Mr. Brody is more
She walked the deep fields of the sky.
apt to bejewel his verse with lovely phrases than
In contrasting this with another first book, that
to startle with the unequivocal adjective. The fact
of Alter Brody—A Family Album (Heubsch).
that Mrs. Untermeyer succeeds more frequently
one comes to a sharper realization of those quali-
seems to be due rather to strenuous self-criticism
ties which make a poet out of a realist. For while
than to any fundamental difference in attack. Ca-
he has a kinship with the maturer artist, the lack
pacity to see the beauty in things common and
of her restraint and sophistication sometimes twists
grotesque, the grasp upon and plumbing of experi-
his sincerest efforts into a blurred and pensive sen-
ence with the courage of the intellect, these are the
timentality. His book is a confusion of power and
hallmarks of their method, as well as the gifts of
weakness: the power of a harsh veracity and irony,
their art.
BABETTE DEUTSCH.
the weakness of youth brooding over love and death.


562
May 31
THE DIAL
The Cult of Brutality
I
T IS A COMMON PLATITUDE that every extreme, into mind even at the most casual inventory, I also
from politics to literature breeds its own violent
likened myself to a sovereign and a chooser; and I very
quickly ruled that I should consider only those situations
antithesis. Yet, familiar though the axiom may be as suitable in which I could imagine myself pronouncing
and numerous though its examples' are, it is always the name God sincerely and spontaneously, never by that
a fresh fascination to watch its workings in a new
way of routine which is death to the esthetic and
religious emotions.
movement in art, a new ethnic cause, a renewed
dispute in literary esthetics. Literature partic-
What is misleading about these ingratiating sen-
ularly records these swings of the pendulum with
tences is the emphasis that is put on a subjećt which
an almost mathematical regularity. From the rude
is dropped time and again (usually to the volume's
vigor of the Elizabethans to the polished artifice of advantage), an emphasis which is likely to lead to a
Pope, from the pietistic elegance of Vaughan and
false appraisal. For Mr. Ransom is less concerned
Herbert to the straightforward simplicity of the
with the whims, turns, and injustices of an anthro-
Lake poets, one can trace the reactions not only of
pomorphic deity than he is in the use of God as good
poetry, but of the age that produced it. In our own
material. In spite of his honest protestation, Mr.
time we see the preponderant swing toward a free Ransom delights in employing his Creator (or rather,
but earth-planted naturalism. The revulsion from
his creation) for artistic effects; he uses him to
a purely decorative literature, from mere verbal
tighten up a phrase, to round a rhyme, to raise a
color and esthetic adroitness, has brought about work
dull narrative to a higher or more dramatic pitch.
of the most opposite sort; the return (foretold by
When he forgets his program altogether, he succeeds
Synge) to brutality as a fresh starting-point is one
with far greater ease. Thus the poem, One Who
of its outstanding results
. We witness it in Eng- Rejected Christ, drags in a sacred allusion by the
land in the narratives of Masefield, in the miniature
very hair of its head. Its actual impulse is far from
dramas of W. W. Gibson, in certain phases of the
a spiritual one. Instead of religious indignation or
poetry of Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, and
ministerial unction there is a hard, bucolic satire that
other young Georgians. In America, thanks possibly
ends:
to the still predominating Puritan tradition, the re-
I'm not like other farmers,
action has been slower and less pervasive. But it
I make my farming pay;
already has its protagonists. We see its manifesta-
I never go in for sentiment,
And seeing that roses yield no rent
tions in the work of Carl Sandburg; in certain of
I cut the stuff away.
the ruder passages of Edgar Lee Masters, Arturo
A very good thing for farmers
Giovannitti, Wallace Gould; in some of the street.
If they would learn my way;
pictures of Roy Helton. And now, with
For crops are all that a good field grows,
a brutal
And nothing is worse than a sniff of rose
intensity of his own, comes John Crowe Ransom In the good strong smell of hay.
with his first volume innocently entitled Poems
About God (Holt).
The whole volume bristles with this acerbity, a
pungence often carried to an unusually bitter climax.
The title itself is misleading. Even the author's
Mt. Ransom pursues, with remorseless vigor, a
prefatory advertisement conceals the book's harsh
stark honesty, a bitter truth; he cares little whether
anger, its fierce humor. In his prologue, written
his frank expressiveness startles the unprepared or
in France, Mr. Ransom says:
disgusts the squeamish. Examine Grace, with its
The first three or four poems that I ever wrote (that
brusque blend of beauty and ugliness. Here he has
was two years ago) were done in three or four different
moods, and with no systematic design. I was therefore
dramatically evoked the partners plowing, the hired
duly surprised to notice that each of them made con-
hand who prayed
siderable use of the term God. I studied the matter a
face” and (through
little, and came to the conclusion that this was the most
poetic of all terms possible; was a term always being
lapsed underneath the broiling sun, the contrast
called into requisition during the great moments of the
of the man dying in the midst of his vomit and the
soul, now in tones of love, and now indignantly; and was
the very last word that a man might say when standing
calm setting with its half-ironic loveliness
. Dumb-
in the presence of that ultimate mystery to which all our
Bells is scarcely less effective, with its blunt cartoon
great experiences reduce.
of thirty fat men
reducing":
Wishing to make my poems as poetic as possible, I
simply likened myself to a diligent apprentice and went
Dripping sweat and pumping blood
to work to treat rather systematically a number of the
They try to make themselves like God.
occasions on which this term was in use with common
American men. And since these occasions fairly crowded
In A Christmas Colloquy there is less roughness
;
a quieter if somewhat too extended irony points the
to live in the sunshine of His
an overdose of grace ") col-


1919
563
THE DIAL
meter.
poet's revolt. And in poems like Wrestling (as by to his treatment; they often bury his racy lines in a
a coarser Robert Frost), Prayer, Noonday, Grace flood of cheap philosophizing couched in a wearying
(with its gustatory catalogue), and Geometry the
Mr. Ransom is fond, for instance, of ring-
original candor mounts with a stronger individuality. ing many changes (not too skilfully) on a single
A fragment from the last-named
may
illustrate: over-stressed rhyme—and, betrayed by a rather in-
sensitive ear, he commits still further musical
My window looks upon a wood
atrocities. This tone-deafness allows him to perpe-
That stands as tangled as it stood
When God was centuries too young
trate rhymes as false as those employed by the School
To care how right he worked, or wrong, of Popular Songs for One-Fingered Pianists—
His patterns in obedient trees;
Unprofited by the centuries
“rhymes” as vaudevillian as "girl-world," "down
He still plants on as crazily
-ground," "way—parley." His next book will
As in his drivelling infancy.
doubtless eliminate such gaucheries. It is to be
Small though the range may be, Mr. Ransom's
hoped that the growing sophistication hinted at in
manner is varied enough. The lines run from the
the first paragraph of his introduction will not over-
surprisingly powerful to the incredibly banal, from
refine a gift that has, for all its rawness, individual-
epithets that are forceful to phrases that are both
ity, strength, and the promise of stronger things.
flatulent and flat. Nor are the crudities confined
LOUIS UNTERMEYER.
London, May 10
I AM Not sure whether a change in the editor-
still obliged to admit, whether they will or not, that
ship of the Times is a matter which directly con it is our first paper. I have heard many surprising
cerns literature. Perhaps it does, and in any case results ascribed to the change in its ownership. I
it is always interesting. In this particular case it have heard it said that the whole course of our war
is even more interesting than usual. The retiring administration would have been changed; that the
editor, Mr. Geoffrey Dawson (né Robinson), has Asquith Government would not have fallen; that
allowed it to be known that he has resigned because Mr. Lloyd George would not have become Prime
he feels that Lord Northcliffe is dissatisfied with Minister; and that, according to the views of the
him. And Lord Northcliffe is dissatisfied, he speaker the war would either have been won earlier
imagines, because of the divergence between the or not at all—if Lord Northcliffe had not secured
policy pursued by the Times and that pursued by effective control before the war began. On these
the other journals under his lordship’s control. This points I offer no opinion. But I am certainly of the
divergence may have been for years a source of irri- opinion that, whatever may be the use to which the
tation to Lord Northcliffe—and of pride, mixed prestige of the paper is put, its prestige remains very
perhaps with apprehension, to Mr. Dawson; but the much the same.
The persons who describe the
knowledge that it existed will probably come as a Daily Mail as the worst influence in our public life
surprise to the general public. Mr. Winston and who believe that the Times is merely the in-
Churchill years ago, when he was a member of a strument of the creator of the Daily Mail, continue
Liberal cabinet, remarked in the House of Com to rely on the Times as the ultimate court of appeal
mons that he was not moved by what appeared in so far as news is concerned.
the Daily Mail, whether in its halfpenny or its Perhaps the subtle divergence of policy, percepti-
threepenny edition; and it has always been supposed ble only to Lord Northcliffe and to Mr. Dawson, has
that the difference of general purpose between the done this without our being aware of how it is done;
Times and the Daily Mail was much what might and the appointment of Mr. H. Wickham Steed as
be supposed to exist between a fifteen-inch howitzer editor may be the beginning of the end. In five
and a field-gun. Both took
part in the artil-
years perhaps, by one of those Napoleonic changes to
lery preparation of any position which Lord North which Lord Northcliffe is addicted, it may suddenly
cliffe desired to storm.
appear as the first morning paper entirely devoted to
But this being so, the difference which Lord colored pictures; and a link with the past will be
Northcliffe's control has made to the Times has gone. But somehow I do not really anticipate that.
been in one direction surprisingly small. In the di I give Lord Northcliffe credit for being the greatest
rection of successful management it has of course
journalistic genius this country has ever produced;
been great; but even those persons who prophesied and I imagine his genius is capable of understanding
the collapse of its prestige under the new regime are the mechanics of the Times as well as those of


564
THE DIAL
May 31
a
la Mare sell briskly. It is a curious and entertain-
Answers or Comic Cuts. Mr. Steed, besides, is a He founded the Poetry Bookshop in 1912—an
highly respectable journalist, who is believed to important year, the year after the publication of
understand the Jugo-Slav question. I am sure he Rupert Brooke's first volume. He founded it to
will not be a party to anything vulgar or rash. meet the very real difficulty caused by the fact that
Meanwhile what we are all anxious about is the a person who wanted in those days to buy a book of
fate of the Times Literary Supplement. This verse often failed unless he had great persistence and
quite separate paper, not given away with the a profound expert knowledge of the publishing
Times, but it is under the same management and trade. The ordinary bookseller met all inquiries
equally subject to the nod of our journalistic Jupiter. with a perfect ignorance and a sullen determination
It has nevertheless pursued a policy distinctly diver not to help. If you supplied him with the fullest
gent from that of its owner's other papers; and it has details of publisher and price, he would still
been acclaimed as the most telling opponent of meditate for months on the desirability of allowing
Northcliffism extant. It is not perhaps quite that, such dangerous stuff to pass through his shop. Of
because it preaches for the most part to the con course he never in any circumstances stocked it. All
verted; but it is a very distinguished upholder of this was changed by the Poetry Bookshop, where
liberty and the humanities, including among its con (broadly speaking) they stocked nothing else; and I
tributors that almost excessively idealistic writer, think that the future historian of English literature
Mr. A. Clutton Brock. One has wondered for a will mark 1912 as a turning-point. I do not mean
long time why his lordship stood it; and indeed one that Mr. Monro provoked a Renaissance by opening
might imagine that he would be anxious to suppress a shop, but I am of opinion that his enterprising
it on other grounds than those of policy. It has long (and as it has turned out, entirely successful) action
dull articles about ideals, and for the rest is made was one of the most important of a number of symp-
up of correspondence on the text of Shakespeare and
toms which began to be obvious at about the same
the principles of English prosody and of pages on
time. In or about that year a new public interest
pages of reviews of books, most of which probably in verse arose and, I think, the demand gave a cer-
seem to Lord Northcliffe as unreadable as the books tain healthiness to the supply. It induces a more
themselves would be. It is generally supposed that
normal and more human state of mind to write
only the amazing, inexplicable fact of its continued what has a chance of pleasing than to produce in
success, witnessed by unimpeachable circulation
the void; and poets who never thought of abandon-
figures, has hitherto held his hand; but no one
ing verse because it was unpopular really did begin
knows how long this will continue. Therefore
to write a little better when they seemed to have a
when any change overtakes the Times, we all feel a greater chance of a hearing.
little nervous about the Times Literary Supplement,
Someone said wistfully to me the other day (a
I came across this question, of circulation enter-
poet of course) that he wished he could see a history
tainingly the other day in another circle of ideas.
of English literature written some hundred years
Mr. Monro, the founder and proprietor of the
hence. By Jove! So do I. I am convinced, and
Poetry Bookshop, is in a semi-demobilized condition
have always maintained, that we are indubitably at
and is applying himself to the resumption of affairs.
the beginning of what can only be called, in an un-
As a result he discovered, I understand, that Mr.
comfortable term, a movement; but I am certain
De la Mare now leads the field and that Mr.
that as yet we know very little of its eventual extent
(whose name I won't mention, because I think it
and character. Our view of it has changed a good
not so creditable to us) is an honorable second.
deal in the six years that have passed since the ap-
Poetry hath her best-sellers no less than fiction and,
pearance of Rupert Brooke and the first volume of
suppose, always had, even when Swinburne limped Georgian Poetry and the foundation of the Property
first past the post with an edition of 600 copies, 400
Bookshop. Reputations have risen and declined.
for sale in Germany. But if it is now a more sub-
New promise has appeared. The works of Mr. De
stantial thing than it was to be a best-seller among
the poets, some of the credit for that happy fact
ing world; and I do wish that I could live for-
must go to Mr. Monro.
I
ever.
EDWARD SHANKS.
Sun Glamour
The day has brought me sun-loaned cheer,
And to unchangeable ways—change.
But dusk is here to make them strange,
Making them clear.
HAZEL HALL.


THE DIAL
ROBERT MORSS LOVETT, Editor
In Charge of the Reconstruction Program:
CLARENCE BRITTEN
JOHN DEWEY
THORSTEIN VEBLEN
HELEN MAROT
THE TREATY WITH
SHOULD
BE
GERMANY
shortly find themselves dealing directly and at
summarily rejected by the Senate. It is contrary to once with the “ kept classes ” of Germany, who will
the view of world peace laid down by President collect the required tribute from the masses of the
Wilson both before and after the United States population. In the second case, the officials will
entered the war. It is in specific violation of the form an additional class of intermediaries between
fourteen points and hence of the terms of the Armis the Germans who produce and the Allies who claim
tice. It is opposed to the theory of the League of
the product. But the governing and owning classes of
Nations and commits such a league to the defense
Germany already rock in the storms of revolution.
and administration of territorial and economic ar-
To insure the final and complete overthrow of both,
rangements which are wrong in principle and im-
it only remained for the Allies to make the position
possible in practice. The treaty should be rejected
of official or capitalist not worth fighting for. And
as a matter of national honor, of national safety,
and of national service to the world. Such rejec-
in this the statesmen have succeeded admirably.
The terms are indeed“
tion will undoubtedly give opportunity for a better
ruinous "—they will ruin
the two intermediary classes in Germany and iron
peace—a peace of honor, generosity, and mutual ad-
vantage-between Germany and the United States.
the population out into decentralized socialism.
It may have the same effect on the peace between
When this has been accomplished, the burdens laid
Germany and her other enemies. Far from hav-
upon Germany will rest; not (as is usual) upon tax-
ing a modifying influence on the exactions of the collecting classes that profit in spite of burdens, but
Allies, the presence of the United States in their · directly upon the flat masses of the German people.
ranks has apparently given them confidence to de Whether the capitalist system caused the war is a
mand terms which but for our guarantee would be somewhat academic question. Certainly it made
obviously impossible. Our withdrawal from the the peace—a peace with terms so heavy that Ger-
Conference at this time is likely therefore to con man capitalism will be crushed out of existence,
tribute to an earlier stabilization of Europe. And and the subject classes of Germany will be united in
in any event the freedom of the United States from a hatred born of nationalistic rebellion and the class-
responsibility for the present Treaty is a necessary This animosity will have for its object the
condition of its support and participation in a foreign “kept classes ” whose only capitalistic func-
genuine international organization of the world, the
tion, as far as Germany is concerned, is the absorp-
necessity for which will be greater than ever.
tion of profits. Here, then, for the first time the
class that owns and the class that works appear in
the undecorated roles of the taxer and the taxed.
BY AND LARGE THE TERMS OF THE GREAT PEACE
Whether or not this reductio ad absurdum of the
were drawn to secure two objects; one offensive old order will have an appreciable effect upon the
the destruction of Germany; one defensive—the pre-
taxed classes in the allied countries remains to be
servation of the present economic and political sys-
Already it seems safe to predict that allied
tem. Obviously it was impossible to destroy all of
and German labor will find friendship in adversity.
Germany. It is less obvious, but equally true, that
All this escapes those critics who seize upon the
in the process of destroying a part of Germany the
Allies have breached the defenses of the old order.
easiest interpretation of the Treaty and find the
In the long run, it makes little difference whether
Allies in danger of killing the German goose that is
the German government signs the Treaty or not. If expected to lay the golden eggs of indemnity. The
the Treaty is rejected, the Allies will enforce its figure does not go far enough. The real goose is
terms without the aid of German official machinery.
an international bird; as long as labor and brain
If the government accepts the Treaty, the Allies power in Germany and elsewhere are organized for
will for the time being have the aid of a German production incident to the preservation of life, the
executive organism obedient to their wishes. In goose lives. It is the system for collecting the eggs
the first case the Entente governments will very that is everywhere in danger.
war.
seen.


566
May 31
THE DIAL
way
Whit-
TH
HE CHIEF USE OF A LEAGUE OF NATIONS FOR It would be another ironical turn of history that
the great silent majority of the earth should be as a should make Germany the hope of freedom in the
form of liquidation for empires in esse and in posse, world, and enroll the nations that fought for liberty
to release the millions of India, Egypt, and Ireland and self-determination, in a League of Free Nations
from British and the millions of Korea from Japan as misnamed as the Holy Alliance.
ese dominion—to save the millions of China, Rus-
sia, and Africa from threatening imperialistic am-
bitions. The great danger of the Covenant, as was
TODAY WALT WHITMAN IS ONE HUNDRED YEARS
promptly seen by its advocates, was in Article X old. During the century since his birth his States
which seemed in effect to validate existing empires. have evolved a scene very different from that crude
The final arrangements preliminary to the Treaty, and spacious panorama, extending westward from a
and the Treaty itself, give no comfort to those who narrow selvage of provincial elegance to a fabulous
hoped for the first and feared the second. The case frontier, which seems to us the congruous back-
of Ireland is the most advanced of those of nations ground for his rugged figure. Yet we feel—those
seeking self-government. Sir Edward Carson has of us who attend him at all—that he was spiritually
forbidden Lloyd George to receive the American more nearly our contemporary than were any of the
Commission sent to raise the Irish question at the other men of letters whose centenaries we have
Peace Conference. The English occupation of Egypt lately celebrated or are soon to celebrate. Many of
is the most outstanding case of international treach them represented, more easily and intimately per-
ery on the´ part of a European nation. At the bid- haps than Whitman the poet ever represented any-
ding of the Egyptian bondholders, English guns thing, the textures of the particular segments of life
were turned on Alexandria in 1882 and the prom that enclosed them; but in a large loose
ising nationalistic movement under Arabi Pasha man the man increasingly typifies for us the general
was crushed. The English government promised
canvas of that life. At the same time, and even while
solemnly in the sight of all Europe to withdraw from
the scene which he proclaimed as American recedes
Egypt. After continuing its occupation for thirty-
into a conveniently remote golden age in our nation-
two years, it declared a protectorate over Egypt in
al consciousness, Whitman the prophet advances
1914. For nearly five years the United States re-
upon us as spokesman for what we like to think are
fused formal recognition of this act. Only a few
our enduring ideals. No doubt this is the normal
days ago President Wilson's complacency triumphed
over his conscience; he accepted the protectorate,
career for the prophet: his time melts into history
as a single luminous page; he himself is purged and
adding a little pious piffle to the Egyptians about the
folly of their attempts at self-determination. The
canonized as its surviving hero. Now if there is
any social validity in this prophet-making process, it
whole of India is a burning, seething sore. Literally,
is perhaps less futile than many think it to be to
millions are engaged in a demonstration against the
củll from the master's works passages of plausible
economic exploitation of the country under British
authority—and particularly against the withdrawal
contemporary pertinence—“ prophecies.” Not that
of all civil rights from Hindus by the Rowlatt Acts.
the prophet will actually have anticipated the con-
ditions or events to which his words are thus ap-
The voices of Robert Williams, Robert Smillie, and
plied, but that he will enrich his readers' desires
George Lansbury are raised in their behalf in a call
to their countrymen
and thoughts with something of the combined dig-
to join us in our protest
against the bombing and shooting of unarmed men
nity and familiar warmth, of the clearer and closer
and women, and in our demand for a public in-
community of purpose, that accrues from a continu-
quiry into these outrages.” In this connection it is
ing tradition and that no age can achieve for itself
interesting to remember that England has always
in isolation. Therefore it is not necessary to believe
professed to hold India as trustee for the Indian
that when Whitman wrote Years of the Modern he
people on the same principle as that implicit in the
was predicting the kind of European war we have
system of mandatories under the League of Nations.
just passed through, or the sort of peace we are de-
It is with little confidence in the light of the news
bating, or the Russian Revolution, or any fortunate
from Egypt and India that we contemplate the pros-
sequels to any of these events, in order to warm
pect of handing the rest of Africa over to England
our newer faith in freedom at the fire of his lines:
as mandatory. The Japanese atrocities in Korea are
What historic denouements are those we
likely to be duplicated in Shantung-underwritten
approach?
by President Wilson, the United States, and the
men marching and countermarching by swift
League of Nations. The connection of this state of
millions,
affairs throughout the world controlled by the
I see the frontiers and boundaries of the old autocracies
Executive powers of the League with the future of
broken,
Germany under the Treaty is obvious. Germany
I see the landmarks of European Kings removed,
is to take her place as the chief of the martyr nations
I see this day the people beginning their landmarks (all
others give way).
-the exponent of their wrongs, the leader in their
What whispers are these, O lands, running ahead of you,
plea for justice and in their movement for freedom.
passing under the seas!
Are all nations communing ?
so rapidly
I see


1919
567
THE DIAL
LETTER IN ANOTHER COLUMN GIVES A SPECIFIC
one
WHY SHOULD NEARLY EVERYBODY INDULGE A
miles from home. The government, under whose
conviction that he can write poetry? Relatively authority they were arrested, imprisoned, and
few unequipped amateurs think themselves painters brought to this city refused to accept any respon-
or sculptors or composers. Are the other arts pro sibility for returning them to their homes. If they
tected from tyro invasion by the obvious recalci had been convicted of crime and served sentence
trance of their media, while poetry, whose stuff is they would be entitled to transportation, but being
after all only the words that Everyman uses to innocent under the law they have no such claim.
transact his daily affairs, looks to be an easier busi This monstrous injustice of the government must be
ness? Whoever has to read manuscripts for a pub made good by private charity. The Dial will
lication which prints verse will be suspicious of that receive contributions and see that they are used to
solution, for he will long since have become con enable the men to reach home.
vinced that more unskilled pens attempt poetry than
attempt fiction, drama, or criticism—whose stuff is
equally words and whose patterns look even easier to
A
the unpracticed. Is it because rhythm is more funda instance of the atrocities committed by soldiers
mental in us than the plastic impulse, and earlier de- against their fellow citizens. We have repeatedly
mands its satisfaction? The popularity of dancing,
called attention to the refusal of the War Depart-
from the elaboration of new steps to the vogue for
ment to take any cognizance of such outrages, except
unskilled interpretive ” license, lends plausibility where negro soldiers were involved, and to the offi-
to that hypothesis. Yet music is also a rhythmic cial approval extended by the Adjutant General to
art, and drumming is easier to acquire than scan- . persons inciting them. As the attack on The Call
sion—why then are we not deafened by amateur was alleged to be in support of the Victory Loan,
drummers? Finally, there is the notion that com protest was made to Secretary Glass. His reply is
posing poetry is somehow a necessity to adolescence, that of a true Southern gentleman. He deprecates
like first love, which it almost universally accom-
lynching but refuses to hold the lynchers responsible.
panies. If the will to unskilled versifying were only It is the “incendiary” nature of articles in The Call
confined to the adolescent! Nevertheless which is at fault, just as it might be the hideous na-
guesses that this notion looks in the right direction. ture of the crime of rape. He has no word of con-
For poetry, as Carlyle or somebody else has said, is demnation for the men who acted as judge, jury,
essentially autobiographical; and if the urge to talk
and executioner upon the offending newspaper-no
about ourselves is acutest in adolescence, the itch apology for his loan workers who egged them on.
lingers long in most of us. Poetry is intimate gossip In this he merely repeats the attitude of his chief.
sublimated, raised at its best to the nth power of
Mr. Wilson calls inciters to mob violence un-Amer-
intensity, and yet protected from a too raw curios ican, but nevertheless continues to honor and trust
ity and the risk of indiscretion by the fact that it them, as he will doubtless continue to honor and
is poured into molds accepted by convention. All trust Mr. Glass.
men want to talk about themselves as fully as they
can with social safety; therefore all men hanker to
Some are content to believe that Many
READERS OF THE DIAL HAVE NOTED
rhyme poetry, and produce the pallid invertebrate the omission of the price in connection with the titles
verse that is perhaps rifest in New England; others of books reviewed. This is made necessary by a
are persuaded that sentiment is also requisite, and ruling of the Third Assistant Postmaster General.
flood the Southern newspapers with flowery wed In the mind of this functionary all reviews are in
ding and funeral pieces; the half-literate discover the nature of advertisements; the only motive he
poetic diction, and drive magazine editors to drink can conceive for the mention of such a commodity
early on Monday morning; undergraduates make as a book is to sell it; and accordingly in his view
the acquaintance of sonnets, ballades, villanelles, and
the pages of this magazine devoted to reviews of
rondeaux, and polish off tracings that resemble
books should be charged postage at the rate for
poems much as tissue patterns resemble dresses. Ob-
serving all of which, iconoclasts conclude that rhyme, willing to suspend this ruling, provided the price
advertising material and trade journals. He is
meter, sentiment, poetic diction, and metrical pat-
of the book is not mentioned. It is superfluous to
terns only hobble Pegasus, and mount him bareback
for free-versatile flights. Schools arise and stiffen
point out that this interference with long-estab-
lished custom is in line with the attitude of repres-
lazy verse" with new gear in place of the discarded
harness. And shortly there is a
sion for which the Post Office Department has
poetic renaissance.”
become noted. The only remedy we can suggest
is that librarians and other readers who are inter-
The men of the RED SPECIAL WHO WERE SAVED ested in price as well as the size of books send
from deportation by the generous efforts of Charles their protests directly to the Third Assistant Post-
Recht and Caroline A. Lowe, are now being re-
master General, or to their representatives at Wash-
leased from Ellis Island, penniless, three thousand ington.
write poetry.


568
THE DIAL
May 31
pressed. For the most part attempts at poetical
a man like George Sterling, to endcavors to imitate
the inimitable in sonnet and lyric. We have wished
Communications
Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Swinburne, Rossetti
utter the emotional and lyrical cry. But the appeal
ONE FUTURE FOR AMERICAN POETRY
of Chaucer and Browning, together with that of
Byron and Burns, at their highest, is based upon
Sir: It would be difficult to ascertain whether
detached and philosophic observation of the human
the discussion of an art is usually a sign of its birth
come The characteristic works of these four
or of its dissolution. A corpse is most convenient
men—such as the Prologue, Fra Lippo Lippi, Don
for dissection. But in the case of American poetry
Juan, Tam o' Shanter-indicate their attitude
it is almost unnecessary to remark that there has
immediately. Keen, critical, humorous observers of
been as yet no body of verse worthy the name; and
human nature are they all, attempting other man-
since the awakening interest in such things, vouched
ners only at the risk of becoming rhetorical—as
for by their publication, cannot indicate post-
witness Burns in his love songs. The grand divi-
mortem curiosity, we can afford to assume that there
sion is in attitude. Spenser leads a group of poets
is an immediate flowering in preparation for the
who were in the main seekers after the beautiful,
submerged art in this country. Meanwhile, come
preeminently receptive and emotional. And Chau-
what will, the discussions are stimulating and ex-
cer, no less English, heads a smaller list of those
hilarating, and especially so the clear-headed critical
who loved truth and its ironies, and an active intel-
estimates of Mr. Conrad Aiken, who, though a
lect, more than the singing robes.
member of the craft, retains a delightfully un-
Many of us are sick of that ubiquitous insipid
partisan attitude toward the members of
sweetness which results from a too absolute sur-
every
school, group, and chorus. Yet it is impossible to
render to that main tradition of the light that
please anybody all the time, and Mr. Aiken's classi-
never was on sea or land.” The past glories of
fication of American poetry leaves me convinced and
English poetry are largely due to the creation and
unsatisfied. Convinced as to the state of our poetical
re-creation of that light; but the age and the land
product, unsatisfied with the remedy offered.
in which we live are too clear-eyed to appreciate the
To Mr. Aiken there seems a middle dish between
beautiful illusion. Many of us also have a prefer-
vulgar sentimental sugar-candy and recondite pea-
ence for Keats, but his purple is foreign to our
cock's tongues; the ham and eggs—may I say—of
garish day; and an attempt to imitare him now is as
verse, appetizing, nourishing, and generally avail-
futile and shallow as the piano reveries of ten years
able. He laments its absence from the American
ago. Perhaps the future lies with those who are
In Browning's words, “the poets pour us
able to look at modern things in modern daylight,
wine," some so sweet that it sickens us, others of
and who are willing to report them without throw-
so condensed, complex, and occult a flavor that we
ing about them any glamour of age, distance, or
take it puzzled, in tentative sips. The plea is for a
exotic custom. In this realistic age all the old para-
medium grade, palatable but with body.
phernalia of romance, once so natural, spontaneous,
One classification suggests another; and when I
and true, seems trashy and affected. The tinsel is
came in the same hour upon Landor's tribute to
frayed; the tricks are stale. There must exist, on
Browning it occurred to me that in this poem lay
every hand, waiting for the seeing eye, exquisite
the basis of another and truer division, applicable
ironies, comparable with To a Louse, The Bishop
in almost every instance, and pointing to a possible
Orders His Tomb, and The Vision of Judgment.
poetical future in a country whose artists have
Our own most distinctively national verse has in-
shown a tendency toward clarity, conciseness,
cluded lesser attempts in the Chaucerian tradition
.
cleverness, and away from sentimentality:
Some of the Biglow Papers, On Lending a Punch
Bowl, and The Last Leaf
and a few of the etch-
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale
No man hath walked along our roads with step
ings of Emerson-are natural and forthright utter-
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
ances in that vein.
So varied in discourse.
Those who try to prettify modern life and ad-
The linking of these two names is impressive in, receive an immediate and impermanent rewardy
venture, in the manner of Masefield and Noyes
,
itself. These are men outside the great tradition of
English poetry, who strive, not after sensuous
They have poured new wine into ancient and leaky
imagery, the purple patch, incense-breathing melody, other school has arisen, though Edwin Arlington
receptacles. And no great modern master in the
but for intellectually stimulating analysis and glee-
ful, ironical portraiture. English poetry has been
Robinson in this country has shown the way
, and
dominated, from Spenser down, by all that is sweet
with Robert Frost we turn with finality from
and lovely in music, picture, and sentiment. Shake-
Tennyson and look freely about us.
speare, able to do as he pleased, finally threw his
may be his.
But America has not yet been ex:
great weight into the scale on Spenser's side, donned
for his tragedies gorgeous trailing robes, and spoke
utterance have been limited, even in the hands of
in elegiac music. Milton is a high priest of har-
mony; Wordsworth (at his best), Blake, Coleridge,
to reproduce beauty in mood and speech, but beauty
menu.
The future


1919
569
THE DIAL
mere
is a foreign element to our nation; there is no sin I am sure I could have passed off as Greek by the
cerity in our rhapsodies. It is to Chaucer, and not simple change of name.
to Milton, that we must turn for “ freedom, virtue, Even more interesting it is to note how stanza
power.”
structure is built up out of the unrhymed, un-
MAXWELL ANDERSON.
New York City.
measured lyric, as is shown in the collection of songs
from the Southwest. And what a lot of discussion
THE PATH ON THE RAINBOW
might be saved us if Mr. Untermeyer could have
made the observation which this volume suggests,
Sir: I am asking for a little space in which to and further inquiry could but confirm, about several
protest Mr. Louis Untermeyer's review of the an things that Imagism is not. It is not, with the
thology of American Indian verse in your issue of aboriginal, merely descriptive, and never merely
March 8. Or perhaps it amounts to a protest decorative.
against giving a book of such national, one might The incident which the reviewer recounts as re-
say international interest to be reviewed by one lated to him by Mr. Robert Frost is true enough;
whose mind has so evidently never visited west of it may be found by the curious in Burton's Ojibway
Broadway.
Songs, and since Mr. Burton so frankly admits his
Mr. Untermeyer describes himself as a
error, he would not object my saying that it is
man of letters," a more limiting title than I should not the only mistaken translation he made. When
have chosen for him, but it begins to be a question one considers how many readings of Sappho and
in America whether a man is entitled to describe even of Shakespeare are in doubt, it is not surpris-
himself as a man of letters at all who so compla- ing that Indian verse should occasionally suffer at the
cently confesses his ignorance of and inability to hands of the translator. It is also true and ought not
enter into the vast body of aboriginal literature of to seem surprising, as Mr. Untermeyer suspects, that,
his country, literature that rises to the saga form Indian poets are like other poets, occasionally banal
easily comparable to the great works on which Euro and commonplace, but it is again pertinent to suggest
pean literature is built, and to epics that for sonority that something more than a mere man of letters
and richness of figure approach and at times equal is required for the appreciation of literature which is
the epics of Homer. That these treasures of native different from one's own, or the fashion of the hour.
literature are not yet available in that easy edition It is not necessary to read banality into the par-
de luxe which Mr. Untermeyer appears to desire, ticular examples given by Mr. Untermeyer, any
is very largely due to the large number of persons more than one reads triviality into an army singing
who, like Mr. Untermeyer, apparently can not get John Brown's Body because the words are trivial.
at literature in any other form. The movement, I did not translate the particular verse instanced by
however, to aid the average American to under Mr. Untermeyer, but what must always be taken
stand what his own land has to say through the into consideration behind Indian songs is democracy
medium of a homogeneous race, will not be helped of thinking and feeling. The communal life of the
by making such reviews a mere statement of limita Indian leads to a community of thinking which made
tion.
many words unnecessary, made the words a spring
I agree with Mr. Untermeyer that The Path on for the release of emotion which might be anything
the Rainbow might have been accompanied by ex but banal. Ten thousand American boys in a
planatory notes to the advantage of most readers. foreign land singing Home Sweet Home is a very
I may say here that the only thing that has pre moving thing, and twice ten Indians at the ragged
vented me from publishing such an edition of end of winter, when the food goes stale and their
American verse, is the difficulty of finding a pub very garments smell of wood smoke, singing 'the
lisher for anything that smacks of scholarship in maple sugar song might sing a great deal of poetry
that direction. But I feel that the failure to get into it, poetry of rising sap, clean snow water, call-
anything out of the edition as it stands is wholly ing partridge, and the friendly click of bass bowls
Mr. Untermeyer's. It would be a great deal, for and birch bark sap buckets. If Mr. Untermeyer
instance, to have fully established, as this volume could get his mind off the Indian Anthology as a
does, that vers libre and Imagism are in truth thing of type and paper, he might have got some-
primitive forms, and both of them generically Amer thing more out of it. He might even have launched
ican forms, forms instinctively selected by people into a dissertation on the horrible banality of poetry
living in America and freed from outside influence. under complete democracy, and have further sup-
I feel quite sure that I said enough in the intro ported it by turning over a few pages to songs of
duction to enable the thoughtful reader to discover the Southwest where everybody knows the abori-
that Imagism is an incomplete form, as recognized ginals live in terraced houses, and the stanza form
by the Indian, requiring melody and the beat of advanced with the increase of privacy and individu-
drum or pounding feet to fulfill itself. It should ality of living. No one who reads the Hako cere-
have been fruitful to the thoughtful poet to consider mony of the Pawnees, realizing that the Pawnee
just how far the Indian could carry this form, as country is open, rolling prairie, lifting toward long
instanced in the Marriage Song of Tiakens, which level mesas, can fail to be struck with the way in


570
May 31
THE DIAL
which the shape of the lines is influenced by the inspectors of public schools—those Czarist agents of
contours of the country. It was in order to show public ' unenlightenment' who have through some
just such local influences that the poems in the An misunderstanding survived the Provisional Govern-
thology were grouped sectionally rather than ment." I wish to remind the writer that a decree
tribally.
abolishing the Curator's Council, and with it its
That all these things seem to have been missed by autocratic machinery, the directorates and inspecto-
the reviewer raises again the question as to whether rates of school, was issued by the Provisional Gov-
we can ever have anything which is American litera ernment on September 26, 1917. (Vyestnik Vre-
ture, sui generis, until literary judgment begins to mennavo Pravitelstva, 1917, no. 178). That the
be American and leaves off being thoroughly New decree was not actually carried out is not the fault
Yorkish.
of the Provisional authorities. The November
MARY AUSTIN. coup d'état which brought about the Lenin-Trotzky
Santa Fe, N. M.
regime simply precluded any further action and left
to the succeeding authorities to carry out all or parts
THE SCHOOL PROBLEM IN RUSSIA
of the school program outlined by the various Minis-
ters of the Provisional Government.
THERESA BACH.
Sır: In your issue of April 19 under the title The
Soviets and the Schools, Mr. Lomonossoff gives a
Washington, D. C.
brief survey of recent educational reforms in Russia
and concludes his article in the following words:
BRUTES IN UNIFORM
“But it is an enigma to me why both Provisional
Governments overlooked the school problem.” This
conveys a false idea and leads the reader to believe
Sir: A patient came into my office this morning
that all the reforms mentioned in his article are to be
whom I expected a week ago. When I asked him why
attributed to the Bolshevik leaders. These are un-
he didn't come at the appointed time he said he
doubtedly also Mr. Lomonossoff's views.
couldn't, he couldn't show himself in the street.
The following facts will prove, however, that
When I asked him why, he said his face was all
swollen. And when I asked him the cause of the
some of his assertions need revision.
In the first place Mr. Lomonossoff tries to im- ject was too painful to dwell upon, that he had been
swelling, he stated rather reluctantly, as if the sub-
press the reader with the fact that the secularization beaten up, beaten up on May first by a lot of uni-
of schools is entirely the work of the Bolshevik
formed rowdies, when he, accompanied by his wife
,
school authorities. This is not the case. In the
visited the new building of the New York Call.
Vyestnik Vremennavo Pravitelstva (the organ of
His wife, who was pregnant, was also struck, and
the Provisional Government) for 1917, no. 89, we
whether it was the blow or the shock of the whole
horrible proceeding, she soon had a hemorrhage and
For an actual and uniform realization of general in-
a miscarriage. In his wildest dreams, he stated, he
struction all the elementary schools included in the school
could not have imagined anything so brutal, so ugly,
system, or all those which receive state grant for their
so utterly wanton and cruel.
upkeep or for the salaries of the personnel, among others,
And nevertheless all these uniformed rowdies
the church schools under the control of the Greek Ortho-
dox Church, as well as the Church Seminaries and two-
went scot free and even received a quasi-approval
class schools, are herewith transferred to the Department
from official headquarters from the Secretary of
of Public Instruction.
the Treasury -
Mr. Lomonossoff further states that “the main
It has become customary to characterize any-
reform of the Russian schools consists of the crea-
thing autocratic, lawless, or brutal, as Prussian. To
tion of a continuous school system which was in the
one who is not a hypocrite such characterization is
process of creation already in November.” In this
mere camouflage. It is false and hypocritical. For
Mr. Lomonossoff contradicts himself. The Bolshe-
such lawless, unprovoked brutality never could have
viki, as is well known, came to power only in No-
taken place in Prussia or anywhere else in Germany;
vember. How, then, could a continuous school sys-
There was only one country where such unprovoked
tem have been in creation at so early a date, if it
attacks on innocent and peaceful men, women, and
had not been worked out by some other than the
children did take place; that was Russia under the
Bolshevik authorities? As a matter of fact, the re-
regime of the Czar. But even there the moujiks
and the black hundreds had to be made drunk be-
organization of the entire school system was, the
fore they would commit murderous excesses and
product of the Provisional Government and was de-
creed as early as June, 1917 (Vyestnik Vremennavo
brutalities
. And some people who happened to be
victims of the Russian pogroms claim that our uni-
Pravitelstva 1917, no. 85). The third and last
point to which I would like to call Mr. Lomonos-
formed rowdies excelled in cruelty and brutality
soff's attention relates to his statement with regard
even the Russian pogrom makers.
to the Soviet orders which “ abolished directors and New York City.
read:
WM. J. ROBINSON, M.D.


1919
571
THE DIAL
Notes on New Books
verse.
often as one forgets that one is reading Kipling.
Of his old breathless joy in the world—the mul-
tiple personality of the sea, the spell of the Orient,
the harvest mood, the silence and sun of the downs,
the fragrance of wood smoke at twilight—there is
here not a note. War's the thing here, and war
caught in conventional generalizations and abstrac-
tions. Magic has given place to eloquence—an elo-
quence conventional and thin, or forced and shrill.
Monosyllabic diction and a neat balance in phras-
ing sometimes contrive to simulate stark vigor, but
any favorite stanza from the early poems will be-
tray the simulation as verbal pose. There is econ-
omy of utterance in The Years Between; there is
also a lamentable economy of emotion. Was Mr.
Kipling doing nothing but economize during the
great war?
THE YEARS BETWEEN. By Rudyard Kipling.
153 pages. Doubleday, Page.
“The remarkable rightness of Rudyard Kipling,”
exclaims the jacket on this new volume of his
But in a score of these poems any unpre-
judiced reader will be struck by his remarkable
wrongness. He is unhesitatingly and consistently
wrong about Ireland (in Ulster), about revolution
(in "The City of Brass”), about the peace (in
Justice), and even about Shakespeare (in The
Craftsman). Mr. Kipling has learned nothing, nor
has he changed anything; his morality still rests on
the Calvinistic dogma that “he who lies will steal,
who steals will slay," the medieval notion that the
sword is a cleansing implement, and the Hebraic
identification of justice and punishment. No doubt
this simplicity in wrong-headedness, this predictabil-
ity in error, on the part of reaction's most vehement
spokesman holds a certain encouragement for lib-
erals: a mind so obviously wrong about women
(The Female of the Species) will probably be dis-
trusted when it considers labor (The Sons of
Martha); and when it patently misinterprets the
American spirit (The Choice), it is likely to be
held suspect about Russia (Russia to the Pacifists).
But what does it offer lovers of poetry, of whom no
inconsiderable number have in the past been moved
and refreshed by Mr. Kipling's muse? Unhappily,
very little. His mental rigidity now has its analogue
in a poetical arteriosclerosis: the fixation of idea is
gloved by a manner stereotyped even to its period-
ical slovenliness. There was a time when a new
Kipling volume was the earnest of another remark-
able l'envoi. Well, this book has had two titles
(for it was to have been called Gethsemane) and
thus contains two title pieces; but what there is to
choose between the doggerel ballad Gethsemane-
of which the last lines might be a grisly parody of
Edward Lear—and the cryptic near-prose of the
new piece, To the Seven Watchmen, is a metaphysi-
cal question one is glad to leave to the publisher.
Nothing else in the book is so incredibly bad as
these, and the general monotony is broken by echoes
of the old Kipling. Sometimes there is the mount-
ing cadence, as in The Sons of Martha:
It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and
cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care
that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly, it is their care
to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by
land and main.
Oftener there is the lightning epithet:
France
"furious in luxury, merciless in toil”; or “ brittle
intellectuals who crack beneath a strain"; or " He
learned to deal the far-off stone and poke the long,
safe spear.” But such echoes recur only about as
LANTERNS IN GETHSEMANE. By Willard
Wattles. 152 pages. Dutton.
If there is any fine secret in mysticism, it is
hardly to be looked for in evangelical prefaces.
Willard Wattles' volume of mystical verse would
gain immensely if he let it speak simply and suffi-
ciently for itself. Not that it would speak with un-
failing clarity and charm, but that it would to a
degree lose the Moody-and-Sankeyism of the prose
that precedes it. The book is very uneven. It opens
with a poem reminiscent, in its liquid syllables and
erotic symbolism, of Symons' translation of St. John
of the Cross. This is followed by one whose open-
ing stanza promises rich entertainment:
The little lonely souls go by
Seeking their God who lives on high
With conscious step and hat and all
As if on Him they meant to call
In some sad ceremonial.
But the commonplace conclusion of this poem
intimates the disappointments that are to follow.
The sincerest convictions, even if they are touched
with the romance that is never absent from religion,
do not of themselves make good poetry. Mr. Wat-
tles seems to be always sincere. His sense of the
poetic is not so sure. Where he is simple and con-
crete he gets an effect that is original and convinc-
ing. But he is uncritical of his own work to such
an extent that one could wish he had not gathered
these poems into a volume until the mystic veil
dropped at least from his critical faculty.
A STUDY OF ENGLISH METRICS. By Ade-
laide Crapsey. 80 pageș. Knopf.
Adelaide Crapsey, in her brief, intense, and so
reserved life, in her tragic death at Saranac Lake in
1914, and in her singularly original and haunting
verse, published posthumously, is one of those per-
sonalities that are destined never to be very widely
known, but who by a faithful few will always be
admired_reverenced even-as one of - the most
authentic and appealing voices in modern poetry.


