Vol. XIV. No. 24. THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 1914.

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NOTES OF THE W E E K . CURRENT CANT . FOREIGN Affairs By S. Verdad . MILITARY NOTES. By Romney . Utopia By Edward Moore . A GREAT SOCIALIST Party By Keighley Snowden FABIAN INSURANCE REFORM. By Margaret Douglas W H A T IS THE CHURCH? By William Marwick . THE UPSIDE DOWN PROBLEM. By Arthur J. Penty TOWARDS THE PLAY WAY-IX. By H. Caldwell

BENEDETTO CROCE’S Aesthetic By A. H.

rrHE DAY’S Work IN ALBANIA. By Dr. Anthony

Cook .

Hannay . Bradford .

T H E R E are plenty of signs that the Home Rule Bill is now practically an agreed measure. Ever since Sir Edward Carson’s invitation to the Government and the Nationalists to “come and win Ulster,” the process of conversion (if it deserves the name) has been going on. The case we presented some weeks ago was, indeed, unanswerable if we were to credit Ulster with any patriotism. I t is not the fact, as we said, that Home Rule is a necessity to Ireland that counts with us at all; but the fact that Home Rule for Ireland is a neces- sity for England. The Bill, in short, deserves better to be called a Bill for the Self-Government of England than a Bill for the Self-Government of Ireland. At the same time, it will not be wise to ascribe to Ulster patriotism equal to her somewhat loud claims. An element of far- sighted prudence, in fact, has largely entered into her present calculations. If there was to be no, real fighting, and Sir Edward Carson had received assurances to this effect from the Government the risks of signing the Covenant and joining the Volunteers were infinitely less than the chance of gain. For one thing, the existence of a standing army of sorts) in Ulster was an admirable means of putting up and keeping up the price of Ulster’s final acceptance of the Home Rule Bill. There was no end to the concessions that Ulster armed to the teeth might not hope to obtain in bargaining cn the clauses of the Bill, For another thing, the enrolment of the Ulstermen under a kind of military discipline was a means of guaranteeing order-for there is nothing like making a man a policeman to save him from burglary. Finally, the continued existence of Ulster’s army after the Home Rule Bill is passed and is put into operation will prove a powerful argument against any Nationalist attempt to coerce the Ulster ‘counties beyond the limits of reasonable government. The creation of the Volun- teers, in brief, was a good Scots stroke of canny fore- sight; and the event goes to show that it is not Ulster

T H E STARVING Man By Arthur F. Thorn . PRESENT DAY CRITICISM . A STUDY. By W. Roberts . READERS AND W R I T E R S . By R. H. C. VIEWS AND REVIEWS. By A . E. R. . POPPING THE QUESTION. By Anton Tchekhov.

(Translated from the Russian by P. Selver) . MODERN ART CRITICISM By hands Coomera-

swamy PASTICHE. By Triboulet, Sebastian Sorrell Harry

Reginald King, Vectis . LETTERS TO THE EDITOR FROM R. B. Kerr Arch.

Gibbs, Auch W e Voudrions Legere, M. D. Amstrong, H. Caldwell Cook, Arthur J. Penty, Harold R. Harrison .

M a r t i n LUTHER. By Tom Titt .

that needs to fear her fate under Home Rule, hut the rest of Ireland.

In the vein of comedy (for all is now comedy in the situation), we cannot restrain a regret that the Ulster bluff will now never be called. W e can well believe what we have heard that nobody has been more surprised and amused by its success than Ulster. But the illusion has been well sustained. Correspondents, reputable and dis- reputable, have been on the spot and reported the drill- ings and preparations with photographs of the same. Thousands of leaders have appeared in our newspaper and thousands of speeches have been delivered, all to the effect that Ulster was arming and would be ready to put up a bloody campaign against professional troops. In the meantime, however, except for these reports, nothing unusual could be detected by the most careful eye. Business proceeded in the accustomed fashion, men married and gave in marriage, society functions were as well attended as ordinarily, and, from all wc have learned, not even the friendliness of the Protestants and Catholics of Ulster who were soon to be at each others’ throats (vide Press) was disrupted or so much as strained. When in awestruck tones Sir Edward Carson besought us to walk delicately lest Ulster should fly into a rage and drive the English into the sea; when every movement of police or soldiers or marines was hushed lest a footfall should awake the sleeping dogs of Ulster ; when we were told that, but for hopes of the withdrawal of the Bill still entertained, Ulster, now straining and frothing on the leash, would break her chain and be at us ; we were half disposed to have our blood a little curdled and to believe that, after all, the turnip-head was a real spook. At the same time, it did seem strange that in the meanwhile Ulster was so quiet. The very newspaper correspondents who had been corn- missioned to draw the foregoing picture could not but contrast what would be with what was and comment on the sinister calmness of Ulster. Even Mr. Hamilton Fyfe, newly back from Mexico and ready to furnish a cinema drama to order, could make nothing palpable of Ulster ; for it was all so “psychological.” Psychdogists ea1 ! We should say it was ! We do not believe now that Ulster ever had any intention of doing more than

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make our flesh creep; and the ease with which she has done it is now humiliating to us. T H E NEW AGE, it is true, is saved from the general wreck, for we have never been able to reconcile the paradox of an Ulster a t once militant and mum. But we bewail the fate of whatever respectable English opinion has been deluded. * * *

7 , I he formal terms of the coming compromise are not, we gather, yet drawn up ; but we believe they will follow the lines laid down at the Conference of Eight held in 1910. That Conference, as Mr. Asquith de- clared at the time, was not fruitless, though elsewhere than in these columns its results were regarded as nil. On the contrary, the precedence of the Home Rule Bill over a general scheme of Federalism was then agreed to be left to the decision of a General Election, and this, as will be remembered, was held for no other rhyme or reason in December of the same year. But the Liberals having been successful, they were obviously entitled by the rules of the game to manage the succession of measures in the order fancied by them ’That is to say, Home Rule was to come first and Federalism was to follow as soon as it conveniently could. I t will be seen that this programme is pretty well being carried out. At the moment that Home Rule is becoming an agreed measure between the two Front Benches, the subse- quent and consequent proposals of Federalism are loom ing into discussion W e are all Federalists now, it may be said without attaching much meaning to the word; and in the haze of that agreement the detail of Irish Home Rule will, as we imagine, be largely ob- scured. But what is Federalism? For ourselves we have always used the term to describe, not the method, but the completed result of the method of devolution. In view of the growing complexity of Imperial problems necessarily confined to Westminster, and of the diffi- culties of purely English domestic politico-economics, it seems not unreasonable that the countries of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales should assume, each for itself, a defined local responsibility in relief of the responsibility of the Imperial Parliament. That, at any rate, is the general argument. On the other hand, it is by no means true that the necessity of devolution of responsibility in the case of either Scotland or England is either so urgent as in the case of Ireland, or that the same identi- cal machinery would be suitable in all three cases. Sir Edward Carson pronounced Federalism to be dead if Irish Home Rule should pass before it ; but we tnay say that Federalism even then will not be dead but only sleeping. Both Wales and Scotland are far from rais- ing so vigorous a demand for Home Rule as Ireland has expressed. I n neither case, further, have the Parlia- mentary members of these countries conspired to sacri- fice English interests to their own local or political in- terests. There is, in short, neither a Welsh party nor a Scots party in the same emphatic sense that for half a century there has been an Trish patty. Why, therc- fore, should Home Rule for either country be regarded by practical politicians as a necessary accompaniment of Home Rule for Ireland? There is no reason, save pedantic formalism, whatever ; and in demanding that Wales and Scotland should be treated like Ireland in the matter of Home Rule and ut t h e same moment, Sir Edward Carson is merely crying for company. Again, we wonder what would have been said if the Government ment, having first framed a Home Rule Bill for Wales had afterwards proposed to apply it without change t:) Ireland ! The three subject nations of England are, after all, somewhat different from each other in history, character, circumstance and condition. A Bill that fits one would be in all probability a misfit €or the others; and we do not imagine that any of them would be pre- pared to accept the same terms as the rest. It follows that, in any event, Federalism must be a sequential and not a simultaneous. act or series of acts,. Of the three countries concerned (we omit England), one must come first; and since Ireland has been the first to demand Home Rule within the limits of an ultimate Federalism, Ireland’s right to lead the way, or to be pushed into it,

is indisputable. To satisfy Ulster that Scotland and Wales will one day be in the same position as Ireland, we suggest once more what we first suggested three years ago-the employment of a promissory Federal preamble to the Home Rule Bill. Solvitur pre- ambulando.

-ft ?i. -E

Before having done with the subject for this week, we may as well record our forecast of the immediate future of Home Rule. W e do not anticipate any dramatic surrender on the part of Ulster. Such a capi- tulation would imply that Ulster had been shamming throughout. What we expect is the appearance of re- sistance to the last, and perhaps even beyond i t ; but with all the time a- parallel preparation going on to make the best of Home Rule when at last Home Rule is established. And this solid sense beneath the mask of frivolity is in its turn a key to the probable consequences of the measure. In the first place, we may expect that by the time the Act comes into force Ulster, with her superior worldliness, will have organised not her own counties only, but the rest of Ireland also, for the pur- pose of securing to her nominees the bulk of the dominant offices in the new administration. That Ulstermen will govern Ireland actually, if not arith- metically, is as certain as that Scotsmen govern Eng- land. Secondly, when this Ulster re-conquest of Ireland has been i n process for some time, it is probable that complaints will reach us here in England of the tyranny of Ulster ! Yes, that, we confidently predict, will prove to be the case. Whereupon, if any response should be made by our Government to the despairing Catholic cry, Ulster will talk separation, as now she spouts Union. That all this appears improbable we not only admit, but we claim. In recent history, how- ever, it is the ordinarily improbable that happens. W h o would have thought that the Pro-Boers and the Jingoes of 1900 would exchange sentiments completely in 1913 Who, ten years hence, will believe that Nationalist Ire- land was praying for Home Rule, and Ulster pleading t-o remain in union with England?

* + * The attempted “seduction of the army” (a phrase

wittily paraphrased by Mr. Burns as the R a p e of the lock, stock and barrel”) has led to another misunder- standing than that of the officers ; it has led to the use of the phrase-democratising the Army. What Mr. Ward means by it his interview with the “Christian Commonwealth” leaves still obscure ; but “Justice” takes it to mean a Citizen Army (whatever that may be), while the “Spectator” and similar journals construe it as Universal Compulsory Service-this being their notion of “democracy.” In effect, however the phrase can mean no more than the opening of the com- missioned ranks t.0 all classes-the abolition, in fact, of class distinctions in all ranks. People who say that this would necessarily be fatal t,o discipline and all the rest of it are ignorant of history. On the other hand, their knowledge of English history may be profound. For it is a fact, we fear, that for the present the distinctions of class, though artificially produced by our contrasted systems of education for the rich and the poor respec- tively, are of more importance in the Army than else- where. Until industry is somewhat democratised it is premature to talk of a democratic Army. The -Army will he the last institution to become democratised.

* The news has, just been published that for the first

time in its history the United States is importing meat. Under the new Tariff, refrigerated meat is now admitted into America duty-free ; and the effect of this will be two-fold. The cost of living and therefore of labour in America will be reduced; to the enhancement of the profits of the American employing classes. And, on the other hand, elsewhere in the world-in England par- ticularly-the cost of living and therefore of labour wilI tend to rise at the same moment that our hold on the world-market will become .comparatively relaxed. No great perspicuity is required to foresee that as a con-

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sequence of these tendencies unemployment in England in the near future will spread, unless (as appears im- probable) we take the field with qualitative instead of quantitative production. But the condition of quali- tative, as distinct from quantitative, production is well known; it is freedom and responsibility in the artisan classes. Hence it follows that the intelligent response to the challenge of America is not, as, o,f course, our stupid Press suggests, the further reduction of wages, but the abolition of the wage system and the establish- ment of Guilds.

* * * If Mr. Ramsay MacDonald thinks his decision to

pilgrim to South Africa to interview Generals Botha and Smuts on behalf of the nine deportees is of the same dramatic value as Mr. Asquith’s recent astonish- ing Cabinet trick, he is as bad a critic as playwright. What is more, we cannot ,conceive any real good corning of it. What obligation are the South African

strong men” under to listen to Mr. MacDonald when they have already declined to listen to reason? Or why should Mr. MacDonald now succeed in doing by himself what some weeks ago he failed with all his forty to ac- complish? His proper course, as we pointed out, was to insist that the Imperial Government should in its turn insist that the common laws of the Empire should be observed in South Africa as well as here. In taking this line he would have had the moral support of every constitutionalist and of every British citizen capable of understanding his own designation. Moreover, he would have established a principle for all time. As it is, even if the ostensible purpose of his mission is car- ried out, the return of the deportees will seem to be by favour and not by right, by accident and not by principle. Public opinion both here and in South Africa will likewise be flouted, since it will be shown that Generals Botha and Smuts can resist opinion safely enough, but yield to the blandishments of Mr. Mac- Donald. His going, in short, will be a colossal error- unless he takes the nine deportees with him !

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* * * t h e decision of rhe London County Council by a

majority of 70 to 30 to dismiss their women doctors should they marry has stirred up the question once more of the so-called penalising of marriage. It is quite true that marriage is becoming more unpopular with men year by year ; but it is also true that women appear to be doing their utmost to accelerate the pro- cess. Every device that could occur to an intelligent mind devoted to reducing the chances of marriage for women has occurred, it seems, to the distorted instinct of the women’s movement. Is marriage unpopular with men because men’s wages are relatively declining? Then women will blackleg in men’s industries and re- duce men’s wages still further. Is marriage unpopular because women desire too much “independence,” too many of men’s privileges in addition to their own, and as little home and as much public life as possible? Then they will ask for complete independence, all men’s privi- leges, and for unlimited publicity. To the burden that marriage places disproportionately on man in general fresh burdens are in process of being added by way of inducing him to marry in greater numbers. Such is the common logic of the women’s movement. The London County -Council by its action has challenged this logic in one practical respect. If women are mar- ried they shall not be employed as well ! Logic for logic one argument, we think, is quite as good a s the other. * * +

There is, of course, no slavery under the British Flag, for every schoolboy knows that it was abolished once and for all. The following advertisement, therefore, taken from the “Straits Times’’ and concerning the British Straits Settlement, must be read in a Pick- Pickwickian sense :-

Good healthy Javanese coolies can be delivered at once

and in m y quantity by the Anglo-Dutch Agency, Ltd., Sourabays.

And this reminds us of the recent question relating to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands asked by Mr. Wedgwood of Mr. Harcourt on February 28 last. Would Mr. Harcourt consider the advisability of remitting native taxation and substituting for it additional taxation upon the phosphates monopoly of the islands? Mr. Har- court would, of course, do nothing of the kind, for he had “no reason to think that the native taxation rn the Gilbert Islands is excessive.” But what are the facts? Llet us briefly recount the story. The Gilbert and Ellice Islands, lying in the South Pacific, consist of a score and more tropical isles inhabited bv natives numbering at the census of 1911 rather more than- twenty thousand. Until the establishment of a British Pro- tectorate over them, the natives depended chiefly for their livelihood upon cocoanuts, which grew naturally and in abundance. But some time before our Govern- ment took possession it was discovered that several of the islands-the Gilbert and Ocean groups in particu- lar-were rich in natural phosphates of which thousands of tons had been deposited upon the rocks. A British Company was formed, having for its chief shareholders and directors ex-officials of the British Government and their friends, and the regular exploits. tion o f the phosphates was begun. But the problem of labour was as difficult there as elsewhere in regions where the potential proletariat are able to roam at large and to live on the bounty of Nature. While, in fact, cocoanuts were to be had, the directors of the Com- pany might dig their own phosphates for all the Gilbert Islanders cared. But wait a moment--a happy idea occurred to our exploiters and their Government c o l leagues. Suppose that the cocoanuts should be taxed or the cocoanut trees destroyed or the cocoanuts ex- ported-would not this bring the natives to appreciate the blessings of wage-labour ? No sooner said than done, an,d for the past ten years or so, each of the fore. going happy ideas has been in practice upon these islands. Copra ,or dried cocoanut is now exported at the rate of some twenty thousand pounds’ worth a year ; native taxes, chiefly on cocoanuts, are levied at the rate of some three thousand pounds a year; and as well the destruction of the trees had proceeded so far that replanting by the Government was actually neces- sary. All this, it may be supposed, had the desired end ; an,d year by year the exports of phosphates in- creased with only such vicissitudes as drought, strike and famine ,cause, until by 1910 they reached a figure which in sales represented a profit to the shareholders of nearly half a million sterling ; and this on an original paid-up capital of only ;G~o,ooo. By agreement with the British Government the tax on the phosphates was originally fixed at sixpence a ton--a matter of some- thing like a penny in the pound of the selling price. Subsequently, however, and after many appeals to Mr. Harcourt and his predecessors, the rate was raised to a shilling per t on a t which figure it .now stands. At a shilling per ton the exports of phosphates yield in re- venue between four and six thousand pounds per annum, o r nearly double the amount o f the native taxes. The proposal made by Mr. Wedgwood was therefore no more than to increase the phosphates tax by another sixpence, and so to dispense with the tax on the staple food of the people. And it is precisely this piece of free trade that Mr. Harcourt refuses to allow ! The irony of the situation is not diminished by two small facts that have been brought to our notice. Civilisa- tion in these islands has so advanced that there has been a strike of native workers against the Phosphate Company. More piquant still (Mr. Harcourt will scream with laughter at it !) there ha-s been a drought ; and what with the destruction of the cocoanut trees, the export of copra and the absence of the men in the phos- phate mines, the Government has actually had to p q - vide and distribute free rice to the starving islanders ! In little, we cannot help remarking, the story of these islands is the story of-these Islands ?

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Current Cant. Matters of Moment.”-“Daily Express.”

“The good old American custom of lynching negroes is falling from favour.”--“Daily Mirror.”

“The Cinema girl is one of the most romantic figures of our day.”-“Daily Sketch.”

“The delight of going first-class is a composite one.”- ‘’ Times.”

“Some chairs are made for the drawing-room, and some

“What others dare not publish we print.”-“Ideas.”

“It was the ‘Times’ that warned us of a noisy week-

for the kitchen.”--Clive BELL.

end.”--“Daily Citizen. ”

“Abolish Religion and we go back to the Stone Age.”- WINSTON Churchill

“Of all the wise things in our unique ‘Referee’ Vanoc’s question last Sunday, Is it not time for Lord Kitchener to come home?’ is one of the most timely.”-E. W A K E COOK.

“England with her green lanes and hedges, her clubs and cosy corners, her clear complexions and open, mascu- line faces, her sense of duty and honesty, her homeliness, humour, sentimentality-yes, England is essentially the land of the novelist.”-J. F. MACDONALD in the “Fort- nightly Review.”

“Why should not the film be treated ,as an Artistic pro- production--Alan H. MAUDE in the “Daily Chronicle.”

“Of course, the whole construction of my play, ‘The Lights of London,’ will be new and slaborate. But a certain section of our young dramatic critics may not like it because it is old-fashioned melodrama, just like Ham- let’ and ‘Macbeth,’ or the Bible.”-GEORGE K. SIMS.

“The Church to-day is an institution of action. It not only preaches., it practises.“-C. F. HIGHAM in the “Ad- vertising Weekly.”

“True genius is uncommonly normal. ”-Dr. CARUS.

“The appeal to reason is the method of civilisation. . .” -:‘I New Weekly.

“The Holy Father last Thursday, the Feast of St. Joseph, kept his name-day for the tenth time in the Vatican Part: of the morning was devoted to converse with his two sisters, his niece, and a nephew, who had been invited to Rome for the occasion.”-“The Tablet.”

“March is a month that same folk do not like, because it is wont to be rather windy.”--“The I.C.S. Student.”

“Law and order are openly set at defiance . . . menaces of Syndicalism. . .”-Rev. R. J. CAMPBELL.

“This photograph of the King was taken during his visit to the North, and shows him wearing a new style of bowler hat. The brim is narrow and curry. . .”-“Daily Mirror.” -

‘ I What the King has, in fact, done has been as f a r as possible to prevent his subjects from flying at each others’ throats.”-“Spectator.”

“Nearly every word written by Sir Arthur Quiller Couch on the behalf of Poetry. . Orlo WILLIAMS. -

“Sir George .Alexander is something of a politician.”- “Daily Express.”

CURRENT Cinema . “The opening of a picture hall at Toft Hill took place

last week. Toft Hill ‘is situated in a wild and moun- tainous part of West Durham, and hitherto the village has been without a place of amusement. What was once the Salvation Army Barracks has been transformed into a cosy picture hall.”-“The Stage.”

Fore ign A f f a i r s . By S. Verdad.

THEY have found out, these newspapers of ours, that some time in the present month falls the tenth anniver- sary of the signing of the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904-not, however, as they wisely tell us, the tenth anniversary of the Entente Cordiale, which began in 1903, when King Edward paid his “historic” visit to Paris. His late Majesty paid several visits to Paris which were not historic, and there is no reason why our shrieky day-to-day chroniclers should suddenly pounce upon April, 1903, and sing Greek choruses to one another about its importance. In fact, they would not do so if somebody had not asked somebody else to arrange that So-and-so was mentioned in his newspaper, there’s a good fellow, and we’ll see that Asquith bears you in mind. * * *

I wondered why they were doing it. That unexpected outbreak of joy and “bonds” and “mutual interests,” and “peace of the world” was too well organised to be altogether fortuitous ; and it was clear that the London papers as well as the Paris papers had, been receiving visits from the representatives of high officials. True, the tenth anniversary of the signing of a treaty such as the Anglo-French Agreement is an event of some in- terest-but such events have never been celebrated pre- viouslJ ; and, on the face of it, there was no need of those outbursts in leaded type. I t was not until I heard from St. Petersburg that the thing became clear.

+ * * For the last twenty years there has been an anti-

French school of politicians in Russia. I do not wish to mention names at what may prove afterwards to be a delicate junctare : close students of Russian politics will know the men I have in mind ; and the others would hardly be interested by a recital of -vitches and -koffs. In the early days of this group, the anti-French bias was due largely to’ racial considerations. The phrase limps ; I admit it. I am not prepared to say that there is not more in common between the Slav and the Gaul than between the Slav and the Teuton. The point is that this school preferred the Ger- mans to the French ; and, having made their preference, they fortified it politically by saying that a Russo- German combination would be better for both countries than a Russo-French combination. I t is an arguable proposition ; circumstances have decreed that it should not be carried into effect.

Y * *

But of recent years these Germanophiles in St. Peters- burg and Moscow have been reinforced by a quiet but not uninfluential mercantile body. Industrialism is in its cradle in Russia ; but there are large capitalists (oil, naphtha, gold, ship-building). I t is to the financial exactions of France that these people have formed ob- jections : they think that Russia could do better by raising internal loans and looking to the Government for considerable State assistance in developing the ris- ing industries of the country, precisely as the German Government did with German industries after the for- mation of the Empire. * * *

These recommendations, in my opinion, are unsound. I think that, financially, Russia could not have done better than she has done by borrowing money from France ; I do not think she could have got it anywhere else-certainly not by “internal loans.” And for the Government to support the industrial interests, even if the agricultural interests were not thereby affected- though, of course, they would be-could not but be pro- ductive of danger and discord. A country in which 85 per cent. of the “interests” are still agricultural is not one where the experiment could profitably be made. And, politically, the case for the present state of affairs is, to my mind, even stronger. If a Russo-German com- bination had been formed, it would have been so power-

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fuI, actually and potentially, that the other States of Europe could not have tolerated it. W e should all have had to go t:o war against the Slav and the Teuton on pain of being swamped in adult exotic babies. The fecundity of the human element in Russia and Germany is amazing : the world would have been overrun in no time. The arrangement whereby Germany remains with an enemy, or rather a potential enemy, on either side is satisfactory. Germany does not wish to attack one un- less she is sure of winning before the other can mobilise -a big task-and she cannot yet attack both at once. France and Russia cannot attack jointly; and the Ger- man bayonets prevent them from meeting halfway and drawing up plans based on practical experience. * * *

The small anti-French minority has at last managed to get a hearing in high society. To catch the ear of the Tsar is always a good stroke of business. I t is true that the Emperor Nicholas is not exactly a strong man ; but he is self-willed, not a little obstinate, and much more inclined to be despotic over his Ministers than over his people. If he were persuaded that it was to the interest of Russia to throw France over and become the bosom friend of Germany instead, the change in policy would be made with less difficulty than even the average diplomatist realises. It is in view of the persistent agitation now being carried on in Russia against the Triple Entente, as well as against the Dual Alliance, that the French Government has seized the convenient opportunity of the visit of King George and Queen Mary to Paris to raise a counter agitation in the French (and indirectly the English) Press. The anti-French groups in Russia have not made so much headway that they cannot be checked.

