without Scruple, without fear, and [New york Evening Post, January ii, 1913.

without remorse,' she has brought to her 20 By permission.]

aid all the resources of imagination, keen

intelligence, and vivid memory, and she John Synge was so skilful in eluding

has produced a work of consummate sig- biographers that he was dead before it
nificance and touching humanness. De- was generally known in this country that
fiant of convention, she has given full *5 he had existed. Within the last year or
reality for her reader to the extraordi- tw0 he has become one of the most con-
narily powerful and fascinating person- spicuous figures in the literary world,
ality to whom she dedicated her life. Ex- Yet current discussion has proceeded for
posing for this purpose much that is the most Part m ignorance of the facts
painfully private and sacredly naive, & of hls llfe and has confined itself mainly
dwelling on facts that belong, if anything to °?e or two of the Plays. Even among
belongs, to that inner life to which Par- th.e better informed there still remain the
nell asserted his right so implacably, she widest differences of opinion regarding
has, at this great cost, succeeded in as- his character, his relation to the so-called
serting the quality of their personal rela- 35 Insh Renaissance, and his appropriate
tion. It was true love, if ever love was niche in the temple of fame. And in con-
true, and it honored human nature. If sequence, of various non-literary forces,
Captain O'Shea was 'deceived,' it was the the division has been rather partizan than
fruit of his own mean inadequacy, deter- critical. It is darkly hinted in one quar-
mined as he was to keep Mrs. O'Shea in 40 ter that he owes everything to the French
bond, to enforce a legal advantage that decadents. On the other hand, Mr Yeats
flattered his vanity at the expense of would have us believe that his work came
everything generous, noble and free. He straight from the heart of Erin. On the
struggled, as small people always strug- °ne hand * 1S argued that he is only a
gle, to keep the springs of life from find- 45 clever craftsman But Mr Howe holds
ing their level, but they were too strong that he stands by his absolute achieve-
for him. After many years' effort to rec- ™fnt ^^ } ^tle lower than Shakespeare,
oncile herself to insuperable limitations, If ^ had h™d> saJf ,Mr- P°we> uhe
Mrs. Parnell found an adequate, a com- c°uid n<* but have a4deduto the num\er
plete, an immeasurable appeal to every So jf hjs plays; and yet in the six plays he
power and sympathy she possessed She has Ieft us> what that 1S essential in life
answered that appeal heroically, failing to 1 The Works of John M. Synge. Boston: J. W.

conform with the written law in order to LurL&rS°;«i 7ls" a , t* um« u .1

. • 1 t , ^1 1 11 j lhe Cutting of an Agate. By William Butler

Conform With what may CUrtly be called Yeats. New York: The Macmillan Co. In this

the Unwritten law Of her Own and Par- 55 are gathered up Mr. Yeats's principal articles on

.., . . Synge; also articles on Lady Gregory, John Shaw-

nell S being. Taylor. Spenser, and miscellaneous thoughts on

When these volumes were published in PTk%'"T cvrtfc,,; stuiy. By P. P. Howe.

London, they were dismissed in twenty New York: Mitchell Kennerlev.

282 WRITING OF TODAY

has he failed to include?' This is the literature from the French point of view.'
question one asks of the supreme gen- At this point our authorities diverge, and
iuses; this is the question one asks of Mr. Yeats executes a bit of skilful and
Shakespeare. characteristic legerdemain. He lifts the

With the collected works of Synge now 5 curtain in the garret of the Latin Quarter
before us and with eager advocates and some four years later and discovers the
jealous disparagers on each side of us, it author of two or three poor poems study-
may be worth while to inquire in an en- ing the works of Racine. George Moore,
tirely dispassionate way what manner of on the other hand, says explicitly that
man this was. 10 Synge was writing indifferent impres-

sionistic criticism of Lemaitre and Ana-
I tole France. There is no necessary con-

flict between these two reports, but there
Synge was for a considerable portion is a noticeable difference of emphasis,
of his life practically as well as theoret- 15 Between Synge and Racine I should never
ically a tramp. We know that he was 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 20 found Synge 'full of that kind of mor-
was called from abroad to take part in 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, 25 Mr. Yeats's covert way of confessing that
who has left his native land and is ap- 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 3° spite the Frenchman's vastly greater range
Heine was perhaps the will-o'-the-wisp to 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 35 of the world and have found no abiding
him,' says Mr. Yeats, 'he had wandered 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- 40 skepticism — no one, I think, asserts that
ered no statistics, had no money to give, 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.' 45 had, he tells us, 'no obvious ideal' ; he

Synge's transformation from a tramp 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 indiffer-
miracle. But they can preserve this air ence; all which comes down to us from
of mystery only by insisting that the re- 5© education, and all the earnest contentions
turn to Ireland meant an abrupt break of the day excited his irony; 'so far as
and a fresh beginning rather than the casual eye could see,' he had 'little per-
natural evolution of his career — only, in sonal will.' This description of moral
short, by maintaining that what is clearly and volitional prostration would be ap-
illuminating is wholly irrelevant. Now 55 plied with hardly an alteration to Anatole
about T895 Synge installed himself in sol- France. And it should help put to rest
itary lodgings in Paris and undertook to the legend of the joyous Synge, bounding
prepare himself to be a 'critic of French over the hills with the glad, wild life of

G. LITERARY CRITICISM 283

the unspoiled barbarian. There are pas- son could have written a line of the poem
sages in the Aran Islands, to be sure, that follows:
which reveal high nervous excitement in-
duced by conflict with the elements. Are you bearing in mind that time when
But there are also clear indications of 5 there was a fine look out of your eyes, and
chronic weariness and low vitality. In y°u"el£ Pleas<^ a?u *houShtflf wue£ 8°"|§
the grim humor of his little narrative, $ > \he boundaries that are set to -childhood?
tt j t?.i 4.U : „rtw^f v,;««. rrm-1 That time the quiet rooms, and the lanes
Under Ether, there is something more about the housej4would be 'noi with your

than a manly resolution m the face of songs that were never tifed Qut the time
death; there is in it the nonchalance of » you,d be gitting down wkh some work that
one who has long made death his familiar. ;s right for women, and well pleased with

the hazy coming times you were looking out
II at in your own mind.

May was sweet that year, and it was pleas-
Synge's verse is what we should ex- i5 antly you 'd pass that day.
pect of a rather despondent young Then I 'd leave my pleasant studies, and

Bohemian, unsure of himself, and seeking the paper I had smudged with ink where
among other poets food and forms for his I would be spending the better part of the
melancholy. I wish to tarry for a mo- <Jay, and cock my ears from the sill of my
ment upon his small collection of poems 20 fathers house, till I d hear the sound of
and translations, partly because, though *W voice or of your loom when your
rrr: , .. . y " , -J- o11 -L^ac,4.:„„ hands moved quickly. It s then I would set

little known, it is intrinsically interesting, stQre of the ^ g and ^ laneg and ^

and partly because it reveals so clearly on places> and the sea was far away m one ]ace
a small scale the nature of his literary and the high hills in another.
talent. The poems are due to the mrlu- 25 There is no tongue will tell till the judg-
ence of various masters— to Burns, ment what I feel in myself those times.
Wordsworth, Swinburne, and, notably, to

that fascinating oulaw, Maistre Francois Here are all the peculiar marks of

Villon. In about one-third of them he Synge himself — the irresistibly quaint
sings of death, and in nearly all of them 3o idiom, the drifting rhythm, the loose sen-
there is a distinguishable echo of some tence structure, thought thrown out after
earlier singer. thought, as it were, without premedita-

In the poem, 'To the Oaks of Glen- tion, and blossoming irom phrase to
cree/ to take a single example, we notice phrase, the window opened upon a mist
how Maistre Villon helps him shape and 35 of vague and limitless emotion, the poign-
round out the first pure impulse of lyric ant and adorable Celtic wistfulness:
exultation: while, as a matter of fact, these lines are

a tolerably close translation of the first
My arms are around you, and I lean half of Lgopardi's 'Suva.' We are here

Against you, while the lark in the presence of a pure miracle of that

ih7dowrareUSonalLfr barl " *"** St?le which is Ws SPecial creation>

There'll come a season when you'll stretch and wThich distinguishes him not merely
Black boards to cover me; ironi Leopardi, but also from all his An-

Then in Mount Jerome I will lie, poor glo-Insh contemporaries. With all its
wretch, 45 apparent spontaneity, his style is as pa-

With worms eternally. tiently and cunningly wrought out as the

style of Walter Pater — wrought of a scru-
The startling and paradoxical fact pulously select vocabulary, idiom, and
about this collection is that the original images, with an exacting ear controlling
poems constantly remind us of some one 5° the cadence and shepherding the roving
else; the translations alone seem unmis- and dreamy phrases. With the aid of
takably Synge's. The original poems this perfected instrument he is able to ap-
have the merits of skilful literary imita- propriate and seal as his own poems
tion. They might have been written, how- from authors as diverse as Petrarch and
ever, by Stevenson or Lang or by^ Mr. 55 Walter von der Vogelweide, Leopardi
Edmund Gosse, or by half a dozen other and Villon. This fact, taken together
cultivators of old French verse. But with his dependence on the original poems,
neither Mr. Gosse nor Lang nor Steven- tends to justify a search beneath the sur-

284 WRITING OF TODAY

face of his other work for alien forces the pensive face of another wanderer
secretly shaping his emotions and deter- and exile, half-Irish and half-Greek,
mining his forms. known in the Orient as Koizumi Yak-

umo, and in the Western world as Laf-
III 5 cadio Hearn. As I turned once more

_, , . . the pages of his book on Japan and ran

The orthodox method of explaining through the Life and Letters, glancing
Synge is to ignore the poems and trans- at his Eastern costume and at the almond
lations and point to the volume on the eyes "of his sons, I reflected that he, at
Aran Islands. This is the record, we are I0 any rate> had possessed the courage to
told, of Synge's literary salvation; here realize the dreams of his favorite au-
lies the key to the dramas. In other thor, Theophile Gautier, and the Oriental
words, we are asked to believe that Mr. reveries of Victor Hugo. Finally, I
Yeats's theory of poetry has been demon- opened the book of Chateaubriand, great
strated. A stranded Irishman living^ father of them all, and read: 'When he
gloomily in Paris without ideal and al- arrived among the Natchez, Rene had
most without ideas is sent to a little group been obliged, in order to conform to the
of lonely islands to the southwest of customs of the Indians, to take a wife,
Galway, inhabited by stolid fisher-folk in but he did not live with her. A melan-
a very backward state of culture. He 20 choly disposition drew him to the depths
spends part of every year there — we pass of the forest; there he passed whole days
over the fact that the other part is spent alone, and seemed a savage among the
in Paris — wearing the rawhide shoes of savages.'

the natives, warming his blood with their The attitude, the point of view — that

fires and their poteen, living in their 25 is the question about this Irishman and
kitchens, hearing their legends, and shar- his book on the Aran Islands. Que
ing in their noble primitive customs till diable allait-il faire dans cette galcref
the folk passion streams through him and Now, it is an essential error to imagine
makes him a genius. If any one is skep- that when Synge passed from the Latin
tical, we point to the fact that something 30 Quarter to the Aran Islands he was re-
like the 'germ' of two or three of turning to his own people. He never
Synge's plays is actually present here in desired to return to his own people,
the form of jottings on folk story and be- He went to this group of islands, and
lief. Now, this is a delightfully simple then to the most remote and backward of
recipe for making a genius. If this were 35 them, because he wished to escape into a
the whole truth, one might agree without perfectly strange and virgin environment,
reservation with one of the reviewers The peculiar charm of the Aran Islands

who declares that the Aran Islands is of and other books of its class consists not
Vast importance as throwing light on this *n the identification of the narrator with
curious development,' and who adds that 40 the life of the people whom he describes,
it 'is like no other book we have ever hut rather in accentuating the contrast be-
read.' tween the sophisticated son of the cities

When I first read the Aran Islands, I and the simple barbarian. It is the es-
thought of that much-experienced vaga- thetic charm of looking upon illusions
bond and subtle exploiter of exotic and 45 through the eyes of the disillusioned. In
primitive cultures, Pierre Loti; and I the earlier examples of this genre the
have learned recently with some satis- sense of the sundering gulf is emphasized
faction, from a foot-note in Mr. Howe's by bringing the weary heir of all the ages
book, that 'Synge thought Pierre Loti into sentimental relations with a 'noble*
"the best living writer of prose." ' And 50 female savage — an unspoiled daughter of
when I found Synge comparing condi- the wilderness. But the sentiment now
tions in the Aran Islands to a disadvan- smacks of the romanticism of the old
tage with what he had seen in his rambles school. In the various books in which
in Brittany, I thought of Anatole le Braz Pierre Loti pictures his exotic amours,
and all his charming studies of the songs 55 v°u may trace the declension of the lovely
and superstitions and customs and char- and beloved barbarian into a mere tran-
acters of that other Celtic people. And sitory symbol of the 'soul' of the land
then there drifted into my remembrance in which she is found. In the Manage de

G. LITERARY CRITICISM 285

Loti, for example, there is still a breath Aran Islands the Moi, as well as the
of strange passion for the poor Samoan maiden, is subdued almost beyond corn-
girl, yet the lover comments as follows: parison. But both men, like all the chil-
'In truth, we were children of two na- dren of Chateaubriand, avail themselves
tures, widely sundered and diverse, and 5 of picturesque exotic scenes as a kind of
the union of our souls could be only tran- sounding chamber to enlarge and rever-
sitory, incomplete, and troubled.' But in berate the lyric cry of their own weari-
that most heartlessly beautiful book in ness in civilized life and their loneliness
contemporary literature, Madame Chrys- out of it.
antheme, the breath of passion has given I0

way to sheer nervous disgust. With the IV

little yellow poupee, Loti has nothing in
common, riot even an emotion. As he ,

takes pains to point out in the dedication bynge s dramas are all sad, tragedies

to the Duchesse de Richelieu, though Ma- TC and comedies alike, because they are all
dame Chrysantheme seems to have the 5 ?ased uPon a radlcal and hopeless disil-
longest role, it is certain that the three luf\0^ . I* them the native lyrical impulse,
principal personages are: 'Moi, le Japan ™hlch m .the P?^ we found checked by
et VEffet que ce pays m'a produit/ 'My- <*e cynicism of Villon and which in the
self, Japan, and the Effect which that Aran Islands expanded under the mflu-
country produces in me'— the bitter per- 20 eIK;f of Loti, is again checked and con-
fume which a crushed chrysanthemum of Jl0!led b* the iroQy of Anatole France.
Nagasaki exhales for the nostrils of a dis- Thls ls no doubt a bald and over-em-
illusioned Academician. phatic way of putting the case, but it may

Essentially Synge was seeking the same 25 **™ to indicate the general modes in
thing— the perfume which the Aran Is- whlch foreign forces determined his tal-
lands could yield to a disillusioned Irish- ent. synSe has been praised by many
Parisian. He, too, has transferred the critics on the ground that he has recon-
sentiment, which was formerly attached to Clled poetry with life. In the sense that
the fair savage, to the land itself. Despite 30 5? .has broken through the old 'poetic
his apparent solicitude for realistic detail, diction and invented a new poetic dia-
it is the subjective soul of the islands that lect with a fresh savor of earth in it,
he is striving to capture. His book, like this ls doubtless true. But in a pro-
Loti's, is pieced together of short im- founder sense it is nearer the truth to
pressionistic sketches which are related to 35 ?W that he has widened the rift that was
one another only through the mood of the between them. For the drift of all his
author. 'It is only in the intonation of a work is to emphasize the eternal hostility
few sentences,' he writes, 'or some frag- between a harsh and repugnant world of
ment of melody that I catch the real spirit facts controlled by law, and the inviting
of the island, for in general the men sit 40 realm of a lawless imagination. In one of
together and talk of the tides and fish, and the longest of his plays, The Well of the
of the price of kelp in Connemara.' The Saints, this idea becomes perfectly ex-
traditional lovely savage has here suffered pKcit Two blind beggars who have long
a further declension into a peasant girl pleased themselves with thinking of each
in her teens towards whom only a friendly 45 other's beauty are, through a miracle, re-
attachment exists. Yet this girl, like her stored to sight. But the vision of 'things
famous predecessors, becomes the symbol as they are' is so hideous that they fall
of what he has come to seek : 'at one ^to a violent hatred of each other. And
moment she is a simple peasant, at another they are both so thankful when they go
she seems to be looking out at the world 50 blind again that they reject with scorn
with a sense of a prehistoric disillusion the holy man's offer to repeat the miracle,
and to sum up in the expression of her This is perhaps the most elaborate expres-
gray-blue eyes the whole external de- sion of an idea in all Synge's works, and
spondency of the clouds and sea.' And one is not surprised to learn that four
after he has talked to her of the 'men who 55 years before The Well of the Saints there
live alone in Paris,' he notes that 'below was performed and printed in Paris a
the sympathy we feel there is still a chasm 'Chinese' play by M. Georges Clemen-
between us.' I do not wish to push this ceau, called the Voile du Bonheur, which
parallelism farther than it goes. In the contains identically the same idea, and

286 WRITING OF TODAY

which, as Mr. Howe concedes, it is 'per- share in sovereignty and the high king of

fectly probable' that Synge knew. Ulster to go salmon-spearing and vaga-

For us The Well of the Saints is sig- bonding with the sons of Naisi. To this

nificant only as illustrating with espe- man in whose vision of joy we are invited

cial clearness that profound sense of dis- 5 to participate, life presents itself in its

illusion which underlies all Synge's eccen- comic aspects as a juxtaposition and irrec-

tric comedies, and constitutes, as I have oncilable opposition of hideous realities

said, his point of contact with Anatole and hopeless dreams, dreams like the glens

France. The most France-like comedy of Neifin in the dews of night, realities

that he ever conceived was never written, 10 like Old Mahon in the potato field — 'He

but the scenario is reported to us by Mr. was a dirty man, God forgive him.'

Yeats. Two women, a Protestant and a What, then, shall we say of his trag-

Catholic, take refuge in a cave, and there edy? Those who are sealed of the tribe

quarrel about religion, abusing the Pope of Synge speak high praise of The Riders

or Henry VIII, but in low voices, for the i5 to the Sea, that picture of the drear old

one fears to be ravished by the soldiers, woman who has lost all her sons. As Mr.

the other by the rebels. At last one Edward O'Brien declares in the preface

woman goes out because she would sooner printed in the collective edition, this

any fate than such wicked company.' drama is set in the atmosphere of uni-

Now it is just this homeless selfishness of 20 versal action ; it holds the 'timeless peace'

his mirth that distinguishes Synge from " that passeth all understanding. This were

Jonson and Moliere and Congreve, with vision, indeed. It is a noble phrase, this

whose names his has been so fearlessly 'timeless peace.' It connotes in my imag-

coupled. In all the classical comedy of ination the serene enduring forever of

the world one is made aware of the seat a5 victorious heroes and saints who have

whence the laughing spirit sallies forth to passed out of tribulation. It is not, at

scourge the vices or sport with the follies any rate, an empty euphemism for an-

and affectations of men. When the play nihilation, but a state in which those of

is over, something has been accomplished the living dwell who, like the Stoic em-

towards the clarification of one's feelings 3° peror, have caught a vision of the central

and ideas; after the comic catharsis, illu- beauty and abiding harmony in all the

sions dissolve and give way to a fresh works of God. It is the mood in which

vision of what is true and permanent and all high tragedy leaves us; the still elatioji

reasonable. Synge's comedies end in a into which we rise when blind CEdipus

kind of ironical bewilderment. His, in- 35 answers the call of the god; the 'calm of

deed, is outlaw comedy with gipsy laugh- mind, all passion spent' with which we

ter coming from somewhere in the shrub- are dismissed by that superb last chorus

bery by the roadside, pealing out against in 'Samson Agonistes,' beginning,

church and state, and man and wife, and

all the ordinances of civil life. 40 All is best, though oft we doubt

It is not that many of the dramatis What the unsearchable dispose

personce are vagrants, but that the dram- Of Highest Wisdom brings 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- 45 The Riders to the Sea. It is like Lear, it
sages in these plays that all the critics is like Greek tragedy; it is not, as they
delight to quote, and that the playgoer 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 50 does differ from Maeterlinck in two strik-
queen or begga^ touched with lyric ec- ing respects. While the Belgian 'mystic'
stasy, expresses a longing to go roaming 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 55 Irishman steeps his linos in personality
the Sea. Even to that piece built of the and the reek of the- and the smell

heroic stuff of the bards, Deirdrc of the 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 wonderously fair woman scorning a only the old dark way of nature. But so

G. LITERARY CRITICISM 287

far as what the Germans call the 'inner what may very possibly prove to be lack-
form' is concerned, Synge gives us simply ing in salient or permanent traits. At
an Irish transposition of Maeterlinck. least before undertaking any such task,
Strictly speaking, The Riders to the Sea is criticism might well attempt to answer the
not a tragedy at all, because it is not a 5 question that every thoughtful contem-
drama. It might with more propriety be porary must put to an imaginative effort,
called a tragic idyl — a somber picture, im- especially to the novel which deals with
pressive enough in its kind, with the fear- the known appearances of life : what has
ful whispering of the young girls, whose this hand made of my world? For it is
necks have not yet bowed beneath the an- 10 here that the novelist touches us all most
cient burden, and the gray broken old closely.

mother, who looks before and after and has What has Mrs. Wharton done for our

passed through all illusions, sitting there world — for the American scene, to use
patiently, passively, receiving the tidings Mr. Henry James's somewhat precious
of disaster. Protagonist in the proper *5 phrase? The experts have told us again
sense of the word there is none; no act of and again that Mrs. Wharton's touch is
the will turning against destiny as a token tne deftest, the surest, of all our American
of human participation in that divine en- manipulators in the novel form. Quite
ergy into which death resumes us all. It is recently Mr. James has reiterated in his
this turning of the will that makes just the *> reverberating periods his authoritative
difference between what is drama and phrase of Mrs. Wharton's accomplish-
what is not; and between the mood with rnent. Hers is the only American name
which Samson in Gaza affects us when he he has found occasion to mention in his
says, 'And I shall shortly be with them latest appraisal of contemporary English
that rest,' and the mood with which 25 fiction. _ The ground for according such
Maurya affects us when she says, 'No distinction to Mrs. Wharton is plain to
man at all can be living forever, and we one acquainted with the craftsman's side
must be satisfied.' It is the difference of the novelist's business. Mrs. Wharton
between Milton looking into the timeless writes well — perhaps too consciously
peace and Synge looking into the noisome 30 well. Technically she has formed her
grave. We heard him before crying method on the approved tradition of
aloud under the golden lights of the oaks French fiction, the tradition of refinements
of Glencree that in the end black boards and exclusions, of subtleties and inten-
would cover him and he should lie with tions, the traditions of Flaubert and Tur-
worms eternally. Just that is the tragic 35 genieff, on which Mr. James admiringly
vision and significance of The Riders to formed himself a generation ago, rather
the Sea. than on the richer if less esthetically satis-

fying tradition of English and Russian
fiction, of Fielding and Thackeray, of
VII 40 Tolstoy and Dostoievsky. In this ap-

tv/tdc weja-dtv-mvt'c \xrr\T>T t\ proved school triumphs are more easily

MRS. WHARTON S WORLD won, at least more enthusiastically recog-

T?rmT7T?T TTT7PT?Trir nized by the expert who has served his

ROBERT HERRICK tf rm therCj than fa the Qther looser tradi_

[New Republic, February 13, 1915. By permis- 45 tion.

sion of author and publisher.] t« 1. ■ 1 r • r

Technical proficiency of any sort, ac-
The exclusive aim of literary criticism cording to any intelligent ideal, is corn-
can hardly be that of drawing the mental mendable surely, but only in measure as it
and spiritual portrait of a creative per- achieves the purpose of all technique,
sonality, as Mr. Brownell, reaffirming the 5° which is effective creation. No true art-
faith derived from his master Sainte- ist can be content with a triumph of man-
Beuve, has recently asserted. That may ner alone. If Mrs. Wharton were forced
be a fruitful enough ideal for the profes- to remain on a solitary pedestal of tech-
sional critic reading anew the ancient nical proficiency, hers would be a lonely
monuments ; but for the less exacting task 55 position in this day of unacademic free-
of reckoning the claims of contemporary dom in all creative effort, and her ad-
creators to our attention, there are simpler mirers by dwelling too insistently on her
methods than an elaborate portraiture of excellent manner would do her a dubious