572
May 31
THE DIAL
But this thought would never occur to those who counterpoint, of "hangers on," of "outrides,” of
made their first acquaintance with her through the lines “rove over," and so forth. He utilizes in much
present slim gray volume. A Study of English of his verse the sprung rhythm, which was em-
Metrics—further work on which was interrupted ployed in Greek and Latin lyric poetry, and in Piers
by the author's death—can only by the most vivid Ploughman, but which he says has not been used in
imagination be conceived as the work of a woman English since Elizabethan times, Green being the
who possessed in herself a creative gift of a very last to recognize it.
high order. In purpose, in scope, and in treatment The subject matter of Father Hopkins' poetry is
Miss Crapsey's book—which we have only as one
completed fragment—is most distinctly analytic, sci-
too prevailingly theological to gain a wide reading.
entific-I had almost said pedantic. Her material
On becoming a Jesuit, he burnt his early verse as
unsuited to priestly ideals, but later he began writing
is, in Shakespearean phrase, “words, words, words.”
The relationship of poetry and metrics, not to
again. His style possesses a teasing quaintness, an
scansion or rhythm proper but to
antique tone oddly incongruous with the time of
phonetic word-
structure ”--this is her thesis and she develops it
publication. The poems frequently are obscure, ex-
here with a patience and thoroughness that must
cessively so, as if the writer deliberately strove to
seem to many appalling. The fundamental question usually results from unwise condensation, or from
mystify his readers. The lack of intelligibility
is that of poetic vocabularies: Miss Crapsey selects
certain_poets-Milton, Pope, Tennyson, Swin-
the omission of relative pronouns, as in the line:
burne, Francis Thompson, and Maurice Hewlett Squander the hell-rook ranks sally to molest him.
for special study. She dissects numerous poems by
these men, dwells on the various peculiarities of
These poems, seen in manuscript by only two or
three persons during the author's lifetime, and pub-
phonetic usage and syllabification and by means of lished thirty years after his death, show a kinship
elaborate tables arranges the work of each man as
with the roughness and obscurity, as well as with
analyzed by herself in a series of columns which the force, of Browning and Meredith. They ex-
show the percentages of words of different phonetic
press a strange talent, but will claim few readers.
value. Nevertheless, through all these abstruse
pages one perceives the operation of a sound instinct,
an instinct which, like that of Edgar Poe or Sté-
POEMs. By Geoffrey Dearmer. 88 pages.
McBride.
phane Mallarmé, realizes the close connection there
is and always must be between the utterances of
A perusal of this small volume will probably in-
genuine poetry and the technical machinery of
cline the reader to the opinion that Geoffrey
words, syllables, feet, meter, and rhythm. One
Dearmer is somewhat over recognized. One finds
would have liked to see Miss Crapsey laboring on
him personable and graceful, but rather the journey,
the phonetics of men like John Gould Fletcher,
man and junior in craft and habit. And although
Carl Sandburg, Conrad Aiken, Robert Frost, Max-
he exhibits considerable easiness in the ceremonial
well Bodenheim; but in defense of our author one
of poetry, he is a little infrequent in his command
should remember that the poets she selected offered
of its rare and precise magic. Such lines as:
the best opportunities for constructing a solid
foundation for a theory which, had it been com-
Now at setting day
pleted, would probably have been more than equal
Moored water-lilies, pale as argent sky,
to the task of analyzing modern poetic tendencies.
Cling to the twilight, fading silently.
And in any case, no one who believes poetry to be
are of promise; the promise however is nearly for-
a serious and important part of the individual life
gotten when we read
can question the very real value of the motives that
prompted Miss Crapsey to make these studies, so
images are not exactly few in these poems, never-
unfortunately interrupted. And those who persist
theless with Geoffrey Dearmer poetry seems to be
in regarding the author as a pedant or a mere thesis-
a matter of parts. There is hardly a poem here
maker will find in her own verse-particularly in
which possesses central conformity, or the totality
the exquisite Cinquain—the one quality that forgives
and interior fusion which are a part of the chief
even the dryest discourse, and justifies it-genius.
requisites to poetic importance. Keats Before Ac-
tion has many lines of distinction, but it struggles"
Poems. By Gerard Manley Hopkins. Edited
with a feeble end; The French Mother to Her
with notes by Robert Bridges.
Unborn Child has a finished dignity, yet
124 pages.
Oxford University Press.
quite final; The Strolling Singer is furnished with
a certain graceful currency:
The chief interest in these posthumous poems
lies in their metrical eccentricities. The author's
A little sylvan man with beckoning eyes
And limbs of lithe expression.
preface has much to say concerning various types of
rhythm—"running,” sprung," "logaoedic,
It appears to be currency however, not coinage; and
" of
as such it can be said to do not very much more.
6
stronger.”
Hate is strong but love is
Moreover, though such clear-struck
not


1919
573
THE DIAL
than keep solvency and peace with the reader. The rupted the sexual life as profoundly as it has af-
Poems show, rather fitfully, a sensitive though not fected any other, and it may well be that after the
very energetic perception, a sense of scene and, a war the whole edifice of our morality (in its etymo-
very considerable feeling for appearances and as logical sense) will be reconstructed. Miss Davies
pects. But the author's imaginative intercourse with however is content to continue romanticizing, as
the world is neither particularly rich nor particu careless here as elsewhere of the deeper issues in-
larly various. His scope of sensibility—so far volved. That these can be adequately treated in
seems not very extensive, and his penetration not poetry, witness among the greater poets, Robinson,
intense. His distinguished parts are lines rather among the younger men, T. S. Eliot. Withal,
than poems, and are relatively few to carry a good there are moments when the author catches her old
deal that is unmemorable. He should probably singing voice. Smith, of the Third Oregon, Dies is
be regarded rather conservatively until he has pros typical at once of her most flagrant faults and her
ecuted some poetic journey home.
familiar sensitiveness. Autumn in Oregon.
and pheasants flying—
POEMS. By Michael Strange. 172 pages.
Gold, green and red,
Brentano.
Great, narrow, lovely things,
As if an orchid had snatched wings.
Unlike many who attempt vers libre Michael
Strange has command of rhythm and skill at design. But such passages are few and far between. And
These desirable prerequisites are not sustained how the approach to prose that her simple diction always
ever by a real creative power. Instead we get dec-
made is hastened by a facile sentimentalism.
orative effects, thin tapestries of emotions not over-
strong, a sense of straining for depth, echoes from Joyce KILMER: POEMS, ESSAYS, AND LET-
an incongruous mixture of Whitman, French TERS. Edited with a memoir by Robert Cortes
decadents, and English esthetes of the nineties. Still Holliday. 2 vols.; 559 pages. Doran,
the decoration, although tending to the rococo and
In this memorial edition the best of Joyce Kilmer's
the impossibly bizarre, is suggestive at least of
writing in both prose and verse has been brought
beauty; and a few poems, notably in the section
together within four covers. All his best-known
called Moods, deserve preservation as worthy ex-
later poems are here, including five which he sent
pressions of the reactions of a sensitive aloof youth
from France; and there is, besides, an amale selec-
to an especially excited world.
tion from his first book of verse, A Summer of Love,
which has long been out of print. Two or three
THE DRUMS IN OUR STREET. By Mary
essays, a story, and a playlet, all abounding in
Carolyn Davies.
131 pages. Macmillan.
Kilmer's joyous humor, are given in the prose
Mary Carolyn Davies seemed, a few years ago, volume. The most interesting and valuable of the
a name to conjure with. She was doing many slight prose however is in the numerous letters, for in them
poignant poems that promised even more than they the personal charm of the young poet-journalist is
gave. Nearly all showed a sense of that dark un more intimately revealed than in his studied writ-
conscious out of which life springs like a roused ings. They help those who did not know him to un-
tiger. Nearly all were marked by a strong nervous derstand how he won the admiration and affection
pulse, by a vivid metaphor, .an evocative adjective. of the hundreds who did. Kilmer's work as a re-
Whether the popularity these gifts rightly brought viewer, which must have been voluminous and was
her itself led the way to their easy destruction is certainly interesting, is not represented in these
not sure. Possibly she has a volume of unpublished volumes. With this possible exception, there is prob-
poems which belie the things she sees fit to print. ably everything here that he would have wished to
At all events The Drums in Our Street are cal preserve, and probably there is little here that he
culated to rouse the emotions of the naive sentiment would have wished away.
alist, to thrill the blood of the populace, and to chill The memoir by Kilmer's friend and literary
the hopes of the critic. The very traces of Miss executor is written with the verve and enthusiasm
Davies' early skill waken a graver disappointment.
of Kilmer's own best manner. Nowhere do these
She never seemed like a drummer before, and this sparkling pages betray any disposition to senti-
book makes her look too much like the merchant's mentalize their hero or to represent him as anything
conception of one. The theme that seems most to but what he actually was—a large-brained, large-
engage her in these poems is the way in which war hearted American, gloriously young and strong and
threw men and women suddenly into that intense energetic, with an extraordinary talent for the
relation which peace takes longer to mature. The. written and spoken word and a positive genius for.
boy and girl who become engaged before he goes making people love him. Page by page the portrait
off, the man and woman who marry in tragic grows until, at the end, one feels that he has known
romantic haste, before the love life is permanently this man. If Mr. Holliday's estimates seem at times
stopped, these small innumerable dramas intrigue a bit too admiring, it is to be remembered that they
her beyond all others. War has distorted and dis are usually concerned not with Kilmer the writer,


574
THE DIAL
May 31
pursued, makes for universal enjoyment of a high, rich,
about whose merits anyone may judge, but with The WRITING AND READING OF VERse. By
Kilmer the man, who, by abundant testimony, C. E. Andrews. 327 pages. Appleton.
captured the imaginations of all who knew him.
If the riant and virile spirit of Joyce Kilmer
How to Read POETRY. By Ethel M. Colson.
were not so antagonistic to all pathos, there would
179 pages. McClurg; Chicago.
be in this definitive edition' of his writing certain
pathetic interest. For this is all we shall ever
Since the laws that Pope laid down in his Essay on
have from the man who was killed in action on
Criticism were definitely and successfully broken by
July 30, 1918, being then in his thirty-third year.
the Romanticists, the science of poetry has been hazy
But, as it is, one feels that his death, like his life
and fragmentary. Most people, in fact, have refused
and all his work, must have been jubilant. He
even to think of it as a science, and have viewed
was a happy warrior, both at home and at the
poets with much the same awe that they would show
front, and he would have made as excellent a poet
whales, and have considered them as fortuitous as
laureate to the American Army as Theodore Botrel
ambergris. Lately however, a more exact curiosity
has been to the French. His life was an incessant
has grown up.
Mr. Patterson and Miss Lowell
boyhood, although he packed into the last decade with their phonographic experiments, and a certain
of it a full lifetime's activity and accomplishment.
M. Verrier with a metronome, have been doing im-
Life was still opening before him and was never
portant foundation work in what is perhaps the
more dear to him than when he cheerfully laid it oldest of the arts. In The Writing and Reading of
down. And so one may say that, although it was Verse Lieutenant Andrews tries always to keep
tragic, his death was not sad.
these researches in view. One notes with interest
that this somewhat elementary essay into poetical
CANDLES THAT BURN. By Aline Kilmer. exactitudes tends rather to break up the old, fast
68 pages. Doran.
theories than to confirm them. Especially is this fact
Mrs. Kilmer need fear no comparison with her
apparent in the chapter on free verse, and in the
husband. Using the simplest ways of expression,
stimulating treatment of the meters (one may safely
she yet avoids the commonplace by her grace, her
use the word in the plural) of blank verse. Yet asi
whimsicality, her quiet sincerity, her sensitiveness to a work of science the volume
not an entire suc-
beauty. The children's verse excels most of that cess. It is confused in its attitudes, propounds vague
sort; the poems on the death of Rose and on Joyce
are moving. Furthermore, she has voiced a religious
theories, and lays much more stress on the a prior-
sense in something better than a banal hymning-a
isms of Lanier than on the sound thinking of Pro-
rare accomplishment.
fessor Gummere. Only when considered as a com-
pendium of hitherto uncompiled facts, as a textbook
ANTHOLOGY OF MAGAZINE VERSE: 1918.
in a course on writing poetry that still remains to be
Edited by William S. Braithwaite.
given, does the book gain undisputed value. Lieu-
285
pages. Small, Maynard; Boston.
tenant Andrews has furnished that much-needed
article, a new saddle for Pegasus.
Mr. Braithwaite's Anthology has become so in-
Miss Colson's book is of a quite different category.
stitutional, in a sense, as hardly to call for review.
An indiscriminate enthusiast, she belongs, no doubt,
One knows now, in advance, what to expect of it.
It is always copious and over-inclusive, contains
to Hermione's Little Group of Serious Thinkers.
always a great deal of mediocre but creditable verse
Her motive in writing is to convert the quarter-
educated into the half-educated-indeed
—and here and there a poem which it might be
pleasant to be able to reread ten years from now.
worthy aim. As for her conclusions, she gives them
One suspects that the motive of the venture is as
best in her own words:
much commercial as literary. Otherwise one finds
Everybody should read poetry.
it hard to explain the presence here of, say at least
Why?
one half of the material. Mr. Braithwaite's list
Because everybody loves it.
of books published during the year is useful. His
Chapter I)
list of critical articles would be better if it were
Again why?
Because everybody loves, needs, desires, seeks enjoy,
more complete: it has a little the appearance of
ment, and the reading of poetry, properly performed and
favoritizing the editor. The critical summaries of
the year's “best books of verse
rare, inexpensive, highly diversified, never-ending and
are what one ex-
pects from Mr. Braithwaite—fulsome, uncritical,
ever-vernal order. (For further particulars see Chapter
II)
and guided, in several instances, one is sure, by
How then to extract this enjoyment from poetry,
motives more personal than esthetic. How other-
cause poetry to yield its rare treasure in plain and pain-
wise is one to explain the eulogy of The Lover's
less manner, in a word, "How to Read Poetry?”
Rosary, by Brookes More? One regrets that Mr.
Why, good sir or madam, perfectly simple and easy.
Read poetry just as you would bathe or dress or write
Braithwaite is not a little more conscientious.
a letter or eat your dinner or play golf or take a car
down town.
a praise-
(For particulars see


1919
575
THE DIAL
The New Era in American Poetry
on
9
" the an-
cen-
OUTCASTS IN
By LOUIS
POEMS ABOUT
UNTERMEYER
BEULAH LAND
GOD
Apart from its value as an ap-
By ROY HELTON praisal, the volume is notewor By JOHN CROWE
thy as a summary of the lead-
RANSOM
Roy Helton takes an incompe-ing movements and figures
tent clerk, or a tired mill-girl, since Whitman. Its lavish quo A book that with much humor
or a city boy and a turn of
tations from the poets under has also much humility. It is
twine, and makes ballads out of
consideration make it a sort of touched with many a whimsical
them as romantic as they are
critical anthology:
turn of thought and phrase, and
real.”—Louis Untermeyer in The
A book of highest distinction. lit with a pervasive glow of in-
New Era in American Poetry.
It is a book of the greatest value direct mental illumination. “Ro-
for its scope, its detail, and its bustly spiritual,” says the Bos-
$1.30 net
opinions.”—Chicago Daily News. ton Herald
$1.25 net
$2.25 net
By ROBERT FROST
By CARL SANDBURG
' An authentic, original voice
By LOUIS
'To me," writes Clement K.
in literature.” – The Atlantic UNTERMEYER Shorter in the London Sphere,
Monthly. Mr. Frost's first vol-
and Other Poets" ($1.25
"he is clearly one of the most
ume, “A Boy's Will” ($1.00 net), net) is a volume of delightful far-sighted critics of life that
brought him wide recognition. pasquinades the modern
the world of poetry has re-
It was followed by “North of school. In “These Times
vealed." “Chicago Poems”
Boston" (Cloth, $1:30 net, ($1.25 net) we have
($1.35 net) was Mr. Sandburg's
leather, $2.00 net), and “Moun- swering call of the new
first volume. Cornhuskers
tain Interval” ($1.25 net).
tury." The Poems of Hein-
($1.35 net), published in 1918,
rich Heine” ($2.25 net) is gen-
is his second.
erally conceded the best English
By WALTER
translation of the great Jewish By PADRAIC COLUM
DE LA MARE
lyrist.
By MARGARET " Wild Earth and Other Poems
“The Listeners and Other
($1.25 net) introduced to Amer-
Poems ($1.30 net) brought
WIDDEMER
ican readers one of the chief
Mr. de la Mare a wide public “Among the foremost of Amer- poets of the Irish Renaissance.
in this country. It was followed ican versifiers when she touches
'To take life and present it ob-
by “Peacock Pie” ($2.25 net), the great passionate realities of jectively requires a restrained
a volume of poems for children,
life,' says The Living Age, talent," says the New Republic.
"She sings with a voice full of
' Padraic
equally popular with older read-
Colum captures
ers; and “Motley and Other tender and exquisite loveliness,"
spirit, a vivid semblance, and
the reader."
Poems," $1.35 net.
says the Boston Transcript lays it befo
Factories and Other Poems
($1.30 net) is Miss Widdemer's
By
By FRANCIS CARLIN first volume, “ The Old Road to
Paradise" *($1.25 net) is her RICHARD BURTON
Of “My Ireland” ($1.30 net), second.
Of “Poems of Earth's Mean-
T. A. Daly writes in the Phila-
THE HOME BOOK
delphia Record: “All the strings
ing" ($1.25 net), the Boston
of the Irish harp, passion and
OF VERSE
Transcript says: "We find a
quiet and sure satisfaction in
pathos, faith and fire, humor and By Burton E. Steden son his poetry.
It stands apart
hope, Mr. Carlin plays upon with
Cloth, one volume, $10.00 net. from the struggle and intensity
skill and just enough careless- Cloth, two volumes, $12.50 net. of the moment, while, as its title
ness to make his touch thorough- Half Morocco, volume, indicates, the poet listens to the
ly human and therefore thor- $14.00 net. Half Morocco, two inchanging beauty of the uni-
oughly Irish."
volumes, $25.00 net.
verse.
9)
a
one
new
Henry Holt and Company
Henry Holt and Company's
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“ About Poets and Poetry," will be sent upon request
Publishers of
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19 West 44th St., New York City
When writing to advertisers please mention THE DIAL.


576
May 31
THE DIAL
The Mountainy Singer, by Seosamh MacCathmhaoil (125
pages; Four Seas Co.; Boston), is an American re-
print of the “pedlar's pack of rhymes” by the poet-
dramatist whose English name is Joseph Campbell
.
Published in Dublin in 1909, these slight but fragrant
lyrics of Irish legend, mysticism, and nationalism
have been too long out of print.
CO
Books of the Fortnight
War and Love, by Richard Aldington (94 pages; Four
Seas Co.; Boston), succeeds the author's Images-Old
and New, and contains poems written between 1915
and 1918. In a foreword to F. S. Flint Mr. Alding-
ton says: · Here I have written less for myself and
you and others who are interested in subtleties and
more for the kind of men I lived with in camp
and in the line.
Perhaps I have lost some-
thing by this.”
Whatever he has lost of the
cold fire and chiseled form of the Images is richly
returned in a warmer passion, a new humanity. Al-
ways the honest artist, he is now the honest reporter
of war-and of love in wartime, though it drives
him to meter and rhyme and an intensification of sex
that recalls Donne. There is ecstasy and exquisite
suffering in these poems, but not sentimentality. The
war has produced no more genuine poetry.
Types of Pan, by Keith Preston (73 pages; Houghton
Mifflin), collects the deft and slangy verses of the
dual personality who is "Pan" to the readers of
“B. L. T.'s” Line-o'-Type column in the Chicago
Tribune and Associate Professor of Latin to the stu-
dents at Northwestern.
A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems, translated by
Arthur Waley (243 pages; Knopf), convey in unpre-
tentious, artless free verse the simplicity and direct-
ness that make the substance of Chinese poetry charm-
ing. The manner of their translation scarcely sug-
gests the studied literary artifice that governs its
form. A valuable expository essay and a critical
bibliography precede the poems.
Baudelaire's Poems and Prose Poems, translated by F.
P. Sturm (192 pages; Brentano), devotes more than
fifty pages to a characteristic gossip by James Hune-
ker on the life, labors, and legend of the “extraor-
dinary poet with a bad conscience.
ence for such natures is a sort of muffled delirium."
Mr. Huneker contrives, dealing sanely with Baude-
laire, to deal justly with Poe, and to cast momentary
illumination on DeQuincey, Hawthorne, Gautier, Whis-
tler, Manet and many another. But was Baudelaire
really "the last of the Romanticists "?
The
translations are indifferent.
The Beloved Stranger: Two Books of Song and a Diver-
tisement for the Unknown Lover, by Witter Bynner
(100 pages; Knopf), is probably—as William
Marion Reedy maintains in his preface—a collabora-
tion between Witter Bynner and “Emanuel Morgan,”
his alias in the notorious, Spectrist hoax (see The
DIAL of April 25, 1918, page 410). One wonders
whether even Mr. Bynner can draw an exact line
between what is his and what is his alter ego's in
these brittle, economical, often merely clever, some-
times very moving poems. Bynner must be allowed
their Oriental Aavor—the Chinese simplicity and the
Japanese suspense—their neat (occasionally too neat)
balance in phrasing, and their passion—when they
have passion, which such pieces as Lightning and
Laurel have richly. Are the others—those that are
bizarre instead of exotic, clever instead of intense-
really Morgan's? Having put forth Bynner as Mor-
gan in Spectra: New Poems (Kennerley), is the
team now attempting to put forth Morgan as Bynner
—that is, inverting the hoax to catch us on the re-
bound?
Exist-
The Passing God, by Harry Kemp (156 pages; Bren-
tano), has by way of sub-title Songs for Lovers. And
some of them—as, for instance, Hermitage—do sing.
Others, like Resurrection, have fetching conceits.
Most of them, however, are magazine verse of about
the right blend of sentimentality and cynicism, and
deal pretty conventionally with familiar passions,
hopes, fears and inconstancies. Many, indeed, are
devoted to ladies of the olden time, among which
one is a long but seldom distinguished narrative
poem about Cresseid, inspired by the medieval
Scotch of Robert Henryson ”—and, rather wanly, by
Chaucer. The volume contains A Commendatory Ad-
dress to the Gentle Reader by Richard LeGallienne.
66
Cervantes, by Rudolph Schevill (388 pages; Duffield),
is the third of the Master Spirits of Literature Series,
and sustains the high character of its predecessors.
The results of Professor Schevill's brilliant scholar-
ship and penetrating criticism are interesting to the
general reader and indispensable to students of the
Spanish Renaissance and of its greatest figure.
Contemporary Spanish Dramatists, by Charles Alfred
Turrell (397 pages; Richard G. Badger; Boston), is
the only representative collection of modern Spanish
plays available. The volume comprises Electra (Gal-
dos), The Claws (Rivas), The Women's Town
(Quintero), When the Roses Bloom Again (Mar-
quina), The Passing of the Magi (Zamacois), and
Juan José (Dicenta). The translation is obviously
conscientious but rather stiff and uncolloquial
. The
introduction serves to place the dramas in their
frame of contemporary Spanish literature, and the
volume is a valuable comment on the present-day
life of Spain.
Everybody's Husband, by Gilbert Cannan (36 pages;
Huebsch), is a short one-act fantasy
which a
young bride discourses with her maternal ancestors
about the problem of the eternal masculine. It is no
mark of literary strength that it recalls Maeterlinck's
The Betrothal-badly diluted.
The Undying Fire:
A Contemporary Novel, by H. G.
Wells (229 pages; Macmillan), is less a novel than
an eloquent conversation which becomes a sermon
and gets interrupted by an operation. It combines
Mr. Wells' two current interests, God and education,
in a book that may be regarded as spiritually the
sequel either to God the Invisible King or to Joan
and Peter, but which is more readable than either.
The Pursuit of Happiness, and Other Poems, by Benja-
min R. C. Low (136 pages; Lane), is the fourth vol-
ume of verse by the author of The Sailor Who Has
Sailed. The title poem is a sequence of fifty-five
sonnets. Mr. Low's muse is rather short of breath
and is too much given to abstractions, to literary
diction and to combinations of monosyllables and
pauses that are more rough than vigorous. The
reader is rewarded, however, by a dashing vigor
of epithet and verb, a not infrequent originality, and
an occasional lyric flight. Browning has influenced
this poet both for good and ill..
Nursery Rhymes of New York City, by Louis How (71
pages; Knopf), has a note of pure lyric whimsey.


1919
577
THE DIAL
A NEW BOOK OF VERSE BY
66 THE TRAMP POET”
Spring Poetry
The PASSING GOD
SONGS FOR LOVERS
By HARRY KEMP
Introduction by Richard Le Gallienne
Red blood lyrics in Mr. Kemp's best style. The
love narrative poem “Cresseid alone makes the
book worth while.
12mo. Net, $1.25
POEMS AND PROSE POEMS OF
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
A new edition with an introduction by James
Huneker,
Boxed. Net, $1.50
POEMS
By MICHAEL STRANGE
A collection of verses of unusual merit by a
promising writer.
12mo. Net, $1.50
POEMS
By IRIS TREE
Decorations by Curtis Moffat. Cloth, $1.50 net.
It is not surprising that the daughter of the fa-
mous actor, the late Sir Beerbohm Tree, should
have inherited a marked artistic 'talent. Miss Iris
Tree's first volume of poems is notable not only for
rich thought and balanced human feeling, but also
for the lyrical quality which creates the emotion
of beauty. Great metrical accomplishment is in
these poems and much variety of theme.
THE PURSUIT
OF HAPPINESS
AND OTHER POEMS
By BENJAMIN R. C. LOW
Author of " The House That Was," "A Wand and
Strings," etc.
Boards, gilt top, $1.50 net.
There is new beauty, as well as old, in the many
lyrical passages of this volume; and the reader
must feel that here, in spite of the rattle and din
of modern versifiers, there is a quiet loveliness
abiding and blossoming even in our own time.
SONGS WHILE
WANDERING
By LIEUT. A. NEWBERRY CHOYCE
Author of Memory: Poems of War and Love,"
etc.
Frontispiece. Cloth, $1.25 nét.
This English soldier-poet, wounded in action,
has just completed a lecture tour through the
West, South and Middle West, and his impression
of our country, people and customs is described in
lyric verse of interesting quality.
BRENTANO'S, Publishers, New York
NEW POETRY AND DRAMA
catholic tales
By Dorothy L. Sayers
Immemorial themes are here moulded into a
new form that will make the reader pause
and catch his breath with the daring beauty
of the author's vision, its simplicity, its faith.
In these verses there is the pungency of a
fresh wind in spring.
$1.00 net.
father noah
Belles Lettres
DOMUS DOLORIS
By W. COMPTON LEITH
Author of " Sirenica,” “ Apologia Diffidentis," etc.
Cloth, $1.50 net.
A new volume by the eminent essayist, whose
beauty and style of language the critics have fre-
quently compared to the golden prose of Walter
Pater.
A Frenchman's Interpretation of
PRESIDENT WILSON
By DANIEL HALEVY
Translated by Hugh Stokes. Oloth, $1.50 net.
" Within the limits of a volume inevitably des-
tined for an immediate interpretation of Mr. Wil-
son to the people of France. Mr. Halevy has here
produced what is Httle less, in its way, than
masterpiece."—The New Republic.
THE LETTERS OF
ALGERNON C. SWINBURNE
Edited and with an Introduction
By EDMOND GOSSE, C. B. and T. J. WISE
Two Volumes. Cloth, $5.00 net.
This is the first comprehensive collection of the
noble, poet's letters to be made, and they cover
practically the whole period of his adult lite from
February, 1858, to January, 1909.
By Geoffrey Whitworth
What were Noah's emotions and thoughts in
that strange period when the fate of hu-
manity lay in his keeping? Mr. Whitworth
has made of them a spiritual drama of rare
human insight, poignant intensity and fine
expression.
$1.00 net.
symphonies
By E, H, W. Meyerstein
Poems of an
unusual kind in which the
syphonic form has been adapted to literary
expression.
$1.00 net.
at all bookstores published by
Robert M. McBride ® Co., New York
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8
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When writing to advertisers please mention THE DIAL.


578
May 31
THE DIAL
Chimney-Pot Papers, by Charles S. Brooks (184 pages;
Yale University Press), carries on the essay tradi-
tion of Hazlitt and Lamb with that studied artless-
ness whose other name is charm. It should be popu-
lar with all who cherish a literary wardrobe laid
away in lavender.
Fighting the Flying Circus, by Captain Edward V. Rick-
enbacher (371 pages; Stokes), chronicles the deeds
done with the fine courage that youth puts at the
service of any cause. If there is no more of the war
in this story than there is of the world in a college
freshman's letters home, no fault is to be found with
the author on this account. Perhaps it is too much
to ask one man to fight a war and understand it too.
Nowadays, by Lord Dunsany (20 pages; Four Seas Co.;
Boston), relies on poets and dreamers to lead us
back from our ugly materialism to simple and beauti-
ful things. In spite of some passages of characteristic
fantasy, the little essay is thin reading. It is the
first issue in the publisher's Seven Arts Series.
The Lucky Mill, by loan Slavici, translated from the
Roumanian with an introduction by A. Mircea Em-
perle (219 pages; Duffield), 'is an example of extreme
simplification in novel writing. Action, psychology,
background are of the most primitive; and yet we
are reminded as in Dostoevsky that the primitive is
infinitely complex.
The American Air Service, by Arthur Sweetser (384
pages; Appleton), recalls the days when the United
States proposed to overwhelm Germany with materiel
,
instead of following the Russian plan of smothering
her with men. Sixteen chapters on preparations in
America and abroad are inadequately illuminated by
one chapter on performance at the front. The men
got there, but for the most part the materiel didn't.
Mr. Sweetser's book stays with the materiel.
The Century of Hope, by F. S. Marvin (352 pages; 0x.
ford University Press), is a philosophical history of
the nineteenth century, in which one of the most dis-
tinguished Oxford humanists “endeavors to exhibit
the growth of humanity in the world," taking as a
leading theme “the development of science and its
reactions on other sides of national and international
life.”
The Silent Mill, by Hermann Sudermann (204 pages;
Brentano), has many of the faults and few of the
virtues of the author's other studies of passion. As
a handling of the perennial eternal triangle it de-
serves commendation only in that it confines the plot
of a novel to the pages of a novelette.
#
Our House, by Henry Seidel Canby (308 pages; Macmil-
lan), is just the sort of novel a groping college pro-
fessor would write. It is not only that his heroines
remind him of the ladies that Botticelli and Leonardo
used to paint, or that Walter Pater is a conversational
stalking-horse. The problem before the young hero
is conceived from the academic point of view, and
the material in which he works out its solution
(especially Bohemia) is the product of an academic
imagination. The author enters a technical defense
of his tepid story by dating it from the Spanish War.
Aristokia, by A. Washington Pezet (214 pages; Cen-
tury), is one more version of Looking Backward.
The proletariat suffer the nonsense of moneyed and
titled aristocracy to come to full flower in a small
hothouse territory called Aristokia. If the execution of
the story is not as successful as the conception is
promising, it is because the author takes too lightly
the obligation to answer the questions the situation
raises, and too seriously the obligation to be always
humorous.
The Clash, by William H. Moore (333 pages; Dut-
ton), is a study in conflicting nationalities, now ap-
pearing in a seventh and revised edition. The author
treats specifically the problem of the French, in Can-
ada, but his fair and candid analysis is not without
its applications to Ireland, to Poland, and even to the
United States. His stand for recognizing large pa-
tional groups rather than attempting to , assimilate
them might well be pondered by the
treat-'em-
rough" school of Americanizers.
The League of Nations, by Mathias Erzberger (331
pages; Holt), published in Germany in the summer
of 1918, shows how far representative German
thought can travel in four years of bitter isolation.
If the belligerent League of Nations is to develop into
a peaceful co-operative society, the German contribu-
tions to this subject will not be entirely lost.
The Prelude to Bolshevism, by A. F. Kerensky (312
pages; Dodd, Mead), nsists of a stenographic re-
port of the author's testimony on the Kornilov rising
before an official commission of inquiry, together
with his later explanatory annotations." Kerensky
makes it clear that Kornilov's erratic demands pro-
posed to annul the Revolution; but he has difficulty
in explaining away his choice of such a commander-
in-chief.
Claire, by Leslie Burton Blades (269 pages; Doran),
has unique interest for a story of adventure, since the
conflict about which the story centers is that between
divergent philosophies of life. The characters are a
blind artist, a woman of fashion, and a Spanish
recluse. This first novel promises a writer of intel-
lectual distinction.
The Clintons and Others, by Archibald Marshall (407
pages; Dodd, Mead), is a volume of short stories
which appear to have been worked up from material
left over from the author's more excellent novels.
The Cup of Fury, by Rupert Hughes (350 pages; Har-
per), is a war story lazily written for lazy readers.
Democracy and the Eastern Question, by Thomas F. Mil-
lard (446 pages; Century), examines the dynastic
reactionary influences and imperialist commercial
policies of Japan with particular attention to China.
The author does not pretend to be impartial in sy
pathy, but as publisher, editor, and correspondent in
the Far East he is equipped with a thorough knowl-
edge of the situation.
India’s Silent Revolution, by Fred B. Fisher (192 pages;
Macmillan), reports the changes that are coming
over Indian life. The author resided in India dur-
ing the Curzon regime and visited it again under the
more enlightened government of Montagu. Indus-
trialization and home rule, and the caste system are
described and appraised according to American stand-
ards.
Belgium, by Brand Whitlock (880 pages; Appleton),
compacts in two volumes the epic story of that coun-
try's suffering during four and a half years of mal-
treatment and misrule. It is a fitting monument to
mark the buried past.


1919
579
THE DIAL
ARISTODEMOCRACY
Labor and Industry in Australia
From the Great War Back
to Moses, Christ and Plato
By
SIR CHARLES WALSTON
NEW AND CHEAPER EDITION WITH A SECOND
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Four volumes, 8vo (894 x 594). Vol. I, pp. viii +
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$33.00
A history of the Labour movements in Australia from
the first beginning of the colony to the foundation of
the Commonwealth in 1901. It is divided chronologi-
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with questions of immigration, land legislation, prices
and political action of its period. The author was for
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580
May 31
THE DIAL
Formative Types in English Poetry: The Earl Lectures of
The New Era in American Poetry. By Louis Untermeyer.
A History of the United States, by Cecil Chesterton (333 A Selected List of Poetry
pages; Doran), is an interpretation of our national
characteristics in terms of our political history. The
benefit of seeing ourselves through another's eyes is
The following list contains The DIAL's selection
notorious, and if we cannot mention Chesterton's book of the more important volumes of verse, anthologies,
in the same breath as Bryce's, we may at least wel-
come it with the same gesture of friendliness.
translations, and books about poetry issued since the
publication of its Christmas List on November 30,
Sir George Etienne Cartier, Bart., by John Boyd (443 1918 (page 512). The references between brackets
pages; Macmillan), is a biography that approximates
a political history of Canada from 1814 to 1873.
are to issue and page of notices in its columns.
Collected Plays and Collected Poems. By John Masefield.
Collapse and Reconstruction, by Sir Thomas Barclay
2 vols; 1161 pages. Macmillan Co. (Feb.8:118)
(315 pages; Little, Brown; Boston), the work of a
The Years Between, By Rudyard Kipling. 153 pages,
Doubleday, Page & Co.
veteran traveler and international lawyer, is a de-
[May 31:571]
The Wild Swans at Coole. By W. B. Yeats.
114 pages
tailed examination of the European situation in the
Macmillan Co.
light of American principles, as embodied in the
The Mountainy Singer. By Seosamh MacCathmhaoil. 124
Fourteen Points. The author is a Federalist and he
pages. The Four Seas Co., Boston. (May 31:576)
The New Morning. By Alfred Noyes. 172 pages. Frederick
indicates the difficulties of making nationalism coinci A. Stokes Co. (May 17:524]
dent with statehood.
The Tree of Life. By John Gould Fletcher. 125 pages.
Macmillan Co. [Feb. 22:189]
ritish Labor and the War, by Paul U. Kellogg and Ar-
War and Love. By Richard Aldington. 94 pages. The Four
Seas Co., Boston. [May 31:576)
thur Gleason (504 pages; Boni and Liveright), gives
The Beloved Stranger. By Witter Bynner. 99 pages. Alfred
in detail the attitude of various British labor groups
A. Knopf. [May 31:576]
Counter-Attack, and Other Poems. By Siegfried Sassoon. 64
toward the problems raised by the war and recon-
pages. E. P. Dutton & Co.
struction. It is a guidebook to the new social order.
Look! We Have Come Through. By D. H. Lawrence. 163
Over 100 pages of appendices make the volume in-
pages. B. W. Huebsch.
Chamber Music. By James Joyce.
36 pages. B. W. Huebsch.
valuable for documentary reference.
[July 18,1918:70, and Sept.19,1918:201]
Minna and Myself. By Maxwell Bodenheim. 91 pages.
The Six Hour Day, by Lord Leverhulme (344 pages;
Pagan Publishing Co. [April 5:356]
Holt), advocates a drastic reduction in hours on
The Ghetto, and Other Poems. By Lola Ridge. 99 pages. B.
W. Huebsch. [Jan.25:83]
the ground that a 72 hour week arranged in two
Banners. By Babette Deutsch. 104 pages. George H. Doran
shifts of 36 hours each would effect a great economy
Co. [May 17:524]
B. W.
A Family Album. By Alter Brody, 132 pages.
in production. In other essays and addresses included
Huebsch. (May 31:560]
in the book the founder of Port Sunlight discusses the
Lanterns in Gethsemane. By Willard Wattles, 162 pages. E.
industrial questions of the day.
P. Dutton & Co. (May 31:571)
Poems About God. By John Crowe Ransom. 76 pages. Henry
Holt & Co.
Management and Men, by Meyer Bloomfield (591 pages;
(May 31:562]
The Passing God: Songs for Lovers.
By Harry Kemp. 156
Century), is mainly a compendium of the changes
pages. Brentano's. [May 31:576)
in the organization of industry as developed in the
Colors of Life.
129 pages.
By Max Eastman.
British Labor Movement.
Knopf. [Dec. 28,1918:611 and Feb.22:202]
96 pages
For the rest, the book is
Young Adventure. By Stephen Vincent Benet.
but one more of many recent optimistic efforts to prove
Yale University Press, New Haven.
[Jan.25:96]
that a happy unity between English workers and their
Growing Pains. By Jean Starr Untermeyer.
W. Huebsch. [May 31:560)
employers is being consummated.
ANTHOLOGIES
The Shop Committee: A Handbook for Employer and
Employee, by William Leavitt Stoddard (105 pages;
The English Poets: Selections with Critical Introductions.
Vol. 5: Browning to Rupert Brooke. Edited by Thomas
Macmillan), provides a comprehensive account of the
Humphrey Ward. 653 pages. Macmillan Co. (Apr. 19:430]
development of the Shop Committee system which was
Corn from Olde Fieldes:
An Anthology of English Poems
organized in a few cases before the war, and of the
from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth century, By
Eleanor M. Brougham.
John Lane Co. (May 31:582]
472 pages
system organized under the direction of the National
A Book of the Sea, Selected by Lady Sybil Scott.
War Labor Board. Mr. Stoddard was an adminis-
Oxford University Press. [May 31:582]
Fisherman's Verse.
By Williams Haynes and Joseph LeRoy
trator of the National Board. The Shop System as
Harrison,
312 pages.
Duffield & Co.
it has developed in this country is a scheme for keep-
ing the peace and handling labor disputes before they
TRANSLATIONS
become widespread or complex.
170 Chinese Poems.
Translated by Arthur Waley. 243 pages.
Alfred A. Knopf.
Crime and Criminals, by Charles Mercier (290 pages;
Chinese Lyrics from the Book of Jode. Translated from the
53 pages.
French of Judith Gautier by James Whitall.
Holt), discusses the jurisprudence of crime from the
B. W. Huebsch.
medical, biological, and psychological points of view.
Coloured Stars: Versions of Fifty Asiatic Love Poems. By E.
Powys Mathers. 62 pages.
The author is in reaction against those who attribute
Baudelaire's Poems and Prose Poems.
crime to the sole infuence of either environment or
Sturm. 135 pages, Brentano.
[May 31:576)
heredity, and he seeks to give due weight to impor-
Poems.
By Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated by Jessie Le-
erished surroundings, defective physical equipment,
mont. 65 pages.
Tobias A. Wright, [May 31:559]
The Kütartan Poetry Book:
and malicious adventure. His position is usually
Irish. By Lady Gregory. 112 pages.
sound, but his treatment, in spite of his wide official
Sons. [Apr.5:359)
practice, does not trust sufficiently in the authority
CRITICISM
of case and example.
Convention and Revolt in Poetry.
Social Work, by Richard C. Cabot (188 pages; Hough-
Lowes. 346 pages.
31:545)
ton Mifflin; Boston), is an attempt to provide the
A New Study of English Poetry.
social worker with a technique for medical diagnosis
pages. E. P. Dutton & Co.
and social treatment. It deals with that common
1917. By George Herbert Palmer.
ground upon which doctor and social worker join
Mimin Co. (Mar. 8:253]
forces.
364 pages.
Henry Holt & Co.
Alfred A.
64 pages. B.
(May 31:582]
Longmans, Green & Co.
Translated by F. P.
Prose Translations from the
G. P. Putnam's
By John Livingston
Houghton Mimin Co., Boston. (May
357
By Henry Newbolt.
May 31:5451
310 pages. Houghton
2


T
1919
581
THE DIAL
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582
THE DIAL
May 31
"
can
an anthology
recently become a contributor of verse to Eastern
Current News
the streets on November 6 last than we find in most
of these poems? Or are we once more victimized
Those who sit by their cozy firesides assembling by Mr. Braithwaite's capricious judgment?
out-of-door anthologies are sometimes as amusing The Poetry of Peace, selected by Irene Leonard
as the sad, watery eyed gentlemen that the swinging (Oxford University Press), is a collection of poems
doors disclose, glass in hand, indulging in the indoor in which many of the authors indicate that the
sport of "watching the ball game on the news lenses of their vision aré bifocal, for they give us
ticker. And yet to the producing of anthologies meditative poems of war and peace in their various
there seems to be no limit short of the range of relations. There is genuine poetry here, written
subjects in which anthologists interest
with rare exceptions by well-known English and
themselves.
American poets. There is no reference to the war
Robert Frothingham admits in his introduction to just ended, and no poets of the younger school are
his Songs of Men (Houghton Miffin) that " with included, although a few of those represented are
such an idea as the title indicates, it was inevitable still living. This collection leaves one the per-
that the old favorites be overlooked and that ' many suasion that the best war poetry is produced after
a gem of purest ray serene' should be rescued from
and not during war. A belief that is not disturbed
obscurity.' But a careful perusal of this collection by Verse for Patriots, edited by Jean Broadhurst
warns one anew that inevitability is rarer than and Clara L. Rhodes (Lippincott), a selection of
accident. This personal scrap-book will make more
appeal to indoor people whose imaginations revel in
war songs and poems produced during the last five
years.
a fighting outdoor life than to lovers of poetry.
Corn from Olde Fieldes, edited by Eleanor M.
Seek the quieter atmosphere of Maude Cuney Brougham (Lane), purports to be
Hare's Message of the Trees (Cornhill, Boston).
of English poems of lesser known writers of the
This volume is made up chiefly of poetry with an
earlier periods." While the reader will feel at
occasional passage in prose and dates from Deuter home among these poets and will recognize a large
onomy and the old Chinese to our younger group
part of the later poems, many of the selections are
The lover of poetry or of nature can
little known and some of the anonymous pieces will
stroll through Mrs. Hare's park of some two hun-
be discoveries. It is to be hoped that
, at its popular
dred trees, assured either of the message or of
price, this book will justify its existence by bring-
poetry—perhaps of both.
ing the rich beauty of the earliest English poetry
Williams Haynes and Joseph LeRoy Harrison to a wider public.
advertise that in Fisherman's Verse (Duffield) they
have brought up such a catch as “ Izaak Walton,
Contributors
James Whitcomb Riley, Andrew Lang, and Robert
Bridges." Looking closer one finds the catch in-
Winifred Kirkland first became known several
cluding no more unimportant specimens than
years ago as a writer of novels and short stories.
Vaniere, Goethe, Scott, Pope, Dobson, Donne, and
More recently she has contributed editorials to
Wordsworth, although in a mood better adapted
weekly journals and articles to a number of reviews.
to fishing than to poetry.
Carl H. Grabo, a member of the faculty of the
Universi:
Turning now to the open sea, we find
these familiar figures better represented. A Book
many
of
Peace and After (Knopf). This volume was re-
of the Sea (Oxford University Press) contains
viewed in The Dial for September 19, 1918.
representative sea poems from the Bible, from the
Carl Sandburg's first volume of verse, Chicago
Greek, Latin, Italian and French languages, and
Poems, and its successor, Cornhuskers, (Holt) were
even,
with an unobtrusive generosity, six from
reviewed by Louis Untermeyer in The Dial for
America, four of which are Whitman's. This pro-
October 5, 1918, under the title Strong Timber.
vokes a question as to why the States, which with
Eunice Tietjens, associate editor of Poetry: A
their sea and coastal beauty have produced a large
Magazine of Verse, has lived much abroad. One of
number of marine canvasses, have at the same time
the products of her travel is Profiles from China
produced so few good sea poems.
(Seymour), reviewed in The Dial for April 16,
Where is our
tradition of the sea ? This book indicates that it is
1917. Mrs. Tietjens is now preparing a volume of
still in England.
verse for autumn publication --Body and Raiment
In Victory! Celebrated by Thirty-Eight Amer-
(Knopt).
ican Poets, - brought together by William Stanley
Eden Phillpotts is an India-born Englishman,
now living in England. He has written a number
are permitted a
of novels, several plays, and two volumes of verset
eight poets indulged, presumably during the time
that many of their less expressive countrymen
Hazel Hall
, a resident of Portland, Oregon, has
thronged the streets. Is it perhaps because we wit-
ness this celebration after the fact, that we imagine
magazines.
-we found more spontaneity and genuine emotion in
The other contributors to this issue have pre-
viously written for The DIAL.
of poets.
Chicago, is author of The World


919
583
THE DIAL
“Keep the Faith”
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The fight is won. Shall victory mock the dead?
The peace terms written by the Allied governments are not the terms for
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584
May 31
THE DIAL
' BORZOI
POETRY OF IMPORTANCE TA
A distinguished anthology
170 Chinese Poems
Translated by ARTHUR WALEY
anthology of Chinese poems in English. In addition to the translations theniselves,
the volume contains a valuable introduction by Mr. Waley addressed especially to the gen-
eral reader, a note on "The Method of Translation” and a Bibliography.
“In making this book,” says Mr. Waley, “I have tried to avoid poems which have been
translated before. A hundred and forty of those I have chosen have not been translated by
anyone else. The remaining thirty-odd I have included in many cases because the previous
versions were full of mistakes, in others because the works which they appeared were no
longer procurable.”
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THE BELOVED
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Foreword by William Marion Reedy
In 1916 Mr. Bynner went to the
Orient and in this book we have the
singing evidence of what he saw there
evidence in color, in sound, in
scent
the wind-blown bells on
temples, odors of wisteria, the statues
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Second printing. $1.25 net
By Kahlil Gibran
THE MADMAN
HIS PARABLES AND POEMS
Critics and the public have been quick
to recognize the remarkable quality of
tbis, the first volume in English of the
greatest living poet of the Near East.
" He is
the William Blake of the
twentieth
century," said Auguste
Rodin, his friend. "He has come to
stay..
· By the 25,000,000 men and
women whose tongue is Arablc be is
considered the genius of the age."
New York Evening Post.
With three exquisite drawings by the
author.
$1.25 net
By Max Eastman
COLORS OF LIFE
Besides the poems, this volume includes the prefatory
essay, "American Ideals of Poetry," which has been very
widely discussed. In it Mr. Eastman makes a strangely
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Back to Principles
THE DIAL
A FORTNIGHTLY
VOL. LXVI
NEW YORK
NO. 792
JUNE 14, 1919
BACK TO PRINCIPLES
MORNING Verse
FINLAND—A BULWARK AGAINST BOLSHEVISM
Robert Dell 587
Katharine Warren 589
Lewis Mumford 590
Arthur Livingston 593
.
TURMOIL IN SPAIN
.
INDIA'S REVOLUTION.
Sailendra nath Ghose
595
PROPAGANDA IN SCHOOLS
Charles A. Beard 598
The CAPTAINS OF FINANCE AND THE ENGINEERS
: Thorstein Veblen 599
In My Room I READ AND WRITE. Verse
Mary Carolyn Davies 606
EDITORIALS
607
COMMUNICATIONS: 0 Tempora, o Mores!.—Roads to Freedom.—Inter Arma Silet
Labor.
610
612
Notes on New Books: War and Revolution in Russia, 1914-1917.—Bolshevism.-
The Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne. The Conscientious Objector.—Military Servi,
tude and Grandeur.-Fields of the Fatherless.-Tumblefold.-An Introduction to the
Government of Modern States.—The Present Conflict of Ideals.-Chimney-Pot Papers.-
In the Alaskan Wilderness.
BOOKS OF THE FORTNIGHT
.
620
CURRENT News
622
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586
June 14
THE DIAL
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THE DIAL
A FORTNIGHTLY
Back to Principles
THE OFFICIAL COMMENTARY on the Covenant says
ably expressed the unanimous opinion of French
that “if the Nations of the future are in the main Socialists and I should say the nearly unanimous
selfish, grasping, and bellicose, no instrument or opinion of the Socialists of Europe. How can it be
machinery will restrain them.” Exactly the same otherwise when they see the five great powers which
thing might have been said and no doubt was said will dominate the League backing all the enemies
by our remote forefathers about individuals. Yet of the Russian Revolution and inciting Roumania
we have succeeded in restraining—I do not say to overthrow the revolution in Hungary? Bitter
eradicating the selfishness, the cupidity, and the indeed has been the disappointment of the Social-
bellicosity of individuals by preventing them from ists and Labor parties of Europe at Mr. Wil-
being a law unto themselves. There is nothing son's acquiescence in such proceedings as these. The
intrinsically impossible in restraining nations by the Roumanian aʻtack on Hungary, incited or rather
same means; the difficulty is that too many of those ordered by the Allies, is not only an unwarrantable
that profess to will the end do not will the means. It interference in the internal affairs of another coun-
is assumed that a nation must always be a law unto try but also a breach of the Armistice. What con-
itself, just as no doubt was once assumed that the fidence can be placed in a League of Nations
individual must be. The obstacle to any genuine inaugurated by such measures as these? Moreover,
international organization is the conception of the a League of Nations on whose council five powers
sovereign independent state and, if we really wish have five representatives and all the others only four
to try to get rid of war, we must first of all abolish has an unpleasant resemblance to a Holy Alliance.
the sovereign independent state. Some means must Another cause of profound disappointment is the
te devised for depriving the state of authority out utter inadequacy of the provisions in the Covenant
side its own borders while leaving it autonomy with relating to disarmament. The peoples of Europe
in them. The present Covenant makes no attempt
ha: e been told that this was a war to end war";
to do that; the whole structure of the League is their great hope was that it would at least end
built up on the good faith of governments—an compulsory military service and huge conscriptionist
insecure foundation.
armies; they now see that there is not the remotest
The measure of the disappointment which the probability of its doing anything of the sort. Perhaps
Constitution of the League has caused among those their feelings on the subject are fairly well repre-
that were the first to welcome President Wilson's sented by the following passage in the manifesto
idea may be gaged by the declaration on the sub of the French Socialist Party already mentioned:
ject of the French Socialist Party. In the manifesto
The party denounces the hypocrisy of the French rulers
adopted at the National Congress of the Party last who, after having exploited the ignorance and credulity
week the opinion was expressed that the new organ of the masses of the people by making them believe that
ization will be nothing but " a league of Capitalists
the war was merely one for national defence, for the
free self-determination of peoples, for the destruction of
having at their service an international White Army
militarism and the suppression of armaments, are now
for the purpose of fighting the social revolution devoting themselves to giving this war a purely imperial-
everywhere.” The manifesto in which this passage
ist and capitalist solution whence will inevitably issue
fresh conflicts unless the international proletariat soon
occurs was adopted without a vote being given becomes master of its destinies.
against it except by the extreme left of the Party,
Since nothing is to be gained by blinking the
which proposed an alternative text even less com truth, I am obliged to say that it is not only the
plimentary to the League of Nations; the former
League of Nations that has caused disappointment.
Majoritaires" abstained from voting, but on the When Mr. Wilson first came over to Europe, he
ground that the manifesto condemned the policy was enthusiastically welcomed by all the liberal
followed by the party during the war. The decla elements and by the masses of the people in every
ration about the League of Nations therefore prob country. On him were fixed the eyes of all that
(0


588
THE DIAL
June 14
Crucy, who interviewed the Pasha on behalf of the position at the Peace Conference. The opponents
had happened. I agree with him. And I fully Wilson should have waited until now to make his
are tired of listening in vain. Have you not had occasion
roused and threatening? Why did you not sooner appeal
to the conscience of the Nations, in which was your
strength? Why did you so long endure that we should
sincerely desired to remove the causes of war and ment and British public opinion.” Mr. Simonds is
establish international comity. I should be depart- mistaken about British public opinion. The British
ing from the truth if I said that Mr. Wilson's Parliament, although it is only four months old,
position was still the same. He has not placated his no longer represents public opinion. The by-elec-
enemies—they have never been so violent—and he tion at Central Hull has shown that the ministerial
has not retained the confidence of his friends. When coalition cannot even hold a seat which it won in
I last wrote it was believed that Mr. Wilson would December by a majority of 10,000. The issues be-
leave the Peace Conference rather than yield to fore the electors of Central Hull were conscription
the demands of the French Government in regard and the imperialist ambitions of the Allies; they
to the Saar Valley and the Left Bank of the Rhine. realized, as the public in general now realizes, that
He has agreed to a compromise in regard to the the former is the logical result of the latter. Central
Saar Valley which must inevitably make it a cause Aberdeen has now given the same verdict. That Mr.
of new dissensions. The annexation of the territory Lloyd George was subjected to pressure in this coun-
by France would be at once more honest and less
try is true; perhaps the bitterness of his attack on
dangerous to the peace of Europe than this hybrid Lord Northcliffe in the House of Commons the
solution. And how can Mr. Wilson reconcile with other day was an indication of annoyance at having
democratic principles the handing over of the inhab- yielded to that pressure. Everything that Mr.
itants of the Saar Valley to the control of a direct- Lloyd George said about Lord Northcliffe was true,
orate of five persons, of whom only one will be but it was just as true when Lord Northcliffe put
chosen by the inhabitants themselves? A few days
Mr. Lloyd George into power and the latter is
ago I should have been obliged to say that no man
rather late in finding it out. Moreover the attack
in history had had a greater opportunity than that would have carried more weight if Mr. George had
which Mr. Wilson had lost. He has indeed made a
not once more followed Lord Northcliffe's policy.
stand in regard to the Italian claims, but are the Mr. Wilson's compromise in regard to the Saar
Italian 'claims in fact any worse or any less consist-
Valley has also weakened his protest against the
ent with the Fourteen Points than the claims of
Italian claims. Italy has in fact a much better
other Allies, of France or Japan, for instance? Great
claim to Fiume than has France to the Saar Valley,
Britain is no more blameless than the others. It is
for there is a large Italian population in Fiume-
British ambitions in Egypt and Mesopotamia and
Italians claim that it is even the majority—whereas
Persia that have weakened Mr. Lloyd George's there is no French population in the Saar Valley. In
hands in the conflict with French and Italian im- protesting against the Dalmatian annexations guar-
perialism. We have imposed our rule on Egypt in
anteed to Italy by the iniquitous treaty made when
defiance of the wishes of the inhabitants and, when
she entered the war Mr. Wilson is on stronger
they rose against us in defense of their liberties, we
ground. But how much stronger would have been
suppressed the rising with a severity which, if the
accounts be true, should make us hold our tongues
his position if he had taken a firm stand long ago
against all such claims from whatever quarter they
in future about German atrocities. I do not know
how far the accounts are true, for the Government
came! It was in his power to make conditions when
America came into the war and he has had many
as usual has deprived us of any but the most meager
information. L'Humanité published on April 26
opportunities of making them since. The facts that
a pathetic and very moderate account by Zagloul
he never signed the Pact of London and that Europe
Pasha of the wrongs of his country; M. Francois economically and financially give him an unicus
is to so great an extent dependent on America
paper, said that England was dishonored by what
of imperialism in France itself regret that Mr.
that, so long as our government acts in this way, it
is not in a position to oppose the imperialism of their
the Viviani and Briand Ministries during the war,
wrote in L'Humanité on April 25:
governments. It was perhaps because Mr. Lloyd
George felt that too that he deserted Mr. Wilson
President Wilson, why have we waited so long?
in the matter of the Saar Valley and supported the
Despair follows, as you well know, on hope deferred. We
French demands which he had hitherto opposed.
That able American supporter of European im-
to intervene in the Fiume question? Can you not see
the great standing armies rising again
perialism, Mr. Frank H. Simonds, has said that
promises ?
Mr. George bowed “to the will of British Parlia-
spite of your
Was not the ferocious appetite of conquest
1


1919
589
THE DIAL
be thrown back under the rule of the old Diplomacy? olutionary; M. Albert Thomas and M. Renaudel
Have you not read that interview given by the Gen-
eralissimo of the Allied armies? The French paper that
have signed an electoral program which declares
reproduced it was seized, but surely you have read it that a revolution is necessary and that it will prob-
and have thought upon it and understood its full mean-
ably begin with a temporary dictatorship of the
ing? Is it not more intolerable in your sight that in the
name of France the Rhine Frontier should be demanded
proletariat. This program was accepted last week
in perpetuity than that Italy should demand an Italian by the whole of the National Congress except
town? Now, since you have at last spoken, since you
the extreme left, which did not consider it suf-
have gone straight to the peoples over the heads of their
Governments, since you have broken that oppressive
ficiently advanced. The Party decided to affiliate
silence, will you not complete your task? Speak once itself only temporarily to what is called the Second,
more; tell us all your anxieties, your struggles, your
aspirations and do not let us fall back once more into
International, which recently met at Berne, on con-
the silence of death,
dition that it purge itself of M. Vandervelde, M.
As the Daily Herald said a few days ago, there
Branting, and other Socialists that are compromising
is only one remedy for the tangle into which the
with bourgeois governments, that it return to the
Peace Conference has got itself—to return to prin- class war and irreconcilable opposition to bourgeois
ciples. It is because principles have been abandoned
parties and governments, and that it follow the
and appetities let loose that the tangle has come
example of Russia, Hungary, and Germany by im-
about. Only America can force the Conference to
mediately orientating the International towards the
return to principles and a distracted Europe looks
social revolution. If these conditions are not com-
to you and to Mr. Wilson to do it. Every coun-
plied with it is probable that the French Socialist
try in Europe is seething with discontent and un-
Party will adhere to the Third International founded
rest. In Belgium there is bitter resentment against by the Russian Bolsheviks, to which the Italian and
the Allies, especially France, on account of the
Swiss Socialist Party are already affiliated. In its
neglect with which Belgian requirements are being
manifesto which has already been mentioned the
treated. Belgium has been sacrificed to the cause
French Socialist Party denounces the conditions of
of the Allies, she has been occupied by the enemy
Peace imposed on Germany as being “calculated to
for nearly five years, her industry is ruined, she is
reduce the German people to slavery,” expresses its
bankrupt, and the majority of the population are out
sympathy with the Russian Revolution, condemns
of work. Now that the victory is won, she is treated
the policy of the Allies in regard to Russia, and
as a negligible quantity and put on a level with
instructs the Socialist deputies to vote against the
Haiti and Uruguay, although before the war she
budget and all military and civil credits on pain of
was economically a more important country than
exclusion from the party. I have already quoted the
Italy. A detestably selfish policy has been followed
declaration of the party about the war, which it
toward her at the Peace Conference by certain Al-
attributes to the “imperialism and nationalism of
lied Governments, and the Belgians allege that the
all the European States small and great.”
French Government is intriguing against them in
Such are some of the events that are happening in
Luxembourg. If the Allied Governments wished Europe while our statesmen and our diplomatists
to see Bolshevism triumphant all over Europe, they squabble over frontiers and scraps of territory. The
would not have acted otherwise than they have. gods, one would imagine, must have marked them
There is a general strike in a great French pro for destruction: unfortunately they may also involve
vincial town, which neither the French nor English others than themselves in their ruin.
Press has been allowed to mention. The French
ROBERT DELL.
Socialist Party has become once more definitely rev-
Morning
I hope that I shall know when the moment comes,
So I can be glad.
I think it will give me that clear sharpness of joy
I have never had
To slip past the edge of sense, to throw off the old
Worn garb of distress,
And poise an instant naked and free, then plunge
Into nothingness.
KATHARINE WARREN.