* * * This wiIl explain the recent references in some

of the London and paris papers to the enormous value of the Anglo-Russian Agreement as well as of the Anglo-French Agreement and th’e Triple Entente. The Anglo-Russian Agreement, as I have often said, is a very useful piece of diplomatic work, and we should have been worse off without it than we are. Still, there was no need to say so just now, after our com- paratively recent differences of opinion about the in- ternal constitution of Persia. * * *

l e did not seem to me to be necessary to refer to this Russian agitation before; for it was hardly sufficiently strong. Now, however, that it has shown itself to be strong enough to stir the French Government, I think it is time for us to take notice of it. By the way, no references to it will be found in any of the English news- papers, although it can hardly be unknown to the corre- spondents of some of them, surely. No doubt the class of people in this country that reads news items of diplo- diplomatic interest is small; but there is no reason why 2t should be kept in the dark-especially as one or two of the penny organs are supposed to cater for it. This is only a hint. * * *

Readers of THE NEW AGE will remember that some weeks ago I pointed out that Argentina was sending to Europe more wheat than Canada and more meat than the United States. I ventured at the same time to pro- phesy interesting commercial developments, especially after the opening of the Panama Canal. W e have not towait so long, it appears, for the developments to begin. It is announced that two British firms interested in the Argentine meat trade-Messrs. James Nelson and Sons, Ltd., and the River Plate Fresh Meat Company-have entered into an agreement whereby the latter Company becomes the property of the former and the combina- tion will henceforth be known as the British and Argen- tine Meat Company,. Ltd., with a capital of ;GI 400,000 in ;GI ordinary shares and ;G6oo,ooo in 61 six per cent. preference shares, with ;G~,ooo,ooo worth of six per cent. mortgage debentures to come. And all this to fight the American Beef Trust. This is another hint.

Military Notes. By Romney.

THE more one reads in history, the more one becomes convinced that the chief factor of success is the posses- sion of an active, well-instructed and intelligent officer corps. The more one sees of the peace training of modern armies, the more one realises how ill-adapted it is to the creation of such an instrument. It may be, of course, that something of what I am about to describe is inevitable, and that any reform is impossible without injury to that uniformity and cohesion upon which an army depends for its existence a s such. I t should be remembered. however, that so far none but the most tinkering attempts at reform have been made. Soldiers have not possessed the necessary breadth of view. Statesmen have been too ignorant of soldiering. * + *

I t should not be forgotten that the cadet who enters Woolwich or Sandhurst is intellectually above the level of his class. The stockbroker or merchant who begins business life as an office-boy, and who is fond of describing officers in general as the fools of the family, could have outwitted them at sixteen or seventeen in knavery. He most certainly could not have passed the examinations which. they passed at that age, and there are probably few branches of human activity (apart from cheating) in which the cadet would not show to the better advantage. This advantage he maintains for several years more. The training as a cadet is excellent; it combines the moral, intellectual, and physical in a manner which is not to be discovered in the City. For the first few years after joining his regi- ment he also finds a great deal to occupy himself. The elements of discipline and tactics, and of regimental routine, will occupy his interest. It is not till the sixth or seventh year of service that the demoralising process begins.

Y * *

At this age most business men or professional men of an equal standing are administering a department, or even a business, of their cmn. Their energies are fully occupied, and their powers, if they have any,, begin to expand. The soldier, on the other hand, is just beginning to feel cramped. His mind, if active, has already absorbed the bulk--of what there is to absorb in his regimental duties. One company training is like another company training : one manoeuvres is deadly like another manoeuvres. Events of any importance are few and far between. At this point, if the officer is a “brainy” man, he begins to work for the Staff College--at which establishment, if he reaches it, his intellect will find food enough, but his power of command and management will decline. If not, he will take to a hobby-probably some game- and will probably neglect his work to indulge it the longer. If, again, he be a man with no extraordinary taste for books (which are a very different thing from knowledge) and too much in love with reality to waste the whole of his life upon sport-such men frequently make the best officers-he will throw himself away on Colonial Service in Africa, will break his neck in the Flying Corps, or, worst of all, resign on a pension of A150 at the end of s s years and try his hand at other occupations. * * *

One begins to understand why the higher ranks of our Army so frequently fail to justify the promise of our lower. Peace service tends to something resembling an elimination of the fittest. It is difficult to propound a remedy. The company system, where it is really carried out, affords a real help. The company system is that by which the management of every company or squadron is left, as far as possible, to its commanding officer-who is allowed a free hand, subject only to the excellence of results. I have italicised this clause, because in England the company system too often means that the company officer is responsible for his

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company only when something has gone wrong and he is required as a victim to be called to account for it. At other times he is subjected to unlimited inter- ference by everyone, from divisional generals down- wards. It is true that these interferences are designed with the laudable object of preventing him from com- mitting what appear to be mistakes; but it is equally true that a reasonable proportion of mistakes will prove inevitable when men are acting on their own, and it is only by making them that we learn to avoid them. The man who is never allowed to make a mistake in peace will the more surely commit one in battle.

* * * The occupation provided by the management of a

company in a unit where the company system is really in operation will do a great deal to keep a man mentally alive. Even more useful, however, would be the second- ing of every officer for a year or two’s service in the Territorial Force as a company oficer at some time before he attains the rank of company commander-say, whilst he is occupying the somewhat superfluous posi- tion of second captain. I say as company officer, rather than as adjutant, because the company officer is far more in touch with the reality of things. He has to learn the great lesson of the Territorial Army--the management of large numbers of comparatively untrained and un- disciplined men without recourse to excessive punish- ment. The Territorial Army, with its lack of trained N.C.O. ’s, compels the officer to get in touch with his men in a way that no Regular Army does, and though such a system has its obvious drawbacks, it would afford a useful training to every Regular. Apart from the mental and moral training, the experience would be of immediate practical use to those who underwent it. The next war, like every other hitherto, will find us under the necessity of expanding our small, well-trained Army by the influx of masses of half-trained or untrained men. It is then that the officer with Territorial service would find his experience useful. In any case, there are 250,000 Territorials to be mobilised on the outbreak of war, and it is therefore imperative for the Regular Army to get in touch with them.

* * * I t is suggested, also, that all officers should be given

a year’s leave on half-pay at, say, thirty-five. This would permit a change of scene, a freshening of ideas, a getting out of the fatal groove of military life. In former times, when leave was allotted on a liberal scale, this was not so essential. Nowadays it is very much so. Keeping men to the dreary round of garrison and station life is fatal, as the Germans have discovered before and will discover again.

UTOPIA. I dreamt that all creation

With youthful animation a t’ Re-moulded was completely :

The earth was smiling sweetly.

In every bosom gladly

The very parsons madly The tide of life was flowing.

Were laughing and halloing.

Each wife with tender passion- Her husband was pursuing :

Each husband- twas the fashion- His wife was madly wooing.

Poets, their spirits quickened,

E’en priests-with pleasure sickened- Each other’s verse were quoting.

On piety were doating.

The Lord, himself, so sweetly From Heaven’s height was smiling-

The fiend was charm’d completely, And ceased from his reviling.

EDWARD MOORE.

A Great Socialist Party. How W e Can Have it Soon.

By Keighley Snowden. I HAVE said elsewhere that the tactics of the Labour leaders betray a very strange ignorance or mistrust of human nature, and I must make this good for the Socialists who put up with them.

The task of Socialists in this country is to create the will for Socialism, and I shall submit, contrary to ex- perience, that it is not a hard task at all ; that we have not gone the right way about it. ‘This task presents a simple problem in human nature, but one that has not been looked at squarely, I t h ink We have had some inkling o,f it, but the Labour Party has none.

If I am right, it will follow that we make too great a toil o,f expounding our doctrine. I think we do, now- adays. It is like the volume of 523 pages just announced by Herr F. Bonn, a German mathematician, entitled “Is it True that 2 by 2 equals 4?” For I believe that by this time everybody knows well enough what Socialism means-i.e., well enough for the purpose, which is that i t shall become something more than an academic system of opinions. I am convinced that everybody knows as well what it means as he knows what Liberal- ism or Toryism means. The time has come to bring it in.

The first thing to remember about human nature is that we seldom want things because we have been told that we ought to like them.

By many and ingenious minds, now engaged in prov- ing to people that they ought to like Socialism, this is forgotten. The belief that it is a safe and simple thing will never move any man prfoundly ; nor will the belief that it is an honest thing, or the only good and sensible thing. To say of this or that, “It is good for you; please take it,” does not excite either a grown-up per- son or a child. They will not strain hard to get the thing when they hear that. Some people will actually feel shy of it. This oddness accounts, no doubt, for the failure of Christianity.

The next thing t-o remember is that we generally do and think things because we wish, and then find rea- sons; seldom, if ever, because we have found reasons first. With the psychologists, I would rather say “always” and “never” ; for, though we may restrain ourselves till reasons have been found, reason is never the impulse. However this fact is doubted by people who have not thought about it. I therefore say “generally” and “seldom.” To that everybody w1ll a t once agree.

It amounts only, after all, to saying that the nation will want Socialism before it becomes as clever as those expounders..

Now, if these things are true of every man and woman, they are true of parties, which are only masses of men and women moved by the same impulse, And if reason is never the impulse, but only the justification for it, what rouses them? What makes other people flock to join a party? What gets them excited, makes them resolute, fills them with hope and winning courage? That is the question. Everything that creates the im- pulse is to be welcomed and fostered. Anything that damps or diverts i t is to be shunned.

The answer is in the third thing to be remembered- which is that we desire things keenly in proportion as they are denied us, or are hard to get at. The impulse to liberty is in despotism. The impulse to struggle is in resistance.

Given a faith of its own, any party or cause will prosper as it provokes conflict, therefore ; not as it re- lies on persuasions.. It should welcome resistance, not hope to evade it. I t may preach, but it will certainly fight. It may give reasons. for fighting, but it will be most of all concerned to provoke the fighting spirit. Indeed, we are so made that our faiths can only be judged by the degree in which they make us eager to

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fight and willing to suffer for them. A faith that can be compromised perishes. So does a faith patronised. N o faith really great was ever even argued much. I t was proclaimed sturdily, simply, fearlessly, and took the consequences, prospering by them.

See now how Socialism stands in this country. In Parliament it avoids fighting with one party, and even backs it against the other. In the country the fights it shares in are always apt to be lost or compromised. Its Parliamentary representatives help sometimes to com- promise them.

In these circumstances it makes, and can only make, poor headway, because its impulse is both damped and diverted; but certain reasons are given for th,e Parlia- mentary policy, making out that it pays. Although the Liberal Party consists largely of capitalists, and is financed wholly by them, it is said to be fighting our fight. “Liberalism leads to Socialism.” In spite of itself, we are to believe, Liberalism will come to be practically Socialist ; therefore it had better not be fought with when hostile, but ought to be backed when helpful.

I do not make the usual reply that this is playing into the hands of Liberalism, or that Liberal help is always a clever evasion of our principles and faith. These things are true, but I make a reply far stronger. I t is that such a policy abandons all hope of a great Socialist Party, ignores human nature, betrays our faith by relying on mere reason as well as by ,continual compromise. The very means by which great causes have always grown are avoided by it. If it were con- tinued-if it could be-our faith would inevitably perish.

Enthusiasm gathers only for a fighting cause. So much the simplest intelligence may understand, and the most casual observation verify. Even the Tories know it. W e ourselves have seen it in Dublin and South Africa, in spite of that policy and to the great embarrassment of its advocates. But neither Liberal- ism nor that policy leads to Socialism.

What is to be done, then? Why do I say that to create the will for Socialism is not a hard task, though it has hitherto been one of the hardest tasks?

when our .predecessors had educated a sufficient number of voters to give us a party of our own in Parliament, the hard work was done. Small as it is, that party, if it will take heart and trust the people, can do wonders easily. Let it fight, that is all. I t holds the key of a great position that can be carried. I invite anyone who doubts this to check, if he can, a simple exercise in imagination, now to be attempted. Suppose that at the next election this party, no bigger at all, should embrace the clear policy of the Irish Party under Parnell, and suppose another Liberal Government. If the party were strong enough to throw the Government out it would hold them up and make terms; if not it would harass them. Take the latter case, and imagine the renewal of such tyrannies as those of Dublin and South Africa? What would be the effect of that little party on classes “ hard to rouse?”

Ministers might refuse to act, as now, or they might act quickly and adroitly. But with men in office there is always some delay, due to official forms or to con- sultation ; and whether they acted or not it would be in that little party, not in them, that an angry and storm- swept democracy would see its champions. And if they refused to act? If they were both strong enough and unwise enough to suppress or burke the agitation- how then? Is that conceivable? The question reveals at once the strength of our position. Tyrannies or no tyrannies the Socialist Parliamentary Party, making an incessant fight, would not only compel ameliorations, but, what is essential, keep the flame of enthusiasm burning and spreading everywhere.

The true education in politics is action, not argu- ment. There is no way but to fight. A party is true to human nature when true to itself, and human nature is true to such a party. After one such Parliament we should have the power we need.

Fabian Insurance Reform. By Margaret Douglas.

T H E R E is a certain grim irony in the fact’ that the Fabian Committee of Inquiry should, as the result of their investigations into the working of the Insurance Act, have been driven to demand the removal from its scope of those features which alone gave platform plausibility to the politicians’ arguments in support of the Bill and which led to its acceptance by the people, namely, the Sanatorium and Maternity Benefits. Had the 191 I Bill been what the Committee now seek to make it, merely a measure for sickness insurance and contract doctoring, the people would not have submitted to the cards and the deductions from their wages; it was the bribe of thirty shillings and the talk about hotels on the sunny hillsides that made so effective an appeal to English sentimentality, and now that they have served their purpose our Fabian friends come for- ward and demand that these two benefits shall be taken out of the Act and placed on a “national” footing.

The absurdity of attempting to deal with an infectious disease like tuberculosis by means of insurance has only to be stated to be realised. It was obvious from the first that the system of giving treatment to men and women in possession of small pieces of cardboard and denying it to those possibly more urgent and infectious cases which happened t-o be unprovided with the magic pass- port to the first-class hotel would, end in the fiasco which the Committee reports with its usual expression of “re- gret.” The majority of people had realised this, many months ago, and the Committee are but echoing opinions widely held when they demand that the Town and County Councils working in conjunction with the Health Authorities should take over the administration of the benefit and organise a complete and systematic provision for all forms of tuberculosis available to all persons, whether rich or poor, insured or uninsured, who cared to take advantage of it. As the cost of this public treatment would be met out of public funds there seems no justification for the Committee’s proposal that the fifteen pence now allocated for this benefit out of the compulsory contributions of the workers should continue to be taken for the purpose. When free treatment is offered to independent workers, employers, wives or children, it would be surely unjust to make a charge in the case of the wage-earner. With the abolition of con- ditions for the treatment there must necessarily be coupled the abolition of any direct compulsory contribu- tion from one section of the community alone.

The Committee are on equally sure ground in sug- gesting that treatment for venereal diseases should be placed on a similar basis so that hospital accommoda- tion shall be available free of charge for all who volun- tarily present themselves either as in or out patients, for treatment.

It is not until the Ninety-Five turn their attention to the question of the Maternity Benefit that the cloven hoof of the Fabian-Eugenist is perceived. Here is a subject dear to the hearts of our reformers ! They insist that this benefit must be taken out of the Act in order that every woman, whether insured or not, should be entitled on confinement---not to the paltry thirty pieces of silver which so rouse the indignation of your contributor, Christopher Gay-but to a fixed allowance of A7 10s. Experience having proved the difficulty of dealing “satisfactorily with confinements by an unconditional and unsupervised money grant,’’ this new and larger bribe is only to be given provided the woman submits herself to such “systematic,” “co-ordinated,” “impera- tive,” and inquisitorial treatment as our reformers shall prescribe. They give various reasons for demanding this enormous grant in relief of wages, and consequent increase in the power and number of the bureaucrats. They refer to public interest “in the nascent infant” ; they predict greatly increased efficiency in coping with infantile mortality if the activities of the Local Health Authority “could extend to the ante-natal period,” and

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they point out that if the nation embarks on this scheme -the annual cost would be from ten to fourteen mil- lions-the women’s Approved Societies would be re- lieved of charges which are at present involving them in insolvency. This last suggestion is like asking one to set a haystack alight in order to extinguish a candle !

The logical effect of these proposals was indicated in an article which appeared in the “Westminster Gazette” a few days after the publication of the Committee’s re- port, where reference was made to “the industry of childbearing and child-rearing,” and welcoming public assistance for women “in the performance of this their primary service,” while Mrs. Sidney Webb presided still more :recently over a Caxton Hall meeting at which it was stated that it was not proposed to make notification of pregnancy compulsory at present.

Will no one rid us of these complacent and detestable busybodies ! Nothing is sacred to them. They write and talk of human mysteries in the language of our de- graded modern commerce and are sublimely unconscious of any defect in their mental or moral outlook. They are, in fact, conscious of nothing save their desire to poke their long, thin noses into poor people’s houses and to impose on them conditions and interferences they would not tolerate for their own wives and daughters. It is useless to point out to such people that child-bearing is not an industry-even among the poor -though chicken rearing may be so described. Nor is child-bearing woman’s primary service to the com- munity any more than eating or drinking, or, since she has been born a human being, the duty of leading an active human life. I t is but logical, since the working man cannot be trusted to dispose of his earnings but must be taught by compulsion, for the Fabians to as- sume that his wife cannot be expected to spend an “un- conditional money grant” in the wisest fashion. I have known cases where what was left of the thirty shillings after the midwife’s fee had been paid was expended shamelessly on paying off back rent, settling an old bill, or buying boots for the children, but mothers have been so constituted since the world began !

However, Mr. Sidney Webb’s municipal midwife will doubtless change all that, and we seem, indeed, within measurable distance of the “new despotism’’ fore- shadowed by the late Mr. Stead when he predicted some two or three years ago that, as a result of the Insurance Bill and the increased power of the doctor, the next step would be “to deprive women of the maternity grant if they produce babies in too rapid succession.”

The Fabians in Council seem equally unimaginative when they deal with the mu,ch discussed question of medical treatment. The defects of the Panel system are admitted by everyone : the “Daily News” has even de- clared in a leader that “the inadequacy of the present medical service is no longer matter of opinion but of experience.” These shortcomings are in part due to the contract system itself, with its inevitable tendency to hurried diagnosis and drug and bottle treatment, and in part to the restrictions arbitrarily imposed by the Insurance Commissioners as to the character of the ser- vice to be given to the insured. The Act requires that the medical attendance and treatment should be of an “adequate kind,” but the Commissioners, taking ad- vantage of their extra-legal position, have so restricted the interpretation of this phrase that panel doctors are, in practice, only required to give a minor ailments ser- vice All cases demanding expert diagnosis, operations, or such special knowledge as is required for deal- ing with affections of the eyes or teeth, must be-paid for separately or treated at the hospital, while th,e list of appliances that may be ordered is so meagre as to be practically useless. Moreover, under the ingeniously devised system of remuneration for doctors and chemists, the doctors are forced to fine themselves if they prescribe drugs of an expensive kind, no matter how essential these may have been to the recovery of panel patients. W e have thus made universal what was previously a limited evil : treatment by means of the stock prescription and stock mixture, and we have de-

graded the honourable traditions of a great profession. The Committee, while acknowledging their own pre- ference for a State Medical Service, recommend the ap-- pointment of a number of State medical referees t o assist the panel practitioner in diagnosis, and in the detection of malingerers, and they ask, of course, for. more money. More officials and more money ! That is the sum of their demands. I do not believe that acy tinkering within the limits of a vicious system will be of any real value. So long as we have a legally estab- lished and compulsory form of treatment for the poorer- classes so long will that treatment be of a suspect character. Nor would a compulsory State medical ser- vice for the working classes be much better, though the Committee support this proposal with the well-worn illustration of the half-dozen competing milk sellers in a single street and point with horror to the different doctors who visit one tenement house. The analogy will scarcely hold, however, since it might easily be a matter of indifference which member of the Fabian Society delivered our daily quart of municipal milk, while we should certainly be more particular as to which of them arrived to stay ?

It is probable that as long as men and women remain human so long will they continue to have human if, to Fabians, unreasonable preferences and dislikes, and I believe that the only real solution of the medical benefit muddle will be found in making the profession as a whole responsible for the provision of an efficient public Health Service. The doctors should formulate their own proposals and arrange, by agreement with the State, a scale of charges, which might be met either from a voluntary insurance contribution, or by direct payments, according to individual choice. Professional responsibility will certainly evoke professional pride, but it will be stifled, if the present system continues, in the same red tape and officialism which is destroying the spirit of the British people.

What Is the Church ? By William Marwick.

As the creation of Parliament-a fact which nobody can dispute-an Established Church is not only the Church of the whole nation-including Nonconformists, Free Thinkers, and Atheists, but it is in its own sphere a model (in theory, at any rate) of a genuine National Guild.- (THE NEW AGE, Vol. xiv, p. 292).

The Church is not an industry or a corporation; it is not even a State within a State; It is the State itself in its religious aspect.-(THE NEW AGE, p. j1.O.)

T H E first quotation is from ‘’ Notes of the Week,” January 8, referring to the Kikuyu Controversy, the second is from a letter by “Press-Cutter” in the issue of February 19, referring to a query in the “Church Socialist” for February, asking : “What is THE NEW AGE doing with the musty old theory that ‘ establish- ment ’ [of the Church] means that religion is the one department of life in which people can have privileges without responsibilities or conditions? ” “ Press- Cutter” goes on to ask : “But is not that the very claim of religion? I really thought it was, and that this was the foundation of the teaching of Christ.”

To answer adequately the question : “What is the Church?” or even the narrower question : “What is the Established Church of England?” one would re- quire first of all to answer : “What is Christianity?” or, at least, “What is the W.T. doctrine 0.r theory of the Church, and how has that doctrine been modified during the centuries, especially in the case of the Church of- England?” “ Press-Cutter” goes on to say : “ I wish some of your learned correspondents would examine the history of the subject.” Without making any claim to be one of these, may I refer “Press- Cutter” and any others who are interested in the sub- ject to “The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics,”. Vol. 111, which contains articles on “Christianity” by Princ. A. E. Garvie; “Church,” by Prof. John Oman, author of a very suggestive work, “Vision and Authority, or The Throne of St. Peter ” 1902 an

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inquiry into the foundations on which ail Chruches wst, and of “The Problem of Faith and Freedom in the Last Two Centuries” (1906), both worth!- of study in connection with this question of the Church ; “Church, Doctrine of the (Anglican),” by Dr. Darn-ell Stone, author of several works on the Church; “C.D. of (Roman C a t h o l i c by Herbert Thurston B.A. S . J., and two excellent historical articles : “Church (British),” by Prof. Hugh Williams, and “Church of England,” by F. W. Head, M.A., Cambridge. These articles and others that are to be found in earlier or later volumes supply ample material by experts for an answer to the questions suggested by the quotations at the head of this paper.

