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THE

NEW AGE A WEEKLY REVIEW OF POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND ART.

. Vol. VI. No. 26. THURSDAY, APRIL 28, 1910.

CONTENTS. PAGE

NOTES OP THE W E E K ... ... ... ... ... 601 FOREIGN AFFAIRS. By Stanhope of Chester ... ... 603 T H E PREVENTION OF DESTITUTION BILL. By C. D. Sharp ... 604 THEODORE ROOSEVELT. By Professor G. D. Herron ... 607 THE PHILOSOPHY OF A DON.--VI. ... ... ... 609 IN SANTA CROCE. By Francis Grierson. ... ... ... 611 EXHIBITITIS By Walter Sickert ... ... ... ... 612 BOOKS AND PERSONS. By Jacob Tonson. ... ... ... 613 PRESENT-DAY CRITICISM ... ... ... ... ... 614

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NOTES OF THE WEEK. “ I T was soon plain that the revolution which had struck down Parliament and the monarchy alike was without sanction from the nation a t large. Half the judges retired from the Bench, etc., etc. ” The passage occurs in Green’s “ History,” and refers to the Crom- wellian Revolution. The question for Liberals to ask themselves is whether such language will have to be recorded of the revolution now under discussion. W e naturally hope that so damning a verdict on the political instinct of the leaders in the anti-Lords crusade will never need to be made; but we are convinced that the verdict will be inevitable if the wild policy recommended by some of the Radical backwoodsmen is pursued to its bitter conclusion. * * *

I t is, as we have often said, to ensure that the revolution, whenever it shall be made, shall be made to last, that we urge on Liberals in particular and on Unionists who desire to avoid a conflict with the nation the considerations we have enumerated during these last eight weeks. With the passage of the Budget and the suspension of Parliamentary sittings during a month’s recess, there comes the opportunity that we have long awaited of resuming the reasonable discussion of the issues involved. To paraphrase a saying of Joubert’s : “ Reason until force is necessary ” ; and nobody will deny that, however necessary force may prove eventu- ally to be, the moment for its use has not come yet. Until i t has come, we at any rate shall continue to reason and to look facts in the face, even when they are most disagreeable.

THREEPENCE.

REVIEWS DRAMA. By Ashley Dukes ... ... ... ... 617 ART. By Huntly Carter ... ... ... ... ... 618 RECENT MUSIC. By Herbert Hughes ... ... ... 619 CORRESPONDENCE ... ... ... ... ... 619 ARTICLES OF THE WEEK ... ... ... ... ... 622

Chesterton ... ... ... ... ... ... €23

P A G E ... ... ... ... ... ... 614

BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF MODERN AUTHORS XXIII. G. K.

W e must deprecate in this phase of the long cam- paign the use by responsible and, in fact, leading journals of words and phrases which close the avenues to reason. For example, no good can possibly be clone by the “ Nation ” writing contemptuously of Unionists as “ baffled gamesters.” In the lesser issues of party politics such language is more picturesque than dangerous ; but in an issue involving a possible--we do not say probable--civil war, such terms are to be regretted. As a matter of fact, though we ourselves have no doubt whatever of the side on which political freedom and the hope of the future are to be found, the actual issues are so confused and mingled with other considerations that it is quite conceivable that the “ Nation’s ” Unionist opponents may have good grounds in appearance for their views. In some respects, indeed, we frankly admit that the Unionists have even better ground for their political attitude than many Radicals have. For many of the views expressed by Unionists there is, we have no doubt whatever, considerable electoral support; and not merely in constituencies reputed to be under the heel of the landed magnates, but among electors who freely apply their minds to political problems. Under these circumstances, offences of language addressed to representative Unionist leaders are offences offered to whole bodies of electors, that is, to organic parts of the nation ; and this is not a means of ensuring that the revolution, even if it be done, shall not be undone by the sections thus roughly and unnecessarily overridden.

* * * W e know that this attitude of ours will be mistaken

by partisans as an intention and an invitation to compromise. Nothing, however, is farther from our thoughts. It is both natural and praiseworthy that offers of compromise should be beginning to be made from the Unionist side; but we should regard it as disastrous if the offers were immediately accepted. On the other hand, it would be equally disastrous in our view if such offers, when made, were contumeliously rejected without even the appearance of consideration. I t is quite possible that in them we shall discover, if not a solution of the problem, at least a suggestion of the more knotty parts of it, and, in consequence, a hint to ourselves of the direction in which more reason and persuasion are necessary. For instance, it is plain that the principal ground of objection among Unionists against Mr. Asquith’s resolutions is that the resolutions

602 THE NEW AGE APRIL 28, 1910

will set up single chamber government. Now we do not for one moment believe that the resolutions, even if embodied in an Act, would do any such thing. On the contrary, as Mr. Balfour conclusively proved, the proposed Act, even if i t embodies the resolutions to their commas, will immensely enlarge the potential control of the Second Chamber over legislation. So much so, that we can readily believe that if the Lords-. were well advised, they would instantly close with the offer made to them and rehabilitate their House together with their power. But while this is true in fact, in the popular mind the argument that the Liberals are preparing to set up single chamber government will prove very damaging. And on this ground, in view of the necessity of carrying the nation with us, it is as well that anti-Lords speakers should be prepared to meet the objection and even to anticipate it. Such a piece of policy is plainly to be learned from the Unionist specification of grievances.

***

Again, it is difficult to make Radicals believe how inflammable is the material they are handling when they make use of the King’s name in their discussions. Addressing as we are an audience practically in camera, we may admit that the respect bordering on reverence in which the King is held is not merely distasteful but nauseating. Nobody can receive such idolatry without danger, and nobody with judgment can view it with pleasure. But the fact remains that the position of the King is such that if Utopia could be won only at the expense of a slight upon the King, the nation would not only forgo Utopia but visit with punishment the states- men who dared attempt to win i t at the price. I t is for this reason that we repeat with damnable iteration our warning that there is no royal road to revolution. We wish there were; we wish that King Edward VII. dared take the advice once offered him by Mr. Cecil Chesterton in these pages, to ally himself with his people in their attack upon an oligarchy that governs him no less than it governs them. But we know very well that there is no hope of that; and meanwhile it is folly to add to our popular difficulties by even appearing to bully the most popular personage in the Empire.

* * x-

There is no need, of course, in anticipating the election cry of the Unionists that the Crown is in danger, to instantly swear that it is not. The “ Daily News ”

in particular has alternately stormed and slobbered over the King’s name to an extent that makes “ P. W. W.’s ” articles perilously near burlesque. Such an attitude is a blow to the cause of democracy. On the other hand, there is no reason why we should not refrain both from bullying and from slobbering. Everybody, however earnest in the anti-Lords crusade, realises that the Crown has had no part or lot in the action of the peers, and consequently that it is unfair to make excessive demands of the King. However in fact the King. may be the keystone of the arch of privilege, the relations of the Lords and Commons are none of his making, nor is the Crown directly concerned in defining them. Theoretically and in the public mind, the Crown stands for England ; and an attempt, therefore, to bully or coerce the Crown (even the appearance of it, O Machiavelli !) will be regarded and actually felt by thousands as tantamount to an attempt to dragoon the nation. Is there any doubt about it? Will anybody deny i t? But the conclusion is that Liberals must be prepared to treat the Crown not merely with ostentatious courtesy but with the most patent generosity.

* * * W e cannot say that we think Mr. Asquith’s publicly

expressed decision to advise the King to create peers (if that is what his words were meant to convey) was well considered. The popular objections to such a course were conclusive to the Cabinet in January, and April did not see them lessened. True, it may be said that the Budget was in consequence enabled to be passed ; but we deny that the passing of the Budget required any such preliminary. Whatever he may

diplomatically have said to the contrary, Mr. Redmond would not have voted against the Budget after the Veto resolutions were passed, even without Mr. Asquith’s declaration regarding the Crown. The whole affair gives plenty of colour to the Unionist charge that the King has been sacrificed to the Irish Salome ; a charge which, though untrue, will do the Liberals a good deal of damage. As a matter of fact, we happen to know that the decision of the Cabinet to make the announcement was come to after the passage of the Budget had been assured. An act of unwise generosity.