590
June 14
THE DIAL
FinlandA Bulwark Against Bolshevism
The war which was to make the world safe for
moneyed classes it meant the guarantee of their.
democracy has come to a fitting close. The de personal ascendancy within the national domain. ·
facto government of Finland has been recognized How specious was the ruling classes' fear of
in almost the same breath that acclaimed the Russification became apparent as soon as the Keren-
monarchist elements in Western Siberia. Scarcely sky regime was established in Russia. The Finnish
was the announcement made when the ambassador Socialists were then in the majority, as against all
of the present Finnish government disembarked on the conservative parties in combination, and in July
the shores of the United States. The regime he 1917 they promptly seized the opportunity to de
represents has on its own confession thrown Finnish clare Finland's political separation from Russia
.
citizens into jail by the thousands, and has denied Germany was not yet in a position to play its ap-
the ordinary rights of participation in politics to pointed role in the domination of the Finnish prole-
thousands more. It is altogether fitting and proper tariat, and the Allies were still (nominally) op-
that the elder statesmen of the Quai d'Orsay should posed to Prussian methods of rule. Accordingly
recognize Finland—for what it is worth. The basis the conservative parties joined issue with the
of the recognition is what makes the act interesting. Socialists on the question of independence, and were
From the beginning of the great war Finland able to stall the works successfully by procuring.a
has been a disaffected country. National struggles dissolution of the Diet.
Then four months of
and class struggles have been perplexingly inter- political frustration followed. Just as the new
mingled, for the reason that Finland is a zone of parliament was about to meet in November the
contact where the Slavic and Teutonic civilizations, overthrow of the first Russian republic took place,
one moving eastward and one westward, meet; and and the reins of government fell into the hands
in general the common people of Finland seem to
of unmistakably proletarian groups, functioning
have been the victims of two contentious foreign through the Soviets. Instantly the Finnish home
ruling classes, who have now compromised their
rule problem was turned upside down. The
differences for the laudable purpose of keeping the
Socialist party now declared its adherence to Soviet
mass of Finlanders in subjection. General Man-
Russia, and the conservatives resuscitated their
nerheim himself sums up in his personal inheritance project for national independence.
the main characteristics of the present ruling classes.
Up to this time the Finnish Socialist party had
Born in Finland, of Teutonic Junker stock, and
limited its activities to the established parliamentary
trained in Russia under the Czarist regime, he
fields. It had worked cautiously, and with that
brings to the government of his native land an
enviable equipment in cruelty, arrogance, rapacity,
rigorous internal discipline so characteristic of
continental Socialism. Protection to labor and the
and chicane. To the degree that he fails to repre-
sent the Finnish people he represents the more
eight-hour day and equal suffrage for municipalities
adequately the present government,
were the measures it demanded—the sort of thing
At the beginning of the war the ruling classes
even a Republican Congress might pass under the
turned with a single mind to Germany for aid in
whip of a Democratic president. The small con-
throwing off the incubus of Russian bureaucracy.
servative majority in the November Diet refused
Volunteers were enlisted for training under German
to consider these apparently innocent demands, and
military discipline, and preparations were made to
in consequence of their refusal the Socialist Party,
operating with the federation of labor unions, de-
attach the conduits of power to a switch manipu- clared a general strike—November 15, 1917;
lated in Berlin. The Finnish ruling classes realized
that without the intervention of an alien military
The result was civil war, accompanied by the usual
government they were impotent.
manifestation of violence, bloodshed, and disorder.
For ever since
the revolution of 1905 the common people of Fin-
During this period the Red Guard had the upper
land had drifted toward Socialism, and but for the
hand, and acts were committed by isolated groups
of the baser sort, breaking loose from restraint,
ment, through a coalition of peasants and workers to palliate. The number of people killed has been
which the Finnish Socialist party does not attempt
would have swept the tax-collecting classes into
limbo. Hence the dual character of Finnish nation-
variously estimated. In the book compiled from
alism. To the worker it meant freedom to par-
official documents by Dr. Henning Söderhjelm the
ticipate in the international class struggle; to the
actual tally is 624, and the most biased estimates
do not mount much above a thousand. It is well


1919
591
THE DIAL
a success.
to remember these figures for the purpose of com-
The details of Mannerheim's methods have no
parison, and to bear in mind that they were not place outside the police court records of sanguinary
executions by a government but the work of mobs crime, or the psychoanalyst's monograph on the
which had defied their government.
phenomenon of sadism. Wholesale imprisonment
The immediate outcome of this general strike was and widespread summary execution represent but the
The Agrarian Party swung over to the superficial aspects of his attempt to suppress popular
Socialists, and the bills which the Socialists had (social-democratic) government. According to a
presented were enacted. But the Socialist measures report of representatives of all the Scandinavian
were passed only to be delayed, and they were de Socialist parties, conditions in the camps for the
layed only to cause another general strike. As detention of Red prisoners have been indescribably
result, civil strife broke out again in January 1918, horrible. Starvation and filth have accomplished in
with a Red government establishing itself in the slow inexorable fashion what lead and steel do hap-
towns of the south, and the White Guard organiz- pily in a shorter period. This report is corroborated
ing itself under General Mannerheim in the im by the independent testimony of a correspondent of
pregnable morasses of the north. Left to themselves, the New Statesman (London), in a communication
the Whites were defeated.
dated February 1919. He adds the systematic em-
From this time on the fate of popular govern- ployment of torture for the purpose of obtaining
ment in Finland was bound up with the general evidence to the list of the present government's
situation in Europe. First came the “peace” treaty crimes. These statements are now confirmed by an
of Brest-Litovsk. There the representatives of the indisputably respectable authority. On the admis-
White elements appeared in order to give their sion of the official head of the Finnish Economic
sanction to the dismemberment and prostration of Mission, published in the New York Times for
Soviet Russia, and to extend an invitation to the May 24, the White Guards took 70,000 prisoners
German imperialists to combat the menace of
and promptly put them on trial,” condemned a
Bolshevism by invading Finland. (This White few' to death, and gave more than 8,000
government was incidentally recognized by France sentences of more than eight years in prison. Hence
at the same time—a significant preface to present the estimates of the representative of the People's
day politics.) Now, Finland contains scarcely more Government in America do not require any stretch
than 3,200,000 inhabitants, and only a relatively of the imagination to become credible. Given in
small military force, well munitioned and victualed, round numbers, they err on the side of conservatism.
was needed to destroy the ill-organized Red Guards.
Executed: 10,000.
In the spring Mannerheim's troops pressed down
Died in prison: 10,000.
from the north, and von der Goltz's army estab-
Exiled: 50,000.
lished its base and moved upward, and between The New Statesman correspondent is probably
them the people's government of Finland was nearer the correct figure when he asserts that be-
macerated out of existence.
tween 15,000 and 20,000 were shot out of hand
The pre-revolutionary voting strength of the without any form of trial, and that not less than
Finnish Socialist Party was above 370,000. This 13,000 and not more than 18,000 met death in the
body was the backbone of the revolution, and notorious prison camps between June and October
consequently the mainstay of the people's govern 1918 through lack of food and water. In all about
ment. An autocrat, under no matter what czar he 100,000 Socialists out of a total electorate of
had perfected his education, could not rule a coun 900,000 have been either killed or disfranchised.
try while such a large body of people were robust Naturally those who were promptly executed were
in health, sound in mentality, disciplined in leader the leaders in the Finnish Socialist movement,
ship, and undiminished in numerical strength. educated for their positions by more than a decade
Nevertheless Mannerheim intended to rule, and the of slow parliamentary experiment. Hence when
kept classes were unanimous in seconding his inten the chief of the Finnish Economic Mission informs
tion. To achieve military power was one thing: us that the erstwhile rank and file Socialists are
to suppress all political rivalry was another. Thanks bitter against the leaders who deserted them,” it
to Mannerheim's sound training under the ancient is plain that he uses the word “desert” in a pecu-
regime, he was able to combat that infirmity in liarly Pickwickian, or diplomatic sense.
dealing with the masses which is so constant a With thousands of their fellows killed, their
source of instability in a capitalist government
leaders executed or exiled, their funds gone, their
tainted by the most ordinary standards of human most active members imprisoned, their journals sup-
decency.
pressed, their political activity curtailed, one would


592
June 14
THE DIAL
was
suppose that the Finnish Socialists might well The question becomes pertinent when one inquires
weaken in enthusiasm for their creed. For theirs —unfitness for what? Unfitness obviously for asso-
a martyrdom without the consolations of ciation with free peoples, with governments that
eternal beatitude. The statistics of the latest elec exist by the consent of the governed, with those
tion prove otherwise. The new Socialist repre that deny that there is any necessary nexus between
sentatives number 80 out of a total of 200, and might and right. But the covert clique of govern-
when due allowance is made for the starved, the ments that has taken unto itself the task of con-
executed, the exiled, and the jailed it appears that trolling the world is not concerned with these old-
the Party has positively gained in strength under fashioned liberal shibboleths. It exists to keep the
persecution. Notwithstanding their position, the economic status quo intact, and it is willing to
Socialists are not represented in the present govern utilize any more or less powerful group which has
ment, and as long as the dictatorship of Manner the same end in view. All the better if in the
heim continues with the connivance and subsidy Baltic region the Allied governments can supply
of the Big Four-practically one-half of the popu munitions, money, and moral authority, and allow
lation of Finland will be living under an alien and the hired forces of the Junker-capitalist groups to do
autocratic rule.
the dirty work.
We have now reached a point where it is pos-
There is an obvious fitness in the Mannerheim
sible to estimate what recognition of Finland by
government for the commission of the sanguinary
the Allies implies. Primarily it carries on an im task of extirpation imposed upon it by the logic of
portant governmental tradition—continuity of the situation in Russia. Finland is a bulwark
policy. The Allies have stepped into the place against Bolshevism: the stronger the present govo
vacated by the defeated autocracy of Germany, and
ernment becomes, the stronger grows this bulwark.
are supporting the methods so ably developed by. With plenty of material equipment, such for exa
the Mannerheim-Von der Goltz regime. This sup-
ample as the famous Lewisite exterminator now in
port has been of threefold nature: financial, muni the hands of the United States Government, there
tionary, and moral. As for the first, it is pretty well
authenticated that a shipment of gold, intended to
is no reason to suppose that a White Guard in-
vading Russia should not be able to live up to its
stiffen the Kerensky regime before the American
government realized that the first republic was on
past performances, and possibly (for Lewisite seems
its last legs, was halted before it reached Russia,
to make it possible)- to go beyond its best achieve-
and that it has since been diverted into the channels
ments in the way of butchery and torture. Three
of such law and order as White Terror stands for.
million Soviet adherents in slavery, and three hun-
Since the debacle of Germany the munitions have
dred thousand ready for execution, would represent
naturally been supplied from Allied sources, includ-
the scale of extermination and suppression conform-
ing America, and the British fleet has gone so far
able to the requirements of the Russian situation
.
as to contribute naval support to military operations
Doubtless the Soviet system could be swiftly
around the Baltic. This has strengthened the in-
prostrated by such an application of Finnish law
ternal control of the counter-revolutionists, and has
and order, and a gentlemen's government, consist-
made possible an interventionist campaign in Russia.
ing of the remaining population (if any) could be
Finally, the Allies have backed these material con-
erected, in accordance with the principles of self-
tributions with a moral ” offensive. They have
determination, nationality, and democracy.
taken the opportunity through the daily press to
Apparently the Prussic spirit is unconquerable.
whitewash the sanguinary exploits of the White
It has left the corpse of Germany only to enter the
Guard, and to reinforce this expression of approval
governments of the Allies. In Germany however
by diplomatic recognition of the government which
it had the decency to expose the nakedness of its
this guard keeps in power. Thus the perpetrators
brutality, whilst with the Allies it is petticoated in
of a wholesale reign of terror were received openly
President's English. The situation about the Baltic
into the ranks of the defenders of Belgium against
throws a white light upon that struggle of nations
the iron rule of Germany. Doubtless they will
which is also a struggle of classes. By means of its
prove to be valuable adjuncts to the present League
illumination we can penetrate the “hypocrisies and
of Governments.
patent cheats and masks of brute force" and realize
The story of the White Terror discloses the
how far the economically autocratic democracies,
manifest unfitness of the Mannerheim government
led by America, have fallen from their grand and
to rule Finland. Was it in spite of this unfitness
utterly unfulfilled aim of setting the world free.
or because of it that the Allies have bolstered it up?
LEWIS MUMFORD.


1919
593
THE DIAL
Turmoil in Spain
S PAIN
PAIN IS IN UPHEAVAL today through the con circles, and in all those social groups, the aristocracy,
temporaneous maturing of two great movements, the clergy, the army, which most directly profit by
each aiming at a transformation of the political and the present system of centralization. The Spanish
social order of the nation. The one is called in monarchy is of the approved constitutional type.
Spain the regionalist” movement; the other, the The King governs in name only, while the real
Spanish manifestation of the same social unrest
government rests in a cabinet, responsible to the
which is sweeping the world, is industrial in char Cortes, which is in turn elected by a universal and
acter and aims at nothing less than the social revolu- obligatory suffrage for men over twenty-five. While
tion. The repressive measures now being taken in the age limit for voting might seem rather high, a
Barcelona against the syndicalistic and revolutionary very considerable case can be made out for the
socialist agitators, coming as they do on the heels democratic character of the Spanish constitution.
of the spectacular political events of December and In actual operation the constitution does not show
January, make confusion between the two move all the virtues it seems to piomise on paper. The
ments very easy when they are viewed from abroad; cabinet has control of the entire administration of
all the more since the regionalist movement is itself the country through its power of appointment to the
a very complex one, taking on different aspects in executive offices of the state, the political provinces,
different places and provoking in each case different and the larger municipalities. This power it is able
reactions on the part of the various political parties to exercise in controlling, not only the vote of the
in Spain.
deputies to the Cortes, but also the local election
The “regionalist " movement, as a whole, is a machinery. Hence political “bossism” on the one
concerted attack on the Spanish bureaucratic gov hand; and on the other a spoils system which makes
ernment centralized in Madrid. It is, in other
politics a matter of group warfare and compromise,
words, a political movement, aiming at a decentral-- rather than a conflict of ideas. A defect of theory
ization of governmental control by a recognition of
also develops in this mechanism as it radiates over
the great historic “regions of Spain, to be erected
the Peninsula and encounters the thirteen ancient
into autonomous, or even into independent states,
geographical, economic, and social regions, differing
with the national unity entrusted to a system of in habits, interests, traditions, and even in language,
federalization of some form or other. In two regions, out of which the modern Spanish state has been con-
particularly, this agitation for regional autonomy is structed and of which only the two Castilles and
intensified by a local nationalistic propaganda of Andalucia may properly be called Spain. For
or less ancient origin. The Basques and the the centralized government operates through gen-
Catalonians, by virtue of their non-Spanish language, eral laws and regulations applicable to the nation as
literature, and race, are appealing to the principle of a whole. In order thus to satisfy its specific indi-
self-determination for
oppressed” nationalities.
vidual needs, a given locality or region must appeal
The enthusiasm thus imparted to the movement in to the central government, where it meets not only
these regions has made it powerful enough to become bureaucratic inefficiency or rapacity, but also the con-
an issue throughout the whole peninsula, where the flicting interests of other regions, each competing for
problem of bureaucratic maladministration is just special favors and each jealous of regionál discrimin-
as serious as in the Basque provinces or in Catalunya. ations.
The “Spanish,” as opposed to the Basque and Cat The Spanish regionalists contend that these evils
alonian, autonomist program is, in fact, only a device can be corrected by reconstituting the government
of the Spanish constitutional parties to find a form from the bottom up. They would, first of all,
ula whereby the dissatisfaction with the present abolish the present forty-nine political and adminis-
monarchy general throughout the country may trative provinces, which date from 1833. Then they
removed, while at the same time making all possible would establish complete municipal autonomy, build
concessions to Basque and Catalonian nationalism. up from representatives of the municipalities a par-
The “ Spanish
movement, lacking the separatist
liament to govern each of the thirteen ancient
patriotic animus, aims simply at a political reorgan gions,” and finally reach the state government,
ization of the nation, as the basis of a moral and whose functions would be strictly limited to inter-
social renovation of government in Spain. The regional, as we would say, interstate, affairs. Ex-
proposed reorganization is however radical enough treme regionalists would make participation in this
to arouse determined opposition in bureaucratic central government on the part of the regions op-
more
re-


594
June 14
THE DIAL
re-
tional, and at all times free. Others would give to flourish, with declarations of independence and
greatest strength to the national unity. In the one programs for regional autonomy. Not less than ten
case, we should get a state as loosely ceptralized as predecessors to the recent petition of November 25
the British Empire; in the other a union as compact are to be counted in these years, the most important
as that of the United States.
being that signed at Manresa in 1892. After the
This program finds its major support in the so crisis in Catalonian industry, resulting from the
called parties of the left, the Reformists, the Re Cuban and Spanish-American war, the nationalistic
publicans and Radicals, the Socialists. Since 1898, movement assumed its present industrial character,
moreover, the government parties, Liberal and Con-
industrial, that is, in the Spanish sense of the term.
servative, have been progressively inclined to con For since that time, the nationalistic sentiment has
cessions in the direction of these proposed reforms. been identified with the cause of prosperity, protec-
They have never gone much farther, however, than tion, and the full dinner-pail. It has won to its side
a proposal of municipal autonomy coupled with gen the important industrial capitalists and large ele
eral changes in systems of appointment and election,
ments among the business and working classes. At
judicial procedure, and methods of taxation.
no time however has it interested those proletarian
While doubtless the lureaucracy could thus com energies, which are now concentrated in the agita-
promise at almost any time with the “Spanish tions of the Syndicalist Union or the revolutionary
gionalist movement, it has never been able to pacify General Federation of Labor. The present Catalan
the nationalists of Catalunya with such superficial League represents the fusion of Conservatives
, Lib-
changes. All the forces of discontent which operate erals, Reformists, Radicals, Republicans
, and Social-
in Spain generally rage with particular violence in ists. To the left of this it does not go.
the region of Barcelona, Gerona, Tarragona, and As compared with the Catalonian movement, the
Lerida. These districts, owing to their wealth in Basque agitation for regionalism presents only the
water power, have a monopoly of the cotton-textile distinctive trait that in the Basque Provinces power-
industries in Spain. With one-tenth of the total
population of the nation, Catalunya pays one-fifth of tionary tendencies
, seem to have taken control of the
ful Carlist elements, of clerical and definitely reac-
the taxes, buys one-half of the imports, and sells one-
· third of the exports of the whole nation. No amount
movement in some localities. The impulse here is
of special legislation on the part of Madrid has ever
the same that translates itself in France and Italy
reconciled the Catalonians to the control by the
into the demand for proportional representation,
central government of these great and separate in-
Various local majorities expect, through regional
terests.
autonomy, to make good a power they can never
This stubbornness is the product of an idealistic
hope to realize as a weak national minority. Both
middle class movement, now nearly a century old.
the Basque and the Catalonian demands would be
We do not make it older than that for several
satisfied with the extreme program of the Spanish
reasons: first of all, Catalunya has been, since the
regionalists. Neither movement, that is, is strictly
twelfth century, identified with the destinies of the
separatist in character. In fact, the petition of last
rest of Spain. Furthermore, the autonomy she now
November is, in this respect, less radical than the
demands is not the autonomy she lost in 1715. But
constitution of 1892. The same reservation applies
more important still, the present fervor of national-
to the question of the monarchy. Since 1898, the
ism among the Catalans is of nineteenth century republicans
were in a majority. As a whole, eine
Catalan movement has known moments when the
cess of development, which, since the French Revo patible with any form of autonomy which would
dedi
.
lution
, has characterized all nationalisms. In the initely tid them of bureaucratic control from Made
first half of the past
century, Catalonian national-rid. The Basque movement meanwhile has powera
ism was a matter of philological and anthropological ful enemies of the present dynasty, who prefer
research. Philologists discovered the distinctness of however something still more reactionary and
the Catalan dialect, its affiliations with Southern absolutistic.
France, the Provencal type of its literature. From
the pedants the patriotic torch passed, after the
The regionalist movement, in its three aspects
,
bears thus only a tactical relation to the revolution-
poets. Between 1860 and 1880 we have to seeking groundilise programs of political reform as it is tetang
ary labor movement, which is as hostile to the re-
Catalan literature the nearer origins of a def- centralized government.
initely anti-Spanish spirit. The years between 1880
and 1898 we may distinguish as the political era of
Federation of Labor usually finds, that is, in the con-
Catalan nationalism. Then political societies began
ditions of passive regional resistance to the govern-
ment, a favorable opportunity for revolutionary
as
The subversive General


1919
595
THE DIAL
agitation and for a general strike. On the other ning of a period of turmoil, which will be of prop-
hand the regionalists utilize the threat of such in- agandist, rather than reconstructive character, and
dustrial troubles to coerce the government, which tend to a compacter organization of the revolution-
just as stolidly is inclined to retort by masking gen ary elements of the country. Of this trend the Gov-
eral repression of regionalist propaganda behind its ernment has been perfectly aware. While it was
assault on “anarchy.” Francisco Ferrer is only the meeting the regionalist agitation with a revised ver-
most celebrated victim of such tactics.
sion of the Maura proposal for local autonomy made
The best disciplined groups of industrial revolu in 1907–Maura was again chairman of the Extra-
tionists are in Catalunya and Andalucia. Barcelona Parliamentary Commission—it was, under Roman-
contributes about 65,000 members to the revolution oes, meeting the revolutionary threat with the meas-
ary Federation, while about three thousand more ures of social reform well known to English and
come from Lerida, Gerona, Tarragona, and the agri- American liberalism. Along with lavish concessions
cultural regions. Not over forty thousand paid up in wages, working hours, and protection for working
members report to the Federation centers in An men, it was organizing labor in its own public utili-
dalucia, with the strongest groups in Seville, ties, and stimulating cooperative management be-
Cordoba, Cadiz, and Malaga. These figures, the tween owners and workers in private industries. In
latest issued by the Federation, are based on reports both of these tactics it could rely on a definite pre-
of 1911. Since 1915, new sections have been formed ponderance of governmental forces. Meanwhile,
in La Corunya, Sarragossa, Valencia, Gijon, and however, the military clique accomplished during
La Felguera. The Woodworkers and Builders of April what amounted to a seizure of the govern-
Bilbao and the Glass Workers of Madrid are sep ment, creating circumstances which compelled the
arately organized but are affiliated with the Fed- resignation of Romanoes, and left labor face to face
eration. Solidariedad Obrera, the organ of the Fed with military reaction in a situation which prom-
eration, claims at present a total of 107,000 ad ises still to seek something else than a political
herents for the whole group. But its action is not solution. Doubtless the present elections, the re-
by any means so limited as these figures, or its open
turns from which are just coming in, will show lib-
organization, would imply. In the last four months
eral forces strong enough to restrain the military
there have been general strikes in Lugo, Burgos, and to conciliate the workers. The bureaucracy will
Badajoz, and Valladolid of “ bolshevik" character,
find itself, when the present crisis passes, still in con-
though these localities are not claimed by the revo-
trol; and the Spanish public will find itself in Spain
lutionary organization.
in the presence of organized labor working in rela-
These figures suggest, not so much weakness, as
tive harmony with organized capital.
lack of discipline on the part of labor forces in
Spain. We are doubtless witnessing only the begin-
ARTHUR LIVINGSTON.
India's Revolution
IN
N THE LIGHT of the evolutionary growth of revo upon the people by the British government, was
lutions and their constant approach to more ideal more a protest against brutalities and barbarities
goals, it is of extreme interest to estimate the sig. committed on the unarmed and unfed masses by the
nificance of the present revolution in India. This alien autocrats. It was adopted only when they
revolution has come out of desperation, and to the were not allowed to voice their silent protest against
goal of absolute freedom it must go. Whether it the alien laws that legalize and perpetuate the en-
succeeds now or not, it has already contributed a slavement of themselves-one-fifth of humanity.
new and radical idea to the progress of humanity,
The desire for freedom has been growing stronger
which will be a permanent gift to international and stronger day by day. In 1917 the British
thought. This contribution comes, perhaps, nearer authorities recognized the revolutionary tendencies
the goal of idealism than that of any other revolu- by the appointment of the Rowlatt Commission to
tion, because the contribution is that highly ideals investigate revolutionary conspiracies in India. By
istic and inspiring one of passive resistance.
this act alone they acknowledged the invalidity of
In its inception, the Indian revolution was passive their title to rule India against the will of her 315
in character. Though in the latter stages it lost millions of people. In 1919, driven to desperation
its original character and switched towards active by the continued growth of the revolutionary move-
resistance, yet it never lost sight of the spirit of ment, the Government introduced the infamous
passivism. Even the recourse to violence, forced Rowlatt Bills and had them passed against the


596
· June 14
THE DIAL
.
.
unanimous voice of the Indian members of the Legis of protest by observing the 6th of April as a national
lature Council who are, of course, in the minority. Day of Humiliation and Prayer. All over India
These Rowlatt Acts revived the Spanish Inquisition shops were shut and general mourning was observed
and the Star Chamber of the Tudor and Stuart as a silent protest against the passage of the Rowlatt
period, in their worst forms. According to their Bills. But undue interference of the authorities
provisions :
prevented them from even making a passive demon-
stration of protest. Shops were opened at the point
1. Any Indian is subject to arrest without trial, upon
suspicion, and detention without trial for an unlimited
of bayonets, passive resistance leaders were kid-
duration of time.
napped and transferred to unknown destinations,
and, according to the London Herald, twelve per-
2. The burden of proof rests upon the accused.
sons in one city were flogged for destroying govern-
3. The accused is kept ignorant of the names of his
ment notices.
accusers and of witnesses against him. The accused is
not confronted with his accusers or with witnesses against
For a number of days following the Day of
him, and is entitled only to a written account of the
Humiliation and Prayer, the country was quiet
.
offenses attributed to him.
But suddenly, on April 11, the whole of India,
4. The accused is deprived of the help of a lawyer, and
from Bombay to Calcutta and from Kashmir to
no witnesses are allowed in his defense.
Madras, went on a general strike. That day wit-
5. The accused is given a secret trial, before a Com-
nessed the greatest display of passivism the world
mission of three High Court Judges, who may sit at any
has ever seen. People threw themselves in front
place they deem fit-in a cellar if they choose. The of tram cars and moving trains, and succeeded in
method of their procedure or their findings may not be
made public.
their attempts to induce their fellow-workers to stop
work. They refrained from picketing and all other
6. Trial by jury is denied. The right of appeal is
direct action.
denied. “No order under this Act shall be called into
question in any court, and no suit or prosecution or other
This extreme passive renunciation, the like of
legal proceeding shall be made against any person for which is not to be found in the history of any
anything which is in good faith done or intended to be
done under this Act.”
country, brought in that extraordinary unanimity
among all classes and all creeds. High and low,
7. The accused may be convicted of an offense with rich and poor, Hindu and Parsee, Mohammedan
which he is not charged.
and Brahmin, were solidly united against the foreign
8. The prosecution "shall not be bound to observe the
rulers, for the emancipation of their Motherland.
rules of the law of evidence." Prosecution may accept
Hindus went to Moslem mosques and prayed along
evidence of absent witnesses. The witnesses may be dead, with their Mohammedan comrades in the orthodox
or may never have existed.
Mohammedan style; and the Mohammedans went
9. The authorities are given power to use
any and
to the Hindu temples and prayed in the orthodox
in carrying out the law and in obtaining
confessions. In other words, torture.
Hindu style, clasping the hands of their Hindu
brothers as they knelt, praying for the same great
10. Any person possessing "seditious" documents, pic-
tures or words, intending that the same shall be pub-
ideal—the freedom of India. Such a thing as this
lished or circulated, is liable to arrest and imprisonment.
is unique; it is possible only in India where freedom
According to the definition of "sedition,” absence of
of toleration for differences of opinion exists in
affection for the British Government would be legally practice
, and is not a dead letter. This fraterniza
;
tion of two widely different religious sects is a
11. Men who have served prison terms for political
offenses may be restricted to certain specific areas, must
contribution to the real civilization which is to
report regularly to the police, cannot change address with-
come, and India is well proud of it. Though the
out notification of authorities, and must give securities
revolution may be suppressed by sheer brute force,
for good behavior. They can never thereafter write on
or discuss or attend meetings on any subject of public im-
still this contribution will live through all time.
portance including even social, religious, and educational.
Even with this fraternization the British officials
interfered. Mosques and Temples were ordered
12. Any person (even the family) voluntarily associat-
ing with an ex-political prisoner may be arrested and
closed and surrounded by police and military guards
.
imprisoned.
The people were forced to disperse by fire from
13. Search without warrant of any suspected place or
machine guns and bombs from aeroplanes—the
home is provided for.
civilized” weapons of Christian nations.
The people of India, led by that great passive
Naturally, as might have been expected in any
resistance advocate, Mr. M. K. Gandhi, and that
other country, passive protest of the masses was
spirited soul, Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, raised their voice
ineffective, and the people, losing patience, resorted
to active methods. They began destroying banks
every means


1919
597
THE DIAL
3132
13
was
and postoffices, demolishing government buildings, an article published in the Bombay Times of
destroying bridges and means of communication, April 15th stated that the Bolsheviki had forwarded
blowing up railway trains carrying troops to kill £25,000 sterling to Bombay. The same paper
them, and attacking Englishmen. All this was by quoted a telegram from Helsingfors, in March,
way of open challenge to the right of alien domina- predicting the outbreak.
tion and economic exploitation.
News coming from India at the present time is
It was at this juncture that Mr. M. K. Gandhi very meager. But this is certain: the revolution is
called upon the people participating in the passive on, as also are the massacres perpetrated by the
resistance movement to refrain from all further acts British on the masses atrocities compared with
of violence, declaring that attacks upon Englishmen which German barbarities in Belgium sink to
and other lawless acts constituted a blot on the nothingness. These atrocities are carried on by the
movement for which the people should atone. He very power which has been given the “mandatory
then fixed three days for fasting in atonement for of practically half the habitable world by the con-
acts of violence. And, according to the London ference of old diplomats sitting at Versailles. This
Times for April 25, his followers did three days much is also certain: Britain will sacrifice much of
fasting as penance."
that habitable area before she will give up India.
But the situation was out of control. It became She will give Cliina to Japan, she will give up
so serious that the Governor General, on the 14th many of her other possessions, but desperate and
of April, announced in unmistakable terms, that he bleeding India, and the route leading to India, she
“satisfied that a state of open rebellion " existed will hold by every means from diplomacy to liquid
in India. Thereafter, Mr. Gandhi retired from fire and poison gas.
the field, and the moderate elements—the Home Whatever the outcome of the present revolution,
Rulers-rallied to the side of the Government and India has shown that it is not lagging behind any
denounced the movement, thus repeating the history other nation in idealism and radicalism. The
of the Russian Revolution of 1905.
Hindus and Mohammedans have been cemented by
New India, however, had tasted of the cup of the closest ties. Younger India has shown to the
freedom and went on its march toward emancipa- world what it desires and what it must have for
tion. By the 20th of the month nearly half of the self-existence. India has determined what it needs
entire country was placed under martial law. The and it is also determined to get it. The people
following day the Governor General issued an ordi will not adopt violent means simply for the sake
nance ordering deportation to the Andaman Islands of violence. By birth and by heritage they abhor
for life, or the extreme form of punishment, for it, in practice as well as in theory. But if their
political suspects tried under martial law. He for- passive efforts are met by active and brutal opposi-
bade the publication of all newspapers except those tion, they will not hesitate to adopt those measures
first passed upon and censored by government for the time being, to smash to pieces all civilized
agents.
Christian methods of subjection, and to smash them
Following the martial law order, all news from
once for all.
India, meager as it had always been, ceased. It In idealism and radicalism India is not inferior
was not until the Afghans on the northwestern to the inspired idealists of other countries. In
frontier invaded India on the 9th of May that any some parts of the country the people are attempting
news was permitted to reach America. The news to adopt communal ownership of land and property,
stated that the Afghans were guarding the Khyber and to revive their indigenous democratic village
and Bolan passes, the only two passes connecting community system. They have succeeded in a few
India with Afghanistan, and through Afghanistan sections, such as in the Punjab, where the revolution
with Russia. The Afghans further sent a mission to
has gained a strong foothold. The official press
Moscow, thereby violating the treaty of 1880, by states that the “ fanatical ” Hindus are demanding
which the British had forced them to relinquish expropriation of landlords, and communal owner-
their right to
treat independently with other
ship and control of the earth! It is true that these
nations.
illogical” and simple Hindus have always held
These facts are especially significant when we
that the land belongs to the people, and now they
consider that the Afghans were supplied with ma-
are determined to see that this becomes a reality.
chine guns, apparently from some European source,
The social and economic ideals of the people to the
and that Hindu revolutionists have been stationed
north of the Himalayas are not new to the Hindus.
in Moscow working with the Russian Socialist
Government since November, 1917. Furthermore,
SAILENDRA NATH GHOSE.


598
THE DIAL
June 14
1)
is, to put it mildly, not warranted by any authentic stand? Why was the preparation of this pamphlet
Propaganda in Schools
America's part in the great
war was just cribe Kerensky's failure to the opposition of the
and needed no specious apology. Nevertheless the extremists, Lenin and Trotzky," is too simple a
Department of Education in New York City issued solution for a highly complicated historical problem.
such an apology for use in the schools in the form Lenin and Trotzky are then accused of “betraying"
of A Syllabus of the World War, with instructions Russia into the hands of the Germans. If this means
to principals of high schools to present the docu anything, it means that Lenin and Trotzky con-
ment to all their pupils " in the most efficient and sciously and wilfully delivered Russia into the hands
inspiring manner —to use the language of Mr. Et of the Kaiser and his war lords. Even the strongest
tinger. All additional material, runs the notice to cpponent of the Lenin regime must admit that this
principals, must be “approved by the principal be- is at best merely an allegation. To raise it to the
fore it is used in the class room.” Apparently the level of an established fact to be used in the school
purpose of this publication was to make clear to room is to fly in the face of all canons of historical
high-school students the nature of the German evidence. The Brest-Litovsk treaty is represented
system against which we waged war and 'to ex as the wilful deed of these two leaders-apparently
pound the reasons which induced our government
conditions in Russia and the refusal of the Allies
to take up arms.
to render aid having nothing to do with it.
In large part the pamphlet is confined to state Finally, by what warrant does the Department
ments of fact which the most exacting historian
of Education carry on a campaign among the school
will not question. Facts, however, do not always
children of New York in support of universal mili-
tell the whole truth. For example. This sylla- tary service as a permanent public policy (pages
bus states: “Great Britain responded [to Belgium's 67-71)? Surely it is a historical fact that general
appeal in support of her integrity] with a note to conscription stands upon the books as a temporary
Germany warning her to respect Belgium's neutral measure to meet a great emergency. The advocacy
ity, and when Germany, disregarding the warning,
of universal service as a settled national policy is
invaded Belgium, England declared war, August
therefore nothing but propaganda—wise, honorable
,
4.'
This is a truth, but not the whole truth. It
correct, let us admit for the sake of argument—but
implies that the invasion of Belgium was the cause
nevertheless propaganda. Our schools, it would ap-
of Britain's entrance-an interpretation contrary to
pear, are not the places where conflicting views of
the plain record of the British White Book.
future policy are to be fairly considered, but insti-
On July 29 Sir Edward Grey warned the Ger tutions for propaganda.
man Ambassador in London not to be misled into
To sum up, this pamphlet, considered as a his-
assuming that Great Britain would stand aside in
torial document, is no credit to the Department
case Germany and France were involved in war;
of Education, and as a piece of patriotic argument
on July 30 he wrote to Sir E. Goschen that Great
will defeat its own purposes. America's cause was
Britain would not bargain in the matter of Belgian just—its defense needs no misuse of facts.
neutrality; on July 31 he stated that the “ German
What of the children whose minds are to be
government do not expect our neutrality"; on the
fashioned under this syllabus? They cannot be
same day he declared " the preservation of the neu-
trality of Belgium might be, I would not say a de-
cut off from the public libraries where they may
cisive, but an important factor in determining our
learn of things not included in the whole book
attitude"; on August 2 (before Belgium was in-
of complete orthodoxy. This being so—with boys
vaded) he assured M. Cambon that “if the Ger-
and girls reading far and wide in many books and
man fleet comes into the Channel or through the
magazines, listening to many voices in the outside
North Sea to undertake hostile operations against
world—will not the teacher who recites without
French coasts or shipping, the British feet will give
comment this syllabus come to judgment and be
all protection in its power.” Is it too much to say,
confused and confounded in the presence of open,
therefore, that on this vital point the syllabus mis-
eyed and wondering youth? Has the Board of
leads teacher and student?
Education considered the moral effect of such a pre-
The account (page 42) of the Russian Revolution
dicament upon its teachers ?
And where do the trained teachers of history
records that have come through to us.
To
taken from their hands and nothing but the
as-


1919
599
THE DIAL
assistance " of a few of them invited? Are they to
be mere phonographs reciting by rote lessons pre-
pared and approved by superintendents and
principals? If so, of what use is their long
special preparation-their habits of research
and truth-testing—their knowledge of the use
of documentary evidence? Have we the
right to ask that history in the schools be
entrusted to the collective body of trained his-
torical teachers ?
If this syllabus is what we are to expect from the
public schools in the coming age, then we must look
elsewhere for education.
CHARLES A. BEARD.
not
The Captains of Finance and the Engineers
IN
N MORE THAN ONE RESPECT the industrial system the due working of this inclusive going concern it
of today is notably different from anything that has is essential that that corps of technological specialists
gone before. It is eminently a system, self-balanced who by training, insight, and interest make up the
and comprehensive; and it is a system of interlock general staff of industry must have a free hand in
ing mechanical processes, rather than of skilful the disposal of its available resources, in materials,
manipulation. It is mechanical rather than manual. equipment, and man power, regardless of any na-
It is an organization of mechanical powers and ma tional pretensions or any vested interests. Any de-
terial resources, rather than of skilled craftsmen and gree of obstruction, diversion, or withholding of any
tools; although the skilled workmen and tools are of the available industrial forces, with a view to the
also an indispensable part of its comprehensive special gain of any nation or any investor, unavoid-
mechanism. It is of an impersonal nature, after the ably brings on a dislocation of the system; which
fashion of the material sciences, on which it con involves a disproportionate lowering of its working
stantly draws. It runs to quantity production efficiency and therefore a disproportionate loss to
of specialized and standardized goods and services. the whole, and therefore a net loss to all its parts.
For all these reasons it lends itself to systematic con And all the while the statesmen are at work to
trol under the direction of industrial experts, skilled divert and obstruct the working forces of this in-
technologists, who may be called "production engi dustrial system, here and there, for the special ad-
neers," for want of a better term.
vantage of one nation and another at the cost of
This industrial system runs on as an inclusive the rest; and the captains of finance are working, at
organization of many and diverse interlocking me cross purposes and in collusion, to divert whatever
chanical processes, interdependent and balanced they can to the special gain of one vested interest
among themselves in such a way that the due work and another, at any cost to the rest. So it happens
ing of any part of it is conditioned on the due work that the industrial system is deliberately handicapped
ing of all the rest. Therefore it will work at its with dissension, misdirection, and unemployment of
best only on condition that these industrial experts, material resources, equipment, and man power, at
production engineers, will work together on a com every turn where the statesmen or the captains of
mon understanding; and more particularly on con finance can touch its mechanism; and all the civi-
dition that they must not work at cross purposes.
lized peoples are suffering privation together because
These technological specialists whose constant super-
their general staff of industrial experts are in this
vision is indispensable to the due working of the way required to take orders and submit to sabotage
industrial system constitute the general staff of in-
at the hands of the statesmen and the vested in-
dustry, whose work it is to control the strategy of
Politics and investment are still allowed
production at large and to keep an oversight of the
to decide matters of industrial policy which should
tactics of production in detail.
plainly be left to the discretion of the general staff
Such is the nature of this industrial system on
of production engineers driven by no commercial
whose due working depends the material welfare of bias.
all the civilized peoples. It is an inclusive system
drawn on a plan of strict and comprehensive inter-
No doubt this characterization of the industrial
dependence, such that, in point of material welfare, system and its besetting tribulations will seem over-
no nation and no community has anything to gain drawn. However, it is not intended to apply to
at the cost of any other nation or community. In
any date earlier than the twentieth century, or to
point of material welfare, all the civilized peoples any backward community that still lies outside the
have been drawn together by the state of the in sweep of the mechanical industry. Only gradually
dustrial arts into a single going concern. And for during the past century, while the mechanical in-
terests,


600
THE DIAL
June 14
close-knit for that. And yet, that extent and degree ing division of powers between the business man-
the financial end. So there also set in a correspond-
work of the technologist to determine, on technologie
dustry has progressively been taking over the pro not be far distant when the interlocking processes
duction of goods and services, and going over to of the industrial system shall have become so closely
quantity production, has the industrial system taken interdependent and so delicately balanced that even
on this character of an inclusive organization of the ordinary modicum of sabotage involved in the
interlocking processes and interchange of materials; conduct of business as usual will bring the whole to
and it is only in the twentieth century that this a fatal collapse. The derangement and privation
cumulative progression has come to a head with brought on by any well organized strike of the
such effect that this characterization is now visibly larger sort argues to the same effect.
becoming true. And even now it will hold true, In effect, the progressive advance of this industrial
visibly and securely, only as applies to the leading system towards an all-inclusive mechanical balance
mechanical industries, those main lines of industry of interlocking processes appears to be approaching
that shape the main conditions of life, and in which a critical pass, beyond which it will no longer be
quantity production has become the common and practicable to leave its control in the hands of busi-
indispensable rule. Such are, for examples: trans ness men working at cross purposes for private gain,
port and communication, the production and indus or to entrust its continued administration to others
trial use of coal, oil, electricity and water power, than suitably trained technological experts, pro-
the production of steel and other metals; of wood duction engineers without a commercial interest.
pulp, lumber and other building materials; of tex What these men may then do with it all is not
tiles and rubber, as also grain-milling and much of so plain; the best they can do may not be good
the grain-growing, together with meat-packing and enough; but the negative proposition is becoming
a good share of the stock-raising industry.
sufficiently plain, that this mechanical state of the
There is, of course, a large volume of industry in industrial arts will not long tolerate the continued
many lines which has not, or only in part and
control of production by the vested interests under
doubtfully, been drawn - into this network of the current businesslike rule of incapacity by
mechanical processes and quantity production, in advisement.
any direct and conclusive fashion. But these other
lines of industry that still stand over on another
In the beginning, that is to say during the early
and older plan of operation are, after all
, outliers growth of the machine industry, and particularly in
and subsidiaries of the mechanically organized in-
that new growth of mechanical industries which
dustrial system, dependent on or subservient to those
arose directly out of the Industrial Revolution,
greater underlying industries which make up the
there was no marked division between the industrial
working body of the system, and which therefore experts and the business managers. That was be-
set the pace for the rest. And in the main, there-
fore the new industrial system had gone far on the
fore, and as regards these greater mechanical in-
road of progressive specialization and complexity,
dustries on whose due working the material welfare
and before business had reached an exactingly large
of the community depends from day to day, this
scale; so that even the business men of that time,
characterization will apply without material abate-
who were without special training in technological
matters, would still be able to exercise something of
But it should be added that even as regards these
greater
, primary and underlying, lines of production stand something of what was required in the
an intelligent oversight of the whole, and to under-
the system has not yet reached a fatal degree of
close-knit interdependence
, balance, and complica and from which
they drew their income. Not und
mechanical conduct of the work which they financed
tion; it will still run along at a very tolerable et usually the designers of industrial processes and
ciency in the face of a very appreciable amount of equipment would then still take care of the financial
persistent derangement. That is to say, the in-
dustrial system at large has not yet become so deli-
end, at the same time that they managed the shop
.
cately balanced a mechanical structure and process
But from an early point in the development there
that the ordinary amount of derangement and sabot-
set in a progressive differentiation, such as to divide
those who designed and administered the industrial
age necessary to the ordinary control of production
by business methods will paralyze the whole out-
processes from those others who designed and man,
right. The industrial system is not yet sufficiently
aged the commercial transactions and took care
of paralysis from which the civilized world's in-
dustry is suffering just now, due to legitimate busi-
agement and the technological experts. It became the
nesslike sabotage, goes to argue that the date may
cal grounds, what could be done in the way of pro-
ment.
of


1919
601
THE DIAL
ductive industry, and to contrive ways and means And (b) the continued advance of the mechanical
of doing it; but the business management always technology has called for an ever-increasing volume
continued to decide, on commercial grounds, how and diversity of special knowledge, and.so has left
much work should be done and what kind and the businesslike captains of finance continually
quality of goods and services should be produced; farther in arrears, so that they have been less and
and the decision of the business management has less capable of comprehending what is required in
always continued to be final, and has always set the the ordinary way of industrial equipment and per-
limit beyond which production must not go. sonnel. They have therefore, in effect, maintained
With the continued growth of specialization the prices at a profitable level by curtailment of output
experts have necessarily had more and more to say rather than by lowering production-cost per unit
in the affairs of industry, but always their findings of output, because they have not had such a work-
as to what work is to be done and what ways and ing acquaintance with the technological facts in the
means are to be employed in production have had case as would enable them to form a passably sound
to wait on the findings of the business managers as judgment of suitable ways and means for lowering
to what will be expedient for the purpose of com production-cost; and at the same time, being shrewd
mercial gain. This division between business business men, they have been unable to rely on the
management and industrial management has con hired-man’s-loyalty• of technologists whom they do
tinued to go forward, at a continually accelerated not understand. The result has been a somewhat
rate, because the special training and experience re distrustful blindfold choice of processes and per-
quired for any passably efficient organization and sonnel and a consequent enforced incompetence in
direction of these industrial processes has continu the management of industry, a curtailment of output
ally grown more exacting, calling for special knowl below the needs of the community, below the pro-
edge and abilities on the part of those who have ductive capacity of the industrial system, and below
this work to do and requiring their undivided in what an intelligent control of production would
terest and their undivided attention to the work have made commercially profitable.
in hand. But these specialists in technological Through the earlier decades of the machine era
knowledge, abilities, interest, and experience, who these limitations imposed on the work of the ex-
have increasingly come into the case in this way— perts by the demands of profitable business and by
inventors, designers, chemists, mineralogists, soil ex the technical ignorance of the business men, appears
perts, crop specialists, production managers and not to have been a heavy handicap, whether as a
engineers of many kinds and denominations—have hindrance to the continued development of techno-
continued to be employees of the captains of in- logical knowledge or as an obstacle to its ordinary
dustry, that is to say, of the captains of finance, use in industry. That was before the mechanical
whose work it has been to commercialize the knowl. industry had gone far in scope, complexity, and
edge and abilities of the industrial experts and turn specialization; and it was also before the continued
them to account for their own gain.
work of the technologists had pushed the industrial
It is perhaps unnecessary to add the axiomatic system to so high a productive capacity that it is
corollary that the captains have always turned the forever in danger of turning out a larger product
technologists and their knowledge to account in this than is required for a profitable business. But
way only so far as would serve their own com gradually, with the passage of time and the ad-
mercial profit, not to the extent of their ability vance of the industrial arts to a wider scope and a
or to the limit set by the material circumstances larger scale, and to an increasing specialization and
or by the needs of the community. The result standardization of processes, the technological know-
has been, uniformly and as a matter of course, ledge that makes up the state of the industrial arts
that the production of goods and services has ad has called for a higher degree of that training that
visedly been stopped short of productive capacity, by makes industrial specialists; and at the same time
curtailment of output and by derangement of the any passably efficient management of industry has
productive system.
There are two main reasons of necessity drawn on them and their special abili-
for this, and both have operated together through-. ties to an ever-increasing extent. At the same time
out the machine era to stop industrial production and by the same shift of circumstances, the captains
increasingly short of productive capacity. (a) The of finance, driven by an increasingly close applica-
commercial need of maintaining a profitable price tion to the affairs of business, have been going
has led to an increasingly imperative curtailment farther out of touch with the ordinary realities of
of the output, as fast as the advance of the in- productive industry; and, it is to be admitted, they
dustrial arts has enhanced the productive capacity. have also continued increasingly to distrust the