If one prefers to look at the question from the point of view of Philosophy, I would refer to Dr. Jas. Bonar’s Philosophy and Political Economy in some o f their Historical Relations 1 8 9 3 is excellent and only needs an additional chapter or two dealing with these relations during t!~e last twenty-five years- particularly to c. iv of Bk I “Christianity” and other references throughout t hc work to Christianity Church, Society, State (see Index Even if one accepts the definition of the Church as “the State itself i n its re- ligicus aspect,” or as, “ in its own sphere a model (in theory at any rate of a genuine National Guild,” one has to inquire what is meant by State and Nation, in order to understand clearly what a “State” or N a t i o n a l Church really is.

Dr. Bonar compares and contrasts, Stoicism and christianity in their relations t o the State and to citizen- ship. “Stoicism, like Christianity, was fatal to the old view of the supremacy of one particular earthly s ta te The rights of man n-ere not I he same as the rights of th:3 Roman, still less of the Greek citizen. . . The Stoics did not even render thc indirect service of clear- ing up the notion of civil society and the relation of its members to each other and to the State. In fact, the distinction of civil society and the State was yet to be made ; and the notion that the individual could be de- pendent on his fellow-citizens and on the State without losing his individuality was not yet understood” (p. 50). For the influence of Stoicism on Roman Society see Dill’s “Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius” (1905). Dr. Bonar continues : What Stoicism began foi- the few, Christianity accomplished for the many. It broke down the exclusive regard to State and citizen- ship. w e ought to obey God rather. than man,’ there is a higher law than that of the State and a higher order than that of politics or civil society. As far as existing States were concerned, it was individualistic ; but, like that of the Stoics, the individualism of Christianity was itself founded on the conception of a State-a State which was spiritual and owed nothing to the coercive force of armies and magistrates. The Church was a community which embraced men of all ranks and nationalities. It imposed on its members a law adopted by their own choice, and a law which IT-as supposed to derive no support from the traditional morality or the old political institutions of Greece or Rome. It n~as first of ali a mystical union in which the members were one in Christ Jesus, having their citizenship i n the i n - visible world. I t interfered with the earthly citizen- ship mainly by destroying its old identity with religion. Religion was no longer part and parcel of political citi- zenship” (p. 51).

“Church” means primarily “the Christian s o c i e t y 1 he word Church (ecclesia) “stood for one comprehen- comprehensive idea which could have many special applications. The word was not first applied to the local communi- ties and then extended to embrace the whoIc, but stood for the N.T. Israel, and was meant t,o assert that the essence of the whole was in every part. WhereT-er two or three were gathered together there the Church was in all its power and dignity, in all the promise of the Kingdom of God, and in possession of the blessings of that Kingdom. ”*

Oman, E. R. and E. iii, p. 618 who adds that the credit of emphasising this tr i~th is duw t o Sohm Kirchin

_____ _____.-_.___ ___

I t is important to understand this original spiritual idea or ideal of the Church before we come to discuss later developments i n particular, a national State Church, a possible model of a National Guild. In the first of the series of papers on “Guild Socialism” (THE NEW AGE, ”01. xi,. p. 561, Oct. JO, 1912) it is affirmed that : “‘The abolition of thc wage-system involves not merely an economic revolution, but, ex hypothesi, a spiritual revolution also. A spiritual revolution, in- deed, will be necessary as a precedent condition of the economic revolution ; for we are not so blind to the lessons of history as to imagine that an economic re- evolution or the better can be engineered by force and greed alone. would then, this spiritual revolution which we hypothecate be likely t o destroy what is already spiritually desirable in existing society ? Rather it seems essential that it should come not to destroy but to fulfil ; not to make a complete break with its own spiritual past, but to release that past for new con- quests.” what is meant by “the spiritually desirable” here is made clear in a later sentence : “I t is clear to- day . . . . that spirituality sf mind, culture and innate taste are not now, if they once appeared to be, the monopolies of any one class. . . I t is the nation that has always produced them 1 these spiritual qualities] ; and the nation may be relied upon to continue to pro- duce them.') But what is really meant by the spiritual revolution itself has never been made clear. According to the “Notes of t.he Week” in the sane number, the Established Church of England, as represented by the Church Congress o f 1912 did not seem to be within sight of even understanding the need of a spiritual re- volution. The u-ritcl- says : “ W e are all of us aware of what may be called thc ideal function of the Church in the State. Man does not live by bread alone, and a community in which the spiritual needs of man are without their visible embodiment is a community that goes in danger of forgetting them. Nor are we so ill- disposed to the Church as to deny that in some respects the English Church has fulfilled this function in the past, and is still partially fulfilling it to-day. But no- body can contemplate the growing division in the soul of society without foreseeing that the unifying power of the Church must become less and less with every fresh accession of economic equality. The ideal of the Church, we assume, is to assemble the nation as a com- munity whose individual members are on an equality in thc eyes of God ; but when this equality is being in- creasingly denied in the minds of men, the task of the Church becomes more and more difficult. A wise Church under these circumstances xvould devote its n-hole energies to understanding, denouncing, and abolishing the causes of the divisi\on in the nation of which it professes to be the spiritual expression. I t would not cease from mortal strife until it had re- united in spirit, at any rate, the two antagonistic halves into which the nation is being rapidly divided. But the English Church, on thc other hand, shows signs not only o f failing to understand the causes of the present national disruption, but of wilfully misunderstanding them.” Rut the. Kikuyu controversy seems to show that the Church is itself divided into at least two an- tagonistic halves the Bishop of Zanzibar contending that the Ecclesia Anglicana must make up her mind xvhat her doctrine is and if she is a Church prepared to hand on “the Truth as it was received before the divi- sion between East and West or is to be “merely a Society for shirking vital issues,” whether the Church is to remain “Catholic” or to become “Protestant,” link with the dissenters and so widen the breach.

But if the Church is or ought- to be Catholic, can it a t the same time be National, and be the State itself in its religious aspect? Can it be in its own sphere, a

recht 1892. Kattinbusch approves, and adds : “The words in Mt. 1820, for where two or three,’ etc., was valld everywhere and of the whole Church. . . . Each local community is a n ecclesia, not a mere synagogue, because it is a representation of the whole.”--Apostol Symbol, 1900).

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model, on the theory of Catholicity, of a genuine National Guild? Or is the original Christian ideal that of a free Church in a State that, whether originally autocratic, bureaucratic, or democratic, or a mixture of these, :becomes gradually spiritualised and unified in a society or state of economic freemen, organised in a unity of economic interests? And will not the ultimate ideal or rather the ideal realised be a free Church in a free State, a Church free in every respect to act as the spiritual leader or initiator of whatever spiritual revolu- tions may be necessary as a precedent condition of still further economic revolution or evolution ?

But to go back to the Church of the present, it has to be dealt with in the light of the divergent historic development of the idea of the Church. “The fellow- ship of believers founded on Christ, governed only by love and nourished by helpful interchange of spiritual gifts, did not vanish from the earth, but has remained as a leaven working in all the various legalisms that have arisen-the early Catholic, rhe Orthodox Eastern, the Roman, the Protestant. That being seen, the rapid growth of Catholicism is easy to understand, for, as Sohm says, the natural man is always a Catholic, and that does not cease to be true though he call himself a Protestant. Me still likes material guarantees, and would rather not trust anything to God that can be managed by man. The essence of it is that an institu- tion with official rule seems a better security than a fellowship with divine gifts. So long as that continues, man .needs and introduces for himself what Paul calls the schoolmaster of the Law, a thing that may be lower but is continually necessary. . . . Till man is wholly spiritual it will be God’s necessary way with him. W e may not even despise, neglect or fail to serve the organisation (the Church). At the same time, it must ever be held, like the body, as subject to the soul, something that must ever be dying that the soul may live. Hence we have to recognise the significance ‘of God’s providential dealing in once more breaking down the discipline of the Law by division, criticism, and even unbelief. Out of this ferment a new phase of the Church’s life must surely issue, and a new vision of the Gospel, and then possibly a new, and, we trust, more spiritual incarnation of it in outward form, one in which there will be at once more freedom and more spiritual power’’ (Oman, E.R.E., 111, pp. 622-33. C,f. Cairn’s “Christianity in the Modern World” and J. H. Moulton’s “Religions and Religion” (1913). No Church that is or seeks to be purely a State 0.r National, much less a sectarian or a class Church, whether upper, middle, or lower (Socialist or Labour), can administer to the soul of any nation ; it must speak to man as man, to the spiritual in each that is the solvent of all servile bonds, the true bond of union in the State and in the world at large.

The Upside Down Problem. B y Arthur J. Penty.

THE best definition of the social problem is given by the “man in the street,” when he says that things are upside down. For really that is what is the matter with modern society. It is upside down. The secondary things have everywhere usurped the position of primary importance, while the primary things are neglected altogether as being matters of no account-playthings, as it were, for poets, artists, and children, but not worthy of the attention of seriously minded men.

Now it is obvious if we come to the conclusion that things are upside down we must have at the back of our minds some conception of what a society is like when it is the right side up. For the purposes of argument therefore, I propose to take the Caste system of the Hindus, as it exists in theory, as an example of an ideal social structure. In theory it is excellent. The idea that different kinds of men have different natural functions and can only co-operate successfully

when they stand in a certain definite relationship to each other, is the true social conception. The defect of the Caste System lies in its attempt to give visible embodiment to this theory by crystaltising it into in- stitutions, entry into which is not dependent upon an individual’s innate capacity, but upon birth. The assumption being, entirely unfounded, that the requisite spiritual and mental qualities, necessary to the members of the different castes, could be attained by their isola- tion.

At the same time, as has already been pointed out, it is, apart from this fault, excellent in theory, and it may well serve as a model with which to contrast our society. The original idea of the Caste System was this. That men were divisible into four classes : the priests, the warriors, the traders and agriculturals, and the labourers-which they named respectively, in the order of their importance, the Brahman, the Kshattriya, the Vaishya and the Shudra castes. The three upper castes were what we may call the responsible castes, the Shudras were not. They were supposed to be un- developed minds, and were merely to do what they were told. They were the servants of the higher castes. The Hindus claim that there is no fifth caste, though there are sub-divisions and mixed castes, and that all human beings fall without a remainder into one or other of these four main types which deal respectively with the main problems of social and national life in their most important aspects. And that all other races of the earth who do not formally recognise the caste divisions are merely transformations of these four types. undoubtedly men approximate to these four main types, though in a society as complex as ours it may not always be self-evident. Accepting, then, for the present that this division of types is roughly correct, how does modern society compare with the ideal, as set forth in the theory of the Caste System? Well, in the first place we may rule out the lower caste, the Shudras, as being in the same position as the labourers in modern society -which is, 01 course, at the bottom. It is when we com- pare the order of the three higher castes with the corre- sponding classes in modern society that the comparison becomes interesting. Under the Caste System, the Brahmins or priests and thinkers were on the top ; below them were the Kshattriyas or warriors and ad- ministrator:;, and below them again the Vaishyas or agriculturists and traders, financiers, etc. Allowing for differences between an agricultural and industrial society such as ours, it will be seen that in modern society the order has been completely reversed. Inr stead of the thinkers being on the top and the financiers at the bottom, we find the financiers at the top and the thinkers at the bottom, while the warriors and adminis- trators occupy the middle position in each case.

Now when the “man in the street” says that things art: upside down he has at the back of his mind some such dim perception of a social order which has sorne- how got inverted. How and why he utterly fails to understand. All he knows is that men are on the top who ought to be at the bottom, and vice versa. What he believes to be right does not for some reason or other succeed, and things he knows to be wrong are every- where successful. I will venture an explanation of this phenomenon.

Fundamentally, this reversal of the natural order of things is due to the decay of all our traditions. Were religion, art and philosophy firmly established in society, and social arrangements orderly, each man would arrive at his proper station in life as a matter of course. Social arrangements would give a base to his activities, while established tradition of religion, art, and philosophy would provide ladders by which he would climb. In modern society, where these traditions have disap- peared, no ladders exist which enable the wise to rise to positions of authority. Take for example the case of the artist. In an age of established traditions almost everybody knows something about art. The artist would find himself in an atmosphere where reciprocal relations are possible between himself and the other

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members of society. But in modern society this is not the case. If he says this is beautiful; this is the right way of doing a thing, he is not accepted as a man of superior insight, but is told it is all merely a matter of taste : some like this and others like that. And so he spends the most of his life fighting for the truth which he sees. If he is a good fighter, and circumstances allow him to hold out, he may eventually become ac- cepted. If not, he goes under. But even if he is be- lieved, he can exercise little authority. The danger is that the public will put him on a pedestal and leave him there.

The same kind of thing is true of the philosopher. In ancient times the philosopher was the law-giver, and he came to this position naturally because, as certain ways of thinking about things were common to t h whole community, it was easy for him to establish reciprocal relationships with it. But in modern times this is not the case. Instead of being accepted as a wise man, he finds everybody asking the question, What is truth? For the public to-day believe everything to be a matter of opinion. And so instead of being a ruler or adminis- trator in society he has to spend his time in trying to answer the question What is truth? And he finds it no easy matter, for what is so obvious to himself is by no means so obvious to other people. Accordingly, in- stead of being a ruler he becomes a writer, an historian, a sociologist, or what not. He may make a great reputation, but he has missed his vocation and society suffers from its apparent inability to use him.

Now while society suffers with the artist and the philosopher as with the saint and the mystic because of this confusion of ideas and principles which has followed the break-up of our traditions there is one type of man who profits by it-the financier. When traditions of religion, art, and philosophy were firmly established and reflected in the social structure, the economic field was divided by barriers such as those which existed between the Guilds. But now, when these traditions have been destroyed with the social institu- tions which supported them, the economic field has be- come united. Everything in modern society can be re- duced to the terms of cash. This has given the financier his opportunity. No ladders exist in modern society for the artist and the philosopher, but there are countless ladders for those who know how to manipulate finance.

Fortunately, to-day, there are signs that a change is taking place in this direction. The successful finan- ciers are nowadays engaged in destroying the ladders by which they climbed, while the movement to restore the Guilds will break up again the economic field. The con- fusion of thought which surrounded art and philosophy is coming to an end, for there are a few, at any rate, in modern society, who can speak of them with certainty and confidence. As these get more settled, religion will revive, as it will need to do before the social problem is finally solved, for it is the cement that binds men together.

Meanwhile, it is interesting to speculate as to the causes which have brought the present state of things about. First in importance comes the materialist philo- sophy, with its denial of mysticism, its condonation of usury and its love of comfort. I t provided the intel- lectual sanction for the change. Then we must take thc division of society into classes on a property basis, for it is much more harmful than differences of classes based upon differences of function which was the prin- ciple underlying the Caste System. Our class divisions corrupted morality at its base, and gradually under- mined the communal base of society. Communal insti- tutions were deliberately destroyed in the interest of our wealthy class. ’The factor, however, which has finally completed the work of destruction has been the unregulated use of machinery. This gave us Over en- tirely into the hands of the financiers, for nothing can stand up against machinery. Religion, philosophy, a r t , morals, and humanity have in turn been sacrificed to it, and will continue to be until we have the courage to face its problems.

Towards the Play Way. By H, Caldwell Cook,

IX. The imaginary Stage,

IT has already been laid down as an article in the Play Way that the best thing to do with a play is to act it. Let it now be added that the best place to act it on is a stage-real or imaginary. Acting 01: an imaginary stage is not so impossible as it may appear; it is, in fact, the invariable custom of the playboys in the class- room. W e invented the imaginary stage because our thorough study of Shakespeare on the Play Way demanded an Elizabethan setting, the whijch we could only supply in our imagination. Many modern plays might be very adequately presented without a stage at all. One form of the sensational melodrama has entirely dispensed with words, and is already familiar on the “ Cinema ” screen. Many scenes of present-day comedy are little more than a parade of mannequins; and the drama of discourse could, for the most part, be as adequately presented between the covers of a novel or in a volume of Fabian Essays. But your true play, as the Elizabethans knew it, is a thing of sound, colour, and movement all combined. On the “ cinema ” we have movement of a jerky, mechanical kind, and pageants give us gay colour and to spare. But drama is an ideal representation of life compact of nearly all the “ dimensions ” possible in art. In the study of drama, to ignore the representation or acting, by virtue of which alone it is drama, is to write oneself down a hopeless ass. The study of Shakespeare on the Play Way not only requires the acting of the piece, but is also made fuller and more thorough in a dozen ways through the making of original plays by the boys them- selves.

The practice of playmaking is complementary to thk study of drama, and each helps the other. So that not only is your playwright the better for his study of Shakespeare, but your student of the drama as a literary form is the better for the practice of playmaking. I t would not be worth while stating such a platitude if it were not evident, both in the stuff now staged as plays and in the rubbish written as literary and dramatic criticism, that neither do our dramatists really study existing plays, nor our critics and professors of litera- ture attempt to make them. The disclaimer familiar in the mouths of critics that one need have no practical knowledge of the subject one is writing about may pass well enough in the case of adults in modern life. In present-day journalism you may take as your text a con- temporary play and utter your wisdom on current sociology economy, and medicine as the dramatic critic of this journal was recently accused of doing. Or you may find that a few notes on education range over the whole field of modern life. But children do not. generalise, they discuss the matter before them, usually in an active manner as play. They have no wide theoretical conclusions about life and art which they may trot out on any text or occasion. The Play Way takes account of this peculiarity of the immature mind and insists on keeping to the point. The chief point about a stage-play is that it is meant to be played on a stage. Therefore, whether you are studying someone else’s play or making one of your own, you at once seek after a stage. And if a wicked generation determine that there shall no stage be given you, you fall back upon the natural resources of the player, and make-believe a stage : fashion a heaven in hell’s despite, and proceed with your playing maugre the ungodly.

The imaginary stage we use for the study of Shake- speare in the class-room is naturally that of an Eliza- bethan playhouse. This was not the picture stage familiar at the present day, with its picture-frame proscenium arch, its front curtain and its footlights, but the platform stage which happily is being introduced, with its natural accompaniments of diffused lighting,

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2nd with hangings and other decoration i n place of painted canvas scenery. The researches of E. I<. Chambers, William Poel, W. J . Lawrence and many others have established beyond reasonable doubt the shape of an Elizabethan stage and the conventions that governed it. And though the result of their investiga- tions has not yet reached the writers of the Cambridge History of Literature and others such, I must take for granted that even the details are tolerably well known, and he content to relate how the study of such a subject is conducted on the Play Way as contrasted with other existing methods.

The present-day notion of class-room method is to keep all the children sitting in attentive rows while the school teacher holds forth upon some topic or asks questions of the individuals in turn. It is very dull. Neither master nor pupils have any freedom, their work being conditioned by outside authority. Suppose that :he various boards of examiners who control secondary education in England were able to understand the in- terest and importance of such a subject as the Eliza- bethan stage. I t would then be prescribed in the examination syllabus. Then those progressive and enlightened schools which have a teacher of English would take up the study. The said teacher of English would read the outlines of the subject in some hand- book such as Dowden’s Shakespeare Primer, which devotes one or two paragraphs to the matter. In school he would face his class and begin to lecture. Or if he were a trained teacher (which is not likely, as I am thinking now of the public schools) he would decide to extract from the class the facts they are not yet in possession of by a series of leading questions spread over two or three lessons. I t is most tedious. Hc begins thus :

W h a t is ;I stage?’’ Various hands are held up and the guessing b e g i n If the class has previously been through a similar drudgery on “The Coaching Days” some confusion may arise. If not, they probably get i t in one. A stage is a place where they act plays.”

“IVho act plays?” asks the master, a stickler for clearness of thought and accuracy of expression.

“The actors,” replies a boy, quite accustomed to such silly questions.

“Quite right. Now which of you has ever seen a stage?” Many hands go up and several boys offer 1-0 recount the story of the plays they have seen, the con- tortions of the acrobats, and so on. Someone observes that he has been to a circus, and someone else starts in on a full account of the nigger minstrels at Broad- stairs. But all this must be sternly cut short, and the?. return to the matter in hand. “ Who can tell me \\.hat a stage itself i s like.?’’ And so on and on and on. It is all unspeakably dull. Towards the end of the lesson the point is reached, and the boys are brought to under- stand that stages have not always been as we sue them now. The teacher might have told them so at the he- ginning, as that was the starting-point of his lesson. But he is a trained teacher, well practised in heuristic method.

The untrained leacher, on the other hand, will have a page or two of notes, and will hold forth to the class upon the subject, with diagrams on the blackboard, while they jot down notes of their own or write passages at his dictation. For homework they will produce it all in what is called an “essay,” though there will be n3 attempt at style, and the work will consist solely of undigested fifth-hand facts. The following evening the master, with a blue pencil, will laboriously underline the spelling mistakes and criticise the arrangement of “the matter.” The boys \\-ill throw the work away as soon a s it is returned to them. Nothing duller could be imagined Moreover the whole process is entirely with- out value or result. The master is bored, the boys are bored and none of them have any more real knowledge at the end than the>- had at the beginning. Most of thcm will pass in that question at the examination.

Benedetto Croce’s Aesthetic. By A. H. Hannay.

The Theory of Art. THE New Realism which is becoming such a powerful factor in English philosophy has not yet produced a systematic philosophy of art : yet even in this sphere its influence can be detected. Rather than the New Realism it should be called the New Dogmatism. It i s pivoted on one single idea, thc unique, the indefinable. I t says, Beauty is Beauty, Good is Good, Ugliness is Ugliness, Evil is Evil, and that is a11 about them. They cannot be de- fined in terms of something else, for in that case they would be that something else and not what they are. One’s first impulse is tco reply that it is being vehement about the obvious. But suddenly the doubt springs up : is it really true that Beauty is unique and quite distinct from Good and Ugliness, and so on. The New ReaIist answers : “If you don’t see that it is distinct, I cannot prove to you that it is : if you see green as yellow, I cannot prove to you that you are wrong : the only pas- sible proof of the uniqueness of Beauty is pointing. ”

In that case there is no proof of it. For to point to ;L fact is not to prove : to prove is to point to a reason. Colour blindness is just seeing differently from other people : it is not holding a contradictory statement to he true. To maintain what is irrational, on the other hand is to maintain what is contradictory : it is opposing reason with unreason, not one dogma with another. In so far as :-he Realist. argues that if Beauty. is a definite quality or category, i t n-ill not admit of defi:li- tion i n terms of something else, he is reasoning : i n so far as he merely points to Beaut? and alleges that i t is a unique quality and therefore indefinable, he is dogma- tising. In order t G prove this dogma he must demonstrate that Beauty is and must be a unique quality, or, in the words of Kant, he must demonstrate the possibility of the existence of Beauty : he must rc- late it to the other categories. ’i’he Realist is simply repeating his great discovery that i f a quality is unique it is indefinable, putting it i n the from of a non-hypo thetical assertion and substituting the word Beauty for quality. He is not genuinely thinking about the actual concept of Beauty. And he does not perceive that it is impossible to show that anything is unique unless at the same time you show its relation to the other unique elements. To differentiate is to unite, a t least in the sphere of demonstration. You will not have shown th ; l i

art is different from action mti l you have demonstrated its relation to action. ’I‘he Realist may reply that all demonstration ultimately rests on a basis of undemon- strated fact, O F assumpt-ion. Most English philosophy undoubtedly does so : but, then, the English rarely think they prefer to assume rather than to attempt t o demonstrate and so to run the risk of falling into error. Thought may sf art with assumptions, but the act of thinking is the negation of the act of assuming.