* * *

The case for omitting any further references to the Crown in this matter is really overwhelming. In the first place, there is no manner of doubt that if the nation is set on the proposed Revolution, the Crown will not hesitate to make the guarantees if they are needed; but in the second place there is also no manner of doubt that such guarantees would not be needed. The House of Lords will not be so foolish as to admit several hundred new Peers into its ranks on any condition whatever. W e believe that rather than allow its blue blood to be contaminated in this public and wholesale way, the Lords would abdicate political power entirely. There is, in fact, no question that the proposed creations will never take place. But in sober fact there is a better guarantee than their fears that the King’s guarantees will not be needed. The “Times” has solemnly assured us that “ to a decisive majority approving the abolition of all Constitutional checks the House of Lords will bow, and there will be no need for the advice to the Crown of which Mr. Asquith speaks glibly.” “ But nothing,” the article continues, “short of a decisive majority can settle a question of this tremendous and overshadowing importance. “

* * *- That, WC maintain, leaves democrats nothing better

to be desired. It is, in popular phrase, “up to us” now to demonstrate that a decisive majority of the nation is in favour of the modification of the Lords’ veto. If there is n o such majority, or if that majority cannot be relied on to remain a majority for as long as you please, then what becomes of the Liberal contention to represent the popular feeling? The “ Nation,” we observe, has no fear whatever that an election in June or July would return a decisive Liberal majority. Then, in heaven’s name, what further is there to be done by going cap in hand to the King or by continuing to regard the Unionists as tricksters and gamesters? For our part, we do not remember a more straightforward offer of political sincerity than this of the Unionists as represented by the ‘‘Times. ” Cavil may be made to the sentences we have quoted that the nature of a “ decisive majority ” leaves the offer vague. But a “decisive majority” in politics is a psychological and not a merely arithmetical question. W e can conceive a majority of a hundred being generally admitted to be “decisive. ”

W e know of a majority of 124 which nobody seriously regards as decisive. In fact, it is, if we may say so, by the “feel” of an election that its result is measured; and we have no doubt whatever that if this “feeling” is in favour of Revolution on the morrow of the coming election, the majority will be regarded as decisive whatever its arithmetical dimensions.

***

We can only suppose that Liberals who still oppose a General Election on the single issue are in doubt of either or both of these majorities. In that case, as we urged last week, it is not merely impolitic to throw the onus of choice upon the King, but downright tyran- nical. The King might well say, in the words of King Pelasgus in Aeschylus’ “ “ Suppliants” :

“Make me not chooser ; for the choice is hard, The State must share my counsel, as I said, Though I be sovereign; lest my people say, Should aught untoward be sequel to this act, ‘ Honouring chance-comers, thou hast ruined Argos.’ ”

What would Liberals say in reply to that? Obviously, they would have nothing to say. * * *

W e may add to our arguments for an immediate

http://www.modjourn.org/render.php?view=mjp_object&id=mjp.2005.01.010

APRIL 28, 1910 THE NEW AGE 603

General Election two which have emerged since last week. W e have said that Compromise is in the air. Let us now add that without a General Election Com- promise will not merely be in the air, it will be in Parliament. These front bench politicians, simpletons must be told, do not meet at each other’s houses without discussing the situation in friendlier and more sensible terms than appear in Parliamentary reports. The fact is that Compromise has already been discussed, and the terms drafted. If the rank and file of the Liberal party combine with the Radical firebrands to make a General Election impossible, and yet continue to demand a Revolution by Royal prerogative, we have only to .say that their leaders (the Cabinet, that is,) will not hesitate to sell them, as the less dangerous alternative. For, under no circumstances whatever will the promise to create Peers during the present Parliament be either seriously asked for or seriously given. Is that plain enough? In fairness to THE NEW AGE, let it be remembered that we are not at this moment defending or attacking the advisability of creating Peers. Given the nation behind us, we would employ the Royal prerogative in the teeth, not only of the Lords, but of the King. But that is not the situation; or, at least, it is not conclusively proved. Conse- quently, the Cabinet is neither entitled nor is it disposed to take the high hand as Radicals would have it. In short, no General Election means Compromise without fail. * * *

In passing, we may consider the probable terms of such a Compromise. They have been already published in sketch i f not in detail. The financial veto would be abolished for ever; the House of Lords would be reformed somewhat on the lines of Lord Rosebery’s resolutions; and, in addition, a Liberal Government would be entitled to nominate a number of Lords of Parliament to sit in the Second Chamber during its tenure of office. That is the nucleus, at any rate, of a plan of Compromise which exists, to be put into practice with modifications should the Coalition, rank and file, attempt unauthorised violence. W e will not discuss the suggestion here; and we will hope that it need never be discussed.

Y * * The other argument in favour of a General

Election is the rising temper of the Unionist party. We are not among those who delight in seeing their political opponents driven into a corner and smashed without compunction. God knows if the indubitable authors of all our national miseries were actually at our mercy, whether we should have the hardihood to dispatch them. Fortunately for us, the case is not so tragical. We believe that the future of Democracy demands the abolition of the House of Lords; we believe that equality is the first condition of freedom and the abolition of class rule the first condition of equality. Rut we are prepared to believe also that there are not only many friends of democracy among the Unionists, but many enemies of Democracy among the Liberals. Till it comes to the arbitrament of the ballot-box, therefore, we are content to reason as best we can and with what persuasion our case can offer. In any event, since, as Mr. Austen Chamberlain has recently said, everybody is wiser than anybody, we are prepared to leave the decision to the verdict of the nation. That k i n g our view, the rising temper of the Unionists does not gratify us in any way. W h a t is worse, it augurs no good to the cause in which we are contending. Should violence be attempted and the Crown coerced to make Peers, in the circumstances of national doubt revealed by the last election, we are assured that many thousands of Unionists would, in familiar language, go on strike against the Government that indulged in it. Are Radi- cals prepared for tha t ?

[ W e shall have pleasure in presenting our readers next week with the Index of the volume which the present issue of THE NEW AGE closes. Wi th the next issue of THE NEW AGE will also be included a special Supplement devoted to modern science and edited by Professor Patrick Geddes.]

Foreign Affairs. By Stanhope of Chester.

T H E White Slave Traffic has been the subject of another International Conference. This Traffic will never be suppressed so long as the rich are not penalised for their employment of procurers and procuresses. The White Slave Traffic is one evil which cannot be laid at the door of the poor. The middle and rich classes alone can pay the price for the girls who are the victims of this Traffic. The National Vigilance Asso- ciation has never undertaken the prosecution. of a rich man or woman for offences of this kind. I t is an association which is run as a moral hobby. I t is absurd to imagine that this disgusting traffic is confined to girls. Boys and young men are often decoyed at the instigation of wealthy men and women to be seduced into a life of vice. Unhappily, this unnatural side of the moral cancer is neglected by legists and reformers.

* * *

There is a strange myth current that the Jew has a higher standard of morality than the Christian. This myth has about a s much foundation as the theory that the Jew’s abominable financial methods a re due to their having been persecuted in the more ,reputable employ- ments. “ ‘The Jewish Chronicle ” has frankly spoken out on the subject of the Jews’ connection with the White Slave Traffic. Its comments throw some light upon the so-called finer sense of sexual and domestic morality among the Jews :-

“ Hence it has come about that all who know anything of the conditions prevailing in the White Slave Traffic are agreed that if the Jew could be eliminated it would shrink and shrivel to comparatively small proportions. Do we not owe it as a bounden duty to humanity, since Jews are the chief offenders, that we Jews shall be foremost in ridding the world of the scourge of this noxious calling ? ” The reason for the Jews’ preference for this “ noxious calling ” is simple. The profits of the White Slave Traffic, like the profits of high finance and rapacious moneylending, are enormous. The Christian is often sneered at for his alleged jealousy of the worldly posses- sions of the Jews. The high-minded Christian, who believed in Jewish emancipation, has been disgusted at finding that the Judaic plutocracy has obtained control of society by means of financial moneylending and procuration profits. That is the real explanation of the steadily-growing anti-Semitic feeling in England. The Jews, moreover, have consistently ignored humani- tarian movements. Their action in regard to the White Slave Traffic has been forced upon them by the criticisms of the Roman Catholic workers against this traffic.

***

The growing dangers to health from the prevalence of prostitution are attracting considerable international attention. The importation of the Chinese slaves-at the instance of the Judaic plutocracy-into the Trans- vaal without their womenfolk compelled the Government to allay the evil by permitting native women intercourse with the coolies. Now that the coolies have returned to China, these native women have been haunting the streets of the towns. The result has been a frightful outbreak of syphilis in Rhodesia and the Transvaal, which is threatening to spread all over South Africa. In California there is a wave of venereal disease. The cant of the Puritan mind of the American citizen may be judged by the circumstance that the Californian

604 THE NEW A G E APRIL 2 8 , 1910

Press would not refer to the name of “ The Association for the Study and Prevention of Syphilis and Gonorrhea. “ Journalistic ingenuity described the Asso- ciation by every conceivable connotation but its regis- tered name ! The increase in these two diseases is a menacing feature of the social evil. The churches and society are largely to blame, as they have set up the utterly false standards of morality which regulate sexual life on the one hand, and produce social and unnatural vice on the other. * * *

“ The Methods of the Indian Police,” by Mr. Frederic Mackarness is a pamphlet which should bring the blush of shame to Lord Morley’s aged face. The Reign of Terror now proceeding in India would be unbelievable but for the deadly records contained in this pamphlet. What are the means by which Indian police uphold law and order?