602
THE DIAL
June 14
sort.
the present posture and drift of things is unmis-
perience has brought out the fact that corporation they have been so that wherever the production
technological specialists, whom they do not under cratic routine, necessarily comprising the mutual
stand, but whom they can also not get along with-
relations between various corporate concerns, and
out. The captains have per force continued to em best to be taken care of by a clerical staff of trained
ploy the technologists, to make money for them, but accountants; and the same experience has put the
they have done so only reluctantly, tardily, sparingly, financial houses in direct touch with the technolo-
and with a shrewd circumspection; only because and gical general staff of the industrial system, whose
so far as they have been persuaded that the use surveillance has become increasingly imperative to
of these technologists was indispensable to the mak the conduct of any profitable enterprise in industry.
ing of money.
But also, by the same token, it has appeared that the
One outcome of this persistent and pervasive corporation financier of nineteenth-century tradi-
tardiness and circumspection on the part of the tion is no longer of the essence of the case in cor-
captains has been an incredibly and increasingly · poration finance of the larger and more responsible
uneconomical use of material resources, and an in-
He has, in effect, come to be no better than
credibly wastful organization of equipment and an idle wheel in the economic mechanism, serving
man power in those great industries where the only' to take up some of the lubricant.
technological advance has been most marked. In Since and so far as this shift out of the nine-
good part it was this discreditable pass, to which teenth century into the twentieth has been com-
the leading industries had been brought by these pleted, the corporation financier has ceased to be
one-eyed captains of industry, that brought the a captain of industry and has become a lieutenant
regime of the captains to an inglorious close, by of finance; the captaincy having been taken over by
shifting the initiative and discretion in this domain the syndicated investment bankers and administered
out of their hands into those of the investment as a standardized routine of accountancy, having to
bankers. By custom the investment bankers had oc do with the flotation of corporation securities and
r cupied a position between or overlapping the duties with their fluctuating values, and having also some-
of a broker in corporate securities and those of an
thing to do with regulating the rate and volume
underwriter of corporate flotations—such a position,
of output in those industrial enterprises which so
in effect, as is still assigned them in the standard
have passed under the hand of the investment
writings on corporation finance. The increasingly bankers.
large scale of corporate enterprise, as well as the
growth of a mutual understanding among these
By and large, such is the situation of the in-
business concerns, also had its share in this new
dustrial system today, and of that financial business
move. But about this time, too, the “ consulting that controls the industrial system. But this state
engineers were coming notably into evidence in
many of those lines of industry in which corpora-
of things is not so much an accomplished fact handed
on out of the recent past; it is only that such is the
tion finance has habitually been concerned.
culmination in which it all heads up in the im-
So far as concerns the present argument the or med
present, and that such is the visible drift
dinary duties of these consulting engineers have
of things into the calculable future. Only during
been to advise the investment bankers as to the
industrial and commercial soundness, past and pros-
the last few years has the state of affairs in industry
been obviously falling into the shape so outlined, and
pective, of any enterprise that is to be underwritten.
These duties have comprised a painstaking and im-
it is even yet only in those larger and pace-making
partial examination of the physical properties in-
lines of industry which are altogether of the new
technological order that the state of things has
volved in any given case, as well as an equally im-
partial auditing of the accounts and appraisal of the
reached this finished shape. But in these larger
commercial promise of such enterprises, for the
and underlying divisions of the industrial system
guidance of the bankers or syndicate of bankers in-
terested in the case as underwriters. On this ground of that regime of rule-of-thumb, competitive sabor
takable. Meantime very much still stands over out
age, and commercial log-rolling, in which the busi-
and those banking houses that habitually were con-
cerned in the underwriting of corporate enterprises captains have known how to contrive for the chains
well at home, and which has been the best that the
The effect of this move has been two-fold: ex-
agement of that industrial system whose captains
presently arose between the consulting Engineers neslike captains of the old order are so altogether
finance, at its best and soundest, has now become a
matter of comprehensive and standardized bureau-
experts are now taking over the management, out
of the dead hand of the self-made captains, and


1919
603
THE DIAL
wherever they have occasion to inquire into the than an occasional, haphazard, and tentative con-
established conditions of production, they find the trol of some disjointed sector of the industrial equip-
ground cumbered with all sorts of incredible make ment, with no direct or decisive relation to that per-
shifts of waste and inefficiency—such makeshifts as sonnel of productive industry that may be called the
would perhaps pass muster with any moderately officers of the line and the rank and file. It is still
stupid elderly layman, but which look like blind the unbroken privilege of the financial management
fold guesswork to these men who know something and its financial agents to “hire and fire.” The
of the advanced technology and its working-out. final disposition of all the industrial forces still
Hitherto, then, the growth and conduct of this remains in the hands of the business men, who still
industrial system presents this singular outcome. continue to dispose of these forces for other than
The technology—the state of the industrial arts-
industrial ends. And all the while it is an open
which takes effect in this mechanical industry is in secret that with a reasonably free hand the produc-
an eminent sense a joint stock of knowledge and tion experts would today readily increase the
experience held in common by the civilized peoples. ordinary output of industry by several fold, -
It requires the use of trained and instructed work- variously estimated at some 300 per cent to 1200
men-born, bred, trained, and instructed at the cost per cent of the current output. And what stands
of the people at large. So also it requires, with a in the way of so increasing the ordinary output of
continually more exacting insistence, a corps of goods and services is business as usual.
highly trained and specially gifted experts, of divers
and various kinds. These, too, are born, bred, and Right lately these technologists have begun to
trained at the cost of the community at large, and
become uneasily class-conscious ” and to reflect
they draw their requisite special knowledge from that they together constitute the indispensable
the community's joint stock of accumulated ex General Staff of the industrial system. Their class
perience. These expert
men, technologists, consciousness has taken the immediate form of a
engineers, or whatever name may best suit them growing sense of waste and confusion in the manage-
make up the indispensable General Staff of the in ment of industry by the financial agents. They are
dustrial system; and without their immediate and beginning to take stock of that all-pervading mis-
unremitting guidance and correction the industrial management of industry that is inseparable from its
system will not work. It is a mechanically control for commercial ends. All of which brings
'organized structure of technical processes designed,
home à realization of their own shame and of
installed, and conducted by these production damage to the common good. So the engineers are
engineers. Without them and their constant at beginning to draw together and ask themselves,
tention the industrial equipment, the mechanical ap-
“What about it?"
pliances of industry, will foot up to just so much This uneasy movement among the technologists
junk. The material welfare of the community is set in, in an undefined and fortuitous way, in the
unreservedly bound up with the due working of closing years of the nineteenth cenutry; when the
this industrial system, and therefore with its un consulting engineers, and then presently the “effi-
reserved control by the engineers, who alone are ciency engineers," began to make scattered correc-
competent to manage it. To do their work as it tions in detail, which showed up the industrial in-
should be done these men of the industrial general competence of those elderly laymen who were do-
staff must have a free hand, unhampered by com-
ing a conservative business at the cost of industry.
mercial considerations and reservations; for the pro The consulting engineers of the standard type,
duction of the goods and services needed by the com both then and since then, are commercialized tech-
munity they neither need nor are they in any de nologists, whose work it is to appraise the in-
gree benefited by any supervision or interference dustrial value of any given enterprise with a view
from the side of the owners. Yet the owners, now
to its commercial exploitation. They are a cross
represented, in effect, by the syndicated investment between a technological specialist and a commercial
bankers, continue to control the industrial experts agent, beset with the limitations of both and com-
and limit their discretion arbitrarily, for their own monly not fully competent in either line. Their
commercial gain, regardless of the needs of the com normal position is that of an employee of the in-
munity.
vestment bankers, on a stipend or a retainer, and
Hitherto these men who so make up the general it has ordinarily been their fortune to shift over
staff of the industrial system have not drawn to in time from a technological footing to a frankly
gether into anything like a self-directing working commercial one. The case of the efficiency en-
force; nor have they been vested with anything more gineers, or scientific-management experts, is some-


604
THE DIAL
June 14
never concluded between capital and labor, between
looked for in the control of productive industry and
in the distribution and use of its product. These
what similar. They too have set out to appraise, they are beginning to draw together on a common
exhibit, and correct the commercial shortcomings ground of understanding, as men who are concerned
of the ordinary management of those industrial es with the ways and means of tangible performance
tablishments which they investigate, to persuade in the way of productive industry, according to the
the business men in charge how they may reason state of the industrial arts as they know them at
ably come in for larger net earnings by a more their best; and there is a growing conviction among
closely shorn exploitation of the industrial forces at them that they together constitute the sufficient and
their disposal. During the opening years of the indispensable general staff of the mechanical in-
new century a lively interest centered on the views dustries, on whose unhindered team-work depends
and expositions of these two groups of industrial ex the due working of the industrial system and there-
perts; and not least was the interest aroused by their fore also the material welfare of the civilized peo-
exhibits of current facts indicating an all-pervading ples. So also, to these men who are trained in the
lag, leak, and friction in the industrial system, due stubborn logic of technology nothing is quite real
to its disjointed and one-eyed management by com that cannot be stated in terms of tangible per-
mercial adventurers bent on private gain.
formance; and they are accordingly coming to un-
During these few years of the opening century derstand that the whole fabric of credit and corpora.
the members of this informal guild of engineers at tion finance is a tissue of make-believe.
large have been taking an interest in this question Credit obligations and financial transactions rest
of habitual mismanagement by ignorance and com on certain principles of legal formality which have
mercial sabotage, even apart from the commercial been handed down from the eighteenth century,
imbecility of it all. But it is the
young
rather than and which therefore antedate the mechanical in-
the old among them who see industry in any other dustry and carry no secure conviction to men
light than its commercial value. Circumstances
trained in the logic of that industry. Within this
have decided that the older generation of the craft technological system of tangible performance cor-
have become pretty well commercialized. Their poration finance and all its works and gestures are
habitual outlook has been shaped by a long and un-
completely idle; it all comes into the working scheme
broken apprenticeship to the corporation financiers of the engineers only as a gratuitous intrusion which
and the investment bankers; so that they still habitu could be barred out without deranging the work
ally see the industrial system as a contrivance for
the round-about process of making money.
at any point, provided only that men made up their
Ac mind to that effect-that is to say, provided the
cordingly, the established official Associations and make-believe of absentee ownership
Institutes of Engineers, which are officered and
tinued. Its only obvious effect on the work which
engineered by the elder engineers, old and young,
the engineers have to take care of is waste of
also continue to show the commercial bias of their
materials and retardation of the work. So the next
creators, in what they criticize and in what they question which the engineers are due to ask regard-
propose. But the new generation which has been
coming on during the present century are not simi sabotage
, credit, and unearned income is likely to be;
ing this timeworn fabric of ownership, finance,
larly true to that tradition of commercial engineer- Why cumbers it the ground? And they are likely
ing that makes the technological man an awestruck
to find the scriptural answer ready to their hand.
lieutenant of the captain of finance.
It would be hazardous to surmise how, how soon,
By training, and perhaps also by native bent, the
on what provocation, and with what effect the guild
technologists find it easy and convincing to size up
of engineers are due to realize that they constitute a
men and things in terms of tangible performance
, guild,
and that the material fortunes of the civilized
as their apprenticeship to the captains of finance may already sufficiently plain that the industrial.com
to them. Many of the younger generation are bea gineers are drawing together to some such end.
ginning to understand that engineering begins and
ends in the domain of tangible performance, and Hitherto it has been usual to count on the in-
that commercial expediency is another matter. In-
deed, they are beginning to understand that com-
terested negotiations continually carried on and
mercial expediency has nothing better to contribute
to the engineer's work than so much lag, leak, and
friction. The four years' experience of the war
to bring about whatever readjustments
has also been highly instructive on that head. So
were discon
the agents of the investors and the body of workmen
,
are to be


1919
605
THE DIAL
negotiations have necessarily been, and continue to standardized, mechanical, and highly technical inter-
be, in the nature of business transactions, bargain locking processes of production, there has gradually
ing for a price, since both parties to the negotiation come into being this corps of technological produc-
continue to stand on the consecrated ground of tion specialists, into whose keeping the due function-
ownership, free bargain, and self-help; such as the ing of the industrial system has now drifted by force
commercial wisdom of the eighteenth century saw, of circumstance. They are, by force of circum-
approved and certified it all, in the time before the stance, the keepers of the community's material wel-
coming of this perplexing industrial system. In the fare; although they have hitherto been acting, in
course of these endless negotiations between the effect, as keepers and providers of free income for
owners and their workmen there has been some loose the kept classes. They are thrown into the position
and provisional syndication of claims and forces on of responsible directors of the industrial system,
both sides; so that each of these two recognized and by the same move they are in a position to be-
parties to the industrial controversy has come to come arbiters of the community's material welfare,
make up a loose-knit vested interest, and each speaks They are becoming class-conscious, and they are no
for its own special claims as a party in interest. longer driven by a commercial interest, in any such
Each is contending for some special gain for itself degree as will make them a vested interest in that
and trying to drive a profitable bargain for itself, commercial sense in which the syndicated owners
and hitherto no disinterested spokesman for the and the federated workmen are vested interests,
community at large or for the industrial system as They are, at the same time, numerically and by
a going concern has cut into this controversy be habitual outlook, no such heterogeneous and un-
tween these contending vested interests. The out wieldy body as the federated workmen, whose num-
come has been businesslike concession and com bers and scattering interest has left all their en-
promise, in the nature of bargain and sale. It is deavors substantially nugatory. In short, the en-
true, during the war, and for the conduct of the gineers are in a position to make the next move,
war, there were some half-concerted measures taken By comparison with the population at large, in-
by the Administration in the interest of the nation cluding the financial powers and the kept classes,
at large, as a belligerent; but it has always been the technological specialists which come in question
tacitly agreed that these were extraordinary war here are a very inconsiderable number; yet this
measures, not to be countenanced in time of peace. small number is indispensable to the continued work.
In time of peace the accepted rule is still business as ing of the productive industries. So slight are their
usual; that is to say, investors and workmen wran numbers, and so sharply defined and homogeneous
gling together on a footing of business as usual. is their class, that a sufficiently compact and in-
These negotiations have necessarily been inconclu clusive organization of their forces should arrange
sive. So long as ownership of resources and in itself almost as a matter of course, so soon as any
dustrial plant is allowed, or so long as it is al appreciable proportion of them shall be moved by
lowed any degree of control or consideration in the any common purpose.
And the common purpose
conduct of industry, nothing more substantial can is not far to seek, in the all-pervading industrial
come of any readjustment than a concessive mitiga confusion, obstruction, waste, and retardation which
tion of the owners' interference with production. business as usual continually throws in their face. At
There is accordingly nothing subversive in these the same time they are the leaders of the industrial
bouts of bargaining between the federated workmen personnel, the workmen, the officers of the line and
and the syndicated owners. It is a game of chance the rank and file; and these are coming into a frame
and skill played between two contending vested in of mind to follow their leaders in any adventure
terests for private gain, in which the industrial sys that holds a promise of advancing the common
tem as a going concern enters only as a victim of in good.
terested interference. Yet the material welfare of To those men, soberly trained in a spirit of tang-
the community, and not least of the workmen, turns ible performance and endowed with something more
on the due working of this industrial system, with than an even share of the sense of workmanship,
out interference. Concessive mitigation of the right and endowed also with the common heritage of
to interfere with production, on the part of either partiality for the rule of Live and Let Live, the
one of these vested interests, can evidently come disallowance of an outworn and obstructive right of
to nothing more substantial than a concessive miti absentee ownership is not likely to seem a shocking
gation.
infraction of the sacred realities. That customary
But owing to the peculiar technological character right of ownership by virtue of which the vested
of this industrial system, with its specialized, interests continue to control the industrial system


606
June 14
THE DIAL
for the benefit of the kept classes, belongs to an older
order of things than the mechanical industry. It
has come out of a past that was made up of small
things and traditional make-believe. For all the
purposes of that scheme of tangible performance
that goes to make up the technologist's world, it is
without form and void. So that, given time for due
irritation, it should by no means come as a sur-
prise if the guild of engineers are provoked to put
their heads together and, quite out of hand, dis-
allow that large ownership that goes to make the
vested interests and unmake the industrial system.
And there stand behind them the massed and rough-
handed legions of the industrial rank and file, ill at
ease and looking for new things. The older com-
mercialized generation among them would, of
course, ask themselves: Why should we worry?
What do we stand to gain? But the younger gen-
eration, not so hard-bitten by commercial experience,
will be quite as likely to ask themselves: What do
we stand to lose? And there is the patent fact
that such a thing as a general strike of the techno-
logical specialists in industry need involve no more
than a minute fraction of one per cent of the popu-
lation; yet it would swiftly bring a collapse of the
old order and sweep the timeworn fabric of finance
and sabotage into the discard for good and all.
Such a catastrophe would doubtless be deplorable.
It would look something like the end of the world
to all those persons who take their stand with the
kept classes, but it may come to seem no more than
an incident of the day's work to the engineers and
to the rough-handed legions of the rank and file. It
is a situation which may well be deplored. But there
is no gain in losing patience with a conjunction of
circumstances. And it can do no harm to take
stock of the situation and recognize that, by force
of circumstance, it is now open to the Council of
Technological Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies to
make the next move, in their own way and in their
own good time. When and what this move will be,
if any, or even what it will be like, is not some-
thing on which a layman can hold a confident
opinion. But so much seems clear, that the in-
dustrial dictatorship of the captain of finance is
now held on sufferance of the engineers and is liable
at any time to be discontinued at their discretion
as a matter of convenience.
THORSTEIN VEBLEN.
In My Room I Read and Write
In my room I read and write.
Somewhere men cry out and fight,
Struggling for the thing they need;
Somewhere women reach and take
What time withholds, and wrench and make
Days into something odd and new.
They say words which are wild and true.
They bend life like a rod of glass
That they have heated in the flame
Of their wills. They would know shame
If they did not bring to pass
Mighty things for beauty's sake
And truth's. And they will never sheathe
The sword they fight with while they breathe.
Shelter, clothing, food and ease
May not beat them to their knees;
Need of touch and word, and rest
Will not hold them from the quest.
All in good time, after stress,
As they know well, they shall possess.
Somewhere men and women take
What time withholds, and wrench and make
Life into something strange and new.
Women seek for what is true.
Under wrong, men turn and fight.
In my room I read and write.
MARY CAROLYN DAVIES.


THE DIAL
CLARENCE BRITTEN
ROBERT MORSS LOVETT, Editor
In Charge of the Reconstruction Program:
JOHN DEWEY
THORSTEIN' VEBLEN
HELEN MAROT
The TREATY WITH AUSTRIA IN, INCOMPLETE behind him demanded such humiliation and
form is now before the American people. So far as spoliation. And to what end? Certain interests in
may be judged it approaches more nearly the Brest this country may profit by the ruin of German in-
Litovsk model than the Treaty with Germany. The dustry, but the business of the United States as a
duty of liberals in the Allied countries toward it is whole can only suffer. We have no legitimate re-
therefore even clearer than toward the German venge to seek from Germany, no great injury, mate-
Treaty. It is the duty which rested upon every rial or moral, to make even. We have inflicted
German and Austrian liberal in regard to the peace vastly more harm on Germany than we have re-
of Brest-Litovsk, and which some of them fulfilled. ceived. Our attitude is to be explained solely by
It is to repudiate both compacts utterly, and allow a survival of war psychology. We are still stupid
them to be ratified, if it must be, only under pro and blind from hate, and unfortunately that hate
test. No other course of action has any moral sanc has extended itself to Russia. The Armistice
tion. As to its practical value, it is to be noted that balked us of what we regarded as legitimate prey-
already, under vigorous and forthright criticism the destruction of German cities and the massacre
of liberal journals, the Allied nations are disposed to of Germans on German soil—and in these circum-
make the German reply a basis for modification of stances we have found an outlet for our feeling in
terms—in other words to substitute a negotiated for our former ally. Thus we have made it impossible
a dictated peace.
to use the forces that are sincerely interested in a
new international order, and we are compelled to
resort to the doubtful process of wishing such an
The TREATIES WITH GERMANY AND AUSTRIA
order on our suspicious and half-unwilling asso-
are a clear proof that, however much the Allies may ciates. In other words the United States is de-
want a League of Nations, they want other things termined to sacrifice the one tangible object for
more. Indeed, France, Japan, and Italy, the three which it fought, not to material advantage or to
predatory members of the Alliance, from the first calculated revenge, but to a state of mind. And
regarded the League as a menace to their aggressive for that state of mind, which blocks his own en-
policjes and made their acquiescence a matter of pur- deavors, Mr. Wilson is largely responsible. He
chase at a ruinous price. England wishes a League is reaping the fruit of his panic-stricken war policy.
only as a validation of her empire, is unwilling to When he suspended free speech and trampled upon
sacrifice any of her possessive rights, and is under opinion, when he gave the country over to the mob
suspicion of seeking to use the mandatory system for law of security leagues and defense societies, when
imperialistic ends. The United States wants the he sold his bonds on atrocity stories and set up a
League, but is unwilling to sacrifice to it her posi- department of public falsehood by way of prop-
tion in the Western Hemisphere. Even with these aganda, he was preparing exactly such a situation
reservations it might still be possible to launch the as he will confront on his return-a country which
League by virtue of the measure of hope and good will not renounce any of the fruits of victory which
will that remains in the neutral and defeated na others are gathering, which will not make place
tions, including China and Russia, but by the for Germany and Russia in the new order of the
Treaties this last hope is frustrated. The victors world, because it is still “in no condition to do
will not yield any of the attributes of a strong business.”
peace to secure the League. On the part of the
first four partners this attitude is so bound up with
territorial and financial claims as to be readily un-
PRESIDENT WILSON'S RECENT SPEECHES IN PARIS
derstood, but on the part of the United States it will do little for his own credit, the service of his
is explicable only in terms of national hypocrisy and country, or the honor of her dead. On May 10 he
stupidity. No one believes that Mr. Wilson would delivered an address before the French Academy of
have sacrificed the essential features of his new
Moral and Political Sciences in which he delivered
world order to the humiliation and spoliation of
himself of his usual well-laundered sentiments:
Germany if he had not realized that the country My view of the State is that it must stop and listen to
60


608
THE DIAL
June 14
I
who at his bidding died for a better world is ciety devoted to the achievement of industrial
what I have to say, no matter how humble I am. ... THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR, IN CON-
have always been among those who believe that the great-
est freedom of speech was the greatest safety. . . . In
vention at Atlantic City, is pondering no less a
this free air of free speech men get into that sort of com-
problem than the future of the State. Is indus-
munication with another which constitutes the basis of all trial democracy, so warmly and vaguely recom-
common achicvement.
mended by President Wilson, to come as the gift of
One pauses aghast at this oily hypocrisy. Mr. Wil a government of politically federated geographic
son knows that there are hundreds of his fellow areas, controlled by a labor vote, or will this democ-
citizens in prison for speaking their minds, not to racy be first arrived at within self-controlled pro-
the State but to spies set by the State to trap them. duction units, destined finally themselves to achieve
He knows it because he has just commuted the sen federation and to replace the whole geographic-rep-
tence of such a fellow-citizen-William Powell, resentative system? If Federated labor and all
of Lansing, Michigan-from twenty years to one labor is to make an intelligent choice between eco-
as punishment for saying in private that the stories nomic and political means, such a selection must be
of German atrocities were propaganda, that he conditioned by a choice between a future built from
could not believe in President Wilson, that the war the bottom, and one that hangs from the top. With
was a rich man's war. One year of confinement in all due deference to the A. F. Li's deliberations as
Leavenworth, which, with the unearned increment to the advisability of its participation in a Labor
of tuberculosis
, means death, and $5,000 fine which party, it may be said that labor has already made
has already reduced this man's family to beggary! its choice of means and ends. It is not necessary to
This is President Wilson's conception of free speech. call on Russia for proof. Great Britain will serve;
We submit that he has made the French Academy the December elections found British labor not im-
of Political and Moral Sciences the victim of a potent but politically indifferent; by the extension
hoax which would be silly if it were not tragic.
of the shop-steward movement, and by the initiation
Mr. Wilson's Memorial Day Address is likewise of strikes in sharp succession, British labor has won
notable for establishing a complete antithesis be a near-dictatorship and has even succeeded in sweep-
tween words and deeds. It has the same fulsome ing into its control a group hitherto subservient to
quality as the address to the Academy, the same
reactionary control—the police. In Spain the Con-
hollow rhetoric—but here tragically misplaced. federacion General del Trabajo devotes itself not
“ It is delightful.
It is more delightful.” to the manipulation of political machinery but to
The world cares little for the stages of Mr.
the sabotage of government. Canadian authorities
Wilson's hedonism. It cares even less for the find themselves practically powerless before a labor
tawdry second-hand verbal ornament of one who movement which embraces not only the employees of
cherishes the platitude as a figure of speech. But
private industry but an army of the servants of thu
when he makes the death of his soldiers an argu-
State. And the United States itself offers shan
ment for the cause which he has betrayed, the mind
of the reader is divided between amazement at the
enough contrasts between indifferent and ineffective
voting and earnest and powerful direct action. The
effrontery and horror at the sacrilege. "Shall I
War was not the sole author of today's distrust of
ever speak a word of counsel which is inconsistent
with the assurances I gave them when they came
the political State ; perhaps the Peace has done even
over?” This is quoted from his address at New ganisms which are supposed to represent them. If
more to alienate the people from the political or-
York before his second departure for France.
the War brought the breakdown of bureaucracy,
Then it was a promise ; now it' is a broken promise.
“Here I stand consecrated in the spirit of the men
the Peace has done as great a disservice to the re-
ligion of nationalism. The State has been proved
who were once my comrades and who are now
gone and who left me under eternal bonds of fidel-
both impotent and morally irresponsible. The ten-
ity.” One is forced to ask: Where does Mr. Wil-
dency of the time is toward decentralization and a
son stand? Perhaps at Fiume. What are those
new beginning. Neither State Socialism nor State
eternal bonds? The recognition of the British pro-
Capitalism, with their common dependence on
tectorate in Egypt, the cession of the Saar Valley
geographic-political machinery, can be accommodated
to a new era that promises, not to bring men to-
to France, of South Tyrol to Italy, of Shantung gether in horizontal layers that cut straight across
to Japan, the starvation of Russia, the economic war
after the war against Germany. It is too much to
every economic relationship, but to unite them in
expect that he should characterize these achieve-
vertical self-governing units as their work unites
ments in truthful language. He has properly left
them in the factory in the day time, rather than
that to Mr. Debs. It is perhaps too much to ex-
in the club or on the street corner at night. Direct
pect that he should refrain from exalting himself
action is a tremendous protest against the existence
in the light of what he would like to have
of a system of artificial relationships and political
done in place of these things.
indirection, and a demand for the recognition
But that he
should accept them in the name of the men
of production groups-economic successors
the family—as the natural elements of a so,
blasphemy.
democracy.
to


1919
609
THE DIAL
ET CIRCENSES WAS THE FORMULA FOR THE
66
(
PANEM
business proposition in their own right, a source of
politicians of Imperial Rome, on which they relied earnings " and a vested interest. And in ordi-
to keep the underlying population from imagining nary times of peace or war the movies supply what
vain remedies for their own hard case. Mutatis appears to be required in the way of politically
mutandis, in the vernacular of the twentieth cen salutary dissipation. Yet in time of stress, as is now
tury, this would be as much as to say, The Bread evident, something more enticing may be required
Line and the Movies.” This is not a literal transla to distract popular attention securely and keep the
tion of the Latin motto. It amounts to an underlying population from taking stock of the
equivalence of practice rather than an equivalence statemen's promises and performance. At a critical
of words—panis, of course, is Latin for “bread juncture, when large chances of profit and loss for
rather than “the bread line”; and the nearest mod the vested interests are in the balance, it may be
ern equivalent for circenses would perhaps be the well to take thought and add something to the
ballfield” rather than the movies.” But then, as workday routine of the movies, even at some ex-
the Romans would say, tempora mutantur.
pense. In case of urgent need, to stabilise a doubt-
Panis, of course signifies“ bread ” a product of fully manageable popular sentiment, the rant and
the baker's art, rather than the breadline, which is swagger of many subsidised heroes and the pomp
a product of the associated charities. But in effect, and circumstance and moving show incident to a
as it comes into this Imperial Roman motto, panem victory loan should have a salutary use of the same
signified that certain salutary minimum of bread kind; expensive, no doubt, but then the coșt need
without which the underlying population could not not be borne by those vested interests that are to be
be counted on to tolerate the continued rule of the safeguarded from the corrosive afterthought of the
Imperial politicians and of those vested interests underlying population. And then there are avail-
that were entrusted to the care of the politicians.
able such heroic spectacles as a victory fleet,” to-
So it appears that the politicians of Imperial Rome gether with parades, arches, and banners, -miles of
allowed the underlying population a ration of act banners and square miles of heroic printed matter;
ual bread, at some cost to the vested interests. It costly, no doubt, but also doubtless salutary. Só
appears that the astute politicians of Imperial Rome also, in case of need there is something to be made
dared go no nearer to the modern democratic in of such a thing as an overseas fight; particularly
stitution of the bread line. To those democratic if it be abundantly staged and somewhat more than
statesmen who now bear up the banners of the abundantly advertised. It is a potent resource,
vested interests—also called the standards of Law capable of lifting the common man's afterthought in-
and Order—this prodigal conduct of the Roman to the upper air, instead of letting it run along the
politicians will perhaps seem weak and little-minded. ground of material fact, where it might do mischief;
But something is to be allowed in extenuation of costly, no doubt, but then the cost need not be
their pusillanimity. The politicians of Imperial counted so closely, since it is the common man
Rome had not the use of liberty loans and machine who pays the cost, the same common man who
guns; and then the underlying population of that is forever in danger of getting into mischief by
cruder age was perhaps less patient and reasonable, reflecting unduly on what the statesmen have been
less given to promises and procrastination. Tem- using him for. And, of course, since it is the com-
pora mutantur. The democratic statesmen of the mon man who is to be relieved of afterthought, it is
twentieth century are more fortunate in both re only reasonable that the common man should pay
the cost.
spects. More particularly, the mechanical ap-
pliances for preserving law and order have been Panem et circenses : The Breadline and the
Movies.
greatly perfected; and by suitable fiscal methods the
underlying population which is to be “kept in
hand" can be induced to pay for these mechanical
appliances by which they are to be kept in hand. BenjaMIN GLASSBERG
So the statesmen of the twentieth century are en-
from the New York public schools, for stating (1)
abled to let the bread line serve in place of the bread, that the Soviet regime of Russia had been maligned
and thereby to save the net output of the Republic's in America, (2) that testimony to this effect had
industry more nearly intact for the use of the kept been suppressed by the State Department, (3) that
classes.
a teacher in New York could not tell 'the truth
about Russia. The first two statements are the
But in the matter of circenses, too, there has
been change and improvement during these inter exact truth as proved by Colonel Robins' testimony
vening centuries since the Glory that was Rome. before the School Board; the third is proved by
Political practice runs on a more economical plan Mr. Glassberg's dismissal. So much for suppres-
in this businesslike age. The Roman_circenses ap sion of truth. As for the propagation of false-
pear to have cut somewhat wastefully into the ordi- hood, the Board continues to demand that teachers
nary “earnings” of those vested interests for whose make enthusiastic use of the official Syllabus of the
benefit the Roman Imperium was administered ; World War exposed by Professor Beard in an
whereas the movies of the twentieth century are a
article in this issue.
HAS
BEEN
DISMISSED


THE DIAL
June 14
610
Communications
why he is a democrat and why the rest of the world
should imitate the sterling example he sets, than he
O TEMPORA, O MORES!
has been in bringing about a little house-cleaning in
I
the United States. Is it any wonder that the Entente
Sir: Does anyone realize in what preposterous
diplomats did not take his fourteen points seriously
conditions we live? Do the readers of THE DIAL
when they saw how little his professions squared
understand that the police can enter my front door
with his practice? Of course, Mr. Wilson may not
at any time, go to my reading-table and there find
have wanted them to take his points seriously—but
circulars, pamphlets, and magazines, and that I can
that is a different matter. We have in the continued
be imprisoned for five years for possessing" unlawful holding of almost all of the political prisoners a liv-
literature?” Do you understand that the man who
ing proof of Mr. Wilson's innate casuistry and ca-
passes on such questions is invariably one who is ig- pacity for insincere and hypocritical action. The
norant and unread and that he naturally classes
President's conception of democracy is at best flimsy
unknown, poorly and cheaply printed publications
and shallow, for it takes no account of the economic
with the strange and terrible? Do you realize that
reorganization which must come before any real de-
one must be first arrested before he can know what mocracy can exist, but even the idea of democracy
is “unlawful?” Do you know that some of Bos-
which he vaunts and claims himself the spokesman of
ton's May day paraders were given 18 months for
is being fundamentally violated. So long as he holds
having copies of the Revolutionary Age and the
these men and women in prison, so long must we
Rebel Worker in their possession? Do you realize
consider him actively insincere.
that in proportion as one is intelligent enough to
make efforts to learn what is going on in the world
New York City.
RAMON P. COFFMAN.
he renders himself liable to this five-year seclusion?
III
Do you realize that there is plenty of matter in The
Sir: The writer, like thousands of others, tries to
Dial which any magistrate would include in the
have respect for the press of the country. He feels
category of “unlawful ” and are you willing meekly
that the editor is, at least in a way, a representative
to submit to such tyranny?
of public opinion and principles. Yet, if you will
just fairly and impartially think it over, you will
Marblehead, Mass.
WALTER C. HUNTER. bear me out when I state that just as independent
II
men in religion are leaving churches, so are people
Sir: A good many of us Americans have supposed
in a political sense losing respect for newspapers and
that the operation of the Draft and Espionage Acts
politicians. The writer has twice 'volunteered in
insofar as they imprisoned men and women for hold-
defense of his country, and this last time he deemed
ing or expressing views contrary to those of the gov-
it his duty to do his part, small though it was, to
ernment must be repulsive to President Wilson's
end the military jag of the now William the Con-
sense of fair play and common decency. We felt that
quered.
although he championed the Draft Act, and sanc-
Much is written in our reactionary press about
tioned the Espionage Act, he did so only from the
spies and alien enemies being responsible for the
conviction of war necessity; and we expected him to
discontent. This is only partly true. Thousands
come out of the war preserving at least the modicum
of patriotic people, including soldiers and sailors,
of democratic feeling which would lead him at once
are registering kicks. And another thing: who
to redress, insofar as lay in his power, the
committed under the operation of these measures.
wrongs
is to blame for these spies being here? I an,
swer advisedly; I was connected with the “ Aid
The Armistice came, and we watched and waited.
for Information,” Navy Department, which, strip,
We have
been watching and waiting for very nearly ped of all language, simply means a detective and
seven months, and not a single decent word or act
was stationed at New Orleans. Six of us were
has come from the Administration in regard to the
thus detailed. We were informed that we were
fifteen hundred men and women who have been cast
to act as detectives to detect enemies and draft
into prison for holding independent opinions in a
evaders. Very little time was devoted to this; in-
country which our newspapers and our school-books
stead, we were used to coddle and hound soldiers
tell us is a democracy. Instead of an immediate and
and sailors, to watch their every move. A few of
general amnesty—which would have in a degree
cleaned the soiled skirts of the government-we
us could not stand these contemptible proceedings
and asked to be sent back to the Naval Station, but
have witnessed a fraudulent play in which batches of
fifty political prisoners have from time to time been
this so-called American Protective League, better
released or had their sentences reduced in varying
known among us as the American Pimp League,
Behold our generous government in the
continued these childish tactics until the writer,
role of merciful dispenser of pardons!
violating military ethics, at the request of comrades
This is no amnesty; it is the veriest pretense. Mr.
and their sisters and wives who had been insulted,
Wilson has been more interested in telling Europe
forwarded a sixteen-page memorial to the President
of the United States. This never came out in the
measure,


1919
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THE DIAL
press. People who have the proper conception of as Germany never feared Nietzsche. He is as
freedom of speech also desire to see that blessed dangerous as Jesus in the temple, as Socrates in the
privilege restored. The Democratic Party, above all market place.
other organizations, is stopped from curtailing free In a world and a civilization that pursue facts to
speech. It almost owes its life to its stand in 1798 the exclusion of truth and idea, Roads to
against the Alien and Sedition Laws.
Freedom will doubtless seem
to many unreal
and simple. Our German philological methods
Geo. F. WALLACE.
Memphis, Tenn.
have reached a stage where a man who sets out to
organize facts and ideas instead of merely compiling
ROADS TO FREEDOM
them is regarded with suspicion. His efforts are
called youthful by incompetent critics who are in
Sir: There is much in Mr. Durant's critique the habit of applying that adjective to what they do
of Mr. Bertrand Russell's “ Roads to Freedom not begin to understand.
with which I should like to take issue. His view is The same may be said of the charge of simplicity.
so hasty that it fails to grasp the meaning of some If “oversimplicity means anything, it means
of Mr. Russell's most careful arguments. Take pseudo-simplicity, the characteristic of the monistic
this passage, for instance:
mind-briefly the habit of judging every problem,
He approaches the social question always from the
in all its aspects, in terms of one substance, one
point of view of the artist, and tests each plan by asking
principle, or one categorical imperative. To accuse
“What will it do to art?" there will be a minimum Mr. Russell of this is to fail to grasp the meaning
wage for all, even for those who will not work; the and application of neo-realism.
creative impulse, the constructive disposition, may be It has none of Kropotkin's "grappling with
trusted to keep all but a few men busy . .
difficult details,” because it has, in fact, nothing to
But Mr. Bertrand Russel approaches no question
do with details. It deals, on the contrary, with
from the point of view of the artist; his point of ideas, theories, attitudes of mind. It rests upon the
view is that of a philosopher, and it is so broad that mature wisdom of a profound and difficult meta-
it would be futile to try to isolate it as a personal physic, the result of a life-long study, a philosophy
or even typical stand. As a philosopher he is, to be which has not as yet been successfully refuted. The
sure, concerned with the significance of the creative
attitudes of mind with which it deals are the real
in human experience, which he admits is given to roads to freedom, and they are not " goals ” as Mr.
but a few. His argument is that a minimum wage, Durant supposes, as well as the American publisher
sufficient to meet the bare necessities of life, should who gives it the misnomer, 'Proposed Roads to
be given to all, regardless of whether or not they Freedom.” For the nature of freedom is such that
work. But what man among us is satisfied with those who seek it cannot race toward it and seize it;
the bare necessities of life? Only the elite, those the concept, in this case, must precede its realization.
who do not live by bread alone, will not be only
GORDON KING.
too willing to work for their share of the luxuries.
New York City.
In this little book no differentiation is made be-
tween the necessities and the luxuries; but it is not
the function of a philosopher to draw the line ex-
INTER ARMA SILET LABOR
ceedingly nice between values that would vary in Sir: In his recent communication John J.
every locality. Contrary to Mr. Durant's asser-
McSwain, Captain of Infantry, proposes an advisory
tion, the powerful competitive impulses of men,” commission to study and advise Congress and the
as well as the evil tendencies in human nature gener War Department as to military training. I am not
ally, are carefully presented and examined in this questioning the advisability of military training or
work in such measure as they influence the prob- otherwise but I wish to point out that among all the
lems considered.
professions and occupations he suggests for per-
sonnel there is not the slightest suggestion that labor
Indeed, says Mr. Durant, if one may add a word of
criticism, the impression left by the book is one of over-
might desire to be represented on such a commis-
simplicity and unreality; it has about it an air of jejune
sion. In my judgment labor is more entitled to an
and ideologic youth. It has all of Kropotkin's gentleness opinion on the questions involved than any other
and many of his delusions; but it has little of Kropotkin's class of society. It is confessedly the larger and
patient grappling with difficult details. It has beauty,
in my opinion from present manifestations has the
such as one has come to expect from Bertrand Russell;
but it is a fragile beauty; a
more intelligence. “They will sometimes be
or two from
Nietzsche, one fears, would smash it into sweet regrets. generous to Labor; but they will never be just to
Labor. They will speak to Labor; they will speak
There is nothing of the fragile in Mr. Bertrand
for Labor; but they will not let Labor speak.”
Russell; his work will weather the Nietzschean
bombast, as his spirit and truth will weather per-
JOEL HENRY GREENE, M.D.
secution. Perhaps that is why England fears him, Urbana, Ill.
(6
sentence


612
June 14
THE DIAL
Notes on New Books
ments; nevertheless his book is a passionate effort
to destroy faith in every phase of Communist
WAR AND REVOLUTION IN RUSSIA, 1914 thought or activity. Surely the Communist pro-
1917. By General Basil Gourko. 420 pages. gramme, though dangerous and doomed sooner or
Macmillan.
still sooner for the political ash-heap, cannot, judg.
The author of this latest book about Russia ing from its rapid spread, be utterly rotten and
possesses all the distinction that adheres to obsolete destructive. Spargo does not think so: “The Bol-
titles. He was chief of the Russian Imperial Gen-
shevist, wherever he may present himself, is the foe
eral Staff from November, 1916 to March, 1917,
of progress and the ally of reaction." And so his
and he was commander-in-chief of the western case, since the evidence is preponderantly from Rus-
armies from March to June of the latter year, un-
sian Socialist (not Bolshevist) sources
, obviously
til he was relieved of his post by the Kerensky gov-
seems biassed in favor of such more sober democrats
ernment. That he is alive today and able to write
as the Social-Revolutionists. With the radicals
his memoirs at Paris is due to the happy animosity of publishing propaganda for Bolshevism, and the So-
the first revolutionary government, which did him
cialists clamoring for justice to the International
the favor of sending him into exile. He writes an programme, only a few voices raised in defense of
account of Russia's participation in the war, from the bourgeoisie are lacking to complete the Russian
the stages of mobilization onward, with the author-
babel. Although Mr. Spargo's book is a valuable
ity of one who was at all times among the high
aid to an understanding of the politico-economic
command; and if one may judge - by his openly struggle in Russia and the dangers of Bolshevism,
avowed attitude toward the first revolution, he
it would be more trustworthy if it were less right-
writes with a singular freedom from the desire to
eously Socialistic.
please. No mere courtier would ever at this late
stage of the world's progress admit that he advised
The LETTERS OF ALGERNON CHARLES SWIN-
the provisional government that the revolution BURNE. Edited by Edmund Gosse, C. B. and
should be stalled for the duration of the war, and
Thomas James Wise. 600 pages; 2 vols. Lane.
that he urged them naively not to forget that the This collection of Swinburne's letters, wrongly
man who cannot satisfy his elementary material described in the introduction as the first, is dis-
necessities does not require liberty.” In deciding
appointing to those who will turn to it for a revela-
between the continuance of the war and the welfare tion of his personality. It is a comment on Swin-
of Russia Gourko was at one with the politicians of
burne's interests rather than on himself. It ap-
the western democracies in urging that the benefits pears that Messrs. Gosse and Wise have had access
of internal reorganization be sacrificed. But he was
only to the poet's correspondence with friends who
honest enough to see that there was a clear-cut alter-
like themselves were of the stiff, academic sort be-
native. If this had been perceived by the western
fore whom he felt bound to conduct himself with
democracies, the road to the present chaos would not
elegance and discretion, to whom he was bound by
have been paved with so many futile gestures of
common interests in scholarship and esthetics.
benevolence.
These interests, it should be added, counted for
more with Swinburne than with any poet of equal
BOLSHEVISM. By John Spargo. 389 pages.
Harper.
fame. In none does personal experience furnish so
The latest dissertation of John Spargo has a
little inspiration and material for poetry; in none
does literature and the history of literature give so
pair of antipodal appeals. For the unsuspecting much. Greek tragedy, the Latin decadence, Media
popular reader it presents a simple undramatic and
substantiated history of the Socialist movement in
eval romance and lyric, Renaissance and especially
Elizabethan drama, French Romanticism—he satu-
Russia, from the underground agitation of Herzen
and his disciples to the debacle before the hosts of
rated himself in all periods and practiced a multi-
Bolshevism.
tude of forms. His heroes were literary heroes
On the other hand, it is excellent
Marlowe, Shelley, Landor, Victor Hugo, Mall-
propaganda for the Russian Social-Revolutionary armé, Baudelaire. Of these literary interests and
party, which is, it can be guessed, the legitimatized
idolatries the present volumes are a record. One
Socialist faction, being closely affiliated with the In-
ternational Bureau. Naturally, it has Spargo's sup-
pursuit in which Swinburne succeeded the romantic
port; to it is consecrated, he believes, the eventual
critics of the preceding generation was the recovery
democratization of Russia. Although now being
and attribution of Elizabethan poems and plays,
Bolsheviciously persecuted, it was the group behind
and with this subject more than half his letters are
the Constituent Assembly, and in that body is
concerned. The letters which come closest to hav-
Russia's hope of recovery from chaos. Spargo an-
ing personal value are those which bear evidence
nounces that he takes no stock in any of the material
of the gusto with which he wrote, and read, and re-
presented by anti-Bolshevist campaigning, neither
called poetry. “I have added "yet four more jets
journalistic horror headlines nor the Sisson docu-
of boiling and gushing infamy to the perennial and
poisonous fountain of Dolores. O mon ami!"
1


1919
613
THE DIAL
Inner history of the war made public. England
in uproar over sensational disclosures in Viscount
French's book.”—Press Dispatch.
“1914” The Memoirs of
FIELD MARSHAL VISCOUNT FRENCH
Introduction by Maréchal Foch
The complete, uncensored and authoritative account by Viscount
French of the operations of the British armies under his command during
1914 including the dispatch of the British armies to France, the re-
treat from Mons, the battles of the Marne and Aisne, the siege and fall of
Antwerp, and the first Battle of Ypres.
Ever since the signing of the Armistice the world has been waiting
for the real facts of the war, so long hidden by the censor's pencil, and
particularly for the authentic memoirs of the Allied leaders, from which
the final history of the conflict will be written. As the first of these memoirs
by a commanding general of the present Allies, “1914” promises to take
its place as the most important war book of the year. Frontispiece and
maps. $6.00 net.
THE BOUNDER
By ARTHUR HODGES
ROUSSEAU and ROMANTICISM
By IRVING BABBITT
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spells genius, and yet it is no exaggeration to say
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felt much the same when first they read 'Vanity
Fair' or 'Dombey and Son' as the reader now feels
who peruses 'The Bounder.'”—Philadelphia Press,
$1.60 net.
Rousseau's world-wide influence—far greater than
that of the ordinary man of letters, and comparable
in some respects to that of the founders of religions
-is of late years receiving increasing recognition.
Professor Babbitt takes him as the chief figure in
tracing a great international movement from the
sentimentalists of the 18th century to the present
day. $3.50 net.
CONVENTION AND REVOLT IN POETRY
By JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
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arranging the frontiers between poetry and prose.”—Chicago Evening Post. "Not often in the whole range
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erudition and excellent judgment, and withal as delightfully readable.”—Baltimore News. $1.75 net.
Boston
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
New York
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614
June 14
THE DIAL
than prose.
It is more like the landscape in Browning's Childe tion it. On the whole, if we needed evidence of the
Roland [he writes to Lady Trevelyan from Mentone) ineptitude of the War Department in dealing with
than anything I ever heard tell on. A calcined, scalped,
rasped, scraped, flayed, broiled, powdered, leprous,
conscientious objectors, and of its ostrich-like belief
blotched, mangy, grimy, parboiled country without trees, in the virtue of concealment, we should find it in
water, grass, fields-with blank, beastly, senseless olives Major Kellogg's uncomprehending observations
,
and orange-trees like a mad cabbage gone indigestible; it is
infinitely more like hell than earth and one looks for tails
and in Secretary Baker's perfunctory introduction.
among the people. And such females with hunched bodies
and crooked necks carrying tons on their heads, and look MILITARY SERVITUDE AND GRANDEUR. By
ing like Death taken seasick. Ar-r-r-r-r! Gr-r-r-r-rn!
Alfred de Vigny. Translated by Frances Wil-
Now and then a bit of criticism, literary or
son Huard. 320 pages. Doran.
political, is delivered with the trenchancy which
we expect from the author of the sonnets On looking half circled by the Rhone, stands a monument to
In the South of France, cresting a great rock
into Carlyle's Reminiscences and The White Czar.
"You are thoroughly right about the waste of tos-
two religions. To this Palace of Avignon the
sing such things to the feeders on such rotten
French kings brought the Popes of Rome for the
acorns and mouldy rye as Epics of Hades and the
period of their Babylonish Captivity. To the out-
side world the Palace presented huge defenses com-
like. Who the deity is the author—Louis or^parable in strength to the cliff itself, while the deep
Lyewis Morris, Tennyson's under-butler ?" In walls of the courtyard were pierced with Gothic
general, however
, Swinburne's Letters prove that windows giving upon chapels with high groined
poetry was a form of expression more natural to him ceilings, and great rooms rich with the colors of
Renaissance art. The Popes passed, and
finally the kings. Enemies of the new Republic
THE CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR. By Major
crowded the frontiers; France became for a quarter
Walter Guest Kellogg. 141 pages. Boni and
of a century an armed camp, and to the Palace of
Liveright.
the Popes came “military servitude and grandeur."
Major Kellogg represented the army on the com-
Gothic windows were bricked up; beams to support
mission of which Judge Mack and Dean Stone were
new barracks floors were driven into chapel walls,
members. He has a military mind; the confusion,
one tier above another; pictured saints were alto-
repetition, and mistaken emphasis of his book show
gether blotted out beneath alternate layers of smoke
that. He is haunted by what he cannot under-
and whitewash. France had found a new religion.
stand and he returns to it again and again. One
the wholly active life of the soldier” of
of these things is conscience. The cases of men like
that day Alfred de Vigny brought“ an entirely con-
templative nature." As a child he "
Mennonites and Molokans, who are constrained by Nobility one great family of hereditary soldiers"
the external law of a sect to avoid bearing arms or
and “thought only of growing to a soldier's size."
wearing buttons, he can understand or
classify. The absolutist and the political objector
at least Through his father he knew intimately Louis XIV
and Frederic the Great. Toward the end of the
are beyond him. As for emphasis, Major Kellogg
Empire he was
a heedless school boy
is much impressed by his own wisdom and good ceaselessly dizzied by the guns and the bells
of the
will in permitting objectors to appear before his
Te Deum.” Then more than ever," he says, "a
He has great sympathy with officers assigned to the
hold of me; a passion all the more unfortunate be-
charge of conscientious objectors and thus deprived
cause it was the exact time when
of the opportunity for active service in France:
began to be cured of it." Each year of the Restora-
" It is not surprising that in a certain few cases
tion opened with the hope of a new war and closed
the patience of the officer was so exhausted by the
in peace, leaving De Vigny long inactive" between
maliciously
annoying attitude of various objections the echoes and the
dreams of battles," learning from
in his charge that he lost his temper and maltreated
them.” He adds that “the Secretary of War, in
the dead routine of garrison life and the stories of
old soldiers
what there is that endears in the
one or two instances, ordered investigations and
savage life of arms."
took disciplinary action against those responsible.”
He does not say that the disciplinary action resulted
The modern Army is blind and dumb ſhe says] ·
in the honorable dismissal of the officers. Major
It wills nothing and its action is started with a spring.
It is a big thing that others control and that kills. But
Kellogg never visited a disciplinary barracks, but is
it is a thing that suffers, too! ... Looking from nearby at
under the impression from hearsay that the ob-
the life of ... armed troops, it will be truly seen that
jectors were fairly treated. He must have known
the soldier's existence is the saddest relic of barbarism
of the way in which the Hofer brothers were
subsisting among mankind. I have said so and I believe
tortured to death in the Federal Disciplinary
it is, next to capital punishment! But
also that nothing is more worthy of the interest and the
Barracks at Alcatraz Island, but he does not men-
love of the Nation than this sacrificial family which
sometimes gives the Nation such wondrous glory.
To "
saw in the
court without standing at attention and Saluting truly
ungovernable love for the glory of armas robe
France
.
will be seen