Very few philosophers have devoted as much time to the problem o f art as to that of science or morality or of the dependent or independent existence of colours, sounds, etc. They have, most of them, been satisfied with a vague eclectic position with regard to ar:, con-

it as :! judicious blend of emotion and thought : an isolated and impressive phenomenon that. might COII-

ceivably be dispensed with. But emotion is :i very ambiguous and unintelligible term : it is a prostitute conception : it walks the streets with Feeling. Others haye contented themselves wiih !he somewhat pompous assertion that art is the expression of Life. Are not history and philosophy also the expression of life? And w3at is meant by life? Is it something conscious? And yet what can to express mean except to bring to con- sciousness? Arid so art is tautologous : it brings to

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consciousness x-hat is already conscious : it reproduces. Benedetto Croce is one of the few great thinkers who Etave treated art seriously and have really grappled xith its problems. And yet it is only through a very profound study of the other problems of life that he has been able to arrive at a clear >conception of the nature of art. And conversely this conception has thrown light on many problems which have hitherto been regarded as absolutely unrelated to ar t . Perhaps the clearest state- ment of his theory is 1.0 be found in an essay written by him last year at the invitation of the new University of Houston, in Texas, which has been published in Italy under the title of Breviario di Estetica. It constitutes in many respects an advance upon the larger Aesthetic ” and embodies the substance of Ch. VI, Part I , Section 11, of “The Philosophy of the Practical.” I should like t.0 say that it is far the best of the many modern treatises on art but, perhaps fortunately, I have not read them all.

Art, according to Croce, is not merely a pleasant activity, or a “need” of life, in the sense that many people desire it, just as they desire billiards or moun- tains : it is a condition or form of life itself, something without which neither philosophy nor science nor his- tory nor any other form of human activity could exist, Hume said that the imagination cannot contain an!*- thing which has not previously been in the senses, thereby denying to imagination any creative power. Croce, on the other hand, says that the senses are the imagination. The visual perception of ordinary people, for instance, is not the datum of the painter, it is itself derived from some painter’s vision : it is a repetition of a previous original vision. And that vision was imagina- tive : it created a possible experience T h y imagination conversely, has no existence except in its “expressions” --in colours or sounds or language, although it is not limited to these or any other “types” of expression. The. senses are the creative imagination, which is art.

I must admit a difficulty here. In the ordinary view there is not an art of smell or of taste or of touch. Does Croce include these, and also the sensation of heat and cold under the form of intuition, imagination? If no t with his theory, under what from can he include them? This brings me to Croce’s deduction of art from the unity of life, to his demonstration of the possibility o E art as a unique category. Life consists of a circular movement through three different forms of activity, each of which is the condition of the other; firstly, in- tuition or imagination which is the expression of possi- bilities, of aspirations, desires (hence the emotional ele- element : but the desires o d y exist in and for their ex- expression in sounds, forms, colours, words) ; secondly judgment which is a union of th,e individual intuition (art) and of the universal concept (philosophy). Through judgment we know what is, what has been done, the extent to which our desires are or arc not fulfilled. ‘Thirdly, there is the practical activity and the life of action, of doing : this includes the natural sciences, for they tell us how to do what we want to do : how to build houses and ships and railways and so on. “Reality,” he says, “is possibility that passes into actuality, desire that ,becomes action from which desire springs forth again unsatiated.” “How could we will if we had not before us historical intuitions (perceptions) of objects, pure intuitions (imaginations) of possibilities, and relations (logical concepts) which throw light on the nature of these objects and of these possibilities? How could we really will if we did not know the world that surrounds us, our desires and our tendencies, and the method of transforming natural objects by acting upon them?” In the ‘‘Breviario di Estetica” Croce gives an illustration. Ugo Foscolo, the poet, has a love intrigue with the Countess Arese. Out of the tumult of his passions and desires he evolves a magnificent “lyrical representation.” For the moment he is completely satisfied. But he is a man as well as an artist, he has a philosophical and practical side as well as an artistic side. And he begins to ask himself whether the Countess is really the idea! lady whom he has created in his

imagination. He passes to perception, definition judg- ment, and his letters bear witness to his disappoint- ment. But knowledge does not satisfy him : hi: must act on the basis of this previous intution and judgment And this is the process which is taking place in every moment of life : life is this spiral development through these three distinct forms. Moreover, in the history of nations we can distinguish periods in which art has predominated, others which have been pre-eminently tly philosophical and others, again, such as the 19th cen- tury, where science and the practical life reigned supreme.

Now, at first sight, in its broad outlines this theory would seem to represent what historically, actually happens, and conceptually it would seem that life must be somehow differentiated into these three different forms. The only thing that really exists is the present : but within the present there can be distinguished three different moments, or, rather, there are three different kinds of “ present” : the past (history), t.he present (action), the future (desire). Bergson is fully justified in maintaining that the future is not “given,” already created. Yet in a certain form it is already “given,” namely, as desire, imagination : not as a generalised Utopia, but as a unique lyrical expression, the material from which Utopias are generalised. But a closer examination of this theory seems to me to disclose many difficulties,’ some of which are so serious that the whole conception totters. I will mention here two cr‘ them. (T) The poet Ugo Foscolo has given form to his passions in a poem : he has passed to judgment : he finds that his mistress is not as he had imagined, he judges that she is something else. Now, in order to h o w what this something else is, he must, according to Croce’s theory have first of all had a representation 01-

intuition of it. But he then finds that this intuition is real; is no longer an intuition, but is the Countess Arese. He has had all the trouble of fashioning an ill-

tuition simply in order to find that it is already existing as an “act.” And so intuitions are not only of the possible, but of the actual : art is often identical w f t h history, only the artist qua artist is not conscious of thc fact. But how does he ever become conscious of i t? Does he compare his intuition with reality? In that case he already knows reality, and what is the use of this primary stage in which “everything is real and nothing is real” ? Either art is simply possibility, as- piration, dreaming (and useful to history merely as a contrast with what actually is), or it is identical with history. Croce’s attempt a t a compromise seems to me io have failed. (2) w i t h o u t Art,” Croce says, “philo- sophy would be lacking in itself, since it would lack that which conditions its problems.’‘ Now the ordinary theory is that in thinking we pass from a contradiction or problem to a solution or conclusion which gives rise to fresh problems, and so on. According to Croce we pass from imagination or representation to thought or judgment, from that bo action, and from action to further imagination, and then, and only then, do we have a further problem and a further solution. I agree that thought must have an immediate descriptive con- tent, but I cannot see why this should not be produced together with the universal which invests it : or to put it empirically, I fail to see why philosophy must con- tinually be resorting to literature, painting, music, etc., for its material. If it does so, then the impetus to the development of thought falls outside thought : and similarly with art and science. But this does not seem to me to be the case : they all require imagination, but each seems to have its own particular type of imagina- tion, and to be able to develop without any assistance from any of the others.

These are more or less tentative objections on my part. But I think that they are real objections, although not final : they are questions which should be raised. And Croce does not appear to me to have answered them. About this I may be wrong : n m t probably I am, for Croce is one of the profoundest of living thinkers.

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It was a fact that such an act on the part of Nikolas would endear him to the Great Heart of the British Public.-He did n,ot care a damn about the Great Heart (or Servian words to that effect).

N o doubt after the war a lot of discussion would take place, and the help of England would be desirable.- Nothing doing there. By the time the discussion occurred Nikolas would be in Scutari, and it would take more than that t'o get him out.

Very well (and here the maccaroni box creaked with our disappointment) be it upon the head of Nikolas if his cause did not prosper as his was a Sin against Humanity.-Quite so, and what were we doing at Vir B Bazar ?

W e hung the receiver up at once, and prepared to leave Vir Bazar, and retire for ever from the foolish profession of diplomacy.

The really important matter In hand was (quite off our own bat) the establishing of a field hospital on the Lake Scutari side of the Tarabosch position at the small Albanian village of Zogaj. We had collected a lot of equipment, and had it now stowed away on the small petrol launch, and were ready to start when the Servian received a telegram ordering us back to Anti- vari. To save unnecessary discussion we pushed off at once into the unknown, after a most emotional farewell from Maritza. Occupying a commanding position on the steps, she declared that she had been looking after the English doctors for a week, and not even once had they struck her, and she wept again at our splendid for- bearance

None of us had been down the lake before, and a very beautiful way it was, with its high snow-capped mountains on either side floating in a blue haze. About half-way there the two church towers of Scutari became visible, and farther on we had to hug the right shore to keep out: of the sight of the Turkish gunners. High up on the mountain shells could be seen exploding. The placid lake with its wild fowl, the hazy snow mountains, the church towers, and the evident hell on the crest of the Siroka Gora made a strange picture which filled us with queer feelings of adventure.

Just at dusk we arrived at Zogaj, and received a great welcome from the soldiers. Upwards of 2,000 men had been stationed here for some time tmo man the trenches, and no arrangements had been made to treat their wounded or sick. The Commandant, too, was very affable, and we had quite a house-warming in the mosque handed over to us. This was one of the few places during the war where we received any help at all from the soldiers. Generally our reception had been what one would have expected had we started fussing round a mediaeval army of John of Gaunt's. but here we were called on, and returned calls, and received, and did all the polite things. The houses of the village were chock full of soldiers, and the sanitary arrangements were very primitive, and what did exist were not used, and when asked by the Commandant for suggestions, which might improve things, I hinted that it would be a good scheme to keep one compound only for slaughtering sheep in, etc., instead I of doing it on each and every doorstep. Yes, he agreed

l that would be a good thing, but who, then, would carry the meat away? Was it not much simpler to drive the sheep to the doorstep, kill them there, and hand the meat up? It seemed that a Montenegrin gentleman will drive a sheep, but dislikes carrying meat. The village got dirtier and dirtier, and enteric arrived. and then our vicious circle was complete. W e made the disease in our own lines and there we treated it. It was no use attempting to enforce any rules. Little discipline of any kind existed in the army, and certainly no ideas on sani-

Ours was really a collection of raiders, and it was tragic to see it here adjusting itself to its new role of besiegers of one of the most modern fortresses in Europe.

The Montenegrin is as brave as any other imaginative man, but he has not the stolid indifference to unknown dangers of our own people. When the arsenal blew up

The Day's Work in Albania. By Anthony Bradford.

IV. TVE had been hung up at Vir Bazar waiting for a steamer to take us down Lake Scutari to the army, and at last had got a launch through the goodwill of Michel Plumanatz-a name that works wonders in Monte- negro. Most of the launches and steamboats about had been taken from the Turks, and the Montenegrin en- gineer-captains were so interested in their new ttoys that they seemed to drive the vessels about in a sort of engineering trance, quite contemptuous of the wants or destination of any passengers or cargo. They were always very busy starting from anywhere and arriving no'where, and Heaven only knew where the boat would stop when once set going.

Besides Michel Plumanatz another adherent was a Servian doctor whom the Government had asked me to look after, but wh,o probably was looking after me. He had married the daughter of the only capitalist (besides Nikolas) in Montenegro, and sol deserved care. Some time spent in America had filled him with science and the most up-to-date ways of dealing with disease, and a few years before Nikolas had made him Medical Officer of Health of Dulcigno in order to try and boom that unlikely town into a fashionable seaside resort The Servian had taken charge of what amounted to some picturesque ruins, a few Albanians, and a very bad smell, and had drafted out a schedule of perfect rules and regulations to aid the local peasant to conduct himself sanitarily. That which was his downfall for- bade the carrying of uncovered meat in the streets. But in Dulcigno there lived a fierce old hotel-keeper named Mirko, and he put himself at the head of the Conservative opposition and showed his contempt for Officers of Health by walking up and down all day long in front of the Servian's house with a naked leg of goat in his hand, and with the well-advertised intention of hitting the doctor over the head with it did he dare to come out. The Albanians of Dulcigno all assembled to witness this sporting affair, and the Servian gathered that science was not wanted in that part of the world, and so he left.

To-day he brought up slome letters, and one of them told how the British Foreign Minister had received a request from the Turkish Minister in London to ask Nikolas to allow some of us to g o into Scutari to attend the sick and wounded. We, of course, were anxious to get there as we had gazed long enough at its citadel and churches, and knew everything there was to be known about its exterior, and we saw n.0 prospect of the army taking it by storm. The request had been officially refused by Nikolas, but still there was nothing to be lost by trying unofficially, and so the Servian and

embarked on our new careers as hustlers of kings. Certainly the setting of our operations was not all we

desired. I t is well known that diplomatists manage these Things in very superior and consequential ways in palaces and grand hotels, and with the help of beautiful ladies who smoke cigarettes and carry on generally. The only furniture on the dirty floor of the telephone room at Vir Bazar was an old maccaroni box, and the telephone instrument looked diseased. The Servian seemed to have no difficulty in getting through to the palace at Rjeka and to Nikolas, or his Lord Great Chamberlain, and we at once began to discuss the situa- tion.

W e were English surgeons and were ready to carry out immediately the humane intentions of King Nikolas, at the request of Great Britain, of sending in a medical relief to Scutari under a flag of truce. W e were misinformed. Nikolas had no such intention.

There was no doubt that there were a lot of wounded .and much disease in Scutari, and this was distressing England. Would Nikolas let us go in?-No, he would not.

751

at Antivari and rent a hole in the wall through which could be seen smoke and flashes and exploding shells- a regular inferno-no Montenegrin would go near it, but two of our fellows, Williams and Baverstock by name, went into it, and brought out some insensible men, in the same way as they might have gone into’ a public-house and had a drink. And here at Zogaj was another example. Anchored a little farther along oppo- site Siroka was an old Turkish gunboat, whose very existence there was a constant challenge to us to capture her. I said as much t’o the Commandant-- H e asked how I would set about it. I suggested that he got a large Albanian canoe, holding about thirty men, and one dark night-Would you go in the boat? he inter- rupted-. This was rather a nasty one, and I had to say I would. Well, he replied, much to my relief, you would get no one to go with you ! No, she was zin un- known quantity-something mysterious out there float- ing in the water-and as such was unduly feared. Yet there was no question as to the bravery of these men, and they had a remarkable power of endurance. The trenches on the t’op of Siroka Gora, overlooking Tara- bosch, were exposed tlo everything in Tarabosch, yet here these men lived for days on end with no effective clothing, no shelter from the icy North wind, and no regular food supply. When they came down to the hospital, even then, they called their exhaustion rheu- matism; !

The fatigue, hunger, and utter boredom w-hich con- stitute 99 per cent. of war soon breed an indifference to death, especially of other people. One may be talk- ing and eating with a fine man, and then a few minutes later a shell comes screaming along like an electric tram- car, and after it nothing is left of Ihe man but some bits. A shallow grave is dug in the rocky earth, the Orthodox priest has his little say over the remnants, steps down and kisses the face, and the dirt is shovelled in. Done with and forgotten utterly in half an hour.

The Starving Man. A True Story

I HAD never noticed this particular shop before, though I seem to remember having observed the pawnbroker’s next door, and also a melancholy second-hand clothes store which faced the new Labour Exchange on the other side of the road.

As in most working-class districts, there was a long line of barrows in the main thoroughfare, quite forty of them I should think, reaching from the church to, the public baths. Each barrow was illuminated by paraffin flares, which are much more picturesque, in my opinion, than the blinding arc-lamp which are now used by the more civilised shop-keepers.

Another shop which I had noticed, and even patro- nised, was a new branch of Lyons’. Its fresh white paint, and the name in letters of gold over the window, emphasised the gloomy drabness of the adjacent premises. It was about eight o’clock, and I found it difficult to walk as quickly as I desired. Working people swarmed along the narrow pathway between the barrows and the shops. Moving at so slow a pace I had ample time to observe local details which would otherwise have escaped my notice Five urchins, bare- footed and inadequately clothed, were lined up in front of Lyons’ new tea shop ; they seemed mesmerised by the contents of the window. I noticed that their hair was clipped absurdly short ; you could see the skin of their heads. The youngest, a girl of about four,. was dabbing her beetroot-coloured little hands upon the plate-glass ; dancing her bare feet in the mud. The eldest, a boy, looked morose, and I thought I detected a look in his eyes which indicated that he was just about to pass beyond the stage of childish wonder. He was staring a t a pile of chocolate pastry ferociously. . . . On my

left I saw a young girl, standing in the gutter between two barrows. She was attempting t o sell all the latest sentimental ballads. Between the next two barraws stood a.n old woman of seventy or more, holding a few boxes of matches in her skinny-hands. She was singing a hymn. . . .

The crowd drifted along, and as we came opposite the Labour Exchange there was a sudden congestion A huge crowd had congregated around the strange shop with which I commenced this story I managed to squeeze myself as far as the corner of the pawnbroker’s and craned my neck in order to discover what on earth it was all about. I saw the top of a podiceman’s helmet above the heads of the people. A working man next to me expressed the opinion that somebeody was being

into the doorway of the pawnbroker’s I was able to see exactly what was causing the excitement. My first im- pression was that the shop was empty; a few bare boards were visible, and a litter of cardboard boxes covered the floor ; a dirty piece of curtain was nailed across the window about six feet from the street front and the shop was in semi-darkness. Then I discovered a hole torn in the curtain near the door, and ‘peering through it was a girl’s face. Her expression was quite normal, and one of her hands rested upon a little wooden shelf. I struggled round and endeavoured to read a badly written card which was hanging lopsided over her head. I could just see the word ‘‘Succi,” but that was all. The police were endeavouring to’ clear the crowd away from the entrance of the shop, and presently they succeeded. I forced myself along the window and came face to face with an individual arrayed in evening dress. I stared in amazement. “Walk up ! Walk up ? ” he shouted above the din, tapping a large card, “Walk up ! Walk up-only one penny-the most marvellous Succi. The wonder of the age. Walk up !” He con- tinued to beat the card and shouted so loudly that people an the tops of the passing trams stood up in their seats and peered over into the street. I hesitated a moment then produced a penny, handed it through the aperture, and dived under the .curtain. . . . I found myself in a large bare apartment, once, apparently, a shoemaker’s shop. I noticed an old advertisement for boot polish which had been left hanging upon the wall, and there was a strong smell of leather.

Strips of paper had been torn from th,e walls reveal- ing the yellow plaster beneath. A gas-burner in the centre of the room, with a broken mantle, provided the illumination. There were three people in the shop be- side myself, and these were deeply engrossed in con- templating “Succi.” This! person lay upon his back, and was enclosed in a sort of glass compartment He made no movement, and his face was deathly white. Slightly horrified, I approached him ; he was wearing an old evening dress w-hich seemed to be several sizes too large for his frail body; he was revoltingly thin, and took no interest whatever in the four people who stood around, but stared with glassy eyes at the ceiling. A huge steam lorry thundered by and shook the broken incandescent mantle ; it threatened to go out ; I drew back, and for a moment, as I caught a glimpse of this fearful thing in the glass case, I imagined that I had paid a penny to see a corpse. But “Succi” was not a corpse-he had merely been fasting for thirty-one days ! I was about to make a rush out of the shop when the proprietor came in and gave a lecture. “ ’E drinks a glass of pure water every twenty-four hours,” he ex- plained, “an’ he aint ’ad no solid substantial food for thirty-done days ; ’e weighs six stone seven pounds naked and ’opes ter g o another ten days-thus beating the record of his world-famous rival the renowned ‘Sac- cho.’ ” He produced a copy of the “Daily Sketch” from his pocket and showed us “Succi’s’’ photo taken before he commenced the “fast.” I looked down at the ghastly countenance in the glass-case-and then in- spected the “Daily Sketch” photo--there seemed to be no difference.

run in.” W e pressed nearer, and by adroitly slipping

ARTHUR F. THORN.

752

Present-Day Criticism. T H E editor of “Poetry and D r a m a draws our attention lo himself u-ith a flick of that niggard abuse which seems ali there is to be expected in return for a round drubbing. This vocabulary is in compliment to Mr. Monro for he summarises these many columns i n the following manner : “ T H E New A G E critic is one of the few who attempts [sic] to castigate malefactors; he, however usually picks out the wrong people.:’ Mr. Monro is referring to bad poets; who plagiarlse and “ruthlessly mutilate,” as he puts it, expressions to fit them into their own insipid verses. Mr. Monro men- tions no one of these bad poets by name; it is, he says, no business of ‘‘Poetry and Drama” to condemn such except in “glaring cases.” We think th3t there ma:\- not too soon occur one of these “glaring” cases-but if sometime there should, we hope that Mr. Monro will remember to call the poet a malefactor and i o label his criticism a castigation; we hope that he will name his victim and give the plagiarisms, as we do, i n quota- tion marks : and, lastly, that despite his public produc- tion of the plagiarisms, he will not mind being told that he has picked out: the wrong person !

For the moment we pick out hlr. Monro himself, this malefactor, and castigate him for plagiarising from those same “insipid critics” he writes about, who are editorially preferred ”provided they have two or three hundred cliche phrases at their command.” If we may claim the least gratitude from this generation, gratitude should be ours for having broken the spell of the cliche Numbers of writers now avoid thy cliche, mho, a year or two ago, were unconscious of any such thing to avoid. R u t that our labour is still unfinished, RZr. Monro’s article is proof Here follows evidence that this time a t least we pick out the tight malefactor. Here is ever?- affectation of the insipid critic.

Uncertain margin ; unlimited extent ; fails to provide ; phrases badly strung together ; ruthlessly mutilated ; glaring cases ; fulfil this office ; grasped the advantage ; hearty recommendation ; convey a false impression ; smacks of a11 overweening confidence ; youthful enthusiasm ; revert at some future date ; tmly welcome to his admirers ; established reputation ; not particularly distinguished ; he inveighs against ; deep sympathy ; veiled allusions : one of the finest embodiments i n modern poetry ; calm after

and calm ; fine renderings ; mere local importance J closely resembles ; a drama of enthralling interest ; exceptional originality and power ; completely visualised ; thc charac- ters are alive ; sordid details ; glossed by no sentiment. ality ; earnestly to be hoped ; her poems are singularly unequal; dangerously facile; bear the mark of the study ; preserves a strict formality ; his thoughts reveal ; enlarged his scope ; precluded from discussion ; allowed to pass withont remonstrance ; a11 insult to his memory; purely individual ; a medium for the. discussion of ; frankly confessed ; radical changes will shortly take place ; dimly foreseen ; groping in 811 obscure land of shadows

If we were to quote the syntactical cliches of Mr. Monro we should ha\-e no space left even for a sigh that our castigations have taught this malefactor so little. W e shall be lucky t.0 leave such company with our English undefiled. Even to study no more than the two sentences about ourselves is to be i n peril. What slovenly writing is this of the ‘‘few who attempts” and these wrongly accused people who are malefactors ! Several sciences, including psychology, would be needed to clear up the disordered idea, which not all t-he King’s English could put in order for translation. We are said to attempt to castigate male- factors ; we are not said to castigate people who are not malefactors-do what you will with the sequently placed sentence, you will find no connection without exploring Mr. Munro’s secret passions. Our mathematical readers may now take the problem : a castigates b ; a, however, usually castigates c. Selah ! the which means some kind of a gap.

The current issue of “Poetry and Drama” contains a translation by Mr. Wilfred Thorley upon which we

thought ; straggling rout of feasters ; ponder ill leisure

offer many congratulations. Although he has ventured to alter his test, has not followed the original metre, and, in fact, i s absolutely unscrupulous, he must ccr- tainly be forgiven by everyone. The poem is so short tbat we cannot quote it in justice to the review in which it appears : it is worth much more than a miser- able two and sixpence to any lover of the real poetry. Mr. Thorley has outdone his author ; and here, at least, is no sin against the Muses !

‘I’he article by Mr. Edward Thomas is enthusiastic and well-expressed. He asks for a n honest reviewer of poetry. “If only reviewers could aim at honesty.” When, however, he forbids his ideal reviewer simply t o laugh at some or other volume, he is dictating beyond what any honest reviewer would suffer, for a laugh i s all that some verse deserves, and a laugh is what it gets from an honest reviewer. For instance, the verse by Mr. J. E. Flecker i n “Poetry and Drama” got nothing but a laugh from the present writer. W h a t ? The quantitative hexameter does not fit English ! Well, then, we’ll alter English ! Yea, though Mr. Flecker’s predecessors be, as he confesses, “desperate few”-by lud and marry come up, he will not shirk for that. But his appended note is more diverting even than his green exhibition of what more sensible souls keep in a locker. “Good scholars, while they are bound to recognise that th<e classic. effect has been rightly produced in English, have every right to object that the effect in English is. too outlandish to be acceptable.’’ What, what is this outlandish classic effect ? What are we trying to say with our tortured words? Mr. Flecker is trying to say that he could not bear to suppress his lovely Prayer to. the Brightness of Day, wherein he has “followed Virgil’s rules,” though the result is an outlandish- classic effect. How many times will how many men yet need t o be taught that classic means produce classic effects Quantity is not a classic means in English and will never produce a classic effect.