288 WRITING OF TODAY

service, all the more as their praises seem Wharton has least zealously embraced,
to deny the validity of other and robuster however carefully she may have studied
ideals for the novel. It may well be, in- its manifestations. The House of Mirth,
deed, that the French tradition with all its offering that most significant of Mrs.
reservations is already doomed in favor 5 Wharton's discoveries, the lamentable
of that freer, more epic treatment of life Lily Bart, contains less of obvious shoddy
so much deprecated by Mr. James in his than The Custom of the Country, with its
comments on Tolstoy. Undine Spragg and Elmer Moffatt. In-
However all this may be judged by the deed, so far to the extravagant verge of
few who are absorbed in the how rather w the social world has Mrs. Wharton moved
than the what of the finished product, it is in this latter novel that it remains fan-
futile to deny that the what is always of tastically unreal, with the generic unreal-
first importance to that large mute audi- ity of the parable, betrayed even by the
ence of the uninitiated to which every stage names of the heroine and of her
creator must appeal in the last resort. ^ origin, 'Apex City.' Apex City ! As ex-
And respecting Mrs. Wharton's content, it pert a realist as Mrs. Wharton must have
has been her misfortune that her pub- been aware to what unreality of the typi-
lishers should have advertised so persist- cal she was surrendering herself with
ently and complacently her peculiar ad- those satiric names. One feels that ex-
vantage in possessing an accurate knowl- 20 tremely little of this variegated chronique
edge of her material, for observing, that of marriage and divorce, of 'Wall street
is, that small portion of American human- deals' and vulgarian millionaires, ever
ity intensively occupied with purely social really entered into Mrs. Wharton's deli-
ambitions. Mrs. Wharton, we have been cate perceptions. They emerge from be-
told, has actually been part of what she 25 neath her trained hand almost as raw as
presents as fiction, the ^ inference being f rom the reportorial insignificance of the
that the fiction must inevitably be the bet- newspaper to which she so often refers
ter for this fact. It is a naive conviction the reader for corroboration. The singu-
that intimate experience is a condition of iar characteristic of imaginative presenta-
imaginative realization. The truth seems 3o tions is that they provide their own test of
to be that the least influential factor is their validity, whether or not the reader
the observed fact, while the personality has happened to have similar experiences,
through which the fact must pass with its Crusoe's island was never doubted bv boy
fundamental knowledge and power of real- or man But one doubts Undine Spragg,
ization is the controlling one. It scarcely 35 A Qt Elmer Moffatt and their
needs the illustrious example of a Balzac worM alth h the newspapers authenti-
who constructed solidly an entire social cate them dai, w- h fsePdetail. That
system out of the meagerest of observed somethi hum ess£mial for conviction,
data, to suggest that Mrs. Wharton may which £ a' para^raph must per:
actually have been hampered in her im- force Qmi thePn£vel[;t £0}$d prov[^
JIM I^T^^^XiA f any rf a noveli such

material. Certainly she has not done least t?IL.-0tl?erw,.se w^P!f.ce c0Rethe.r the
-been least convincing-in those ocea- sho^ chronicle of Undine Spragg s ca-
sional excursions into the less familiar ie€,r'

reaches of her field such as Ethan Frome. 45 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 hearth, I suspect, than that of the two
that portion of the abundant material at 5° 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-
shoddy part. For it is the shoddier part where within hail of the more hectic orbit
of rich and fashionable New York, in- of 'society.' But Amherst and his phil-
dubitably authentic as 'society' though it 55 anthropic yearnings over the Westmore
be, that preponderatingly occupies the mills has the fatal stamp of amateurish-
scene in The House of Mirth and The ness — the unrealized — almost as plainly
Custom of the Country— the part Mrs. as the preposterous Spragg family. With

G. LITERARY CRITICISM 289

all his earnest intention Amherst merely observer has 'been fair' even to our
scratches the surface of the immense field 'most fashionable circles.' Certainly she
of American social endeavor. His creator has not cared to tone her pictures by vig-
still thinks of these matters in the terms orous contrasts or shaded examples. In-
of 'doing good' and 'social settlements/ 5 stances of these she has offered, but with
Fortunately The Fruit of the Tree holds little enthusiasm; they are pallid ghosts,
much else that is better realized if not her 'nice' people, who by right of soul
better worth realizing than social service; as well as of blood belong to the world she
it contains the soft, shallow Bessie, the has chosen to exploit. Why has Mrs.
best done of Mrs. Wharton's many rich 10 Wharton never cared to do more for them,
women, as well as Justine, the most daring for the Seldens, the Marvells?
of her young women. And the conflict The explanation may lie in the truth of

between the rich wife and the idealistic which I have already hinted, that Mrs.
husband, the reactions of Amherst and his Wharton is not primarily a social his-
venturous second wife, are all much more 15 torian, that she does not use the novel for
in Mrs. Wharton's real province — the this epic purpose, although these longer
analytic and psychological province where American stories suggest quite naturally
the subtleties of the subtly-minded are such a presumption. Ethan Frome be-
neatly unraveled. trays the secret of her true power. This
What has Mrs. Wharton done toward 20 shortened novel, this monochrome prose
painting in our national canvas? Grant- tragedy so exquisitely dealt with, reveals
ing the utility and significance of all ele- the spiritual interest with which Mrs.
ments in the scene, granting at least for Wharton is innately sympathetic — this
The House of Mirth and The Fruit of the and the suppressed drama of Bessie and
Tree, the authenticity of portrayal, never- 25 Amherst, the expressed drama of Amherst
theless, beyond the single figure of Lily and Justine. These spiritual conflicts in-
Bart, which is doubtless the most authori- volve no necessity of picturing a civiliza-
tative version ever rendered of the shal- tion; they are universal. Just because,
lowly rooted and socially obsessed Ameri- perhaps, they are not conditioned by
can girl, there is little of importance that 3° special environment or caste, because they
remains. For one reason, Mrs. Whar- lie outside the hard actualities of her per-
ton's stories are almost manless in any sonal contacts, their creator's imagina-
real conception of the sex, and in spite of tion seems to have been happily released,
the dominance of American women in our to work more freely and convincingly in
social world we have not yet reached the 35 them. Ethan Frome conceivingly sprang
point where men are utterly negligible, from no more intimate experience than
where Selden or Marvell, Rosedale or Undine Spragg and her crew, yet his sub-
Gus Trenor will answer for men. As for dued and twilight tragedy of relaxed will
the woman side of the picture, Mrs. Whar- spoke to his creator with all the fidelity of
ton's chosen contribution has been quite 40 high art. This is the field of creative in-
exclusively in the realm of social passion, terest to which Mrs. ^ Wharton has re-
which she has correctly portrayed as the paired more frequently in her short stories
pathological absorption of American than in her novels. Her talent, a defining,
women. Even her skill and her special analyzing, and subtilizing talent, has
knowledge have not saved her from ex- 45 found little ^ that was really congenial or
aggerations, unrealities, and repetitions. suggestive in the common run of our
The prevailing tone, the final taste of this coarsely accented national life. She has
American society is that of a marvelous rarely caught its more significant notes or
thinness — tinniness, rather. Are we as a tried to peer beneath its obvious super-
people when we evolve into 'society,' are 5o ficialities, nor has she been warmly
our women, even, as mentally and spirit- charmed by its kaleidoscopic glitter. The
ually anemic as Mrs. Wharton's world be- larger canvas, therefore, I infer, is not
trays them? Without too easy a patriot- her natural opportunity, competent artist
ism it may be doubted whether this clever that she is.

:90 WRITING OF TODAY

In the last three years the official passion
VIII for secrecy has been lessened, so that he

may say things, and the public lust for the

THE MOST HEROIC EFFORT blood of a scapegoat has been sated, so

5 that he may be heard. Mr. Nevinson's
JOHN MASEFIELD book comes when both official terror and

public fury permit much of the truth to be
{Manchester GMar^°^er^sgs[onN]ovember ^ I9lS- known. Not all is yet revealed, nor is full

justice yet done. When all the Reports of

The Dardanelles campaign was the w the Dardanelles Commisssion are pub-
strangest, most difficult, and most heroic lished, if they ever are, the truth will be
effort ever made by the men of our race. fully known. Meanwhile Mr. Nevinson's
It was unlike most of the campaigns in book gives more of the truth of that cam-
our history in that it was conceived by paign than any book which has appeared,
genius. It was unlike all others in that x5 It is not likely that any other book will
its failure (redeemed, like all other Brit- supersede it or upset his conclusions,
ish failures, by courage and endurance) His story is well ordered, well arranged,

was relieved by a quality or glamour which and well balanced. His descriptions are
lays over all memories of it a glow of just, terse, and full of color, his descrip-
beauty. Even now, less than three years 20 tions of battlefields are as precise and
after the evacuation, those who were as perceiving as good landscape-painting,
there in the months of exultation, misery, In the moving passages of that great tragi-
and despair, from April to December, cal drama he is both eloquent and austere.
191 5, think of the place and the time as In all his criticism he is careful and wise,
things apart, consecrated forever by pas- 25 His book comes not only from a great ex-
sion, agony, and bloody sweat, but also by perience of the peninsula, but from a wide
another thing, difficult to define yet felt information. Few men, perhaps no single
by all as the very heart of romance. man, saw so much of the peninsula as he.

Apart from the beauty which comes Very few (of those who were there)
with man's courage and sorrow and high 30 landed and lived as he did at all three
resolve, this campaign, above all other positions — Helles, Anzac, and Suvla, as
campaigns, was set in beauty. Men came well as at the advanced bases. Perhaps
to it in ships across a sea glorious with no man can have talked of the operations
beauty. The light, the mountains and the with so many of the soldiers and sailors
islands, the plants and flowers, the im- 35 who led them and took part in them,
mense expanse of the iEgean decked the Certainly no single man there had better
stage for our men as it has never been opportunities for seeing and knowing,
decked for any campaign in the past. And to what conclusion does this rarely

Then, the campaign was not visibly sue- gifted, just, and most eloquent writer
cessful, and a man has a tenderness for come, from the depth of his knowledge
the fine things which failed. Sir Ian and fullness of observation? What
Hamilton may yet see the 25th of April, caused the failure of the campaign?
which some call 'Australia's Birthday,' a 'The ultimate burden of failure,' he
national holiday and day of remembrance, writes, 'lies on the authorities at home.'

This book of Mr. Nevinson's x is the 45 They, 'the authorities at home,' not any
first considered and critical history of the soldier, flung away the certainty of suc-
campaign. Mr. Nevinson is specially fit- cess long before the troops left England
ted to be the historian of such a venture. Napier says somewhere that we are ^ 'a
He was an eye-witness of the more tragic very warlike race, but not at all a mili-
part of the fighting and the endurance. 50 tary one.' Somewhere in that very just
Beyond all living writers he is qualified by summary of our people may be found the
powers of sympathy and of style to under- reason of our failure. 'The authorities^
stand and to tell of some such struggle home' were warlike but not at all mili-
as this, where right and wisdom were tary. They had no knowledge of the
matched against might and power. The 55 strength of our enemy, they showed
time is ripe for such a book by such a man. our enemy what we intended to do, tin v

waited till our enemy was thoroughly 1

i The Dardanelles Camfajon. By H. w. Nevjn- pared, and then launched against them an
Nin„erM%r:.8N8:sbnVn<fC°- Ppl"'42»' W,th inadequate force without support. Pres-

G. LITERARY CRITICISM 291

ently they launched another inadequate

force, and then stopped the campaign. IX

Perhaps, finally, it comes down to this,

that when this war began we were quite THE FALLACY OF FREE VERSE

unprepared for war, so that we had 5 tot -crirwMj-c */r wr t t>t^

neither the men nor the guns for an ex- THEODORE MAYNARD

peditioil of the kind. [Yale Review, January, 1922. Republished in

Some Will Say : 'In that Case, "the au- 0ur ^es* Poets by Theodore Maynard (Holt & Co.

thorities at home" ought not to have sent I922l) By Permisslon of author and publishers.]
the expedition at all.' They ought not to 10 In view of the fact that Miss Harriet
have sent it when and how they did send Monroe (who seems to be not only editor
it, giving full advertisement to the enemy of Poetry but of poetry) has announced
to prepare, and (later on) full time to re- that the discussion of free verse is now
cover. But the campaign was conceived closed, I feel a little diffident about for-
by genius, and though it had no immediate 15 cibly reopening it. My apology is that
effect that was not distastrous its real most attacks upon free verse, like most
results were profound and beneficial. defenses, have been unintelligent; and
While I write this the news comes that the that mine, I venture with all due modesty
Kaiser has abdicated, and that the ships to believe, will be intelligent,
of the Allies are preparing to pass 20 The whole controversy, intelligent or
through the Narrows. There is general not, has become so confused in its issues,
joy and thanksgiving for these things. so much entangled with personal ambi-
And who, in the general joy, thinks for a tions and prejudices, that it is difficult as
moment of the part played by the Darda- well as dangerous to make any attempt to
nelles campaign in bringing the war to an 25 reduce the matter to orderly arrange-
end? The campaign was an heroic feat ment. It can only be done by painfully
of arms. No thinking man will withhold clearing, at each step, the ground of its
honor in his heart from Sir Ian Hamilton cumbering misconceptions,
and those whom he led on that forlorn To be fair to the vers librists we should

hope. But how many realize that it was 30 not take the wild eccentricities of the
Sir Ian Hamilton and his merry men who notoriety-seekers among them as typical
broke the power of the Turk forever? of the movement. It would, I think, be
There, in the dust and scrub and stink of just to draw unfavorable conclusions
Gallipoli, Mesopotamia was freed, the from the prevalence of eccentricity among
Caucasus relieved, Egypt made safe, and 35 even the staider innovators who, like
Palestine ours. The Turk was not only Miss Amy Lowell, have protested against
broken by us in Gallipoli but he was there the 'nefarious persons who endeavor to
sickened of his allies, so that very much keep themselves before the public by
of the present happy state of the war is means of a more or less clever charlatan-
due to this expedition — 'equal,' as Mr. 40 ism.' But it would not be just to hold
Nevinson writes, 'in splendor of concep- Miss Lowell and her co-workers guilty of
tion, heroism, and tragedy.' crimes that, in intention at least, they do

This war has shown the world, what the not commit. This is an easy, often-used,
poets have shown to the few, that life, and discreditable method for bringing
destiny, or the powers which direct man 45 free verse into contempt. I disdain to
work with irony but with justice. In our employ it.

seeming failure, which brought in Bui- Moreover, there is much to be said for

garia against us, sealed the fate of Kut, the widely diffused notion that free verse
and made the collapse of Russia only a is a better mode for expressing the erao-
matter of time, there was still the seed of 5o tions of our age than traditional metrical
victory. Our blow in Gallipoli went home forms. I think it quite probable myself:
to the Turkish heart, and from that time so much the worse for the age !
our enemy's chief ally was a dying man. A paradoxical circumstance about mod-

These things will some day be recognized ernism, however, is that it is never mod-
by the world. Mr. Nevinson's book is 55 ernism : it is invaribly futurism. And the
worthy of his subject. It is by much the central doctrine of futurism is that we
best and most thoughtful history that has are all poor fools — which also is a highly
appeared about any part of this war. tenable proposition. For the modernist

292 WRITING OF TODAY

is continually making violent efforts to advocates maintain that they are able to
be revolutionary, although he carries in get out of it effects of which other liter-
his breast the exasperating knowledge ary modes are incapable. They say, with
that he must in due course appear a reac- a great show of reasonableness: 'Stick
tionary to his children. He is obliged, in 5 to your traditional forms, if they are
short, to begin as a young freak merely to adapted to what you are trying to do.
end up as an old fogy. Free verse is adapted to what we are try-

Any philosophy behind futurism is a ing to do. We have not only the right
philosophy of negation which doubts, to use it, but — since an artist must work
without daring to deny, the validity ot 10 in his medium — no right to use anything
reason and the existence of all absolutes. else.'

Truth has fallen into the hands of the it may be so. It would be partially

pragmatists; goodness into the hands of proved to be so if the vers librists were
the psychoanalysts; and beauty — well, the aDle to produce any example of pure
natural result of the age's deliquescence l5 poetry that could not have been written
is free verse. The one thing certain is in any other way. But one does not
that nothing is certain. We have fallen feej the inevitability in even Out of the
into the abyss of hopeless skepticism. Cradle Endlessly Rocking as one feels
The very title of the most characteristic it in tne case of the Ode to a Night-
of Miss Lowell's books. Pictures of the M ingaie. For free verse is always more
Floating World, is significant and ap- or less of a tour de force, It has forrI1|
propnate. % but unnatural form.

Mr. Santayanas genius for profound The mere techni of free verse is a

criticism has noted this state of affairs feat H D achi^eS it within a small
and has drawn from it the correct con- .5 f others do M f the

elusions. The interest abroad, he says, o^ ^„ ,' f ,r_OA „„>*.„ „,..;«.« .:tt,OI.
, • <• ,1 j-,.- r so-called tree verse poets write either

to summarize him, in the condition of \C£ , . u a *.u

flux, in the process of becoming rather dithyrambic prose, whose cadences they
than in what has or will result, is the un- emphasize by a typographical device, or
mistakable mark of the barbarian.' In 30 else metres "PS1^ and !DroJcen in such
saying so he touches the root of modern a ^ay as to be unrecognized as metres,
aesthetic experimentalism. Far from traditional poetry concen^

The artist is no longer concerned with trating on form, it is free verse that does
the impossible but happy task of captur- s<>- The one mode accepts a convention
ing absolute beauty: he does not believe 35 (not Perhaps, as a rule, realizing that it
in an absolute beauty. Consequently, he ls more than a convention) and is in con-
is thrown back upon himself, and must sequence at liberty to forget form. But
use as the material of his art not reality not for an instant is free verse able to
but his personal reactions to the unsub- possess the carelessness of freedom. Its
stantial phenomena of appearances. He 40 refusal of limitation binds it, of neces-
gives up in despair the ancient ambitions sltY> m the^ strictest of limits,
of his craft and confines himself to the Indeed, in the latest developments of

narrowing circle of his own ego. It is technique we have what is equivalent to
a terrible fate; but one that has, at pres- an abandonment of the earlier free verse
ent, the delusive attraction of novelty. 45 position. Imagism removes the discussion
The poet is spurred on by the craving outside of the question of form to that
to be 'original' ; and as he has nothing to of method ; and 'polyphonic prose* is
reflect in the distorted mirrors of his nothing more than a synthesis of every
fantastic art but his reactions, he is com- conceivable method, ranging from bald
pelled to be as idiosyncratic as possible in 50 statement to frank doggerel — a haggis
order to justify himself. pie into which innumerable ingredients

It is frequently asserted that free verse are thrown at hazard,
is lacking in form. That is an ignorant Imagism brings together, with an in-

contention and one easily demolished by dulgent Catholicism, those who use metre
the exponents of modernism. The point 55 with a brilliant exactness, like Mr. T. S.
at issue is not whether free verse has form Eliot, and those who use only cadence,
but whether it has poetic form; whether it like H. D. But they are to a man stick-
is a satisfactory medium for poetry. Its lers for form. And in the tenets agreed

G. LITERARY CRITICISM 293

upon among them and published in their hands must touch the wood of chairs,
first anthology, free verse is fought for the skin of flowers — and reproduce in
merely as a principle of liberty. The words the sensations of their curious fin-
sole rule that distinguishes them from gers. So far so good. But their eyes
other schools is that of the presenta- 5 must be pressed against the object of
tion of images. As Miss Lowell, their their love — and they will be too close
spokesman, puts it, throwing Aristotle to it to see it. They forget that 'Nature
overboard, 'Imagism is presentation not is still elsewhere,' that beyond the mate-
representation.' rial substance is a mysterious essence —

No other of their six rules can be cav- 10 the beauty which should be the object
iled at by the most conservative. Poets of their search — and the closest scrutiny
have never abandoned the principle of fails to yield the results that they had
using always the exact and not the nearly expected.

exact word, though they have not always Along with this, as a corollary, goes a

been successful in finding it. (Neither 15 desire to strip life to the bare bones,
are the Imagists.) Poetic diction has which now and then achieves an austere
practically disappeared as good usage. economy of speech that is, in itself,
Every poet of consequence has invented wholly admirable. But while the Ima-
some new rhythms. Most poets have felt gists are refining down their material
free in the choice of subject. Concen- 20 f rom all alloy, making it ready for use,
tration is no new poetic ambition. And they generally do not remember that they
poetry that is 'clear and hard, never have to go on and use it. The process
blurred nor indefinite,' existed before the is doubtless one that is necessary to
Imagist manifesto appeared. poetry. But it is a preliminary process.

Nevertheless, a restatement of these 25 And the Imagists usually stop there,
hoary precepts is to be welcomed. Like As Miss Lowell herself states —
all precepts they are frequently forgotten

in practice; and to do the Imagists jus- We will scatter little words

tice they have made an attempt to carry ^P011 the paper,

out their rules with meticulous conscien- 30 Llke seeds about to be planted.

tiousness. Unfortunately the Imagists omit to plant

Moreover, their central idea — that of them

rendering particulars exactly without Wakefulness, for example, is full of

vague generalities— is valuable when not the material of oetr carefully prepared
pushed too far. But the Imagists have 35 fof use The Fprelfminary £r£ce* is
pushed their doctrine too far. They are lete< (As a matter of fact all the

like that group of painters whose fad sg ^ be t intQ operation

it was to paint sand with real sand; hair £multaneousl and the oet refin de_
with real hair Like them this group of . and huM with the game hand ^
poets is out for presentation not repre- 40 * game moment< sm Qne be ^

sentation.' They will describe sand with ^ q f es of £iolog5ical

words that are as sandy as possible ; hair £ * * d ^ fa

with words that are as. hairy as possible ' £ made-but where is the

It is onomatopoeia ceasing to be a casual *7

trick and stiffening into a habit with the 45 ^ucm '
likelihood of freezing into a ritual. Jolt of market-carts;

One must, nevertheless, recognize that Steady drip of horses' hoofs on hard pave-
at the bottom of Imagism lies a hunger ment;

for actuality, for close contact. This, A black sky lacquered over with blueness,
like the other fine elements in the move- 50 And the lights of Battersea Bridge
ment, is not novel. Tt is an odd jeal- P[ickjinS P.*'* j? the dawn- .
SS£ said Emerson, 'but the poet finds '^Sj^jEH " "
himself not near enough to his object ^£p**l
The pine-tree the river, the bank of Incurved upon your dreams,
flowers before him, does not seem to be 55 wm the day come before you have opened
nature. Nature is still elsewhere. The t0 me?

Imagists would accept the first but not
the second part of ths dictum. Their If any one doubts my assertion that this

294 WRITING OF TODAY

is not a poem, let him read another sug- He does not hesitate to go to the length
gested by it, Wordsworth's sonnet on of turning one of Meleager's epigrams
Westminister Bridge. I am sure that into verse before our eyes as an object
my point will then be clear, and will be lesson to explain his own literary
accepted by the reader. 5 method. This is certainly a striking il-

The majority of free verse poets, how- lustration of what typographical arrange-
ever, do not follow the Imagist example ment will do:

in this matter. I wish they did. Much The hol n- ht and th Q L we

more common faults are vast prolixity took as witness of our vows; and be_

and an utterly unselective dealing with 10 fore tnee we swore, he that he would
life in raw slabs. love me always and I that I would never

We could not take three more represen- leave him. We swore, and thou wert

tative examples of the various brands of witness of our double promise. But

free verse than that written by Edgar Lee now ,he savs that our vows were written

Masters, Carl Sandburg, and Amy Lowell, 15 onaJ*e iT^^hfm"^ th^ !™' S
who among them cover nearly the whole anoTer

field and will provide more than enough
illustrations for our purpose. Their This becomes:

methods differ widely, as do the subject xne holy night and thou,

matter and the temperament of each. 20 o Lamp,

To classify them roughly, let us say that We took as witness of our vows;

Masters is a free verse poet by accident; And before thee we swore,

Sandburg by fate; Amy Lowell by He that he would love me always

choice: Sandburg by natural bent; Amy And I that I would never leave him.