1919
615
THE DIAL
EXCEPTIONALLY IMPORTANT AND TIMELY NEW BOOKS
NEW SCHOOLS FOR OLD
The Regeneration of the Porter School
By EVELYN DEWEY
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School, thoroughly realized that only by the co-operation of the township could anything
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her work will not die.
This account of the re-creation of a community through its school is, in fact, a most inspiring
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Fully illustrated. Cloth. 12ma, net, $2.00
Schools of To-morrow
By JOHN DEWEY and EVELYN DEWEY
A general survey of the best work that is being carried on to-day in America as educational experiments. Net, $1.60
New York Times: Undoubtedly the most significant educational record of the day.
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Creative Impulse in Industry
By HELEN MAROT
A Proposition for Educators. Professor JOHN DEWEY in an extended review in The New Republic describes this
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Labor and Reconstruction in Europe
By ELISHA M. FRIEDMAN, Editor of
“American Problems of Reconstruction'
Mr. Friedman in this book describes impartially the means undertaken or proposed in sixteen countries, belligerent
and neutral, to deal with reconstruction in labor matters. It is of value to employment managers, directors of cor-
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“For those who are patriotic enough to be constructive, it is a work of inestimable value.”—Tho Publio.
The Freedom of the Seas
By LOUISE FARGO BROWN
No better introduction to a much-discussed problem could be desired. For those merely desiring to be well informed
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A Society of States
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The State and the Nation
By EDWARD JENKS, M.A., B.C.L., Author of "Law
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Russia's Agony
By ROBERT WILTON, Correspondent of the London Times in Russia
There is probably no term of equally recent origin so often in print as Bolshevik and its derivatives. Readers of the
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* No such comprehensive and straightforward account bas yet been given," says the New York Times, " of the condi.
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FROM ANEX BROKSROKE E.P.DUTTON & COMPANY 68EFWF
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616
THE DIAL
June 14
66
ment.
with awe and resignation. He has limited himself be, and has centered his effort upon the humaner
Among all the clamorous voices offering inter the many differences in procedure obtaining in vari-
pretations of the Great War, De Vigny speaks for ous states. Besides elucidating principles by show-
France. From Germany comes the war of machting their applications to typical states, he has em-
and schrecklichkeit, from England the sportsman's phasized the fitness of particular political organiza-
war, from Russia the war of blind sacrifice, and tions to the temper and the development of differ-
from America the war of plodding industry. But ent peoples.
France has given and still gives to war a m
martyr's The shortcomings of our own political organiza-
sacrifice and a martyr's exaltation—a spirit echoing tion enforce recognition when we are brought face
in the shout of Paris headlines on the day of victory: to face with the administrative and legislative dif-
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!"
ficulties which confront us in any attempt to accede
to a demand for more democratic control of govern-
FIELDS OF THE FATHERLESS. By Jean Roy. The inflexibility of the Constitution, the
307 pages. Doran.
possibility of an amendment's being passed which
TUMBLEFOLD. By Joseph Whittaker. 284
may not reflect the wishes of the electorate, the over-
pages. Dutton.
lapping of the administrative functioning organs of
The color-note of Fields of the Fatherless is a
government, the duplication of organization because
lifeless gray. Accompanied by a monotony of short
of our multiple system, and our unscientific method
of budget-making are but a few of the questions
sentences and insignificant details, the author tells
of her dreary existence as an illegitimate child, bar-
which Professor Willoughby presents. In addition,
an excellent index refers to every detail of political
maid, factory hand, and domestic servant in Scot-
land—the tragedy of the soul yearning for wider
organization discussed in the text. In short
, The
Government of Modern States is both an enticing
horizons than those that imprison it. The book is
not, however, exciting enough to interest, passionate
introduction to the study of political science, and
a quick reference work for those whose understand-
enough to move, or introspective enough to consti-
tute a human document. Tumblefold, sketches of
ing of political principles has become a little hazy.
boy life in English slums, also falls short. Joseph
Whittaker has acquired sufficient journalistic skill to
THE PRESENT CONFLICT OF IDEALs. By
etch with startling distinctness the hideous life of
Ralph Barton Perry. 549 pages. Longmans,
poverty-stricken children, but he hopelessly blurs his
Green.
sharp outlines with an incongruous sentimentality
Aviation is the image which Professor Perry's
and a conventional fictioneering. As it is, he achieves
several excellent stories for juvenile consumption
swift-winged survey of the world of modern thought
naturally suggests. He moves with insouciant ease
and one, The Woman Who Lagged Behind, of
through the pure ethers of reflection and charts the
genuine merit for adults. The strange thing about
orbis terrarum animae with the nice precision of a
both books is the complete absence of revolutionary
metaphysical expert. The result is--well, a some-
protest in them. Their authors apparently console
themselves with thoughts of a beneficent God and
what impressionistic photography. The latitudes of
competing philosophies and the longitudes of con-
the scanty joys of the poor; they seem to have abso-
lutely no touch with present-day social movements.
tending national ideals are all duly observed and
noted, but in the final representation laboriously
hewn paths are apt to appear as erratic streaks:
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE GOVERNMENT OF
storied edifices sit squat upon the ground, while
MODERN STATES. By W. F. Willoughby.
the serrated fortifications blur and lose their teeth.
455 pages. Century.
But for all this, the chart is a good guide, and a
Many students of political science have been
timely. We have come to an hour of appraisal in
turned from a thorough inquiry into this important
things of the mind no less than in affairs of the
department of education by the intricacies of sup-
forum and the mart and it is good to have before
posedly elementary textbooks. To meet the lack of
us a book which can give a broad report of the
books,
mind's labors in the decades which have so lately
been sealed into the dead past. To be sure, in this
author has departed from the usual custom of weav-
ing a description of political principles with pages
decently laid by now—when he finds himself once
of explanatory matter, citations of cases, and other
more quarreling with Absolutist quiddities, or
details which the student of Gov.
gasping amid Realistic rarefactions: but, in fair.
1,
ness to Perry, he has given as little of this as need
to a study of principles, and has, pointed out with
admirable clarity the many nice distinctions in gov-
and more living elements in the philosophies of the
ernment political organization which account for
generation. As he truly says, we are on the verge
of a new age in which not merely the map of Europe
of the government of modern states. In method, the walking in a land of ghosts-ghosts that ought to be
” looks


1919
617
THE DIAL
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has had intimate
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618
THE DIAL
June 14
him old-fashioned, yields place to the enjoyment pologist of some note, Dr. Gordon's chief concern
but the map of the human mind will be changed; and gracefully. The very titles give a cue to the
and it is a wholly sensible effort at construction to mood, for Mr. Brooks can wax pleasantly digres-
prepare for this certain change into the new by a sive over such topics as On Going Afoot, On Turn-
square and comprehensive regard of the old. For ing into Forty, and On Going to a Party., The
making this possible in a readable, suggestive, and author splinters no lance in defense of these familiar
quite manfully up-to-date volume, Professor Perry excursions, nor does he apologize for his obvious
deserves all good will, and his book bon voyage. liking for those things which the majority have over-
But one really must say a word more. Professor looked in their mad haste to be modern. After all,
Perry takes us up into a high place and shows us no one is so modern that he will not someday“ turn
all the philosophical dominions spread out below into forty”-unless the violence of his haste shat-
including his own. That is the odd thing about it: ters his span—so why not write about it, especially
he has apparently learned to fly, but has not suc if it can be done with grace and good humor? But
ceeded in detaching himself; and when we examine when it comes to discoursing upon the difference
our vehicle a little closer we discover that we are between wit and humor, as Mr. Brooks has the
borne aloft, not in an aeroplane, but in a kite se temerity to do, it is to be feared that the essayist
curely tethered to the New Realism. What this
has pilfered his point of view from a forgotten
may mean, in full effect, must be left to the read freshman theme.
er's discovery. · It is not merely that there is, on the
author's part, a bias in favor of his own convictions: IN THE ALASKAN WILDERNESS. By George
that surely is a virtue, if convictions mean anything. Byron Gordon. 247 pages. Winston; Phila-
But it is the nature of these convictions that some delphia.
how forbids genuine Aight. Neo-Realism calls it-
self rationalism, intellectualism, and prides itself
Narrative charm in a book of exploration is a
upon being passionless and devoid of intuition. By quality which appeals to the average reader when
that very count it is void of the power to move
geographical exactitude and recondite scientific de-
men, void of life, empty of help. Perry skims the
ductions are lost on him. This book has much of
surface of modern thought; his own school is but
the former to commend it, though the author's
an eddy in the moil; there is no depth, no current,
observations indicate that he is capable of profundity
.
no drive. Doubtless, philosophy is so accepted and
Dr. Gordon and his brother crossed nearly the entire
su intended by the New Realists; but the result is
width of Alaska in a canoe.
Their craft was
that this display of the varieties of thought leads
launched at Fairbanks on the Tanana River, a
but to a general impression of the footlessness and point which they evidently reached by steamers from
haplessness of all intellectual labor, to a kind of
White Horse by way of the Yukon and the Tanana.
suicide of the Realistic premise. And it gives, too,
They floated down this stream a distance of some
to the expositor, not even the power which should
two hundred miles to where it is joined by the Kan-
be legitimately his, as guide and prophet. He moves
tishna River, and thence poled against the current
familiarly and discursively through the field of con-
another hundred miles or more to Lake Minchu-
temporary thought, but for all his cultivation he
mina, in which the Kantishna has its beginning. A
makes no plant grow therein; indeed one might
ten-mile portage brought them to the Kuskokwim,
add that he is singularly adept in destroying the
and it was on this river that they traveled to the
dynamogeny of the authors he treats whose philo-
sea. So far as geographical information is concerned,
sophical convictions are rather more living than
the book gains little importance from the fact that
those of the Realists. Self-conscious intellectualism,
no white men had ever followed this route before;
dissected out of organic life, always has been (and
it gains much, however, from the author's unortho-
how can it ever be anything else?) a condition of
dox point of view. His sense of humor is unfailing,
moral paralysis. It is no fault of Professor Perry's
He looks upon adventure as mainly a
agreeable exposition that his book leaves the reader
matter, and what is to the orthodox explorer merely
unperturbed, uninspired; rather it is the miasma of
a means to an end becomes to him a noteworthy
his philosophy, which, like a dead thing, draws him
incident. The book is interesting for its minutiae
back into the company of the ghosts.
quite as much as for its travel data. Thus a hungry
lost dog that, failing to hear the call of the wild,
CHIMNEY-Pot PAPERS. By Charles S. Brooks.
joined their party, is the basis of several good pages
.
184 pages. Yale Univ. Press. New Haven.
Further parentheses are reasons for retaining the
Mr. Brooks dons his carpet slippers with an un-
Indian name
“Denali ” for what is called Mount
disguised relish that is disarming, and carries the
McKınley on the maps, and some excellent re-
reader over discoursive pages with such a fund of
marks concerning the inaptitude of missionaries
good humor that the first impulse, which is to brand
in discouraging tribal ceremonies and dances
Kuskwogamiut Indians.
which comes with recognition of the companion-
able quality in his essays. Chimney-Pot Papers
on this trip was the study of the Indians
, and
might be termed essays in relaxation, written quietly toms, and languages.
he gives some enlightening
views of their arts, cus-
spiritual


".
THE DIAL
1919
619
Brentanos
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620
THE DIAL
June 14
and true; the weakly managed complication and
Namara (296 pages; Brentano), is an epic of mean-
what Synge did for the Irish drama, and the result
is an interesting piece of pessimistic realism, some
what Hardyesque in effect. The malignant spirit of
heroine's early sin, wreaks destruction of soul upon
all those involved, and finally blots out her hard-
Books of the Fortnight
Bureau of American Ethnology, Annual Report
, 1910-11
(819 pages; Government Printing Office), 'is dated
Democratic Ideals and Reality, by H. J. Mackinder (266
1918. It is a rich storehouse of Seneca fiction, legends,
pages; Holt), throws the problems of international re-
and myths. The chief fault of this wide margined,
bulky volume is that of so many other government
construction against their ultimate geographic back-
ground. The author dogmatizes too confidently about
publications it was never meant to be read.
the political elements considered, and the book is
stronger in its perception of realities than in its ap The Last Million, by “ Ian Hay" (Major Ian Hay Beith;
praisal of ideals. But Mr. Mackinder is a vivid ex 203 pages; Houghton Mifflin), is no King Canute's
ponent of the new regional geography and his con-
chronicle, attempting to sweep back the tide. Major
ception of the World Island, the Heartland, and the
Beith takes the war for granted and writes of accom-
role of seamen, horsemen, and plowmen in the devel modation rather than of rebellion; he sits down inside
opment of civilization amply makes up for his defects a finished universe to chat familiarly of what hap-
in political comprehension.
pens when the object of construction is destruction
and death is the day's business. The new volume do
International War, by Oscar T. Crosby (378 pages; Mac-
more lives up to The First Hundred Thousand than
millan), discusses the causes of war and the means
the peace has lived up to the war.
for curing them. Written before the entrance of the
United States, it was withheld from publication until
The War Romance of the Salvation Army, by Evange:
the principles advocated had crept even into the coun-
line Booth and Grace Livingston Hill (356 pages;
cils of statesmen.
Lippincott; Philadelphia), shows alarming symptorns
of that attudinizing from which the war activities of
Towards New Horizons, by M. P. Willcocks (213 pages;
the Salvation Army were notably free. The sequence
Lane), is an English woman's attempt to evaluate
of prosperity and decay is familiar in the history of
the contributions of the war to a new order in reli-
earlier mendicant orders; does it threaten to repeat
itself?
gion, science, literature, labor, and politics—a plea for
a fresh beginning, with an entirely different objective.
Anatole France, by Lewis Piaget Shanks (241 pages;
Reconstruction and National Life, by Cecil Fairfield La Open Court; Chicago), is a biographical record of its
vell (193 pages; Macmillan), purposes to suggest an
subject with some critical comment. It is a question
historical approach to the problem of reconstruction
whether an Anglo-Saxon can penetrate the secret of
in Europe, viewed as a matter of national adjustment.
Anatole France, but Professor Shanks has illuminated
As an interpretation it is superficial; as a history, in-
his subject conscientiously.
complete.
American Business in World Markets, by James T. M.
Reading the Bible, by William Lyon Phelps (131 pages;
Macmillan), exhibits the author in the act of carrying
Moore (320 pages; Doran), exploits the plausible
a very light burden of coals to Newcastle. If the
commercial possibilities of what the author believes is
theological students who first heard these collected lec-
going to be a Business Man's Era. There is nothing
tures were not already convinced that the Bible is good
in his postulates to show that he has been alive
reading, there was little here to win them to new
during the last generation.
tastes.
Efficient Railway Operation, by Henry S. Haines (709
pages; Macmillan), is a technical treatise covering a
Luna Benamor, by Blasco Ibañez, translated by Isaac
field familiar to the author as administrator, opera-
Goldberg (209 pages; Luce; Boston), is a collection
tive head, and engineer. There is a short introduc-
of short stories of which the most pretentious gives
tion on the evolution of the railway.
title to the volume. This is a Jewish-Spanish love
story, heavy with local color. The short tales which
Punishment and Reformation, by
complete the volume are in the staccato mander
Frederick Howard
Wines (481 pages; Crowell), appears now in a third
Maupassant, mere local situations without the sugges.
edition, with additions and revisions by Winthrop D.
tion of wider application that makes Maupassant a
Lane, of the Survey staff. By incorporating the latest
fabulist.
contributions to criminal anthropology, to the study
of the individual delinquent, and to the rehabilita-
The Home and the World, by Sir Rabindranath Tagore,
tion of the criminal through occupational and politi-
translated by Surendranath Tagore (298
cal therapy, Mr. Lane has given the freshness of
millan), is the first novel by the distinguished poet:
youth to a classic that was far from senility. Punish-
modern India. It is a story of Hindu family life
ment and Reformation is a book for the citizen, as
affected by the storm of revolution in the world out-
well as for the social worker and the official, and to
side. The narrative consists of successive confessions
the extent that it succeeds in tempering the judgment
by the three characters: Nikhil, the moderate husband;
of the whole community it is above all things a book
Bimala, the enthusiastic wife; and Sandip, the inter-
for the criminal.
loper, who introduces into the home the mingled ele-
ments of patriotism and passion. The unpretending
A New Municipal Program, edited by Clinton Rogers
realism of the book and its philosophy are of the East
Woodruff (392 pages; Appleton), brings together com-
pactly the experience gained in municipal administra-
imported conclusion are of the West
, and imitated.
tion since the organization of the National Municipal
League in 1894. It is the work of a committee em-
The Valley of the Sqainting Windows, by Bringley Mac-
bracing such capable students and administrators as
Drs. Lowell, James, and Fairlie, and Messrs. Childs,
ness. The author attempts to do for the Irish novel
Wilcox, and Woodruff.
Democracy, by Shaw Desmond (332 pages; Scribner), is
a pocket flashlight illuminating a political scene which
the valley, nurturing carefully the memory
the genius of Gissing, Bennett, Wells, and Cannan has
already made as bright as day.
bought dream of proud atonement.
pages;
Mac-
of
the


1919
621
THE DIAL
NUMBERS Five One-Act Plays
By Grover Theis
A Distinctive and Powerful Group of Plays
1. Numbers, the title play, dramatizes the funda-
mental principle of all war, a portrayal singularly
human_and moving.
II. Between Fires, a folk-drama of southern Italy,
portraying the fierce passions of a primitive people.
III. The Crack in the Bell, a play of mood and at-
mosphere, the locale of which is Independence Square.
IV. There's a Difference is a comedy, in which the
author has shown unusual ability.
V. Like a Book, another comedy, containing keen
characterizations of artistic and literary folk.
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June 14
622
meet
Current News
Liveright), although it is designated as a book " for
Arnold Bennett says somewhere that he wants to
after the war," rivals any of its predecessors in
hysterical fervor. Not many of them in fact can
the man who will not willingly let die the
author who is not yet dead." Up to date very few
boast of passages to match this gem:
war books have been successful enough to warrant
Then something happened in Europe. A gallant rab-
keeping their live authors alive just on their ac-
bit stood between the hole where its babies trembled, and
a band of coyotes. France and England placed themselves
count. For the most part, books about the war are beside the rabbit. I waited for America to go in with
really more disappointing than the war itself; they
France and England. America did not do it. But I for
cast a kind of pale glamour over the surface of the
one could not go on selling ten-cent loaves in waxed
ocean, instead of hunting out the caves where the
paper. It was my chance, and the chance of every young
man in America, to adventure generously.
storms are made.
Mr. Nicholson, for instance, proves beyond per-
The Swallow is fiction, but it is based upon the
adventure that finesse is not an unattainable quality Escadrille, who seems to have been as careless of the
actual experiences of a survivor of the Lafayette
in fiction which plays with war intrigue (Lady disposition of his war reminiscences as he was of
Larkspur; 171 pages; Scribner). Heretofore spy
stories have been dragged before summary mental
his life in battle.
court martial, and promptly sentenced. But here
Readers whose thirst for vicarious suffering has
is an instance where judgment may well be de-
survived the war will relish Eleanor Porter's Dawn
ferred, for the author has exercised restraint and
(338 pages; Houghton Mifflin). Miss Porter's ap-
a becoming degree of art in weaving his mystery. In
peal to the tear-ducts of the “glad" cult might be
fact, were it not for the disclosure on the wrapper,
followed by a plea for financial aid for some new
one would become securely enmeshed in the plot
war “ drive.” Actually it asks for no donation
before discovering that there is so much as a secret
other than a generous outpouring of sentimentality.
agent on the premises.
The more normal reaction to it is not unlike that
Besides Mr. Nicholson, there is just now Mrs.
which might be expected to follow the sipping of
Victor Rickard, a compatriot of Mr. Bennett's
sweet brine.
with an eye for background and a hand for good
As between sentimentality and grossness there is
writing (The Fire of Green Boughs; 328 pages;
little to choose. The disgusting material fished up
Dodd, Mead). With a crisp, vivid style, perhaps
for exhibition by Fernand Vandérem (Two Banks
too obviously imitative of Wells, she has posed for
of the Seine; 412 pages; Dutton) is capable of
a section of London stay-at-home society the holo-
treatment by an artist; but we rebel when an oily
caust of youth in Europe. As a student of char-
raconteur of suggestive stories capitalizes it. The
acter however she is unsatisfactory. Labels may do
plot of this novel is insipid, the characters trivial
,
well enough for subsidiary persons, but we demand
the setting lifeless, the whole without sparkle or
more than strangely assorted posters when we meet
insight. The narrative might well have escaped
Dominic Roydon, the magnetic clergyman, and
being written in French; there is yet a chance that
Sylvia Tracy, the heroine. Mrs. Rickard gives us
it will escape being read in English.
little aid in our search for hidden mechanisms and
The Bookman has recently celebrated the rebirth-
motives—that is, for the storm caves of character.
day that marks the end of its first half-year's resi-
dence in the house of Mr. Doran. As heir to a
are quite generally losing their edge; perhaps be-
cause fighting experiences, though varied, tend finally
umes of the senior Bookman, the remodeled pub-
to fall into classifications, and are capable of rising
lication carries a considerable burden of responsibil-
into life again only at the touch of genius. The
ity, to which, when it changed hands, it added an ob-
Active Service Series (Lane) furnishes two new
ligation to cultivate a field somewhat wider than
cases in point-A Handful of Ausseys, by C. Hamil-
the ancestral acres. Today with a forty-eighth vol-
ton Thorp (296 pages) and Some Soldiers and
ume on the shelf, The Bookman deserves well of the
Little Mamma, by Helen Boulnois (203 pages).
old friends it has kept and the new ones it has
Here the yield in profit to the reader is fairly pro-
acquired.
portional to his zeal; which is perhaps inversely pro-
Contributors
to read the
Arthur Livingston is Professor of Romance
vantages to Macedonian
Musings
, by v..JI
. Selig and a member
of the Royal Commission of Vereichen
; )volume that brings
an academy of For the term
to present a picture of life in the Salonica campaign,
of which “ those at home knew next to nothing.'
ton is associated with the New York headquarters
But the attempt suffers from too much straining
of the Foreign Press Service.
after verbal brightness, and from too great reliance
Katherine Warren is an instructor in English at
on the capital " I.”
Vassar College.
Ruth Duribar's Swallow (246 pages; Boni and viously written for The DIAL.
The other contributors to this issue have pre-
War memoirs and letters and that sort of thing dierary tradition developed in the forty-seven pronta
same thing
before. A novel setring gives Cereainh an der Languages at Western University, London,
Operations
together a series of sketches and semine saya sering af aceder from his professorial duties, Desa Luciens


919
623
THE DIAL
Against the Betrayal of Russia
At a dinner given by THE DIAL, May 22, in honor of Pro-
fessor George V. Lomonossoff and Mr. L. A. Martens, at which
five hundred guests were present, a resolution was passed“ re-
affirming our faith in the Russian people, our sympathy with their
effort to establish democratic institutions of their own choosing,
and our protest against all forms of military intervention and eco-
nomic blockade designed to modify such institutions and exploit
the country in the interest of foreign powers ”; also pledging “our
best efforts to persuade our government to recognize the govern-
ment of the Russian Soviet Republic."
In order to give the American people an opportunity to de-
mand repudiation of the policy which the executive has applied
toward Russia, the following protest has been drawn up.
A Plea for a Just American Policy Towards Russia
We, as citizens of the United States, call upon the Congress of
the United States to bring about the abolition of the blockade against
the Russian Soviet Republic. Without declaring war upon Russia
we have permitted the blockade to bring death to hundreds of
thousands every month, by starvation.
We urge the immediate recall of all American troops in Rus-
sia, and the abandonment of attempts to secure special troops for
service there. That is no service for the soldiers of a democracy.
We earnestly protest against our government's conniving or
collaborating with any counter-revolutionary groups, such as those
of Kolchak or Denikin, servers of a discredited monarchical regime.
We hold that the American government must do nothing that
will hinder the Russian people from determining their form of gov-
ernment, in accordance with their own economic and political ideals.
In sum, we demand that Congress exercise its constitutional
functions for the purpose of creating a genuinely democratic foreign
policy, consistent with the traditions of a nation which cherishes
honorable memories of the revolution by which it was founded, and
the civil war by which it was perpetuated.
(Signed).
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624
June 14
THE DIAL
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THE DIAL
The Ruin of Bourgeois France
A FORTNIGHTLY
VOL. LXVI
NEW YORK
NO. 793
JUNE 28, 1919
Summer Reading Number
.
.
ECONOMIC UNITY AND POLITICAL DIVISION
Bertrand Russell 629
THE RUIN OF BOURGEOIS FRANCE
Robert Dell 632
ON THE ROAD TO EDEN. Verse .
: Elizabeth J. Coatsworth 634
A WORD ABOUT REALISM
Nancy Barr Mavity 635
WAR Music. Verse
Helen Hoyt 637
THE VOYAGES OF CONRAD .
E. Preston Dargan 638
A PARASITIC NOVEL
. Robert Morss Lovett 641
FEODAR SOLOGUB
Katherine Keith 643
THE TRIAL OF POLITICAL CRIMINALS HERE AND ABROAD. Robert Ferrari 647
BelATED TRANSLATIONS
Edith Borie 650
THE WAYS OF GENIUS
Clarence Britten 651
EDITORIALS
653
COMMUNICATION: The Question of Nationalism.
656
CASUAL COMMENT
657
Notes On New BOOKS: The Secret City.–Blind Alley.-César Napoléon Gaillard. - 658
Jim, the Story of a Backwoods Police Dog.—The Roll-Call.—The Song of the Sirens.-
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666
A SelecTED LIST OF FICTION
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June 28
The Place of Agriculture in Reconstruction
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THE DIAL
A FORTNIGHTLY
Economic Unity and Political Division
THE POLITICAL UNITY of the world, which is the But while material unity has been more or less
avowed aim of the League of Nations, may or may accidentally achieved, unity in any higher sense has
not be achieved in the next few years; indeed, any not been even approached. The League of Nations,
but a very bold optimist must incline to the view so far from being world-wide, is in effect an alliance
that it will not. But the economic unity of the of America, Britain, and France, with Italy as a
world has been furthered by the war to a very sur somewhat doubtful hanger-on. Japan, which is
prising extent. Conditions are, of course, still ab- nominally a member of the League, is mainly en-
normal, but we may expect much of what has gaged in the attempt to absorb China—an enter-
resulted in the way of international economic gov prise by no means calculated to win the affection of
ernment to remain for a long time to come. Certain America. From the Pacific to the Rhine, the League
Powers, notably the United States and the British of Nations appears as an enemy or a master, not as
Empire, control the supplies of food and raw mate-, a free union of equal democracies. The world is
rial sufficiently to be able to decide, throughout the thus divided into three groups: the Western nations,
greater part of the civilized world, who shall starve the outcasts Germany and Russia, and the Yellow
and who shall have enough to eat, who shall be Races, among whom the Japanese are masters and
allowed to develop industries and who shall be the Chinese unwilling servants.
It is in such a
compelled to import manufactured goods. This world that the League of Nations is to make its
power is the result partly of geographical advan-
début.
tages, partly of armed force, especially at sea. The distinction of capitalist and proletarian has
Financial strength also plays its part, but is a result been made familiar by the writings of the Socialists.
of geographical and military superiority rather than
But this distinction has now taken a new form:
an independent cause of dominion. If Germany had there are capitalist and proletarian nations. Russia
won the war, it may be assumed that indemnities and Germany are proletarian nations, the former
would have fundamentally altered the balance of still on strike, the latter probably about to make a
financial strength.
sullen submission. By the economic provisions of
The necessity of rationing supplies has created, the Peace Treaty, it is secured (as far as such
unavoidably, an international way of dealing with things can be) that Germans shall, for an indefinite
problems of distribution. Those who control inter time to come, be very much poorer than inhabitants
national distribution have a degree of power ex-
of the Western democracies. They are to do speci-
ceeding anything previously known in the history of fied work for the capitalist nations, obtaining pre-
the world. The growth of industrialism in the sumably wages, but not profits. They are to be
century before the war led most nations to become deprived of an enormous proportion of their ships,
dependent upon foreign countries for supplies indis- coal, and iron, and in every way prevented from
pensable to life or at least to prosperity. Cessation competing with our trade. If they nevertheless do
of foreign supplies would mean inability to support find ways of making money, they are to be deprived
the actual population in health, as it has meant in
of what they make in order to provide reparation
Germany. Consequently it is impossible for any
for the war. Their national situation, in short, is
European nation to return to economic independence to be as similar as possible to the individual situation
except through a period of intolerable hardship, in- of a wage-earner in a capitalist community. Their
volving death or emigration on a large scale. Only reward for accepting our terms is to be that they
extreme heroism prolonged through many years
are to have enough to eat to support life; their
would enable a continental country to free itself punishment for rejecting them, that their numbers
from the economic dominion which has resulted are to be reduced by starvation until they submit.
from the war.
This economic dominion has given (This is a slight exaggeration of our generosity.
to the world, as regards material things, a new At a moment when large numbers of German in-
unity and a new central authority.
fants are dying for lack of milk, the Peace Treaty
3


630
THE DIAL
June 28
For all these reasons, it would be foolish to attachcapitalism that we cannot hope to see it effectively
demands the surrender by Germany of a hundred Allies. Like everybody else, they are products of
and forty thousands of milch-cows.) In industrial circumstances and systems. We have to understand
disputes, we are accustomed to subjugation of their action, and to form an opinion as to whether
strikers by these means. But it marks the growth it is for the good of the world; but if our opinion
of economic ways of thought that the methods of is adverse, we must go behind the men to the system
labor disputes should be applied in dealing with a which has produced them, and ask ourselves whether,
vanquished nation.
under that system, anything better could be expected.
As to Russia, it is as yet impossible to know what The capitalist system of industry, whatever its
will happen. It is conceivable that, by sufficient merits, has not been found conducive to perfect
determination, Russia may succeed in becoming harmony between capital and labor. It is hardly to
economically self-sufficient. If so, war-weariness be expected that its extension to international rela-
may compel the Allies to abandon the policy of tions will produce harmony between States, or that
intervention. But if Russia is not willing to face Germany and Russia will be filled with ardent love
the hardships involved in an economic boycott, or for the Western nations during the next few years.
if the Allies can raise sufficient armies to occupy the They may be powerless in a military sense, just as
centres of Bolshevik power, it will become necessary labor organizations are; but, like labor organiza-
for the Russians, as for the Germans, to submit to tions, they may find other ways than war by which
our terms and accept whatever form of government their grievances can be forced upon the attention
we may think good for them. The Germans were of their masters. I do not wish to be misunderstood
informed that we should be more lenient if they when I speak of “grievances": what I am saying
expelled the Kaiser; probably the Russians will soon is wholly independent of the question whether they
be informed that we shall be more lenient if they are justified in feeling grievances. I say only that
restore the Tsardom. In that case, no doubt, they, they will feel them, and that in fact their economic
like the Germans, may be granted a peace of justice position will be less fortunate than ours, as a result
and mercy, not of revenge. (The peace terms seem of their defeat in the war. And this situation is not
to me to combine justice with mercy.—The Bishop
one likely to inaugurate a period of international
of London.) But if they persist in Bolshevism, amity, or to realize the dreams of those who died in
we may discover what it is that the Germans have France believing that our aim was to destroy mili-
been spared as a consequence of their adoption of tarism and establish universal freedom.
democracy.
It is economic considerations mainly that have
We see, in the two cases of Germany and Russia, caused the severity of the peace terms and the im-
the two purposes for which the power of the sword placable hostility to the Bolsheviks. (Those who
is being used, namely (a) to extort economic ad think the hostility to the Bolsheviks is due to their
vantages; (b) to impose a form of government other atrocities are putting the cart before the horse, and
than that desired by those upon whom it is imposed.
are failing to realize how their own horror of these
I do not wish to blame in any way the individuals atrocities has been stimulated. The Tsar's govern-
who are carrying out these two purposes. I believe
ment was guilty of many more and much worse
that many of them are completely blind to what is atrocities, but it was not to the interest of the
really happening: they feel that Germany, as the capitalist press to make our blood boil about them.)
disturber of the peace, must be rendered harmless
, Economic considerations of this sort are inseparable
and that Russia, as the perpetrator of endless
from the capitalist system. Probably every allied
atrocities against the well-to-do, must be forced to
nation, as a whole, will be worse off economically if
adopt again the civilized
government which it Germany and Russia are ruined than if they are
enjoyed before the Revolution, whose much greater
prosperous,
but
many individual capitalists will
atrocities they forget because the capitalist press did profit by the removal of competitors, and these
not exploit them. Others, though they may see and
individuals, through the press, have power to mold
regret the evil that is being done, accept it as inevit- public opinion.
Moreover, under the existing
able in order to inaugurate the League of Nations;
economic system, competition is the very air we
and in the disarmament of Germany they see the breathe, and men come to feel more pleasure in
first step towards universal disarmament. Many outstripping a competitor than in the absolute level
others, again, sincerely believe that it is the business
of their prosperity. If, by slightly impoverishing
of a statesman to think only of the interests of this ourselves
, we can very greatly impoverish the Ger
own country: they feel themselves in the position of
trustees, and regard “sacred egoism
mans, we feel that we have achieved a valuable
as their duty.
result. This state of mind is so bound up with
66
moral blame to those who direct the power of the
removed while capitalism persists.


1919
631
THE DIAL
as
I do not despair of the world; I do not think it acquired feet of merchant ships, and an opportunity
impossible that the idealistic aims which inspired of securing naval supremacy. But apart from tem-
many of those who fought in the war may in time porary advantages, there are others of a more per-
be achieved. But I think a lesson is to be learned manent sort, which seem likely to increase rather
from President Wilson's failure, and the lesson is than diminish: an invulnerable territory, the possi-
this: The removal of international rivalry, and the bility of complete economic self-sufficiency, with a
growth of real co-operation among all civilized rapidly increasing white population, already larger
nations, is not to be attained while competition, than the white population of any other single State,
exploitation, and the ruthless use of economic power and full of all the qualities that promote national
govern the whole machinery of production and dis- strength. No other State can compete against this
tribution. It is scarcely to be expected that the combination of felicitous circumstances. Whatever
relations between States will be immeasurably more America may vigorously desire, the world will have
humane than the relations between individuals to accept. So long as America is content to believe
within a State. So long as the whole organized in the Liberal ideas of 1776, so long not only
machinery of the State is used to defend men who Bolsheviks or Spartacists, but even conventional
live in idle luxury on the labor of others, and to Socialists, cannot hope to maintain themselves for
obstruct those others in attempts to secure a more more than a moment in any important country: their
just system, the natural assumptions of men who existence will be inconvenient to American capital,
possess authority can scarcely be such as to restrain and therefore, through the usual channels for edu-
them from a ruthless use of force in their dealings cating public opinion, odious to the American
with hostile countries. International justice and nation. We in the older countries, where oppor-
lasting peace are not to be secured while capitalism tunities are fewer, and “la carrière ouverte aux
persists.
talents” is a less, all-sufficient gospel, are turning
It is especially in America that belief in funda more and more towards co-operation as against com-
mental economic reconstruction is needed. America petition, Socialism as against plutocracy. A Labor
has always stood for the ideas which are now known Government is likely in this country at no distant
Liberal.” In 1776, these ideas, as embodied in date; France and Italy, may well follow suit. But
the Declaration of Independence, represented the nothing that we can do will be secure or stable while
Extreme Left, just as much as Bolshevism does now. America remains faithful to the creed of ruthless
But even the most advanced ideas cannot be allowed individual competition.
to stand still for a century and a half without find We are thus brought back to the point from
ing themselves outstripped by later comers. Liberal which we started: the economic unity of the world.
ideas are admirable in circumstances which allow a The Labor Movement must be international or
prosperous career to any tolerably vigorous person. doomed to perpetual failure; it must conquer Amer-
Americans, with an immensely rich and fertile con ica or forego success in Europe until some very
tinent waiting for their advent, required energy and distant future. Which of these will happen, I do
enterprise and initiative, but little else. They pos not profess to know. But I do know that a great
sessed these qualities in a supreme degree; they responsibility rests upon those who mold progressive
developed their continent with almost incredible thought in America: the responsibility of realizing
rapidity and skill. In the course of their progress, the new international importance of America, and
almost against their will, they have been driven into of understanding why the shibboleths of traditional
the position of arbiters of the world's destiny. They Liberalism no longer satisfy European lovers of
may hesitate for a time, they may be reluctant to justice. The only right use of power is to promote
undertake the responsibilities of the League of freedom. The nominal freedom of the wage-slave
Nations, but the power is unavoidably theirs. With is a sham and a delusion, as great a sham as the
the power comes responsibility, however they may nominal freedom which the Peace Treaty leaves
hesitate to assume it; and from sense of responsi to the Germans. Will America, in her future
bility to love of dominion is unfortunately a fatally
career of power, content herself with the illusory
easy step.
The United States, having the oppor freedom that exists under capitalist domination? Or
tunity of ruling the world, is almost certain, before
will her missionary spirit once more, as in the days
long, to acquire a taste for doing so.
of Jefferson, urge men on along the way to the
The sources of American power, so far as can be
most complete freedom that is possible in the cir-
seen, are not merely momentary. It is true that, at
cumstances of the time? It is a momentous ques-
the end of the war, America has certain special
tion; upon the answer depends the whole future of
advantages: unimpaired wealth, few casualties in
the human race.
spite of large numbers of trained soldiers, a newly-
BERTRAND RUSSELL.


632
June 28
THE DIAL
The Ruin of Bourgeois France
One of the SHREWDEST and best-informed ob-
it is difficult for the poor to live at all, especially
servers of international politics that I know said in as wages in France have not risen during the war
a letter which I received from him a few days ago: to the same extent as in England and their increase
“The economic danger of France is the key to the is much smaller in proportion than the increase in
whole future of Europe." I am convinced that he the cost of living. Before the war, wages were con-
is right. The critical economic and financial situa- siderably lower in France than in England and the
tion in which the war has placed France is also cost of living was about forty per cent higher.
the key to the impossible conditions imposed on The present high prices are to a great extent the
Germany by the Allies. The French bourgeoisie sees result of the policy of M. Loucheur, whom M.
ruin staring it in the face and its only hope of escape Clemenceau has placed at the Ministry of Recon-
is to enslave Germany and force her to support struction. M. Loucheur is interested in a large
France. Nothing else can prevent the inevitable col number of industrial concerns, he has made a huge
lapse or avert national bankruptcy—and that means fortune out of the war, and his notion of recon-
the end of the bourgeoisie and of the capitalist sys struction is to promote the interests of himself and
tem. The peace treaty is a desperate attempt to make his fellow-profiteers at the expense of the consumer.
Germany support France. It cannot succeed. For An illuminating article on M. Loucheur's policy by
Germany is not in a condition to give the support M. Francis Delaisi, than whom there could be no
required and, even if she signs the treaty, she will more competent authority on the subject, was pub-
not be able to fulfil its conditions.
lished in the Manchester Guardian on May 15.
The French bourgeoisie has committed suicide as That policy chiefly consists in closing the French
surely as did the French noblesse of the 18th cen market to all English and American manufactured
tury. For more than a century it has been the rul-
goods, although they are urgently needed in France
ing class, but the days of its ascendency are num and have been offered at low prices; only raw ma-
bered. M. Charles Maurras recently expressed in
terials in the strictest sense of the term—“ matières
the Royalist paper, L'Action Française, the opinion brutes” as distinguished from “ matières premières ”
that revolution is imminent; he believes that it will
in general-may be imported without permission.
come when the public in general realizes that it was
M. Delaisi says that American machines actually
deceived when it was told that Germany would pay
bought by the Roubaix spinners have been counter-
for the war and realizes also the consequences of manded by order of the Government and that Ford
Germany's inability to pay. He is almost certainly
motorcars, bought and paid for by the State, are
right. The realization may be a matter of weeks
or months—it may take longer—but sooner
rusting in the port of Bordeaux. I may add that
later it is inevitable and its consequences are no less
M. Loucheur recently fixed by decree prices of
inevitable. The revolution may be preceded by a
paper considerably in excess of the market value,
because the French paper trust happens to have
"White Terror" or a coup d'état but it will come.
large stocks in hand and prices were beginning to
There has been since the Armistice a formidable fall in spite of the restriction of imports.
increase in the cost of living in France, which was
The high prices and the consequent misery are,
already much higher than in England, and it con-
tinues to increase. The Euvre said on May 22
therefore, partly the consequences of the deliberate
that prices in Paris had risen about twenty per cent
policy of the Government, that is, of the bourgeoisie
.
during the last three months, that is to say, since
Unrestricted importation, M. Delaisi says, would
the institution of the Government booths which,
enable the reconstruction of the invaded depart-
according to the optimistic prophecy of their au-
ments to be rapidly completed. But that would not
thor, M. Vilgrain, were to reduce the cost of living
suit the profiteers, so M. Loucheur has announced
forty per cent. in a fortnight. Sugar is unobtain-
in the Chamber of Deputies that reconstruction will
able, butter adulterated with margarine is $1.50 a
not begin seriously for two years and M. Delaisi
says that it will take at least two years more to re-
pound; potatoes cost five cents each, French beans, establish the steel works, five ur six years to set cero
fifty cents a pound, and the prices of meat are fan-
tastic-ranging from about sixty cents to $1.50 a
tain mines going and sixteen years, according to an
pound. Clothes and other necessaries are propor-
official report, to rebuild all the houses.
tionately dear and the landlords are raising the mist, will have to wait till the factories behind
vastated regions, says this eminent French econo-
rents about fifty per cent. In these circumstances
them are ready to work for them.”
or
The de-


1919
633
THE DIAL
One of the excuses given for this policy is the at last applied in an emasculated form during the
necessity of keeping up the rate of exchange and that war in spite of the violent protests of the bour-
excuse has until now kept public opinion more or geoisie and its organs in the press, but even now its
less quiet. But it will do so no longer, for the highest rate is only twenty per cent on the largest
rate of exchange is rapidly falling against France incomes and that rate is not payable on the whole
in spite of the prohibition of imports and at the time of the income. Moreover the whole agricultural
of writing is about frs.30.50 to the pound sterling population-about half the population of France-
and frs.6.50 to the dollar. It is likely to go on is entirely exempted from it and there is reason to
falling unless American and British financiers con believe that the rich make very imperfect returns
sent to bolster it up as they did during the war. of their incomes, which are accepted without any
But such expedients cannot be permanent. Many serious investigation. In any case the income tax
financial experts consider that the real value of the has produced much less than it should have pro-
franc in England is now not more than about six duced even at its present rate and its collection is
pence and sooner or later it will find its true level. considerably in arrear.
The depreciation of the French currency is the While the bourgeoisie refuseď to pay for the war,
natural result of the reckless issue of paper money. it is the class chiefly responsible for its prolongation.
The total value of the French banknotes in circu Almost at any time after the middle of 1915, plebis-
lation at the end of 1911 was $1,360,000,000; in cite would have resulted in a large majority for
August 1917, it was $2,400,000,000; it is now $8, peace by negotiation, and at least three times dur-
000,000,000. Against this huge issue of forced ing the war the feeling of the country was so strong
paper currency the Bank of France has a gold and that France was within an ace of a successful move-
silver reserve of only £1,170,000,000. Of the total ment to stop the war. Had not the United States
value of banknotes in circulation the sum of $5, came in when they did, France would have gone
400,000,000 is a loan from the Bank of France to out of the war in the Spring of 1917 and in May
the State. For the French Government has now 1918 the internal situation was again critical. But
resorted to the expedient of meeting the national the Parisian bourgeoisié, as has so often happened
expenditure by the issue of paper money. A further
during the last hundred years, succeeded in keeping
issue of $800,000,000 has just been authorized-it its grip on the country by means of the centralized
is included in the total quoted—of which $600,000,-
Administration and persisted in continuing the war
000 represent a loan from the Bank of France to the
to the bitter end—to the “Pyrrhic victory" which,
State to meet the deficit on the budget for the next
according to M. Clemenceau, France has at last won.
three months. But that deficit 'will be much larger
It did so chiefly because it believed that Germany
Whenever one urged that the cost
unless the holders of War Bonds (“Bons de la Dé-
should be counted, whenever one tried to point out
fense Nationale") now falling due consent to re-
the inevitable ruin to which France was being con-
new them, for the receipts from taxes for the three
ducted, that was the invariable reply: “Les Alle-
months are estimated at only $560,000,000, whereas
mands paieront.” Many people were even deluded
the estimated expenditure is $2,600,000,000. The
enough to believe that France would make a profit
“Bons de la Défense Nationale" are repayable three,
out of the war. The indemnity: that was the
six or twelve months after issue and the amount
aim for which the French bourgeoisie continued
issued and unredeemed up to January was $4,600, the war, more than for any Imperialist designs, even
000,000. The receipts from taxes thus meet little more than for Alsace-Lorraine. The general pub-
more than one-fifth of the current expenditure and lic shared the delusion to a great extent and the
the balance has to be found by the issue of paper belief that Germany would pay alone induced the
money and by borrowing at short term. The French people to go on.
finances of France are being conducted on the prin Now the bourgeoisie recognizes that Germany
ciples of a spendthrift "fils de famille.” The Na cannot pay and it is aghast at the ruin that con-
tional Debt, which at the outbreak of the war was fronts it. And the public that has been deceived is
$6,400,000,000 was $33,600,000,000 three months beginning to realize that fact. The Government
ago and is still increasing.
resorts to the desperate expedients that have been
For this state of affairs the bourgeoisie has a heavy described in order, if possible, to postpone the day
responsibility by its obstinate refusal to make any of reckoning. On the one hand it tries by the peace
contribution worth mentioning to the cost of the treaty to make Germany support France; on the
The Income Tax, adopted by the Chamber other hand it hopes that by means of paper money
in 1909 and hung up for years by the Senate, was and war bonds it may succeed in evading the solu-
would pay.
..
war.


634
June 28
THE DIAL
Is none,
tion of the financial problems at least until after ready to give their sons to be killed,” said an em-
the general election and in bequeathing it as a legacy inent Frenchman some three years ago of the French
to its successors. Poor M. Klotz cannot even sug- bourgeoisie, “but you mustn't ask them for five
gest a possible solution of that problem; indeed there francs."
It is a vicious circle: if the rate of ex The downfall of the French bourgeoisie will be
change falls, French importers pay more for every the penalty of a selfishness and an avarice unsur-
thing that they buy, but it can be kept up only by passed by any class in any country or any age. For
restricting imports; if imports are restricted, prices nearly five years it has gambled with the lives of
will go on rising in France and the invaded regions men for the stake of a crushing indemnity; and it
will wait for their reconstruction; if fresh issues has lost. What we must hope for is that the So-
of paper money continue, the currency must be de cialist and Trade Union leaders will be strong
preciated and the exchange will fall in spite of the enough and will have behind them a sufficiently
restriction of imports, but without fresh issues of strong organization to prevent violence and blood-
paper money it will be impossible to make both ends shed, for the wrath of a deceived and ruined people
meet. Current expenditures can be met in no other will be terrible. And there is not too much time
way without an income tax averaging something to prepare for the consequences that the coming ca-
like sixty per cent all round, which is impossible, tastrophe in France will have for the rest of Eu-
for it would mean either starvation for people with rope and of the world.
small incomes or a tax of 100 per cent on large One explanation that has been given of Mr.
incomes; and even such a tax would not cover all Wilson's concessions to French, British, and Italian
the liabilities of the next two years.
Imperialism and of his lamentable compromises on
In fact France is insolvent and the only possible his principles is that he feared to precipitate a revo-
way out is bankruptcy—the repudiation of the Na lution in France if he retired from the peace con-
tional Debt. When the pressure becomes intoler ference. It is possible that the explanation has
able, that will be demanded by the mass of the some foundation and, if Mr. Wilson had such a
people. During the last three months Socialism fear, there was some justification for it. But it is
has made immense strides. The circulation of not a sufficient reason for his capitulation, for, if
L'Humanité which was only 55,000 in October, the fear be justified, the French Government at any
has risen to more than 200,000. The peasants, dis rate would have yielded rather than allow Mr.
gusted with the economic and financial conse Wilson to withdraw. And Mr. Wilson's capitu-
quences of the war, for which they were never en lation has only made the revolution more certain.
thusiastic, are turning towards the Socialist party. Had he stood firm and secured a peace in accord-
The salaried proletariat, if one may so call it, is
ance with the principles which he laid down and
uniting with the proletariat paid by wages. Actors which the Allies and Germany accepted, he might
and scene-shifters combine in the same Trade Union, have saved bourgeois society at least for a time.
which is affiliated to the General Confederation of His failure is regarded as the final failure of the
Labor, and 25,000 bank clerks on strike have bourgeoisie and has convinced the mass of the peo-
marched down the Grand Boulevards of Paris. ple whose hopes in him have been so bitterly
This union between the headworkers and the hand-
disappointed, that there is nothing to hope from
workers is one of the most striking signs of change.
a capitalist society and that only a radical change
The bourgeoisie might perhaps save itself at the
can make possible the ideals which Mr. Wilson
eleventh hour by accepting a large levy on capital, aimed at and has failed to attain.,
but it is probably too late even for that to save it
Perhaps the future will show that Mr. Wilson,
and in any case the bourgeoisie will never consent
by his weakness, drove the last nail into the coffin
to any pecuniary sacrifice. “These people are quite of European capitalism.
ROBERT DELL
On the Road to Eden
Trellised grapevines shall be our walls, with the patterned interweaving of leaves and tasseled spheres,
And the broad down-curving thatch of an apple tree shall roof us
With the apples like little round lanterns, honey-colored, blurred with cerise,
Swung to the rafters over our heads.
We shall have a great sunflower on its stalk for a grandfather's clock,
And, if you miss a glimpse of the sea,
We can plant a strip of cabbages along the horizon
To refresh our eyes with their cool frosted green.
ELIZABETH J. COATSWORTH.