“Here is the horrible story of what the police did to the woman, in the very words of the official resolution. On the evening of June 7, the woman Gulab Bano complained that the police had maltreated her. The woman made a statement to the following effect : ‘ I was hung to the roof by the superintendent and two head constables in my village during the investigation, with a rope in my legs, and a baton smeared with green chillies was thrust up my anal opening.’ The Civil Surgeon examined her and found her terribly inflamed and ulcerated, a condition which, in his opinion, could only have been caused by an assault similar to that described by the prisoner. Under this agony she confessed to have poisoned her husband. She was committed for trial, convicted and sentenced to be. hanged by the Sessions Judge. The Appeal Court judges quashed the conviction, and exhorted the Executive “ to institute a most searching inquiry “ into the conduct of the police. The Govern- ment of the Punjab came to the decision that the woman had inflicted the torture upon herself ! She was discharged on December 12, 1908. On January IO, 1909, she “ died of fever at Police Station Pindi Gheb.”

* * * How and why she died a t a police station has not been

discovered, nor has the Punjab Government explained why her death was concealed until October, 1909. The Appeal Judges then read in court a resolution in reply to the Punjab Government, reiterating their demand for a full investigation and stating : “ No inquiry, such a s was suggested by us a s desirable in our judgment of December 12, 1908, into the conduct of the police in regard to this case, has been made by the Executive Authorities. “ The Executive retorted :-

“If your lordships find yourselves unable to concur in his decision, the Lieutenant-Governor regrets that it should be so, but so far as the Government is concerned the decision is a final one, and as such has been communicated to the Head of the Police.” * * *

In a second case, in November, 1909, Mr. Hamnett, Sessions Judge of Madura, stated :-

“There are strong grounds for thinking that the informer’s story, that he was tortured by the police, is substantially true, and that enquiry into the conduct of the police is necessary.” Mr. Dundas in June, 1909, at Rawal Pindi, acquitted six men, charged on their own “ confessions ” with murder, on the ground that no murder had been committed. “ The police investigation has been not only unsatisfactory, but also open to more serious charges which have been freely made. The main charge by the defence is torture. As to the torture, there is no doubt that Ghulam Mohammed had and still has marks on his wrists and ankles.” Such is British administration in India in the twentieth century. The latest atrocity is the sentence on a journalist charged with writing three “ seditious ” articles, of ten years trans- portation in respect of each article.

The Prevention of Destitution Bill. A Reply to Mr. Belloc, M. P.

By C. D. Sharp, Editor of “ T h e Crusade,” the Organ of the Committee for the

Break-up of the Poor-Law. THERE was a completeness about Mr. Charrington’s article in last week’s NEW AGE which makes me very loth to add anything to the controversy. I gather, however, that Mr. Belloc takes his own criticisms of the Prevention of Destitution Bill very seriously indeed, and that since he is a member of Parliament he has a right to expect a serious and more or less detailed reply.

Let me then deal first with a complaint which appears in Mr. Belloc’s opening sentence and reappears a t in- tervals throughout his article, to the effect that the Webbs’ scheme concerns “ the lives of people much poorer than themselves.” How Mr. Belloc ever came to put on paper a personal sneer so silly as this I cannot imagine. As a piece of ill-mannered foolishness it could scarcely be excelled, even by the honourable gentleman who told his constituents that Lloyd George had fixed the supertax to begin where his own salary ended. The latter had, I believe, the excuse that he was making an electioneering speech, whilst Mr. Belloc’s equally fine effort is part of what is supposed to be a weighty, sincere and considered judgment upon a very widely and honestly supported scheme of reform. To what sort of Poor Law reform, nay, to what conceivable piece of social legislation might not such a sneer be applied ? I t is hard indeed to see how Socialists, or social reformers of any sort, can hope to escape it except by confining their attention exclusively and for ever to the question of the House of Lords. Perhaps that is what Mr. Belloc, as a good Liberal, would really like.

Let us pass, however, to Mr. Belloc’s main complaint, that the proposals of the Prevention of Destitu- tion Bill have nothing to do with Socialism. I t is a strange complaint to come from the pen of a militant Anti-Socialist. I t might have saved trouble if Mr. Belloc had addressed it direct to the Anti-Socialist Union. But I would not appear to grudge an opponent a new mode of attack, and so I will endeavour to reply as fully and faithfully as I can.

“Let anyone,” writes Mr. Belloc, “ pick up this document, the Prevention of Destitution Bill, and consult the whole of its 95 clauses, to discover, if he can, in any of them the machinery by which it may tend to put the control of the means of production into the hands of the mass of the citizens.” I am bound to admit that in this matter Mr. Belloc’s suspicions are well founded. The searcher will look in vain, the machinery is not there. Socialists have no doubt attempted many quaint and wrong-headed things in their time, but I do not think they are ever likely to attempt to nationalise the means of production, distribution, and exchange in a Bill purporting to reform the Poor Law. It is a jolly idea, and may one day perhaps find the place it deserves in the mythology of Fabian guile. But in the meantime I am afraid that even that arch-juggler Mr. Sidney Webb would shrink aghast from a scheme so unquestionably devious.

This, however, is no answer to Mr. Belloc’s more general question : “ What has this scheme to do with Socialism? ” Now I frankly admit that it is a very difficult thing to produce a satisfactory definition of Socialism. Mr. Belloc, who is very fond of hard and fast definitions where other people’s opinions are concerned, will no doubt deny this and produce one of half a dozen words. But if his definition fails to satisfy the great mass of people in Europe who call themselves Socialists, it will not, with all his logic and authority


behind it, be of very much practical use. This much, however, Mr. Belloc may take from me, that no Socialist that I have ever come across or heard of in this country or abroad would accept “ the social ownership of the means of production ” as anything like a complete definition of Socialism. I t is a convenient formula, expressing an essential feature of the revolution which Socialists seek to bring about. But it takes no account whatever of another feature which Mr. Belloc will find occupying an important place in every Socialist creed, and which deals with the moral relationship between the individual and the community.

Just as “ laisser faire ” meant much more than mere private ownership, so Socialism means much more than mere social ownership. “ Laisser faire ” denied the existence of any mutual responsibility between the individual and the community except the bare obligation of the former to avoid crime and of the latter to protect property. Socialism, on the contrary, affirms and ex- tends the idea of that mutual responsibility, and exalts it to the position of the first principle of social organisa- tion. That is to say, we desire, qua Socialists, to de- velop and cultivate to the utmost on the one hand the devotion of the individual to the service of the State, and on the other hand the recognition by the State of its great responsibility for the welfare of every citizen. The hope of Socialism depends absolutely upon the full development of this mutual relation and every change, therefore, that in any way promotes it is part and parcel of Socialism. Take, for example, changes like the establishment of Old Age Pensions and of the public feeding of school children, which were actively advocated for years by all Socialist bodies in this country. Both explicitly recognised the responsibility of the State for its more helpless citizens, and both, though especially the former, have tended to make thousands of poor citizens regard the State as something more than the mere protector of the property of the rich. I t is entirely vital to Socialism that everyone should feel a personal advantage and a personal interest in the existence of organised society ; and these two reforms (to which, of course, might be added most of the Factory, Education, and Public Health Acts), being a considerable step in this direction, are rightly regarded by Socialists as instalments, if minor instalments, of Socialism. Yet none of them has anything directly to do with the ownership of the means of production. I might show that there was an indirect connection, but it is not necessary for the purposes of my present argument.

Now the foregoing explanation fully justifies, from the Socialist point of view, the aims a t all events of the Prevention of Destitution Bill. Those aims are, firstly, as the title suggests, to prevent the occurrence of destitution ; and, secondly, to provide for those who are necessarily dependent in a way more adequate, more efficient, and less cruel and inquisitorial than the present Poor Law system. The present Poor Law, taken as a whole, is indiscriminately “ deterrent,” that is to say, it is based on the idea that the community should repudiate all responsibility for the individual to the utmost limits tolerated by civilisation. The new scheme denies the whole philosophy of deterrence, and substitutes for it the philosophy of mutual responsibility. As a single example, under the present Poor Law we withhold public medical assistance as much and as long as we dare, under the new regime we shall provide it readily and generously, but we shall recognise at the same time the Erewhonian principle that to prevent disease in himself or in his dependents is a duty which the individual owes to the community. That is why Socialists regard the proposals of the Minority Report as eminently worthy of their support.

There are other reasons, of course, of which I will mention one, because I think it is a matter which Mr. Belloc does not at present understand. It is commonly

imagined that the driving force behind Socialism is the extreme poverty of a section of the community, and that our doctrines find most favour where misery and degradation are most rife. The facts, however, are diametrically opposed to this theory. Socialists have learnt by long and bitter experience that it is not the destitute or sweated worker who makes revolutions or who even wants revolutions. Just as a man who gets beyond a certain degree of starvation must be forcibly nourished in order that he may regain the desire for food, so there is a large class of persons in this country who must have a higher standard of life imposed on them from above-or, as Mr. Belloc would put it, must be managed by people richer than themselves -in order that discontent and the very desire for liberty and independence may be reborn in them.