Lowell by cleverness; Masters by ,5 XndXu' wert witness of our double
shrewdness helped out by luck. promise.

Edgar Lee Masters, who, oddly, is one But now he says that our vows were

of the most famous free verse poets, once written on the running waters,

told me that he did not call himself a And thou, O Lamp,

free verse poet at all. It is quite true 30 Thou seest him in the arms of another,
that the larger part of his work is com- Reading this Miss Harriet Monroe

posed in formal metres. He has an am- declares, with a toss of her head, that
bition to be known as a poet pure and Mr Masters has more of the authentic
simple; and he plods along writing bad clas9dc note than Tennyson, Browning,
blank verse and feeble lyrics which would 35 and Arnold comb;ned \ But the indica-
never attract attention were it not for tion of where we are tQ breathe cannot
the eclat of the Spoon River Anthology. make anything except pros€ out of a
Apart from the fat Silence (in free passage. This is still truer of the

verse as it happens) included in Songs Spoon R{vey Anthology for which it
and Satires, none of the other poems in 40 served as a modd but tQ whkh it did not

thl4J0l^me lsJwortrJ1 \st?w'. , impart its beauty. We may grant, how-

The Domesday Book, despite its glar- €ver> that> th h Mr Ma^rs defaced

ing faults, has power. It is in many his book with a morbid preoccupation
ways a remarkable performance But with satyriasis and nymphomania, he
out of its twelve thousand lines hardly 4S produced a highl interesting collection
twelve possess any distinction. of thumb.nail sketches and deserved his

An inquisition taken for the people triumph.

Of the State of Illinois here in Le Roy, To an English reader, and I suppose

County aforesaid, on the 7th. of August, to many American readers as well, Mr.

Anno Domini nineteen hundred nineteen, 5o Car, Sandburg's three volumes, on first

Before me, William Merival, coroner. acquaintance, must appear to be a chaos

That passage has no more and no less of cacophony. The poet is at no trouble

reason for being written in blank verse to placate his audience. He throws

than the rest of a volume which may be words as he might throw bricks at your

magnificent but which is not poetry. 55 head.

Even the Spoon River Anthology has And yet, amid all this welter of verbi-

no technical subtlety. Mr. Masters, with age, a beauty is to be discerned— a beauty
rare candor, has explained that he picked often smothered by ugly jargon, but still
up his hint from the Greek Anthology, beauty. To cite Whitman's superb

G. LITERARY CRITICISM 295

phrase, one hears 'a horn sounding Many ways to spell good night,

through the tangle of the forest and the Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July

a * l -.» spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes,

dying ecnoes. ,,_... . They fizz in the air, touch the water and

A great deal of Sandburgs success is, J -t

I suspect, due to the fact that he is sup- 5 Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue
posed to write American. He does, an(j then go out.

but not nearly so often as is generally Railroad trains at night spell with a smoke-
supposed. He does get, however, a con- stack mushrooming a white pillar,

siderable amount of publicity because of Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi
a tendency current in some quarters to 10 crying in a baritone that crosses

connect free verse with 'hundred-per- lowland cottonfields to a razor-back

cent Americanism' — a tendency that can hill.

do no good either to free verse or Jt is easy to sPe11 S°od niSht
Americanism. For metrical experiments ManY ways to spell good night,

are by no means peculiar to America. 15 Now for Mr. de la Mare's poem, Good-

And Robert Frost and Edwin Arlington frye:

Robinson are, to say the least, as rooted _, . ' 4 . . _

in the national soil and as informed with ™e last of last words spoken is, Goodbye-

Jr J , • .. M r* Qo„iKl ,r„ The last dismantled flower in the weed-

the national spirit as Carl Sandburg. n hed

Chicago is not the world. It is not even 20 The last thin rumor of a feebk beU f ar rf
the whole of the United States. And mg>

when Mr. Sandburg defends Chicago by Tne last blind rat to spurn the mildewed
bellowing: 'Come and show me another rye;

city with head lifted singing so proud

to be alive and coarse and strong and 25 A hardening darkness glasses the haunted
cunning !' I feel like saying, with cold eye\

contempt, that if Chicago is what he says Shines into nothing the Watchman s burnt-
it is_which I have reason to doubt— then w °"* ca?aie>

II is _ iv,n m,:~.«o. Wreathes into scentless nothing the wasting
he ought not to be proud of Chicago. incense

He speaks with the brutal violence of the 30 The last 0J ,ast words spoken is> Goodbye<

barbarian.

Now, the barbarian, I hasten to add, Love of its muted music breathes no sign,
may possess many splendid qualities Thought in her ivory tower gropes in her
which civilized men are inclined, during spinning,

periods of decay, to neglect. But to ex- 35 Toss on in vain the whispering trees of
alt the barbarian at the expense of the Eden, , . „ «

civilized man is cosmic treason. And Last> of a11 last words sPoken> 1S> Goodbye.
Mr. Sandburg, I regret to say, is guilty This is one of those few cases in which

of that crime. He has many finer ele- two poems can be fairly compared,
ments in him — tenderness, humor, gaiety ; 40 They are equal in theme, in length, and
but to me he is the barbarian. in mood — but how unlike each other

There are signs, nevertheless, that Mr. they are! Mr. Sandburg has all the
Sandburg is mellowing. The crudity of originality of detail and of manner; Mr.
his adolescence is gradually wearing off; de la Mare has all the originality of
and as a consequence his verse is grow- 45 effect.

ing more delicate and nearer to the Ima- Good Night, though characteristic, is

gist ideal. In Smoke and Steel he is not the best of Sandburg's poems,
under the disadvantage of being less There are other pieces which would sup-
sure of himself than he was in Chicago ply more vivid examples of single points,
Poems; but, on the other hand, he was 5° and one poem, (which, though I cannot
a little too sure of himself in the earlier quote it here, I must in justice mention),
book. He will acquire poise in time. Flash Crimson from Smoke and Steel,

Probably the best way of illustrating where all of Carl Sandburg's admi-
Carl Sandburg is to set out his poem rable qualities are gathered together, and
Good Night, and let it make its own 55 the ultimate word he has to say — courage,
vivid contrast with a poem bearing a Miss Amy Lowell is much the most

similar title by Walter de la Mare, re- completely equipped and, therefore, the
cently published in the anthology The most satisfactory example of a vers lib-
Enchanted Years: rist to be found. For Masters writes

296 WRITING OF TODAY

— — ^— — — — — _ I 3»

free verse without finesse, and Sandburg Leaves fall,
without any clear understanding of his Brown leaves,
own • purpose. Amy Lowell possesses Yellow leaves streaked with brown,
both : she is dexterous and doctrinaire. They fall,
Moreover, though H. D. excels all the 5 Flutter, .
members of her group in exquisite re- Jf1^ again,
straint, Amy Lowell excels H. D. in ihel bfown Iefv<:s' „ .
power and the width of her sweep. And f"d the streaked yellow leaves,
though no one could accuse of mystical Jffi^ft ttU.
humility the author of a book on Amen- 10 Qne
can poetry written in order to justify her One', two, three
private poetics, Miss Lowell is at least One' two,' five.

free of the fantastic egotism of Ezra All Venice is a falling of Autumn leaves-
Pound and the callow pedantry of John Brown,

Gould Fletcher. In addition there is no 15 And yellow streaked with brown,
'hundred-per-cent Americanism' nonsense

about her — a Lowell does not need it. Almost invariably the free verse poem

She is cosmopolitan, complicated, clever, that is successful in making its desired
and self-conscious. All her books have effect is very short and suggestive of a
prefatory explanations; and all the poems 20 translation. Miss Lowell, for her part,
in them are obviously written to sustain has studied to acquire the tang of hokku.
a thesis. She will be as delicate, as deliberate, and

If Miss Lowell were unable to indicate as limited as the art of Japan — but it is
successful instances of regular verse in an art remote from us, one alien to the
her later volumes, the early work of A 25 texture of our souls. Whether the vers
Dome of Many-Colored Glass would in- librist translates from the Japanese, like
cline the critic to conclude that she went Miss Lowell; or from the Chinese, like
in for revolution because she was a fail- Mr. Pound; or from the Greek, like Mr.
ure as a conservative. Aldington, he betrays a natural bent

When, however, Men, Women and 30 towards translation. And this, I think,
Ghosts appeared, it became demon- is because his original work suggests a
strated beyond question that Miss Low- flower plucked from the grave of a dead
ell is not merely an important free language.

verse poet, but an important poet. In- This tendency has made Miss Lowell

deed, the finest things in the second book 35 grow more and more metallic. Whole
are cast in a strict mold — Patterns pages in Legends are covered with plates
and Pickthorne Manor being written of foil. All her prints might be called, as
in odic form, the latter actually in she calls some of them, Lacquer Prints.
elaborately constructed stanzas; and Her handling of lifeless substances is
The Cremona Violin in the Chau- 40 significant. Where Shakespeare heard the
cerian style affected by Mr. Mase- lark singing at heaven's gate, she sees that

^ The Cremona ^becomes a literary ^nT^
curiosity by being broken by brief inter- Straight at the ear of heaven,
ludes of vers libre. They are intended 45

to represent — perhaps I should say 'pre- In the final analysis it will be discovered
sent' — the notes of a violin. If they are that what is wrong with the vers librist
read critically they will look more like is not so much their technique as their con-
the notes the poet put down, meaning but ception of poetry. It would not matter
omitting to polish in stanzas. This is a 50 even that they rebelled against one kind
thing we come upon frequently, not only of vicious virtuosity to bring in another
in Miss Lowell but in the other poets of kind equally vicious, if their fundamental
her school: the jottings for incomplete understanding of art were sound,
poetry or the jottings for incomplete The Imagist itch to 'present' instead of
prose allowed to appear before the public 55 represent, and the 'advanced' attitude
as finished articles. How admirably this towards the limitations of metre reveal
might have been worked into a descrip- a false view of the nature of poetry. I
tive essay: -have already tried to show that metre 13

G. LITERARY CRITICISM 297

much more than a convention; that invariably speak in verse. As the musi-
though it is not the soul of verse there cal element dropped away from drama,
can be no verse without it — for it is the ultimately branching into opera, it left
body which contains the soul. And hence behind it the habit of versified dialogue,
to speak of bad poetry (as I, in this es- 5 and this has never died out in any civi-
say, for convenience, have done) is a lized country. It is not probable that it
contradiction in terms. Bad poetry is an ever will be wholly discarded, for though
impossibility: it is either poetry, and it is manifestly artificial as a means of
therefore good, or non-existent. Poetry expression, its artifice is serious and
is nothing less than perfect speech — and 10 agreeable, and has been justified by the
how rare that is ! It is unique among the practice of the greatest poets of the
arts in that it cannot be tolerated unless world. What was good enough for
it attains excellence. ^Eschylus and Shakespeare and Racine is

The poet accordingly lays upon himself plainly good enough for their descendants
the most heart-breaking of labors — and lS today.

the happiest. He is on fire with desire. It is true that in unskilful hands stage-

He is tormented with frustration. Beauty poetry is very tiresome, and Alphonse
is a constant lure — and forever eludes Daudet speaks somewhere of a piece that
him. Thrice blest is he who once in a might be entertaining but that 'alas ! it is
lifetime is able to consummate in himself 20 in verse, and boredom stalks between the
the marriage of the genius of mortal couplets/ This, however, shows clumsi-
language with the divine Logos ! ness in the dramatist, not error in the

The vers librists, so far from being ancient convention, and so long as people
daring innovators, are really shirkers of are thrilled by Hamlet and Phedre there
their vocation. They take the safe mid- 25 wiH be dramatists eager to shine in the
die course, in which they will neither ornament of metre.

fail so badly as those who aspire to the No prominent poet of our time has been

highest nor succeed so well as those who more persistent than Mr. Yeats in culti-
attain the highest. They renounce the vating the drama in verse. He began
hope of perfection. 30 with The Countess Kathleen, published

And yet they have performed an ex- thirty years ago in a little 'cameo' volume
ceedingly useful service to literature— now much sought after by collectors,
one for which we should be grateful: Since then he has produced more than a
they have carried out the dead. The dozen plays, most of which, though by
vogue of the loose and the sentimental 35 no means all, are written in the plaintive
and the decorative is over. The world and delicate blank verse of which Mr.
may learn from the vers librists' fantas- Yeats has the secret. The issue of
ticality, sometimes, and from their frigid- Countess Kathleen was an event in the
ity, always, salutary lessons in technique, history of English poetry, so mysterious
They are the schoolmasters to bring us 40 was it and subtle, so charged with a
back to poetry. new species of electrical magic. For the

first time we were confronted with the
X drama of reverie, with scenes which were

enacted between a sleep and a sleep, in a
PLAYS IN VERSE x 45 vitreous atmosphere of refined and half-

wakened sensation, and expressed in lan-
EDMUND GOSSE guage of a marvelous felicity. Perhaps

LdEnDb i even ^ Countess Kathleen, and by its

un ay ones, ^m p^mi"?o'n -j ecem er Ul ig21' immediate successors, there might be

50 awakened in a thoughtful observer a note

The convention of what is called 'poetic of danger. There was a lack of logic, a
drama' belongs to the antiquity of Europe, weakness in the mental structure of the
According to Aristotle, tragedy arose beautiful wandering drama-dreams, which
from the goat-song, from the dithyramb gave cause for alarm, but there was every
of the Arcadian mountain-satyr, and in 55 reason to hope that the intellectual quali-
the oldest Greek fragments the characters ties would be added to a playwright so

IFour P.ays for Dancers. By W. B. Yeats. y0U"S a"d ardent> and S0 determined tO

(Macmillan and Co. ios. 6d. net* excel.

2$8 WRITING OF TODAY

What was certain was that such pieces of thought. The play called Calvary,
as The Shadowy Waters and Deirdre which is supposed to be a study of the
justified their faint and frail existence by finite character of the power of Christ —
the charm of their language and the who, it is represented, cannot save a
loveliness of their vision. Would Mr. 5 heron and a swan, infuriates Lazarus by
Yeats gain humanity and force? That the gift of life when he longs for death,
was the question which his readers hoped is unable to redeem the soul of Judas, and
to answer in the affirmative. is a vain sacrifice to the insolence of the

The Four Plays for Dancers, which he Roman soldiers — treats a terrible subject
presents to them today, will hardly re- 10 with a levity which is not intentional, but
assure them. Let us see in what these arises from a want of basal reflection,
dramas consist. Only one of the four, This drama is odd, in a sense it is

Calvary, is entirely new; of the others, picturesque, but it has no meaning. Mr.
At the Hawk's Well was privately printed Yeats has never realized the fact that
in 1917, The Dreaming of the Bones 15 creative activity depends on intellectual
and The Only Jealousy of Emer in 1919. energy; that it is not enough to appeal to
Mr. Yeats, in his notes and appendices, color and melody, or, as in The Dreaming
which are a little too self-complacent, of the Bones, almost entirely to landscape,
evinces a partiality for At the Hazvk's but that an intelligent completion of the
Well, to which I would fain do no in- 20 central idea must exist in the brain of
justice. But it is extremely difficult to the artist, however he may choose to
give an impression of this play which will disguise it with metaphor and fantasy,
not seem a caricature. There is a hollow The dramatist who is satisfied to move
among stones, watched by a Girl, who his characters about in an oracular va-
does not speak but screams at intervals 25 por, 'without a course, without a star,
like a hawk; she is accompanied by an by the instinct of sweet music driven,'
Old Man, who claims ownership in the can build nothing but a house of cloud,
hollow. Water on rare occasions plashes The authors of A Midsu..imer Night's
up for a moment among the stones and is Dream and The Witch of Atlas indulged
gone. 30 imagination in forms of extreme caprice,

but their procedure was not, like that of
He who drinks, they say, Mr. Yeats, purely arbitrary. Behind

Of that miraculous water lives for ever, their visions there was the solid force of

but the Old Man, who has watched for an intelligible system of experience
more than fifty years, has never caught 35 It has been the misfortune of Mr.
a drop. He therefore discourages the Yeats that he has never been subjected to
Young Man, who arrives on the quest of the discipline of criticism. He made his
immortality. That is the sole substance appearance as a radiant child, and his
of the piece; there are dances, and songs, literary attitude was so charming that it
and musicians 'whose faces are made up 40 met, from the first, with nothing but in-
to look like masks/ but what is the pur- dulgence. A result of this has been that,
port of it all, beyond a faint romantic like a child, he has continued to devote
melancholy, remains absolutely inscrut- himself to childish things, to prefer the
able The difference between At the pose of life to life itself. Quite early in
Hawk's Well and, for example, La Mort * his career, he began to think it amusing
de Tintaqeles,' is that behind the sym- to dabble in necromancy and magic, to
bolism of M. Maeterlinck there is a submit his senses to non-natural experi-
movement of intellect, whereas Mr. Yeats ment and to speculate vaguely about
simply records an incoherent dream, in 'fairies/ and mahatmas. He found that
which romantic phantasms move, or sway 5° all this entertained his readers and he
about without a purpose, without a mean- sank further into the marish of theoso-
ing, supported entirely on the ornament phies and mysteries of the Rosy Cross.
of beautiful diction. These ghosts of knowledge have a fas-

A heresy of the present age, pushed by cination for some romantic characters,
Mr Yeats to a further excess than by 55 but a robust mind casts them aside as
any other living writer of merit, is the soon as it discovers that they are to the
belief that artistic creation is independent intellect what choral or veronal is to the

G. LITERARY CRITICISM 299

body — solvents which disintegrate and dread encouragement. He should read

destroy. the marvelous story in Lucian of how

Unhappily, as the notes in the plays the prophet Peregrinus-Proteus was

before me only too plainly show, Mr. driven by a horde of fanatic women and
Yeats has yielded more and more pas- 5 idolatrous disciples to prove his immor-

sively to all this paralyzing stimulus. He tality by plunging into the crater of Etna,

is encouraged in his error by the applause Let Mr. Yeats beware,
of those from whom he should most

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC,
AND ART

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, in 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.

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.

As to musical criticism, if one may quote the opening phrase of Professor Daniel Gregory
Mason, editor-in-chief of The Art of Music, 'So many and varied are the paths of musical enjoy-
ment 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, espe-
cially if he is not acquainted with the technique and history of the form of musical art he
undertakes 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.

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 ns himself to have some skill,
however slight, in one of these arts, his understanding and appreciation of nil will be the
clearer and more intimate. When he comes to write, however, he should remember Ins reader,
and, especially as a beginner, shun that too prevalent artistic pose which delights la grading
a newly acquired vocabulary. There is nothing esoteric or obscure about great art, and
criticism ought to cast light and not shadow upon the object which it asks the reader to
contemplate.

300

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC AND ART 301

Professor Matthews' latest book is

called 'The Principles of Playmaking,'

I but if any hopeful aspirant to the mantle

of Shakespeare or Fitch hopes to learn

PLAYWRIGHTS AND PRO- 5 hi.s trade by a perusal of these pages, he

FESSORS w*^ be doomed to disappointment. In a

series of more or less unrelated papers,

WALTER PRICHARD EATON £e ^thor ranges from a discussion of

the theories of Aristotle, Lessing and

[Theatre Arts Magazine, January, 1920. By per- 10 Sarcey to memories of Edwin Booth and

misslon] an essay on Matthew Arnold and the

It is quite possible for the writer in the Theater. But he nowhere tells anybody
practical theater — and by practical thea- how to write a play. Rather he discusses
ter, we mean the theater which offers the plays which have been written, and
entertainment at a price and thus sup- J5 sets forth what seem to him certain laws
ports its workers — to underestimate the deducible from them, as opposed to the
debt the theater owes to its theorists, even mere rules or fashions of this or that
to those men who are professors, a term period. He is the teacher of architecture
less honored on Broadway than Brattle who discourses on proportion, on the uses
Street. Yet it would be rather difficult, *> of detail, on the underlying principles of
we fancy, to name any two men in Amer- structure, not the teacher who supplies
ica who have inspired an understanding the draftsman technique, the mathematics,
love of dramatic art in more young men the planning.

(and young women) than Professor 25 Professor Matthews' point of view
George P. Baker of Harvard and Pro- toward the drama is too well known by
fessor Brander Matthews of Columbia, now to require exposition. Like Walk-
The wit at the Players Club who remarked ley in England, he rests on Aristotle and
that the Columbia group of dramatists runs with Brunetiere. Some of us may
were all Brandered with the same Mat- 3o think that he overtresses the part an
thews was paying a perhaps unintended audience plays — that is, he gives an audi-
compliment to the professor's influence, ence too little credit for individual judg-
an influence so strong that it has sent ments, pushing the theory of 'mob psy-
man after man out of Columbia filled chology' beyond a reasonable point, and
with a desire to work in the theater. 35 also makes the 'success' of a play too de-

The recent success of the two volumes pendent upon its immediate effect in the
of one-act plays written at Harvard and playhouse. There was a long period, for
Radcliffe under Professor Baker's in- instance, when Shakespeare could not
fluence — a success not only among readers succeed in the theater, yet his plays re-
but in the test of scores of amateur per- 40 mained great drama. For a long time
formances — is alone sufficient vindication American audiences did not accept Ibsen,
of the academic study of dramatic com- They were forced to accept him — by lb-
position. Did it have no immediate effect sen. In other words, Professor Mat-
at all upon the professional theater, so thews' advice to playwrights to go to the
pronounced an effect in the amateur 45 theater constantly and study the suc-
theater would be worth all the effort. cesses, to see what makes them succeed,

In the light of the influence of these is possibly dangerous doctrine, and cer-
two men, who have given us from their tainly unnecessary. We find, too, a shade
classrooms playwrights, critics, scene de- of amusement in his theory of the need
signers, actors, etc., it is interesting to 50 of music-drama to stick to the romantic,
turn to their most recent books, and to the far away, illustrated by Madame But-
see, if possible, how far the 'academic' terfly and the drink of whiskey; for is
attitude toward the theater, the theoriz- not Madame Butterfly the most popular
ing attitude, holds a value for us to have, opera on the stage to-day? However,
presumably, advanced beyond the pupil 55 theories quite aside (and the Brunetiere
stage (though, to be sure, no man worthy theory of drama as a clash of wills so
of attention ever ceases to be a pupil constantly urged by Professor Matthews,
to experience). particularly annoys us at times), it is this

302 WRITING OF TODAY

author's deep knowledge of plays and book, one is inclined to say, is its thor-
players and playhouses, his devotion to oughness, its painstaking search for apt
the task of speculating endlessly about and illuminating illustration. Page after
them, his vast sympathy for them and his page, often in parallel columns, of ex-
unfailing interest in everything which 5 amples are cited, showing how dramatists
concerns them, that makes us understand of the past and present have met the
how he has influenced young men, of keen various problems of exposition, suspense,
minds and alert curiosity, winning their character revelation, natural and reveal-
sympathies and their enthusiasms, also, ing dialogue, and so on. Often two
for the theater. If the stage does not 10 versions of the same scene are presented,
owe much to Professor Matthews, and if Nothing whatever, in the practical part
the playwrights do not owe much because of the book, is left to theory. It is all
of awakened interest in critical specula- stuff from the workshop. Yet, paradoxi-
tion about their art, there is no such thing canV) theory is never quite absent. The
as debt. When shall we realize that until 15 critical instinct is probing for the reason
theory does enter into our work, until in- of e st and inuminating the process.
tellect is awakened in the young, we can Nowhere is this clearer than in his ch
have no?real criticism and no reasoned ters Qn charact€rization> He agrees

PrpgroefeSSsor Baker's book is of a totally * |f^ , Wj* Galsworthy 'that character
different stamp. It is not a collection of "h*±°\™ rth/J™ * ' il ustrations he
essays on the theater, but the ordered ^XrHvT,'n nn * T' *"* .°r

study of the practical task of putting a ^WW ^ v, 2 "T' -Ti^ ^"

play together, so far as this study can be gJln§^ allve ™hen the *aratist lets h.ls
embodied in a book and divorced from .5 ^[f^ take Jt in hand- Whei] ?
the personal equation. It deals in theory dou?t' whenu vour transition scenes don t
not at all, except as a preliminary. Yet work ou> when y°uJ act becomes clogged,
Professor Baker's preliminary theories stop and become better acquainted with
are interesting. First, of course, since he y°ur characters, is the gist of his advice,
is to teach the pupil how to write a 30 Because drama is emotion, the deepest
drama, he must needs define drama, ^nd surest drama must inevitably result
That is dramatic, he says, 'which by rep- from character.

resentation of imaginary personages in- It is practical advice, which not a few

terests, through its emotions, an average of our practising playwrights would do
audience assembled in a theater.' He 35 well to heed, that every dramatist, facing
does not deny that drama is most fre- the further development of his story,
quently a contest, a clash of wills, but it should not at once cast about for further
certainly is not always that. He would, situations, but should first see whether he
practically, define drama as something has extracted all he can of complication
creating emotional response ; and further, 40 and revelation out of the character clashes
he defines 'theatric' as the dramatic made naturally incident to the existing situa-
fit for practical presentation in a theater, tion. An act of a dozen situations may
To make a dramatic idea theatric, in this very well be less absorbing and rich than
good sense of the word, is, he says, the one of a single situation worked out to
mission of technique — and to show the 45 the full. 'Intimate knowledge of his
way is the mission of his book. characters is the only safe foundation for

He does not pretend to tell any writer the ambitious playwright,' Professor
how to express himself in an individual Baker says, to which we cry Amen!
idiom; if that could be done differently And never was this truth more disre-
in each individual case. But he, like 5o garded than in the American theater to-
Professor Matthews, finds certain techni- day where we are still under the spell of
cal laws of the drama eternal, as opposed the trick drama, the search for novelty
to tricks and rules, and by pointing them of theme and fresh twist of plot,
out in detailed studies, he shows the way In his chapters on Dialogue the teacher
to master the basic, essential steps every 55 holds no less firmly to the basic need of
dramatist must take in shaping a play understanding the characters. In these
for the theater. chapters, also, he has something to say

The first value of Professor Baker's — but too little — about the actors. It is

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC AND ART 303

a fault of this book, as of all books on brow' by the 'highbrow' has worked
playwriting, that the perpetual conscious- much evil, opening the gap between en-
ness of the actor in the dramatist's mind joyment and critical contemplation which
as he works cannot be expounded. No makes enjoyment unthinking and criti-
doubt it was to fill this very want, pri- 5 cism dull. There should, of course, be no
marily, that Professor Baker started his such gap, and when men like Brander
workshop theater in conjunction with his Matthews and George P. Baker are fill-
classes in composition. A dramatist ing young minds with enthusiasm as well
must not only feel what words can best as critical curiosity, we, on our part, hail
be spoken by an actor. He must know 10 the enthusiasm and refuse to quarrel much
what effects the actor can secure by ges- with any of the critical theory,
ture, by facial expression, more potently
than by words. (Professor Baker's re- II

marks on Pantomime are shrewd and sen- ___ U. ^^^^

sible, but he cannot teach a novice to l5 SOME PLATITUDES CONCERN^
know how expressive his players can be. ING DRAMA

Only the instinct which comes from prac-
tice in the theater will teach him that. JOHN GALSWORTHY
It is interesting to observe how Barrie, f '.