Mr. Maurice Hexlett begins the delivery of his epic, his Hodgiad, which “was conceived seven years ago,” the subject- of which is “as old as England,” but the “point of view, I think, novel. ” Prodigious novelty, indeed, of our governing classes having always been all foreigners and Hodge pure British. But Mr. Hewlett shall not be challenged by us even with so much as statistical evidence regarding le droit de seigneur. The poor man appears to have suffered much already, for he implores the protection of Jehovah, in whom he does cot at a!! times believe, the while he shall be bringing alongside his Ark W e would, however, dearly like to hear Mr. Hexlett pronounce “nourisht.”

Of entirely provoked and legitimate laughters, none might beat that belonging to the adventure of the eight poets who went to present Rlr. Scawen Blunt with their admiration and invite him to dinner. Instead, the scep- tical object of their worship was driven to provide the whole eight with a free luncheon ! They appear to have insisted on giving him their testimonial of seven lines of verse in a “marble reliquary.” “Mr. Blunt made an informal speech b!; way of acknowledgment. He said that he felt to a certain extent an impostor. He had never really been a poet. He had written a certain amount of verse, but only when he was down on his luck. . . When he had received their flattering invita- tion he had at first been rather puzzled, and wondered whether it was from some of his horsey friends or poli- tical admirers. When he found it was for his poetry he was all the msore flattered and astonished.”

“Mr. W. B. Yeats made a fitting reply,” writes Mr. F. S . Flint, “in which he spoke with some horror of the Victorian era [it seems a pity to go on !] and observed t-hat he and the others present admired Mr. Blunt’s work largely because it was not Victorian [more pities to go on !], because it contained the real emotions and thought of a human being, and not the abstract senti- ments of an abstract personage, The Victorian BARD.”

It was unkind in Mr. Blunt not to have told his guests that he is Monsieur Hegesippe Simon.

'APRIL 16, 1914. 753

This drawing contains four figures. I could point out the position of these figures in. more detail, but I think such detailed indication misleadmg. No artist can create abstract form spontaneously ; it is always generated, or, at least, suggested, by the consideration o f some outside concrete shapes. But such shapes are only interesting

if you want to explain the psychology of the process of composition in the artist's mind The interest of the drawing itself depends on the forms it contains The fact t h n t such forms were suggested by human figures is oE no importance

'1'. E. Hulme

CONTEMPORARY Drawings j

EDITED by T. E Hulme

754

Readers and Writers. I POSSESS an old note-book in whi,ch I used to copy down, ah, how many years ago, extracts from the books I was then reading. Many pages are filled with passages from the novels. of George Gissing and one o,f them lies open before me, now. “What I really aim at [it is Harold Biffen speaking in Gissing’s best novel, “New Grub Street”] is an absolute realism in the sphere of the ignobly decent. I am going to reproduce it verbatim without one single impertinent suggestion of any point of view save that of honest reporting. The result will be something unutterably tedious. Precisely, that is the stamp of the ignobly decent life. If it were anything but tedious, it would be untrue.” This was Zola’s doctrine carried out with English thorough- ness, and nobody bas succeeded better in it than Gissing. All the same, even he failed, for neither are his novels tedious nor are they transcripts of life. Something, as, I believe, Mr. Wells said and Mr. W. W. Jacobs has proved, was wanting in Gissing’s real- ism ; it was an eye for life. I t will seem strange to hear Gissing charged with a lack of- sympathy with the ignobly decent; yet that is what I could establish against him. If you like, he sympathised too much to understand them ; or, still better, he reserved his sym- pathy for their woes only.

* * * This defect was due, I am sure, to his own colossal

self-pity. Asked what Aunt Emily said when she heard .of her niece’s trouble the latter naively replied : “Oh, she began to sympathise with herself.?’ It is a common habit and Gissing was a victim of it. H e could not hear some wretched story without being reminded of his own; and in the flood that then gushed out, him- self and the other object were mingled and submerged. That this is not the artist’s temperament anybody can see for himself; for the artist must have only so much sympathy as just does not carry him oft’ his feet. To have none is, of course, fatal; but equally it is fatal to have too much. Here again common sense is the beginning of wisdom which itself is the foundation of beauty. In the “Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft” which I have just read for the first time (Constable’s IS-. series), the real Gissing appears ; and even more clearly to me in his style than in his actual confessions The latter, it is true, are significant enough ; for in one place he affirms that he is “no friend of the people. ” I should think not ! For were they not always reminding him of himself? (For the same reason, by the way, Mr. Wells is honestly cruel to his Kipps !) The style, how- ever, is the man ; and a s a pretty exercise my readers should compare the ‘Private Papers’’ with Senan- cour’s “Obermann” (Scott. IS . ) . Matthew Arnold speaks rightly of the inwardness, the austere simplicity, of Obermann-but who can discern any austerity in the simplicity of Ryecroft Gissing ? Not I. On the con- trary, Gissing’s sentiment Is always brimming over the rims of his forms. He cannot have done with a state- ment, but must add paraphrases and parallels to wallow in. Turn, for example, to p. 15 of the edition just pub- lished. The whole section (V.) is no more than a tedi- ous amplification of Johnson’s remark, but p. 15 is worse, for it is not amplification but repetition. “You tell me (he begins) that money cannot buy the things most precious. Your commonplace proves that you have never known the lack of it. When I think of all the sorrow and the barrenness that has been wrought in my life by want bf a few more pounds per annum than I was able to earn, I stand aghast at money’s signi- .ficance.” So far so tolerably good. But at this point Gissing’s bitter memories push open the gates of his art and drown us in mere examples. Turn now to letter XXIX of “Obermann.” The subject is not dis,- similar, but the treatment ! And it is not that Senan- cour was one of your gay, cynical Frenchmen-the same that are seldom to be found ! Senancour also had retired a little disgusted from life ; Stevenson, who

wanted everybody to warm him, even found Senancour “cheerless,” and bore Arnold a grudge for recommend- ing him. Yet in discussing poverty, Senancour was as austere as simple, as sympathetic as restrained. I will add that the “Private Papers” produced on me much the same effect as Jefferies’ “Story of My Heart. ” Neither is written by a man’s man ; both are suffering from more than melancholy-a softening of the senti- ments. * * *

The prospectus has been sent to me of still another quarterly magazine-“The European Review,” to be edited by Dr. R. W. Seton-Watson and published by Constable. The aim, I gather, of the magazine is just not to be European, but to survey individually each of the nations composing geographical Europe. The idea, to my mind, is ill-conceived; for, in the first place, .its appeal is assuredly only to the international- ists of Europe, it being notorious that one nation is seldom interested in another ; in the second place, the cult of nationality is an affectation, as we have seen in the case of Ireland, and results in no more than a sort of moonlight imitating sunlight ; in the third place, it is, even at best, premature, for until Europe is one it ought not to be confined in its multeity. A far better service would be done to Europe by establishing a European Review that every good European could read. I t would in fact be the beginning of the restoration of the unity of Europe, on a grander scale than its old Roman or Catholic unity. * * *

A recent letter in the “Nation” from Dr. W. J. Clarke of ‘Toronto appeals for information on a subject of world-importance-the consistibility of the doctrine of Reincarnation with the doctrines of Christianity. An answer on the historic side has been given in advance by Mr. G. R. S. Mead in the current issue of his quarterly magazine the “Quest. There is evid- ence, he says, that the pre-Christian Gnostics held and taught Reincarnation ; but the Fathers of the Church, though they affirmed the pre-existence of the soul, one and all “rejected transcorporation in the sense of re- incarnation utterly.” This, of course, by no means proves either that the doctrine is untenable or that it may not prove consistent with a developed Christian doctrine. After all, they did not know everything even down in Judee; and the comfortable notion of a pro- gressive revelation of Christian doctrine keeps the future open even for the orthodox. Dr. Clarke cites the spread of Indian thought in the West as a hint that Reincarnation may become popular; but to the wishy- washy decoction thus served out I should much prefer a Darwin to arise and demonstrate the probability of Reincarnation for us. As much material, I believe, exists as Darwin found sufficient to establish Evolution ; and the consequences in both life and thought would be tremendous. Reincarnation, indeed, I do believe, is the next working hypothesis to be employed; and the sooner it is seriously examined the better * * *

Chance has brought me a copy of the new edition of “Burke’s Peerage” (Harrison. Two guineas), and I confess I have spent some amused hours upon it. The work is now in its seventy-sixth year, and time and care have made it, as a compilation and a reference, absolutely perfect. But then, England excels in books of this kind, for we are not only as painstaking as the Germans, but we have a better sense of proportion. The year-books, for instance, such as Whitaker’s, are so well done that you could not do them better. The “Statesman’s Year-Book” also is a first-class work; so is “Who’s Who.” If only the material were of more intrinsic importance, the excellence of these books of reference would be a proof of national vigour. As itu- is, however, they mean no more than that our brains are a long way ahead of our practical imagination * * *

Nobody has vet done for Sculpture proper what Ruskin did for Architecture in his “Stones of Venice.”

755

Perhaps you will say so much the better; or, in the alternative, remind me of Lessing’s “Laocoon.” But Ruskin is only to be sneered at by people who under- stood him too well; and, as for Lessing, his treatment of sculpture is a little too general for the purpose I have in mind. This is no less than io see Sculpture examined as the language of a people. W e hear too much nowadays of art as self-expression and from this extreme individualism (most of it based on that crude egoist, Max Stirner), arise the esperantos, volapuks and private sign-languages now exhibiting in studios. To recover the spirit of Art it is necessary, I believe, to re- cover the spirit of the nation; and if, as I suspect, this means a long pause for Art, why, better wait than abort ! The history of Greek sculpture, only just now becoming really known, is a proof of how closely art and national life walk together. Read Sir S. C. Kaine’s work o f this title (Nisbet, 7s . 6+), and examine its many photographs of pre-Greek sculpture and reflect on his comments upon them. Or there is Mr. March Phillips’ “Art of Man,” also well illustrated (Duck- worth, 7s. 6d.). I do not follow Mr. Phillips in all his deductions ; he is too ingenious in drawing them to be always safe ; but with his main contention cf a parallel- ism between the sculpture and the thought of an age I cannot disagree, with his examples before me.

* * * Messrs. Methuen have just added to their shilling

library a volume, edited by Mr. Robert Ross, of the “Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde.” Strange how this man lasts ! For his prose is not pure and time ought by now to have winnowed much of it away. Yet reading this Anthology-admirably selected, by the way -1 am surprised to find how good Wilde was at hls best. At his best he wrote “Intentions,” containing the essay on the “Critic as Artist,” his most characteristic work. The passage on Goethe, here quoted, is almost a masterpiece. Almost, but why not quite? Because as always in Wilde, before you have finished the passage your mind is cloyed with the monotony of its rhythm. But can you prove it, sir ; or is it only your impression? Yes, I could prove it with a metronome and a good ear, even, perhaps, without. Listen. This is how the passage opens :-

Goethe-you will not misunderstand what I say-was a German of the Germans.

He loved his country--no man more so His people were dear to him ; and he led them. Yet, when the iron hoof of Napoleon trampled upon

vineyard and cornfield, his lips mere silent. Note here the regular placing of the caesura and the

monotony of the concluding cadence. It is constructed more on the lines of verse than of prose. And that it was not intentional, an analysis of the remainder of the passage would show; for sentence after sentence con- forms to the same rhythmic model with only variations of a superficial character. A trained ear will not fail to discern in their variety the essential similarity of the following sequence of sentences, for example. Wilde, I believe, was dimly aware of it and thought to escape ,monotony by varying the lengths; but he did not suc- ceed, for it was not the lengths that mattered :-

This note, sounded in the modern world by Goethe first, will become, I think, the starting point for the cos- mopolitanism of the future.

Criticism will annihilate race-prejudices, by insisting on the unity of the human mind in the variety of its forms.

If we are tempted to make mar upon another nation, we shall remember that we are seeking to destroy an element of our own culture, and possibly its most important element.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination.

When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

The change will, of course, be slow, and people will not be conscious of it.

Is it not plain what were the two master-forms of

I

Wilde’s formal mind-a regular verse basis and epigram? From this passage alone I think I could have foreseen Wilde’s limited range in poetry and his un- limited range in epigram. But of prose he was no master. R. H. C.

Views and Reviews.* HERE they are again : Stendhal, Heine, Disraeli, Nietzsche, Strindberg, Miss Marie Corelli, Wedekind, Schnitzler, Verhaeren, and because the first shall be last, “The Future of Futurism” concludes the volume. Exactly what the word “Modernities” means, I do not know and Mr. Samuel does not say; to call them “Newnesses” wo,uld be t’o risk a fearful pun on the name of one of our wholesale providers of reading matter. What is a “Modernity” ? “The ten studies which constitute this volume are devoted to individuals who are held out as being reasonably characteristic of that modern movement of the last and present century which started with the French Revolution. At any rate, they were all modern once.” I can find all these words in an English dictionary, but the only meaning that I can extract from them is that “modern” means

more or less contemporary.” For without some de- finition of the phrase “modern movement,” we can postulate nothing of these writers but that they lived at some time subsequent t~ the French Revolution. So, by the way, did Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Dickens, to mention four outstanding figures c.ho were influ- enced by revolutionary ideas. According to what prin- ciple of selection Mr. Samuel includes these ten, and excludes these four, I cannot ascertain; Mr. Samuel himself says : “It is somewhat difficult to find any com- mon denominator-for the subjects of these studies. The essays must be left largely [why “largely” ?] to speak for themselves. ’ Ifi however, an attempt were to :be made to pronounce of what the spirit of modernity really consists one. might suggest that it is a spirit of energy, of fearlessness in analysis, whose sole raison d etre and whose sole ideal is actual life itself.” Where are we now? If “modern” is to contrast with “ancient,” as it does in the title of the hymn-book, then we must suppose that before the French Revolu- tion there was no spirit of energy, no fearlessness in analysis, no “sole raison d’etre,” no “sole ideal” of actual life itself. W e should have to forget the Italian Renaissance, the German Reformation, and the English Elizabethan period, to accept this conception of “modernity.” There is no need to hark back to ancient civilisations to show that Mr. Samuel’s attempted dif- ferentiation of the spirit of modernity does not differen- tiate--although it would be easy to show that “spirit of energy, fearlessness in analysis, whose sole raison d’etre and whose sole ideal is actual life itself” in the works of most civilisations of which we have knowledge. What is “actual life itself,” as revealed by Mr. Samuel? It is not sex, for sex has been present in all literature in all its forms ; it is abnormal sex-treated in a pseudo- scientific way. Wedekind, Strindberg, Schnitzler, only offer paraphrases of “Psychopathia Sexualis.” Apart from the morbid impulse to make the world their confessional, the works of these writers have no other purpose than that of shocking the bourgeoisie. When a bourgeois is shocked pleasantly, when he realises a repressed wish in imagination, he says that the per- son who, has shocked him has made him think. What he means is that his consciousness of this particular function has been stimulated and intensified, that he has succumbed to the temptation of imaginative de- bauchery. So he indulges in sexual reverie, sexual introspection, and fearlessly analyses his own sensa- tions ; and the consequence is that we have in this age many more “thinkers” than thoughts. Yet to these

* “Modernities.” By Horace B. Samuel. (Kegan

6 6

, Paul. 7s. 6d. net.j

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three writers, Mr. Samuel devotes nearly half his book ; although it is Verhaeren who stimulates him to rhetoric. ‘‘Disdaining alike the cowardice and the perversity of those who, refusing to face the red realities of the pre- sent century, fly for their comfort to the pale shadows of the Middle Ages, Verhaeren has plunged boldly into the very brazier of our modern existence.”

I t is here that Mr. Samuel has really defined his position; the phrase just quoted reveals the modern state of mind. I t is not “more life and fuller that Mr. Samuel wants ; it is more literature and bloodier that he desires, and i t must be contemporary. Rabelais was anaemic, Montaigne obviously suffered from chloro- sis, and Dante, as we all know, was only a “ pale shadow” with wind in his veins. There were no “red realities” then ; like the “long, green desires’’ of a modern poet, they have been reserved for this age. Carnivorous we are : “Oh God, I want to eat you,” says one of Mr. Eden Phillpotts’ heroes to his love “Oh, blood, Iago, blood !,’ was the cry of Othello when mad with jealousy; but we must wallow in it, in imag- ination, of course, if we are to be “modern.”

A man with a psychology of this kind is not likely to perceive anything of value in the work of such men as Disraeli, Nietzsche, Heine, or Stendhal. To call Stendhal “the compleat intellectual” and “the patentee o f psychology,” is to tell us nothing o f him ; for we dis- trust Mr Samuel’s “psychology.” He writes an essay on “The Psychology o f Disraeli” only to conclude that “Disraeli’s master-passion was ambition. ” So was Caesar’s according to Shakespeare’s Brutus. TO tell u s of Heine that “his writings form an incessant stream of paradoxes, but his life is the greatest paradox of all,” is to evade the task of definition by the use of a cliche ; as much h n s been said o f Shaw, o f Wilde, of Voltaire, of almost everyone who h a s had a reputation for wit. And what is the conclusion o!‘ 3Ir . Samuel’s study of Nietzsche’s Genealogy o f M o r a l s “Exist.. ence is its own sanction, its own raison d’&ve, and he who coldly ravishes the sphinx o f life has found a drastic solution far excelling that of any Oedipus. ” This i s very profound, as profound as any bathos ; and it is typical of Mr. Samuel’s conclusions. After wasting twenty pages on “‘The Weltanschauung of Miss Marie Corelli,” Mr. Samuel concludes : “Her Weltan- schauung, broad, plain, simple, touched at once with a high consciousness o f her ethical mission and a ruth- less observation for all the sins and follies of the age, is the authentic and spontaneous outcome of her own unique psychology.” In other words, her thoughts proceed from her mind ; which is really not an impos- sible procession.

In the ‘‘Future of Futurism,” har. Samuel works up to his grand climax. Nietzsche is superseded by Berg- son, Apollo by Dionysos, the “old God of pity” by the “new God of sweat and agony and tension,” statics by dynamics, the old by the new, and every other anti- thesis that can be invented or remembered. “Ring out the old, ring in the new,” said Tennyson about sixty years ago ; and the most modern 0.f the “modern- ities” is only obeying the command of a mid-Victorian. But what it all means is just what Mr. Samuel does not tell us. That the Futurist believes that “form is not an end in itself, its sole function is to extract the whole emotional quality of its content,” we have 110 reason to doubt; bu t why does Mr. Samuel agree with him? The reason is very simple, and can be discovered in the very phrase that I have quoted. Mr. Samuel’s psychology is the art of missing the point, and c,om- pleting the vicious circle. The function of form is to extract the whole emotional quality of its content ; or, in other words, form exists for the purpose of empty- ing itself. I t is not a container, but an extractor, of its content; it is Life plucking out its own entrails, if I may use so violent a personification; in other words it is not form. There is one word that describes such a conception; it is phantasmagoria; and that is what Mr. Samuel really means by modernity

A. E. R.

Popping the Question. A Farce ia One Act. By Anton P. Tchekhov.

Translated from the Russian by P . Selver.)

DRAMATIS personae STEPAN Stepanovitch Chubukov’s a country gentleman NATALIA Stepanovna his daughter, ”5 years of agc. IVAN VASILEVITCH Lomov Chubukov’s neighhour. (’The action takes place in Chubukov’s country h o u s e

drawing-room in Chubukov’s house.

I. Chubukov’s and Lomov (caters in dress-suit and white

gloves). Chubukov’s (going up towards him) : My dear old chap,

fancy seeing you, Ivan Vasilevitch ! I am de- lighted. (Shaking hands.) This really is a sur- prise, old fellon-. How are you?

LOMOV : Quite well, thanks. And how are you, might I ask?

Chubukov’s : Pretty middling dear old boy-bu; pray si: down I do beg of you. Really, i t isn’t a t all the thing to forget one’s neighbours, my dear old fellow But my dear sir, why on earth are you in full rig? Dress-suit, gloves, and so on. Going out somewhere, hy any chance, my dear good chap?

LOMOV : I’ve only come to see you, my dear Stepan Stepanitch.

Chubukov’s : But why ir, all this toggery, old man? Like a regular New Year’s visit !

LOMOV : Well, you see, its like this (taking him by the arm), I’ve come to you, my dear Stepan Stepanitch, to trouble you for a favour several times previous ously 1’1-e had the privilege of soliciting your help, and you’\-e always, so to speak . . . but, excuse me, I’m quite agitated. I must drink a little water (drinks water

Chubukov (aside) : He come to ask for money 1 won’t let h i m have any. (Aloud) what’s the bother, dear boy?

Lomov : Well you see, my good old Stepanitch . . . . pardon me, Stepan Goodoldovitch . . er, that is, I’m horribly agitated, as you may possibly observe. . . . To cut a long story short, you’re the only one who can help me, although, strictly speaking, I haven’t deserved it in the slightest, and . . . and I’ve got no right to reckon upon your help. . .

CHUBUKOV : Well, dcn’t make such a long yarn of it, my dear good chap. Out with it ! Now then?

Lomov : This very instant. . . On the spot. The fact is, I’ve come to ask for the hand of your daughter, Natalia Stepanovna.

Chubukov (joyfully) : Dear old boy, Ivan Vasilevitch. Say it again-i didn’t quite hear.

LOMOV : I have the honour to ask. . , . CHUBUKOV (interrupting him) : My dear fellow. . I’m

really quite delighted, and so 011. . . Most specially, and so forth (embracing and kissing him). It’s been an old wish of mine. I’ve always hoped it might be (shedding a tear). And I’ve always been fond of you, dear boy, as if you’d .been my own son. God grant you both harmony and love and so on-it’s been a sincere wish of mine. . . But what an old booby I am to stand here like this, I’m quite crazy with joy, absolutely crazy. Ah, with all my heart. . . . I’ll go and call Natasha and so forth.

LOMOV (with deep emotion) : My dear Stepan Stepanitch, do you suppose I can count on her con- cent ?

CHUBUKOV : n7hy, really, a fine chap like you-how can she help consenting at once? My gracious me-as loving as a kitten, and so om. . . I shan’t be a moment. [Exit.]

757

11. LOMOV (alone).

Loh,lov : I feel chilly. . . I’m shivering all over, a s if I was going in for an examination. The chief thing is-to make up one’s mind. If you think a long time about it, and keep shilly-shallying, and talk it over and over, and wait about for some ideal or for true love-why you’ll never get married like that. . . Brr. . . . I feel chilly. Xatalia Stepan- ovna is a first-rate housekeeper, she isn’t bad look- ing, and she’s well trained. . . What else do I need? Hang it, all this excitement is bringing on a buzzing noise in my ears [drinks water]. And it’s simply out of the question for me not to get married. . . ‘To begin with, I’ve turned thirty- five-a critical age, so to speak. And in the next place, I need a systematic, regular life. . . Here a m I lvith a weak heart, continual palpitation, I’ve got a violent nature, and I’m always becoming hor- ribly excited. . . As soon as that comes on, my lips start trembling, and I have a sharp twitching in m y right eye-lid. . . But the very worst thing about me is my sleep. Hardly have I got into bed and just dropped off into a doze than all of a sudden I get such a twinge in my left side, and shooting pains right in m y shoulder and head. . . I jump up like a madman, walk around for a bit, and then lie down again, but hardly have I dropped off into a doze, than I get another twinge in the side, and so it goes on a n-hole score of times. . .

I1 I. NATALIA STEPASOXXI and Loarov.

Natalia m~ STEP,novs..i (entering) : w e l l just fancy n0.w ! . I t ’s . .yau, and papa said : run along j therk’s a tradesman come about some goods. good morn- ing, Ivan Vasilevitch.