I t is the well-led, well-clothed, well-housed artisan, earning comparatively good wages in a well-regulated industry who turns most readily to the Socialist ideal. The chronically under-employed, underfed, underpaid man turns rather to the ideal of the soup kitchen. Mr. Belloc, with his intellectualist fancies about Democracy, may not believe it, but there are men and women at the bottom of society as personally worthless as any of his favourite Hebraic company promoters, people whose utmost dreams go no further than a never-ending suc- cession of soup kitchens and blanket societies where no questions are asked. Such people leave the local S.D.P. or I.L.P. branch severely alone, and probably vote-if they have a vote-for the Tariff Reformer who finances the soup kitchen or the Nonconformist capitalist who provides the blankets. Whilst such a class exists Socialism will be impossible. Hence we are justified from our point of view-though not, of course, from Mr. Belloc’s, who does not want Socialism-in doing our utmost to get rid of it.

That, for the present, is all the answer I can give to Mr. Belloc’s main question. Let us now refer to some of his more specific criticisms of the machinery (not, be it noted, the aims) of the Prevention of Destitution Bill.

His first complaint is that the administration. of Public Assistance is to be in the hands of Committees of the County and Borough Councils. I can only ask what is Mr. Belloc’s alternative? Would he have a number of separate ad hoc authorities or would be submit every case (as in one place he seems to suggest) to a popular vote or to a Court of Justice? The two latter alternatives do not merit discussion. The former raises the old issue between the ad hoc and the general authority. That issue has long ago been fought and won, as far as most Democrats are concerned. If you want the utmost Democratic control, the ad hoc authority is the worst possible instrument for your purpose, since it invariably tends to become a sort of hole-and- corner tyrant. Within reasonable limits, the more you centralise the control of the various branches of administration in the hands of a single elected body, doing its work mainly through committees, the more possible it becomes for popular pressure to be brought to bear. That, I repeat, is the deliberate conclusion reached by persons whose concern for the real sovereignty of the people is even less open to doubt than is Mr. Belloc’s, and whose experience of the actual working of Demo- cratic machinery in local affairs is, to put it a great deal too low, not inferior to his.

“ gives to the Council the ‘ specific power to apportion money arbitrarily to those whom they happen to favour ’-’ another committee will decide who is and who is not mentally defective ’--it is for the Council to decide whether he (any applicant) shall have relief or not’-the committee alone decide whether one of their protégés is receiving benefits from several sources at once or not.” The last sentence illustrates the absurdity of the whole thing. Does Mr. Belloc really wish such questions of fact as whether or not in any given case there is over- lapping to be decided by popular vote? In point of fact, this particular matter will probably be dealt with in practice, not even by a committee, but by a single tyrant-a sort of minor “ Statistician”-to be called the Registrar. It is really very difficult to reply to such vague and violent denunciations until one knows some-

This Bill, fulminates Mr. Belloc,


thing of the alternative methods which Mr. Belloc would propose. If he can suggest a way by which popular control over these things can be rendered in any degree more effective he will have earned the gratitude, not only of people who have spent their lives studying the question, but of the whole human race.

I come now to Part III. of the Bill, which deals with the Able-bodied and the Unemployed, and sets up Training Establishments and Detention Colonies. Mr. Mr. Belloc is so upset at these proposals that he calls the Training Establishments " compounds " where men will be kept within " high walls " whilst their families are relieved " in some place apart." As you read his burning description you can almost see the chains and the lash and the solitary cells in the dark back- ground. You might, indeed, once more be in the throes of the 1906 Election, but that instead of pigtails you perceive the short-cropped hair of the British con- vict. And when, having come to the end, you remember the prosaic truth out of which this horror has been created, you realise, not perhaps for the first time, the splendour of Mr. Belloc's literary gifts. For these establishments are not, even for the first part, if a t all, to be residential. Men will attend them every morning as they attend their work, when they can find any, and will return in the evening to the "placer; apart," where their wretched families are confined-or in the vulgar tongue, to their homes. It is true that all these arrangements are to be made for persons who are poorer than either Mr. Webb or Mr. Belloc, but I do not see any way out of this unless Mr. Belloc will resign his seat in favour of someone less wealthy.

I t is evidence of Mr. Bellsoc's controversial ability that he is careful to make no distinction between the Training Establishments and the Detention Colonies. He does not assert in so many words that they are one and the same thing, but the suggestio falsi is quite successfully contrived. The compulsory methods of the Detention Colony are a regrettable necessity. Ap- plied to those for whom the Training Establishments are intended they would amount to gross tyranny. The distinction between the two is, therefore, as vital to a reasonable understanding of the scheme as the suppres- sion of it is to Mr. Belloc's case.

Before leaving this point I want to ask a question of Mr. Belloc. The loathing which he expresses for the inhuman wickedness of applying the principle of compulsion to any section of the poor is so extreme that. one would suppose he would rather go to the stake than be himself a party to anything of the kind. Yet when a Bill was brought in by the Labour party containing a Detention Colony Clause corresponding almost exactly with the one in the present measure, Mr. Belloc so far from denouncing it voted for it ! Why is his attitude, to put it mildly, so different when the proposal comes up again as part of a scheme devised by Mr. Sidney Webb? I have no doubt Mr. Belloc has a satisfactory answer to this question, but I should like to know what it is.

With Mr. Belloc's more general attack upon that great body of regulative legislation which has been won by the trade unions I have not space to deal. When he says that it is all leading to what he calls a servile State, I am confined to the statement that it is doing nothing of the sort. He makes, for instance, a bare assertion to the effect that in regulating the relations between employers and employed " you are building barriers which prevent the collection into public . . . hands of capital which is now owned by a privileged few." I can only reply that in the opinion of people who want that collective ownership-which Mr. Belloc does not--the very reverse is the truth.

An attack upon regulative legislation, very similar to Mr. Belloc's, was made in last week's NEW AGE by Mr. C. H. Norman, who referred to Labour Exchanges as " ' Blackleg ' institutions." Mr. Norman cannot be accused of an anti-Socialist bias, and so one must put down his attitude to sheer ignorance. At the last Trade Union Congress Labour Exchanges were discussed a t some length. Every speaker was favourable, and everyone referred to the desirability of removing the particular suspicious prejudice which Mr. Norman

appears to harbour. Mr. Will Thorne, M.P. (Gas- workers and S.D.P.), and Mr. C. W. Bowerman, M.P. (Compositors), were both at considerable pains to emphasise the effect of Labour Exchanges in checking " blacklegging " by malting the bargain take place not in the back streets, but in the wholesome glare of pub- licity.

I have referred to this point here because whilst Mr. Norman's attitude is apparently identical with that of Mr. Belloc, he is not quite such a clever controversialist and is apt to give himself away by being too explicit, thus revealing the significant isolation in which he stands. When Mr. Belloc and Mr. Norman (let me hasten to say that my association of the names of these two gentlemen i s simply a matter of convenience and is not intended to flatter either of them) tell us that on matters like " blacklegging" and industrial regulation the entire Trade Union and Socialist worlds are wrong and they are right, it is surely unnecessary to argue with them. It is enough to point out that neither has anyone behind him but the other.

One word in conclusion. I think that some Socialists, especially perhaps readers of THE NEW AGE, have been inclined to regard Mr. Belloc's political attitude with a certain kindly tolerance on account of his readiness to abuse the Capitalist system. I wish to point out that that sort of abuse is quite cheap, and in this case practically confined to the columns of THE NEW AGE. Mr. Belloc's dissatisfaction with the existing system only appears when he wishes to gain, the ears of Socialists for his attacks upon Socialism. He produces his favourite bugbear, the " Servile State," just as Lord Rosebery produces his, the Constitution of Costa Rica; and like Lord Rosebery he criticises but does not attempt to create. Consider once more his attitude to the Prevention of Destitution Bill. He is righteously indignant a t proposals by which vagrants can be trained, by force if necessary, to maintain their dependents ; he says nothing of the existing law under which they can be, and are, flogged and imprisoned for twelve months. He pictures the tyranny of the country councils and their officials he is silent about guardians and relieving officers. He vehemently, even offensively, ,execrates the whole scheme for breaking up the Poor Law; he has at no time exhibited the slightest compunction regarding the neglected infants, the semi- starved and diseased children, the abused imbeciles the unfortunate aged, who are to-day incarcerated in that ever-damned but everlasting institution the General Mixed Workhouse nor regarding any of the other inhumanities which this Bill is designed to remove.