, , T j ~A '„ ~ 4-~^:^~ [Fortnightly Review, London, Eng., December,

for example, has advanced in pantomime 20 igoQ ftevfsed and published in The inn of Tran-

understanding.) Similarly it might be quillity: Studies and Essays, copyright, 1912, by

urged that Professor Baker neglects the ^"reprinledj'8 S°nS' by Wh°SC permission h is
possibilities of lighting, grouping, setting,

in the creation of that total emotional A Drama must be shaped so as to have a

effect which is acted drama. But doubt- 25 spire of meaning. Every grouping of life
less he would urge that this, too, can only and character has its inherent moral ; and
be taught in the school of experience. the business of the dramatist is so to pose

Not the least valuable part of the book the group as to bring that moral poign-
is a concluding chapter on scenarios, antly to the light of day. Such is the
which contains the complete author's 30 moral that exhales from plays like Lear,
scenario of Kismet, with notes on subse- Hamlet, and Macbeth. But such is not
quent changes. This chapter helps to the moral to be found in the great bulk
drive home the common-sense lesson of of contemporary Drama. The moral of
the entire book — the lesson of clearness, the average play is now, and probably has
coherence, the need of so definite a 35 always been, the triumph at all costs of a
knowledge of the characters, so well- supposed immediate ethical good over a
realized a purpose, that the action may, supposed immediate ethical evil,
in summary, tell a good story, with em- The vice of drawing these distorted

phasis in the proper places and the guid- morals has permeated the Drama to its
ing idea held like a beacon. 40 spine ; discolored its art, humanity, and

Frankly a book of technical instruction significance; infected its creators, actors,
for beginning playwrights, to aid them in audience, critics ; too often turned it from
mastering those first principles which, a picture into a caricature. A Drama
under self-instruction, are often so pain- which lives under the shadow of the dis-
fully mastered, or never quite grasped, 45 torted moral forgets how to be free,
this volume at the same time by its theory fair, and fine — forgets so completely that
of the first principles, and by its copious it often prides itself on having forgot-
illustrations of them from fine examples, ten.

becomes of interest to all students and Now, in writing plays, there are, in this

lovers of the theater, making for a better 50 matter of the moral, three courses open to
understanding of dramatic art and a the serious dramatist. The first is: To
richer background of judgment and en- definitely set before the public that which
joyment. it wishes to have set before it, the views

In all departments of American life, and and codes of life by which the public lives
particularly, perhaps, in the theater, the 55 and in which it believes. This way is the
absurd pose of contempt for the 'high- most common, successful, and popular. It
brow' by the 'lowbrow' (and sometimes makes the dramatist's position sure, and
the equally absurd patronage of the 'low- not too obviously authoritative.

3©4 WRITING OF TODAY

The second course is : To definitely set temperamental philosophy out of his work,
before the public those views and codes of As a man lives and thinks, so will he write,
life by which the dramatist himself lives, But it is certain, that to the making of
those theories in which he himself be- good drama, as to the practice of every
lieves, the more effectively if they are the 5 other art, there must be brought an almost
opposite of what the public wishes to have passionate love of discipline, a white-heat
placed before it, presenting them so that of self-respect, a desire to make the
the audience may swallow them like pow- truest, fairest, best thing in one's power;
der in a spoonful of jam. and that to these must be added an eye

There is a third course : To set before 10 that does not flinch. Such qualities alone
the public no cut-and-dried codes, but the will bring to a drama the selfless charac-
phenomena of life and character, selected ter which soaks it with inevitability,
and combined, but not distorted, by the The word 'pessimist' is frequently ap-

dramatist's outlook, set down without fear, plied t0 the few dramatists who have been
favor, or prejudice, leaving the public to 15 content to work in this way. It has been
draw such poor moral as nature may af- applied, among others, to Euripides, to
ford. This third method requires a cer- Shakespeare, to Ibsen; it will be applied
tain detachment ; it requires a sympathy t0 many in the f uture. Nothing, however,
with, a love of, and a curiosity as to, is more dubious than the way in which
things for their own sake; it requires a 20 these twQ WQrds <pessimist' and 'opti-
far view, together with patient industry, mist, are used; for the optimist appears
for no immediately practical result tQ be he who cannot bear the world as it

It was once said of Shakespeare that he {s> and h forced b his nature t0 picture
had never done any good to any one, and |t as it ht tQ b and the pessimist one
never would. This, unfortunately could « who cannQt Qnl bear the wQrld as it ^
not, m the sense in which the word good ^ loyes it wdl e h tQ draw h {aith.
was then meant, be said of most modern fuU The true loyer of the human race

dramatists. In 1 truth, the good that is sJreiy he who can put up with it in all
Shakespeare did to humanity was of a re- fa f ^ fa yice as ^ as in yirtue> in
mote and, shall we say eternal nature , 3» dfeat nQ less than in victory. the true
something of the good that men get from seer he who gees nQt Qnl ■ but sorrow>
having the sky and the sea to look at. h inter of hum'an Hfe one who

And this partly because he was in his . k £. It be that he is al

greater plays at all even s free from the incidentall fts true beynefactor.
habit of drawing a distorted moral Now 35 * f h -al fabHc

the playwright who supplies to the public two impartial persons, the

the facts of life distorted by the moral and J P and ^ ^ ^

which it expects does so that ^he may do such dramatists as desire to

tt^ttStttt*2*. ^hlZ^: but for tomor-

dd[=l P^£%S?£X. B-T^atists' being as they are made
^r^ehe considers that he wU. -& r~ ^ » ^^ft
T0rZ^:Zo^:XLTbTCL^oH their qualities and defects are

CcaoSnefe*onadthaen,aXce liT^edi^^ $ depict ! A good p,ot is that sure ed-
. J " ifice which slowly rises out of the mter-

^Butmatters change, and morals change ; play of circumstance on temperament, and
men rTmain-and to set men, and the 5» temperament on circumstance withm the
facts about them, down faithfully, so that enclosing atmosphere of an idea. A. hu-
thev draw for us the moral of their natu- man being is the best plot there is, it may
ral actions may also possibly be of benefit be impossible to see why he is a good
to the community. It is, at all events, plot, because the idea within which he was
harder than to set'men and facts down, as 55 brought forth cannot be fully gasped ; but
thev oueht, or ought not to be. This, it is plain that he ts a good plot Heis
howeve/ is not to say that a dramatist organic And so it must be with a good
should, or ndeed can, keep himself and his play. Reason alone produces no good

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC AND ART 305

plots ; they come by original sin, sure con- pressing all jokes and epigrams severed

ception, and instinctive after-power of se- from character, relying for fun and

lecting what benefits the germ. A bad pathos on the fun and tears of life.

plot, on the other hand, is simply a row of From start to finish good dialogue is

stakes, with a character impaled on each 5 hand-made, like good lace; clear, of fine

— characters who would have liked to texture, furthering with each thread the

live, but came to untimely grief; who harmony and strength of a design to

started bravely, but fell on these stakes, which all must be subordinated,

placed beforehand in a row, and were But g00(j dialogue is also spiritual ac-

transfixed one by one, while their ghosts 10 tion. Tn so far as the dramatist divorces

stride on, squeaking and gibbering, his dialogue from spiritual action— that

through the play. Whether these stakes is t0 sav> from pr0gress of events, or

are made of facts or of ideas, according toward events which are significant of

to the nature of the dramatist who planted character— he is stultifying rb bpana the

them, their effect on the unfortunate char- 15 thing don€; he may make pieasing disqui-

acters is the same; the creatures were sitions, he is not making drama. And

begotten to be staked, and staked they in so far as he twists character to suit

are! The demand for a good plot not his moral or his plot> he is neglecting

infrequently heard, commonly signifies: a first principle, that truth to Nature

Tickle my sensations by stuffing the ao which alone invests art with hand-made

play with arbitrary adventures, so that 1 quality

need not be troubled to take the charac- The ' dramatist's license, in fact, ends

ters seriously. Set the persons of the play with his desi In conception alone he

to action, regardless of time, sequence, ig free He * take wh£ character or

atmosphere, and probability ! « ou of characters he ch see them

Now true dramatic action is what char- with what knit them with what id

acters do, at once contrary, as it were, to within the ,imits of his temperament . but

expectation, and yet because they have al- once tak se and knitteJ he ■ bound

TtadL , °A6- 0t / "T N°^ f ?matlst to treat them like a gentleman, with the
should let his audience know what is com- 30 tenderest consideration of their main-
ing; but neither should he suffer his char- ; Take care f charact action

acters to act without making his audi- and dia, wil, take care f themselves ,

ence feel that those actions are in har- r™ . Q, ,. . . ... . . , .

mony with temperament, and arise from Jhe true dramatist gives full rein to his
previous known actions, together with 35 temperament in the scope and nature of
the temperaments and previous known ac- his1 subJect; havlnS °.nce. selected *ubJect
tions of the other characters in the play. and. characters, he is just gentle, re-
The dramatist who hangs his charac- strained, neither gratifying his lust for
ters to his plot, instead of hanging his Praise at the expense of his offspring, nor
plot to his characters, is guilty of cardinal 40 usm^ tbem as PuPPerts *> flout his audi-
gjn ■ * ence. Being himself the nature that

The dialogue ! Good dialogue again is bought them forth, he guides them in
character, marshaled so as continually ™Q c°Vrse. predestined at their conception,
to stimulate interest or excitement. The jjd only f^ve they a chance of defying
reason good dialogue is seldom found in 45 Time, which is always lying in wait to de-
plays is merely that it is hard to write, str°y the false> topical, or fashionable,
for it requires not only a knowledge of all— in a word— that is not based on the
what interests or excites, but such a feel- permanent elements of human nature,
ing for character as brings misery to the The perfect dramatist rounds up his char-
dramatist's heart when his creations 5o acters and facts within the ring-fence of
speak as they should not speak — ashes to a dominant idea which fulfils the craving
his mouth when they say things for the of his spirit; having got them there, he
sake of saying them— disgust when they suffers them to live their own lives,
are 'smart.' Plot, action, character, dialogue ! But

The art of writing true dramatic dia- 55 there is yet another subject for a plati-
logue is an austere art, denying itself all tude. Flavor! An impalpable quality,
license, grudging every sentence devoted less easily captured than the scent of a
to the mere machinery of the play, sup- flower, the peculiar and most essential

3o6 WRITING OF TODAY

attribute of any work of art ! It is the form — it need only be the 'real thing/

thin, poignant spirit which hovers up out need only have caught some of the pre-

of a play, and is as much its differentiat- cious fluids, revelation, or delight, and

ing essence as is caffeine of coffee. Fla- imprisoned them within a chalice to which

vor, in fine, is the spirit of the dramatist 5 we may put our lips and continually

projected into his work in a state of drink.

volatility, so that no one can exactly lay And yet, starting from this last plati-

hands on it, here, there, or anywhere. tude, one may perhaps be suffered to spec-

This distinctive essence of a play, marking ulate as to the particular forms that our

its brand, is the one thing at which the 10 renascent drama is likely to assume. For

dramatist cannot work, for it is outside our drama is renascent, and nothing will

his consciousness. A man may have stop its growth. It is not renascent be-

many moods, he has but one spirit; and cause this or that man is writing, but be-

this spirit he communicates in some sub- cause of a new spirit. A spirit that is no

tie, unconscious way to all his work. It 15 doubt in part the gradual outcome of the

waxes and wanes with the currents of impact on our home-grown art, of Rus-

his vitality, but no more alters than a sian, French, and Scandinavian influences,

chestnut changes into an oak. but which in the main rises from an

For, in truth, dramas are very like unto awakened humanity in the conscience of

trees, springing from seedlings, shaping 20 our time.

themselves inevitably in accordance with What> th are t0 be the main channels

the laws fast hidden within themselves down which the renascent English drama

drinking sustenance from the earth and win float in the coming years? It is more

air, and in conflict with the natural forces than possible that these main channels

round them So they slowly come to f ull 2$ wiH come t0 be twQ in number and situ.

growth, until warped, stunted, or risen to ate far apart

fair ^d gracious height they stand open The Qne ^ fce •

to all the winds. And the trees that channe, q£ naturali down which wi„

spring from each dramat st are of d.f- cQurse drama ^

ferent race; he is th spirit : o f his own high intention, but faithful

sacred grove into which no stray tree tQ ^ seethi 8^ ^

can by any chance enter drama suc5h as £ ; H d

One more platitude. It is not unfash- ^ photographic, deceived by a seeming
tonable to Pit one form of drama against sj ,£. ^ fo' ,fulness 'of the „,§
another-holdmg up the naturah^cto £b ^ £ , d b.

the disadvantage of the ep.c .the epic to ,jvious f h ^ h ■

the behtt ement of the fantastic ; the fan- . . . . ' » • r>

tastic to the detriment of the naturalistic. *U(* drarna 1S. « ^^ respect as depen-
Little purpose is thus served. The essen- dent on imagination, construction selec-
tial meaning, truth, beauty, and irony of ^ tlofn> and eliimnation-the main laws of
things may be revealed under all these 4° artistry-as ever was the romantic or
forms. Vision over life and human na- rhapsodic play. The question of natu-
ture can be as keen and just, the revela- rahstic technique will bear, indeed, much
tion as true, inspiring, delight-giving, and ^re study than has yet been given to it.
thought-provoking, whatever fashion be 45 The aim of the dramatist employing it is
employed— it is simply a question of do- obviously to create such an illusion of
ing it well enough to uncover the kernel actual life passing on the stage as to com-
of the nut. Whether the violet come from pel . the spectator to pass through an ex-
Russia, from Parma, or from England, penence of his own, to think, and talk,
matters little. Close by the Greek tern- 5© and move with the people he sees think-
ples at Paestum there are violets that seem ing, talking, and moving in front of him.
redder, and sweeter, than any ever seen— A false phrase, a single word out of tune
as though they have sprung up out of the or time, will destroy that illusion and
footprints of some pagan goddess; but spoil the surface as surely as a stone
under the April sun, in a Devonshire lane, 55 heaved into a still pool shatters the image
the little blue scentless violets capture seen there. But this is only the begin-
every bit as much of the spring. And so ning of the reason why the naturalistic if
it is with drama— no matter what its the most exacting and difficult of all tech-

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC AND ART 307

niques. It is easy enough to reproduce of forms that has killed a thousand plays,
the exact conversation and movements of We want no more bastard drama; no
persons in a room ; it is desperately hard more attempts to dress out the simple dig-
to produce the perfectly natural conversa- nity of everyday life in the peacock's
tion and movements of those persons, 5 feathers of false lyricism ; no more straw-
when each natural phrase spoken and each stuffed heroes or heroines ; no more rab-
natural movement made has not only to bits and goldfish from the conjurer's
contribute toward the growth and per- pockets, nor any limelight. Let us have
fection of a drama's soul, but also to be starlight, moonlight, sunlight, and the
a revelation, phrase by phrase, move- 10 light of our own self-respects,
ment by movement, of essential traits of
character. To put it another way, nat-
uralistic art, when alive, indeed to be

alive at all, is simply the art of manipula- III

ting a procession of most delicate sym- 15

bols. Its service is the swaying and fo- WRITING PLAYS

cussing of men's feelings and thoughts

in the various departments of human life. ARNOLD BENNETT

It will be like a steady lamp, held up from ■ -t _ . :■ ■

time to time, in whose light things will 20 l******* JSyihe9^biiAe?8T Y C°mt*S7
be seen for a space clearly and in due

proportion, freed from the mists of prej- There is an idea abroad, assiduously

udice and partizanship. fostered as a rule by critics who happen

And the other of these two main chan- to have written neither novels nor plays,
nels will, I think, be a twisting and de- 25 that it is more difficult to write a play
licious stream, which will bear on its than a novel. I do not think so. I have
breast new barques of poetry, shaped, it written or collaborated in about twenty
may be, like prose, but a prose incarnating novels and about twenty plays, and I am
through its fantasy and symbolism all the convinced that it is easier to write a play
deeper aspirations, yearnings, doubts, and 30 than a novel. Personally, I would sooner
mysterious stirrings of the human spirit ; a write two plays than one novel — less ex-
poetic prose-drama, emotionalizing us by penditure of nervous force and mere
its diversity and purity of form and in- brains would be required for two plays
vention, and whose province will be to than for one novel. (I emphasize the
disclose the elemental soul of man and the 35 word 'write' because if the whole weari-
forces of Nature, not perhaps as the old ness between the first conception and the
tragedies disclosed them, not necessarily first performance of a play is compared
in the epic mood, but always with beauty with the whole weariness between the first
and in the spirit of discovery. conception and the first publication of a

Such will, I think, be the two vital 40 novel, then the play has it. I would
forms of our drama in the coming gen- sooner get seventy and seven novels pro-
eration. And between these two forms duced than one play. But my immediate
there must be no crude unions; they are object is to compare only writing with
too far apart, the cross is too violent, writing.) It seems to me that the sole
For, where there is a seeming blend 45 persons entitled to judge of the compara-
of lyricism and naturalism, it will on ex- tive difficulty of writing plays and writing
amination be found, I think, to exist novels are those authors who have sue-
only in plays whose subjects or settings ceeded or failed equally well in both de-
— as in Synge's Playboy of the Western partments. And in this limited band I
World, or in Mr. Masefield's Nan — are 50 imagine that the differences of opinion on
so removed from our ken that we cannot the point could not be marked. I would
really tell, and therefore do not care, like to note in passing, for the support of
whether an absolute illusion is maintained, my proposition, that whereas established
The poetry which may and should exist novelists not infrequently venture into the
in naturalistic drama, can only be that 55 theater with audacity, established drama-
of perfect rightness of proportion, tists are very cautious indeed about quit-
rhythm, shape— the poetry, in fact, that ting the theater. An established drama-
lies in all vital things. It is the ill-mating tist usually takes good care to write plays

3o8 WRITING OF TODAY

and naught else; he will not affront the may be marvelously clever, but that it is
risks of coming out into the open; and not a play. I remember the day — and it
therein his instinct is quite properly that is not long ago — when even so experi-
of self-preservation. Of many established enced and sincere a critic as William
dramatists all over the world it may be 5 Archer used to argue that if the 'intel-
affirmed that if they were so indiscreet as lectual' drama did not succeed with the
to publish a novel the result would be a general public, it was because its tech-
great shattering and a great awakening, 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- 10 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- 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 15 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 ern times. j tremble to think what the
benefits of his experience, and what he 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 20 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 tech- consider the of Sardou, Henri Bern-

nique of the stage, and that the proper stein and Sir Herbert T and be wise.
place to .learn it is not behind the scenes*^ itive, th would assert ^
but in the pit. Managers being the most Ham/^was not a play. And their pupils
conservative people on earth, except com- f h dai V J 0UtJXt

positors, will honestly try to convince the , Mr" Shakespeare ought to have

naive dramatist that effects can only be /ived for himself-that the second,

obtained in the precise way in which ef- 30 f,. , r .. 4 . , A * . '

fects have alwavs been obtained, and that th!rd> PT fo"r,th a<* ""f1* be CUu wh°le~
this and that rule must not be broken on £alTe ™thout th • sllShtetst loss to the piece.
pain of outraging the public. And indeed 4 In the sense in which mandarins under-
it is natural that managers should talk stand. the word technique, there is no
thus, seeing the low state of the drama, 35 technique specia to the stage except that
because in any art rules and reaction al- ™h\ch concerns the moving of solid human
ways nourish when creative energy is b°d,€S t0 and fro> and the limitations of
sick. The mandarins have ever said and the human senses. The dramatist must
will ever say that a technique which does not expect his audience to be able to see
not correspond with their own is not tech- 40 ?r hej"" two things at once nor to be
nique, but simply clumsiness. There are incapable of fatigue. And he must not
some seven situations in the customary exPect his interpreters to stroll round or
drama, and a play which does not contain come on °[ go off.Jn a satisfactory man-
at least one of those situations in each act ner unless he provides them with satisfac-
will be condemned as 'undramatie' or 45 t0IT reasons for strolling round, coming
'thin,1 or as being 'all talk.' It may con- in> or, SOing off. Lastly, he must not ex-
tain half a hundred other situations, but ?ect his interpreters to achieve physical
for the mandarin a situation which is not impossibilities. The dramatist who sends
one of the seven is not a situation. Sim- a pretty woman off in street attire and
ilarly there are some dozen character 50 seeP to bring her on again in thirty sec-
types in the customary drama, and all on ds fully dressed for a court ball may
original— that is, truthful— character- fai1 *n sJage technique, but he has not
ization will be dismissed as a total absence proved that stage technique is tremen-
of characterization because it does not re- dously difficult; he has proved something
produce any of these dozen types. Thus 55 Qulte else.