Lomov : Good morning, my dear Natalia Stepanovna. NAT.\LI.\ Stepanovna : You’II excuse me, won’t you?

for having my apron on, and being so untid).. . . IVe’re shelling peas for drying How is it you haven’t given us a look zp for such a lonx time? t ake a seat. . . I they sit down IVill you take some breakfast?

LOXOI~ : XO, thanks all the same 1’1-e already had something.

Natalia STEYANO\-KA : Perhaps yc>u’lI smoke . . Here are some matches. . . -i‘hc weather is magnificent, but yesterday it rained so heavily t.hat the workmen could do nothing- the whole day How many trusses of hay have ybu mown ? just imagine, I was horribly greedy a@ mowed a whole meadow hut now sorry about--&. I’m so afraid that my hay will be spoilt, It would ha\-e been better to have waited. But lvhat’s the meaning o f this? You’ve got you dress-suit on unless I’m very much mistaken. How very odd ! w h y are you going to a ball? And now I come to notice it, you are more handsome. . . . R e d l y now, n-hat makes you such a swell?

Loxov (agitated) : IVell you see, my dear Natalia Stepsnovna. . . It’s like this : I decided to ask you to listen to n e carefully . . I t stands to reason you’ll be surprised, and perhaps even angry but I. . . [aside] It’s horribly cold

NATXLIA STEP.\SOVSA : IZ’hat’s it all about? [pause] Well 3

Loalov : I’ll endeavour to cut it short. you are already aware, my dear Natalia Stepano\-na, that I’ve had the honour of knowing your family for a long, long time-right from my childhood, in fact. M p late aunt and her husband, from whom I, as you may perhaps know, inherited some property, always manifested the most profound esteem towards your dear father and your late mother. Between the family of the Lomovs and the family of the Chubu-

kovs there have always existed the most amicable and, it can even be said, the most fraternal of re- lations. In addition to this, as you may perhaps know, my property borders closely upon yours. I t will possibly occur to you that my Ox-Meadows are adjacent to your birch-covert.

NATALIA STEPXNOVNX : Pardon me for the interruption. You say My Ox-Meadow. ” . . . But are they yours ?

Loarov : Y e s , they’re mine. . . . NAT.AI,I.\ STEP.\SOVS.X : w h y what next? The o x -

Meadows are ours and not yours. LOMOV : Not at all, my dear Natxlia Stepanavna,

they’re mine. NATALIA Stepanovna : That’s ncn-s to tne. How are

they yours ? Lomov : What do you m e a n - h o w I’m speaking of

those Ox-Meadows which arc wedged i n between your birch-covert and the marl pit.

NATALIA STEPXSOVKA : Why, yes, yes. . . They’re ours. . . .

LOMOV : No, you’re mistaken my dear N;l,tnlia Stepnn- ovna-they’re mine.

NATALIA STEPANOVNA : Do think n-hat you’re saying, Ivan Vasilevitch ! have yoa been in posscssion of them for long?

LOMOV : What do you mean, for long They’\-e always been ours, as long as I can remember.

Nx’I’.\LI.J, STEPXNOVNA : w e l l I think ,otherwise, i€ you’ll excuse my saying so.

LOMOV : There are documents which makc it quite evident my dear Natalia Stepano~-na. There was a time, it is true, when the ownership of the Os- Meadows was disputed ; but now it’s well known to everybody that they’re mine. And there’s nothing to dispute about now. Kindly observe this : My aunt’s grandmother gave over these meadows for an indefinite period and gratuitously- for the peasants of your father’s grandfather to use on the condition that they baked bricks for her. The peasants of your father’s grandfather enjoyed the gratuitous use of the meadows for forty years, and grew accustomed to consider them as their own, but afterwards, when 1-he arrangement ter- minated. . . . .

N.IT.\LIA STEI’.\I\’OVN;A : w h a t you’re saying is absolutely wrong. Both my grandfather and my great-grand- father were of the opinion that their property es- tended as far as the marl ,pit-and that shows be- J.ond a doubt that the Ox-Meadows were ours. What there is to argue about, I cannot understand. It’s really annoying

Lomov : I can show J-ou documents, Natalia Stepan- ovna.

Natalia STEPANOVNX : No, you’re simply joking, or else you’re teasing me. . . This is a surprise ! The property has been in our possession for close on Three hundred years, and suddenly we’re informed rhat the property isn’t ours. Ivan Vasilevitch, you must pardon me for saying it, but I really can’t 1 believe my own ears . . I don’t attach any great value to these meadows. In all, they cover fix-e desyatin and they’re worth somewhere about three hundred roubles, b u t it’s the injustice of it that riles me. you can say what you like, hut injustice I cannot put up with.

Loalov : hear me out, I implore you. The peasants of your father’s grandfather, as I have already had Ihe honour of telling you, used to bake bricks for m y aunt’s grandmother. Now, my aunt’s grand- mother wishing to do them a kindness. . .

NATALI.\ STEPANOVNA : Grandfather, grandmother, aunt . . . . I don’t understand a word of it. The meadows are ours, and that’s all about it.

1

LOMOV : They’re mine ! NATXLIA STEPAKOVNA : ’They’re ours ! I don’t care if

758

you go on proving- for two days, or if you put on fifteen dress-suits, they’re ours, ours, ours. . . ! I don’t want anything that belongs to you, but I don’t wish to lose what’s my own. . . So you can do just as you please.

LOMOV : I don’t need t.he meadows, Natalia Stepanovna, but it’s the principle of the thing I look at. If you’re keen on it, why, I’ll give you them.

Natalia STEPANOVNA : I’m just as well able to give them to you-they’re mine. . . . I call this pecu- liar, Ivan Vasilevitch, to put it mildly. So far, we’ve always looked upon you as an excellent neighbour, a s a friend-last year we gave you our threshing machine, with the result that we our- selves didn’t manage to get our corn ground till ,November, and you treat us like so many gipsies. Now you’re offering me my own property. Pardon me, but that’s not neighbourly. I’ll go, so far as to call it a piece of impudence, if you like. . .

LOMOV : In fact, you’ll go so far as lo say that I’m an interloper? My dear young lady, I’ve never laid hands on other people’s property, and I’ll allow nobody to accuse me of such a thing. . . . [goes quickly to the decanter and drinks water]. ’The Ox-Meadows are mine !

NATALIA STEPANOVNA : It’s not true---they’re ours. LOMOV : They’re mine. NATALIA STEPANOVNA : It’s not true. I’ll prove it to

you. This very day I’ll send my reapers on to those meadows.

LOMOV : What’s that? NATALIA STEPANOVNA : This very day my reapers’ll be

LOMOV : And I’ll be after them too. NATALIA STEPANOVNA : You dare ! LOMOV (clutching at his heart) : The Ox-Meadows be-

long to me Do you understand? To me ! NATALIA STEPANOVNA : Pray don’t shout. You ‘can

shout and shriek yourself hoarse with rage in your own house, but I must ask you to keep yourself within ‘bounds here.

LOMOV : My dear young lady, if I hadn’t got this hor- rible, plaguey palpitation, if the veins weren’t hammering away in my temples, I’d talk to you different from this. [shouts! The Ox-Meadows are mine !

there.

NATALIA STEPANOVNA : ’They”re ours. LOMOV : They’re mine. NATALIA STEPANOVNA : They’re ours. LOMOV : They’re mine.

IV. ‘ T m FORMER and CHUBUKOV.

Chubukov (entering) : What’s the matter? What are you shouting about?

XATALIA STEPANOVNA : Papa, kindly explain to this gen- tleman whether the Ox-Meadows belong to us or to him.

CHUBUKOV (to Lomov) : My dear old chap, the meadows belong to us !

LOMOV : Oh, come, come, Stepan Stepanitch, how do you make that out? Do be a reasonable man, I beg of you. My aunt’s grandmother gave the meadows over, for the time being, to your grand- father’s peasants, who were to have the free use of them. The peasants had the use of the property for forty years, and became accustomed to it as if it had been their own, but later, when the arrange- ment terminated . . . .

CHUUUKOV : Allow me, my dear fellow. . . You’re for- getting altogether that the peasants never paid your grandmother anything and so on, because the ownership of the meadows was just being con- tested, and SO forth. . . And I give you my word that now every living soul knows they’re ours. Why, it’s pretty well certain you’ve never seen the plans.

LOMOV : And I’ll prove to you that they’re mine. CHUBUKOV : YQU won’t prove anything of the sort, my

LOMOV : But I will prove it, though ! CHUBUKOV : My dear good fellow what’s the use of

shouting like thzt? You’ll prove nothing by shouting I give you my word. I don’t want your things and I don’t intend to let my own things go. Why should I ? If it’s really come to such a pitch that you intend to dispute our possession cf the meadows, and so on why, I’d sooner give them to the peasants than to you. Really I would.

LOMOV : That’s beyond me. What right have you got, I’d like to, know, to give away other people’s pro- perty ?

CHUHUKOV : You’ll kindly leave me to judge whether I have the right or not. I give you my word, young man, I’m not accustomed to be spoken to in such a tone, and so for th I’m twice as old as yo,u, young man, and I must request you to speak to me without all this hullabaloo, and so on.

LOMOV : Nc, you simply take me for a fool and you’re laughing up your sleeve all the time. You call my property yours, and then you actually expect me to keep my temper and talk to you as man to man. That’s not the act of a good neighbour, Stepan Stepanitch. You’re no neighbour-you’re s n in- terloper.

dear chap !

CHUBUKOV : What? What’s that you said ? NATALIA STEPANOVNA : Papa, send the reapers on to the

meadows at once. CHUBUKOV (to Lomov) : What’s that you said, my good

sir ? NATALIA STEPANOVNA : The Ox-Meadows are ours, and

I won’t give them up, I won’t give them up. LOMOV : W e shall see. I’ll prove to you in court that

th,ey’re mine. CHUBUKOV : In court? You can take out a summons,

my good sir, if you like, and so forth. You can do so,. I know YOU. I give you my word, you’re merely waiting for a chance of going to law, and so on. . . . You’re a low-down schemer, that’s what you are. All your family were a pettifogging gang. All of them.

LOMOV : I must request you not to insult my family. The family of the Lomolvs has always been entirely honourable; none of them was ever had up for squandering money, like your precious uncle.

CHUBUKOV : And in your family they were all crazy. NATALIA STEPANOVNA : All, all, all of them ! CHUBUKOV : Your grandfather used to drink like a fish,

and the younger of your aunts, NastAsia MikhAil- ovna, I’d have you know, ran away with an archi- tect, and so forth. . . . .

LOMOV : And your mother had a crooked leg. [clutching at his hea r t I’ve got such twinges in my side. . . And th,ere’s a hammering in my head. Good Lord ! . . . Water !

CHUBUKOV : And your father was a gambler and a glutton !

NATALIA STEPANOVNA : And your aunt was a rare back- biter.

LOMOV : My left foot’s gone stiff. . . And you’re a common plotter. . . Oh, my heart. . . ! And it’s no secret to anybody, that at the elections you did. . . There are spots in front of my eyes. . . Where’s my hat?

NATAIJA Stepanovna : You low cad ! You scoundrel ! You brute !

CHUBUKOV : And you yourself, I’d have you know, you’re a ,malicious, double-faced intriguing fellow ! That you are !

LOMOV : There’s that hat. . . My heart. . . Where shall I go? Where’s the dolor? Oh dear me. . . . I’m dying, it seems to me. . . My foot drags. . . [He goes to the door.]

CHUBUKOV (just behind him) : You keep your feet out of my house an’other time !

759

NATALIA STEPANOVNA : Have him up in court. We’ll see about that. [Lomov goes staggering out.]

V. CHUBUKOV and NATALIA STEPANOVNA.

CHUBUKOV : confound it all ! [goes about fuming]. NATALIA STEPANOVNA : What a scamp ! Don’t talk to

CHUBUKOV : The dirty wretch ! The ugly freak ! NATALIA STEPANOVNA : What an unnatural monster !

He helps himself to other people’s property, and even has the impudence to wrangle about it.

CHUBUKOV : And this ghastly scarecrow, mind YOU, this squint-eyed baboon goes and has the cheek t’o make a proposal of marriage, and so forth. Yes. A proposal of marriage !

me about good neighbours after this.

NATALIA STEPANOVNA : What proposal of marriage? CHUBUKOV : Why, bless my Soul ! That’s what he

came for, to make you an offer of marriage. NATALIA STEPANOVNA : An offer of marriage? Me?

Why ever didn’t you tell me about it before ? CHUBUKOV : Why, that’s the reason he togged himself

up in a dress-suit. A whipper-snapper like that ! The weedy little skunk !

NATALIA STEPANOVN.~ : Me? An offer of marriage ? Oh my ! [She sinks into a chair and groans.] Bring him back ! Bring him back ! Oh dear ! Bring him back !

CHUBUKOV : Bring who back? NATALJA STEPANQVNB : Do look sharp, do look sharp.

How ill I feel. Bring him back [hysterics]. CHUBUKOV : What’s that? What’s the matter with

you? [seizing himself by the head]. I anz an un- lucky man ! I’ll shoot myself ! I’ll hang myself ! They’re plaguing me to death !

NATALIA STEPANOVNA : I’m dying. Bring him back. CHUBUKOV : Tut, tut. All right. Don’t holler so [he

runs out].

NATALIA STEPANOVNA (alone : she groans) : What ever have we done? Bring him back, bring him back !

CHUBUKOV (comes running in) : He’s coming in im- mediately, and so on, deuce take him. Tut, tut. You talk to him yourself, for 1 don’t want to, I can tell you. . . .

NATALIA STEPANOVNA (groans : Bring him back ! CHUBUKOV (shouting) : He’s coming, I tell you. Oh

my stars, what a business it is to be the father of a grown-up daughter ! 1’11 cut my throat. I’ll certainly cut my throat. Fancy insulting the man, and abusing him and hounding him out. . . . You’ve done it all . . . you, you.

NATALIA STEPANOVNA : No, you. CHUBUKOV : I ’m the. guilty person, if you please.

[Lom,ov appears in the doorway.] Well, you talk to him yourself ! [Exit.]

VI. XATXLIX S’IEPANOVXA and LOMOV.

LOMOV (entering, exhausted) : Shocking palpitation. . . My foot’s all numb. . . I’ve got shooting pains in my side. . .

NATALIA STEPANOVNA : Forgive me, Ivan Vasilevitch, 1 lost my temper. . . I remember now : The Qx- Meadows do really belong to you.

LOMOV : My heart’s palpitating horribly. . . The Qx- Meadows are mine. . . There’s a sharp twitching in both my eyes. . .

NATALIA STEPANOVNB : The meadows are yours, yours . . . Take a seat. . . [they sit down]. W e were unjust. . .

LOMOV : It’s the principle I look at. . . . I don’t set much value on 1-he property, but I do think a great deal of the principle. . . .

NATALIA STEPANOVNA : I t is the principle that matters . . . Come, let’s talk about something else.

LOMOV : All the more, seeing that I’ve evidence. My aunt’s grandmother gave the peasants of your father’s grandfather. . . .

NATALIA STEPANOVNA : We’ll let that be now. . . . [aside] I don’t know what to begin with. . . . . [to Lomov] Will you soon be getting ready f o r the hunting season ?

LOMOV : Yes, I expect to start grouse shooting, my dear Natalia Stepanovna, after the harvest. Ah, did you hear this? Jus t fancy how unlucky I am. My dog, Ugadai, whom you’ve probably heard of, has gone lame.

NATALIA STEPANOVNA : What a pity ! How was that? Lomov : I don’t know. . . It may be a sprain, or

some other dogs have bitten him. . . [sighing]. Far and away the finest dog, to say nothing of the money. Why, I paid Mironov 125 roubles for him.

NATALIA STEPAK’OVNA : k’ou paid too much, Ivan Vasile- vitch.

LOMOV : Well, if you ask me, it’s very cheap. The dog’s a right down marvel.

NATALIA STEPXNOVNA : Papa gave eighty-five roubles- for his dog, Atkatai, and Atkatai is really miles better than your Ugadai.

LOMOV : Atkatai better than Ugadai? Well, I like that [laughs]. Atkatai better than Ugadai !

NATALIA STEPANOVNA : Certainly he’s better. It’s true that Atkatai is young and hasn’t bred yet, but in the pack and on the leash there isn’t a better dog anywhere, even. . . .

LOMOV : Allow me, Natalia Stepanovna, but you’re forgetting that he’s got a short jowl, and a dog with a short jowl never seizes well.

NATALIA STEPANOVNA : A short jowl? ’That’s the first I’ve heard of it.

LOMOV : I assure you, his lower jaw- is not so long a s his upper one.

NATALIA STEPANOVNA : Have you measured i t? LOMOV : I have. Of course, he’s all right for hounding

the quarry, but when it comes to making a capture, it’s hardly . . . . .

NATALIA STEPANOVXA : To begin with, our Atkatai is of good stock, and a thorough-bred-he’s the SOY? of Zapryagai and Stamkzka, while you’ll never get at the family of that mongrel of yours. . . That’s what makes him so old and unsightly, like a scare-

LOMOV : He may be old, but I wouldn’t take five o f your Atkatais for him. . . And who would, I’d like to know? Ugadai is a dog, while Atkatai- why, it’s too ridiculous to argue about it. Any fancier has got enough dogs like your Atkatai to fill a pond. with. Five and twenty roubles would be a good price to pay for him.

NATALIA STEPANOVNA : The spirit of contradiction has taken possession of you to-day, Ivan Vasilevitch. First of all, you take’it into your head that the Meadows belong to you, and now Ugadai is better than Atkatai. I don’t like a man to talk different from what he thinks. Why, you know quite well that Atkatai is a hundred times better than your . . . . than this stupid Ugadai. What’s the good of saying the opposite, then?

LOMOV : I can see, Natalia Stepanovna, you think I’m either blind or daft. But you must understand that your Atkatai has got a short jowl.

crow. . . .

NATALIA STEPANOVNA : It’s not true. LOMOV : He has got a short jowl. VA.TALIA STEPANOVNA (shouting) : It’s no? true. LOMOV : What are you shouting for, m y dear young

lady ? NATALIA STEPSNOVNR : Why w ~ Z Z YOU talk such rubbish?

It’s really most provoking. It’s about time your Ugadai was shot, and here you are comparing him with Atkatai.

LOMOV : Excuse me, I cannot continue this discussion. I have such palpitation.

Natalia STEPANOVNA : I’ve always noticed it-the huntsmen who argue most of all are the very ones who understand least of all.

760

Lomov : ) I> . dear !-oung lady I must ask \-ou to keep quiet. . . . 3ry heart’s thumping away fit to burst . . . (shouts) Keep quiet.

Natalia Stepanovna : 1’11 not keep quiet as long as you won’t admit that Atkatai is a hundred times better than your Ugadai.

Lomov : ,I hundred time worse I wish somebody would do for your Atkatai. My forehead . . . and eyes . . . 2nd shoulder . .

N;ITALIX STEP:~.SOVS;\ : ’l‘here’s no ncccssitJ- io do away \+-it11 > our silly Ugadai because he’s already 0 1 1

his lrist- legs :is i t is.

splitting. . . . Loarov dolefully : Oh, do be quiet ! My heart’s fairly

NATALIA SYEP.\SOVS.I : I ~ i l ’ t be quiet ! lT1I.

The same and cHI’UL.IiO\..

CHVBUI;OV (entering) : TVhat’s thc matter now ? NAT.ILIA STEPXSOVSA : Papa, let’s have you unbiased

opinion, honour bright. IVhich is the better dog our Atkatai or h i s Ugadai?

Los~ov : Stepan Stepanovitch I implore ~ o u , tell mc jus t this one thing, has !.our Atkatai a short jowl or not? Yes or n o ?

CHCBUKOV : And supposing he has:’ ‘ihat’s n~ig-l~t>- im- portant, I must say ! For all that, there isn’t a better dog in the whole district, and so forth. . . .

LOSIOV : Gh, but come, Ugadai is better. Honestly now !

CHI.I;UKOV : Don’t gct excited now, my dear fellow . . Allow me. . . ‘r’our Ugadai, I don’t mind saying has his good points. . . I-Ie comes of a pure stock, he’s firm on his legs, he’s solid about the loins, a:ld 50 on. But n1y dear chap, if !.ou really \\-ant to know there arc t n - o considerable drawbacks about !hat dog : he’s old, ;\i2d he’s got a short jowl

Lomov : Excuse me, nl!; palpitation’s coming on again. . . . Let’s consider the facts of thc case. . . Pray remember that, i n Marusk in fields, my Ugadai ran neck and neck with the Count’s dog Razmak hdi, and your Atkatai was a whole verst behind.

Chubukov : He got behind because the Count’s keeper whacked him with a riding-whip.

Lomov : So hc did. all the dogs were after thc fox, but Atkatai stood worrying a sheep

CHUBUKOV : That’s not true ! . . . My dcar sir, I’ve got rather a hasty temper I’d have you know ; and I must ask \-ou to let u s cut this argument short. He whacked him because everybody casts an en- yious eye on a strange dog. . . Yes thelr’re all envious. And you, my good sir, arc not blameless in this respect. You take my word for i t , as soon as >-ou notice that somebody’s dog is better than vour Ugztdai, a t once you start this . . . that . . . the other and so forth. . . . Yes, I see through the whole lot of it !

Losrov : And I see through it, t-oo ! CIIURIKOV (gibingly) : I see through it, too. . . what

do you see through 2 Lomov : Oh, my palpitation. . . . 3!y leg’s gone lame.

. . . I can’t. . . . NAT.\J,I.A STEPASOVS-A (gibingly) : Palpitation. . . And

J-ou call yourself a huntsman? You’re more fit to dawdle about by the kitchen-stove 2nd choke black- beetles than to chase loxes. Palpitation, indeed.

CHL‘EL’KOV : Quite right. A fine sort o f huntsman, you are ! With your palpitations, I’d ha\-e you know, the best thing you can do is to stop at home and not rampage about in the saddle And I t wouldn’t I?e so bad if IOU really went hunting, but you only g o out to squabble and interfere with other people’s dogs, and so forth. I’ve got a hasty temper-let’s stop this conversation. You’re no huntsman at d l , I’d have you know.

Lomov : Well, and are you a huntsman, then? You only go out to curry favour and carry tales to the Count. . . Oh, my heart. . You’re a tale-bearer.

CIIL.J~CKOV : IVhat’s that? I’m a tale-bearer? [Shouts]

LOAIOV : You’re a tale-bearer ! CHUBUKOV : Young jackanapes ! You puppy ! Loalov : You old reptile ! I’ou Jesuit ! Chubukov : Hold your tongue, or I’ll shoot J-ou u ill1 a

dirty old gun, as if you were a partridge. Gas-bag ! L O A L C J V : Everybody knows quite ~vcll that )-our wife

used . . . Oh, my heart . . . thar; your wife tised to beat you. . . Oh, my foot . . . my forehead . . . spots in front of my eyes . . . I’m done for, I’m done for. . . , !

CHUBUGOV : And you’rc henpecked by your house- keeper. . . .

LOMOV : O h dear, oh dear . . . my heart’s about split. . . . Rly shoulders in two. . . ITThere’s rn?- shoulder? I ’ m dying [falls in :L chair]. The doc- 1 os.

CI-IUI;L:KO\- : You j a c kanapes ! l’ou greenhorn ! ‘t-ou gas-hag I I t makes me feel sick . . [drinks water fairly sick. . .

NAI*ALI.\ S.rL:r’ino\.x.? : \Vltrlt sort of a huntsman do you call yourself W h y !-ou can’t even sit on horse- back. [To CI~LBUI;OV] : Papa u-hat’s the matter with h i m Papa ! Look, papa ! [She wails.] Ivan Vasilevitch ! He’s dead !