In short, Mr. Belloc is frankly obstructionist and nothing else. I am not in a position to judge of his intentions, but that is what his actions amount to. He writes as a friend of the poor and of the oppressed, but only to devote all his abilities to denouncing the attempts of other people to improve their lot. Our present Poor Law system is a disgrace to a civilised country. It need\s reconstruction not in ten or twenty years time but now. What is Mr. Belloc prepared to do about it ? Has he an alternative schemle? and, if so, what steps is he taking in the matter? He has now been in the House of Commons for over four years. Has he in that time done anything or written anything or said anything there or elsewhere to awaken public opinion to the evils of our Poor Law or of our capitalist system generally? To put it broadly : If I were to assert that Mr. Belloc sits in Parliament simply and solely for the status and other personal advantages which that position gives him, could he point to a single action o r speech of his since his election in 1906 that would disprove my statement ? I don't assert that it is so, and even if it were I should have no right to complain. There are a great number of men who go to Parliament for private rather than public reasons, and as long as we do nothing to prevent the electors from voting for them we must not grumble. Rut when a man who has done nothing to show he does not belong to this category speaks as if he were the sole representative of democracy, the sole friend of the great British proletariat, we have a right to tell him that we find his pretentions wearisome.

APRIL' 28, 1910 THE NEW A G E 607

Theodore Roosevelt. By Professor G. D. Herron.

I. I HAVE been asked by the NEW AGE to write about Theodore Roosevelt. I t is difficult to write of so dominant and delusive a personality without in some measure using language that fits the subject. In both word and deed is Mr. Roosevelt himself so terribly personal that it is impossible to write about him in a n impersonal way. To speak of him in any terms that a t all characterise him is to lay oneself open to the charge of personal feeling. I confess I do feel deeply about Mr. Roosevelt, but it is because I believe him to be the most malign and menacing personal force in the political world of to-day. He is the embodiment of man 's return to the brute-the living announcement that man will again seek relief from the sickness of society In the bonds of an imposing savagery. He is a sign, and one of the makers, of universal decay. H e is the glorification of what is rotten and reactionary in our civilisation. To speak calmly of one whose life and achievement are a threat and an insult to the holiest spirit o f mankind, this is not easy for anyone who cares about mankind, or carries within himself the heart-ache of the generations. About other men one may write judicially and leave something for inference. But one can only truly write about Mr. Roosevelt by telling the truth about him; and that means the use cf plain and terrible words. That is the tragedy and terror of having to speak of him a t all.

Quite recently I have been criticised for saying that Theodore Roosevelt is the most degrading influence in o u r American public life and history. I said this because it was true. It is what many thoughtful Ameri- cans khow; it is what no one with a reputation to lose will say. W e a r e all afraid of him; we are afraid of him just as we are afraid of the plotted revenge, of the bludgeon from behind, of the knife in the back, of the their in the dark. No one knows what this man will do if one enters the lists against him; but whatever he does, it will be to avoid the question at issue, and to come at you unawares : to seize an advantage that only the dishonorable and shameless accept. Whatever he does, he will never fight you fair; he will never strike a blow that is not foul. In some respects, Mr. Roose- velt has the field quite to himself; the majority of men have still some rudimentary feelings about the truth; and if not this, then an ordinary sense of humour, as well as the lack of opportunity, saves them from any foolish attempt at competing with Mr. Roosevelt in the a r t cf clothing flagrant falsehood with the garments of moral pomp. I t is notorious, too, that no man will now contend with Mr. Roosevelt because no man will so bemean himself as to fight upon Mr. Roosevelt's terms. I t is also notorious that Mr. Roosevelt will avail himself of this fact, as he did in his controversy with Mr. Edward H. Harr iman; as he did in his amazing and disgraceful articles against Socialism; a s he did when he condemned, for the sake of his own popularity with a capitalist press, the two Labour leaders Mayer and Haywood, while these men were still on trial for their lives. He knows that his most bitter opponent will observe some of the decencies of combat. Observing none of these himself, he has all the choice of weapons ; and he chooses without reference to the weapons of his opponent. Indeed, no white man would be found with the controversial weapons of Theodore Roosevelt upon his person And no white man has had, or would wish to have, Mr. Roosevelt's opportunity for investing the

most skulking personal revenges with the air of a cham- pion of the public good.

But it is not against a mere individual that I protest. I object to Mr. Roosevelt from the fact that he voices and incarnates the fundamental social immorality, the doctrine that might makes right-that no righteousness is worth the having except that which is enforced by brute words, or brute laws, or brute fists, or brute armies. Mr. Roosevelt stands for a life that belongs to the lower barbarian and to the jungle. He has set before the youth of the nation the glory of the beast instead of the glory of the soul. The nation has been hypnotised and saturated with his horrible ideals, as well a s by his possessional and intimidating personality. Of course, the nation is itself to blame, and in this reveals its own decadence, for the heroes we worship, and the ideals we cherish, are the revelations of ourselves. Yet it is this one man, more than all others, who has awakened the instinct to kill and to conquer, and all the sleeping savagery of the people. It is he who has put the blood-cup to the lips of the nation, and who bids the nation drink. And one of the strangest ironies that ever issued from academic ignorance, and what will prove to be one of the historic stupidities, is the endow- ment of this naked militarist with the Nobel Peace Prize; and this because, in the interests of the great bankers and of his own military policy, he was instru- mental in depriving Japan of the full fruits of her victory.

Theodore Roosevelt leads a recession in the life of the world. H e betokens the enfeeblement of mankind, its lack of a living faith. H e is the ominous star of the New Dark Ages, wherein the faithless soul of man will seek forgetfulness and excitement in military murder and political bestiality. It is true that Mr. Roosevelt has imposed upon the world an impression of strength ; but he is essentially a weakling, an anthropological problem, a case for the pathologist. His psychology is that of the savage at one time, and of the hysteric at another. Intellectually, he is an atavism, the re- crudescence of an antique type; he belongs with the rulers of the Roman degeneracy, or with the lesser Oriental despots.

And Mr. Roosevelt is the last man whose name should be spoken of in connection with democracy. H e does not believe in democracy a t all ; nor in freedom a t all. He is no more of a democrat than Genghis Khan or Louis XI. He likes liberty less than Cromwell did; and Cromwell liked liberty less, by far, than did Charles I. Only these are big names to put beside the name of a man so morally small, so ignorant of essential exceilence, so ruthlessly inconsiderate of his fellows, a s Theodore Roosevelt.

But supposing Mr. RooseIvelt were one of the soul’s gentlemen, supposing he politically meant to do social good, it is by methods that belong to the darkest phases of human history--the methods of the tyrant who believes his own will to be the only righteousness, and al! opposition to that will to be the one unrighteousness; and who proceeds to stamp its opposers with what he means to be an indelible infamy, or to kill if he can. As the best example of this sort, Cromwell tyrannized over a nation and over the souls of men, for their own salvation and for the glory of God. And this is the method by which every tyranny or tyrant seeks justifica- tion. I t is the only method Mr. Roosevelt cares for or believes in.

Yet no man ever ruled other men for their own good; no man was ever rightly the master of the minds or bodies of his brothers; no man ever ruled other men for anything except for their own undoing, and for his own brutalisation. The possession of power over others is inherently destructive-both to the possessor of the


power and to those over whom it is exercised. And the great man of the future, in distinction from the great man of the past, is he who will seek to create power in the peoples, and not to gain power over them. The great man of the future is he who will refuse to be great at all, in the historic sense; he is the man who will literally lose himself, who will altogether diffuse himself, in the life of humanity. All that any man can do for a people, all that any man can do for another man, is to set the man or the people free. Our work, whensoever or wheresoever we would do good, is to open to men the gates of life-- to lift up the heavenly doors of opportunity

This applies to society as well as to the individual man. If the collective man will release the individual man and let him go, then the individual will a t last give himself gloriously, in the fullness of his strength, unto the society that sets the gates and the highways of opportunity before him. Give men Opportunity, and opportunity will give you men; for opportunity is God, and freedom to embrace opportunity is the glory of God.

II. Yet, having said all this, I venture to prophesy that

Mr. Roosevelt has not yet reached the high noon of his day. And the day is Roosevelt’s, you may be sure of that. It will be a long day, too, and a dark day, before it is done. He will return to the American nation and rule it, as he means to do. It is not merely that the nation is obsessed with Theodore Roosevelt; it is that a situation is arriving in which he will be the psychological necessity. He himself foresees this necessity; the nation is instinct with it. He knew what he was doing when he made Taft President. Roosevelt made Taft President because he knew that Taft would make Roosevelt necessary. He knew that Taft would be a failure; that he would further confound the con- fusion toward which the nation was drifting.