every truly original play is bound to be One reason why a play is easier to write
indicted for bad technique. The author is than a novel is that a play is shorter than
bound to be told that what he has written a novel. On the average one may say

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC AND ART 309

that it takes six plays to make the matter with 'atmosphere.' He may roughly sug-
of a novel. Other things being equal, a gest one, but if he begins on the feat of
short work of art presents fewer difficul- 'creating' an atmosphere (as it is called),
ties than a longer one. The contrary is the last suburban train will have departed
held true by the majority, but then the 5 before he has reached the crisis of the
majority, having never attempted to pro- play. The last suburban train is the best
duce a long work of art, are unqualified to friend of the dramatist, though the fel-
offer an opinion. It is said that the most low seldom has the sense to see it. Fur-
difficult form of poetry is the sonnet. But ther he is saved all descriptive work,
the most difficult form of poetry is the l0 See a novelist harassing himself into his
epic. The proof that the sonnet is the grave over the description of a landscape,
most difficult form is alleged to be in the a room, a gesture— while the dramatist
fewness of perfect sonnets. There are, grins. The dramatist may have to ima-
however, few more perfect sonnets than gine a landscape, a room, or a gesture-
perfect epics. A perfect sonnet may be J5 but he has not got to write it— and it
a heavenly accident. But such accidents fe the writing which hastens death. If
can never happen to writers of epics. a dramatist and a novelist set out to
Some years ago we had an enormous portray a clever woman, they are almost
palaver about the art of the short story equally matched, because each has tc
which numerous persons who had omitted 20 make the creature say things and do
to write novels pronounced to be more things> But if th set out to portray
difficult than the novel. But the fact re- a charming woman, the dramatist can
mains that there are scores of perfect recline in an easy-chair and smoke while
short stories, whereas it is doubtful the noveIist is ruini t di

whether anybody but Turgemeff ever did « tion and eyesight, and spreading terro? in
write a perfect novel A short form is his household by his moodiness and unap-
easier to manipulate than a long form be- __ , , .... ™, . . . .._- . - *
cause its construction is less complicated, Pr^chabihty The electric light burns
because the balance of its proportions can ln *« nove}.)f s f ud^ . at 3 a. M.-the
be more easily corrected by means of a 30 novellst Is still endeavoring to convey by
rapid survey, because it is lawful and even * means °f fw°rds the extraordinary fasci-
necessary in it to leave undone many nation that his heroine could exercise over
things which are very hard to do, and be- mankind bY the mere act of walking into
cause the emotional strain is less pro- a r°°m; and he neve,r hasu really be-
longed. The most difficult thing in all art 35 ceeded and ne£er wfir.f-.The->drSJrtlrt
is to maintain the imaginative tension wrlt.es curtlJ> uEn^r Millicent.' All are
unslackened throughout a considerable anxt10us t0 do the dramatist s job for him.
period. Is tne play being read at home — the reader

Then, not only does a play contain less eagerly and with brilliant success puts his
matter than a novel— it is further simpli- 40 imagination to work and completes a
fied by the fact that it contains fewer charming Millicent after his own secret
kinds of matter, and less subtle kinds of desires. (Whereas he would coldly de-
matter. There are numerous delicate and cline to ad^ one touch to Millicent were
difficult affairs of craft that the dramatist she tne heroine of a novel.) Is the play
need not think about at all. If he at- 45 being performed on the stage — an expe-
tempts to go beyond a certain very mild rienced, conscientious and perhaps lovely
degree of subtlety he is merely wasting actress will strive her hardest to prove
his time. What passes for subtlety on that the dramatist was right about Mil-
the stage would have a very obvious air licent's astounding fascination. And if
in a novel, as some dramatists have un- So she fails nobody will blame the dramatist ;
happily discovered. Thus whole conti- the dramatist will receive naught but sym-
nents of danger may be shunned by the pathy.

dramatist, and instead of being scorned And there is still another region of su-

for his cowardice he will be very rightly perlative difficulty which is narrowly cir-
applauded for^ his artistic discretion. 55 cumscribed for the spoiled dramatist — I
Fortunate predicament! Again, he need mean the whole business of persuading
not— indeed he must not— save in a primi- the public that the improbable is prob-
tive and hinting manner, concern himself able. Every work of art is and must be

3io WRITING OF TODAY

crammed with improbabilities and artifice; hours to 'talk,' and even recitative sing-
and the greater portion of the artifice is ing, on the stage, without a pause. In-
employed in just this trickery of persua- deed audiences, under the compulsion of
sion. Only, the public of the dramatist an artist strong and imperious enough,,
needs far less persuading than the public 5 could, I am sure, be trained to marvelous
of the novelist. The novelist announces feats of prolonged receptivity. However,
that Millicent accepted the hand of the chapters and acts are usual, and they
wrong man, and in spite of all the novel- involve the same constructional proc-
ist's corroborative and exegetical detail esses on the part of the artist. The en-
the insulted reader declines to credit the" tire play or novel must tell a complete
statement and condemns the incident as story — that is, arouse a curiosity and rea-
unconvincing. The dramatist decides sonably satisfy it, raise a main question
that Millicent must accept the hand of the and then settle it. And each act or other
wrong man, and there she is on the stage chief division must tell a definite portion
in flesh and blood, veritably doing it ! *5 of the story, satisfy part of the curiosity,
Not easy for even the critical beholder settle part of the question. And each
to maintain that Millicent could not and scene or other minor division must do the
did not do such a silly thing when he same according to its scale. Everything
has actually with his eyes seen her in the basic that applies to the technique of
very act ! The dramatist, as usual, hav- 20 the novel applies equally to the technique
ing done less, is more richly rewarded of the play.

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 matic, employing the term as it is usually
not written novels, that it is precisely the 25 employed. In so far as it suspends the
'doing less' — the leaving out — that con- listener's interest every tale, however
stitutes the unique and fearful difficulty of told> may be said t0 be dramatic. In this
dramatic art. The skill to leave out-- sense The Q0\L\cn Bozvl is dramatic; so
lo! the master faculty of the dramatist! are Dom{nique and Persuasion. A play
But, in the first place, I do not believe 30 need not be more dramatic than that,
that, having regard to the relative scope y emphatically a play need not be
of the play and of the novel, the neces- dramatic in the stage sense. It need
sity for leaving out is more acute in the never induce imerest tQ the degree of
one than in the other. The adjective excitement. It need have nothing that re-
'photographic is as absurd applied to the 35 sembles what would be recognizable in
novel as to the play And, in the second the theater as a situation. It may amble
place, other factors being equal, it is less on_and it win stin be a play> and it may
exhausting, and it requires less skill, to succeed b leasi either the fastidious
refrain from doing than to do. To know hundreds or the unfastidious hundreds
when to refrain from doing may be hard, 40 of thousand according to the talent of
but positively to do is even harder. ^ hor> Without doubt mandarins

cr?),sn|?n' • „ ., , _ • , nnvpi fu+ not. Some archmandarin may launch at

is & ■. S? sr ?*» SHHSm

and it has been proved thai

audience can and will listen for two

chief. novels have no f^?™™* g^Sr*FK ^Sm^iS ihe ZZ

™l«^Zr:tf &L V^ IZ ern age differ from a psychological novel

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC AND ART 311

in nothing but the superficial form of tell- is well versed in the making of both
ing. Example, Henri Becque's La Pari- plays and novels can fail to feel pro-
sienne, than which there is no better. If foundly. The emotional strain of writing
I am asked to give my own definition of a play is not merely less prolonged than
the adjective 'dramatic/ I would say that 5 that of writing a novel — it is less severe
that story is dramatic which is told in even while it lasts, lower in degree and
dialogue imagined to be spoken by actors of a less purely creative character. And
and actresses on the stage, and that any herein is the chief of all the reasons why
narrower definition is bound to exclude a play is easier to write than a novel,
some genuine plays universally accepted 10 The drama does not belon^ exclusively
as such— even by mandarins. For be it to literature, because its effect depends
noted that the mandarin is never consis- on something more than the composition
tent. of words. The dramatist is the sole au-

My definition brings me to the sole tech- thor of the play, but he is not the sole
nical difference between a play and a novel 15 creator of it. Without him nothing can
—in the play the story is told by means of be done, but, on the other hand, he can-
dialogue. It is a difference less important not do everything himself. He begins the
than it seems, and not invariably even a work of creation, which is finished either
sure point of distinction between the two by creative interpreters on the stage or by
kinds of narrative. For a novel may con- 20 the creative imagination of the reader in
sist exclusively of dialogue. And plays the study. It is as if he carried an im-
may contain other matter than dialogue. mense weight t0 the ianding at the turn
The classic chorus is not dialogue. of a fli ht of stairSj and that thence
But nowadays we should consider the de- ward the lifting had t0 be done b other
vice of the chorus to be clumsy as, 25 people. Consider the affair as a pyrami-
nowadays, it indeed would be We have dal structure and the dramatist is the
grown very ingenious and clever at the base— but he is not the apex. A play is a
trickery of making characters talk to the collaboration of creative faculties. The
audience and explain themselves and their egotism of the dramatist resents this un-
past history while seemingly innocent of 30 comfortable fact, but the fact exists,
any such intention. And here, I admit, A . f , , creative faculties are

the dramatist has to face a difficulty spe- ^*Jg^m of the au7hor?Th "stage-

cial to himself, which the novelist can .j.^.J /_^.,_-\ a *u *~ fu«

. , T , ,. ' ., , , ,1 , j-rr 1- director (producer) and the actors — the
avoid. I believe it to be the sole difficulty audience ^ lf • unconcCiOUciv nart 0f
which is peculiar to the drama, and that 35 2f cXboration unconsclously Part of
it is not acute is proved by the ease with

which third-rate dramatists have gener- ^enc(: a dramatist who attempts to do
ally vanquished it. Mandarins are wont the whole work of creation before the act-
to assert that the dramatist is also handi- mS beSins ** an inartistic usurper of the
capped by the necessity for rigid economy 40 functions of others, and will fail of
in the use of material. This is not so. P™per accomplishment at the end. The
Rigid economy in the use of material is dramatist must deliberately, in perform-
equally advisable in every form of art. lnS hls share of the work> leave scope for
If it is a necessity it is a necessity a multitude of alien faculties whose op-
which all artists flout from time to time, 45 erations he can neither precisely foresee
and occasionally with gorgeous results, nor completely control. The point is not
and the successful dramatist has hitherto that in the writing of a play there are
not been less guilty of flouting it than the various sorts of matters— as we have al-
novelist or any other artist. ready seen— which the dramatist must

And now having shown that some al- 50 ignore; the point is that even in the re-
leged differences between the play and the glon proper to him he must not push
novel are illusory, and that a certain the creative act to its final limit. He
technical difference, though possibly real, must ever remember those who are to
is superficial and slight, I come to the come after him.

fundamental difference between them— a 55 When the play is 'finished,' the proc-
difference which the laity does not sus- esses of collaboration have yet to begin,
pect, which is seldom insisted upon and The serious work of the dramatist is over,
never sufficiently, but which nobody who but the most desolating part o_t his toil

312 WRITING OF TODAY

awaits him. I do not refer to the busi- serious confabulation with the author,
ness of arranging with a theatrical mana- then at once the play begins to assume
ger for the production of the play. For, new shapes — contours undreamed of by
though that generally partakes of the na- the author till that startling moment,
ture of tragedy, it also partakes of the 5 And even if the author has the temerity
nature of amusing burlesque, owing to the to conduct his own rehearsals, similar dis-
fact that theatrical managers are— no concerting phenomena will occur ; for the
doubt inevitably— theatrical. Neverthe- author as a producer is a different fellow
less, even the theatrical manager, while from the author as author. The producer
disclaiming the slightest interest in any- w is up against realities. He, first, renders
thing more vital to the stage than the box- the play concrete, gradually condenses its
office, is himself in some degree a col- filmy vapors into a solid element. ... He
laborator, and is the first to show to the suggests the casting. 'What do you think
dramatist that a play is not a play till 0f X for the old man?' asked the pro-
it is performed. The manager reads the 15 ducer. The author is staggered. Is it
play, and, to the dramatist's astonishment, conceivable that so renowned a producer
reads quite a different play from that can have so m}sread and misunderstood
which the dramatist imagines he wrote. the piay? X would be preposterous as-
In particular the manager reads a play the old man But the producer goes on
which can scarcely hope to succeed— in- „ talking: And suddenly the author sees
deed a play against whose chances of sue- possibilities in X. But at the same time
cess ten thousand powerful reasons can be ^e sees a different play from what he
adduced. wrote. And quite probably he sees a

It is remarkable that a manager e glorious play. Quite probably he

nearly always foresees failure in a *5 had nQt cted how * a d/ama,

manuscript, and very seldom success. dst he is Before th* first rehearsal

The managers profoundest instinct-self- is called the { ^ wkhout a wQrd
preservation again-is to refuse a play; altered has ^ th h astoundm
if he accepts it is against the grain creatiye transl*utations . tge author rect
agamsthis judgment-andoutof amadso izes m fc sQme Hk his be_

spirit of adventure. Some of the most 1(f^ hiM b it . fa Hk f

glittering successes have been rehearsed ^rgt cousm
in an atmosphere of settled despair. The . . -

dramatist naturally feels an immense con- . At ™e first rehearsal, and for many re-
tempt for the opinions, artistic and other- 35 nearsals, to an extent perhaps increasing
wise, of the manager, and he is therein Perhaps decreasing, the dramatist is forceo
justified. The manager's vocation is not into , an apologetic ^ and self-conscious
to write plays, nor (let us hope) to act mood; and his mien is something between
in them, nor to direct the rehearsals of }hat .of a criminal who has committed a
them, and even his knowledge of the 40 ^ornd offense and that of a father over
vagaries of his own box-office has often the crude body <>f a new-born child,
proved to be pitiably delusive. The man- Now in truth he deeply realizes that a
ager's true and only vocation is to refrain Plav " a collaboration. In extreme cases
from producing plays. Despite all this, he may be brought to see that he himself
however, the manager has already collab- 45 is one of the less important factors in the
orated in the play. The dramatist sees collaboration. The first preoccupation of
it differently now. All sorts of new con- the interpreters is not with his play at all,
siderations have been presented to him. but — quite rightly — with their own ca-
Not a word has been altered; but it is reers; if they were not honestly convinced
noticeably another play. Which is merely 50 that their own careers were the chief
to say that the creative work on it which genuine excuse for the existence of the
still remains to be done has been more theater and the play they would not act
accurately envisaged. This experience very well. But more than that, they do
could not happen to a novel, because not regard his play as a sufficient vehicle
when a novel is written it is finished. 55 for the furtherance of their careers. At

And when the director of rehearsals, or the most favorable what they secretly
producer, has been chosen, and this price- think is that if they are permitted to exer-
less and mysterious person has his first cise their talents on his play there is a

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC AND ART 31;

chance that they may be able to turn it
into a sufficient vehicle for the further-
ance of their careers. The attitude of

every actor toward his part is: 'My part IV

is not much of a part as it stands, but 5

if my individuality is allowed to get into THE IRISH DRAMA

free contact with it, I may make some-
thing brilliant out of it.' Which attitude WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
is a proper attitude, and an attitude, in __ . , „

~,,, ~~:-.;~-. :,*^:&^A k,r +U^ -f~~+^ ~£ t-U^ [Twentieth Century Magazine, November, iqii

my opinion, justified by the iacts 01 the 10 By permission.]

case. The actor's phrase is that he cre-
ates a part, and he is right. He completes I will not criticize the contemporary
the labor of creation begun by the author theater as a whole. If you were satisfiec
and continued by the producer, and if lib- with it you would not have formed your
erty is not accorded to him— if either the 15 selves into a Drama League. If I wen
author or the producer attempts to satisfied with it I should not have spen
do much of the creative work — the result so much time over our Irish players. W<
cannot be satisfactory. all know, owing to the commercial condi
As the rehearsals proceed the play tions of the times, contemporary drama
changes from day to day. However auto- 20 as a whole, does not take its place besid(
cratic the producer, however obstinate the the best painting, the best music, and th(
dramatist, the play will vary at each re- best books of our times ; the contemporar}
hearsal like a large cloud in a gentle theater makes a pretense of representing
wind. It is never the same play for reality — of showing us people no mon
two days together. Nor is this surpris- 25 exciting than we are ourselves, no mon
ing, seeing that every day and night a eloquent than we are ourselves, no mon
dozen, or it may be two dozen, human be- picturesquely dressed than we are our-
ings endowed with the creative gift are selves, and it is right that it should dc
creatively working on it. Every drama- so. Reformers of the theater, for the
tist who is candid with himself well 30 most part, accept the same idea. Anc
knows that, though his play is often they, at least, do give you reality, and thej
worsened by his collaborator, it is often make it interesting to you, as Mr. Gals-
improved — and improved in the most mys- worthy does in his Strife and in his Jus-
terious and dazzling manner — without a tice, by showing the great hidden forces
word being altered. Producer and actors 35 of the modern world — the strife between
do not merely suggest possibilities, they capital and labor, the contest of men
execute them. And the author is con- against theological institutions, against the
fronted by artistic phenomena for which accepted social code, etc. There is an-
law fully he may not claim credit. On other way to change the stage, and that
the other hand, he may be confronted by 40 is to show there a life, whether ideal or
inartistic phenomena in respect to which real, that is exciting and picturesque in
lawfully he is blameless, but which he itself. Italy, where they have made the
cannot prevent; a rehearsal is like a bat- verse drama once more a really popular
tie — certain persons are theoretically in thing, is doing that in one way. In Sic-
control, but in fact the thing principally 45 ily, where Grasso is creating a wonderful
rights itself. And thus the creation school of players, and in Ireland, it is be-
goes on until the dress rehearsal, when it ing done in a different way. We are put-
seems to have come to a stop. And the ing upon the stage a real life where men
dramatist, lying awake in the night, re- talk picturesque and musical words, and
fleets stoically, fatalistically : 'Well, that 50 where men have often strange and pic-
is the play that they have made of my turesque characters ; that is to say, the life
play!' And he may be pleased or he of faraway villages where an old leis-
may be disgusted. But if he attends the urely habit of life still remains,
first performance he cannot fail to notice, From the first start of our intellectual
after the first few minutes of it, that he 55 movement in Ireland, our faith in success
was quite mistaken, and that what the has come from our knowledge of the life
actors are performing is still another play, of the country places, and the imaginative
The audience is collaborating. beauty of their speech. One discovers

3H WRITING OF TODAY

thoughts there not very much unlike and when they gave up their farces and
those of Homer, not very unlike those of took to our plays instead, they did
the Greek dramatists. Of course there is it in the first instance more from
a great deal that is crude, but there are patriotism than anything else. Many of
songs and stories, showing an attitude of 5 them belonged to the Gaelic League ; some
mind that seems the very root of art. 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, 10 have to fight and conquer conventional
and beside the bridge great stones that conceptions of Irish character. And yet
helped the traveler when the stream was we should have foreseen it.
flooded, probably for centuries before the A11 Irish thought has been artificial for
bridge was built. .Seventy years ago years In the earlier parts of the nine.
there died m that village Mary Hynes, a 15 teenth century England had met the Irish
beautiful peasant girl, and the poet Raff- national demand by slandering our char-
tery put her into a song. A few years acters She did not wish to ive us sdf_
ago I heard old men and women describe government and so she said we were un-
her beauty after all these years with won- worthy of it The Irish peasant> for in_
der and excitement in their voices. The 20 stance> was caricatured in Punch, in
sun and the moon said one never shone 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 s e To meet thi beginning> t
Nor was the poet s praise that made her think> with 0'Connell, who said that the
so famous unworthy praise. Mary 25 Irish easant W€re the finest peasantry
Hynes, the calm and easy woman, has earth> IreJand created a who,e fite*

beauty in her mind and beauty 111 her ature f national giorifiCation. We re-
body. That's what Rafftery said of her. d Qne * h real of
It is like hearing the old men on the walls d yirtues q£ Qur k We h£

of Troy speak of Helen. c * them always ready to meet the foreign

In Ireland the country life has for us glander ^ attftude of mind ^
the further fascination that it is the only j f th d f . fa d b

thoroughly Irish life that is left. Every- ^ & . . , £ . . * , *

where else English influence has made a .Every kind <* e"thufast> Polltlcal> .re"
conquest more thorough than any that the 35 "fou* social, had endowed some section
sword could make. All our patriotic of Irishmen with the virtues he most ad-
movements go back to the peasant, just as mire?> and national song and national
similar movements have done in Norway, ™ve -we used the word nation con-
We try to re-create Ireland in an Irish stantly-were expected to show Ireland
way by mastering what he knows, and by 40 in the »est possible light. We were not
using it to understand what the old manu- a Pf°Pj? .curious about life, looking at it
scripts contain. To understand the peas- WMl disinterested contemplation, but a
ant by the Saga, the Saga by the peasant «ind of army organized for offense and
—that was the Norwegian formula. If defense. We understood nothing but
you keep this in mind it will show you 45 propaganda.

that our theater of folk art is no artificial The first play of country life that we

creation of a literary clique, but an ex- set upon the stage was in Irish. Our
pression of the Irish mind of today. It own players had not then come together
will explain to you also how our players, and we got players from a branch of the
who are not peasants, but young men and 5o Gaelic League. At the last moment one
women taken from various businesses in player refused to go upon the stage be-
Dublin, have come to understand the peas- cause the cottage he was to play in was
ant so well. We took them at the start too shabby to do credit to his country,
from different patriotic societies, where and another demanded the banishing of
everything encouraged them to study the 55 a pack of cards that had been given to a
country life. In 1902 a group of young group of young men who were to sit
men and women were playing old-fash- playing in the corner. He admitted that
ioned farces at a coffee palace in Dublin, he spent most of his own evenings play-

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC AND ART 315

ing cards, but he did not think it right the country places as no Irish writer for
that the Irish should be represented as fifty years had known them, but he
playing them upon the stage. selected from them strange, passionate

The history of imaginative thought is and grotesque types, to set beside his
generally a history of violent reactions. 5 dream. It was no malice, no love of
Synge came to destroy all that unreal- mischief, that made him imagine instead
ity. I met Synge in 1897, in a students' of colleens of the old sort, and the good
hotel in Paris. He had learned Irish young men of Boucicault, blind Martin
from a Gaelic professor at Trinity Col- and his wife in The Well of the Saints,
lege, Dublin, and had spent some years 10 the erring wife in The Shadow of the
wandering through Europe. Nothing in- Glen, the fantastic, mistaken hero-wor-
terested him but the life of the poor, not ship of the people in his Playboy of the
because they were poor, for he was noth- Western World. He took his types from
ing of a philanthropist, an artist merely, reality indeed, but exaggerated them and
but because there was something in their *5 arranged them according to his fancy,
way of thinking that excited him. He until he had created something as strange
was very poor himself, though of an old as the wandering knight and the Sancho
family, and a fine scholar. He had lived Panza of Cervantes. I can imagine some
with German peasants in the Black For- patriotic Spaniard saying to Cervantes,
est and with a chairmaker in Paris, and *> 'Do you really pretend that this fat, cow-
brought his fiddle everywhere that he ardly peasant, and this crack-brained
would be more welcome. I got him to knight are typical of the peasants and the
come back to Ireland, and there in the gentlemen of Spain?' I can imagine
Arran and Blasket Islands he found a others even without any patriotic bias
life after his own heart. There he es- 25 asking why he gave them such strange
caped the squalor of the poor and the no- types. He, too, took from life the vio-
bility of the rich. He had nothing of lent and incomplete that through its sym-
the modern humanitarian; he had no in- bolism he might reveal a heroic dream,
terest in economics, no interest in social When we have filled our minds with the
forces, and he had little of the Irish pol- 30 work of Synge, we remember, even more
itician. He was a Nationalist, but he vividly than the strange persons he has
never spoke of politics; nothing inter- created, blind Martin's dream of the
ested him but the individual man: in fact splendid life that might be, Nora
I think his own ill health and poverty Bourke's preoccupation with the fine
had made individual destiny momentous 35 men she fancied, the Playboy's poetical
to him. All the things that we forget in reveries of far-off exciting things. Dub-
the excitements of newspapers and crowds lin for a time saw but one-half his mean-
and business, were always present to him. ing and rejected him, rioting for a week
In one of his early poems he asks on after the first performance of his great-
his twenty-fifth birthday if the twenty- 40 est play, rejecting him as most countries
five years to come are to be as evil as have rejected their greatest poets. But
the twenty-five gone by. But gradually Dublin has repented sooner than most
he attained happiness through his art, countries have repented, and to-day the
coming to see in his individual infirmi- Playboy is played constantly in Dublin
ties but a sort of burning glass that 45 to good houses, drawn from all political
gathered for his study the general lot of and social sections. The six days' riot-
men. All became but a subject for ar- ing was his laurel wreath,
tistic creation and an occasion for the Lady Gregory's plays were accepted

creative joy. from the first, for she is attracted, not

It was inevitable that a man like this, 5o by the harsh, but the gracious elements
who seemed ignorant of the mere exist- in life. She has no sarcasm. It was
ence of all these Irish controversies, sarcasm, aimed at the whole of life, that
should outrage the feelings of the crowds, made Synge his worst enemies. There
Just as he felt in his own life continual is no bitterness in her laughter, in her
struggle between his ideal purpose and 55 vision no delight in the grotesque things,
his infirmity and his poverty, so did he Some of her plays, those that touch upon
see in the world about him an ideal some patriotic emotion, are so well loved
dream and a grotesque reality. He knew that men passing the Abbey Theater door