CIIUI<~~KOV : I fed ill ! I can’t breathe ! . . . I n-ant air ! . . . by the sleeve.] Ivan Vasilevitch ! Ivan V a s i l vitch ! What ever have we done? He’s dead. . . (falling into the chair.] The doctor, the doctor. h y s t e r i c s

CHURUKOV : Oh dear, oh dear. . . IIThat’s up? V’hat’s

N.\TAT,:.\ Sxi~ .~so: -s .~ g roan ing : I-IC‘s dead . . dead. . CHUI~~:F;O\~ : Who’s dead? [looking at Lomov w h y

so he is. Good Lorcl. . . Water. . . A doctor . . . Putt ing a glass to LOMOV’S lips] Drink this. . , No, he won’t drink. . . It’s plain enough he’s dead and so forth. . . I’m the most un- lucky of men. . . \T’hi\. don’t I put a bullet through my brain 3 What am I waiting for? Give me a knife. . . Give me a pistol. . . 14’hy didn’t I cut my throat long ago? [LOMOV begins to stir] It looks as if he’s alive, after allas Drink some water. Here you are. . .

Hold your tongue.

* ? Natalia S,XP.\XOVKA : He’s dead. . . pulling Loarov

wrong n.ith you ?

Loarov : Sparks . . . hlis t . . . TT,-he:-e am I ? CHUBUKOV : Get married and ha1.e: done with it, con-

found you. . . She’s willing enough . . . [he joins the hands of LOhIOV and his daughter]. She’s will- ing enough and so on. . . I gi1.e yo11 m y blessing and so forth. . . On!? leave me in peace !

Loa~ov : E h ? IVhat? [getting up] T-i;ho? chubukov : She’s willing . . . ch? So\\- kiss . . . and

Natalia STEPAKOVXA (moaning) : He’s alive . . Tes,

C H L J ~ L J K Q Y : Kiss . . . LolIrov : Eh, W h o ? [kissing NAT.II,X:I STIT.\.~O\-S.\] I

don’t mind if I do. . . Allow m f . ~ , \\‘bat’s it all about? Oh yes, I unclcrstand. . . 0 1 1 , that palpi- tation . . . those spots in front of my eyes . . I’m delighted, Natalia Stepanovna . . . kissing her hand] My foot’s gone to sleep. . .

go to the deuce. . . yes, I’m willing. . .

X.II-.\LIA Stepanovna : I . . . I’m delighted too. . . CHU:~<KOV : Well, that’s a load off my shouldcrs. . . . NATALIR STEPANOVX.~ : Now, after all this, perhaps

LOMOV : Better , . . . NATALIA S m r m o v N A : Worse. , . CHusur<ov : Ha, this is the beginning of the domestic

bliss. . . . Let’s have some champagne. . . tonfov : Better . . . . N.XT~LIA STEPANOVNA : TVorse, worse, worse. . . CIIUBUKOV (endeavouring to shout them down) : Cham-

[CURTAIN. ]

Whew . . .

you’ll agree : Ugadai is worse than Atkatai.

pagne, champagne. . . .

761

Modern Art Criticism. By Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy.

L C For those who can feel th.e significance of form art can never be less than a religlon.”-CIive BELL.

I ‘ That tragic ecstasy which is the best that: art-per- haps that life-can give.”-W. B. YEATS. THE spiritual energies of successive ages are differently directed ; the problems change, the search is one and the same. There is no more significant tendency in modern thought than that study of aesthetics, which in our day seeks so persistently to penetrate beneath the accidentals in all works of art, to disengage those essential, and innermost compelling qualities which are independent alike of racial taste and temporary pre-occupations. When experience has taught us that works of visual art, music or dance of the most diverse ages and peoples, can awaken in sensitive minds one and the same strange and unique aesthetic emotion, an emotion that frees the spectator from himself, as in sumadhi-when it is realised that works of art are more truly distinguished as good or bad, than as Eastern or Western, old or new -then we cannot but ask what is that one essential quality that so deeply touches us in all these works, quite independently of their appeal to current tastes or codes of ethics.

It is true that the combined faculty of sensitive appre- ciation and logical analysis is rare; most of those who experience zesthetic ecstasy are not interested in dis- cussing it, and most of those naturally gifted with the spirit of analysis have never felt the Esthetic emotion a t all, and have simply wasted labour in discussing a problem which they are constitutionally unable to grasp. Nevertheless, in this age of ”tiefbohrender Aesthetik,” it is possible to find this combination of appreciation and analysis. This is fortunate, if it be true, as Blake says, that no man can embrace true art till he has ex- plored and cast out false art ; and this certainly is true, if we take into account more lives than one, or race- memory.

The clearest thinker about art, since Hsieh Ho and Leonardo da Vinci, was William Blake, who understood art as vision, and declared that painting, like poetry, could admit nothing not significant. Tolstoy, came very near the root of the matter, in setting aside the concep- tion of “beauty,” and indicating the transmission of feeling as the true activity of art, although he seems to have meant rather feelings in the plural, than that one ecstasy which we speak of as aesthetic emotion. Goethe, on the other hand, well understood, for he says,

For beauty they have sought in every age, He who perceives it, is from himself se t free.

Benedetto Croce, like Tolstoy, insists on the linguistic character of art, and the relativity of beauty ; he defines art as successful expression, or simply, expression.

A work just published by Mr. Clive Bel l is un- doubtedly the most important contribution to aesthetics since Croce, and will attract many readers, since it is written in simpler language, though with rather more of mere smartness than quite accords with its own prin- ciples. It is no disparagement o f the book to say that it contains little that is not a commonplace of serious modern criticism ; it is rather for that very reason that we shall find it profitable to follow out its argument in some detail.

“What quality,” asks hlr. Bell, “is common to Sta. Sophia and the windows at Chartres, Mexican sculp- ture, a Persian bowl, Chinese carpets, Giotto’s frescoes at Padua, and the masterpieces of Poussin, Piero della Francesca, and Cezanne? Only one answer seems pos- sible-significant form.”

The term beauty is better avoided, unless ‘we deliber- ately define it as “form that provokes aesthetic emo- tion,” for its most common use is in popular physiolo- gical, rather than aesthetic senses. The “beauty” of the

* “Art.” By Clive Bell. (London, 1914. 5s.)

human type, for example, is absolutely relative-to un- derstand the beauty of Leila, one must see with the eyes of Majnun ; it is a product of racial and personal taste, and there is certainly nothing universal in taste. Another way would be to distinguish objective beauty as loveli ness (likeable, desirability), and subjective or aesthetic beauty as true beauty ; but it would be difficult to expect such a distinction to be widely followed. Hence, “Significant form.’’

Descriptive painting, so far as it is merely descriptive, is not art; “who has not said that such and such a drawing was excellent as illustration, but as a work of art worthless? Of course, many descriptive pictures possess, amongst other qualities, formal significance, and are therefore works of art; but many more do not. They interest us; they may move us too in a hundred different ways, but they do not move us zesthetically. According to my hypothesis, they are not works of art. They leave untouched our aesthetic emotions because it is not their forms but the ideas or information sug- gested or conveyed by their forms that affect us.” Most portraits, topographical and erotic works, and many religious images are thus merely descriptive or illus- trative; but it is very important to notice that this is not so of necessity ; and also that our interest in, and appreciation of, such works is not at all wrong, por- vided that we do not deceive ourselves that this is the the best that art can give us.

It is a source ‘of astonishment to the public that “most people who care much about art find that of the work that moves them most the greater part is what scholars call ‘Primitive’ . . . no other art moves us SO profoundly.” The reason is, that in the sort of art caned Primitive we find three common characteristics- absence of representation, absence of technical swagger, sublimely impressive form.” Some would say the Primitives neglected representation only because they lacked skill; others that they practised what is now called “wilful distortion.’ However that may be-and neither hypothesis commends itself to sensitive minds- it is certain that the Primitives never do create illusion nor make an exhibition of smartness; the,y concentrate their whole energy on the creation of form, and that ic why we owe to them the finest works of art there are. Of course, the Primitives do not belong to any one time or place : there were Primitives in Europe i n the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there was Blake a hundred years ago, there were Chinese primitives just after the highly accomplished Ku K’ai-chih, and some in modern Europe. I fear there are no primitives in modern India.

Fainting and music have often been compared. It is a misfortune of visual art that everybody claims to be equally qualified to criticise it, and the vast majority of persons do so on the basis of its obvious representative elements. No one of intelligence would call a piece of music good because it reflects the sound of galloping horses or the songs of birds ; no one of intelligence ought to call a painting good (as a work of art) because it resembles some familiar or unfamiliar object in nature.

Although Mr. Bell says little about music, and speaks generally of painting, yet it is evidence of the truth of

~ his theory, as it is of the far more magnificent generali- sation of Hsieh Ho, that the principle enunciated- significant form-is equally applicable to art. I think he is quite wrong in saying “Literature is never pure art” ; as wrong as any poet would be in declaring that no painting or sculpture can be pure art because it must almost unavoidably contain some representative elements It is true that a lengthy literary w’ork rarely does maintain the highest lyrical enthusiasm through- o u t ; but in certain short poems, “there is no room for most of what we commonly look for in verse” (as Mr. Basil Hall Chamberlain naively remarks in “Japanese

i Poetry”). The same writer says of the Japanese “epigram,” that it “is a little dab of colour thrown upon a canvas one inch square, where the spectator is left to guess at the picture as best he may.’: Here i s an example, ~

762

Tsuyu no y o 120

Sari nagara Tsuyu no yo nagara

Granted this dewdrop world is but . A dewdrop world-this granted, yet. . . .

’The same kind of thing occurs in the Indian ghazal for .example :- Sajan j e main jandi parit k i ye d u k h Nagar dhandora pherdi parit kare wa koi . Beloved, had I known that love brings grief I must have proclaimed with beat of drum that none

Here there is certainly the “pure expression of .emotion” ; I think, also, the expression of emo- tfon far removed from the everyday emotions, of life (the rasas are shanta and vairagya). Even in Western poetry some similar examples could be found, but these are sufficient to vindicate the claim of litera- ture to the title of pure art.

W e are provided with a short history of Christian art, in the light of the theory of significant form ; it affords profitable reading for those who fancy that the history of art is a progression from Giotto to the Royal Academy. Phidias is the beginning of the end in Greece ; it is reached in Roman realism. Something mew was felt by the early Christians ; but they could not .express it, for the earliest Christian paintings in the catacombs are purely classical. Diocletian’s palace at Spalato (beginning of the fourth century) shows us classicism in a death struggle with the new spirit from the East. Even in 450 A.D. the mosaics of the Galla Placida at Ravenna are still coarsely classical. “There i s a nasty woolly realism about the sheep, and about the good shepherd more than a suspicion of the stodgy, Graeco-Roman, Apollo. Imitation still fights, though it fights a losing battle, with the significant form.” It is .strange to think the very same battle was going on at the same time in India, and that there, too, the Graxo- Roman Apollo stood for stodginess and imitation and the absence of all vision. Even in far-off China this was ’likewise the moment of transition.

But we must not digress from the history of Europe. -The battle was won before Sta. Sophia began to rise .(532-537 A.D.) ; and to the sixth century belong the most majestic monuments of Byzantine art. “It is the primi- tive and supreme summit of the Christian slope. The -upward spring from the levels of Graeco-Romanism, is immeasurable. . . . Go to Ravenna, and you will see +”he masterpieces of Christian art, the primitives of the slope : g o to the Tate Gallery or the Luxembourg, and you will see the end of the slope-Christian art at its ‘last gasp. ”

Mr. Bell is careful to explain that by Christian art ‘he means, of course, nothing that is Christian in a merely theological or dogmatic sense ; he means “that -religious spirit o f which Christianity . . . is one mani festation, Buddhism another. . . So far was the new spirit from being a mere ebullition of Christian faith, that we find manifestations of it in Mohammedan art.” “‘Christian art is not an expression of specific Christian emotion ; but it was only when men had been roused by Christianity that they began to feel the emotions that express themselves in form.” Christian art preserved its significance for an unusually long period, something like 500 years ; because in those days many things moved more slowly ; virgin races in succession caught the new ’inspiration and expressed it with intensity and passion ; Norman art of the eleventh century is scarcely inferior -to Byzantine of the sixth.

Duccio and Cimabue are the last great Western ex- ponents of the tradition that held the essential every- thing, and the accidental nothing. Giotto is individu- ally greater, but he marks the beginning of the end- a n end that had already begun in France with the in- vention of Gothic architecture. The decline is masked by the appearance of many individually great artists in immediately succeeding centuries; but when the new movement towards “Truth and Nature” had finally destroyed the Byzantine tradition, there was nothing

should love.

left to stand against the insidious disease of the Classical Renaissance. What this spirit added to the life of man was-‘‘ a new sense of the excitingness of human affairs. ” The brief splendour of Mughal paint- ing gives us an exact parallel in India; both movements were concerned with material beauty, and both left the uneducated classes quite unmoved. In 16th-century Europe, and 16th-17th-century India and Persia (where the great Bihzad was already on the downward slope), ‘‘we are in the age of names and catalogues and genius- worship. ” There was a truly primitive movement in 18th-century Kangra, but the last of it has vanished, like the relics of traditional grandeur in Rajputana.

The eighteenth century in Europe is distinguished be- cause Blake was born and flourished in the latter end of it. In the nineteenth century the Pre-Raphaelites, like our Calcutta group of to-day, represented a movement of good taste and real cultivation, and did the world the immense service of disparaging the whole tradition of the Classical Renaissance. They preferred Giotto to Raphael, because they saw that Raphael was vulgar; we likewise have the intelligence to recognise that Ravi Varma was vulgar (ten thousand times more so than Raphael), but we have not felt as yet a truly primitive impulse to the creation of significant form. There is time yet ; even in Europe the Pre-Raphaelites had to come before the Post-Impressionists. Impressionism in Europe represents the theory of scientific realism carried to its logical extreme. But it happened that the men who held these theories were artists in spite of them selves-particularly Renoir, Degas, Manet, Whistler. Their fantastic and quite unsuccessful pursuit of scienti- fic truth gave us works of art tolerable in design and glorious in colour : the historical importance of Impres- sionism “consists in its having taught people to seek the significance of art in the work itself, instead of hunting for it in the emotions and interests of the outer world.”

Post-Impressionism, theoretically poles apart from Impressionism, is really a continuation and development. It is essentially the reassertion of the first principle of art-Create Significant Form. “By this assertion it shakes hands across the ages with the Byzantine primi- tives and with every vital movement that has struggled into existence since the arts began.” Almost all good modern painters draw some inspiration from Cezanne, and belong more or less to the Post-Impressionist move- ment. “If the Impressionists raised the proportion of works of art in the general pictorial output from about one in five hundred thousand to one in a hundred thousand? the Post-Impressionists . . . have raised the average again. To-day, I dare say, it stands as high as one in ten thousand. Indeed, it is this that has led some people to see in the new movement the dawn of a new age ; for nothing is more characteristic of a ‘primi- tive’ movement than the frequent and widespread pro- duction of genuine art.” There is reason to think that we may have passed, and only just passed, the p i n t of lowest level in European culture since Rome, and that we stand at the beginning of an upward slope. Some time later on we shall be able to distinguish the sources of the new impulse ; these sources are not in the Post- Impressionist movement, but that movement is in them. I t was the spirit of the East that brought new life into the decaying world of Rome; there can be little doubt that a large, perhaps by far the largest, factor in the present Renaissance of Western Europe is due to the spiritual discovery of Asia. What Indian Buddhism did for China in the sixth century, all Asiatic thought and art may do, and, perhaps, is doing for Europe now. If so, it will be (alas) but small thanks to the modern East, and most of the credit will be due to the sensitive in- telligence of European pioneers ; as someone-perhaps Mr. Bell himself-wrote some time ago in the “Athenaeum,” there are more signs of a spiritual re- naissance in London than in Benares or Tokio. The East has some time longer yet to fall ; although there are already satisfactory signs of discontent with “pro- gress,” even on the far Chinese horizon, and in India.

It remains to notice one more movement to bring the

763

history of European art down to the latest moment. After the Post-Impressionists come the Futurists, Cubists, and the like. These are disposed of as a mere perversion of the main forward tendency, and they are condemned, as artists, because, “like the Royal Academicians, they use form, not to provoke zesthetic emotions, but to convey information and ideas-they aim at representing in line and colour the chaos of the mind at a particular moment.” The Post-Impressionist tendency, on the other hand, is capable of endless de- velopment. So much for a summary of European art, to which we have added Oriental parallels.

It remains to notice an important chapter of Mr. Bell’s book, which will be of special interest, perhaps, to Indians, who have still a natural flair for meta- physics, denied to most Englishmen. Having decided that the essential thing in art is significant form, the question arises, What is this significance. Mr. Bell believes, with Blake, that ‘‘the world of imagination is the world of eternity,” or, in his own phraseology, aesthetic emotion is the emotion that we feel when intui- tion reveals to us Reality. He is on safe ground here, with Blake and Hsieh Ho. This view is also closely re- lated to that of Abhinavagupta, who says that the appre- ciation of poetry (Indian aesthetic is mainly worked out in terms of poetry and drama, as Mr. Bell’s in those of painting) is a revelation of our own higher self (the sattvic nature), otherwise obscured by rajas (selfish activity) and tamas (dullness) ; aesthetic ecstasy is com- parable to Brahmanic bliss. The neo-Platonists and many others have come to the same conclusion. For those who follow thus far, it must be evident that ar t and religion are one and the same thing-the vision of God, or of Ultimate Reality, or the Self, or Wil l or what- ever name we choose to use-and that neither art nor religion, in their deepest essence, are concerned with practical ethics ; both are alike beyond good and evil. The essential ecstasies are as remote from the happi- ness and sorrow, the hopes and fears of this human life, as is the unconditioned from the pairs of opposites. W e are in perfect agreement that this ecstasy is the best thing art can give us ; but Mr. Bell himself is so pre-occupied with this best that perhaps he forgets the importance of the element of sympathetic magic in a work of art. Not only may a picture or a phrase stimu- late in us a dionysic ecstasy ; but together with this, or even failing this, works of art, in so far as they ex- press and awaken personal emotions, or set forth a physiological ideal, have a very direct influence upon life. W e have, indeed, begun to learn that in art , a s in myths and dreams, individuals and races continually dramatise subconscious purposes and hopes and fears ; and our main education, in the sense of “licking into shape,” is attained through the idol-worship of these heroic forms.

Would-be censors of art have always felt this very strongly ; it is only unfortunate that those who are most anxious to exercise a censorship personally, or to have one exercised on behalf of their own prejudices, have very rarely been artists at all, and in many cases not even psychologists. A “censorship” is only satisfac- torily exercised by the good taste of an elite : it is this, for example, that has preserved the perfection of the Japanese No-drama through so many centuries, and even in the face of modern vulgarity. Under some for- tunate conditions it is possible for whole communities to remain for many centuries almost of one mind regard- ing some essentials of character or physical form ; in those ages in spiritual feudalism, the lord in his castle and the peasant in his hut are equals in all but worldly power, divided in status, but united by identical ideals. When a movement like that of the Classical Renais- sance in Europe, or the Anglicisation of modern India, destroys the culture of the upper classes, the peasant, being less accessible to the forces of destruction, changes much less slowly ; we have such a spectacle as modern India provides, where kings are uncultivated, or rather decultivated, and the only elite consists of yet uncorrupted peasants, whose virtues are traditional, un-

conscious and insecure. The later stage, o f plutocratic and official art on the one hand, and “popular” 0.r mob art on the other, the elite reduced to sporadic manifesta- tions of individual genius (perhaps only survivals), may be studied in modern Europe.

I t is quite true that pure art is something ‘much more than ethical; it raises us above the pairs of opposites altogether. But to recommend, therefore, that everyone should “take refuge from life in zesthetic emotion,” is to say that everyone should spend their time in mystic raptures, and neglect the cooking This is neither de- sirable nor possible. Indeed, zesthetic ecstasy must be a matter of comparatively brief and rare experience even for the most exalted spirit; for to remain on these heights, in a perpetual samadhi, would be death. Philo- sophy teaches us that such a death must be the final end of every development; but even if that death be really the gate of Life, we. ought, none the less, to see that we live a fine kind of life while we live at all. Thus the Nietzscheans are right up to a certain point-the dharma, artha, and kama point-in their advocacy of ruler-art, and their interest in subject. Both sides, moreover, are in perfect agreement that realism is the smallest part of art, and that it is no part of the business of art to represent our individual selves.

I t will .never be that the multitude will be content with the aesthetic significance of art-never until they could be content with the ecstasy of mathematical imagina- tion or of mystic vision. If Pravritti and Nivritti are eternal tendencies in the infinite Whole, this can never come about-it is individuals, not crowds, that attain emancipation. Meanwhile, as has been well said, for those who are not idealists, there are idols provided. In this age perhaps it would be truer to say that idols ought to be provided, for they are not easy to be dis- covered. Laymen should look to artists for the setting up of idols ; their own business is to worship. But if all artists confine themselves altogether to idealism, they cannot wonder if the great public sets up mean and false idols for itself.

Probably, with our modern ideals of self-expression, and one-man-as-good-as-another, we make it nearly im- possible for the artists to establish idols; even a god is helpless without worshippers. Probably we need, to teach us idol-worship, to occupy ourselves far more ex- tensively with the minor ritual of the temple. “There must be more popular ar t . . . art must become less ex- clusively professional. That will not be achieved by bribing the best artists to debase themselves, but by enabling everyone to create such ar t as he can. . . . If art is to do the work of religion, it must be somehow brought within reach of the people who need religion, and an obvious means of achieving this is to introduce into useful work the thrill of creation.” One does not bring art into the loves of the people “by dragging parties of children and factory girls through the National Gallery and the British Museum . . . the only possible effect of personally conducted visits must .be to confirm the victims in their suspicion that art is some- thing infinitely remote, infinitely venerable, and in- finitely dreary. . . . By practising an art it is possible that people will acquire sensibility. ”

It appears then that we must not go on having our useful work done by machinery ; that is, if we wish the people to be educated. Almost the only ordinary people who have a chance to understand the significance of form, to become sensitive through their own daily work, are engineers, the people who make machines ; the people who use machines have no chance at all. The central problem of modern culture is to escape from the tyranny of machinery. Before that escape can be achieved we have got to learn that civilisation means quality, and not quantity. T o teach that is to do the best possible alike for art and life. I should be sorry to agree with Mr. Bell- and the Fabians that useful work must remain, for the most part, mechanical, for ever more. If so, the sooner we get back to the bronze age, the better for everyone who does not batten on an un- earned income.

764

Pastiche, WORD REFORM.

At present it is thought good form To say our spelling needs reform, But what is more important still Is that our words express us ill. There’s many modern words I meet Make Shakespeare’s English obsolete, For these with meaning concentrate The sense of lengthy phrases state, And for improvement of mankind Here some examples you will find. The pawnshop higgle and to gorge Up paupers’ pence might be to george,” And “shaw” nu speling) is so fit To signify exploded wit. Now let impotence of man Be desi designate by fabian.” A dotard that is wall- king dead A ‘‘ hardie ” should be called instead. To promise bread to waiting poor and then to fumble at the door By “ web-web ” would be understood. This definition’s near as good As when with inspiration pat The plutocrat was styled as “ Fat.” When windy prose diffusely swells Let’s talk of ‘‘ effervescent wells.” My word-book hath examples more, If half-a-dozen there’s a score ; But euphony will not allow Them published in these pages now. Perhaps by polishing each name They’ll yet be lifted into Fame.

TRIBOULET.

SOME Maxims ON AMERICANS, NEW YORK AND NEWPORT.

By Sebastian Sorrell. Am Americans

A wonderful people mho have succeeded in making ice- creams at least four times colder than any other nation.

That there is nothing in a name and everything in a middle initial, is probably America’s greatest and most popular discovery.

In America most of the men are democrats--and look it; while the women are all monarchists, and often prove it.

The crossing of the Atlantic by an American girl in- variably ends in a loss to the democracy of her country.

The American girl is a strong-willed fairy with a weak- ness for ice-creams, candies, and coronets, all of which her income can afford.

In America Santa Claus gives to every good little girl a coronet; and to every boy, without distinction, an initial.

That there has never been an American queen from a nation so productive of natural princesses will no doubt, have yet to be explained in some future Presidential address.