But drifting is hardly the word. With awful swift- ness we are moving toward long crisis and abysmal disaster-crisis and disaster in which the rest of the world will be involved. I t is the inevitable outcome of the capitalist system that the workers of the world will become too poor to buy the things they make. We are already in sight of that culmination in America. W e must hence reach the last accessible man and com- pel him to buy; we must sell to the uttermost man on the outermost edge of the earth, or our economic world- machine will fall in upon itself. W e Americans must have the market of China, else there will come a sudden day when twenty million men will be in the streets without work. And twenty millions of men will not go down to starvation without bringing down the national structure with them.

Now Capitalism knows that Mr. Roosevelt is the only man that can be depended upon to get for it the Chinese market. It also knows perfectly well that labour has not in the world a more ruthless enemy than Mr. Roosevelt. At heart he holds the working class in contempt. He despises the dream of equality. He hates the whole modern effort of the soul toward freedom-freedom of labour, freedom spiritual, freedom social. Notwithstanding his bluster about the trusts, and bis determination to control to some extent the course of industrial operation, it is in the interest of Absolutism and against Socialism, that he has worked. Intelligent Capitalism knows that Roosevelt can be trusted, as no other man can be trusted, to see it through It is, therefore, to Roosevelt that Capitalism will turn to conquer its new worlds for it; to Roosevelt that Capitalism will turn to finally crush the resistance of labour. It is to Roosevelt that all the vested interests of the present civilisation will turn in the time of their danger or dissolution. The Caesars arose as the necessary chief of police of the Roman propertied or plunder- i n g class. So will Roosevelt and his successors arise : they will arise to police the world in the interests of its possessors.

There could be only one alternative to Roosevelt in the dreadful years that are coming to America : a thoroughly organised Socialist movement of the highest order; a Socialist movement that would be profoundly

revolutionary, resolutely reaching to the roots of things, refusing any longer to tinker or cornpromise with the present evil world; yet a Socialist movement with its Pattern in the Mount-a Socialist movement led by the glowing vision and charged with the highest idealism as to ultimate freedoms and values. I t is for such a revolution the whole world waits : a revolution that shall be a synthesis of the life of man; a revolution wherein men shall mightily and decisively make their own world; a revolution that shall make all material facts and forces to be the medium and music of the free human spirit; a revolution that shall make the world’s civilisation an invitation to the soul of every man to express itself and rejoice. Yet there is not such a Socialist movement in the world now, and the last place to look for its coming is in America. Nowhere else has Individualism borne such deadly fruit; nowhere else is there such intellectual and moral servility; nowhere else is there such actual ignorance of the new world that is besetting the old. W e have never had a Republic in anything but name. W e have always and only had the administration of society in the interests of the dominant financial bureaucracy. And it is well known, now, that our whole system of government has long since broken down. America is practically being governed without law. There is absolutely no constitutional method of social reform. There will be a long time of darkness and suffering, of hypocrisy and compromise, and of depthless disaster, before there will be any real social awakening in America, or any effective spiritual fund upon which to draw for a revolution. I t is for this reason Mr. Roosevelt will become the nation’s psychological necessity. There is nothing for it but the strong man-the man who will govern us without law. Mr. Roosevelt knows this; and he has known it for many years; and all his life he has been getting ready for it. And not only America, perhaps Great Britain as well, will turn to Roosevelt as the only force relentless and purposeful enough to carry it through the beginnings of the New Dark Ages. And, as I have already said, it is when the world is enfeebled and faithless that it turns to the strong man.

Upon such a crisis the nations are turning now. W e are approaching one of those times when the world returns to brute force; when civilisation is resolved back into its primal elements; when the tyrant seems to be the only saviour. And Mr. Roosevelt is the man for this approaching time. And this approaching time is working out the day and the hour of the fulfilment of Mr. Roosevelt’s ambitions.

So I make my prophecy : Roosevelt will return to America, and he will rule it. He carries the nation in the hollow of his hand. He will be elected President. There will be war with Japan for the market of China. There will be glutted markets, under-consumption of economic goods, universal unemployment, and the sudden standstill of industry and the paralysis of even the semblance of government. Roosevelt will seem the only salvation from Anarchy. When he returns to Washington he will return to stay as he means to stay. He is by nature a man utterly lawless, and the nation is now practically lawless. He has been all his life getting ready for this one goal, and the decadent nation is rapidly preparing the goal for him. The monthly magazine-reformers and Mr. Pierpont Morgan are alike turning to Mr. Roosevelt as the nation’s hope. All things are preparing his way. The times and he are joining themselves together perfectly. Theodore Roosevelt has had his dawn : he will now have his day; and it will be one of the harshest and bitterest days in the still-continuing pilgrimage of mankind through the wilderness.

Now, having made my prophecy, let me be judged by it ten years hence-not now. And ever, while I live, shall I pray that my prophecy may prove false. For the sake of men, and for the joy of my soul, may it be that this word of the future may not c i n e true. Rather let it be that some sudden awakening as to what is really true and good and beautiful, some sudden precipitation of the yet unevolved spirit of man, may deliver us from the engulfing misery of the New Dark Ages which the coming of Roosevelt betokens.


The Philosophy of a Don. VI,-A Plea for Plagiarism.

CERTAIN mean and malevolent persons have written to inform me that they have recognised in my " Philo- sophy " ideas and expressions which they remember having seen in the works of other Masters. This, if I mistake not, in plain English, amounts to a charge of plagiarism.

If the matter concerned myself only, I would, of course, have treated it with serene and contemptuous indifference. But as it really involves a question of principle which afftects the whole of literature-past, present, and to come-I think that silence on my part would be a crime against mankind

Before pleading my case in the august court of the great reading public, I thought it advisable to take counsel with my friend Shav, feeling assured that he who has emancipated himself from so many scruples would not share this popular prejudice against plagiarism.

I was disappointed. " You deserve all you've got," he said briefly, after

having listened to my grievance without the least sign of sympathy.

" Your capacity for saying the wrong thing at the wrong moment, my dear Shav, is, not to put too fine a point upon it, wonderful. May I presume to ask what is the ground, if any, upon which you base your condemnation ? "

" As a general rule," he replied, " I do not like to explain myself. Explanations, I have found, are nearly always a prelude to fresh recriminations. But I will make an exception in your favour."

" I a m deeply sensible of your kindness," said I, with great dignity.

" This, then, is my reason for condemning you. Like the rest of your brethren you never look into your own heart for your ideas : you get them as waiters get their dress suits-second hand."

" W h y should I not, if they fit me ? " " W h y ? W h y should a man speak at all, unless

he has something new to say ? The 'only valid excuse for writing is that you have, or you think that you have, something fresh to write about--something de- rived from your own special experience. All expression shouId be original. Each man worth the name sees the world from a peculiar point of view-a point of view from which no other man sees it quite. Well, if he tells us his individual version, he does us a real service. If he can't, he had better hold his tongue."

" At that rate," I protested, " what becomes of the accumulated experience of the past ? What becomes of progress ? "

" There is no such thing as progress--only re-birth," he pronounced oracularly.

" I don't know what you mean by re-birth," I said candidly. " What I do know is that, if everybody confined himself to his own individual experience, there would be mighty little to write about. Therefore I hold a writer is not only justified, but actually bound in duty to d raw upon the experience of his predecessors. I t is only thus that knowledge increases. Originality, at this time of day, can only mean intelligent plagiarism.."

On all these modest and moderate views of mine Shav's tongue came down like a sledge-hammer-the beloved tool of the Bohemian. Where gentlemen use the delicately pointed pin of irony, your Bohemian must employ the brutal sledge-hammer. It is most discon- certing to the scholarly temperament.

Of course, I was not angry with Shav for disagree- ing with me. I t would be a dull world, indeed, if everybody agreed- with everybody else. Nevertheless, as he treated my defence with such scant attention, I have no alternative but to appeal to the public.

Let me begin with a personal reminiscence. Once upon a time I had a friend who was the most

charmingly unscrupulous plagiarist I have ever known. When found out, he did not even attempt to defend himself.

" My dear fellow," he said to me one day, when I

had taxed him with a more than normally audacious act of unauthorised appropriation, " I cannot help it. I am what you might call a born logokleptomaniac. With me to see a tempting passage, to covet it, to annex it, are but three stages of one automatic function. I t may be wrong, but what can I do? It is constitutional. I have the instinct of acquisition a s highly developed as an Imperialist statesman." " Have you no qualms of conscience afterwards? "

" I suppose I must have-in my sleep. The other night I dreamed that I was dead and that I went to hell. There is nothing surprising in that, you will say. Perhaps not. What was surprising, however, was the exquisite fitness of my punishment. I was condemned to march up and down the nether regions through all eternity bearing aloft an immense banner made up of all the passages I had stolen in my life neatly stitched together. "

I gave my friend credit for, at least, one piece of original composition. A few weeks later, as his ill- luck would have it, I chanced upon the very book whence the rogue had purloined his infernal dream. But for that accident--due to my exceptionally wide acquaintance with books--I should have continued to believe that my friend had invented that impressive banner himself. As it is, I only recognised in him a brother What shocked me was his lack of moral courage. He was ashamed to confess what he was not ashamed to do. I will not imitate him.