316 WRITING OF TODAY

and seeing some favorite name upon the and made an exquisite scene, at the risk
bill will pay their sixpence, and having of an anti-climax, for that base little
seen, say The Rising of the Moon, for creature, Jessica, who was so devoid of
perhaps the fortieth time, will come out decent feeling that she sold her mother's
after twenty minutes of emotion and go 5 ring for a monkey ! The play is curious
upon their way. No new play can mean for the fact that the principal figures in
as much to them, and so they only stay it, Shylock and Portia, do not meet, ex-
for the old one. Our other dramatists, cept in the Trial Scene, and that Shy-
Mr. Robinson, Mr. Murray, Mr. Boyle, lock never discovers, so far as we know,
Mr. Irving, are less full of the folk life;" the identity of his 'wise young judge.'
probably they may be half conscious of He could hardly be blamed for not real-
some reaction against us older writers, izing that 'Dr. Balthasar' was a woman
because at moments they seem almost as when her own husband, but newly parted
much interested in economic problems as from her, was so completely deluded by
a Galsworthy or a Shaw ; but what in- *5 a lawyer's gown that he could not see
terests me most in their work is that by his wife inside it ! But then Bassanio
their means we are setting upon the was the Supreme Ass !
stage the life of most classes in Ireland Mr. Ernest Milton, shortly to leave

that have anything Irish about them, the Old Vic, was the Shylock. He
We have begun to go beyond the peasant 20 piayed it better than any other part in
to find themes in the workhouse parlor, which I have seen him. He is always in-
the house of the strong farmer, in the telligent, and in this instance imaginative,
seminary and the shop. He lacks virility, and is inclined to con-

fuse fret fulness with anger. He still
25 draws his words out to an excessive
V length, and is altogether too fond of the

vowel sound ee. For example, he in-
'THE MERCHANT OF VENICE' variably pronounces the article the as if

it were the personal pronoun thee. His
AT THE OLD VIC. 3o exit from the Court was admirable. I

am sorry to learn of his departure from
ST. JOHN ERVINE the Old Vic, for this young actor, in

{Observer, London, Eng., January 15, 1922. spite of many defects in his acting, has
By permission.] quality and potentialities. Miss Florence

Shakespeare, in my belief, wrote this 35 Buckton's Portia was a spiritless per form-
play in amood of exceptional arrogance, f nce- J, «»»£ f <e *»*°m M.ss Buck-
There was some argument among his ton- She ought to be able to play Portia
friends, and suddenly he announced* that very well. I have seen signs o high
he would take the silliest plot in the sPlrlt.ln ^ and certainly of a set seof
world, and so enrich it with his verse <° comedv i ^t she seemed totally o m,s-
and skill that it would never fail to draw understand the character of the lady of
and hold an audience. There never was Belmont-a fault in production perhaps
a theme so utterly fatuous as the theme *°r the., wh°le P1*^ was racthe.r "* 'y
of The Merchant of Venice, yet few dT m urt/'Tw !T ,^ S
plays contrive to keep the attention of « and Mr. Wilfred Walter as the Prince
diverse people as it does. I doubt °* Morocco were pretty good though
whether it will ever cease to interest man- Mr. Wa ter (an excellen comedian) de-
kind. And how lovingly Shakespeare hvered his lines rather like that
wrought it! One feels in listening to its person who at parties, WiU volunteer to
lovely lines that he lavished them upon 5° entertain the company w, a recitation
it as compensation for its imbecility 1 ° The Village Blacksmith The rest
He even put into the mouth of that in- <>i the acting, on the male side, was
sufrerable fortune-hunter and hopeless worthy. pjj.-

ingrate, Bassanio, such words as these, . A large audience, which on Friday
to describe Portia- 55 evening included Sir Arthur P.nero, re-

.'. . and her sunny locks ceived the play with that closeness winch
Hang on her temples like a golden fleece, is characteristic of those who attend the

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC AND ART 317

Old Vic. It was done in its entirety, ex- nessed by a large and eager audience,
cept for the negligible cuts demanded by The brilliancy of the stage pictures, the
contemporary decency, and went through swift movement of Sardou's skilfully
in three hours, thus establishing once planned action, the disclosure of Geral-
more beyond contest that Shakespeare 5 dine Farrar's gifts in a new investiture
knew more about his job than the gentle- and the new demonstration of a pleasing
men who adapt his work to the ex- skill within a limited field of impersona-
igencies of their damnable scenery or tion on the part of Mr. Amato, for
their still more questionable personalities. which he has few opportunities, all

10 served to hold the interest of the as-
sembly and furnished food for much
V I animated discussion in the entr'actes.

But there was no ground for belief
WORLD PREMIERE^OF 'MA- that the opera had made any deeper con-

DAME SANS-GENE? 15 viction of creative power than its pred-

ecessors from the same pen. If the
W. J. HENDERSON work obtains any vogue it will be en-

[Sun, New York, January ,6, i9i5. By permis- tirely due to the achievements of the
sion.] principal impersonators. And it must be

20 kept in mind that this can confidently be

'MADAME SANS-GENE-METROPOUTAN OPERA JPj ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^^

Toscanini, the foremost opera conductor

Caterina Hubscher Geraldine Farrar of the world, has devoted to the inter-

Lefebvre Giovanni Martinelli pretation of the work his unique endow-

Napoleon Pasquale Amato 25 ments and his inexhaustible energy.

Fouque. Andrea de Segurola 0f the liberties taken with history by

Count de Neipperg Paul Althouse Sardou and Moreau in their comedy

Queen Carolina Vera Curtis nothing need now be said> Mr> Simoni

Princess Ehsa Minnie Eggener hag *d a§ d ^ b fc q{

Despreaux Angelo Bada , . 11 u 4. j xj u

Gelsonimo Riccardo Tegani 3° the play as could be expected. He has

Leroy Robert Leonhardt k€Pt close t0 hls original, and his labor

has naturally been chiefly that of omis-

Madame Sans-Gene, opera in four sion and condensation in order that the
acts, the book by Renato Simoni after piece might be reduced to practicable
the comedy by Victorien Sardou and E. 35 proportions. If the libretto is not a
Moreau, the music by Umberto Gior- great one, it can hardly be called the
dano, was performed last night at the fault of Mr. Simoni.
Metropolitan Opera House for the first It is too crowded with incident and ac-

time on any stage. The comedy should tion. An ideal opera book would sel-
be remembered by local theatergoers 40 dom be able to stand performance with-
from its interesting representations with out the music, because it would be too
Kathryn Kidder in the title role and 'talky.' The numerous sustained lyric
from the production in which Mme. Re- utterances which are the life of an opera
jane was the principal actor. Umberto are the death of a play. On the other
Giordano is the composer of Andrea 45 hand a composer cannot work to advan-
Chenier, an opera produced at the Aca- tage when he is encumbered with a mass
demy of Music by the late Colonel Ma- 0f details of stage business. What he
pleson on November 13, 1896; Fedora, requires for his purposes is a few grand
produced by Heinrich Conried at the dramatic situations in which the ele-
Metropohtan on December 5, 1906, and 50 mental emotions are to be expressed not
Siberia, produced at the Manhattan by doing but by speech which he is to
Opera House by Oscar Hammerstein on translate into song.

February 5, 1907. Not one of these The first opera makers tried to con-

three operas made any serious impres- struct this type of poetic drama by
sion or effected a lasting occupation of 55 carrying on their explanatory dialogue in
the local stage. recitative and publishing their emotional

Last evening's production was wit- states in arias. Their purpose was de-

3i8 WRITING OF TODAY

feated by the decadence of their method wig, the exaggerated gallantry and the
into a mere stereotyped formula. Later pirouette of Paris of the close of the
masters sought to reconstruct the form eighteenth century.

by modifying the large difference be- That Giordano has written his score in

tween the recitation and the air. Still 5 a workmanlike manner goes almost with-
later composers abolished the conven- out saying. The routine of operatic
tions of the recitative entirely and wrote composition is well known to Italian com-
their dialogue in a continuous melos, posers. In fact they know more about
known technically as arioso. When they this than about anything else, and much
needed the larger lyric utterance they » 0{ the ivrjc art which emanates from the
gave it, but not in any conventional pat- land of the 'drama per musica' discloses
tern such as that of the eighteenth cen- its inheritance of the blood of a genera-
tury aria. tion in which one who could write an ef-

But no great operatic masterpiece has fective opera finale was called a skilful
ever been created which contains no mo- 15 contrapuntist. Giordano is a competent
ments of rapturous melodic song, of pure routinier; he knows how to put an opera
lyric utterance. Without pausing to score together.

search the archives of the mind any His method has no new features. It is

opera goer will think of the great third that 0f the contemporaneous Italian
act of A'ida, of Otello's farewell to the 20 stage His dialogue is carried on in
pomp, the pride and circumstance of continuous melody, with rare excursions
war,' of the dialogue of Pelleas and MeU int0 the modern type of recitative. His
isande beside the fountain, of 'O sink larger dramatic situations he seeks to
hernieder' and 'Mild und leise' in Tris- embody in broader lyric form, but as al-
tan, of Wotan's farewell, of Bruenn- «5 ready said he is t00 frequently hampered
hilde's immolation. These things are by tne nature of the situations them-
music, great music, and an opera book selves.

to be a good one must not only make The meiodic flights which do occur
room for great music but must inspire disclose no lofty flight of musical inven-
it. . 3o tjoru ^ey are pretty and pleasing, but

If the objection be raised that Uior- they lack the directness, the individuality,
dano's work is comedy.and we are quot- the incisiveness essential to the excite-
ing tragedies, it is necessary only to re- ment of enthusiasm. Thematic repre-
call the frequent and beautiful instances sentation is not employed at all in the
of lyric utterance in a baker s dozen ot 35 manner of Wagner or even Puccini's
works, among them Rossini s Barber of ToscQ but the older deviCe of fixed ideas
Seville, Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, and reminiscences is utilized rather baldly
Wolf-Ferrari's Le Donne Curiose, bme- &nd ineffectively. The repetitions of the
tana's Bartered Bride Wagners Die loye melodies are of course obvious; all
Meistersinger and Verdi s Falstaff.* h titions are. The crashing

Surely Comedy with her smile and her chords of brasg whkh heraM Napoleon
rod of satiric castigation has done as ^ mere noise without musical design,
much for music as Tragedy with her composer has said that his thought

grim portents and he ^mts. centralized on the Little Corporal. Al-

Emperor' suggest 'Vf UvorTe For frequently disappointing. In the seore

fhe'rest thereggare°some delightful bits of Giordano Napoleon ,s an an ^lm,ax

of comedy in the book and some of them The composer unwittingly shot his bolt in
clamo? for that style of delicate and fan- 55 the second act and when the third brings

ciM music with which Massenet has de- the figure of the first Emperor the stage

lighted our ears and our taste in his is still dominated by the wilful Sans-

Manon, music which wears the powdered Gene.

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC AND ART 319

The orchestration is on the whole pects, which the composer tried to seize,
workmanlike. But there are some pages and still more momentous in its pro-
in which it is much overdone, and in the founder significance which was not to be
third act at times even the powerful tones published to us merely by echoes of the
of Mr. Amato were inaudible. Musical 5 Marseillaise, the Carmagnole and the
tricks of the time are not numerous. £a ira. In the second act the composer
There are some harp sweeps along the was invited to embody the unhealthy,
whole tone scale. Stopped trumpets in- overdrawn and even apprehensive cere-
evitably impart a nasal twang to certain monials of a mushroom aristocracy striv-
passages. The bass drum wearies itself 10 ing to inspire itself with confidence by
in futile struggles to indicate the tumult the exercise of sheer audacity. Into this
of a troubled historical period. had to be projected the outspoken thought

So much for a swift review of the (and untrammeled feelings of a woman
music in its more immediate revelations, of the people rebelling against a society
But certain problems larger than those 15 of pretenders. It was a formidable task
indicated in this examination confronted indeed and it proved to be far beyond
Giordano. In common with every other the abilities of the composer of Fedora
writer of opera he had to face the diffi- and Siberia.

culties of characterization. These pre- Having examined the broader require-

sented themselves to him in two general 20 ments of the score, we may now proceed
phases, of which the more familiar may to pass in review some of its salient de-
be discussed first. In Madame Sans- tails as they appear in the several acts.
Gene as in any other lyric drama, there The first act bristles with incidents. The
is an imperative demand for definition of composer has endeavored to give some
the characters of the protagonists as well 25 musical coherence to it by entrusting the
as for that broader characterization principal figuration and movement to the
which creates a style perfectly adapted orchestra, which thus provides a well
to the emotional movement of the play, tinted background for animated dialogue.

Both of these requirements Giordano The first real success of the method is
has met but feebly. His assertion that 3o found in the scene between Caterina and
the musical thought of his composition Fouque, in which old French melody of
revolves around Napoleon may be true, rustic type, well suited to suggest Cate-
but there is no individuality in the music rina's Alsatian origin, is worked up into
of the Emperor. He speaks precisely an extended scherzando which is quite
the same lyric language as the other per- 35 pleasing.

sons of the comedy, and he speaks it with There is a light touch in the music ac-

less directness than Sans-Gene. Nor can companying the entrance of Lefebvre and
it be said that the general emotional his soldier companions, and the tenor has
scheme of the play has given the com- a respectable bit of semi-declamatory
poser any larger inspiration than this 40 melody beginning with 'Ah, perdio fu un
historical figure which he believed to travaglio rude.' After that all is rapid
occupy his mind. The music of the dialogue, as was most of that which went
whole opera is lamentably deficient in before, together with the bustle of action,
power of characterization. crowds rushing on and off the stage,

We are not therefore disappointed 45 passing the windows at the rear and bat-
when we consider the other phase of tering at the door. The last crowd
characterization which was placed before which passes at the rear just before the
this musician. He was called upon to curtain falls sings the Marseillaise,
make a deeply significant contrast be- which always was a good tune and still
tween his first and his. second act. The 5o is. At an opportune moment, too, the
accomplishment of the task would have composer finds a happy use for the
been a veritable tour de force for even Carmagnole, for its thought resounds
a master, and it was quite beyond the through the action:
powers of Giordano.

In his first act he was asked to find 55 <Le canon vient de resonner :
a musical expression for the spirit of the Gtterriers, soyez prets de marcher.'

revolution, a historical event portentous
even in its outward and pictorial as- In like manner one hears echoes of the

320 WRITING OF TODAY

Ca ira. The composer is quite right in that's what I said to him.' Caterina
introducing those melodies of the period. runs into his arms, and then it is his
They belong to the story, and as all good turn with, 'Questa bocca tua perfumata
and true theatergoers know, we must e pure' — 'this, thy mouth, perfumed and
have local color. Any composer who 5 pure' — and again the composer writes
knows his business can get it from the commendably and without inspiration,
native color shop, and it is not hard to A musician scrutinizing these two lyric
remember that the best tune in Gior- passages will see that their technical
dano's Siberia was 'Ay ouchnem,' made weakness lies in the want of organic re-
in Russia. io Jation in their phrases. The develop-
The second act opens delightfully. It ment of a melodic climax is thus rend-
is perhaps one of the curiosities of the ered impossible, and the whole scene is
lyric drama that three minor characters, without cohesion.

a tailor, a dancing master and a valet, A littie further on in this act there is
have a trio, which is almost the best bit 15 a wen written bit of ensemble for Cate-
of music in the entire score. The fact rina> Lefebvre and Neipperg, but it is
that it is woefully wanting in originality marred by thick orchestration. The en-
affects the matter not in the least, for un- trance of the court ladies gives opportun-
original composition is often the happi- jty for some more mns\c 0f grace and
est product of mediocrity. This trio has 20 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 serv- ing as it is> has no more distinction than
ants trained under the old nobility and that of the trio at the beginning of the
now waiting upon the upstart creations act It sounds like Bizet waking from a

of the Corsican. *»■■'. 1 1 Carmen dream in a Massenet entourage.

The scene between Caterina and the The rest of the act is action and dia_
dancing master is well written but there j gome of the latter heated in charac_

is nothing in the music which disc oses t as in the defiance of the Queen o{
more than the familiar technical skill of N les b Caterina. There is little
a profession composer of Italian opera. 3o room for music What Giordano

It is the work of a man who knows his has made * s its mechanism piainly

business, but has nothing to demand par- and Qne gees the andent wheels j
ticular consideration. In the next scene, around

that between Caterina and I her ^ustend, j ^ third c rf yisits th€

the composer has ; the .largest opportumty 35 or obedience t0 his command,

of the entire book, and it is here that he / Napoleon for the first time,

most strikingly reveals the weakness of ^ ^ , iju ,. j «.u ~

his invention But> as ha,s, **& been noted> th* c°m"

This is the scene in which Lefebvre, poser could find no expression for this
returning from the Emperor, tells Cate- * remarkable personality save a noise of
rina that his Majesty is wearied of her trumpets and trombones. It would be
manners and her language and has sug- futll.e to attempt a description of the
gested that her husband divorce her. n™slc of this act Here indeed and
When she asks him what he answered hence to the finish the play s the thing,
he says : 'What would you have said ?' 45 No one has anything to sing except dec-
Then the woman pours out her soul in lamation, which is frequently shouting
the words with which she would have rather than speech.

spurned the royal suggestion and ends There is one well made passage, to wit,
with: 'So would you have said, if you that in which Caterina reminds Napo-
had a bit of heart.' 5<> leon of a long past visit to his room and

One can imagine a Verdi voicing in how he neglected her proffered love for
poignant phrases a splendid emotion like the study of a war map. This speech,
this, or a Montemezzi letting it flame 'Che in quel tempo io pensavo,' might
through a clear medium of pure melody, have given us something movingly tender
Giordano has done fairly well with it, 55 in its musical expression, but Giordano
but it never rises to a thrill. It com- contrived to miss his opportunity once
mands respectful admiration and that is again through his inability to write firmly
all. Lefebvre quietly remarks, 'Well, organized melody.

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC AND ART 321

From this point to the end of the opera sic of Gelsonimo. Mr. Althouse was very
little could be done by such a writer as vigorous as Neipperg, but praise can fol-
this and indeed not much even by a mas- low him no further. The scenery was of
ter. Yet the observant hearer feels that course all new and excellent, and the cos-
a musician with ability to create an or- 5 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 yjr

trap his Empress. In the present case one 10

wui tSrS^o« muslaor tSJTS M**™"*1*^*™
insensibly affected by it. BOSTON SYMPHONY

Of the production at the Metropolitan
little can be said that is not commenda- 15 ■rrilLlF HALE

tory. Miss Farrar was the chief offender [Boston Herald, December 19, 1914.]

against probability and against good taste, _f . , , _ , ,. T^ , , ■ t n

for her Caterina was too rude, too vul- Thce el§£th Public Rehearsal of the Bos-

gar and suddenly too rid of her awkward- ton Symphony Orchestra, Dr. Karl Muck
ness. There was much cleverness in her 20 .c°5ductor' t0?^ place yesterday afternoon
acting and much that was astonishingly ln Symphony Hall. Miss Florence Hmkle.
pointless. She sang the music well soprano was the soloist. The program
enough. If there were anything calling was as follows:

for great delicacy of treatment or for an A Faust Overture Wagner

art of deep resource there might be much 25 'Voi che Sapete' Mozart

more to say. But vocally Caterina is Five pieces for orchestra:
simple. In the combination of song and Presentiments, The Past, The Chang-

action which constitutes an operatic im- inS Chord, Peripeteia, The Obbligato

personation Miss Farrar made a lively Recitative Schoenberg

impression on the audience, but just what 30 <A __ . ,^.irst ^f in Boston
the various members of that audience will Ave Mana from The Cross of Fire
think about it all when at home and c— ..»„«, :„ r /tu. c .. • \ tjj
not under the immediate influence of the SymPhony ,n G <The Surpnse) .... Haydn
young soprano's magnetic personality may Bill Nye said, many years ago, that the

be another matter. However, Miss Far- 35 music of Wagner was better than it
rar usually makes progress in her roles, sounded. Arnold Schoenberg says today
and may in this one. that his own music is better than it

Mr. Amato achieved a genuine success sounds,
with his Napoleon. His makeup was The pieces played yesterday are

good, his rapid walk and energetic action 40 extraordinary. It is easy to say that the
well fitted into the moods of his scenes composer is a maniac or a poseur,
and his delivery of the lines was intel- Neither statement would be accurate,
ligent. He presented a well composed Those who have read his treatise on har-
character of a type different from any- mony know that he is a man of unusual
thing he has given us before, clearly and 45 knowledge, force, originality. Those whG
firmly drawn and full of interesting per- heard his quartette last season know that
sonality. he can write music of uncommon beauty

Mr. Martinelli sang the music of Le- and towering imagination in a more fa-
febvre well and made a manly figure of miliar form.

him. Mr. de Segurola showed his cus- 50 It would also be easy to say that when
tomary histrionic skill in the compara- Strauss's Til Eulenspiegel was first per-
tively small role of Fouque. Mr. Bada formed in Boston, the majority in the au-
commanded _ the warmest possible praise dience thought the music chaotic, incom-
for his admirable character sketch of the prehensible and the composer mad. To-
dancing master and Mr. Tegani must be 55 day, in comparison with Schoenberg's
mentioned for his neat singing of the mu- pieces, this symphonic poem is as clear

322 WRITING OF TODAY

as music by Haydn. Remember, too, that Nothing was thrown at Dr. Muck and the
when Debussy's Nocturnes were played orchestra. There was no perturbation of
twice in succession at Chickering Hall Nature to show that Schoenberg's pieces
they were thought to be incomprehen- were playing; the sun did not hasten its
sible. 5 descent; there was no earthquake shock.