1919
635
THE DIAL
A Word About Realism
OSCAR
SCAR Wilde defined art as the telling of beauti vent of free verse and the return of the three volume
ful lies. His own work is the best example of his novel, accuses realism of indifference to or opposi-
theory. The working out of such a doctrine is, at tion to all “form."
its highest, De Profundis, which, written in the in The modern development of realism has certain
sight and the inspiration of forced asceticism in definite and easily discernible characteristics, but they
prison, becomes a travesty in the light of later events. are not these. I do not know whether any writer has
Even Reading Gaol falls short of perfection by just tried to give a photographic presentation of a single
those conscious repetitions and sounding phrases hour in a single life—if he seriously tried it, he
which indicate that the poet's eye was fixed not on either gave it up or landed in an asylum for the
truth but on the attempt to make beauty serve a lie. insane. Selection is not a desideratum of art: it is
Wilde's case is the case for all anti-realists, whether unavoidable. Not even the three volume novel
their banner be marked Classic or Romantic. Such would suffice for a complete account of that one
labels are themselves subject to gradual revision in hour. A “cross-section of life" may be had only by
so far as they indicate living tendencies. It is one living through it, with the use of every sense. In
whom the professors of literature dub a romanticist
his crabbed fashion, Hegel, who said many true
who enunciated the eternal motto of realism, threw things which few people have the patience to read,
down the gage of defiance to the whole theory of wrote that "the real has an infinite number of
art as decorative or formal or symbolic or vague marks." It can never be fully described. This
or creative of a super-real:
residue of distinguishing marks is what differentiates
Beauty is truth, truth beauty; that is all
it from any image we may form, however elaborate.
We know on earth and all we need to know.
The realist, then, like everyone else, must select.
The realist is the indomitable searcher after that And, like everyone else, he must admit that his rank
truth. He is the writer humble enough to conceive as an artist depends on what things he omits. When
that truth as the world gives it to him is of more he tries—faithfully to "hold the mirror up to
worth than a universe created out of his own omnip- nature,” he must acknowledge that even when we
He maintains that the man
to whom
look at a landscape we do not see it all—the vision
truth as he sees it is not more beautiful than any lie is modified by selective attention. What will be
can no more create a work of art than he can live seen depends on the observer. Thus, when op-
an effective life. After all, since we are not God ponents of the realists accuse them of wasting four
we must remain subjects, not makers, of the uni- hundred pages on the unimportant, when the pop-
ular magazines praise their own “red blooded fiction,
Many of us have no personal memory of the packed with action,” the difference of opinion hinges
nineteenth century storm against Zola; we were not on what things are important, what constitutes
even intrigued into an interest in Russian novels by action. Combing one's hair is of course as genuinely
the necessity of reading them in the attic or the action as is committing a murder.
woodshed. But we still catch echoes of a concep The sign of the realist is that he refuses to admit
tion of realism which shows the inconvenience of that murder is intrinsically more important than
static terms to express growing processes. Some hair-combing. His attention is focused on action,
aroma of distaste still clings to the word; for when not for its own sake, but for its significance in
a friend remarked in literary company that realistic illumining humanity, in aiding our visual faculty
writing is the only kind worth doing, the remark to picture either outward appearance or inner mood.
was not ignored as a platitude, but was combatted Indeed it is only in outward semblance that thoughts
with some heat as either a wilful paradox or a or emotions are ever revealed. Because he takes
woefully erroneous doctrine.
seriously this commonplace, the realist cares in-
When this odor of unsanctity is analyzed, three tensely how things .look, and to him all details are
distinct connotations of the term realism may be important which help us to see. Action and thought
detected. The first is the view that realism is or emotion are as body and mind. Mere adventure
non-selective, photographic, a "cross-section of life”; without meaning is as dull as noise without rhythm
the second is the notion that realism consists of the
It does not so much matter what happens
outpourings of minds morbidly attentive to sewer as how and why it happens. Irrelevant action in a
age, like the dirt eaters noted in books on abnormal story is annoying as a fire bell rung for a joke is
psychology; the third, brought upon us by the ad- annoying. We demand meaning behind events;
otence.
verse.
or tune,


636
June 28
THE DIAL
and meaning is in terms of the human mind. On 'Form' is my form; your form is no form
the other hand, ideas or emotions in abstraction, at all,” says the metrist to the vers librist, the
with no body by which we can see them, are as novel of "construction" to the novel like Sinister
futile as ghosts. But meaning is not always in- Street, which closes in the hero's twenty-fourth year
carnated in the most exciting events. When the only because, the author assures us, it would take
realistic writer, therefore, descends to the appar too long to continue it until he is seventy. But
ently trivial, beware! For in literature, as in life, there is no disorder, says Bergson; there are only
the trivial is most often the way of revelation. different kinds of order. So long as words are
When the realist is accused of preoccupation with written in succession and books have somewhere an
the gutter, he may well retort that such preoccupa- ending, there can be no absence of form. The crea.
tion is on the contrary romantic. Reaction against tion of new forms is by no means a new process.
the assertion that tragedy belongs only to crowned The molds into which an age pours its self-expres.
heads and that only a very limited range of experi- sion have always been remodelled according to the
ence is appropriate to treatment in art, naturally led needs and impulses of the time. No one nowadays
to a kicking of blithe heels in hitherto forbidden writes blank verse epics or uses for his social satire
pastures, to a seeking for beauty in the "totally un the rhymed couplets of Pope. The innovation of
inhabited interior,” and to impatience with the blank verse in Elizabethan plays raised a commo-
long-trodden ways. But to glory in the sordid as tion fully as violent as that directed against the
such, to exalt the romance of ugliness, is foreign to Spoon River Anthology—which itself, by the way,
the whole purpose of realistic fiction. It is sub- far from adopting a new form, harks back to the
ordinating interest in humanity to interest in a Greek Anthology. Form is nothing but the chosen
dogma; and this can never be realism.
method of expression; and so long as expression is
It lies deep in human nature to revel in doing sought at all, just so long must some method be
what we have been taught is naughty; the force chosen from among a multitude of possible methods,
of the reaction is one of the effects of a too close some form adopted or created. Already there are
restriction. But the "conspiracy of silence” has expounders of the formalistic elements in free verse.
been so long broken that the novelty of revolt is Already there is some recognition that the psycholog-
wearing off. Our serious novelists are tiring of an ical, biographical novel is not wanting in construc-
exclusive devotion to the analysis of sexual aberra tion, though its construction may differ from that
tions. They can no longer shock anybody, so what of the novel wherein the hero and heroine, each un-
is the use? They are regaining their sense of pro- mistakably labeled, meet in the first chapter and
portion, which means neither suppression nor over-
are married in the last. Our new wine must have
emphasis. Compton Mackenzie and J. D. Beres new bottles. The only question to be asked con-
ford, for example
, treat of sex with entire candor in cerning form is whether it is an appropriate vehicle
its relation to life. But their books deal with the for the substance which it embodies.
religious and economic adventures of their heroes, no
In its war against romanticism as a literary
less fully than with their sexual experiences. Will- method, realism by no means disdains genuine ro-
iam McFee shows the same fine sense of the com-
It is concerned only to draw the line very
plexity of human experience. The realists are
sharply between romance and sentimentality. Ro-
strong in the faith that where truth is, there beauty
will be also.
mance may represent a great truth. Certainly ro-
mantic elements in life and feeling are facts to be
By “unpleasant topics,” the detractors of real- recognized like all other facts, and as such are to
ism usually have reference to this question of
be reckoned with, not denied, in any veritable pre-
sex. As a matter of fact, they do not object to the
sentment of life. It is only when romance is' set up as
topic, but only to the topic when it is not treated
romantically. So long as we have "five reelers" it becomes dangerous. Sentimentality
, the imitation
somehow above reality instead of a part of it, that
like The Gangster's Girl, and plays like Camille
, of an emotion for the sake of following convention
and hundreds of best sellers whose one concern is
the pursuit of a woman by
or of pointing a moral, is a foe to all originality and
a man, with the implica- sincerity in art.
The trouble with the romantic
tion that wedding bells ring down the curtain on
method is, that it has set up a hieroglyphic system
interest in life, we cannot hang as a millstone round
the neck of the realist, preoccupation with sex and
of “proper” feelings and situations which have no
relation to life and are useless as interpretation,
the sordid underworld.
There is an old saw to the effect that ortho-
guide, inspiration, or description.
doxy is my doxy and heterodoxy your doxy. of the outward or inner semblance of things, for the
The new realism, then, is opposed to falsification
mance.


1919
637
THE DIAL
sake of symbolism or beauty or morality or for any by common mortals indefinable, it is after all simply
purpose whatsoever. Reality never looks the same an accurate style. If it transcribes beauty so that
to two different people. It is incumbent on the we see and feel beauty as the writer saw and felt
artist only to present the truth as it presents itself it, glorying in all the most glowing colors of diction
to him.
for the purpose, the highest which it can attain is
The new realism is also opposed to the sub an accurate presentment of that beauty. If this
ordination of presentation to propaganda. Truth seem like dragging the miracle of art into the light
for truth's sake, might be its slogan. Life is its own of common day—why, common day, though greatly
exceeding justification. To reveal humanity to it- maligned, remains the best light for seeing things.
self is the function of the artist. Shaw, who hates The attainment of realism may be expressed in
romanticism as stanchly as any man now living, Carlyle's fine phrase: “Finding the ideal in the
falls short of being a realist because he never im actual." Do we thus steal the thunder of the pro-
merses himself in his characters, is never interested fessed idealists? But the idealists, the mystics, and
in them for their own sakes, never forgets that he the symbolists insist that the actual is the one place
is a preacher. There is a high place for preachers; where their ideal cannot possibly find abiding place.
only it should be remembered that it is never the It can be found, say they, only in Maeterlinckian
same place as that occupied by the artists. The grottos or Dunsany temples-never in the Bronx
preacher always wants to do something to reality; nor along the Main Street of Keokuk, Iowa.
he cares less about understanding it than about push-. The early “laboratory” realists may indeed have
ing it along in the direction he wants it to pursue. denied the ideal elements of life, fleeing like hermits
It is the mission of the realist to comprehend, not from the sins of the sentiment-ridden world. But
to judge.
their modern descendants, so far from reducing life
Finally, the new realism is a foe to vagueness. to its physical elements, write whole plays about
There is no such thing as seeing too clearly, it justice, whole trilogies about the struggle of a man
holds. Vagueness in expression is only a cloak for and a woman to wrest the divine, romantic meaning
vagueness of conception; and vagueness of concep out of the dusty business of printshop and boarding
tion is only a cloak for laziness. The reader or the
house and matrimony. So far from being pessi-
writer who maintains that clarity dissipates his mistic, such work gives us the only hope that glory
enjoyment is either too cowardly or too indolent to
may shine over life as we have to live it, that we,
face the difficulties of precision.
in the integrity of our personalities, are, if Bennett
The whole mission of art is to transcribe impres-
or Galsworthy or Mackenzie could only drop into
sions—sensuous, mental, or emotional. In this sense
the office or the shop some morning and see us, every
accuracy is the final test of style; if a style is such
whit as interesting, as heroic, as Clayhanger or
that it can recapture a fleeting mood, the whisking
Falder or Michael Fane.
tail of a scampering feeling, the aspiration which is
NANCY BARR MAVITY.
War Music
The shame and blood be on your head!
You it was their hearts that led,
Quickened their deluded feet,
Sang them to their own deceit.
Taunted with sounds of bravery,
Lured them with songs of victory,
With your shrill, shrill, shrill strains
Drowned their hearts, drowned their brains.
.
O rhythm and rhyme, snaring man's will,
O treacherous splendor of sound, be still!
Bugle and fife, yours is the blame;
Bugle and fife and drum, be still for shame.
Helen HOYT.


638
June 28
THE DIAL
The Voyages of Conrad
IN
1873, A POLISH LAD of fifteen, walking in the figures, and he dies in his curses, unforgiving and
Alps with his tutor, dismayed that gentleman by a abandoned.
declaration of independence. He proposed to give The ardor and chivalry of the Malays, their pas-
up his country and career, in order to take his sionate pride, again fascinates Conrad in Karain.
chances on the sea. A few years later he was sail Our circle now widens out to include the Archi-
ing on the Mediterranean, that nursery of the pelago around Borneo. Karain's mad avenging
craft.” Then he realized his dream by becoming journey, as he tells it, proceeds from the monster-
associated with the English flag—incidentally learn- shaped Celebes, past a great mountain burning in
ing the English language. He went on far voyages, the midst of water,” past myriad islands that are
seeing little of Europe for a quārter of a century.
scattered like shards from the gun of a demiurge,
Finally, he accomplished his second transformation: to Java, with its stone' campongs and its slavish
the Polish lad became a great writer of English. population. Then on to unhealthy Delli
, where a
The boy was named Jozef Korzeniowski—the writer blossoming thicket hid Karain and his brother-in-
is known to fame as Joseph Conrad.
arms, the two avengers; and there the deluded
The adventurous spirit thus manifest is charac Malay kills his friend instead of the too ravishing
teristic of Conrad's mind and work. Romance is woman who should have been the victim.
his great word, genuinely romantic are his favorite This is an intensely tragic voyage. The more
heroes. He arrays them against the manifold visage epic and comic Typhoon is a tale of endurance and
and challenge of the seven seas. He is primarily conquest. Reaching beyond the Philippines, its
the psychologist of mariners, he is Henry James on scene is laid near the northernmost point of the
a South Sea Island.
Malaysian circle. In the narrow dangerous China
Let us follow some of his rovings. The real
voy seas, near Formosa, the Nan-Shan encountered one
ages of Jozef Korzeniowski concern us only as a
of the worst storms ever recorded. She was saved
basis for the fictional adventures that his double, by the dullness and obstinacy of her Captain Mac-
Conrad, has narrated. We know that a dozen ac Whirr, a man—witness his name-of no imagina-
tual ships and scenes served as a springboard for tion. Just as his stupid dutiful letters home are
his imagination. The publishers of his tales have barely read by a yawning family, so does his imper-
recently charted for
us voyages, undertaken by viousness disgust Jukes, the livelier chief mate.
his dream-ships in seas that often Conrad alone has MacWhirr has never yet been in a great storm, but
adequately celebrated. We will cruise with these you feel that, as a crustacean, he is prepared for one.
ships, not in chronological order, but widening out
from the author's favorite center. Usually his ports
He greets the danger-signals with the obvious re-
mark that there must be "
of call are found in Malaysian waters and his ordin- ing about.” It becomes a Typhoon and knocks
ary beat is that of his hero, Heyst—" a circle with everybody about: the officers scurrying on their du-
a radius of eight hundred miles drawn round a
ties from pillar to post; the cargo, namely two hun-
point in North Borneo." This point is approxi- dred coolies, who presently begin sliding to and
mately the scene of Almayer's Folly, with which
fro in a mass of boxes, pigtails, and dollars. They
book we begin to cruise.
are roped in like an unruly herd. Jukes plunges
The original of Almayer, inadequate and shift-
down to the engine-room and from that gleaming
less dreamer, had been studied along the muddy Inferno the boat seems submerged by the greatest
banks of the Pantai, where the story unrolls. The
breath of this poisonous backwater eats into the
blow yet; tons of water descend, sufficient to wipe
characters and the sunset gold of the Pantai sym-
out everything; those in the engine-room stare at
bolizes the vain greed of Almayer. Swathed in mist
, the captain's voice goes on unperturbed, attending
one another aghast; and through the speaking-tube
the river hides a pair of lovers and their canoe; it strictly to business.
is a sleeping world, wherein all the ardent life of
the tropics is transferred to the beating hearts of
When the Nan-Shan was virtually a wreck and
Dain and Nina. Finally—and this is the actual
the wind fell, they were caught in the circular whirl
voyage—Almayer watches his daughter and her
of the hurricane; but the captain and the boat kept
lover depart in a violent brazen light; he watches
their heads up and came to anchorage, to the aston-
the vanishing cance that holds their embracing the harbor. Mrs. MacWhirr
, in a far-off, forty-
ishment of Jukes, the reader, and all the seamen in
the
some dirty weather knock-


1919
639
THE DIAL
route
cences.
pound house, stifled a yawn at the captain's dull wreck in tow. But the crew had saved all they
account of his voyage.
could, and Marlow, in charge of his own boat,
On the other side of the Archipelago are the presently sighted Java—his first vision of the East,
peregrinations told of in The End of the Tether. “the East of the ancient narrators, mysterious, re-
The blind Captain Whalley touches bottom as mate splendent, and somber." The Judea did and died;
of the coasting craft Sofala, which beats up and her second mate had begun to live.
down its sixteen-hundred-mile circular
From the year of grace 1900 dates the personal
through the Malacca Straits. Needing the money history of Lord Jim and the record of the pilgrim-
for his daughter, Captain Whalley has descended to ship, the Patna. She was a rusty lean cosmopolite,
this from much greater voyages. To hold his posi- who at some Eastern port took on her cargo of eight
tion, he has concealed his oncoming blindness, de- hundred faithful ignorant cattle-like pilgrims. Her
pending on the eyes of his faithful Malay serang. officers, barring the untried Jim, were all scamps
But he is suspected by his worthless officers, one of and bullies. Unlike the men of the Judea and the
whom, near Pangu Bay, piles the steamer up on the Nan-Shan, these fellows are not true seamen; and
reef—and the captain will not survive his charge. that, with Conrad, always spells disaster. His
Such is the third journey in Conrad's chief volume picture of the early part of the voyage is one of
of nouvelles. The others of the trilogy are Youth his greatest pieces of descriptive writing. After
and Heart of Darkness, both of which are reminis- clearing the Strait, the Patna headed through the
Who has not read Youth, that record of one-degree " passage for the Red Sea, borne down
gallantry, endurance, romance, and humor? It tells by an oppressive sun, sailing on a stagnant ocean.
of Marlow's very first voyage, beginning far out of Under a slender shaving of a moon, not far from
our circle, but aiming for the "white" of it, for where the Arabian Sea joins the Red, something
that Bangkok which is the scene of Falk and from happened. A collision with a derelict shook the
which Conrad's own first command set sail. Mar- ship and the souls upon her. The scared officers,
low's boat was the Judea—"all rust, dust, grime— believing her about to sink, took to the boats, aban-
soot aloft, dirt on deck.” But on her stern she doned the Patna and her pilgrims.
bore the imperative and romantic motto “Do or In the record, shifted and twisted from a dozen
Die.” And Bangkok for Marlow promised all the angles, we feel all of human dread and cowardice,
thrill and wonder of the unknown East.
all of human pity for the doomed eight hundred,
Bound first for an English port to load on with who yet were not doomed but successfully towed by
coal, the Judea spent a week in getting to the Yar a French gunboat into Aden. The Patna was
mouth Roads. There was a gale; she shifted bal saved. Only her officers were damned. The rest
last; the crew
set to the grave-diggers' of the story, dealing with the “ of Jim; his
work” of righting her. After long delay in loading, wanderings like those of the accursed Jew, his atone-
she had a collision with a steamer, and waited ment in savage Patusan, will concern us later.
three weeks more. Another gale, 300 miles W. of In a previous voyage, described in The Nigger
the Lizards, tore up the old ship and the crew
of the Narcissus we meet with foul weather off the
turned to endless pumping. But still the battered Cape and with that admirable cook, who at the
craft threw out “like an appeal, like a defiance, like height of the storm accomplishes the miracle of
a cry to the clouds without mercy, the words written making coffee. His declaration as long as she
on her stern: 'Judea, London. Do or Die.'” And swims I will cook” becomes the motto of the desper-
for Marlow, aetat. 20, the faith, the endeavor, the ate and dauntless boat. For here we are in the
imagination of Youth were in that cry.
presence of “the dumb courage of men obscure, for-
Their deck-house was blown away and they put getful, and enduring.” Throughout the windings
back to Falmouth. Three times they put back to of their limited and superstitious souls there has
Falmouth. The crew refused, and no wonder, to passed the taut shiver of responsibility, of “Do or
trust that leaky and bewitched hooker, now six Die." The Narcissus is no Patna. It is with ad-
months on the road to Bangkok and not yet clear miration and fellowship that Conrad bids these sea-
of England. You ask if they ever reached Bang men farewell. It has been said that this story best
kok? Almost. They finally got to the Indian "conjures up the actual spirit of a voyage,” the
Ocean, they neared Java Head—when the coal smell of the ocean, the ship moving through the
caught fire. Still sailing for Bangkok,
tropical heat.
Die,” they fought that fire for days and just as they We have already twice swung around the Cape
seemed to conquer it, the cargo blew up. The in Conrad's wake; his farther reaches take us into
ship herself blew up, after a steamer had taken the the penetralia of the West African Coast.
As a
were
case
" Do or


640
June 28
THE DIAL
they go.
boy he had dreamed of the dark and dreadful Congo. of illusions in which his best-beloved romantic
In the incomparable Heart of Darkness, under the characters appear as beautiful vanishing figure-
witching spell of the narrator Marlow, we are taken heads. Sombre and splendid, they come, they flash,
far up this river, which, resembling an“ immense
“Ports are no good, ships rot, men go to
snake uncoiled,” buries its tail in the tenebrous the devil.” Conrad's pessimism becomes more sar-
wilderness. Kurtz, that leader of men, has lost both donic and matter-of-fact in his later books. But
,his moral sense and his life. An expedition has throughout he is saved by his absolute love of the
been sent to pluck him out. The steamboat crawled sea and seamen, and by his belief in a certain
along the gloomy silent Congo; it was “like trav steadiness and sturdiness which is essentially nauti-
eling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, cal. We have seen how he displays courage and
when the big trees were kings.” An uncertain character in his best sailors. Again, the artistic
channel, a sluggish atmosphere, wonderfully con compass by which he steers swings resolutely to
veyed in the telling, saurians on sandbanks, and the pole of Truth. Sincerity and a kind of austere
especially the “stillness of an implacable force, venge control guide this romantic realist who can on the
fully watching." It had watched poor Kurtz to one hand define literary criticism as a high adven-
some purpose, for when, after experiences with ture of personality-exactly like Anatole France-
cannibals, ivory, attacks from the jungle—when and on the other achieve restraint in the deepest
you, I, and Marlow reach the heart of darkness, emotion of Lord Jim or Lena.
we find that its powers have driven Kurtz to head Conrad is professedly not "literary" in the spe-
hunting, megalomania, and the point of death.
cial sense.
He lived only for the sea and did not
Far-flung tangents from the circle are traced by write a line until his thirty-sixth year. It is nat-
other voyages which may be briefly summarized. ural then that the sea's rhythm should be found in
There is the transatlantic venture by which the his sentences, something of her swift fickleness in
hero of Romance comes to peril and thirst and the
his restless eye.
He has often compared artistic
most adorable of stately señoritas on the Spanish creation to voyaging. Each effort is like the
Main. There is the savage brute of a boat (Sydney everlasting somber stress of the winter passage
to London) which slays a passenger every trip and around Cape Horn.” Each story gets under way
whose cruel anchor catches up and crushes the as leisurely as the Judea. There are voyages into
mate's sweatheart before his eyes. There is the the consciousness of a hundred heroes, into the
Ferndale (London to Port Elizabeth), on which thwarted spirit of Kurtz, into the self-deception of
occurs the singular incident narrated in that ob the Nigger, a voyage of discovery to learn simply
scure book, Chance. If Victory has most of Stev that Captain Whalley is blind, another outward
enson in its scheme, Chance has most of Henry tragedy that ends in inner Victory. From this
James in its method. Gradually Conrad has be mental and moral Odyssey I will detail only a few
come more interested in souls than in ships; also episodes, which will likewise serve as specimens of
he stays longer and more persuasively in the society Conrad's constructive technique. There are two
of women.
main sorts: the voyage that flits from one interest,
That brings us to his inland voyages,
group, or situation to another, using each cursorily
of two kinds, geographical and psychological. As
as a port of call; the voyage which proceeds from
regards the first kind, for over twenty years Conrad
one psychological standpoint to another, plumbing
scarcely saw the continent of Europe, and the jour-
the depths of each soul, through its own narrative
neyings which traverse that continent—such tales as and confession.
Under Western Eyes—are to my thinking almost
Of the first kind, the epic story of Nostromo-
negligible. But the voyages of discovery into the regarded by some as Conrad's greatest—is typical.
varieties of human hearts and situations demand
We know the immense labor that went into this
fuller treatment. They demand first of all some
presentation (based on almost no experience) of a
reckoning with the author's philosophy.
South American republic. The result, I believe, is
Traveling always from one place to another,
a tangle, a too intricate web. The adventurous
shifting imaginatively from standpoint to stand-
point, Conrad has naturally come to view life as
interest is to find the pattern, which is not zero as
in musical comedy, but nearer infinity,
a great panorama, and art as an adventurous cruise.
Life is a succession of scenes and the “
In fact, Balzac's method rules.
the show” is the goddess Maia. Illusion is the
master of situation, in medias res, we travel back to one set
word most frequently on Conrad's lipsillusions
of people and then to another, with fresh digres-
of youth, of hope, in fact the " darkness of a world
sions and dossiers, eddies and whirlpools. We
sink into the maelstrom of an individual experience
which are
as in Balzac
From an initial


1919
641
THE DIAL
servers.
to emerge into the muddy froth of revolutionary drama. The magnanimous self-tormented Heyst
parties. We are led astray by an undated log-book, is set off against the cupidity and villainies of old
which produces much confusion of time and place. Schomberg, Ricardo, and “plain Mr. Jones.” With
We are frustrated by unclear sequences and con most of these we stay for several chapters, while
trary winds and we chart our course in a dozen each expounds his attitude and outlook. They are
directions.
loosely enclosed within two outer rings of observa-
To this excessive ramble one is justified in pre tion, that of the semi-detached narrator and of the
ferring the stiller depths of Lord Jim. Here Con- peripatetic Captain Davidson, who brings news of
rad nearly attains his desired unity of effect, the Heyst and the girl on the island. The triumph of
atmospheric steeping which is the essence of his the book is the girl herself, her gradual rise from
romanticism. Here, at least, there is a single sub a dull sulkiness—Conrad is strangely fond of sulky
ject, a mountain of a subject, which we cruise women—to participation in Heyst's scheme for her
around and see through the eyes of several ob rescue, and finally to an overwhelming gratitude
The author_uses his pet device of first- reaching the point of self-immolation. Her growth
person narration.
The reminiscent and gloomy in consciousness and effectiveness is a marvel of
Marlow first appears here and tells us, too length- psychological portrayal, set amid stirring_deeds.
ily, nearly the whole story of Jim's failure and re The Spanish heroine of the Arrow of Gold (Double-
habilitation. But that is only one point of view. day, Page; 1919) is, on the other hand, already
There is also the inner circle of Jim's own con fully grown; almost as grown as her creator,
sciousness, gradually becoming distinct. There are in her strange mingling of deep romance and
the successive sidelights thrown episodically by the disillusionment.
self-sufficient Brierly, by the French captain, with Mr. Richard Curle, Conrad's biographer and
his touchstone of honor, by the merchant who re critic, has found over ninety strongly realized char-
trieves and establishes Jim in Patusan. There are acters in his work. What a power of vision is
the crowning lights thrown by Jim's dusky sweet needed to conceive sharply all these diverse types!
heart and his chivalrous brother-in-arms-spot The creative mind has roamed from the duellist
lights for the catastrophe.
Feraud, of Napoleon's time, to the chivalrous dark-
Here again space and time are introverted or skinned Dain, from caged and restless English girls
confused, but the main end is gained and we have (Bessie Carvil, Flora de Barral) to the romantic
a progressively ascending study of one temperament Ninas and Seraphinas of exotic strain. Literally
mirrored through several others. In Chance, from China to Peru Conrad has voyaged and ob-
these others are quite evidently of the sort usually served. He has depicted vast rivers and those
chosen by Henry James: the first-person narrator, seas of God” in all their myriad changes—sunny
curious but limited in knowledge, the dull conven smiles hurrying into darkness, sluggish peace alter-
tional couple who guard the unfortunate heroine, nating with riot and cruelty. Much has he trav-
the viewpoint of the romantic captain who weds eled in the realms of gold—so much that the de-
and saves her.
ferent reviewer can see only two more major ad-
But it is in Victory that we find the happiest
ventures for him to undertake. The first would be
amalgamation of the true Conrad with his cosmo-
to visit this country, as he once proposed to do. May
politan masters—for certainly his technique is much
he long delay the great Departure, the uncertain
more exotic than English. With Victory we are in
landfall of the second voyage!
the heart of Malaysia again and we are furthermore
in the hearts of the various actors in this passionate
E. PRESTON DARGAN.
A Parasite Novel
THE REALTY OF Characters in fiction depends
on a multitude of adventitious circumstances. We
believe in a man because he lives in a known town,
on a particular street, at a special number; because
he belongs to a certain religious sect or political
party; because he dresses in conventional black or in
sport tweeds; because he has a squint, a wen, a stam-
mer, or smells of garlic. One of the methods of
the realist is the identification of characters by
families; and since family is so important an in-
stitution to the English, we should expect to find
that method greatly in vogue in the English novel.
Thackeray as an English gentleman recognizes his
characters by their family connections, and one of
the ways in which he makes his whole social fabric
convincing is by carrying his families on from novel


642
June 28
THE DIAL
to novel. A modern edition of Thackeray's novels plication that the book is based on the documents
should be furnished with a series of genealogical of Sir Eustace gives plausibility to the African ma-
trees, as Hardy's with a map of Wessex.
terial, for which Sir Harry Johnston's own career
In The Gay-Dombeys (Macmillan) Sir Harry is ample authority. The second episode of the book
Johnston has reared a family structure of his own in interest, and the first in dramatic handling, is the
on a foundation established for him by a famous love affair of Paul Dombey III. And for back-
predecessor. Dombey and Son was the novel in ground there are English politics and administration
which Dickens dealt most specifically with the theme represented by the Feenixes, Skettles, and Mulberry
of family and the curse of family pride, so properly Hawks, the imperial inefficiency against which Sir
punished in the misfortune of the senior Dombey— Eustace breaks his life; there is English society at
the flight of his wife, the death of his son, the down Sir Walter Gay-Dombey's house in Onslow Square
fall of his house. Now comes Sir Harry Johnston or at Lord Wiltshire's or Lord Feenix's country
to show us the family revived through the marriage houses, with its imperial cynicism; there is English
of Florence Dombey to Walter Gay, whose name religion represented by the orthodoxy of solemn
yields through hyphenization to hers, so that the son Canon S. Edward Dombey, and the superstition of
and heir of the house is Paul Dombey III. And the Second Advent held strongly by Eustace's
accompanying the Dombeys into the second and third mother; the English stage represented by Belle De-
generations there is a similar projection of their com lorme; English journalism by Baxendale Strange-
patriots in the world of Dickens. Suzanne, daughter
ways; and English art by the estheticism of Percival
of Sir Walter Gay-Dombey and Florence, is married and Lucretia Dombey. It is all the substance of ex-
to a Lord Feenix. Harriet Carker's son, Eustace perience and observation, a journalistic record of
Morven, a faithful retainer of the house of Dombey, certain aspects and episodes in imperial England put
is the hero of the book. His inspiration comes to forward casually and unpremeditatedly, much of it in
him from Professor Lacrevy, F.R.S., whose sister, letters, the rest in dialogues, conversations, and
Adele, is his first love. The Toodles stock has borne author's narrative, and properly introduced by the
a railway promoter; Sir James Tudell, a popular foremost practitioner of the English journalistic
actress, Bella Delorme, and a blackleg journalist, novel, Mr. H. G. Wells.
Baxendale Strangeways. There is also a Sir Mul Perhaps the chief challenge of the title is to our
berry Hawk, a Barnet Skettles, and a Lord Algernon recognition of the changes which have passed over
Verisopht. These people start thus with a certain English life as recorded in fiction in the half-century
inherited reality which is increased by a resemblance interval between Dombey and Son and The Gay-
in character or position to personalities of the day.
Dombeys. One difference has already been noted,
That of Josiah Choselwhit to Joseph Chamberlain,
the greater emphasis on the background, and its con-
and of Lord Wiltshire to Lord Salisbury, are most
nection with greater issues, political and social
. A
noteworthy. For the rest Sir Harry creates his second difference is the greater uniformity of charac-
human background from the world which he has ter, the absence of startling eccentricity in life and
known, the late Victorian. At Sir Walter's party,
grotesque exaggeration in the drawing of it. But
with which the tale opens in 1887, the characters
the chief difference is undoubtedly in the moral cli-
above noted are set off by a background consisting
mate of the two books. Both contain the element of
of the Bancrofts, Henry Irving, John Hare, George
illicit love; but while Edith Dombey's flight is heav-
Grossmith, Eric Lewis, Beerbohm Tree, Ellen
ily weighted with moral significance, the escapade of
Terry, Arthur Pinero, several Rothschilds and Ox-
Paul Dombey III and Lucilla Smith is totally with-
ford Dons, Arthur Balfour (who talked theology
out moral implication, the whole question being one
with Mrs. Humphry Ward), W. S. Gilbert, Arthur
of beating the social game. The Victorians used
Sullivan (who played the accompaniment for An-
passion as an opportunity for renunciation, and that
toinette Stirling to sing The Lost Chord, DuMau-
Mr. Dombey is excluded from the benefit of this
rier, Margot Tennant (Dodo), Corney Grain (who
unearned moral increment shows the depth of his
delighted everyone with his parodies), and Oscar
reprobation. The post-Victorians (vide Wells,
Wilde (who shocked them with his epigrams). Al-
Beresford, George), like the comedians of the
together an easy way to get the human stuff for a
Restoration, use it as a test point in the contest be-
novel. Why is it not done oftener?
tween man and his environment. Their theme is
The method of the story is equally nonchalant.
not the spiritual reward of sacrifice but the social
It follows for a main thread the biography of Sir
difficulty of "getting away with it." Sir Harry
Eustace Morven–explorer, consul, commissioner Johnston is of their school of thought.
with governing power in tropical Africa. The im-
ROBERT Morss LOVETT.
S


1919
643
THE DIAL
Feodar Sologub
66
66
“I
CANNOT give you my autobiography," Sologub
wrote the editor of a literary almanac, as I do not
think that my personality can be of sufficient interest
to anyone.” And so we know nothing of the man
Feodar Teternikov beyond the fact of his birth in
1864, his education in Petrograd, and his early
vocation as a schoolmaster. But of the writer
Feodar Sologub, the egohood of Teternikov, we have
the testimony of more than twenty volumes. Of
this work he himself states: “I simply and calmly
reveal my soul ... in the hope that the intimate
part of me shall become the universal.” Which
irrelevantly suggests a very placid child seated on
the nursery floor and solemnly exhibiting his glow-
ing, variegated, shifting kaleidoscope.
Unfortunately only four books from this extensive
self-revelation are available for English readers:
The Little Demon (translated by John Cournos and
Richard Aldington; Knopf, 1916) and The Created
Legend (translated by John Cournos; Stokes,
Co., 1916), which have been termed the In-
ferno and Paradise of Russian literature, The
Sweet Scented Name (edited by Stephen Graham;
Putnam, 1916), and The Old House (translated
by John Cournos; Knopf, 1916). Of these
two are novels, two are collections of short stories,
all are philosophic in tone and symbolic in method.
The Little Demon is the depiction of an idea, built
up incident by incident like the values of a painting
-gray values transepted by a single streak of
carmen, the adolescent love of Liudmilla and the
student Sasha. It is an idea of evil, resulting from
the distortion of life by the light of a corrupt imag-
ination. Peredondv, a schoolmaster, lives with his
cousin Varvara Dmitrievna in the little town of
Skorodozh. His mistress has promised that if he
will marry her, she will use her influence with the
princess for whom she formerly worked to have
him made an inspector. On this slight peg of the
coveted inspectorship hangs all the drab, noisome
fabric of the tale. His passion to attain it makes
Peredonov suspicious. He is suspicious of Varvara
till he smells his coffee to make sure she has not
poisoned it; of his friends till he protests his inno-
cence to leading townsmen to circumvent imagined
slander; of the princess, whom he insanely suspects
of wishing to seduce him, till the thought of “the al-
most cold little old woman smelling slightly of a
corpse” makes him faint with savage voluptuousness
and drives him to sending her an obscene note that
thwarts all his hopes of promotion; of the cat, which
looks at him wildly and snarls till he tries, by shear-
ing her, to rid himself of the menace in the elec-
tricity of her fur; of the playing cards, which seem
to whisper and leer at him till he pokes out their
eyes; and finally, above all, he is suspicious of the
ramlike Volodin, an old friend whom he holds
senselessly as an enemy and whom in a frenzy of
insanity and drunkenness he eventually kills. From
the first adagio, where he smells his coffee, andante
through his mistaking the pond for a dirty mirror,
or setting fire to the dining room because of a gray
imp running up the curtains, to the fanfare of the
murder, the incidents blend in a crescendo of mad-
ness, the madness resulting from an inherently
warped, malevolent point of view. It is the man's
own nature which haunts him in the form of the
little demon—"a small, gray and nimble nedoti-
komka " that nods and trembles and circles around
him and, when he stretches out his hand to catch it,
glides swiftly out of sight, only to reappear a
moment later trembling and mocking again.
Vindictive, carnal, insane, colossal in his petti-
ness,” Peredonov is nevertheless a tragic figure.
Because he is acute enough to realize evil in him-
self and others, he throws his whole life on the
fires of his bitterness; then dances like a maniac by
the light of the holocaust. Within and without
the stuff of his world is hate, and there he stands
alone, with only the consciousness of his corruption.
In the midst of the depression of these streets and
houses under estranged skies, upon the unclean and im-
potent earth, walked Peredonov tormented by confused
fears. There was no comfort for him in the heights and
no consolation upon the earth, because now, as before, he
looked upon the world with dead eyes like some demon
who, in his dismal loneliness, despaired with fear and
with yearning All that reached his consciousness
became transformed into abomination and filth. All ob-
jects revealed their imperfections to him and their imper-
fections gave him pleasure. When he walked past an
erect clean column, he had a desire to make it crooked
and to bespatter it with filth. There were neither
beloved objects for him nor beloved people--and this made
it possible for nature to act upon his feelings only one-
sidedly, as an irritant.
Yet amid the phantoms illumined by his own
infernal imagination, his perishing soul can still
murmur wistfully: “Surely everything doesn't
merely seem to me. There must be also truth
upon the earth.”
The keynote of The Little Demon is individual-
ism, that of an extreme egotist cut off from his kind.
The Created Legend, on the contrary, is essen-
tially social. “I love the people, I love freedom,"
cries the heroine Elisaveta. “My love is revolt.”


644
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THE DIAL
In the latter work we see distinctly the advan-
tages and disadvantages of the author's stated
formula: “I take a piece of life coarse and poor
and make of it a delightful legend.” The piece
of life here is the story of the poet and chemist
Trirodov, who establishes an out-of-door school for
children beyond the confines of Skorodozh, in which,
as we may remember, dwells also Peredonov. But
where we formerly looked at the village through
the black glasses of egotism, we now see it through
the rose of altruism. Barefooted children and in-
structresses lightly clad in gay colors, romp through
the glades of Trirodov's property, where by chance
comes Elisaveta, daughter of a nearby landowner,
who loves the poet for his revolutionary and
humanitarian views and eventually marries him.
The legend, in the meantime, makes Elisaveta
the reincarnation of the lost queen Ortruda from
beautiful isles in the Mediterranean and symbolic
also of the 1905 revolution. It pcoples the master's
house with white, silent, spiritual children in an-
tithesis to the pink, rollicking, fleshly boys and girls
of his gardens. Throughout its paragraphs magic
is rampant: Trirodov changes the former wicked
owner into a prism which he keeps on his desk as
a paperweight; strange melodies are heard from far
away corridors; while on St. John's Eve, putrid
ghosts representing the dead institutions of old
Russia pace the Navii footpath. These symbols,
according to the author, should be treated like music,
which is interpreted differently by each individual:
It does not matter that one person understands a story
one way and one another. Do not think that I
refrain from explaining my work because I do not wish to.
Perhaps I simply cannot. I was in such a mood and such
a poem was the result.
It may be due, psychologically, to this verbal
projection of a mood that the union of fantasy and
realism sometimes becomes actually grotesque in
Sologub's longer works. A mood is difficult to
sustain in an extensive piece of writing and when
it lapses, its expression is forced or thin. A tired
mood in an author follows the path of least resist-
ance and embodies itself in a trite or inept symbol.
Moreover, it is too weak to stimulate a like emotion
in the reader, and so his attention is left free to
notice the mere technique of the uncertain parallel-
ism. For instance, at the beginning of The Created
Legend, in the account of the sisters' bathing,
Sologub's mood is one of joy and youth. Intense
at first, it expresses itself in words whose ease,
rhythm, and relevance arouse the same feeling in
the reader:
immense space, they were glad because of the wind that
blew from some far land, because of the many birds,
because of the two nude maidens.
But further, toward the end of the episode, the
mood wanes and the same figure of the sun, because
of its forced and discordant quality, becomes
ridiculous:
They made their way silently together out of the
pleasant, cool, deep water toward the dry ground,
heaven's terrestrial footstool, and out into the air, where
they met the hot kisses of the slowly, cumberously rising
Dragon. They stood awhile on the bank yielding them-
selves to the Dragon's kisses, then entered the protected
bath house where they had left their clothes.
This same involuntary grotesqueness, rather than
a perverted mind, is, I believe, the basis of accusa-
tions against Sologub of pornography. For instance,
descriptions of passion or beauty are frequently
marred by suggestions of the most modern or prac-
tical things. Now just why a heroine of serious
verse may ride a horse-even astride—but never
a bicycle, or why combing her hair is a poetic
on the part of the Loreli, while brushing
her teeth is not, are facts for future doctors' theses to
analyze, yet their status is undisputed. Similarly, it
is unfortunate when Liudmilla in The Little Demon
shows Sasha the label of Guerlain, Paris, on a bottle
of perfume before scenting him with it; or when
Trirodov hastens for 'his kodak to photograph the
body of his mistress, or presents Elisaveta, on their
bethothal, with a snapshot of his nude former wife.
This last may be Slavic, and it may even be
symbolic, but at least for any Anglo-Saxon sense of
the ridiculous, it is beyond the pale. Inconsistency,
too, adds to our impression that Sologub sometimes
describes passion for his own sake rather than for
the sake of his characters. After saying through one
of the latter that a free feeling is always innocent,
and reiterating that the love of Liudmilla and Sasha
is pure, he nevertheless subjects her to forty or fifty
pages of agonized restraint until, with Freudian
inevitability, she dreams that she is embraced by a
act
swan.
This occasional awkwardness of style is entirely
lacking in his short stories. The old House, for
instance, which is the account of a day in the lives
of three women—the grandmother, mother, and
sister of Boris, who has been hung for anarchy, is
like a long, prose song. It is a song of grief, with
the cadence of very simple words, the unity of dawn
to dark, and the slow rhythm of the sun's arc across
the sky:
When the midday sun rested overhead, when the sad
moon beckoned, when the rosy dawn blew its cool breezes
,
when the evening sun blazed its red laughter-these were
the four points between which their spirits Aluctuated from
evening joy to high midday sorrow. Swayed involun-
tarily, all three of them felt the sympathy and antipathy
of the hours, each mood in turn.
It was a bright hot midday in summer and the heavy
glances of the faming Dragon fell on the river Skorodyn.
The water, the light, and the summer beamed and were
glad; they beamed because of the sunlight that filled the


1919
645
THE DIAL
The description of this family grief, which is the history. The real issue is in the clash of two classes, two
motive of the story, shows Sologub's agreement with
interests, two cultures, two conceptions of the world, two
moral systems. Who is it that wishes to seize the crown
the revolution more fervently than do any of his other of lordship? It is the kham (serf]. It is he who
works, although even these are never free from threatens to devour our culture.
suggestions of political unrest and intrigue. For And Elisaveta responds:
him, the matter resolves itself into a revolt of youth
I know that we human beings will always be frail,
against the established order of tyranny and op poor, lonely, but a time will surely come when we shall
pression. Adult radicalism is generally shown as pass through the purifying flame of a great conflagration;
then a new earth and a new heaven shall open up to us;
something ugly, because it has in it the alloy of
through union we shall attain our final freedom.
self-interest and scheming. But the rebellion of
Brute force is the origin of all ownership, so that
youth is beautiful because it is magnanimous, im-
the protelariat is justified in reverting to it to turn
petuous, and exultantly fearless. Not even the
the tables on the capitalist. As in Bolshevism, the
waters of all the cold oceans can quench the fire
immediate aim of the radicals in The Created
of daring love, and all the cunning poisons of the
earth cannot poison it. “I love all bigness, all im-
Legend is public ownership of the machinery of
moderation in everything! In everything!" Boris production, including land, which is to be divided
into ten or a hundred acre lots for all who ish
cries, and Natasha answers: “Yes, big things, things
to farm it. Constitutional Democrats merely desire
beyond the powers of man. To make life lavish.
to construct a pyramid out of people; Social Demo-
Only no stinginess, no trembling for one's skin. Far
crats would scatter this pyramid in an even stratum
better to die—to gather all life into one little knot
over the earth. “But what of our culture?" cries
and to throw it away!”
Piotr, and Trirodov answers bitterly: “The value
The brother's opportunity comes, and true to faith,
of human life is greater than the value of these
he stoutly gathers his young, good life into a single
monuments!”
terrible second and Aings it to destruction. Boris
the beloved boy with his fine, honest eyes is hung like H. G. Wells for instance, a dialectician. He
If Sologub is not a propagandist, neither is he,
in the prison courtyard, and thereafter from dawn
is an artist. His emotions and the beauty of his ex-
to dark and from dark to dawn, the tightening of
pression are more important than his ideas. The
that childish neck and the blackening of that sun-
Old House, with the remaining stories of the same
burnt face 'haunt the impotent minds of those who
volume, and the fairy tales or fables of The Sweet
loved him.
Scented Name prove that at best he can verbally
The other translations are less emotionally
paint a mood more exquisitely than any living
partisan, and so, as Sologub is intellectually too
Russian. His style is simple and very facile, yet his
cynical to be a consistent propagandist
, they are only originality always saves it from the triteness of
indirectly revolutionary. The ominous cloud of of-
sentimentality. Life for him is intense and he de-
ficial and Cossack tyranny hovers always in the back-
picts it clearly, with haunting nuances of childish
ground and even the prophecy and tenets of Bolshe-
minds, of early spring, of human wistfulness, of
vism are mentioned. Elisaveta dreams of hiding
vague, disquieting Weltschmerz. He has been
books, ponderous condemned books, that are brought
compared occasionally with other Russian authors
to her by students, workmen, young women,,
school
who like himself use the form of the short story
boys, and military men, all of whom whisper per-
more frequently and more successfully than another.
sistently, “Hide them, hide them!” till finally
But it is this indefinable longing in Sologub and this
there is no hiding place left-and still the books
Slavic consciousness of all humanity which to me
are brought. A dull provincial supper party at the
relates him most closely with Dostoevsky. As in
Svetilovitches is raided and the hostess and guests all comparisons of writers, there are some super-
unjustly searched. Peredonov visits fellow towns-
ficial differences of method between them, and there
men to protest his loyalty. And Cossacks ride
is likewise a fundamental difference in breadth and
abruptly through the park on a summer evening
intensity of character-Dostoevsky being distinctly
flashing their knouts promiscuously across the shoul-
the bigger man -but there is nevertheless and above
ders of strollers, for no reason except that their leader
all an essential similarity in attitude toward their
is drunk.
material-life.
In The Created Legend, Piotr, looking far ahead
To begin with, both, either through author's com-
with unsuspected clarity, exclaims:
ment or in the speeches of principal characters, re-
There will be a reign
terror and a shaking up pudiate this same life. To Sologub, reality is tragic
such as Russia has not yet experienced. The point at
and man's only liberation from it is through his
issue is not that there is talking or doing here or there
by certain gentry who imagine that they are making imagination. But even this is uncertain, for life


646
June 28
THE DIAL
I
with her pitiless irony destroys all illusions. In The nounce the higher harmony altogether. .. I would
Kiss of the Unborn the mother who has killed her
rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatis-
fied indignation, even if I were wrong."
baby by abortion is forgiven and blessed in a vision
of the child fór sparing it the sordid agony of living.
Both in Sologub's Created Legend and in
The white children of Trirodov's house represent
Dostoevsky's Idiot, Christ is represented as a
the fantasies of tiny sufferers escaping the squalor
modern character. In the first, he is Prince
of existence by dreams and make-believes Dosto-
Davidov, a celebrated author and preacher with a
evsky, in the creed of Ivan Karamazov, rejects hu-
"tranquil, too tranquil voice"; in the second he is
man existence even more definitely and emphatically.
Prince Myshkin, the epileptic hero. And strangely
The latter says to Alyosha:
enough, although each writer admits the tremendous
magnetism and power of Jesus, both agree in ex-
I accept God and am glad to, and what's more
accept His wisdom, His purpose—which are utterly be-
cluding him absolutely from truth. But here their
yond our ken; I believe in the underlying order and
resemblance ceases, for Sologub sides with truth,
meaning of life; I believe in the eternal harmony in which Dostoevsky with Christ. Trirodov, Solgub's ideal
they say we shall one day be blended.
Yet, would
you believe it, in the final result I don't accept this world
character, with proud, Satanic irony, we are told,
of God's, and, although I know it exists, I don't accept refuses ever to stand with Davidov. He will not
it at all. It's not that I do not accept God, you must
understand, it's the world created by him I don't and
accept his comforting theories or listen to his false
cannot accept.
eloquence which seeks to entice the weak. There
Morally too, Sologub and Dostoevsky respond un-
is no miracle or resurrection, nor has a single will
conditionally and almost in unison to the old ques-
ever established itself over the inert, amorphous
tion: Am I my brother's keeper? The former
world. “I know the true path—my path!" He
says: “The conscience ripened to universal full-
cries bitterly, “Leave me alone!" Dostoevsky, on
ness says that every fault is my fault.” And thus the contrary, writing his brother, exclaims: “If
echoes the terrible cry of his predecessor, “I am
anyone can prove to me that Christ is outside of
responsible to everyone for everything!"
truth, and if the truth really does exclude Christ, I
Toward children both authors feel an admiration should prefer to stay with Chirst and not with the
and love amounting to reverence. Sologub holds truth.” And in the passion of these very words he
that only children really live, for children alone are confesses that for him, truth does exclude Christ.
innocent. One critic has said that when he loves But truth is merely the laws of nature, while Christ
or pities an older person, he endows him with child-
like attributes. Many of his children die young to
is the great priceless Being, worth the whole earth
which nature has aimlessly clutched, crushed, and
spare them from becoming unlovable. Mitya, re swallowed up. Truth is the created world which
calling his little playmate Rayechka, observes: “Had Ivan Karamazov acknowledges but will not accept.
Rayechka lived to grow up, she might have become
a housemaid like Darya, pomaded her hair and
The man, Jesus, represents all suffering, deluded
squinted her cunning eyes.
humanity.
In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan's entire de-
Finally, categorically both authors are symbolists,
nial of life is due to adult cruelty toward children.
but here too, there is an essential difference.
What have these to do with the suffering which
Sologub's symbols are numerous hieroglyphs of mood,
shall pay for eternal harmony? Here there can be
subject-according to himself-to the general
no solidarity of retribution, because children are
pictorial interpretation
of each reader, while
blameless of sin. Through all eternity, their tears
Dostoevsky's are
rare keys to unlock the very
will be unatoned:
structure itself. For instance in The Possessed, un-
Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human
less we realize from the first that Stavrogin personi-
destiny with the object of making men happy in the end,
fies will, the book, instead of being a literary master-
giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essen-
tial and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny
piece, appears like the irresponsible ravings of a
nd to found an edifice on its un-
lunatic. Then too, as we have seen before, Sologub
avenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on
those conditions ?.. And can you admit the idea that
is fundamentally an artist, whereas Dostoevsky is a
men for whom you are building it would agree to accept
philosopher. To the latter, material is paramount;
to the former, emphasis falls on presentation. Con-
of a little victim? And accepting it, would remaid happy sequently one has vital significance
, the other has
ethereal charm.
Then answering his own question, Ivan concludes: loose, spacious, and massive as life; that of Sologub
For the art of Dostoevsky is as
Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth the
prayer of one child to dear, kind God.
as vivid, intimate, and frail as a dream.
there is still time, I hasten to protect myself, and so I re-
While
KATHERINE KEITH.
.
creature


1919
647
THE DIAL
man.
The Trial of Political Criminals Here and Abroad
POLITICAL
OLITICAL CRIME in the United States, has been, gle by the people against arbitrary power. This
up till very recently, a rare thing. In Europe it has freedom implies freedom not only for the defendant
been for a long time a well recognized part of life. himself to give evidence as he wishes and in the
With the European it is almost as familiar as other quantity he desires, but alsoº for the witnesses he
crime. With us it is just beginning to be recognized may bring forward to prove his case. These wit-
as a form of crime punished by the statutes. Just nesses are free, too. They too must be allowed to
so long as thieves, robbers, burglars, and murder testify untrammeled by anyone.
ers were the objects of arrest and trial, the princi This series of contrasts is long and striking. Is
ples of court procedure and the lot of these men in justice come to more easily and surely by the Con-
prison were matters which a Howard might in tinental European 'than by the Anglo-American
vestigate, but which appealed little to the ordinary method ? Centuries of oppression, a contest long
Now that some of the finer spirits in this drawn out between the rulers and the subjects,
country are facing trial and imprisonment in our have brought the Continental Europeans to the sys-
dungeons, now that the man in the street is begin tem which in criminal law makes the jury the judge
ning to be directly affected by the procedure in of both the facts and the law. Rivers of blood ran
court and the treatment of the prisoner in prison before the people conquered the right to be tried
there is certain to be a creation of interest in both by a body of their peers, and not by governmental
courts and prisons. This article will deal only with authorities. Even now most judges are not directly
court procedure, and will use some recent trials, elected by the people, but are appointed either by
especially in the City of New York, to illustrate governmental authority which is hereditary or
the principles of present day procedure and to point which has been elected by the people. The situation
the moral of a transformed procedure which will is in this last case like that of our Federal judges who
more nearly do justice to the individual and to the are appointed by the President who has been elected
state.
by the people. Even in the case of the judges ap-
Everywhere on the continent of Europe the pro pointed by an elected governmental authority the
cedure in criminal trials is practically the same. In Continental European is wary. Not that the jury
countries where the Anglo-American system prevails is infallible, or that it is always on the side of the
we have a striking contrast to the Continental Eu defendant, and particularly in political cases, on the
ropean system.
In Continental Europe the jury side of the prisoner. But the probabilities are that
is judge of the facts and of the law. In the Anglo the jury, rather than the judge who is the direct
American system the jury is judge of the facts, and representative of the governing power that brings
the judge, of the law. In the first system the jury the prosecution will give the defendant a fairer trial.
is tolerant; in ours intolerant. In the Continental Because of the reasons that have brought to birth
system the jury is independent and, in some cases, an the jury of law and of fact the Continental Euro-
tagonistic to the wishes of the judge. In ours the pean jury is also tolerant, and independent of the
jury is submissive and pliant to the judge. In the judge and sometimes antagonistic to him. A
foreign system the defendant is given the last word. hostile attitude of the judge to the defendant
In ours the prosecution has the last say. In the will almost certainly in a political case espe-
first system the jury gets a complete case-gets all cially cause a revulsion on the part of the
the evidence the prosecution and the defense desire jury and result in an acquittal as a demonstra-
to present. In our system the two parties are lim-
tion of power.
In Anglo-American countries,
ited in the presentation of evidence by rules of proof. on the other hand, the jury is meek and dependent
In the foreign system, because of the lack of tech upon the judge. Our system of evidence conduces
nical rules, there is little waste of time over quirks to that result, and history reinforces the teachings
and quibbles. In our system an infinite amount of and the requirements of law. Wide differences of
time is thrown away by long, tedious, useless dis- opinion have produced a tolerance in Europe of
cussions of points of law relating to the admission which we are not yet the possessors. This tolerance
and the exclusion of testimony, or evidence of other finds a prominent place in the jury box across the
sort. By means of this system of rules we keep out water, whereas it is almost unknown in this coun-
a great deal of matter the Continental European try, except in rare cases and in the largest cities.
believes essential to the liberty of the citizen. A Minorities are not yet respected here. They had a
cardinal doctrine there is that the defense is free- vigorous handling during the Revolution, and a
a formula which is consecrated by centuries of strug worse handling during the late war.