I suffer from no false shame in the matter of borrowing--for philosophically viewed, it is not stealing ; only borrowing, with the intention of repaying, though not, of course, to the individual from whom I borrow : nothing is more irritating than to have one's own stories repeated to one. No, I like to give back to the human race collectively what I have taken from its constituent members, as the clouds return in generous showers to the earth at large what they have absorbed in drops from her various seas. This is not a matter for shame, but rather for self-felicitation The riches accumulated by the sweat of 'other men’s brains are meant to be used and, diffused ; and those riches are like the waters of the ocean--the most you can swallow from them will not diminish their perennial supply.

But I do not believe in " acknowledgments " any more than the cloud's do. I am, content to know that I think in inverted commas ; but I do not consider it necessary to keep saying "that phrase is So-and-so's, not mine." Conscientiousness of this kind rings a little suspicious to my ear. Methinks, it is too empressée to be quite genuine. It betokens pride- the pride of learning-and a pride of a peculiarly offen- sive type : the pride which parades itself under the mask of humility. Lucifer in his everyday accoutre- ments is a respectable person enough ; he only becomes despicable when he assumes the guise of the grovelling serpent. In the same way, the modesty of men of letters which proclaims itself by the display of inverted commas has always impressed me as only a more subtle, more sophisticated, and more intolerable form of vanity.

Personally, I prefer to pay to my readers the delicate compliment of pretending that they are able to distin- guish, without any ,extraneous assistance, between the words of my own weaving and the purple patches which I borrow from others; a n d if I ever employ inverted commas, I do so from higher motives than that of mere ostentation of learning. On one occasion, for example, I found it expedient to pass off an, invention of my own under the safe-conduct of quotation marks. This I did, not from .any misguided passion for forgery, such as impelled the authors of the old Apocrypha, with their peculiar notions of literary probity, to utter their diva- gations under the signature of some prophet of estab- lished reputation--Moses, Solomon, Daniel, or whatever the contemporary equivalent might be for our Shakespeares, Bacons, and Barabbas Shavs. No ! They acted as they did because they had a positive doctrine to inculcate, and they were anxious to inculcate it at any cost-even at the cost of self-effacement. I have no such ambition. Indeed, I should be very angry if anyone suspected in me a desire to proselytize.

610 THE NEW A G E APRIL 28, 1910

Therefore, I see no reason whatever why I should sacrifice my identity and honesty by masquerading under another prophet’s mantle. Happen what may, I am prepared to bear unflinchingly the whole of the glory that is likely to be inflicted upon the author of this stupendous work.

Why, then, did I, in that memorable instance, father upon a hypothetical parent the legitimate offspring of my own genius? I was compelled to do so by the necessity of showing that what at first sight looked like a self-contradiction was really a profound general- isation. I had ventured, for the first and last time in my life, to perpetrate a paradox; and the proof-reader, unaccustomed to such things from me, queried the phrase on the margin, and suggested an emendation. “ Evidently,” I said to myself, “ the proof-reader can make no sense of this; what assurance have I that other readers will be more fortunate? ” For some weeks I writhed between the horns cf an excruciating dilemma : either to turn my paradox into a platitude by adopting the proof-reader’s emendation, or to delete the phrase altogether. Both operations seemed equally painful At last, a happy compromise occurred to me. I decided to preserve my dictum intact, but to tone down its dazzling brilliance under the shade of inverted commas. By doing so I saved to t’ne world a phrase a t the sacrifice of personal fame.

That was the only time when I indulged in this sort of inverted plagiarism; and since then I have amply repaid myself for that solitary act of literary suicide. So far from uttering my own thoughts under an alien mark, I now glory in appropriating and offering to the public, undetected, all the precious and rare gems that I have picked up in the various intellectual bazaars which it is the delight of my life t o explore and to despoil--the more especially a s some of those bazaars are inaccessible to the ordinary man; for, being a scholar and a philosopher and one gifted with a seeing eye, I love to depart from the beaten track of original creation, and, roaming leisurely about the labyrinthic alleys of our great libraries, I note and copy many curious things which, if properly appreciated, may serve a s a corrective of the picturesque vagaries of writers w h o mistake their mental indigestion for divine inspiration.

If there is one class of man I abominate, it is the fussy, crusty, musty, literature detective, who thinks it his business to hunt up and down the earth in order to discover the particular establishment whence I abstracted my gem and to denounce me as a thief. Mean, officious, despicable, superfluous, odious pedant ! Why should I labour to make what I can get ready made? Surely, in these days of the strenuous life and truceless competition, no public-spirited citizen can afford to waste his energy on wanton production.

Production ! Does not political economy teach u s that a nation can dispense as little with the distributors of wealth as with its producers? There is no more useful man in a civilised community than the middleman. Besides, consider, O thou critical policeman, the egregious presumption implied in such expenditure of energy ! For my part, I am humble-minded enough to believe that the great minds of the world have expressed all that there was to express quite as well a s I could have done it myself.

As a rule, you will find an author’s reputation for originality is proportionate to the ignorance of his readers; for true originality is as extinct as an ante- diluvian lizard. W e a r e f a r too well disciplined to have any independence of thought We are too full of the ideas of other people to cherish any of our own. As the Wise Man has wisely ,observed, “ If you want new ideas, go to old books; and if you want old ideas come to new books.” The only qualification which the world has a right to demand from its literary purveyors at the present day is the power of selection--a power which implies judgment, taste, leisire, painstaking industry, and some intelligence. The fortunate possessor of all these gifs generally contrives to compose his hetero- geneous plunder into something that may not be too remote from his conception of unity, something that, if he is very skilful, his friends will call characteristic

of himself. Thus, after a longer or shorter period of time and toil devoted to patient and conscientious plagiarism, the author finds himself, half to his own surprise, a classic--the wonder of unsophisticated critics and the envy of unsuccessful colleagues.

Many standards of literary merit have been invented by critics. Personally, I believe that the greatness of an author can best be measured by the magnitude of his plunder. Small men may pick pockets. High- handed brigandage is the prerogative of giants. Virgil did not hesitate to strip Homer in broad day-light. Boccaccio lifted his stories e n bloc from mediaeval French romances. Chaucer robbed Boccaccio. Even honest Martin Luther did not disdain occasional pilfer- ing from the same store. He relates, in his “ Table- Talk,’’ as an actual occurrence that happened in his own entourage, a story which Boccaccio had told more than two centuries before as a fiction. T o come nearer home, the great Shakespeare robbed Plutarch and Ovid, as well as his own contemporaries, English and foreign, with a bare-faced impudence which, pedantry and patriotism apart, constitutes, in my humble opinion, his chief claim to glory. In like manner, all the songs of Burns have been traced to Scottish folk-poetry. But why multiply illustrations and proofs? It is ever thus : the more famous the writer, the more flagrant his plagiar- isms. No man of genius but has realised the futility of attempting to say anything new. As early as the fifth century before Christ, the lyric poet Bacchylides felt constrained to forestall me by confessing that original production is an anachronism. His confession reads like a reply to some obscure literary detective of his day :- “ One writer becomes wise from another : both in olden

times and now. For ’tis no easy thing to discover the gates of words that

have not already been spoken.” But suppose that a writer could be found foolish

enough to try to make what he can so easily take. However conscientious he might be, he could never, from the nature of things, satisfy a really well-informed critic--if such a being exists. Even assuming that he himself always knew when he w a s quoting--an assumption, as every man who ever wrote will agree, utterly wild-he could never hope to convey the exact measure of his indebtedness to others, except by the adoption cf what is, I think, technically called the polychrome style of printing--a style employed w i t h what results it would be superfluous to say) in critical editions of the Old Testament, to show the various inspired authors from whom various other inspired authors stole their inspiration; and one which a frolic- some Frenchman has jestingly recommended for printing bocks cf history, so as to indicate the various degrees of probability, plausibility, possibility, and general unveracity attaching to various historic statements. Should that method be universally adopted-- which the gods forbid !-a publisher’s prosaic estab- Iishment wouId soon be converted into a lunatic asylum, and a writer’s pages into an uncouth mosaic.

So far as I am concerned, my ‘‘ Philosophy,” by that rule, would be transfigured into something like a parody on Joseph’s coat; each passage, often each particular sentence, would have to be printed with inks of different colours, ranging from the blackest dye, mark- ing pure and undiluted plagiarism, to the faintest pink, indicating the various degrees of theft which constitute an author’s usual titles to originality. Such a process would obviously be too expensive for the publisher and too humilitating to the writer. If the reader is so minded, he is at liberty to picture these pages printed in that fashion.