These instances will not answer the ob- It was as it should have been in Boston,
jectors to Schoenberg. What is to be Miss Florence Hinkle has a beautiful

said of his five pieces? Personal impres- voice which she uses with rare skill,
sions are interesting chiefly to the person The Canzona of Cherubino, sensuous in
impressed. No two persons hear music 10 its suppressed passion, should be sung by
in the same way. I could make little out a darker voice to gain full effect. It
of the first and the fifth pieces. There served yesterday to display the art of Miss
are fine moments in The Past and The Hinkle in sustained and flawless song.
Changing Chord; beautiful suggestions The lyric measures of Bruch's Ave

of moods; strangely beautiful effects of 15 Maria, conventionally suave, were sung
color. Nor is the fourth piece wholly with unexaggerated emotion, and the
inexplicable. To argue for or against this singer gave dramatic importance to the
music, which might be of another planet, agitated passages that in themselves are
after even several hearings, would be pre- 'of a perfunctory and meaningless nature,
sumptuous and foolish. It took many 20 It has been said by some that Miss Hinkle
Bostonians, well acquainted with orches- is a cool, impassive singer. They prob-
tral and chamber compositions, a long ably mean by this that she is not spas-
time to familiarize themselves with the modic and hysterical. Seldom at Sym-
idiom of Cesar Franck, and later with phony concerts of late years has there
that of Debussy. These composers, how- 25 been such a delightful display of pure
ever, are not so fundamentally radical, vocal art as that of yesterday,
anarchistic, as Schoenberg. Dr. Muck gave an eloquent reading of

Thomas Hardy in that noble prose epic, the Faust overture in which there are
the description of Egdon Heath, asks if hints of the Wagner to come. The sym-
the exclusive reign of orthodox beauty is 30 phony of Haydn, admirably performed,
not approaching its last quarter. The is not among his most interesting,
new vale of Tempe may be a gaunt waste

in Thule; human souls may find them- yjjj

selves in closer and closer harmony with

external things wearing a somberness dis- 35 j^ COATES AND THE NEW
tasteful to our race when it was young. * vr>PT^ qvm puhmv

... The time seems near, if it has not YORK SYMPHONY

actually arrived, when the mournful sub- DTruA1?n ATr»PTru

limity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain, RICHARD ALDRICH

Will be all of nature that is absolutely COn- 40 Wew York Times, January 2, 1922. By per-

sonant with the moods of the more think- mission,

ing among mankind. And ultimately, to Albert Coates conducted the Sunday
the commonest tourist spots like Iceland concert of the New York Symphony
may become what the vineyards and myr- Orchestra yesterday afternoon in Aeolian
tie gardens of South Europe are to him 45 Hall, and, appearing before this set of
now, and Heidelberg and Baden be passed subscribers for the first time, was given
unheeded as he hastens from the Alps to another warm greeting. His program
the sand dunes of Scheveningen.' comprised Mozart's overture to The

When Schoenberg's Five Pieces were Marriage of Figaro; a symphonic cycle,
performed for the first time in London, 50 Potpourri, by John Gerrard Williams; a
and in Chicago, there were scenes of out- ballet suite, La Boutique Fantasque, on
spoken disapproval. Yesterday the be- themes of Rossini, arranged by Resplghl,
havior of the audience was highly credit- and Rimsky-Korsakoff's symphonic suite,
able to Boston. There was smiling; Scheherazade.

there was giggling at times; there was 5S The Potpourri and the Boutique Fan-
applause. Nobody rose to remonstrate, tasque were played for the first time in

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC AND ART 323

America. The English composition made coordination; and in the two new corn-
no such demands upon the attention and positions there was playing that verged
the receptive capacities of the audience on raggedness. The old idea that time is
as that other English composition, The needed for a new conductor to get an or-
Planets, which Mr. Coates played the 5 chestra wholly in hand did not seem on
other day at his first concert. Potpourri this occasion to be thoroughly exploded,
refers to that old-fashioned faint perfum- Mr. Coates's authority in the music of

ery that women make by putting different Russia comes from his heritage as half
kinds of flowers and sweet-smelling herbs a Russian himself. It was evident that
into a jar and letting them dry there. 10 he had a clear and cogent conception of
There are nine movements, all short, and Rimsky-Korsakoff's sumptuous fantasy,
two or three of them very short, each en- and he played the Scheherazade with a
titled with the name of a constituent herb multitude of imaginative and picturesque
— lavender, thyme, pinks, cassia, roses, details, with rhythmic sweep, force and
musk, rosemary and rue, lilies of the val- 15 rich tonal color. And it may be said that
ley; and there is an epilogue. in this concert Mr. Coates did not find

The music is not so old-fashioned as occasion to assault the ears of his lis-
the herbs, but its new fashion is delicate teners so violently as he did in Carnegie
and restrained, gently imaginative, trans- Hall the other day; and that in any case,
parently and subtly colored, intimate in *> apparently, he wisely took the size of the
its appeal. The epilogue is made on a smaller hall into consideration in arrang-
quaint little tune for the oboe, suggestive ing his scale of dynamics,
of the old style.

The effect is of a succession of minia- IX

tures, and is pleasing. One trouble with 25

the 'cycle' is the lack of contrast in the MISS MYRA HESS'S PIANO

successive movements, which illustrate RECITAL

moods very similar and of the same sort

of amiability. But musical amiabilty, in RICHARD ALDRICH

these days, is something not to be lightly 30

undervalued. Vim York Times, January 18, 1922. By per-

_. , . 11 mission.]

The second new piece was equally
harmless. Rossini, it appears, left at his An extraordinary artist made her ap-
death a scrapbook filled with various odds pearance in New York yesterday after-
and ends of tentative and unfinished com- 35 noon in Aeolian Hall without preliminary
positions, on the cover of which he had heralding; one whose achievements gave
scrawled 'Hen.' Mr. Diaghileff, who ob- all the more pleasure for their unexpected-
tained possession of the volume, seemed ness: Miss Myra Hess, a young English
to think this meant something, and got pianist. Miss Hess is a strongly individ-
Respighi, the Italian composer, to arrange 40 ual artistic personality, self-possessed, re-
from its contents a ballet suite. The or- poseful; but she is one who is devoted
chestration, according to the program note, wholly to expounding the music she plays
was made by Howard Carr. and who takes no thought of injecting her

There are seven movements, bearing personality into it, or of making a display
the titles, 'Danse Cosaque/ 'Nocturne,' 45 of her powers as a performer.
'Mazourka,' 'Tarentelle,' 'Valse Lente,' She is a true interpreter: and makes

'Cancan' and 'Galop.' The most that can her interpretations deeply engrossing
be said of these is that they are bright, through their vitality, their finesse and
gay, melodious, vivacious, and that they subtle qualities, their intensity and glow-
do not seem to show any very pointed re- 5o ing warmth. Her technique is of a high
minders of Rossini's style as it has been development, and is wholly under her con-
delivered to us in his operas and his very trol. It is, indeed, of an uncommon bril-
few other compositions that are remem- liancy and security, even in these days of
bered. brilliant and secure technique ; but it does

Mr. Coates has not yet got the or- 55 not shine as such, because it is so wholly
chestra absolutely in hand so far as re- devoted to the true uses of a technique as
gards finish of detail and perfection of a means of interpretation.

324 > WRITING OF TODAY

Her tone is clear, pure, delicately and naise was made something more than a
warmly colored; her touch has variety of thunderous procession,
quality, power and force, and in its lighter Miss Hess's calibre as an artist is such

manifestations is delightful in its crisp- that she ought to be heard from again,
ness. In rhythmic power and in the 5 and then again, before the season is
point and finish of her phrasing there is closed. She will add to it something to
much in her playing to admire. delight music lovers.

Miss Hess's program showed in itself
the operations of an individual point of

view as well as a wide sympathy. She 10 X

began with three of Domenico Scarlatti's

'sonatas'— three of the 445 that are not FALLACIES OF THE FUTUR-
hackneyed by the repeated attentions of ISTS AND NEW THINKING

pianists : she played the B flat prelude and

fugue from the first book of Bach's IV ell- 15 G. K. CHESTERTON

Tempered Clavier; Cesar Franck's Prel- rX7. ., . ,, A M -.

t r A . ji-'j 11 ilj {New York Morning American, March 14, 1915.

ude, Aria and Finale, generally neglected By permission.]

in favor of his other triptych for the

piano; Schumann's Papillons, which sel- The other day, when I opened an ad-

dom see daylight on a pianist's program ; 20 vanced magazine which I always read
five of Debussy's pieces, and Chopin's with interest, there fell out of it a large,
nocturne in C minor and his A flat Polo- shiny piece of paper on which there was
naise. At the end she added one of his reproduced a Work, a product of the hu-
etudes. man will — a thing done on purpose any-

It may truly be said that there was 25 how, if one could scarcely call it a de-
an aristocratic distinction in her playing sign. If you ask me what it represented,
of all this music, as well as a rich gusto you have formed no conception of the
and a singular power of identifying her- very nature of this fair thing. It is quite
self with the many different styles in- inadequate to say that it represents noth-
volved, and setting forth each piece in its 30 ing. I should not be content with saying
own distinctive and essential spirit. Per- even that it does not suggest anything,
haps the most fascinating of all her play- I affirm, with entire and untroubled cer-

ing was that of Schumann's Papillons, tainty, that it is nothing; so far as is pos-
those preliminary studies for the Carnaval, sible when some space is occupied, the
as they have been called ; yet this is 35 thing is not there. There is something a
perhaps to undervalue their own charm little like a dilapidated railing at the bot-
and musical significance. They glowed torn of the picture, and something a little
and glittered under her hands. Their like Chinese lettering at the top of the
graphic picturesqueness, their varying picture : all the rest is exactly like used-up
moods, their gaiety, tenderness, yearning 40 blotting paper — which perhaps it is. I
boisterousness, are a genuine expression infer which is supposed to be the right
of the flood of Schumann's earliest roman- way up merely by the position of the
tic spirit poured out in the music; and, printed title, which says, 'Supplement of
as they are in the music, they were de- the New Age. A Study by Picasso.'
lightfully reproduced in Miss Hess's play- 45 In another place there is an explanation
ing. that Picasso is the first important artist

There were grace and spirit in Scar- that this planet has produced, and that the
latti's 'sonatas' — a name that does not con- sodden blotting paper opposite represents,
nect them with sonatas of the classical not indeed a Table, a Wineglass, and a
period — and the prelude and fugue by Bach 5<> Mandoline, but the 'souls' of a Table, a
she played not as contrapuntal exercises Wineglass, and a Mandoline,
but as living pieces of deeply felt music. Now, as the Frenchman said at Mugby

Miss Hess showed an equal sympathy of Junction, 'Heavens! how arrives it?'
the five pieces by Debussy, to each of I low does human dignity descend to these
which she gave characteristic physiog- 55 monkey antics? How does the human
nomy. And in Chopin's nocturne there brain sink back into this bestial darkness?
was a poetical tenderness, while the polo- Let us see if we can roughly trace the

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC AND ART 325

origin and operation of the process. But there is a further complication, which

There are running about England today I can no longer conceal from you. The

some thousands of a certain sort of people, tragedy is this : that these happy, thought-

They are, of course, a small minority of less people did once really have a Thought,

the nation ; but they are a large minority 5 This one isolated thought has stuck in

of the middle class; and if one's life moves their heads ever since. Nobody can get

down certain ways, the world may well it out of their heads; and nobody can get

seem to be full of them. any other thought into their heads.

They are in revolt against something It is a thought which, uncorrected by
they have forgotten in favor of something » other thoughts, is quite foolish and dan-
else which (by their own account) they gerous; but it is a connected string of con-
have not yet found. They are always al- ccpts, intelligible and even true in itself :
luding to Thought of various kinds-Free it is the on, one th h and {t {yes
Thought and Higher Thought and Ad- them a dickens of a Jtime> The onesonl
vanced Thought. As a matter of fact, l5 ^d original connected Thought that ever

*?JSeV&^*TJ£??T^'t^ Penetrated these people's heads runs as
at all; but they do lots of other things f u M grandfather thought wires

which are much jollier than thinking: they necessary for telegrams f I know

listen to music and look at sunsets and nQW ^ h ^ fherefore, what-

go to tea parties, and are kind to children *> €yer T think is right^v grandson will
as far as they know how. .»«*w»m„ 4-v,;«u ,„™~

'Well/ you will say, 'a good and happy P^My thmk wrong,
life. Why should they be bothered with Upcm that one mental process the whole

thinking? What would become of their of °ur progress is conducted; and, very
gimcrack cottages in the country and their *5 fatura11^ * ends in a smash-or rather,
corrugated iron ethical societies if they » a ? ^ b^PlS?S0- uT-at there u*
began to think? They live artistically, as s°m.e truth in the Thought is not to be
do the lower animals-by a general sense demed; . SonJe uthin^do alter5 ^rent
of suitability to the senses and the habits, £2J"?2SA ^ dlfferen* standpoints ;
One esthete knows another esthete by 30 £T s,hould *•*?* reasonably flexible to
the color and the smell— the color of his fit fashl0"s which are often genuine hu-
coat and the smell of his favorite flower. ™an ™°°<fc\ «g the worshipers of the
One spirit in revolt knows another spirit fought think it idolatry to have any
in revolt, just as one dandy knows another oth™ thoughts but that,
dandy— by the necktie. 35 uih^7 inslst that on every subject all

The ordinary artistic Socialist throws the thinSs we understand must be wrong,
out signals to his own kind, and naturally and consequently all the things that no-
gravitates to his own environment. He b°dy could conceivably understand (like
does not in the least know what Socialism P°or old Picasso) must be right. Their
is, and he does not need to : he does know 40 fallacy, one would suppose, was simple
that he gets on with the kind of men who enough even for the modern mind to fol-
call themselves Socialists. He knows the <l°w; the distinction is quite obvious. If
other man's extravagances will be of his there exist plausible reasons for supposing
sort, and not of another sort. He knows that an innovation is an improvement,
a Socialist can be trusted to call another 45 then, of course, it is a valid argument to
Socialist's wife 'comrade' without taking sav that many real improvements have
her on a gin-crawl. He knows that a So- been denounced as innovations,
cialist can be trusted at tea-time to de- If I think a man honest, and it is an-

Stroy the whole morality of mankind with- swered that he has been in prison, then
out using a word that could bring a blush 5o it is rational for me to reply that St.
to the cheek of a young person. In short, Paul or Cervantes was in prison. But
he knows that there are a sort of people it is not rational of me to say that all the
like himself in the world, and certain so- people in prison must be like Cervantes or
ciological conjectures (about which he St. Paul. There must be a prima facie
never thinks seriously at all) are among 55 case for the new thing; otherwise it is
the outward tests for detecting them.' obvious that nothing is being asked of it

In saying all this you speak with your but newness. Now the number of new
Usual noble delicacy and unerring wit. things that are possible is at any given mo-

326 WRITING OF TODAY

ment by its nature infinite. When we do a singularity, with so strange a power
anything we deny ourselves a thousand of beauty, that they dwell in a perpetual
other things. When we go to Tunbridge isolation. They are like the poem in
Wells we may be said to be avoiding a which some man has wielded the only
million other places from China to Peru. 5 inspiration vouchsafed to him in a life-

Whenever a man puts on his hat he is time. Nobody cares to know what re-
refusing to put on an infinite number of lations James Graham, Marquis of Mont-
other things, from the flower-pot to the rose, may have had with the literary
waste-paper basket. If, therefore, you movements of his time. All that matters
have no other test of a new idea except » js that just once he 'carved with his
its newness, you will only be able to say: sword' the twenty-four lines which make
'Well, I, at my present stage of evolution, his name immortal. In the Louvre, where
do not see the good of wearing a flower- the great Victory of Samothrace spreads
pot for a hat. But I must not offend my her divine wings, only the anxious pro-
great-grandson, who is so very particular, 15 fessor, dutifully pondering the lectures
and for all I know (since he does not ex- for his next semester, gives any effort
ist yet), may absolutely insist on this uni- to fixing her place in the development
form for all his ancestors.' of Hellenistic art. Botticelli had his

Perhaps you think this is an improb- imitators, but they never cross our minds
able example and an unlikely way of talk- 20 in the presence of his works. Before
ing. Perhaps, in some rural seclusion, Michael Angelo, on the other hand, we
you have failed to meet any people who cannot but recall his influence, contempo-
talk like that. Turn, then, to the subse- rary and posthumous. He is the arche-
quent issue of the advanced paper to type of that special kind of genius which
which I have referred, and you will find 25 interests us not only in itself, but in its ef-
a gentleman talking exactly like my imag- feet upon others. It is a kind to be dis-
inary ancestor, with his flower-pot hat. tinguished with some care from that rep-

An art critic of conspicuous intelligence resented by the professional revolution-
sits in front of my absurd piece of blot- ist. The important point to remember
ting paper, dazed but submissive. He 3o aDout it is that it does not imply propa-
does actually say, in so many words, that ganda, but the unconscious pressure of
he can make neither head nor tail of it, personality. 'They say? What say they?
but that the Future will. He does, with a Let them say/ Michael Angelo was too
really beautiful humility, prostrate himself Dusy to bother about his influence. As
in the dust, not only before Picasso, but 35 the event showed, little men got into
before a totally imaginary great-grand- had habits through emulation of his big-
child, who will profess to see some sense ness. Incidentally they showed how in-
in Picasso. This condition is plainly in- imitable he was. Where does Rodin
tolerable : we cannot go about thinking stand, in a situation recalling that of the
that all our thoughts are wrong without 4° itaiian master ? The influence he has
having even any notion of what thoughts exerted makes an indispensable part of
are right. Shall we try ^ to get that tnjs story. Has it been precious or per-
Thought out of these people's heads? Or nicious? And, in either case, what does
shall we try to get some others in ? it reveal in the artist himself ? To these
Either will involve the most horrible men- questions one is bound to recur, after
tal torture. the first emotions of sentiment and re-

XI gret inspired by the recent news of his

death. In his work there is embodied a
WHAT AUGUSTE RODIN challenge.

MEANT IN SCULPTURE 5° Take up any life of Rodin— and

pnvAT rm?TT<;c;07 Whistler is probably the only other art-

ROYAL CORTlbbOZ ist q{ Ms period who has so large a bib_

[New York Tribune, November 25, 191 7. By per- Hography — and you are certain to find

mission-1 5S him quoted on his point of view. 'They

There are works of art in the world will not understand my realism/ he says

which assert themselves with so intense of his critics in one of these fragments.

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC AND ART 327

'For them sculpture should not endeavor His criticism foreshadowed much that
to represent flesh and blood and bone, Rodin was to encounter as he grafted a
since marble and bronze do not possess kind of esoteric impressionism upon his
the colors which in painting create the realistic habit, yielding to the fantasti-
illusion of life. I, on the contrary, claim 5 cality which culminated in his celebrated
that the sculptor can reach the same Balzac. But it is upon the basis of his
result if he will produce with fidelity and art in truth, accurately and forcefully ex-
intensity the model he has before him. pressed, that emphasis should first be
It is with his eyes fixed on life that he placed. In the best of the portraits you
must work ; and his art will be able to 10 see only that fidelity to life upon which
represent it entire when he has observed he laid such stress in his talk. The stat-
sufficiently and has sufficiently trained his ues, almost always of the nude, carry on
fingers.' The point of view, we know, his affirmation of this central principle,
is everything in art. By it, in the long And to that extent his influence was only
run, the artist must stand or fall. We 15 such as could contribute to the good of
need not pause here upon the point which French sculpture. Why, then, was there
is debatable in the foregoing statement, ever any argument about his work? The
the indictment of Rodin's critics, be they answer is very simple. The Academy
writers or sculptors. The essential de- was in possession of the field — which is
tail is his exposition of his own concep- 2° to say of the Salon — and Rodin's ebul-
tion of plastic art. Observation of life, lient vitality, the ruthlessness of his real-
fidelity to life, expert fingers. It is the ism, gave mortal offense to the Academy,
simplest of programs, and undeniably It was useless to cite his phenomenal
one of the strongest ever stated in any of manual facility to the leaders of
the schools. Indeed, all the great schools «5 a school whose taste, whose ingrained
have embraced it within their scheme of sense of measure, was so grossly violated
principles. It is as old as Greek anti- by his point of view. There it is cus-
quity, the masters of the Renaissance re- tomary, among the followers of the Rodin
vived it, and it has had many exemplars cult, to leave the matter, assuming that
in modern times. Rodin's exploitation 30 the victory remained with their master
of it was powerful, brilliant, so success- as a matter of course. But the case
ful that it filled the world with his fame. cannot be thus summarily closed.
He had the piercing eye, the resourceful Rodin had in him, indubitably, some of

hand, and in the great mass of his work the elements of a permanent triumph,
there is nothing more impressive than 35 His realism offered to French sculpture
what we can only describe as the mani- a needed tonic. Yet, as we have pointed
festation of life itself in the vibrant lines out more than once in these columns, it
of drawings and etchings, in the palpi- is hardly reasonable to make that need
tating surfaces of marble and bronze. the measure of his greatness. He came
The student who would grasp the fun- 40 jn a mediocre time. In an era richer in
damental traits of Rodin's realism would clearly marked talents his salience would
do well to begin his researches among have been slighter. It is doubtless ex-
the portraits in divers mediums. This hilarating for the devotee to conceive of
sculptor was on intimate terms with the him as suddenly overshadowing with his
artists and authors of his day. His etch- 45 aggressive style the numerous contem-
ings of Victor Hugo and Henri Becque, poraries who had next to no style with
his busts of Barbey d'Aurevilly, Berthelot, which to bless themselves. But it is more
Dalou, Laurens, Rochefort and others profitable to consider him side by side with
constitute by themselves an amazing little the one really superior artist then in the
gallery. The earlier examples especially, 50 French school, Paul Dubois. With
done before mannerisms had over- Rodin's work in mind, consider the two
whelmed him, are moving in their direct- small figures with which Dubois opened
ness, their energy, their bold seizure of his career in the sixties, his 'Youthful
the tangible elements in the structure of St. John' and the 'Florentine Singer.'
a head. Later, when he modeled a bust 55 Pass then to the symbolical figures
of Puvis de Chavannes, that austere guarding the tomb of General Lamorici-
master thought the result a caricature, ere, at Nantes, and go from them to the

328 WRITING OF TODAY

'Jeanne d'Arc,' at Rheims. Remember, stance of life. And in their sincerity, in
finally, the noblest of his portraits, the their freedom from Roman rhetoric, they
bust of Paul Baudry. You find, pres- developed a simple force worthy of the
ently, that you are not so sure of Rodin ancient Greek. They, too, served a fine
as you were, and the first impulse set in 5 ideal. Their modeling has beauty, it has
motion by the discovery is one directed style. Also, it is profoundly personal,
at that question of the point of view The lesson of the Renaissance is pe-
which we brought up in the beginning. culiarly the lesson of the man of genius,
Is it possible that there was something whose individual accent supplies the last
lacking in Rodin's point of view? It » and most potent ingredient to the point
bears heavily, as stated above, on obser- of view, the little personal spark which
vation of life and trained fingers. These decides an artist's rank in the world,
alone are not enough to make great whether he is to take us captive forever
sculpture, nor are they sufficient for the or is to leave us cold or doubtful. Char-
exercise of a truly beneficent influence. *5 acter is the issue. It is difficult for some
Dubois had them, in as rich measure as artists to admit it, but, after all, the qual-
Rodin. Amongst all of the latter's busts ity bestowed upon them by the Creator
there is not one to surpass the Baudry. is what decides their fate. A master is
But Dubois had something else, too, and triumphant or not according as God made
that is why he wakes no doubts at all. 20 him. We talk about his ideas, his tech-
It is because in the supreme matter of nique, but what we want first and last to
style he is so simple, so strong, so true, know about is his soul, as the philosopher
so instantly convincing. His observation would put it, his quality, as we say in the
and his skill are tinctured with a very fine, jargon of criticism.

very elevating, quality. That it is that 25 It is on that rock that the case of Rodin
lifts him above the Academy to which he must ultimately be wrecked or saved. It
belonged and allies him with the great is the question of his quality that sooner
schools of the past. And that it is which or later is bound to assert itself. We
stirs us to a reexamination of Rodin's want to know not simply what he did with
point of view. We are content with it 30 his abilities, but what subtler traits were
so long as we are content with his two implicit in them. From the expertness
solid principles. We grow restless when of his hand, which is to be taken for
we begin to test the qualities that tine- granted, we turn inevitably to the nature
tures them. of his mind. The problem is not as