The American girl is a very real and remarkable phenomenon ; always brilliant, invariably beautiful, and produced without parents. This may not be strictly true, or in keeping with the requirements of Nature, but it helps to solve for thz foreigner the problems of her early independence.

American fathers are never seen, and American mothers are never heard.

American brothers are unknown. American sentiment is often stranger than fiction. In America fruit is good, cheap, and rendered popular.

Rockefeller : The survival of the mediaeval Robber

New YORK. I The Atlantic is scarcely wide enough €or one to appre-

ciate properly the perspective of New York. Nor the voyage across long enough to prepare one for

the surprises that await one there. An agglomeration of Babel towers, reconceived and

successfully completed; the building of which has given birth to an entirely new language

An expensive example of chaos galvanised and rendered inhabitable.

A hectic and stimulating place, in which one moves in delirium, and is unconscious of fatigue.

The artistic beauty of New York probably may never be discovered.

Flowers are reserved entirely for the rich.

Baron in modern democracy.

That Americans covet everything European is proved by the alpine architecture of New York.

A Museum in the building which will eventually house all the antiques and art treasures of the Old World.

Fifth Avenue : A street of Hostesses whose wonderful hospitality is excelled only by their chefs.

In Fifth Avenue may be found the arch shopkeeper who knows why a certain little gilded Oriental god has been grinning for centuries.

Wall Street : The forty-storied fortress of financial feudalism, In whose donjons the dollars of the poor are serving an eternal sentence.

The Woolworth and Singer Buildings : The perpen- dicular expression for the horizontal growth of American fortunes.

The New York Customs : An instance of the many trials in after life for which our school examinations have utterly failed to prepare us.

The Statue of Liberty : A cyclopean figure of Truth adapted by a cheerful and witty nation to commemorate their discovery that Utopia is only a theory.

NEWPORT. Newport is closed in winter so that New York society

may rest.

THE CLERK WHO found TRUTH. He wore a suit af shining navy blue, Because he liked it, and it lasts so well. A sock of many colours crowned the shoe, His snow-white collar showed the laundress’ spell, And thence his tie in lavish splendour fell ; He dressed with care, because he was a clerk, And clerks must be respectable till dark.

He sat upon his stool from nine to six, And conned his ledger with an anxious eye. He entered this, checked that, made curious ticks, And watched the minute hand go crawling by. What if his salary was no% so high, He was as one apart, nor did he shirk His reckonings whilst others did the work.

There is divinity doth hedge a clerk As though he were a marquis in disguise. He works for payment, yet there is a mark That makes him one with those whose pen he plies. Strikes rise and fall, he works in loyal wise, Yet dares not claim a special recompense Because he knows strikes are a great expense.

But this our clerk, whose name was Jasper Brown, Was not so much a worm as others are. He was not dulled with ease, but wore a frown That seemed to announce a life of thought afar From all the torments of this wretched star. Well might he frown, for early in his youth He had resolved to find the naked truth.

Impelled by sundry straits of circumstance, Relinquishing the odds that seldom spare The heedless walker on the fields of chance, With poor grey head, cheeks furrowed deep with care, He faltered not, but thought even in despair, “ Truth is worth more than rubies or fine gold ; Theirs is the world, who seek it, and behold ! ”

By what uncharted ways on perilous seas: Or in what depths that plummet cannot sound, He was equip ed with power enough to seize The essence o f that which none had ever found, Cannot be told, are wrapped in gloom profound. Suffice it must that the result was not In form and substance quite what he had thought.

For truth has many faces, and to him, So long unconscious of inflicted wrong, It seemed to burn with wrath, and chant with grim And loud insistence its revengeful song. Wildly perplexed, he pondered deep and lung, And yet despite his mental strife and ache, With one subversive antiphone i t spake.

“ Go thou and suffer and sing the living strain : Man shall not see the light till he be free; But thou, 0 curst in truth, shall rive the chain That binds the long oppressed community 0 blest in truth, so much is given to thee, To brand with hate relentless, hate afire The thieves who profit by the labourer’s hire.

765

(‘ This is my word ; the social man hath needs For whose fulfilment he is bound in kind. For each the sacred path of duty cedes A fit reward if justice be designed. But dark the sin whereby, both greedy and blind, Earth’s tyrants live in idleness, and share The fruits of burdens they make others bear.”

So with the word for buckler and for blade, He strove among his colleagues with success, And gathered forces for a new crusade. But soon he gave up hope that he could bless Himself with other gain than strife or stress, And though he reeked of truth’s anointing chrism He found he was suspect of socialism !

Alas ! that truth should tremble a t a name, And its upholders vanish in disgrace He could not overcome this righteous shame, And meteor-like fell headlong in full chase. Perchance he had survived this woeful case- But little sorrows kill where large griefs break- He lost his job, and died for pity’s sake.

So may his fate be warning to all clerks Who feel the slightest wish to cross the line Of reason seeking truth, who pass remarks As they held doubts, inspired by wit and wine, That work for wages is a law dv ine May they remember thought is nurse to crime, And brings its retribution in good time.

HARRY REGINALD King

CHINNERETH.

As I come out of Chancery Lane And stand in Holborn once again, Before me spreads an eastern plain,

A city where did live and die, Beneath the warmer Syrian sky, Men of the tribe of Naphtali,

In city that was Chinnereth.

And fence that round encompasseth

I see the City as a blur, Towards which I, a wanderer, Go, passing Ziddim Rakkath, Zer,

In solitude akin to death. I see before me on the road, (Fit subject for a song or ode) Four forms that once, perhaps, bestrode .

The dusty path to Chinnereth.

I mark each form and stand agape, Amazed at each eccentric shape, Devoid of garments-cloak or cape,

Or any rag that cumbereth. Marvels of eccentricity ; I own they but appear to me Perversions of geometry

That tread tge road to Chinnereth.

They seem to stride a narrow ridge. One form suggests the Asses’ Bridge. Bomberg ma call this sacrilege;

This diatribe a waste of breath ; Or, anyhow, a waste of ink. But, think what anyone will think, I take the risk and do not shrink

From writing thus of “Chinnereth.”

If this be not Euclidean What is’t, of all the arts of man? Is it Me Mephistophelian ?

I wait for one who answereth ! Lines, angles, segments, senseless curves, Suggesting naught of blood or nerves, . Or any limb that moves or swerves

On any road to Chinnereth.

These forms may be (I cannot tell) Appro riate ‘to Dante’s hell ; If so they serve their purpose well,

Is what the present writer saith. But save us from such graceless art, Sans beauty in its every part, That cannot lift the mind or heart;

Or bring back life to Chinnereth. VECTIS.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. WOMEN AND LABOUR.

sirj-1 have often read with interest the letters and articles of Mrs. Beatrice Hastings upon the sphere of women- Mrs Hastings is an admirable letter-writer, but, unfortunately, she is not a very painstaking student of economic history. Before one can form an adequate opinion about female labour, it is necessary to know the history of female labour.

The first important point is that there has never been a period in universal history in which poor women were not compelled to work extremely hard. Only rich women have ever been exempt from that. It is true that in past times R larger percentage of women worked at home than at present, but that was entirely due to the fact that many industries were formerly earned on at home which are now carried on in factories. In former times all the wool was spun and the cloth woven at home. All the beer was brewed at home, and the bread was baked at home. Everything was washed at home. All the butter and cheese were made at home. All the clothes were made and mended at home, and often even the boots were made and repaired at home. Not on1 did women do all this work for their own families, but many of them spun wool and wove cloth at home for the rich, as we learn from an extremely painful part of Marx’s “Capital,” which deals with cottage industries.

Alongside of this domestic work there was also, how- ever, an enormous amount of extreme1 laborious outdoor work for wa es. If Mrs. Hastings will simply turn over the leaves of “Six Centuries of Work and Wages,” she will soon discover that the wa es of women were a very important subject during the 7 whole of these six centuries. An enormous portion of the agricultural labour of Eng- land w a s done in the past by women, as it still is in Scotland by women who are known as “bondagers.” In England women worked through past ages, not merely at the pit brow of mines, but deep down in the mines themselves. They are working there to-day all over Continental Europe If Mrs. Hastings wishes to under- stand what women did in the past, I advise her to look and see what they are doing to-day in all backward ‘coun- tries. In Austria, Hungary, and Russia she will find women toiling for twelve hours a. day working in the fields, building roads, digging ditches, constructing rail- way embankments, and she will find them working at least ten hours underground in mines. I do not know whether Mrs. Hastings made full use of her chance of studying Kaffir women, but T have observed s e d Indian women a good deal. They work hard enough. Search the whoIe world over, and you will find that in all past times women have been worked to the limit of endurance, whether in their own homes or anywhere else that it paid better to employ them.

If Mrs. Hastings imagines that_ women had an easier time in the past than they have now, let her apply a few simple tests. Let her observe those industries which have changed least. Domestic service is one of these, although even it has changed enormously for the better. A generation or two ago a servant had far less freedom than she has now. I was brought up in a nice three- storey house, with three well-furnished spare bedrooms for guests; yet the two servants slept in. a dark closet off the kitchen, every inch of which was occupied by the bed. The door was kept closed all day, and no breath of air ever got in. That was in the ’seventies, and every- body then talked about the luxury of servants and lamented the good old times. We have no very exact statistics of the wages of servants; yet i t may safely be said that a servant who now gets L20 a year would not have got Es a hundred years ago, although’ at that time most things purchased by servants were dearer than now. In spite of these enormous changes for the better, domestic service is still such a hateful employment that it is always difficult to supply the market. However much women may hate the factory and the shop, they are at least unanimous in the opinion that these things are better than domestic service. I said that there were also domestic industries in the

past, and many of them still exist as they did in the . past. Every decent person who wishes to help the work- ing class desires above all things to abolish these indus- tries. Karl Marx has immortalised these industries in the historical portion of his work. l ow wages, long hours, filthy surroundings, and bad air are the invariable accompaniments of domestic industries. “The Song of the Shirt” was not written about a factory girl. It was about a girl workin in the sanctity of the home.

The best test of a 8 is to converse with some working

7Cb

woman who can remember the good old times, or has heard her mother or grandmother speak of them, I have talked with many such, but everyone I have yet met is very positive that no woman works Lat the present day AS women worked in the past, and Lhat the girl of the present who goes to c? factory or shop has a much easier time than the working woman of sixty or seventy years ago, whether she worked indoors or out. It is fair to say that my own conversations hare been mostly with Scotch or Canadian women, who have lived in countries where the good 016 times lasted longer than in England.

The present turmoil about woman labour is, therefore, in no way due to the alleged fact that women have lately begun to work, or to the actual fact that they are hard- worked and poorly paid. It is due to two entirely different causes.

First, there has been an immense decline of marriage among the loquacious classes. The poor still marry; for among them a woman is still a very useful beast of burden whether for domestic or wage work. Among the middle and skilled working classes, however, men have largely ceased to marry, because the women of these classes have nq economic value. Wife or no wife, the clothes, beer, butter, and cheese have now to be bought outside ; and a wife is not worth her keep. Custom does not approve of the wife of a middle-class man going out to work; hence, she is of I?O use at all. It is a striking fact that the decay of marriage has even gone farther in America and the Colonies than in England. A few weeks ago the British Government published a report on Australia, which clearly points out that a woman has n o more chance of getting married in Australia than in England, notwithstanding the excess of men. I have observed the same thing on the Pacific Coast. Vancouver has 74,000 men to 4.9,ooo women, while Victoria has 19,000 to 12,000 women. Yet old maids swarm in both places. Old maidhood however, does not exempt these women from work. Now, as in all ages, all women who are not rich have to work. Poor men have never in any age of the world been willing to sup ort old maids, unless they could get their money’s worth out of them. Under modern industrial ,conditions the only man who can get his money’s worth out of an old maid is an employer therefore, to an employer she llas to go.

Apart from the decline of marriage, the industrial revolution has made a good many women work for wages who would otherwise have worked at home. In most cases nobody has made any objection whatever. In Lancashire no rational human being believes that spin- ning and weaving should be done by men only. Every- body there takes woman labour for granted. It happens, however, that women are trying to get into some easy occupations which men have hitherto monopolised ; consequently, th,e fur has begun to fly. hairdressing and shaving are occupations admirably suited to a woman ; but the jealousy of barbers has aroused a hostility to female hairdressing such as was never stirred up by women hoeing turnips or working at the pit brow.

I will sum up in a few words. All women who were not rich have worked extremely hard in all ages. The most laborious muscular labour has never been thought too hard for them, especialIy if it was badly paid. Easy labour has often been thought too hard, however. Women hare now an easier time than they ever had in the past. Their labour is more pleasant and more healthy than it ever was. They will continue to work in a11 future ages, and the method of their work will be. determined hy the existing methods of production.

R. H . Kerr * * * A CRYING SCANDAL.

Sir,-Some while back Mr. Byles asked for a return of the number of youths under 2 1 sentenced to death since 1905, and a return of the number executed. The answer, distressing enough, would be more so nom. Most of these youths were sentenced for sweetheart murder. The latest to be executed is Edgar Lewis Bindon, aged 20, who was hanged on March 25, This youth has been lying under sentence of death while the agitation for the reduction of the seven years’ penalty on Julie Decies has been proceeding, yet not one of the canting humbugs who have been prating of mercy in the one case have troubled about the other. Mrs. Meynell, in her remarks to the “ Daily News ” representative, laid stress on the fact that Julie Decies was 20 six years ago--Bindon was 20 at the time. Recently the “ Standard ” declared that women were often hanged. Since 1896 inclusive, five women only have been hanged, all for the murder cf children, and all but Louise Masset over 30. Think of the procession of men who have passed along the via

dolores to the scaffold during that period, many of whom to quote Mrs. Meynell, “ were children of 20 !”

ARCH. GIBBS. * * * DEVOTION.

Sir,-In the City there is a vegetarian restaurant which, with physical food free from the sin of meat, offers weekly to its patrons mental food free from the sin of current cant-THk NEW AGE, to wit. But, Sir, the good intentions in this last respect of the proprietary are defeated by one man. He is the first arrival on Wednesday, and he commands THE NEW AGE; on Thurs- day, and he commands THE NEW AGE; on Friday, and he commands THE NEW AGE. Each day he reads steadily for an hour and a half; and his. lunch gets cold as he slowly absorbs page after page; he does not miss a word. Such an example of devotion to a journal is surely un- paralleled ; and you will be glad to hear of i t ; but, alas ! Sir, we who sit and wait would implore you to reward the devotion of this monopolist by supplying him with a complimentary copy, and thus set the restaurant copy free. Panperrimi sumus !

AUCH WE VOUDRIONS LEGERE. * * *

BOMBAST. Sir,-Partly in defence of my excellent friend Head-

weak, and partly for the guidance of your contributor who suffers from an illogical mind, I should like to ask in what way such phrases as “ the spirit of pity con- templating human patience in face of overwhelming odds,” “ the showing forth of creative adventure,’’ “ the spirit of inner contentment,” etc., are “ the clothes of giants.” Does not Ella Wheeler Wilcox frequently don the first, and the last would suit Frances Ridley Havergal to perfection : yet neither lady is above the stock size.

Your contributor may be right in his polite contempt for our poor Headweak’s lucubrations, but he is wrong in supposing that the phrases quoted necessarily imply poetic excellence : they are merely labels suggesting each writer’s general attitude, and so our exemplary gram- marian must search elsewhere for plums for his section on bombast.

I humbly suggest that your contributor should get to know R little more about the four fishmongers he mentions. Fish, they say, is good for the brain.

M. D. ARMSTRONG. P.S.-I don’t think I ever contributed to THE NEW

AGE. Possibly in a moment’s inadvertence . . . ? But no; the accusation is false.

* * . E Present-Day CRITICISM.

Sir,-The writer of “Present-Day Criticism” in doubt- ing th:e benevolence of government by one’s schoolboy peers Ignores a point which I thought had been made quite clear. I on y quoted the reviewer to point my illus- tration by contrast. With his expression of disgust at the idea of good children being encouraged to show dis- approval of naughty children I heartily agree. So I was at pains to say, “Of course, in the serious atmosphere usually associated with class-rooms such a proceeding (as that of one boy reproving another) would be even too barbarous ever to take place.” My point, o€ course, was that the conduct of discipline by the operation of the play interest makes all the difference. So, lest there should be any misunderstanding-, I said, “The playboy’s two-minute speech was all part of a big game. ”

The writer of “Present-Day Criticism” would like to know what would happen if some playboy, bored with the Pindrop, should yell out or “squizzle” through his nose, just in the nick of time. I cannot say; but next term we might suggest to one of the more mischievous ones to try it. Then we should know. That is the Play Way of finding out about things. 1 should like in return to put another hypothetical case. What should be done if one’s opponent at a game of chess should sweep all the pieces of the board by WIV of a joke : or, i f a batsman should knock his wicket flat on purpose, just to annoy the bowler ?

The cotton fetters were doubtless intended as a parallel to the little pin. But what possible comparison can be drawn between the in inquisitorial nurse and the elected Knight Captain? I Sear the writer of “Present-Day Criticism” has remembered too much of his schooldays to understand Play.

May I correct a slight but important misprint in my article of April 9 ? The second paragraph should open with inverted commas All that rich rigmarole about hares is a quotation. H. Caldwell COOK.

767

MR. ROMNEY GREEN’S FURNITURE. Sir,-When I read Mr. Ludovici’s criticisms of Mr.

Romney Green’s furniture, I did so with a strong feeling of annoyance, and though in the last paragraph he shows some sympathy with the difficulties which the craftsman has to contend with in the modern world, that does not entirely remove the stigma which attaches itself to Mr. Green.

I have not seen Mr. Green’s exhibition, but I am familiar with his work, and I can say that if Mr. Green is not in every way a conscientious worker, then one does not exist,. and, I will say further, never will. It is all very well for Mr. Ludovici to go to an exhibition an,d nose about for a slight little defect here and another there, and then to say that because some of Mr. Green’s work is absolutely without any minor defect he ought not to allow slight imperfections to appear anywhere; but he is altogether in the clouds when he talks in this way. At one time, I ran a furniture workshop myself, and I can speak with some experience of tbe difficulties with which Mr. Green has to contend. I can tell Mr. Ludovici that they are simply insuperable. Almost every time a piece of furniture is moved it bumps against something and makes a slight defect. Every slight variation in temperature affects it. If drawers fit perfectly at the time they are made they will either stick or be loose as the temperature goes up or down, and in many minor ways the craftsman is to some extent dependent on others. Let a man do his best he mill never get rid of these defects, which are a source of annoyance to himself. And then comes around Mr. Ludovici and draws atten- tion to these minor and unavoidable defects, exalting a standard of quality which is absolutely unattainable in such a material as wood, and could only appl 7 to small things made of a material which is not seriously affected by temperature.

Now I want to ask Mr. Ludovici a straight question. What end does he think he serves by criticism of this kind ? He won’t make MI-. Green .do better work, be- cause better mork could not be done. What he does is to cast a certain suspicion upon his work, and justify the public in neglecting him. Indirectly, he plays into the hands of those who are entirely indifferent about quality. So that, finally,. the result of Mr. Ludovici’s attempts to raise quality IS to produce the very opposite effect of lowering it by undermlning public confidence in those who are fighting for better things If I write strongly about these things it is because I feel strongly. I have faced the problem, and I know the difficulties. I feel sorry that it is Mr. Ludovici against whom I have to protest. No one appreciates his analysis of modern art more than I do, but I can tell him that when he writes criticism of this kind he is siding with the enemy.

ARTHUR J. PENTY. + + *

CUBISM. Sir,-I have read with a vivid and palpitating interest

Mr. Hulme’s criticism on the Cubic Exhibition at the Goupil Gallery, and in spite of the ominous word “ knuckle-duster ” and a cryptic sentence about “ the leg following the boot ” I venture forth again in reply.

I understand Mr. Hulme to say that Cubism has cut its umbilical cord (obstetrics seems to have a weird attraction for Cubists), sprung from its cradle, escaped from its nurses, and is nom, Columbus-like, embarked upon a voyage of experimental discovery but, as yet, has not “ arrived the happy isles.”

He then proceeds to pass the pictures-save the mark in review, and writes that Mr. Wyndham Lewis is too sequential and not sufficiently integral, being finally brought up with a round jerk against some realistically painted iron railings.

( ( Oh, would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me ! ”

Those realistic iron railings are symbolical of much. After a word or two of commendation, scattered among

the underlings of the movement, Mr. Hulme goes on to say that Mr. Bomberg is a purist who has “ reduced form to a purely intellectual interest in shape,” but that the square K.Kt.6 in the picture makes an interesting pattern. There are no less than sixty-four squares in the picture; none is greater or less than the other; but all are disconnected and have no relationship ; and yet there are not sixty-four pictures, but one picture. This is the faith of the Cubic heretic. But Mr. Hulme has small hope for Mr. Bomberg’s future in this direction, as he is really too utterly abstract, although a promising beginner.

Oh, weer is my ’at? Oh, God ! Oh, Mr. Hulme !

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To continue. Mr. Hulme admires Mr. Epstein’s work more than anything he has seen in Paris or Berlin, and no reason at all why he should not, if such is his will ; but I would like to ask him to wait a bit, until I have exhibited my Priapus in plastocene in London.

Granting that no truly great art can really flourish that has not some relationship. to “ the general tendency of the period,” or, in other words, contemporary life, does Cubism fulfil this condition? I humbly venture to. think otherwise. In days gone by, du Maurier’s aesthetic young lady said that “ me might learn much from a tea- pot” ; but in the case of Cubism, not all the “ tea-pot handles,” “ knuckle-dusters,” and “ saws ” arranged to- gether in any amount of sequences can raise a thrill. Knuckle-duster calleth unto door-knob, and tea-pot unto: tray, but there is no voice that answereth them.

Our Euripides the human : With his droppings of warm tears :

And his touchings of things common ; Till they rose to touch the spheres.”

By the craft of the Cubist the kitchen cullender becomes. “ The Enemy of the Stars ” and strikes the very con- stellations with sublime head. “ The beauty of banal forms,” says Mr. Hulme.

“ Beauty is in truth form,” says Schiller, “ a condition of our subject, because we. contemplate i t ; but it is a t the same time life, because we fee l it. In a word, it is at once a state and an achievement.”-“ Aesthetische Erziehung.”

Mr. Hulme also writes that a Cubist composition ‘‘ might make up an understandable kind of music,” and here he is again guilty of stating a half-truth, for “ all art,” says Walter Pater, “ constantly aspires towards the- condition of music” ; but says Carlyle (“ The Opera,” Miscellaneous Essays), music itself “ becomes quite de-. mented and seized with delirium whenever it departs from the reality of perceptible and actual things.” Could a better description of Cubism be given?

But Carlyle was not by avocation an art journalist, and therefore, perhaps, not worth listening to in this con- nection. No more is Houston Chamberlain, who, writing- in ‘‘ The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century,” says, ‘‘ But if the artist really succeeds in moving the spectator by the sense of sight i n awakening life b y form, how high must we estimate the importance of form? In a certain sense we might simply say, ‘Art is form.’ ” And again of music he writes : “ There soon came men who boldly asserted and taught the whole world that music- expressed nothing, signified nothing ; but was merely a kind of ornamentation a kaleidoscopic playing with relative vibrations. Such is the re t r ibu t ion that falls upon a n A r t tha,t leaves the ground of a c t u a l i t y Cubists please copy.

Oh, Mr. Editor, the blessed gods themselves fight on my side. Of Hulme, then, shall I be afraid? Nay, surely not. Conspuez le Cubisme ! Life and Ludovici for. ever ! Quack ! quack !

HAROLD B. HARRISON. P.S.-Mr. Hulme has a reference to Plato. The man

no doubt is responsible for a great deal, he has even been accused of Christianity (Religio Illicita) ; but, if in spite of the Fourth Dimension, he IS ever convicted of Cubism, I will undertake-no, not to meet Jack Johnson-but to, eat a Carving in Flenite with apple sauce.

MARTIN LUTHER.

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