648
June 28
THE DIAL
Attorneys present a spectacle less admirable even Now we come to a most significant element in the
than jurors. Up to this war no one had dreamed, trial of a case: the rules that govern the admission
even in this country, which had had continuously of matter to be presented to the jury. In our
a fairly placid internal history, that lawyers-per system we have an elaborate, intricate body of
sons who had defended criminals of the common rules by which evidence is admitted or excluded.
crime sort and had even defended murderers of In Continental Europe they have no such system of
presidents, and had been praised for their action- exclusionary rules. Everything goes in. The wit-
would run away from the defense of political pris-, nesses are produced, and they give their testimony,
oners. But to that we have come. Any lawyer uncontrolled and unshackled. The witness comes
who dares to defend such persons is cut and con to the bar and relates his story in the form of an
demned by members of his profession. A great uninterrupted narration. When he has finished
conspiracy of inaction seems to have been entered questions may be asked of him, but during his
into, and the distinguished members of that learned original narration he is free as the air and can keep
profession decline to stir on behalf of a political the floor for almost as long as he wishes. In the
prisoner, no matter how Aimsy the evidence to sup Bolo trial, for instance, Caillaux came forward and
port the charge. In Europe the tolerance of the made his speech. This is a typical example of the
profession and of the people at large gives wide scope method and its implications. Under our system
to the activities of a lawyer. It is considered most
hours and hours and hours would have been con.
honorable to defend a political prisoner, just as it sumed in drawing out the testímony by question
is even still considered in this country_in theory and answer. In the actual case only about an hour
at least, for distinguished counsel are no longer to and a half were spent. And the facts that came out
be seen in criminal courts-honorable to the law and were much more numerous than by the other
to the State to defend a man who has violated any method. In the second Masses trial, John Reed
other part of the Criminal Code.
was called to the stand and was anxious to give a
On the Continent the defendant's lawyer has the detailed account of the origin and development of
last word. This is another important, indeed in-
his hatred of war. There was some argument as
dispensable right the prisoner has conquered through to whether any of this was admissible, as being “ too
ages, of struggle. The theory, of course, is, in our remote” from the issue, therefore irrelevant and
system, that he who opens must close.' But this is wasteful of the Court's time. All the while the
a case where the practical instinct of the Anglo- Court's time was being wasted by the argument as
American has left him and the logical instinct has to whether the estimony was relevant or not,
gripped him with hooks of steel. We are inclined When some of the matter was finally admitted and
to laugh at the French, for instance, who are ana the witness had begun to narrate his experiences
lytic and logical and build up systems a priori, and
there was objection by the District Attorney, and
we are loud in praise of our own instincts which objection again by the Judge himself. A great
are practical: we do not build up our systems of
of the evidence the witness wished to give, and
thought and action by a priori methods but by trial which would have been not only relevant but
and error, by additions and modifications to the al- powerful in the determination of the conviction or
ready existing structure.
acquittal, was excluded, and the rest of the testi-
How does it happen, then, that we have been
led astray by symmetry (above all things symmetry)
mony the defendant gave created little effect because
and the French have departed from their architec- by the impatience of the judge was detrimental to
he was interrupted often and the atmosphere created
tonic propensities and built practically? But if we
wish to retain a fetish, if we wish the prosecution
the legitimate effect of the story upon the jury.
to close, why not give the prosecution first say on
Under the European systems this could not be. The
summing up; then give the defense a chance to com-
judge has no right to stop the mouth of a man
bat the arguments advanced, and then allow the
who comes to the witness stand, be he defendant or
prosecution the last word and an opportunity to
other witness. Again, in the Nearing trial
, al-
combat the defendant's arguments ?
though the judge was exceedingly liberal under the
tinental Europeans have gone farther, and laid
But Con- rules, although he gave the defendant great latitude
down the fundamental proposition that the prisoner
upon direct examination and greater latitude, as
must have the last word. There the prosecution
was natural, upon cross-examination, the impression
opens the summing up, the defense answers; and
upon the jury, due to the method of question and
then, if the prosecution desires to rejoin, it may.
answer in which the information comes piecemeal
,
But if it does, the defense has the last word. This jury, was not what it would have been if the de
disconnectedly, and in uninteresting fashion to the
is practical and logical.
fendant could have given his testimony in narrative
deal


1919
649
THE DIAL
remote.
form and untrammeled by rules of evidence. The than the suggestion that anything is wrong with the
contrast between the effect upon the jury of Mr. law or legal procedure. To such blind followers
Nearing's examination on the stand and his direct of tradition I recommend a reading of Bentham's
narration to the jury on summing up is instructive Rationale of Judicial Evidence. Here are some
to men desirous of changing our system for the of his choice phrases, sober, steady and excessively
better. But the point is this: parties to an action, temperate and devoid of agitatory features:
and political prisoners particularly, ought not to be
Evidence is the basis of justice; to exclude evidence is
subject to the whims, fancies, or mistakes of a judge to exclude justice.
in the admission or exclusion of evidence. The By example, by reward, by compulsion, by every means
stakes are too great. It is better to get in too much
possible or imaginable, we shall see (every man docs
see it who does not shut his eyes against it) this most
than too little. And our system lets into a trial too mischievous of all vices propagated under the shelter of
little and that little undramatically, unimpressively, the technical system, propagated by the professed and offi-
and ineffectively. Political prisoners lose by the
cial guardians of the public morals; and among the in-
struments of this disastrous husbandry are to be found
exclusion of evidence. Remote or “proximate,
some of the most efficient of the evidence-excluding rules.
the evidence ought to be admitted. Who can tell From the above description of the nature of the mis-
what is proximate and what remote? The judges
chief may be deduced the description of the persons in-
terested in the pushing it up to the highest possible pitch;
differ. One judge more liberal and allows an
mala fide suitors on both sides, including malefactors of
exposition of theory; another is strict and permits all sorts, their accomplices and well wishers; men of
no discussion of the economic or political or social
law, as being the natural allies of malefactors and other
mala fide suitors; under the technical system judges and
theory of the defendant but limits him closely to other officials as well as professional lawyers; professional
the technical issues of law and of fact in the case. lawyers under any system.
For instance, Nearing, under the Continental Euro-
Exclusion (as will be seen) is the grand engine by the
help of which corruption has been enabled to gain its
pean system, would have been allowed to give a
ends; and by which arbitrary power with the jus nocendi
connected, elaborate explanation of the origin and it enforces, has been acquired; that faculty the acquisition
development of his beliefs. He began to detail his
of which is so delightful to the human heart whether
on the particular occasion in question there be or be not
experiences in the Child Labor Committee, and the
a disposition to employ it.
objection came with the ruling that that was too
These are hard words. Bentham did not mince
I do not wish to criticize this ruling of
matters. No espionage act prevented robust speech.
the judge's—it seems ungracious to do so when
We today need not go so far as to say that rules
Judge Mayer was almost as liberal as a judge could
of evidence breed corruption or that the partnership
be under a hampering system. Other matter was
of Judge and Co., as he terms the combination of
admitted: the platform of the Socialist Party, the
judges and lawyers, “is interested in depraving the
War Proclamation, and numerous other things be-
lieved to reveal the intent of the author in writing that just as “ alchemy [is] the art of cheating
moral and intellectual faculties of the people”; or
the work. Did he intend to cause insubordination,
disloyalty or refusal of duty? Did he intend to ob-
men on pretense of making gold, astrology, the
All
struct the recruiting and enlisting service?
art of cheating men on pretense of foretelling future
facts whether seemingly releva or irrelevant,
events (so] judicature—under technical rules—
[is] the art of cheating men on pretense of admin-
remote or proximate, ought to be allowed. Who
istering justice”; or that law is a
“ fortuitous con-
can tell after the trial whether a thing is remote or
cord of technical atoms ”; or that it employs
proximate? And all the more, who can tell before
“ devices for promoting the ends of established pro-
the end? The remedy is to allow a free hand, to
cedure at the expense of the ends of justice ";
permit a complete exposition. This, as I have found
by practical experience in European Courts
, actually prudential (that is
, judge made] law at the expense
or that the habit is pernicious “of eulogizing juris-
saves time, and presents a more comprehensive and
of statutory, sham law at the expense of real law”;
vivid view of the case to the jury.
“the technical system of rules of evidence
The acquittal of Mr. Nearing and the conviction
is the mechanical system”; or that England is today
of the American Socialist Society—the corporation
the slough it was in Bentham's day, for England in
which had been indicted with him for the publica-
her procedure is far more advanced than we in this
tion of the pamphlet, The Great Madness, seems to
country are. But we can follow the great legal
point to a compromise verdict. The evidence
surgeon when he says, seeing that the exclusionary
against the Society was much weaker than that
system still flourishes in all its luxuriant rankness
against the individual, yet the first was convicted
on this side of the water, that “jails have had their
and the second freed.
Howard; jurisprudence waits for one."
Nothing can be more shocking to the average
ROBERT FERRARI.
lawyer, brought up on the pabulum of the schools,
or that


650
June 28
THE DIAL
Belated Translations
ANATOLE FRANCE published his Contemporary fully and peacefully, according to her nature. The
History—The Amethyst Ring was the third in the Abbé Guitrel wins the bishopric, but his opportunist
series of four books—twenty years ago (trans way with life is not made out pleasurable to him.
lated by B. Drillien; Lane). The French M. Bergeret's constant satisfaction in his own un-
read it whilst the Dreyfus Affair was excit fettered intelligence is all that is joyful.
ing every kind of prejudice. A minority of in How he delights in humanizing his learning!
tellectuals, and all the young men of ideals just His speculations about the nature of Hercules make
coming to knowledge of the actual world, were the legendary strongman an enigmatical present
struggling against strong patriotic generalities and fact, affecting our everyday consciousness. Anatole
comfortable absolutisms. It would be an outrage
France has always found it particular fun to fill the
to the Army to doubt the legality of a judgment world with such realized figures from the past that
rendered by the Council of War! Seven officers they lose their historic distance and have some imme-
together could not be wrong! The Army was
diate significance that is disquieting.
exalted by the Royalists, who were rallying to the And this absorbing activity of M. Bergeret's mind
Republic only because of the danger to the Army's allows him to keep the good temper of an Olympian.
prestige, and by the masses, eagerly anti-Semite. He never too vividly realizes little annoyances. He
The state was seemingly facile and corrupt. never gets acrimonious. He is generous to all the
Even M. Bergeret in Paris, the last in the series, smaller satisfactions. He can be really conscious
was published before the end, while Anatole France that arranging his library, and driving nails into the
was still skeptical of the triumph of justice. He walls, is a sensuous enjoyment, a way to feel like a
might well wish to encourage toughmindedness voluptuary. It is delightful to him to make a close
about the human species under a republic. He was relation between his philosophy and his devoted little
not concerned to sow seeds of that faith in the com dog, Riquet. He can discuss amiably immortality,
mon man which is now being called on to move or the weakness of truth.
mountains. He could appeal to the love of the Few The Dreyfus Affair even cannot involve M.
for clarity and all the relativeness of life. Aroused, Bergeret in the general ill-temper. He had come
the Few might be strong enough to enforce the out against the condemnation, and had been hooted
criticism of self, and the revision of the Dreyfus in the streets. He had attacked the secrecy of the
condemnation. He struck at hypocrisy on every trial, maintaining that France could not plead
side.
reasons of state. She had administrations, but no
His attack is energetic and beguilingly skilful, such entity as the state. The Army was as much
and his enjoyment of it is pervasive and con an administration as the departments of agriculture
tagious. Indeed, in the world he creates, the only and finance. Military justice was as gothic and
probable pleasure he recognizes is the free and witty barbarous as had been the justice of the feudal lords
.
use of the critical intelligence. M. Bergeret, lec- And liberty of thought had never any more sup:
turer in classics on a provincial faculty, is made
porters than a minority of the intellectuals. ·Popular
thoroughly to enjoy the ruthless activity of his own
The
enthusiasm could never be counted on.
mind. His pleasure is really the only pleasure in Dreyfus Affair had called for a hard kind of reason-
the book. The rest of the world is almost joyless
, ing that only thinkers in good practice would be
except when now and then someone has a brief capable of. M. Bergeret is skeptical
, but not ill-
sense of power or success. Madame Worms tempered—and he risks his livelihood by being
Clavelin had been a Paris street arab, and now she openly a revisionist.
lived in good society, belonged to the ruling classes,
While the other administrations in France may
and in all her intrigues had really had to do only well have seemed fallible to M. Bergeret, that could
with men of the world. So she can now sometimes
feel mystical, and grateful to the Virgin, in a way
not have been his judgment of the Ministry of
Education, which first promotes him on his pro-
she never could when still a Jewess. Young Bonvincial faculty, and then makes him professor at the
mont has moments of agreeable confidence in the
Sorbonne. It must have been consistently loyal to
power of his money. But most of the time he pro-
tects himself from other men by an air of being
the claims of the mind. And M. Bergeret, not
tranquilly and steadily disagreeable.
unaware of being philosophically subjective, changes
His senti-
mental mother indulges herself with every possible ing our decaying planet alone, into a belief that all
his opinion that life is nothing but a mold, consum,
romance, but is never able to love her lovers trust-
the planets may provide light and heat for life and


1919
651
THE DIAL
thought. Even on this earth, life sometimes takes Church. The Abbé Guitrel has declared himself
an agreeable form, and thought may perhaps be friendly to the Government, inclined to be helpful
called divine. When he is to go to Paris, he amus in its difficulties about the Separation of Goods.
edly discovers too that he is not a detached intel Once appointed, he declares himself in opposition,
ligence, but that, in the provincial city where he has and quotes the same pastoral letter of Pope Leo
lived fifteen years and been betrayed by his wife, he XIII to support both declarations. His rival for
is tied to things” by invisible bonds, and that he the bishopric has been an honest intransigent, en-
loves the very earth of his fatherland. M. Berger thusiastic for the ancient faith, who has not been
et's irony and good humor are immensely helped by able to play the Minister, and the Nuncio, and the
being subsidized.
Jews. He has jerked on the bare hook of truth.
The question, after all, however, remains: how In their dreary grey, too, the Brécés make one
far is M. Bergeret's pleasure "put over in this lenient to radicalisms that would be abhorrent to
translation? What will be the American reader's Anatole France. They are of the old nobility, who
chief memory of the book, now that the world feels have rallied to the republic as Nationalists. They
congested? Whilst the French read it, they were are all for the Army and the Church. They are
constantly excited by its manner, amused and quick- full of ritualisms and superstitions—and passionately
ened by every turn of phrase. Cinderella was given anti-Semite. Yet gifts to the Church buy for the
a ball dress before the ball. In her rags, she might Bonmonts, Jews whose name was Gutenberg, a
have stirred up a good deal of latent socialism. Per sort of inclusion in the Brécé circle. The
haps she might not have engaged the prince! M. Brécés are dangerously stupid and helpless. Where
Bergeret's pleasures of the mind come to England can the general reader find faith in the ruling
and America in a rather dreary workhouse uniform. classes? Or is it true that he still likes to be
Did their fairy godmother really want them to have hardheaded ?
a good time?
M. Bergeret was never popular with his fellow
Presented without fine clothes, the way a bishop citizens in the provincial city. They found him
is made in France, is disagreeable. A Minister of only disquieting. And yet they had the stimulus of
Public Instruction and Public Worship is cajoled by his witty French. He speaks boring, rather stilted,
pretty women, who have been told by their lovers English.
to push a priest useful to them quite outside the
Edith BORIE.
The Ways of Genius
IT
IS COMMON among amiable critics of the incon ever been understood ? Like madness, to which it is
clusive to say with a flourish that So-and-so "lived” perhaps akin, it has been regarded as a badge of the
his book, or his opera, or what not. As if there favor of the gods, a vessel for divine revelation, or
were any distinction in that! Some nine hundred a private factory of truth. Then, in more sophisti-
ninety-nine of every thousand human beings do that. cated times, it has been treated as a social accom-
The thousandth, the genius or near-genius, tor plishment, a supererogatory elegance: certain men,
mented by a malady he comes slowly if ever to having taken life like the rest of us, afterward see fit
understand, must write or compose or paint his life; to gossip about it in whatever art comes handiest to:
and we, recognizing his distinction, say lamely that them. But that neither the inspirational nor
he has “talent," or temperament," or genius.” the representative theory is adequate to explain
Whereas it has been held, and not without evidence, genius may be inferred from the persistent curiosity
that what he really has is a disease-certainly a with which the ordinary man regards the artist.
plague. It is his lot to be challenged, perplexed, de The farmer who halts plowing to quiz the painter
feated by life until he can turn it into something (as in his field is the symbol for us all. We have never,
the philosophers say) not-life, but often so like life, to borrow Clerk Maxwell's idiom, got the “particu-
and yet so curiously more than life, that we gape lar
go ” of the artistic temperament. To be sure, we
over his shoulder, marveling that in a brief while, have had plenty of books which studied the
with only a pen or some pigments, he should thus periphery of the artist's interests; but have we had
easily win through to what we have struggled any that succeeded in plucking out the heart of his
toward in long sweat and blood.
mystery? The artists themselves report only the
Probably mankind has always recognized and ac symptoms of their disease.
corded distinction to this creative faculty. But has it Romer Wilson -one has heard that this is a
66


652
June 28
THE DIAL
one of
ness.
pseudonym adopted by an Englishwoman and at the apex of his vogue as a light composer,
gathers that she is young-has thrown illumination Martin hears his too popular song of the moment
on the matter with her first novel, Martin Schüler ground out by a hurdy-gurdy, on the instant ex-
(Holt), which the publishers advertise, with an un plosively sickens of his long treason to his vocation,
wonted restraint that compels quotation, as
makes a murderous attack on his secretary as the
those successful novels about genius that comes very embodiment of everything that has debauched his
close to being itself a work of genius." It is un musical integrity, and goes to his villa in the
necessary to decide whether the book is the latter in Schwarzwald to escape his intolerable defeat. This
order to recognize that it is much more than the is the mere outline of the emotional material that be-
former;
that it is, indeed, pretty much the first suc came, as fast as he could hear it inside him, Martin
- cessful novel about genius as a creative force. Schüler the composer. Now in the Schwarzwald,
Martin Schüler is a composer whose own notions
he sat and looked across his large writing-table out of
about his processes are never clear. He begins life
the window in a dream. It was the first time he had
with ambitious plans for a grand opera based on a ever experienced a clear vision of the past, or had sought
fairy tale about beautiful maidens spellbound as pea-
to remember anything out of it. Up to now the present
and future had been sufficient for him. He had never
hens, but wins his earliest successes with sentimental
yet drawn upon his resources: he had taken everything
songs and waltzes. From Heidelberg, where he has out of the air, out of his friends, out of the incidents of
produced a promising operetta, he is carried off to
his life as they occurred. In a short time he began to
read the manuscript of The Peahens.
Leipsic by an extraordinary young patron, Stein-
bach, to whom he cries: “Oh, my mind, my mind! There, and afterwards in Munich—when, ironic-
It bursts sometimes for the experience it has not
ally, he has received a Nobel prize for his former,
got.” Already he has begun the acquisition of experi-
too popular music, “because the world thought his
ence, which at first he seeks with calculating direct-
day was over," and the Kaiser has made him a count
He has seduced and deserted a young girl.
he works on nothing but The Peahens:
He has studied in Paris, and wooed inspiration with
He wrote entirely from the memory of his dreams, and
love, alcohol, opium. From beneath the corpse of
from the copy of those visionless thoughts that in past
his friend Werner (in whom the author has sympa-
years had with pain and labor expressed themselves
under his hand.
thetically portrayed frustrate genius) he has stolen
On the night The Peahens is triumphantly produced
the libretto for The Peahens, but is so wrung with at the Berlin Opera House, he dies in his box.
superstitious terror that he has hidden the manu-
That is perhaps an unnecessary conclusion. But
script away. As for the musical materials for The
it does emphasize the fact that the real life of this
Peahens,
genius was his music, and was complete when his
the beyond, the heavens, the desert were in his mind. He music was completed. Nothing that happened to
was not yet able to see them; but every mouth, every
emotion, every piece of knowledge, every attempt, he
him in the crowded years of maturing emotion be-
came nearer to them. Some day he would be able to came life till he had got it into sound, and as sound
visualize them, some day to realize them. Realization for it was remembered. “I can never recall to you,"
him meant to be able to turn into sound.
he says to Hella, “except in music, the charm of
No experience is real to him until it has become those past days.” In the beginning The Peahens was
music, echoing in his memory. Of the raw materials
for such experience—loves, quarrels, exaltations, and that, if you like, was “inspiration.” Gradually
,
a vague dream which he could not put into words;
and despairs; all the meanness
, cruelty, and ecstasy of by subjecting himself to everything which could
which undisciplined genius is capable—from now on
he has enough. He steals Steinbach's fiancee, Hella, ings, he acquired the power to put that dream into
make him feel and by learning to “hear” his feel-
and then wants to kill Steinbach. With Hella he music; and this, if you care to call it so, was “Tepo
runs away to the Alps for an idyllic interlude of resentation." But he was never vehicle to an ex-
love, thinking he has done with music, both the high
ternal
message," never the ordinary man living
art of his dreams and the lower thing of his practice, richly and
translating” his life into an art. His
though he has no idea what else he will do beyond masterpiece was a fabric of his emotions “recols
marrying Hella.
Steinbach concocts
a musical
lected in tranquility”; but his recollected emotions
comedy from sketches Martin has abandoned, and
were sounds, as those of the true painter are lines
Martin precipitately drags Hella back to Leipsic to
and colors, and those of the true writer are speak-
produce it. His next piece is a great success in Ber-
ing phrases.
lin, where shortly he becomes very much the man of distinguished her fine novel among fictional discus-
By the perception of this fact Miss Wilson has
fashion-and (Hella dismissed unmarried) the lover
of the most beautiful matron in the capital. Then,
sions of genius.
CLARENCE BRITTEN.
06
-


THE DIAL
CLARENCE BRITTEN
ROBERT MORSS LOVETT, Editor
In Charge of the Reconstruction Program:
JOHN DEWEY
THORSTEIN VEBLEN
HELEN MAROT
ter.
THE CHANGES IN THE IDEALS AND PRACTICES OF cable in those departments of literature of which
literature, which lead critics to question whether it formal technique has been most characteristic is ob-
is longer to be entitled a fine art, are of the nature
vious in modern drama and poetry. The so-called
of democracy. No longer do writers form a caste
renaissance of the drama is due to the discovery by
apart, an institution devoted to competition in the Ibsen and his successors that the stage is not lim-
production of masterpieces, seeking like Milton "to ited by technique to a certain prescribed subject-
leave something so written to aftertimes as they matter, but may deal effectively with the immediate
should not willingly let it die.” On the contrary
realities of modern existence. The renaissance of
in these days of popular education everyone writes,
poetry is due to the same discovery. But it is in the
or threatens to do so, and measures his success not
novel that the triumph of journalistic realism over
in length of time but in extent of space—not by fit
technical considerations is most pronounced. The
audience though few extending in a thin line down
novel form, owing to its hybrid origin and bour-
the centuries, but by the unfit and vast assembly of geois history, has never suffered from the obsession
readers scattered over the whole world, who for a
of sacrosanctity. Fortunately, perhaps, no one has
month or a year may be held by the potent charm of
ever known exactly what a novel is. Certain tech-
a best-seller. Everyone reads, and supplying read-
nical principles of plot, character drawing, and back-
ing matter to an immense and voracious public has
ground development have been held to constitute a
become a business like supplying it with clothes and
technique of the novel, to which the characteristic
food. This public is uneducated in the art of ex-
modern altitude is that of Mr. Wells, proclaiming
pression. It is primarily interested in subject mat-
Laurence Stern the greatest of English novelists be-
And writers, subdued to public taste, are no
cause he is farthest removed from such technique.
longer devoted to form, seeking subjects that will
Even before the war such books as Number 5 John
serve as material for epic, tragedy, or sonnet se-
Street, Children of the Dead End, and Ragged
quence. On the contrary they spend their gifts on
Trousered Philanthropists were recognized as among
finding what material will take the public, and adopt- the most powerful examples of prose narrative, be-
ing a form which will serve most directly and pow-
cause by their disregard of novelistic conventions
erfully to convey this material to its destination.
they approach infinitely closer to life and lay empha-
Now, the chief uses which a democracy has for lit-
sis with infinitely more exactness upon its overwhelm-
erature are two-education and entertainment. In ing and tragic facts. The war has given great im-
both respects, it must be admitted, the demands of petus to such writing, to such journalistic novels as
the public are in an elementary stage. What is
Mr. Britling Sees It Through and Blind Alley,
wanted in education is a rough general knowledge
which have merely a thin convention of fiction. And
of the world in which we live and some data to
the actual experience of war has given birth to
direct our course efficiently in it. For entertainment
narratives of a reality so stark and terrible that the
reenforcement of fiction would be an impertinence.
the mass of men are dependent on appeals to the
The extension of such experience among men, in-
senses, but there is one form of intellectual enjoy-
stead of its limitation to a professional soldiery,
ment which is wide-spread, the satisfaction of curi-
osity, the emotion which is stirred by novelty. The
finds evidence in the difference between Le Feu and
La Debâcle. To the universalizing of such experi-
questions which the multitude of readers ask in re-
ence the democratic art of journalistic realism is a
gard to any writing are: Is it true? Is it impor-
witness. We are reminded once more that literature
tant? Is it interesting ? Our demands for truth to
life and for guidance in the efficient conduct of it
is a fine art, and that as in all education, so in the
find satisfaction in that mass of material drawn
artistic, as in all entertainment, so in the esthetic, is
literature best fitted to serve modern men. Only
from the lives of human beings which we call real-
ism; and our demand for interest is best served by
the artistic can no longer render this service by devo-
that touch of novelty and timeliness which is of the
tion to an aristocratic formula of his ancestors, of
nature of journalism. A term, then, which covers a
his social equals, or of his own. Indeed, it may be
large part of present-day writing is journalistic questioned whether the greatest literature was not
realism.
always the unsought result of an unfathomable com-
The extent to which this term has become appli bination of the Maker's soul with that of his fellow-


654
June 28
THE DIAL
ADDITIONAL
EVIDENCE BE
NEEDED TO CON-
THE
ANNUAL
CONVENTION OF
assurances
men-only whereas in the past it was only the souls political state. If the Big Four are indeed ready to
of the few who counted, today it is the soul of democ put this Prussic policy into effect they will have
racy. At least this is certain: the true esthetic can drawn a clean line of demarkation between the
not be imposed from without by individual genius peoples of the world and their governments. In the
or eccentricity, nor can it be recovered from the face of such a coalition of reactionary powers there
past by study. It is more than ever before the im can be no paltering: the recognition of Kolchak is a
mediate result of human need, human aspiration, hu direct and final challenge to all liberal-minded men.
man agony. It cannot be complete unless it take The liberals of all nations must either unite to take
account of the experience of the entire race, in which up the challenge or condemn themselves to impotent
for the first time in the world's story the soul of man disintegration. On the decision of liberalism in this
is tragically one.
crisis the very existence of free institutions rests.
If it cannot fight its enemies it will never have the
privilege of living with them. The tolerance of
liberalism can be secured only by establishing its
vince the peoples of the world of the vicious con-
stitution of the Great Powers at Versailles the
strength.
latest reports on the Russian situation serve that
purpose admirably. On May 26 the Big Four
THIRTY-NINTH
made overtures to Kolchak, the terrorist dictator of
the American Federation lived its short life beneath
Siberia. They laid down certain conditions upon
a cloud of officialism shot through with gleams of
which they would accord his government recognition rough reality. From a fighting past the Federation
On June 11 Kolchak's answer was cabled from has inherited a military organization that falls nat-
Paris. It was a refusal, according to the New York urally into line and staff. And like the staff of an
Sun, of practically all the conditions established by army at peace, A. F. L. officialdom polishes its but-
the peace conference. Did that demolish the plan tons, perfects its salutes, and trots the household
of reactionary intervention ? By nõ means. The troops out occasionally for a sham battle-leads a
Allied and Associated Powers knew better than convention off to Washington to fight for beer, the
Kolchak what they meant by their conditions for impending loss of which beverage causes President
recognition. They gracefully sent a reply welcom- Gompers to fear for the first time for the future of
ing his
substantial agreement” and “ satisfactory the country. Mr. Gompers has somehow succeeded
and renewing their promise of support
in classifying prohibition as Bolshevistic, and in the
as set forth in their original letter. In other words, higher circles of the A. F. L., as in the Senate, that
to quote the original letter, " they are disposed to word sends rattling down to death whatever thing
assist the government of Admiral Kolchak and his it touches. Nevertheless there are memories of the
associates with munitions, supplies, and food to
pre-respectable period of the A. F. L. that will not
establish themselves as the government of All
down-memories of open warfare once and again
Russia.' This offer is based upon
a cardinal in Colorado; memories of a day when the Washing-
axiom of the Allied and Associated Powers to avoid
ton headquarters of the Federation could say, re-
interference in the internal affairs of Russia." ferring not unsympathetically to the McNamara
Through this clotted mass of contradictory state-
"It is an awful commentary upon existing
ment the purposes of the Big Four seem nevertheless conditions when one man, among all the millions
evident. They intend to disregard the weakness of
of workers, can bring himself to the frame of mind
Kolchak's army, as indicated in the current reports
that the only means to secure justice for labor is vio-
in the daily press. They purpose to overlook the lence, outrage and murder.” Even today come ru.
direct testimony of the New York Globe and the
mors that the official' recognition which has proved
Chicago Daily News, published on the authority of
their Moscow correspondent, as to the soundness of
so soothing to labor's representatives at Washington
and Paris has not yet been granted everywhere; in
law and order in Soviet Russia
, the willingness of McKeesport and Homestead and other towns of
the Soviet government to make peace
, and the steady Western Pennsylvania, A. F. L organizers must hold
of the Allies” obdurate refusal to enter into friendly Bolsheviki; in Columbus, Georgia, A. F. Listrikere
their meetings out of doors or not at all—they are
negotiations. The Powers appear likewise willing
to treat as negligible the reactionary monarchist
are shot down—they are Bolsheviki. In "the line
character of the Kolchak group, as established again
of the army" the A. F. L. still has its fighters who
and again by neutral observers, and described as
see the cause of the oppressed as one cause and
recently as June 15 in the conservative and circum-
not meet rebellion with the ready damnation of a
spect New York Times. In the interest of vested
word. Just as long as these fighters drag the old
privilege the Big Four will set out to overthrow the
staff with them, the A. F. L. will, like any other
now soundly established Soviet Republic, and will
army, go forward backward.
stake their integrity on a government feeble in mili- IT IS OBVIOUS THAT THE ANTI-RADICAL BILL INTRO:
tary forces, destitute of moral authority, and com-
pletely lacking in the elements of a democratic
duced by Senator King plays directly into the hands
of the reactionary kind of revolutionist. This mea-
case:


1919
655
THE DIAL
OF CURRENT FICTION
WHICH
years.
sure is a forceful example of the sort of government teria, fomented by private security leagues and es-
the nation may expect when the National Security pionage organizations, they will drive the bill out of
League consolidates with the American Protective the Senate before it has a chance to be laughed out
League and establishes (under a wooden Kolchak) of court. It needs only a concerted protest to re-
a dictatorship of the propertariat. But as a poten mind Congress that the American state is still
tial law for a constitutional republic the King bill enough of a republic to be opposed fiercely to the
is baldly ridiculous. In the very first section of protection of the United States Government through
this
act to protect the government of the United the instrumentality of a King.
States” it writes a conspiracy clause for the first
time into Federal law, annuls the first amendment
of the constitution, proclaims the perfection of the The SELECTION
form of government it aims to destroy, and estab The Dial proffers on page 670 of this issue has
lishes the crime of lèse majesté on a basis broad value in that it is a composite photograph of the
enough to hedge the entire executive establishment, opinions of a considerable number of habitually crit-
from Burleson upwards, with that immunity from ical readers, a rough index to the verdicts of many
assault and criticism which becomes a sovereign by, scattered and diversified reviewers. As such, it
divine right. The height of stultification, however, shows the lay of the field. And the query raised
is attained in the fourth section. It reads:
by the present list is a familiar one: Why does
Sec. 4. Any person, firm, or corporation who shall wil-
America produce so little serious fiction of good
fully make or convey false reports or false statements quality ? On this list the English' titles outnumber
or shall say or do anything except by way of bona fide the American nearly three to one, although the
advice to an investor or investors, with intent to obstruct
the sale by the United States of bonds or other securities
English are all imported. Moreover, the American
of the United States, or the making of loans to or by the
books are, with only an exception or two, devoted to
United States shall be punished by a fine of not
adventure, mystery, or humor; so that, in this season
more than $5,000 and imprisonment not to exceed three at least, we have one established' name—that of Mr.
Hergesheimer—to oppose to the roll of Conrad,
This is the work of either a satirist or a born Wells, Bennett, Galsworthy, Swinnerton, Delafield,
fool. It would be difficult to believe that it could Walpole, Beresford, George, and McKenna. Last
be anything but a deliberate attempt to prove the season's shorter list showed about the same ratio,
propertariat bias of the bill, were it not for the fact and had only Mr. Fuller to add. The Christmas
that an official of the National City Bank could list was more evenly divided, but since some of the
have been sentenced to prison under its provisions American publications were posthumous, offered no
the other day for saying in public—not merely to more than Mr. Cable, Miss Cather, and Mr. Web-
bona fide investors—that further loans to foreign ster. The very sharp contrast in the current list
governments were unjustifiably risky. These objec- ought doubtless to be corrected by certain qualifica-
tions are but pinpricks in a document that gapes
tions: English novelists appear to publish more fre-
with constitutional holes. From first to last the quently than do serious American novelists; lately
King bill lives up to its name: for all the recognition
there has been a marked increase in the importation
it accords the Constitution it might have been of English novels (which of itself connotes a short-
drafted by Lord North on behalf of King George
age in the domestic supply); probably more Ameri-
III for the express purpose of frustrating the Amer can than English novelists have been temporarily
ican revolution. Its whole intention and method deflected into journalism by the war; and so on.
run contrary to the Bill of Rights. To this ex Such considerations soften the picture a little: they
tent the measure carries with it an antidote for its scarcely alter the fact. In the production of best-
own poisons. Should popular opinion be supine selling romances, of magazine stories, and of moving-
enough to permit enactment, it is obvious that the picture scenaries we have no real competition; but
first criminals to be arrested under the act (sen-
in the production of narrative that represents life
atorial immunity aside) would be the very persons
as it is lived we fall shockingly behind the English,
who sponsored and promulgated it. Did Senator
both as regards quality and as regards quantity.
That it is the fault of our scene or the fault of our
King see how wilfully his law had defied and
disregarded": the Constitution when he so rigor- public are familiar explanations, probably true
enough in their degree. But the scene grows stead-
ously provided for his own punishment? Were the
ily richer and the public's demand for good fiction
law honestly carried out Senator King would be
constantly increases, as witness the number of im-
taught how dangerous it is to protect an institution
portations and translations in this season's list-and
by the subversive experiment of doing away with
yet the production shows little promise of catching
it. But if the Constitution is still a serviceable in up. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the sup-
strument, that sacred document will at all events
ply of good American fiction lingers behind the de-
protect Senator King from the results of his own mand for it chiefly because the pens that ought to
follies. Let us trust that the measure will not be engaged in its production are too well paid for
progress so far. If the American people are fully maintaining our supremacy in the best-seller, the
alive to the dangers of counter revolutionary hys- story, and the movie.


656
June 28
THE DIAL
to form“
Communications
People usually distinguish between Nationalism
and Chauvinism. It is claimed that Nationalism is
THE QUESTION OF NATIONALISM.
an element of defense, while Chauvinism is aggres-
sive. This is quite an erroneous conception. The
Sir: I have before me a pamphlet dealing with difference between the former and the latter is only
the first Canadian Jewish Congress, recently held in a matter of degree. · Nationalism arriving at a cer-
Montreal, written by a well-known Zionist, himself tain stage of its development must necessarily be
a delegate to the Congress and an active member transformed into Chauvinism. Nationalism is con-
of its various committees. It is supposed to be an sequently the origin of Chauvinism.
"analytic review” of the aims and objects of Can Nationalism principally aims to attach itself to the
adian Jewry, as crystallized at the Montreal Con past, the past with all its dead weight, which only
gress. In the flood of articles dealing with the sub hinders the forward march.
ject, full of eulogies and unwarranted praise, this But to return to our “Reviewer,” who, notwith-
particular pamphlet has drawn my especial attention, standing his critical analysis, has great faith in the
because it makes at least an attempt to deal honestly Congress and its ability to solve the Jewish problem.
and critically with the problem. The question of I marvel at his optimism and, if you wish, self-deceit
.
nationalization involved in a discussion of this nature It has been said that “ life is but a succession of un-
will, to my mind, prove of interest to the readers of successful attempts.". That is particularly true with
your magazine.
regard to Jewish life. Our reviewer is not discour-
Now, then, the author of the Review admits from aged. If the first attempt fail, then he will try again.
the outset that the Congress has failed in its attempts
He does not understand that the causes which
a general Jewish assembly, where all the contributed to the failure of the first Congress are
different factions, classes, and interests of Canadian inherent in the Jewish character and Jewish life
.
Jewry shall concentrate and unite into one solid He is proud of the old orthodox Jew, “who stood
front to stand for and protect their common inter at the height of his mission and instinctively pre-
ests. He does not, however, see the causes which served the principles and interests of Judaism."
are responsible for the failure. He fails to under- Quite so! But the old orthodox Jew is rather a poor
stand that the “ solidarity and unity” of a nation,
foundation upon which to construct a modern state
under the present system of society, is rather a myth. built upon socialistic principles, as many so-called
He also fails to know that the so-called democratic national-socialists dream of in their ignorance.
parliaments (even in England, the cradle of modern
parliamentarism) do not truthfully and honestly
J. RICHMOND.
Winnipeg, Manitoba.
represent the interests of the nation as a whole,
simply because under capitalistic conditions there is
no such thing as a “nation as a whole.” The epi-
Contributors
demic of revolutionary strikes in Great Britain fol-
lowing upon the heels of the last general election
Robert Ferrari, a graduate of Columbia Uni-
proves conclusively two things: First, the total bank-
versity and its Law School, is a New York attorney
ruptcy of modern parliamentarism and, second, the
who has taught criminology in various universities
,
big chasm in the one and the same nation—the an-
has written extensively on legal, political, and soci
,
tagonistic class interests within the same nation pre-
ological subjects, and is editor of the Journal of
dominating over the artificial national interests.
Criminal Law and Criminology.
This naturally leads us to another question which
Katherine Keith (Mrs. David Adler) is the
has escaped the attention of this “critical reviewer "
author of The Girl (Holt, 1917), reviewed in The
-namely, the question of the necessity or even the
Dial for January 25, 1917. Her residence is in
desirability of preserving these elements which, to be Libertyville, Illinois.
sure, have played a certain role in the past, but which
Edith Borie, a graduate of Bryn Mawr, has con-
have long lost their usefulness, nay, which have be-
tributed book reviews to various periodicals.
come detrimental to human progress.
Elizabeth J. Coatsworth was graduated from Vas-
The old fundamentals of social life, which are
sar in 1915, received the M.A. from Columbia the
largely responsible for social injustice and inequality;
following year, and traveled in the Orient during
which have brought about the antagonism between
1917. She has recently begun contributing verse to
man and man; which provoked and finally produced
the magazines.
the world war, the greatest catastrophe in human
The other contributors to this issue have pre-
history—those fundamentals, those forces are, hap-
viously written for The DIAL.
pily, on the decline. New forces are looming up on
the horizon, forces more of a social than of a national
character. But among those forces which are doomed
The Index to Volume LXVI of THE DIAL,
to disappear in the New Society, Nationalism, espe-
which is concluded with this number, will be ready
cially religious Nationalism—as is the case among
in a few days. It will be printed separately and a
the Jews—is the most reactionary and most detri-
copy will be mailed free on request to any subscriber
who sends his name and address to THE DIAL, 152
West 13th Street, New York City.
mental to progress.


1919
657
THE DIAL
as
Casual Comment
days the denouement is more likely to come
the result of an enemy machine gun than after pis-
The light fiction which serves as traditional
tols and coffee for two. Mr. Brebner however re-
pabulum for summer America has already been pub-
mains constant to his former ideals.
lished, and once more the question arises as to just When Richmond Haigh, in An Ethiopian Saga
why people read it. Take for example six of the
(207 pages; Holt), turned to African folklore for
more recent novels. All of them will be mod-
his material, one hoped for something new. But
erately successful; the worst will sell its two or in the breasts of Kundu and Koloani, his rival Zulu
three thousand copies, and the most successful of chieftains, and under the black skins of Jamba the
them will probably pass the fifty thousand mark.
young warrior and the maiden Mamelubi beat the
About them, all together, there is not enough de same hearts that fired the veins of Mrs. Rinehart's
lineation of character, not enough revelation of nurses and animated the dukes and adventurers of
eternal truths, not enough form in the stricter sense Mr. Brebner. The chief difference is one of style;
to supply the matter for a good short story.' The Mr. Haigh has adopted a pseudo-Biblical diction
fact remains however that they are read, and that, and heads every paragraph with a proverb trans-
on a hot afternoon, even the hyper-educated find lated from the original Kaffir or Swahiali.
them more interesting than Dostoevski. Such being It remained for Albert Payson Terhune to take
the case, it is perhaps more reasonable to search for
the last step and transfer the romantic emotions of
the secret of their popularity than to berate them modern society to canine breasts. In Lad: A Dog
for lacking of qualities to which they do not aspire. (349 pages; Dutton) his heroine is proud, self-
It is in Mary Roberts Rinehart's latest volume willed, capricious, his hero faithful and steady.
(Love Stories; 352 pages; Doran) that this secret Their reactions are those of the human being rather
appears. Of the seven tales in the book, six are than of the animal. However, Mr. Terhune as-
occupied with the business of getting young people sures us in a postcript that Lad was a real dog, and
mated; the seventh is the happy aftermath of a that most of the incidents actually happened.
properly pathetic love affair. There is nothing new Romance has been called the sugar coating of
in the matter of any of them, unless it is the cir sex. If one makes this coating saccharine instead of
cumstance that five are laid in hospitals; Mrs. Rine sugar, it can be much thinner and still leave the
hart's method of handling plots is sanctioned by the same taste in the mouth. Such at least is the theory
usuage of generations. Yet we eat the stories up; on which Elinor Glyn seems to write. For her
we are interested in the very primitive business of latest novel (Family; 315 pages; Appleton) she has
marrying Joseph to Josephine and Joan to John. chosen a pot reminiscent of Boccaccio, but she is
Mrs. Rinehart writes with immense cleverness quite humorless and more than a little nasty.
but without gusto. She impresses one as being able, With art as the term is commonly understood,
if she wished, to produce literature of permanent these novels have little connection. There is no life
value, but she is tired; she patronizes her public just in them; they do not aim to portray life. Their end
a little and her characters bore her. A master of is simply to appeal to the romantic side of us; to
light fiction, she probably realizes the shortcomings make their marionette lovers dance for our amuse-
of her medium as much as do any of her readers.
And who will say that they do not achieve
For the romance with which Mrs. Rinehart in-
their purpose.
vests the modern hospital—a romance gained by Two books of melancholy interest are The Whole
making ward nurses tender and young, and by Truth About Alcohol, by George Elliott Flint
metamorphosing internes to spectacled cupids (Macmillan), and Beverages and Their Adultera-
H. C. Bailey must turn to the eighteenth century, tion, by Harvey W. Wiley (Blakiston; Philadelphia).
and sanctify professional gamblers. In The Game The former, though opposing prohibition, lacks the
sters (332 pages; Dutton) he is concerned with complete bartender's guide which the temperate Mr.
wonderful twins, Eve and Adam de Res, who can Wiley eruditely incorporates into his book; but it
impersonate each other at will, and who wander does stimulate the sad hope that there remain a few
all over Germany outwitting Frederic the Great. ancient spirits not outraged by the attitude of
Mr. Bailey goes at breakneck speed, piling incident Horatius Flaccus: “Nulla placere diu neo vivere
on incident, but he writes without color and asks carmina possunt quae scribuntur aquae potoribus.”
miracles of his hero and heroine.
From Philadelphia comes the announcement that
Another book of the same sort is A Gallant Lady George J. C. Grasberger is about to publish
(442 pages; Duffield). During the age when no Gabriel Sarrazin's essay on Walt Whitman, as trans-
novel was a success unless it purported to be the lated by Harrison S. Morris. The manuscript has
memoirs of the Vicomte du Pont, sometime Master been stored away somewhere ever since Whitman
of Horse to His Majesty King Felipe. XVIII of penned his own notes on the margins of the original
Styria, Percy James Brebner could always be re sheets. Only one hundred copies of the new volume
lied on to crowd more highwaymen, ladies in dis will be printed—very attractively printed, if the
tress, and disguised heirs-apparent into eighty preliminary broadside sets the standard—and the
thousand words than could any of his contem proceeds of the enterprise will be used to purchase
poraries. The styles have changed, and in these as a memorial the Whitman house in Camden.
ment.