Beneath the surface traits of every au- 35 simple as it might seem. There is a Rodin
thentic school of sculpture you feel legend, which is confusing. He was, as
working certain elements of immense im- has been indicated, a willing talker, and
portance, like the determining factors in from the records made by his acolytes it
the solution of a chemical problem. The would appear that his range of interests
Greek master, secure in an exhaustive 4° was wide. He wrote himself, giving
knowledge and form and in a consum- some confirmation to this judgment. He
mate technique, simplifies and general- analyzed Greek art and Gothic. He was
izes his material in the light of a pure sympathetic to both. In the course of
and lofty ideal of beauty. He is nothing his long career the portraiture which so
if not a type of intellectual and esthetic 45 frequently occupied him, both in busts
distinction. The drop from him to the and in monuments, nevertheless left him
Roman sculptor is like the drop from free to treat mythological and historical
Athens to the Empire, from refinement subjects. He read poetry and illustrated
and the things of the mind to grossness it in marble. He knew the classics and
and brute force. When sculpture was 5© went to them for themes. Altogether, one
renewed by the men of genius in the would say, a type of intellect and imagina-
Renaissance, by men of the stamp of Ver- tion. Yet that is not the type his art
rocchio, Donatello and Michael Angelo, actually suggests. It would seem to pre-
it failed to recapture the serene perfec- sent, instead, simply the modeler in ex-
tion of the Greeks, but it escaped the 55 celsis, the man of observation rejoicing
meretricious qualities of the Roman in the exercise of his well trained fingers,
epoch. They kept close to the racy sub- iFor a long time in the history of his ca-

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC AND ART 329

reer he leaves us hardly distrustful of his sort of monumental calm. This struck
fundamental character as an artist. The me as characteristic of Rodin. A quiet,
portraits are so good. The nudes are so almost grave, bearded personage — unmis-
graceful, such lovely incarnations of takably a personage — he had a very
sensuous youth. Rodin, for years, seems 5 friendly touch in conversation, a most
a veritable poet, dedicated to the evoca- engaging way of moving about among
tion of images of tender beauty. Under his works and saying little sympathetic
the spell of his picturesque manner you things about them, but he seemed then,
are really unconcerned with the proba- as he seemed when I met him long after-
ble depth of his emotion. Paul Leroi, the 10 ward at the great exposition in 1900,
editor of L'Art of whom I used to see a something of the assured impresario,
good deal in Paris in old days, was wont After Dalou's workshop, which one
to declaim to me for fifteen minutes on thought of as existing only as the sculp-
a stretch about what he termed Rodin's tor breathed, Rodin's suggested an offi-
passion for reclame, and about the sculp- *5 cial establishment. Industry hummed in
tor's weakness in the very classics room after room, where workmen carried
upon which he presumed to draw out in marble the statues he had modeled,
for his motives. They had had a He had the authority and the detachment
long talk when the 'Danaid' was being of a powerful director. I had at that
modeled, and Leroi was furious because 20 time an interesting illustration of the
he did not believe that Rodin had any doubling of the director with the creative
idea of what the subject really meant. artist. He gave me a figurine about
Yet even if Leroi was right, his point did twelve inches high, a nude woman stand-
not seem to me exactly relevant. Sup- ing erect with arms akimbo, the head no
pose Rodin's culture, like his emotion, 25 more than a swift indication of what it
had no deeps? A delicate charm un- was to be in the statue that might or
questionably remained. The statue was might not be developed from the sketch,
there, exciting only admiration for its ex- It is the merest note, a casual memoran-
quisite modulations of form. But Leroi dum, made probably for the pose alone,
refused to believe that sculpture could 30 But it lives. There in a nutshell was
live by modulations alone, and the p one answer, at all events, to Leroi's
shrewdness of his criticism is the better ' impatience. And on the occasion of
perceived as we survey Rodin's career this visit another episode brought
from beginning to end. It is then that home to me the almost hypnotic power
the spell fades. The later works overdo 35 which Rodin could exercise. He sum-
the craftsmanship of the earlier, monot- moned one of his chiselers from
ony supervenes, we tire of what once his task, saying that he was a country-
appeared so graciously beguiling, and in man of mine and that therefore I
the reaction we see the old charm in a should make his acquaintance. The
new light. We sigh for a quality that is *° story of that young man is apposite here,
not there. He called upon me a few days later with

I remember a visit to Rodin in his an old cigar box held mysteriously under
studio in the Rue de l'Universite, years his arm for some time after we had set-
ago, when the charm was still compelling, tied in our chairs. At last he opened it
I had been with Dalou the day before 45 and exposed a number of photographs of
and it was interesting to bring my im- soldiers' monuments, works in the famil-
pression of his atmosphere into that of iar style of the old-fashioned American
his colleague. The difference was very stoneyard. The connection between them
like that which I have always observed and Rodin's studio was a little more than
as existing between Dalou as I knew 5o obscure, but he soon enlightened me. He
him, and Rodin's bust of him. Dalou was from a Western state, where his
was a tense, nervous personality, ting- father manufactured these memorials,
ling with energy, everything that was with his help. He, my interlocutor, did
going on in his studio seeming to not know what ailed him in his dissatis-
be concentrated and summed up in 55 faction with his own productions until
himself. In the bust he takes on a sort one day he opened a magazine contain-
of monumental weight and dignity, a ing reproductions of some of Rodin's

330 WRITING OF TODAY

works. Then, in a flash, he knew, knew It implies knowledge, not merely flair.
what was the matter with his education Sculpture is an art of construction, if
and what he wanted to do. Forthwith ever there was one. It involves the
he made his preparation, got to Paris, manipulation of surface only as that is
and applied to Rodin for the kind of 5 expressive of the form under the skin,
mechanical work for which he knew he That personal touch which we have men-
was fitted. The great-hearted sculptor tioned as so important, that spark of in-
gave it to him, and every day he was dividuality which is as the very life-giving
absorbing priceless lessons in the art principle, makes itself felt in no easy
which had engaged his ambition, living 10 adroitness of technique, but in the whole
in an atmosphere which was alone an in- grain and character of the work. For the
spiration to him, preparing him for pro- stimulation of such a touch only the
gress and new ventures of his own. severest of taskmasters is adequate.
Now, that disciple was typical. I do not With the recognition of that fact we
know how many others have made such 15 come back to Rodin's responsibility for
a pilgrimage as he made. I do know, an unhealthy fashion,
for exhibitions ad nauseam have shown Surely he is not to blame, we say, for

it, that the younger generation has been the ineptitudes of his disciples. Is it
bitten with the Rodin idea of things his fault that they go on dealing in
plastic as by fever. In the case of *> whipped cream ? But what if the exam-
the pilgrim aforesaid, moved by the pie he sets does actually savor of the
recital of his devotion, kindled by the same frivolous material? We have
old spell, I remember thinking only of spoken of quality. It is Rodin's quality
the good that that idea was doing. The that turns out, in the long run, to be the
exhibitions have put the matter in 25 stumbling block in appreciation of what
another perspective. he did. It is the quality of an inspired

Rodin has done his followers some soldier, of a virtuoso in technique, not of
good, inciting them to a freer sense of a great creative sculptor. The story
form, a more supple mode of modeling. which Gsell tells of the 'Pygmalion and
But he has done them an immense 30 Galatea' we have reproduced before,
amount of harm through exalting into a . but must reproduce again. The sketch
false eminence those 'modulations' which for it represented the embrace of a nymph
roused Leroi's wrath. The most obvious and a faun ! He had not been intrigued
of the 'tricks of the trade' which by an idea, he had been playing with form
Rodin practised was a supersubtle 35 and clay. Not imagination, but observa-
caressing of the marble, especially in the tion, had ruled him. The group was a
soft surfaces of the female nude. Like product of the fingers, exclusively, not
Swinburne's 'Hosannas of the flesh' his of the mind. It is the tone of
statues get the last shiver of sensuous his mind that rescues Dubois from the
sensation out of the subject. In his 40 dullness of the Academy. It is the tone
hands the process has frequently been of Rodin's mind that kept him from
productive of marvelously lovely effects. mounting to the heights he tried to scale,
But in the hands of his imitators it more and left him in a sphere of bewitching
often suggests the transactions of some but shallow picturesqueness. If his art
ardent pastry cook doing incredible things 45 shrivels beside Greek art and that of the
for the center of the table with a bowl Renaissance it is not because he wanted
of sugar paste; nay, with a bowl of a share of Greek or Renaissance craft-
whipped cream. Nothing could be softer, manship ; it is because he had his artis-
sweeter, suaver than these pretty impro- tic being on a lower level. If he is in-
visations in the current shows, and 5o ferior to Michael Angelo it is because
often they are miraculously clever. But his daemon is not so interesting. If he
nothing could be more inimical to the has failed to discredit Dubois it is be-
true genius of sculpture. That genius cause when you compare them, quality
rests eternally upon an honest searching for quality, Dubois proves the finer type.
analysis of form. It develops, as it 55 In that matter of fineness lies the crux
were, from the inside, the figure in clay of the whole business. There is a certain
that is to be put into marble or bronze, theatricality in Rodin's characteristic de-

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC AND ART 331

sign; there is a certain speciousness — Rodin. The books about him, as we
in the very beauty of his model- have already indicated, make a little
ing. The dark side of his influence has library. We have even Lc Vrai Rodin,
its source in a weakness which he shared by M. Coquiot, to make sure that the
with his imitators, the weakness of pre- 5 legend should not go wrong. Rodin had
ferring a transitory 'effect' to the solid the artist's passionate desire to avoid
virtues of great sculpture. One thinks, being misunderstood. He was as jealous
for a moment (out of all the men of of the correct expression of his ideas as
genius who have loved, and created, he was of the proper treatment of his
beauty!), of John Keats. There was a 10 works in an exhibition or in the pages
swooning sensuousness about him which of an illustrated book. Once when I
is betrayed even in the last tragic line wanted to reproduce some of his sculp-
he wrote, on the eve of death. But the tures he would not let me rely upon the
essential Keats was concerned with skill of my own photographer. He sent
nobler things. He never pretended to 1$ me instead a collection of the plates
live to any excessive extent of his made by Druet, the photographer he had
honeyed sweetness. Rodin made that trained in his own way and could trust
mistake. He banked too heavily on the in the important matter of light and shade,
melting delicacy of his contours and He was anxious always that the secret
planes, until he lost touch with the *> of his art should be made plain to man-
sterner stuff of his art. When Michael kind. It is not, as we have shown, hope-
Angelo hewed a figure out of a block of lessly inaccessible. If it is all at clouded
Carrara and left portions of the latter to the view, it is the fault, indeed, of the
in the rough, his conception seemed to be busy biographers aforesaid,
struggling out of the marble like an or- 25 'He has commentators,' said Voltaire
ganic growth. The unchiseled parts of Dante, 'which is one reason why he is
affect you as accidental. In many of the never understood.' And the crucial error
numerous works by Rodin which show of Rodin's commentators has been their
how the thing attracted him an air of inability to see how variable he was,
premeditation tinges his idea with an un- 3© how his earlier strength was sapped by
fortunate artificiality. Witness the pop- the steadily growing artifical traits to
ular head known as 'La Pensee.' It is which we have referred. They have
a charming thing, but there is nothing lumped all his productions in one por-
really haunting about it. tentous mass, before which they have flung

To the sworn disciple of Rodin the 35 themselves prostrate. The sentimental
foregoing observations must doubtless balderdash written about Rodin has prob-
seem very much beside the point. Have ably exceeded in quantity that written
not the master's works, he would ask, about any other artist of his time, with the
been fixed forever in the great body of exception of Whistler. When he was
French sculpture ? Was he not, after 4° employed at Sevres he made some magnif-
his first years of rebuff, made the re- icent pen drawings. In his old age he
cipient of innumerable public commis- produced a lot of scrawls, of interest,
sions? Of course he was. One of the save in comparatively few cases, to no
most interesting things about Rodin's one but himself. In the ordinary course
career has long been his prodigious sue- 45 they ought to have been swept out by
cess. The action of the French gov- the boy in the mornings, along with other
ernment in starting him upon his famous studio rubbish. But these late drawings
'Porte de l'Enfer' in 1880 prefigured the are hailed in some quarters as though
final generosity which established him they were jewels, like the souvenirs of
in the Hotel de Biron for life, and set 5o Sevres. That way lies complete obfus-
apart that building to be a Musee Rodin cation for the student who would ap-
after his death. ^ All the nations likewise prehend the characteristics of Rodin,
have honored him. In London, for ex- There is no occasion for our worrying
ample, there has been as keen an enthu- about the question as to whether his works
siasm for him as in Paris. When there 55 are in very truth fixed forever in the
was a monument to Whistler to be erected body of French sculpture. We do not
there was but one sculptor tc ^et it from know. Time alone can tell. But there «

332 WRITING OF TODAY

occasion for our trying to apprehend him The work or Max belongs to none of these
for what he is, not for what the delirious groups except in so far as he is generally
hierophants say he is. And to that end humorous. But his humor is not the
what the student needs is discrimination. type that instantly compels laughter. It
No other modern sculptor of his eminence 5 is in a more satiric vein, a higher form
so imperatively demands the exercise of of wit applied to the picture. One doubts
that faculty. if the writer in the Americana is quite

correct in his definition of caricature.

The accepted meaning and the one that

XII 10 sounds most correct is that which declares

that events and thoughts in pictorial
MAX BEERBOHM'S DRAWINGS. burlesque are cartoons, while only in-
dividual figures in pictorial exaggeration
[New York Times, March 12, 1922. By permission.] are caricatures. If one might coin the

The scene is a barren stretch of land l5 phrase, Max is a purist in caricature. It
with the gloomiest of seas beyond. Joseph jsbut incidental that he makes a cartoon
Conrad stands, legs apart, hands in coat Jhe indul.vl1dufT1 fi^ure1s are the material
pockets, monocle screwed in eye, observ- fr°m ™hlch Max w0.rks- e
ing a bleached skull through the hollow No face or form 1S perfect. There is

eye of which crawls a large green snake. *> always some suggestion of nature over-
With relish he declares, 'What a delight- doing the thing a bit or underdoing it. It
ful coast !' One catches an illusion that Jt thls blt of nature that 1S out of Plumb>
one might forever be almost gay here.' so t0 sPeak> wlTth whlch the caricaturist
The whole thing is delicious. It is criti- 1S concerned. He exaggerates it to its
cism and it is caricature. It is Max 25 natural conclusion. Thus in Max's work
Beerbohm at his best. And it is the fron- we have1 tbe huge chin on Rudyard Kip-
tispiece to Max's new volume of drawings, l\nS% and the prominent eyebrows of Sir
A Survey 1 Arthur Pinero. One of the pictures in

In this book is an amusing drawing of ^ Survey depicts Logan Pearsall Smith
Philip Guedalla being drawn one way by 3° delivering one of his latest compositions to
Law and the other by Literature. One I- -C Squire of the London Mercury.
might well picture Max in the same per- A11 lovers of literature know what ex-
dicament, substituting Caricature for Law. tremely short although extremely good,
He is dominated by two urges, that of de- ™mgSi L?gan ?erSa11 P"11^?8, ThereT
lightfully whimsical prose essays and that 35 fore the knowing reader will be convulsed
of clever, cutting caricature. One might at this picture of an extremely lank gentle-
well throw up one's hands in helplessness ™an handing to an exceedingly worried
upon being asked to render a verdict edltor a blt of P*Pf r no bl^er. than a
regarding the field in which Max excels. Postage stamp. Then there is that
He excels in both fields. Rumor has it 4° effective picture of Paderewski and
that he draws easier and with more d Annunzio meeting upon a starry night,
pleasure than he writes, but this fact Ah read me one of the poems of your
would be hard to discern from his pub- y°uth ! cr.lGS ^ P01,18*1 Piamst \° the
lished work. Ease and assurance mark Italian writer. Ah, play me one of your
both his essays and his drawings. 45 adorable sonatas ! answers d Annunzio.

In order to place Max Beerbohm as a That 1S all» but for those who know how

caricaturist it is, perhaps, proper to ex- politics have swept both these men from

plain the precise meaning of the word their creative fields the pictures will carry

in this connection. The Encyclopedia them in a wistful glance back to days

Americana declares that there are three * more carefree and more concerned with

kinds of caricature. First, the strong, art-

powerful, almost brutal ; second, the hu- These two pictures reveal the fact that

morous, the one instantly compelling the fifty-one caricatures in A Survey are

laughter; and the last, the pathetic, the concerned with both politics and letters.

picture capable of causing people to weep. R Indeed, of late years Max, in his drawings

„ cr,D,/Dv » ./ d- u t « li j at least, seems to be more concerned with
\A SURVEY. By Max Beerbohm. Doubledoy, , . . ' . . . .• ,... , ..

Page & Co. $4. what is going in on in the pohtica world

H. ARTICLES ON DRAMA, MUSIC AND ART 333

than in the world of letters. He has on some of my drawings ? True, madam ;
always been a sort of bad boy at home, and thank you for reminding me. Over
and while Britannia takes enough pride in some in every batch you have frowned,
his brilliance there have yet been times murmuring a fine and a favorite phrase
when his pictures bit too deep for the 5 of yours; 'Not in the very best of taste.'
comfort of the victims. There is a hint And I seem to find in all the drawings at
of this in the amusing Epistle Dedicatory which you have gently drawn the line a
which Max has set at the head of his common denominator. In my youth, and,
book. Because this bit of prose gives an indeed, until quite recent years, the
excellent picture of England's attitude 10 Court was a very dominant factor in your
toward caricaturists and because it also life. A satirist instinctively goes for what
has something to say about Max's own is very strong: the weaker things he
drawings the larger part of this one bit derides with less gusto or not at
of prose in the volume is herewith set all. But you, madam, have a great re-
down: 15 spect for strength, and it is the weaker

<i\r /r> -i. • \ t, • things that are aptest to tickle your sense

You (Britannia) have never since you of jf T m£self have / f

came to woman s estate, smiled much on J J

caricaturists or on satirists m general f „ * £ £ok for the weak points

&SUS7 heTZrhenTo^^V11 TT fr ^f^Z
were stiU a headstrong girl ; there was still "^ely «£ 1 used to laug,h ?* the f™?
a strain of brutality in your nature, to a?d at *• perS°"u ar°UTnd lt; a,"d ?'5
which caricature and satire were agree- d'.s'ressed you rather. I never laughed
able. That strain worked itself out of with you at Labor. Labor didn t seem to
you long ago. You had become mild and *5 Tme. ^lte lraPortant « ouSh 7*. But
buxom long before I had the honor to J£" ? very ™P°«*<* "™> very strong
behold you And the recent war has left "J***, astl/ " * "^ Z ■

you as mild as ever; though less buxom. Sa *ered, this year, from a certain

"That is the kind of remark which in TwJ^T '"^ °*/our1'"PS wlT
u-uu j 1 t i_i. 30 1 laid out tor you on the vellow sands
my childhood on your shores I was taught, ., m t * J , , j«*vw a ^
• t,.i r j. 1 u those 01 my new drawing's which re-
very rightly, not to make about any one. r , ' TJ, .«~v *" s ,, 7r
T, • , tf 1 • j r 1 u- u ferred to Labor, that you thought me
It is the kind of remark which, so soon „ .,, r , ,, ' \ . £ f : .

T T , , ' , 1 . guilty of not the very best of taste in

as I was grown up, I began to make about * -t- ± u 1 \ t> 1

evervone For after all what is 9 cari faihng to bow my knee to your new Baal.
cltuHst but a man who sav 'A vourV 35 "PerhaPs l ™Sht to exclude these few

S p rJL?Z*£ *h£. r ™,r 1« drawings from a book dedicated to you.

too fat; B, you re too thin C, your nose D j c* mise b their inclusfon?

is too large — and so on Such a man, T . I t *£• 1 I Ar u u

alas, am I And what is a satirist but one J hopet »* . * thln^ "ot ^>u have but
who says, 'D, you're a fool; E, your m to f J to.,Labor « O honored and darling

character and motives won't bear looking 4° SlH^n« Slrf' X knOW £? ^P^^ct.

. , T ,, , T7» j Don t blame me for some drawings done

into; I see through you; F — and, very , .. , , « ,5 r

•' , r an c L ' / by an utterly absurd man who lives

jarringly, so forth? Such an one am I > f > . h d

I jar even on myself. I hold no high ^ jackboot.> yBut if such woyrds avPaiI

opinion of the satiric temperament. I , ■* « , j^_ L j- ^ I • ^

despise Thersites and the whole lot, of 45 "*• a"d ^T ll ^Pf™' ,t0 «!«*

which I happen to be one. I have to go *hne f*?dSl ™? EJtS K T 1

i • j t. -u i. • / i. 5\ tannia. 1 shall not thereby be the less

on being rude because that is (a part of) affectionatel servant.*

my nature. But, O Britannia, whenever J *

I sail from my home in Italy, across your Beneath the apparent lightness of this
neatly ruled waves, and step with a new 5o dedication there runs a vein of serious-
sheaf of drawings on to those yellow ness that should be apparent to all
sands where you sit enthroned, I do readers. Max js an admitted humorist,
feel all the more guilty because your eyes hut his humor is based upon serious con-
are invariably so benign to me from be- victions. He feels strongly about certain
neath the brim of your lovely golden 55 things, and in order to adequately ex-
helmet, press himself he employs the most fero-
"You say that you have always frowiied cious of all weapons — wit. More fool-

334 WRITING OF TODAY

ish things have been demolished by wit audience with the Pope, and there is a de-
than by all the pulpit-thumping denunci- lightfully exaggerated sketch of Maurice
ation ever roared. Hewlett posing with a spade. Not to be

For instance, it is well enough to hurl forgotten either is the study of Georg
vigorous speeches at Sir Edward Carson 5 Brandes as an old clothes dealer to whom
and his junker policies, but it is hardly George Bernard Shaw is trying to sell
conceivable that they awaken the same his old garments. 'What '11 you take for
sense of ridiculous qualities in the reader the lot ?' asks Brandes. 'Immortality,'
that does Max's caricature in this book Shaw replies. 'Come,' says Brandes, 'I 've
of a much-perplexed Sir Edward Carson10 handled these goods before! Coat, Mr.
listening to John Bull's declaration. 'I Schopenhauer's; waistcoat, Mr. Ibsen's;
wonder if you quite realize how utterly Mr. Nietzsche's trousers' — 'Ah,' breaks
sick and tired of you I am,' and answer- in Shaw, 'but look at the patches.'
ing, 'I wonder if you quite realize how Nothing has been said about Max's

utterly sick and tired I am of meself.' is draftsmanship. He has made this pecul-
And how delightful is the picture of iarly his own, although it has been stated
Walter Long, holding his chin in be- that when first he started drawing he was
wilderment, while Clio the Muse asks: under the influence of Pellegrini. If he
'But how comes it that at a time of grave was, the influence has been dissipated dur-
stress in the story of the great old nation *> ing the intervening years. The pictures
you are one of the leading men?' Mr. are now marked by a method of drawing
Long, in true Parliamentary form, replies : that is essentially individual. No one
'Well — er — really, you know — feller has could mistake a Beerbohm drawing for
a sense o' duty and all that — besides, not anything else. Whether it is in the line,
without plenty of official experience, *5 and Max can now do beautiful line work,
quite apart from Quarter Sessions — or whether it is in the shading, the secret
same time — since you put it that way — is hard to perceive.

come to think of it — 'pon my word, should A Survey is a welcome addition to the

like notice of that question !' Mr. Long's several volumes of Max's drawings
exceedingly safe and British reply brings 3° which have been published before.
to mind another caricature, one of a He has now reached a position of
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, when sufficient importance in contemporary
Labor rules, holding his first weekly re- English letters to render anything
ception. In welcoming the French Am- by him one of the larger events of
bassador he says : 'Glad to see you, 35 the season wherein it appears. And this
Moosoo ! You'll find I 'm pretty up in is amusing when we realize that it was
all the main points already. Capital o' not so many years ago that Max was
France, Paris, pronounced Paree. Re- rather dismissed by the staid portion of
publican form o' government, founded English society as a flippant young dilet-
1792. Principal exports: wines, silks and40 tante. Like most men of genuine talent,
woolen goods. Battle o' Waterloo, 18 14. however, he has outlived the animadver-
The great war, 1914 to 1918. Take a sions of those people who will see the vir-
chair.' - tues of no new thing under the sun, and

The number of literary caricatures in though he stated, somewhat prematurely,
A Survey is not as many as might be de- 45 years ago that he was outmoded and
sired, but what there are assuredly are belonged to the Beardsley period, he has
amusing. There is an extremely laugh- established an entire movement in himself
able drawing of Hilaire Belloc having alone.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
BERKELEY

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