658
THE DIAL
June 28
for a frankly irrelevant eulogy of Sir George salesman, and finally confidential agent for Upland
Farmer evidently intends to be typical of all Ameri-
Notes on New Books
BLIND ALLEY. By W. L. George. 431 pages.
Little, Brown.
THE SECRET CITY. By Hugh Walpole.
The journalistic novel has come to be recognized
386 pages. Doran.
as a distinct type of fiction—a novel the motive force
“There is a secret city in every man's heart," of which is not story or dramatic interaction of
and it is the secret cities in the hearts of several character, but the behavior of characters toward
Russians and Englishmen, living out their private passing events. Its principle is not action, but re-
tragedy in revolutionary Petrograd, that Mr. Wal-
action. What Wells did for the first two years of
pole explores. Durward, the Englishman who in the War in Mr. Britling Sees It Through, W. L.
terpreted the drama staged in the dark forest George has done for the last two in Blind Alley.
at the Front, where Semyonov and Trenchard
Both books are by competent observers of English
fought for the love of Maria Ivanovna, is, in this
life and the contrast between them is enlightening..
sequel, the absorbed spectator of another drama.
The exaltation present in Mr. Britling is gone in
The dominating figure is still Semyonov, the coldly Blind Alley. The hope that ennobled tragedy is
diabolical sensualist and cynic, who strangely grows
gone. The war has worn itself out into sordid dis-
to resemble the Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights,
illusionment. Mr. George cuts a cross-section of
in love with a ghost, passionately yearning to burst
English society. Sir Hugh Oakley—in the place
the barriers of the flesh and be united with the spirit
of Mr. Britling the chief reactor—is a patient,
of the dead woman. Unwilling to adopt the simple skeptical
, tolerant observer. He is patient with his
method of suicide-which Russian fiction has made wife, who represents the furor teutonicus at its
almost pleasantly familiar-Semyonov aims to ac-
highest. He is skeptical toward his patriotic profi-
complish his liberation from the flesh by an elaborate teering relatives. He is sympathetic toward his son,
plot involving the ingenious torture of poor Mark-
who emerges from the trenches, wounded in body
ovich and the wrecked happiness of Vera and her and mind, weary and cynical; toward his older
lover Lawrence, an English Sir Galahad—all to the
daughter, whose patriotic passion falls off from
end of forcing the tortured man to murder his tor munition-making to illicit love for the munition
mentor. After several Dostoevsky-like scenes of hair maker; toward even his younger daughter, whose
raising suspense, the murder is rather tamely war work” finally leads her through scandal and
accomplished.
the divorce court to a marriage of repairs. He is
But it is really the secret city of the Russian tolerant of the conscientious objector, and of the
soul that Mr. Walpole seems most eager to explore
, enemy's point of view. But Sir Hugh is, in spite of
even though at times he turns around on himself
all his human qualities, not quite human. The most
and scoffs at his own discoveries. This task of in-
genuine person in the story is Frank Cotterham, the
terpretation was a little easier when the Russians
munition maker and sex sport whose affair with
were fighting for the Allies, and their mystic soul
Monica Oakley does not come off, because—well
,
was supposed to be yearning towards the sacred
because. In this character Mr. George has made
city of Constantine. When it begins to yearn
an advance in subtilty beyond A Bed of Roses and
towards Bolshevism, it gives Mr. Walpole (or Dur-
The Second Blooming; but when he says Blind
ward) many a nightmare. "The Russian lives in Alley is the best novel he has written, he is wrong.
a world of loneliness peopled only by ideas
accustomed from babyhood to bathe in an atmos-
phere that deals only with ideas.
CÉSAR NAPOLÉON GAILLARD.
By Jean
Russia
moves always according to the Idea that governs her.
Farmer.
392 pages. Payot et Cie.; Paris.
The same face, the face of a baby, of a child,
of a credulous, cynical dreamer, a face the kindest,
If the recent American interest in France has
the naivest, the cruellest, the most friendly, the
been productive of many volumes of compendious
misinformation, an equal French interest in things
the most Western in the world."* Welter This fishing world. The latest Franco-American book
American has been of even greater profit to the pub-
business of seeing Russian psychology through Engs is a picturesque novel
, César Napoléon Gaillard à list
lish eyes has no excuse, says Durward, except that
it is English. And the effort seems disastrous for
Conquête d'Amerique. The hero of the story is
Englishmen; Durward and even young Bohun are
son of a staid functionary of Montélimar, city of
subject to hallucinations, weird seizures, and visions.
Nougat. Rebel against the conservatism of Gail-
lard père and of the Lyonnais manufacturers for
is that not another cogent reason tore hoping they were in hosuccessively dishwasher
, strikebreaker, and
Buchanan, did one not sympathize with his relief at
finding something he was sure of the perfection of
& Co., a prosperous firm of liquor dealers which M.
the Ambassador.
can corporations. As is quite natural, the author
will withdraw? One might
criticize Mewalpare waiter ; piano player in a bagnio, circus ridermland


1919
659
THE DIAL
6
is on.
stresses throughout the story the differences between THE ROLL-Call. By Arnold Bennett. 417
the two countries rather than their similarities. To
pages.
Doran.
believe him, all American hotels have 2000 rooms
In the Roll-Call Mr. Bennett returns to his
and 2000 baths while all French hostelries are tiny.
He presents American business as gigantic, efficient
Five Towns material, projected into London in the
—and dishonest; the typical American is a dashing,
person of George Cannon, the son of Hilda Less-
adventurous fellow who takes for motto
Partout
ways. He returns also to the method of his Five
ou j'accroche mon chapeau, là est ma maison, mon
Towns novels, departing from his swift impres-
foyer, mon doux foyer
sionistic treatment of London in The Pretty Lady,
-a not too exact Gallici-
in favor of a treatment at times so replete that it
zation of “Any old place I hang my hat is home
sweet home to me." On the other hand his typical
suggests the uninterrupted flow of uncritized con-
Frenchman is fifty years behind the times and quite
sciousness. The book recounts the career of George
content to remain there. One gets no echo of the
Cannon, articled pupil in the offices of a firm of
French talent for revolutionizing the world every
successful London architects. He is, at the start,
capable of being impressed because Mr. Haim, the
once in a while, or of the fact that the United States
is lagging politically behind most of Europe. This
factotum of the firm, owns a house in Chelsea and
omission however does not interfere with one's ap-
will furnish him a lodging; capable, too, of falling
in love with Mr. Haim's daughter, gentle unam-
preciation of M. Farmer's otherwise keen observa-
tion of American life, nor with one's enjoyment of
bitious Margaret. He means, even then, to become
an adventure story extremely jolly, even if highly
a great architect. He attains that ambition with
improbable.
amazing velocity, through winning a competion for
a town hall in the north of England, a competition
he enters individually upon impulse furnished by
JIM, THE STORY OF A BACKWOODS POLICE Lois Ingraham. Then as an architectural prodigy
Dog. By Charles G. D. Roberts. 216 pages. he marries the pleasure-ravenous Lois, and spends
Macmillan.
ten years cashing in his fame while the town hall
Someone has offered this objection to animal
comes into physical existence. By that time the war
stories, that the cleverest beast he ever read
George Cannon, still dissatisfied with his
about was not quite so intelligent as the most stupid achievement, suddenly aware that there exist not
man. The indictment hardly holds true of Jim, the only degrees of success but all kinds of success, lands
hero of the first story in this collection, for his
two large architectural schemes: one a barracks in
canine astuteness puts most of the human beings
India; the other, munition factories in England.
that surround him to shame, and is equaled only by
His assurance that he can best serve his country as
that of the omniscient Tug Blackstock, his master.
an architect is shaken by the appearance of Lucas,
Together they stalk evildoers, and loom up as figures
his brother-in-law, resplendent in an officer's uni-
form. After an uncomfortable dream in which a
of, almost legendary heroism against the familiar
background of the Canada woods. In the remaining of George Edwin Cannon, he applies for a commis-
voice calls the roll and no one answers to the name
tales we encounter a more recent setting for animal
sion. Mr. Bennett leaves him, after a slight mili-
stories, that of the trenches. One of the tales is
concerned with the adventures of a shell-shocked
tary experience at Epson Downs, lying in a small
mule; another follows the flight of an eagle, released
tent; his feet in the rain, reflecting that there is
from his cage by an exploding 75, who flies at a
something in this Army business!
great height along the lines and receives a veritable
The temper of Mr. Bennett seems to be con-
bird's-eye view of the war. These animals of which
sistently sardonic until he reaches the final episode,
we read, despite epigrame to the contrary, are really happy. George Cannon moves through a kaleide-
in which his hero, lifted out of responsibility, is
much more interesting than human beings, and
Major Roberts rather spoils the impression by im-
scopic multiplicity of scenes, from Sunday excursions
and studio parties, through music halls, elaborate
posing on them the purely human institution of a
plot.
dinners, to the opening of his town hall, and even a
Always Mr. Bennett's
This he omits to do in the last story. Stripes, military shopping tour.
the skunk who is its unconcerned hero, goes calmly
treatment of this social background is deft and
about his business of catching field mice and sucking
finished. At the Orgreave luncheon, “Nothing in-
eggs, quite indifferent to the great beasts which sur-
teresting had been said, and little that was sincere.
round him. Finally he is attacked by a very fool-
But everybody had behaved very well, and had
ish bear cub, deluges it with slime, and falls a victim
demonstrated that he or she was familiar with the
finally to its revengeful mother, who after slaying usages of society and with aspects of existence with
him with one blow of her paw, goes on about her
which it was proper to be familiar." The dinner
business. It is all casual and cruel and very real; in the overwhelmingly splendid flat of Irene
it reminds one not so much of another animal story Wheeler illustrates “the great principle of con-
as of one of Tchekhov's sketches or of an etching by spicuous ritualistic waste in a manner to satisfy the
George Bellows.
most exacting.” The chromatic toilettes at the


660
June 28
THE DIAL
“ malo-
Longchamps Sunday races have, in a stroke,
epithets does even greater damage in The Fasces.
dorous workrooms, and the fatigue of pale, indus (Among Caeser's choice mouthfuls, hurled at
trious creatures as their soil. The musical comedy Crassus and Clodius, are: "you yoke of asses,"
in London to which Lois drags George has its "you bat-blind idiots," you nasty little tadpole,"
“jocularity pivoted unendingly on the same twin and
you great scurfy toad.") There are times
centers of alcohol and concupiscence." All of Lon when Mr. White seems quite willing to butcher
don display, of London amusement, of London Rome to make a writer's holiday.
success has this treatment, clever, sharp, provocative.
There are, on the other hand, scenes of definite,
clear reality: Margaret, designing book covers, Mrs.
YVETTE. By Guy de Maupassant. Translated
Haim serving tea, scenes in which reality is evoked
by Mrs. John Galsworthy, with an introduc-
by the words. But for the most part the book is
tion by Joseph Conrad. 259 pages. Knopf.
strident, highly seasoned. Mr. Bennett insists upon
FLESH AND PHANTASY. By Newton A.
the superlative qualities of objects and experiences Fuessle. 211 pages. Cornhill; Boston.
to such an extent that he quickly fails to stimulate TEMPTATIONS. By David Pinski. 325 pages.
a jaded palate. He gives you, not the emotions of Brentano.
his hero, but a list of adjectives, miraculous, won-
drous, supreme, sublime, ineffable, applied alike to
Despite academic definition the shortstory is al-
motor bicycles, complexions, sex sensations, and
ways spilling over its boundaries and invading the
cathedrals. The result is a sort of scenic brilliancy,
shadowy domains that separate it from the novel on
a constant illumination as of too many electric signs,
one hand and the Elian essay on the other. All the
with almost never the remarkable daylight of The
professional disquisitors are agreed that this modern
Old Wives
' Tale or Clayhanger. The Roll-Call. exposition the coherence of brevity ; but not until the
literary form must embody a plot and achieve in
leaves the impression that Mr. Bennett wrote so
furiously that pages Auttered to the floor without
shortstory is as dead as the sophistic oration may one
intermission and that he had his tongue in his cheek
reasonably expect it to follow the orthodox pre-
as he heaped high-sounding adjectives above his
scriptions. Mrs. Galsworthy's translation of certain
adolescent hero.
Maupassant stories, a work done well enough to
appear now in a fourth edition, shows plainly that
at the very sources of its inspiration the shortstory
The SONG OF THE SIRENS. By Edward Lucas was a thing of uneven mood and measure. Yvette
White. 348 pages. Dutton.
is almost big enough to occupy comfortably the
It would seem that the Freudian wish was father
broad-acred pages of the Saturday Evening Post;
to the thought in a number of these tales. In a
A Duel is small enough to run as a one-column filler
prefatory admission, the author chooses to step aside
in a newspaper. In one story you have a complete
from the post of creative responsibility to a certain
plot woven in varicolored threads of place and cir-
extent, and
trace his plot-sources in dreams.
cumstance; in the other, a small sample of uniform
Often," he says, “I wake with the sensation of
color and texture, snipped out of the plaid fabric of
life.
having just finished reading a book or story.” And
in the case of one of the tales included in this
Since the shortstory does not conform to a single
volume, he returned to consciousness “ with the last
pattern in the hands of a Frenchman and a master,
three sentences of it, word for word as they stand,"
it is futile to look for any closer approximation to
branded on his sight. This is an interesting con-
the academic ideal even in well-schooled America.
fession, and since there is no ethical point involved
If Newton Fuessle's collection gives one no other
in frank plagiary from the subconscious, we do not
assurance, it at least gives one this, for with respect
quarrel with the writer for making it. As a matter
to form he ranges from the synoptic narrative of the
of fact the material filched from the unreal has as a - Ten Minutes After Six. About the style and como
Million Heir to the fleeting, sidewalk impression of
rule been welded into far more skilful fiction than
the tales which attempt to mirror ancient life by a
tents of Mr. Fuessle's tales there is little to be said
parallel modern mood.
that was not applicable also to his recent novel. The
The dream stories are
authentic in a certain haunting terror, and in a
world of Alesh he describes with a photographic
baffling verisimilitude. They are
accuracy which is occasionally blurred by a desperate
pleasant tales, and there is at times a somewhat too
ot particularly endeavor, untinged by inspiration, to escape the
bloody vigor in the transcription, but they achieve
hackneyed in metaphor ; but the world of the spirit
a definite effect. On the other hand, the stories
seems rather beyond his comprehension, and the
which deal with ancient Greece and Rome are less
touch -of phantasy one finds in the title does not
dramatic, because they depend upon tedious stretches
enliven the tales themselves.
of "small talk " to supply the needed period-atmos lation of asinski's stories of temptation brings only
As far as our formal thesis is concerned the trans-
phere. Two Roman gentlemen discussing innova-
underwear hamper the early pages The
further proof. But the stories themselves tempt one
to forget the thesis


1919
661
THE DIAL
·Are Dial
Dial readers different?
Democracy
man,
THIS is the open season for so-called “summer
reading”—popularly defined as “hammock”
or “lighter than air" reading. We know a
however, who welcomes Summer as the
season when he has time to do his most thought-
ful reading. He may possibly be an intel-
lectual curiosity-but we venture to believe
that there are many Dial readers who, like him,
take their Summer reading seriously.
Here are five notable books, both fiction
and non-fiction, some of them just off the
presses this week, and all of them deserving of
a place in any constructive program for
summer reading:
By Shaw Desmond
A novel of the British labor struggle of the
hour by a brilliant young Irishman.
"It is the living voice of struggling democracy
itself” according to the New York Sun, “more
potent than programs, louder than manifestos,
and more interesting than either. And the
remarkable thing is that anyone, especially an
Irishman, could write it and present the case
of labor so sympathetically and at the same
time 'with reservations,' as we say of the
covenant." ($1.60).
Saint's Progress
The Mastery
of the Far East
By John Galsworthy
A thoughtful story of the challenge of these
times to the world of a middle-aged English
vicar; a very modern story of the loss of old-
time faith and of the gulf between the genera-
tions:
“It's going to be a young world from now
on,” urges the new generation that has fought
the war. “What's the use of pretending it's
like it was—and being cautious?”
And in the end the older generation asks
itself, as the vicar looks down at the face of
the dead boy, “who had braved all things and
moved out, uncertain, yet undaunted: 'Is
that, then, the uttermost truth, is faith a
smaller thing?'" (Published June 20th, $1.60).
By Arthur Judson Brown
WHAT is Japan doing in Korea and China-
and why? Is Korea to be a Japan's Ire-
land? Why did Japan first oppose and then
favor China's entrance into the European War?
Here is a new book of the very first importance
on this subject, of which the New York Times
says, in the course of a three-column review:
“Readers who have learned to expect violent
partisanship from almost any writer on Far
Eastern affairs will be delighted by the im-
partiality and good judgment which pervade
this entire book.” ($6.00.)
Trailing the Bolsheviki
Miss Fingal
By Carl W. Ackerman
MR. Ackerman went into Siberia to study
Bolshevism in action. In the course of his
12,000 miles of travel up and down the
country he talked with men of all types from
droshky drivers to officers in the Czecho-
Slovak forces; he saw the crowds of men,
women and children that slept for weeks in the
railway stations for want of a better shelter;
he saw the Russian Co-operatives in action as
the only constructive force in a land of chaos.
His book presents an unusually graphic
picture of conditions in bewildered Siberia.
(Published June 20th, $2.00).
By Mrs. W. K. Clifford
THIS exquisite novel of English life involving,
that most subtle of all psychic phenomena,
the reincarnation of personality, is causing a
great stir in England. Sir Sidney Colvin,
Maurice Hewlett, W. P. Ker, Percy Lubbock
and Charles Whibley are enthusiastic about it,
while Sir Charles Walston has sent an article
on it to the Nineteenth Century.
No wonder no less a critic than Keith Preston
of the Chicago Daily News hails it in this
country as “The most fascinating novel of the
entire season." ($1.50).
BOOKS
DOOKS
Charles Scribner's Sons Fifth dee
. et 48th St.
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MAGAZINE,
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MAGAZINE
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662
June 28
THE DIAL
the Irish Revivalists; and like his Gaelic contem MIDAS AND Son. By Stephen McKenna.
poraries Pinski seems to take fresh inspiration by 418 pages. Doran.
mingling in the dim nether world of history with the
Sir Aylmer Lancing is one of Our Conquerors.
mighty men of old. Isaac Goldberg, the translator,
does well to remind us that these tales are more
America has given him his opportunity and he rides
on the floodtide of fortune to fabulous riches; but
than mere elaborations of Talmudic legend or
Jewish history, though it is obvious that Pinski's
at the crest of endeavor Lancing falls a victim to the
nationality is a deep source of literary strength. It
law of compensation, and he returns to his native
land a physical wreck, with nothing to absorb his
is by fusing the broken colors of national tradition
intelligence but the disposition of his riches and the
that he achieves the white light of wide humanity:
bereft of them he would be as universal as medi-
career of his only son, Deryk. The stubborn will
ocrity and as dull as `mud. Readers who enjoy
and unceasing nervous activity of Sir Aylmer are
Dunsany and Tchekhov will find the refreshing
reproduced in his offspring. And the tragedy of
archaism of the first and the poignant insight of the
Midas and Son is not, as the publishers inform one,
second in the characteristic Jewish genius of David
the tragedy of wealth, but the tragedy of similar
Pinski.
temperaments, whose very power to mold others only
intensifies their mutual incompatibility. Sir Aylmer
RED OF SURLEY. By Tod Robbins. 334 pages.
- very much like his Victorian predecessor, Sir
Austin Feverel-maintains an inscrutable watchful-
Harper.
ness over his son's goings and comings, and he is
AGAINST THE WINDS. By Kate Jordan. 348 enough of an invalid to let this solicitude break
pages. Little, Brown; Boston.
forth into open control. Idina is the Lucy of this
modern tragedy, and it is over the fond, clinging
They are no light fiction for light readers, these
form of Idina that both Midas and Son finally
two books; no hammock novels, no anodynes. Their
authors have each chosen for chief character a young
stumble to grief. Sir Midas dies, for all his riches,
person struggling against the world with uncertain
estranged from his son; and Midas Junior inflicts
success: Kate Jordan takes a Georgia Cracker girl;
death on himself, for all his erstwhile love, estranged
from the world.
Ted Robbins a fisherman's son from a Long Island
The England one samples in
Midas and Son is but the thin upper crust of leisured
village. Both authors are evidently and sincerely
and titled folk, the very icing of society. It is the
trying to write a very good novel ; if they have not
succeeded, that fact is not to be held too strongly
same England, if one neglects the slight advance
toward Elizabethan candor, that Meredith depicted
against them.
In the case of Mr. Robbins, the failure is hardly
a generation ago, and Miss Austen a whole century
due to his theme. His idea of frustrated genius, of
ago. In Sonia Mr. McKenna described this par-
ticular stratum of English society buckling and
a poet defeated by the very circumstances that have
produced him, is worthy of a much better book than
twisting under the pressure of war. If the conflict
he has written. One decides in the end that Red
had effected any fundamental changes in the social
of Surley fails because its hero, as a man of talent, is
scene, it is obvious that the author would not have
been able to write another book without changing
unconvincing; only as the skipper of a fishing either his location, his interests, or his characters.
schooner does he seem real. In explanation one can
only say that it takes genius to portray genius
. It proclaiming that Midas and Son are dead, and that
In the very breath that the Webbs and Wellses are
Red Hurley did not reach his goal, it was for a lack
of that special sort of education required by the
the new social order has arrived, it is hardly reassur-
literary man, and of this his creator himself has none
ing to see Mr. McKenna throw his hat in the air
and shout “ Long Live Midas and Son." Really
,
too much.
Miss Jordan has not attempted so much and has
the war should have changed all that, unless Midas
accomplished more.
and Son is a fictional contribution to ancient history.
What the heroine of Against
the Winds asks of life is not fame; she requires only
a decent living and her share of happiness. To at-
The FLAME Of Life. By Gabriele D'An-
tain these she marries, but a drunken husband fails
nunzio. 403 pages. Boni & Liveright.
to supply them. Nature abhors a vacuum; the lover
"Passion, fire, ardor, tempestuousness”—thus
,
steps in; and since Miss Jordan is quite moral, cancer
on the jacket of this recent addition to the Modern
and the war are the means to a happy existence
Library, do the publishers salute the genius of
promised faintly in the last chapter. The author's
Gabriele D'Annunzio—and excite the curiosity of
philosophy of life-compounded of elementary so-
their readers. Certainly there are many who will
ciology, Presbyterianism, and a reading of William
fairly revel in this exotic, highly-spiced, and am-
J. Locke—does not make for great or lasting work.
biguous work by the much too facile Italian who,
But her skill in the business of writing, like Mr.
in the transparent disguise of his hero, Stelio Et-
Robbins' determination not to compromise with
frena, exemplifies the Nietzschean epigram, " Poets
reality, promises something better in the future.
act shamelessly toward their experiences; they ex
ploit them." This fact alone is no indictment, but


1919
663
THE DIAL
THE NEW ORTHODOXY
the convictions of
christopher sterling
by Harold Begbie
Author of “Twice Born Men”
By Edward S. Ames, The University of Chicago
$1.00, postage extra
This book is a popular constructive interpre-
tation of man's religious life in the light of the
learning of scholars and in the presence of a
new generation of spiritual heroes. Every per-
son dissatisfied with the scholastic faith of tra-
ditional Protestantism will find this volume
exceedingly helpful. “ This book will un-
doubtedly have a wide circulation because it
answers 80 satisfactorily the spiritual questions
which are uppermost in the minds of most of
us during this time of change.”
HOW THE BIBLE GREW
This is the story of a man who was so faithful
a servant to his conscience that he followed it
even when it brought him into conflict with all
else that he held dear and sacred. It is the story
of а conscientious objector-a Quaker-who
hated war sincerely and passionately and who
could not compromise with this hatred when
faced by the supreme crisis of our age.
Christopher Sterling, the central character of
the book, represents a class that is numerous,
widely discussed and little understood, and it is
as an interpretation of one of this class and not
as a special plea for their beliefs, that this book
has been written. It is published because, as a
story of human emotions and experiences, it has
a powerful appeal and because it contributes to
an understanding of a type which has been and
will probably continue to be of great political and
social importance.
At All Booksellers, $1.50 Net
Robert M. McBride & Co.
Publishers
New York
By Frank G. Lewis, Crozer Theological Seminary
$1.50, postage extra
This is the first single work to record the
growth of the Bible from its beginning up to
the present time. It presents in an interesting
way the entire literary developinent of both
testaments, and shows how they have been
handled by translators in the production of the
many versions which have appeared through
the centuries.
Order from your book dealer at the price
quoted. If by mall direct from the publishers,
add 10 per cent. of the net price for postage.
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
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Chicago, Illinois.
Τ Η Ε NEW AMERICANS COME
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compares the American method of assimilation by good
will with the Prussian method of terrorism as seen in
Slesvig.
Fridjof Nansen
writing on "American Idealism" holds up the mirror
of our ideals to our actions.
BOOKS
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MASTER OLOF by Strindberg,
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MODERN ICELANDIC PLAYS
Novels and Tales
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from the Danish.
GÖSTA BERLING'S SAGA
by Selma Lagerlöf. (2 vol.)
THE PROSE EDDA
Verse-
POEMS by Tegner,
from the Swedish.
POEMS AND SONGS, and ARNLJOT GELLINE
by Bjornson,
from the Norwegian.
ANTHOLOGY OF SWEDISH LYRICS
From 1750 to 1915.
These books $1.50 each.
The eleven volumes $15.00.
Maurice Francis Egan
in a witty article shows why Americans should not
shut themselves out from the culture to be gained by
means of foreign languages.
A Message from Ole Hansen
who tells why he is proud of belonging to people who
have not "let themselves get flabby."
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664
June 28
THE DIAL
it acquires more critical point when taken in con WHY JOAN? By Eleanor Marcein Kelly.
nection with another caustic reflection from the 407 pages. Century.
same pen, easily applicable to this author, “What?
Novelists attempting character studies should
A great man? always see merely the play-actor make sure first that they have climbed somewhat
of his own ideal.” In the present volume an ob-
above the level of the people in the story and then
servant and healthy cynical reader will discover
that they manipulate a powerful enough searchlight
rather a superfluity of grimacing
and play-acting,
to throw illuminating flashes on the helpless figures
however well and Guently done. This is not to say
below. As a searchlight operator Mrs. Kelly does
that The Flame of Life is an inexcusably mediocre
not inspire. She shows us environments handily
thing, or that its fault lies in offending the moral
enough, but never does she focus clearly on the
sensibilities of Anglo-Saxons. Indeed this latter is. central figure, Joan. In the uncertain light Joan
rather a salutary criticism of the Anglo-Saxon's im-
is an expectant mediocrity drifting through various
penetrable puritanism, which recoils in fatuous
stages—husband hunting, Louisville society, domes-
alarm from every over-bold hint that life is con-
ditioned by the senses.
ticity, suffrage work, war nursing—until finally she
The Flame of Life merely
becomes an author (the reader somehow would not
insists on this ageless commonplace, and if the result
care to read her writings). Yet there is evidence
is frequently puerile and wearisome to those who are
that Joan was intended to be an altogether different
no longer mentally adolescent, it is also accompanied girl—to attain at last through love and suffering to
by an indisputable fervor, subtlety, and an occasional
real self-expression. Likewise there is reason for a
flash of profound insight worthy of a more sub-
hope that Mrs. Kelly may do better next time.
stantial setting. It is especially to be noted that
D'Annunzio is a thorough expert in what might be
called borderline states of consciousness: he is
The Boy Scouts BOOK OF STORIES. Edited
eternally on the watch for those inconceivably deli by Franklin K. Mathiews. 424 pages. Ap-
cate waves of impressions transmitted to the mind pleton.
by all forms, animate and inanimate, whose absorp GOOD OLD STORIES FOR BOYS AND GIRLS.
tion and accurate re-embodiment in words consti Selected by Elva S. Smith. 320 pages. Loth-
tutes one of the gravest responsibilities of the artist,
rop, Lee and Shepard; Boston.
in whatever medium he works. In the present
volume there is just a trifle too much of “the lust
Time was when the good and the pleasant were
of the eye,” and many readers will question whether two separate categories in the literature of youth.
D'Annunzio has really proved to them—to use his
Boys with appetites for adventure were dieted on
own words—“how, in order to obtain victory over
specially prepared stuff that offered little prigs and
man and circumstance, there is no other way but
pious precepts in place of strong men and the urge
that of constantly feeding one's own exaltation and
of human desires. The importation of Diamond
magnifying one's own dream of beauty or of
Dick into the garret was a protest against the régime
power. There is no truth which cries out more
of Percy in the parlor. Mr. Mathiews' collection
insistently, more justifiably for the proof which The of stories is a protest too, prepared in the full
Flame of Life fails to give.
knowledge that every great motive that moves men
to action will likewise stir the ambition of a boy.
THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY. By James Lane
It is precisely because these stories were written for
Allen. 219 pages. Doubleday, Page.
a human audience rather than for a child audience
As befits a veteran, James Lane Allen displays a
that their authors (Mark Twain, O. Henry, Nor-
skilled technique in book planning. His latest
man Duncan, and the rest) escape that air of con-
work is an example of his ease, his grace, his ingenu-
descension which still lingers in the brief introduc-
tion.
ity in that respect. By the use solely of interweav-
ing letters and two explanatory diary extracts, he
If youth looks forward toward rough realities
,
has caused no less than sixteen interesting person-
childhood is busy with fancies born of the mysterious
ages to play an international comedy which realizes
past. Because of the inherent validity of the com-
several highly amusing situations. Unfortunately
mon distinction between child psychology and the
this plot is coated with a charm, a sentiment, a
adult habit of mind, Miss Smith is not called upon
Kentucky whimsicality which cloys a little. Mr.
to make excursions beyond the field of juvenile
Allen, after all, is not a true romancer any more
literature in her search for Good Old Stories for
than certain benign and agreeable elderly clergye Boys and Girls-stories by such authors as Ingelow.
wonderful world, he merely paints a thin gloss
gathers conveniently between two covers not a few of
over the actual—trusting
all the time to certain
market-tested colors,
the classics which live on to rebuke the shallow
This clerical similarity
extends, perhaps it may be added, to the causing of writing for children. The wise parent will appre-
smartness and insolent patronage of contemporary
a slight monotony to the reader.
ciate this service.
men are. Like them, instead of creating a neke rand Ruskin, Björnson, and Browning
. Her volume


1919
665
THE DIAL
Brentanos
ALL LANGUAGES
Letters to Teachers
By
Hartley B. Alexander
Pres. Elect of the American Philosophical Society
Cloth, $1.25
A collection of papers of the hour addressed to
all who realize the importance of a critical re-
construction of public education in America.
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666
June 28
THE DIAL
Books of the Fortnight
Saint's Progress, by John Galsworthy (404 pages; Scrib-
ner), depicts a family of clerical gentility brought
into raffish and disconcerting situations by the war.
A baby born out of wedlock by one of his daughters
challenges Edward Pierson's social position, while
the skepticism of other daughter assails his
religious convictions. A book written with that
inclination toward sentiment in the presence of
beauty” with which Mr. Galsworthy reproaches one
of his characters. (Review later.)
The Gay-Dombeys, by Sir Harry Johnston, with an intro-
duction by H. G. Wells (398 pages; Macmillan), is
reviewed on page 641 of this issue.
Cynthia, by Leonard Merrick, with an introduction by
Maurice Hewlett (350 pages; Dutton), is the third
issue in the new uniform and definitive edition of
Mr. Merrick's novels. The preceding volumes were
Conrad in Quest of His Youth, with an introduction
by J. M. Barrie (265 pages), and the Actor-Manager,
with an introduction by W. D. Howells (332 pages).
Further introductions are promised from Arthur
Pinero, G. K. Chesterton, Granville Barker, W. J.
Locke, and others. The edition, limited to 1500 sets,
is beautifully printed and bound. These novels were
reviewed in Ruth McIntire's essay, An Imperturable
Artist, in The Dral for June 6, 1918.
The Little Daughter of Jerusalem, by Myriam Harry
(289 pages; Dutton), casts the author's own girl-
hood into the molds of fiction, and vividly depicts
the kaleidoscopic contrasts of life in the Holy City.
The narrative marked by impressionability and
keen observation, and renders something of the inner
development of a highly imaginative child, be-
wildered amid the incongruities of many religions
and diverse races.
The Born Fool, by John Walter Byrd (448 pages;
Doran), is a detailed story of character development,
written with poetic 'appreciation. One of those
leisurely, well-knit English novels which delight the
imaginative reader, but irritate those who regard
speed and action as the cardinal principles of the
art of fiction.
The Yellow Lord, by Will Levington Comfort (311
pages; Doran), a romance of adventure and love in
the Orient, borrows the Conrad manner and achieves
something like a Conrad atmosphere. But the action
outruns character and it remains a yarn, if a very
readable one.
All the Brothers Were Valiant, by Ben Ames Williams
(204 pages; Macmillan), is a tale of a whaler,
written much as Morgan Robertson might have writ-
ten it—that is, for summer consumption.
In Secret, by Robert W. Chambers (322 pages; Doran),
is an easy-running narrative in the best quantitative
style. The heroine proves herself a worthy Cham-
bers creation when she disrobes to swim a stream
and carry cartridges to her embattled lover. The
war perhaps accounts for the omission of the cus-
tomary illustrations; but the introduction of German
intrigue produces little dilution in the rich essence of
the author's customary theme.
Red Friday, by George Kibbe Turner (253 pages; Little,
Brown), is not a novel to tèmper the cheerless moods
of Blue Monday. It purports to forecast graphically
what might happen in the United States should
Bolshevist conspirators gain the upper hand, and it
therefore deserves to be bound with those fairy stories
for the feebleminded which described what took place
when a million Huns invaded New York.
Anymoon, by Horace Bleackley (327 pages; Lane), is an
unbeliever's attempt to picture the world under So-
cialism, but it will give the internationalists no sleep-
less nights. Instead of shattering Socialist fundamen-
tals, it merely succeeds in shattering art fundamentals
in the writing of fiction.
Wolves, by Alden W. Welch (236 pages; Knopf), a
first novel, written about engineers by an engineer, is
unsentimental; but it is so far short of distinction that
the reader will wish the author knew less about en-
gineeering and more about fiction.
The Mystery Keepers, by Marion Fox (315 pages; Lane),
represents a somewhat involved handling of what
proves—in the last chapter—to be “hereditary hys-
teria.” It depends solely upon mystery to retain at-
tention and sometimes fails to sustain even this ele-
ment.
The Great Modern English Stories, compiled and edited
with an introduction by Edward J. O'Brien (366
pages; Boni & Liveright), is the second in a series
of short-story anthologies of which Willard Hunting-
don Wright's Great Modern French Stories was the
first. Few of these tales are unfamiliar or inacessible
,
and not all of them are "great"; but the volume,
which concludes with biographies and bibliographies
,
will be found more convenient than most collections
of the kind by those who have use for the kind.
Winesburg, Ohio: Tales of Ohio Small Town Life, by
Sherwood Anderson (303 pages; Huebsch), is a prose
Spoon River Anthology. *Acridly written, these in-
terrelated studies of half-articulate people who do
not know what they want deal more often than not
with the pathological, but they deal understandingly
and honestly. (Review later.)
Temptations, by David Pinski (325 pages; Brentano),
is reviewed on page 660 of this issue.
War Stories, selected and edited by Roy J. Holmes and
A. Starbuck (329 pages; Crowell; Philadelphia), is
a collection of timely narratives half of which had
their premiere in two Philadelphia periodicals of
common lineage and respectability.
Our Wonderful Selves, a novel by Rolland Pertwee (349
pages; Knopf), is the biography of an individualist.
Here evidently is an attempt to get at those qualities
of mind which differentiate the independent spirit
'from the conformer. But Mr. Pertwee's study is
superficial; it has scope for little beyond the stig-
mata of genius, and his zest for outwardness as
opposed to inwardness of action has tripped him into
writing a story which, if very readable, is by no
means significant.
The Convictions of Christopher Sterling, by Harold Beg-
bie (267 pages; McBride), attempts impartially
to set forth the antithetical ideals of nationalism
and religion” in war time. The climax of the story
is the mistreatment of religious conscientious objectors
in the English prisons. As fiction it is awkwardly
written, but as a social document it is not without
interest.
The Two Crossings of Madge Swalue, by Henri Davig-
non (330 pages; Lane), commends itself above the
general run of war fiction by a welcome restraint and
a freedom from hysteria. The narrative is French
in its lean crispness; and the translation, made by
Tita Brand Cammaerts, has lost none of its strength
through attempts at fine writing.


1919
667
THE DIAL
“SOVIET RUSSIA”
A NEW WEEKLY
» " Nine-
By George
Sylvester Viereck
A Study in Ambivalence
Author of "The Candle and the Flame,"
veh," Songs of Armageddon," Confessions
of a Barbarian," “ A Game at Love," " The House
of the Vampire," etc.
DID America Know Theodore Roosevelt?
Did
Theodore Roosevelt Know Himself? The answer
to these questions is contained in Mr. Viereck's re-
markable study of Theodore Roosevelt, richly illus-
trated with portraits, facsimile letters, etc. The
author describes a secret visit with Dr. Dernburg to
Oyster Bay. He reprints his animated correspondence
with Mr. Roosevelt on the subject of Belgium and
America's neutrality. He also discloses Mr. Roosevelt's
WAS THEODORE ROOSEVELT
A HYPOCRITE?
The forces of reaction in the 'most back-
ward countries of Europe are busily at work
in their efforts to destroy the accomplish-
ments of the great people's revolution in Rus-
sia. Particularly in these days, when efforts are
being made to obtain recognition for Kolchak
by the Allied governments, the hearts of
those who wish Russia well are filled with
despair. The blockade is reducing thousands
and thousands of Russians by starvation to
death or to unfitness for life. Not only do
most of the newspapers share in the work
of a general campaign to justify and aggra-
vate the measures of repression undertaken
against Soviet Russia, but special weekly and
monthly organs have been established for
that purpose alone.
To answer this orgy of opposition and
hatred, the Russian Soviet Government
Bureau is issuing a new weekly, called:
private opinion of the English. The book introduces
to us a new Theodore Roosevelt, totally unsuspected
by the majority of his admirers. It is a fascinating
attempt to apply the science of psycho-analysis to a
great contemporary.
In a striking introduction, entitled " Apologia Pro
Vita Sua," Mr. Viereck portrays with biting sarcasm
and withering scorn,
bis persecution during the
period of the war. His brilliant portrait of America
in war time is one of the documents that will furnish
food for thought to the historian of the future.
“SOVIET RUSSIA”
BENEDICT ARNOLD THE FIRST
BRITISH PROPAGANDIST
In spite of its name, Mr. Viereck's preface is not
an apology, but an indictment. He lays bare secret
springs in our national life. He contrasts the so-
called German Propaganda and the Propaganda fath-
ered by Lord Northclif'e. Benedict Arnold, he tells
us, was the first of a long line of British Propa-
gandists.
Price $1.35, DeLuxe Edition $10
It will contain articles and other matter
explaining and defending the accomplish-
ments of the first great proletarian revolu-
tion. It will _have contributions from the
best minds of Europe (especially Russia) and
America. Reprints will be included, from
papers in America and other countries, when
they devote attention to conditions in Russia.
Every true friend of Russia should sub-
scribe to this weekly-it will give all the
latest available material in the field of Rus-
sian thought and action.
VIERECK AND THE CRITICS
Price, 10c a copy; $5 a year
Address: “SOVIET RUSSIA"
110 West 40th St.
New York
Room 303
“The genius of the writer is never in doubt."-Edward
J. Wheeler, President of the Poetry Society of America, in
Current Literature.
"Mr. Viereck reveals a vast knowledge of life.
Charles Hanson Towne, of the Vigilantes, in Town Topics.
“I knew you were a genius."-Gertrude Atherton, Mem-
ber of the Vigilantes and of the Advisory Council of the
Authors' League of America.
“ Talent, Mr. Viereck hastalent and a wonderful sense
of poetic art; and courage too."—New York Evening Sun.
"Perhaps no poet now writing is more proficient in the
loud symphonious lay."-Atlantic Monthly.
“Intellectually
the heir of two races, and we
might add, of three nations, for the combined genius of
Germany, England and America has gone into his poetic
crucible."--Prof. James Routh, in the Bulletin of Washing-
ton University.
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Startling ideas
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THE DIAL
Labrador Days, by Wilfred T. Grenfell (231 pages;
Houghton-Mifflin), is a collection of stories of ad-
venture in Labrador and on the surrounding waters.
Tales of fine intent, but wooden in style and stiff
with sentimental cliches.
New Paths: Verse, Prose, Pictures: 1917-1918, edited by
C. W. Beaumont and M. H. Sadler (164 pages;
Knopf), is the American appearance of a new English
anthology which was reviewed by Richard Aldington
in The DIAL for September 5, 1918.
The Curious Republic of Gondour, by Samuel L. Clem-
ens (140 pages; Boni & Liveright), collects several
short newspaper sketches of interest chiefly to “Mark
Twain” enthusiasts.
Out o' Luck, by J. Thorne Smith (120 pages; Stokes),
narrates further haps and mishaps of Biltmore
Oswald as a member of the U. S. N. R. It is lam-
entable that the public's unkempt sense of humor is
without the standards that ought to preclude the
author's wasting his genuine wit on the cheap genre
of an abortive diary.
Rousseau and Romanticism, by Irving Babbitt (426
pages ; Houghton-Mifflin), “carries to a conclusion
the argument of Professor Babbitt's previous volumes
-Literature and the American College, the New
Laokoon, and the Masters of Modern French Criti-
cism "-whose wiser readers will avoid this undis-
cerning and priggish criticism of romantic genius,
imagination, morality, love, irony, and melancholy
.
Others should be warned that the author's classicism
is of the neo-pseudo-bluestocking variety, that his
spirit is that of the smuggest puritanism (his favorite
word is "decorum”), and that his scholarship is the
one-sided erudition of doctrinaire propaganda. (Re-
view later.)
Prefaces, by Don Marquis (278 pages; Appleton), is a
compilation of newspaper humor over which one is
invited the publishers to smile with Don Mar-
quis.” Spontaneity is so lacking here that one fancies
instead that he sees the conjured smile fading under
an expression of creative strain.
The Life of the Party, by Irvin S. Cobb (66 pages;
illustrated; Doran), a typical Cobb burlesque, in the
form of a single and very slight short story, has been
thrust between covers to give that large public which
is looking for "something easy to read” what it so
evidently wants.
The Life and Works of Arthur Hall of Grantham,
by H. G. Wright (233 pages; Longmans, Green),
one of the Publications of the University of Manches-
ter, is a careful and sympathetic account of the first
man to translate Homer into English, who happened
also to be the first member expelled from the House
of Commons. Hall's typical sixteenth century ver-
satility, and his sense of justice and modern love of
equality, no less than the choleric and stubborn dis-
position that kept his life stormy, make him an inter-
esting study.
An American Idyll: The life of Carleton H. Parker, by
his wife, Cora Stratton Parker (200 pages; Atlantic
Monthly Press; Boston), richly deserves the place it
will find on many bookshelves beside the Education
of Henry Adams. A memorable biography of a
contemporary American liberal. And a beautiful love
story. (Review later.)
The New Book of Martyrs, by Georges Duhamel (221
pages; Doran), comprises a series of hospital sketches,
reflecting the bravery of nameless heroes of the
French front. It seeks to probe below the surface of
mere stoic suffering and appraise spiritual values,
but Dr. Duhamel has come near to defeating his pur-
pose by adhering too closely to surgical detail. The
pages exhale iodoform.
The Fledgling, by Charles Bernard Nordhoff (201 pages;
Houghton-Mifflin), will perhaps be accepted by men
who fly as the truest thing yet written about Aying.
Certainly the “buoyant bounding rush" of the take-
off and the utter celestial loneliness” of the upper
air have discovered in the author something more
than dumb endurance.
The History of Normandy and of England, by Sir Francis
Palgrave (2 vols., 1148 pages; Putnam), represents
the first half of a monumental history and the first
fifth of the equally monumental edition of Sir Francis'
collected works. (Review later.)
The Oxford History of India, by Vincent Smith (816 pages;
Oxford University Press), traces the development of
the peoples of the Indian peninsula from prehistoric
times up to approximately the present time. A many;
sided work, embellished with numerous maps and
illustrations. (Review later.)
Good Friday, by Tracy D. Mygatt. (52 pages; published
by the author, 23 Bank Street, New York), “a Pas-
sion Play of Now,” is dedicated to the conscientious
objector. With only three characters, the Christlike
objector, the cynical prison doctor, and the chastened,
almost humane, prison keeper, Miss Mygatt has
wrought a little piece full of deep emotion and
touched with a weird dramatic interest. It has al-
ready been produced in Boston and Chicago. Per-
mission for further production can be obtained from
the author.
Poems, by Iris Tree (144 pages; Lane), leave an effect
not misrepresented by these lines about herself:
I am the jester on an empty stage
Playing a pantomime
To spectres in the stalls,
Listening at last
For ghostly mirth and phantom hands applauding.
Not that the daughter of the late Sir Herbert Tree
has written no verse more moving than this, but
that-thanks to strained imagery, forced diction, and
too little to say—the effect of it all is hollowness.
The State and the Nation, by Edward Jenks (312 pages
Dutton), is an amplification of his short History of
Politics, now out of print. It traces the development
of political institutions from primitive society up to
the present day. The style is lucid, the temper just
,
and the product an excellent example of " mellow
scholarship. (Review later.)
The British Empire and a League of Peace, by George
Burton Adams (115 pages; Putnam), examines the
possibility of a coalition of English-speaking peoples
in a loose, inarticulate federalism patterned after the
British Empire. (Review later.)
The Lost Fruits of Waterloo, by John Spencer Bassett
(289 pages; MacMillan), herewith comes forth in a
second edition. It deals with the constitution of
peacedom; a new opportunity for creating interna;
tional order
, missed by the Congress of 1815. Should
not a third edition cover the lost fruits of Versailles?


1919
669
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670
June 28
THE DIAL
a
State Morality and the League of Nations, by James A Selected List of Fiction
Walker and M. D. Petrie (141 pages; Unwin;
London), is a two-sided discussion of the moral basis
of international statehood. (Review later.)
The following is The DIAL's selection of the
more important fiction-exclusive of reprints and
Towards the Republic, by Aodh de Blácam (110 pages; re-translations-issued since the publication of its
Kiersey; Dublin), is the second edition of a popular
Christmas List, November 30, 1918 (page 512).
pamphlet on the social and economic ideals of an
autonomous Ireland. It gives promise that the Gaelic
The references between brackets are to issue and
movement will not stop short on the achievement of page of notices in its columns:
political isolation.
The Arrow of Gold. By Joseph Conrad. 386 pages. Double-
Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, by Bertrand
day Page Co. [June 28:688)
Java Head. By Joseph Hergesheimer. 255 pages. Alfred A.
Russell (206 pages; Macmillan), provides a valu Knopf. [May 3:449)
able approach both to the subject and to the author's The Undying Fire By H. G. Wells. 229 pages. Macmillan
earlier Principia Mathematics. It is within the grasp
Co. (May 31:576]
Saint's Progress By John Galsworthy. 404 pages. Chas.
of anyone familiar with elementary mathematics.
Scribner's Sons. [June 28:666)
(Review later.)
Shops and Houses. By Frank Swinnerton. 320 pages. George
H. Doran Co. [May 17:518]
The Roll-Call. By Arnold Bennett. 417 pages. George H.
The Philosophy of Mr. Bertrand Russell, edited by Phi-
Doran Co. [June 28:659)
lip E. B. Jourdain (96 pages; Open Court Publish The Secret City. By Hugh Walpole. 386 pages. George H.
ing Co.; Chicago). is a delicious bit of philosophical
Doran Co. [June 28:658]
spoofing, as solemnly carried off as the Authors'
The Jervalse Comedy. By J. D. Beresford. 283 pages. Mac-
millan Co.
Club's memorable Appreciation of the life and Blind Alley. By W. L. George. 431 pages. Little Brown &
works of the non-existent Larrovitch. (Review later.)
Co. [June 28:658)
Midas and Son. By Stephen McKenna. 418 pages. George
H. Doran Co. [June 28:662]
Religion and Culture, by Frederick Schleiter (206 pages; The Pelicans. By E. M. Delafield. 358 pages. Alfred A.
Columbia University Press), is a critical examina-
Knopf. [March 8:238)
tion, from an ethnological point of view, of the
The Gay-Dombeys. By Sir Harry Johnston. 398 pages. Mac-
millan Co. [June 28:641)
present methods of classifying and interpreting the Martin Schuler. By Romer Wilson. 313 pages. Henry Holt
data of religion. Iconoclastically it attacks many
& Co. [June 28:651)
classical theories of the evolution of religion as
360
Twelve Men (short stories). By Theodore Drelser
pages. Boni & Liveright.
priori and arbitrary, suffering from over-generaliza Winesburg, Ohio (short stories). By Sherwood Anderson. 303
tion and premature classification, and based on a
pages.
B. W. Huebech. [June 28:666)
study of religion apart from its cultural setting. A
The Mirror and the Lamp. By W. B. Maxwell. 442 pages.
Bobbs-Merrill Co. March 22:313)
wide and valuable bibliography is appended. (Re The Challenge to Sirius. By Sheila Kaye-Smith. 442 pages.
view later.)
E. P. Dutton & Co.
Red of Surley. By Ted Robbins. 334 pages. Harper & Bros.
The Blind, by Harry Best (763 pages; Macmillan), is a
[June 28:662]
The Yellow Lord. By Will Levington Comfort. 311 pages.
thorough examination of the causes, the conditions,
George H. Doran Co. [June 28:666)
and the treatment of blindness in the United States.
Sinister House. By Leland Hall. 226 pages.
Mifflin Co. [March 22:314]
The tables under the headings the Economic Condi Lady Larkspur. By Meredith Nicholson. 171 pages. Charles
tion of the Blind, Blindness and Heredity, Blindness
Scribner's Sons. (June 14:622)
and Disease, and Blindness and Accident, build up
Christopher and Columbus. By the author of Elizabeth and
Her German Garden. 435 pages.
an adequate statistical background. Dr. Best leaves Co.
no part of the field uncovered, and his work will
Ma Pettengill. By Harry Leon Wilson. 324 pages. Doubleday,
doubtless take its place in the United States as
Page & Co. [May 17:520]
standard text.
TRANSLATIONS
Victory Over Blindness, by Sir Arthur Pearson (265
pages; Doran), is an authoritative account of the
The Great Hunger. By Johan Bojer. Translated by w...
Alexander Worster and c. Archer. 327 pages. Moffat,
methods developed by St. Dunstan's hostel for blind
Yard & Co. [March 22:299]
soldiers for mitigating one of war's most pitiful
The Amethyst Ring. By Anatole France. Edited by Frederic
injuries. Never before was so successful an enter-
Chapman. 304 pages. John Lane Co.
Jacquou the Rebel. By Eugene Le Roy: Translated by
prise started by a blind leader of the blind."
Eleanor Stimson Brooks. 415 pages.
(May 17:520)
Broken Homes, by Joanna C. Colcord (208 pages; Russell
Nono: Love and the Soil. By Gaston Roupnel. Translated by
Barnet J. Beyer. 272 pages.
E. P. Dutton & Co. (May
Sage Foundation), a study of family desertion and
17:520)
its social treatment, should be put alongside the Sage
The Two Crossings of Madge Swalue.
Foundation's new digest of American Marriage Laws
English version by Tita Brand Cammaerts. 230 pages.
John Lane & Co. [June 28:666)
in Their Social Aspects (by Fred S. Hall and Elisa-
325 pages
Temptations (short stories).
By David Pinski.
beth W. Brooke; 132 pages; paper).
Brentano. [June 28:660]
Blood and Sand. By Vicente Blasco Ibanez. Translated by
The University of Pennsylvania, by Horace Mather Lip-
Mrs. W. A. Gillespie. 356 pages. E. P. Dutton & Co.
The Dead Command. By Vicente Blasco Ibanez. Translated
pincott (illustrated; 249 pages; Lippincott), is a com-
by Frances Douglas.
351 pages. Duffield & Co.
plete history of this university prepared for its alum-
Luna Benamor (short stories).
ni by the Alumni Secretary.
209 pages. John L. Luce & Co., Boston.
Caesar or Nothing. By Pio Baroja.
How. 337 pages. Alfred A. Knopf.
Wool, by Frank Ormerod (221 pages; Holt), is the second
Martin Rivas. By Alberto Blest-Gana.
of a series on staple trades and industries. It deals
Charles Whitman. 431 pages. Alfred A. Knopf.
with the genesis of the product, its marketing, its
Amalia: A Romance of the Argentine in the Time of Rosas
the Dictator. By Jose Marmol. Translated by Mary J.
manufacturing, and its disposal. The aim of the
Serrano. 419 pages.
E. P. Dutton & Co.
editor is to supply the inexpert reader with expert
The Home and the world. By Rabindranath Tagore. Trans-
lated by Surendranath Tagore. 293 pages
knowledge upon the data of economics and industrial
(June 14:620]
enterprise.
The Lucky MI. By Ioan Slavici.
Co. [May 31:578]
Houghton
Doubleday, Page &
2
(June 28:650]
E. P. Dutton & Co.
By Henri Davignon.
By Vicente Blasco Ibanez.
(June 14:620)
Translated by Louis
Translated by Mrs.
Macmillan
Co.
219 pages. Duffield &


1919
671
THE DIAL
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672
June 28
THE DIAL
An Interesting List!
Notable Summer Books—Ready in July
TWELVE MEN. By Theodore Dreiser.
(Third Edition) $1.75
“ Dreiser at his best in his new book, By far the
most readable and interesting book of all the late
spring output.
-Ne York Tribune.
Also by the same author, “Sister Carrie," $1.90, and
"Free and Other Stories, $1.75.
(In preparation by the same author, "The Hand of
tho Potter," a play in four acts, and "The King Is
Naked," a book of essays.)
THEIR MUTUAL CHILD. By Pelham Gren-
ville Wodehouse.
$1.50
A fascinating love story, with a delicious satire on
"Eugenics'' and "Society.' "A wonderful book," says
Robert H. Davis, "it does Wodehouse proud."
MEN IN WAR. By Andreas Latzko.
(Eighth Edition) $1.50
Practically universally regarded as one of the three
greatest books produced by the World War.
(In preparation by the same author, “The Judgment
of Peace"-Q novel.)
THE TAKER. By Daniel Carson Goodman.
author of Hagar Revelly, $1.75
Are you a giver or a taker?
This book searches the souls of men and reveals the
beauty of a fine woman.
"Mr. Goodman writes with a power that reminds us
of Thomas Hardy."
-Review of Reviews.
TRAVELLING COMPANIONS. By Henry
James.
$1.75
"I counsel all who love books to buy this one before
the edition is exbausted."
-William Lyon Phelps in the New York Times.
THE GROPER. By Henry G. Aikman. $1.60
A first novel of extraordinary interest and merit.
THE STORY OF THE RAINBOW DIVISION.
By Raymond S. Tompkins.
$1.50
Special War Correspondent of the Baltimore Sun, with
introduction by Major General Charles T. Menober,
who commanded the Rainbow Division in all of its
battles.
This is the first-and official-story of this most
famous of all American Divisions.
JIMMIE HIGGINS. By Upton Sinclair.
(Just Published) $1.60
" The first hundred pages are enough to justify the
author in thinking this his best book."
--H. W. BOYNTON In The Review
THE PRESTONS. By Mary Heaton Vorse.
(Sixth Edition) $1.75
"The best and the most entertaining story of an
American family of modern American fiction."
-Review of Reviews.
IN THE SWEET DRY AND DRY.
By Christopher Morley and Bart Haley. $1.50
The most timely, humorous, delightful book of the
year. Profusely and humorously illustrated by Gluyas
Williams.
THE SWALLOW. By Ruth Dunbar.
Donn Byrne says: "This is beautiful
really delightful story.'
$1.50
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THE WILL OF SONG. By Percy Mackaye, in
collaboration with Harry Barnhart.
Boards, 50 cents
a
THE PALISER CASE. By Edgar Saltus. $1.60
"Read it and dare to go to sleep over it. Who says
that it is not the Great American Novel?"
-New York Sun.
IN PREPARATION:
THE CRAFT OF THE TORTOISE. By Al-
gernon Tassin.
A four-act play, which in its theme and brilliant
treatment suggests Shaw at his best.
THE CURIOUS REPUBLIC OF GONDOUR.
By Samuel L. Clemens, Author of Huckleberry
Finn, etc.
(Just Published) $1.25
(One of the six volumes in the well-known PENGUIN
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(Just Published) $1.75
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THE MODERN BOOKS OF VERSE. The
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