I a m by no means so sanguine as to hope that the reader will assent to all the propositions enunciated in the course of this plea, yet I think he will agree with my main thesis--that all creation is but a quotation. As I have shown, men of genius have always tacitly recognised, and the most illustrious among them have frankly acted, on that principle. Why, then, blame me for following in their footsteps? Surely a license which is so freely accorded to genius cannot, in common justice, be denied to mediocrity.

APRIL 2 8 , 1910 THE NEW AGE 611

In Santa Croce. By Francis Grierson.

I. Y E A R S after Ernest Renan had ceased to believe in religious ceremonies he confessed that he could, were he to give way to his feelings, pass whole hours every day in some old church or cathedral, musing and meditating on the mystic signs and symbols, in the dim light, shut off from the noises and the crowds of city and street. Most old churches have something in common, yet all possess some individual characteristic. A cathedral has what might be called an “aura” of its own, created by the shape and the dominant colour of the stained glass windows. And I found, after a long experience, that all have their hours, days, and season’s, like certain flowers and certain people. There is something personal in their mystical quality, and it is useless to attempt to take them by storm. Rarely does an ordinary tourist get so much as a glimpse of the soul cf a n old church ; what they usually see is the glare, if the sunlight strikes the windows. No lasting impression has been made because no understanding has been attained. When I first entered Notre Dame de Paris, in 1869, what impressed me most was the sombre purples of the stained glass, and after that the deep depression caused by the funereal aspect of the whole interior. It was a place where a Savonarola might have announced the downfall of the Empire in accents fitting the mystical terrors suggested by the overpowering purple and gloom. Notre Dame on a cloudy day in autumn is the first degree of a purgatory for saints and sinners alike No wonder the middle ages was a time of fear and trembling for those whose faith was fixed in the rites and beliefs of the Church. But imagine Bossuet de- livering one of his great funeral orations in one of the old churches of Paris. A memorable frisson for pre- lates, poets, monks and mystics ! I spent a whole winter poring over the orations of Bossuet and the great classical preachers of his time, and I too, after the lapse of centuries, felt the fire of his eloquence, and I seemed to hear the terrible words pronounced from a pulpit of gloom in the midst of flickering tapers, before a congregation of Royal Princes, nobles and the greatest dignitaries of France, when the founda- tions of Royalty seemed to be slipping from under the feet of the brilliant court, during a silence in which all held their breath :--“ Madame is dying-Madame is dead ! ” That was a time when poetry, literature and religion were inseparable.

From the sombre aspect of Notre Dame de Paris to the worldly splendours of Saint Isaac’s at Saint Peters- burg there is a wide gulf. In Saint Isaac’s I could never make myself believe I was in a structure intended for serious meditation. I could not discover or feel anything mystical or medieval here. Saint Isaac’s is a gorgeous temple fox- the display of jewelled icons; all over the vast interior, jewelled heads of saints ; diamonds emeralds, opals, rubies, shine with a brazen magnificence and pagan luxury. A fitting place for typical modern tourists who worship the magnificence of mammon, and who judge of the beauty by the cost, one of the show places where dollars and golden eagles count for more than poetic illusion and religious feeling. In 1872 I witnessed the ceremony of an Easter morning in Saint Isaac’s, when each hand held alighted taper, and the great dome was lit by thousands of small lights and ten thousand moujiks stared in ecstasy at the magical sight. But even a t this ceremony I felt no thrill. I could not get clear of the feeling that all this fabulous wealth of jewels and pillars of precious stone and marble sixty feet high was intended for nothing hut ostentatious show.

But of all the great show places of the world the most pompous and the most pagan is Saint Peter’s at Rome. A vast storehouse of polished marble, it imposes by its vastness and repels by its emptiness. It is a huge body without a soul, without colour or warmth, character or mystery. Nevertheless it contains one priceless masterpiece : La Pietà of Michelangelo, enough

to infuse a ray of divine fire into everything near it. After Saint Peter’s it is a relief to get back to the calm mysteries, the superb colouring, the poetic enchant- ments of cathedrals like those of Cologne and Stras- bourg, to say nothing of others in France and elsewhere, or of the old churches which hold a greater charm than the vaster structures. Paris is, the city for enchanting churches, but the finest music I ever heard was in the cathedral of Milan.

II. The secret of perennial youth is wonder. When

things cease to evoke a sense of wonder mystery vanishes and art dies. When Emerson declared that the sight of flowers in spring no longer aroused in him the feelings they aroused in his youth he admitted he had lost the sense of poetry, for when poetry withers wonder is an impossibility. This blasé feeling in Emerson made of him a n intellectualist, keen and alert, but not penetrating when dealing with the genial mysteries of poetry and art. The old Church of Santa Croce in Florence is certainly no place for the intellectualist. Here, as nowhere else, we require to sense the poetic aura which pervades everything. Nothing is needed here but a sense of what I might call natural art. The form and tone of the interior are so simple and natural that everything not in strict harmony with this naturalness comes as a disagreeable surprise; for ,example, the female figure on the tomb of Rossini, which has all the pose of an amateur actress rehearsing a rôle in a classical drama. Rossini died in Paris in 1869, and his tomb in Santa Croce represents the best that ItaIian art could furnish, vet a more striking contrast could hardly be imagined than that created by this work, and that of former epochs here Beside the work of the sculptor, the colours of the windows, the marble slabs under foot hiding the bones of so many knights, beside the pillars arranged to produce an illusion of distance, and so many other interesting and impressive things, what was to be seen in the wonderful old church? More important than all I saw some living, human beings. Ruskin says, with truth, that a landscape fails to produce the desired effect when the artist has left out the living figure. An old church like Santa Croce destitute of the living is no better than a desolate tomb. The poor coming here to worship are the vital dots and accents in the solemn silence of the days, seasons and cycles of the centuries ; they animate the marble with palpitating life and assume a kind of gesture for the dead. Italian gesture is sometimes a sort of music for the eyes. I saw lately what an Italian actor could do with his arms and hands. W e were amazed and delighted. But in a church like Santa Croce the gestures are not for the eyes, but for the soul. Great thoughts come from the heart, and the most expressive gestures corne from the deepest emotions, always the same in the effect they produce, always related to hope and suspense, to life and death. I saw a group of some thirty persons, men and women, all of the poorer classes, clustered in one corner of the church one early morning just as the sun was beginning to light the long, narrow windows, casting a radiant glow over the altars and monuments. A solitary priest appeared, intoned a short service, like some revenant arriving amidst an assembly of phantoms ; then he glided away, and the group slowly dispersed, and one by one fresh arrivals gathered, halting and meditating here and there, lonely, languid figures cast up from the ocean of humanity on the stones of Santa Croce amidst the laurel wreaths of fame and the wrecks of a thousand fortunes.

Almost all modern art is theatrical, like the age itself. There seems to be no escape from the self- conscious The naivete that made great poets and artists is rare indeed. The quality of Italian art in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries was like Shakespeare’s quality of mercy-it was “ not strained.” Didactic poetry is an intellectual vice, like pedantic art. In Santa Croce Italian feeling and sentiment dominated intellect, and now, after the lapse of centuries, the effect produced is that of a unified simplicity ; the atmosphere is not that of an old museum,


but that of some quaint garden, half shade and half sunshine.

Above all, Santa Croce is a place for poets. This is the real temple of the muses, where Michelangelo sits enthroned as the Jupiter of them all, poet before everything else, and for the best of reasons : poetry is the supreme medium of all the creative faculties. Dante possessed a greater imagination and more illusion. In the work of Michelangelo there was no place for illusion. He was the greatest emotional realist the Christian world has ever known. I can find no match for him in the ancient world except Isaiah, and I never could think of Isaiah looking like Dante. The difference between Dante the austere poet, and Michelangelo the ineffable artist, is very great. The truth is, Dante has to be reached, while Michelangelo reaches us; the one works on our imagination, the other on our feelings. And between the two powers-imagination and feeling-the last grips and holds, while the other moves us as in dreams. Compare the two heads-they are both here in Santa Croce-a cold, impersonal dignity characterises the features of Dante, who seems to be absent from our world; Michelangelo abides with us. He is emotion controlled by art, feeling expressed in sheer power.

His bust which sits above his tomb is so intensely real that the large and powerful statues below, which were intended to mean many :significant things, mean nothing in comparison. Of all the faces known in the world of art, that of Michelangelo! contains the most expression. All his work in marble is simply the result of this expression Power in the hands of other artists too often leans to violence, as in Rodin and Zola. The real realism is not muscular contortion and violent gesture, but the expression of power from within.

A genius like Michelangelo does not. seek to impose on us his theories and his thoughts; he attains the miraculous by creating a form for his emotions. How is such a thing possible in marble? It is done in music and poetry, but how can the cold marble embody an emotion, or rather a whole universe of emotions? Yet this has been accomplished in the marbles known as " Night and Day," " Morning and Evening." In the figure supposed to symbolise the evening we are face to face with the decline of ages.

The poet can see from what a distance such a figure descended. Every evening has had a morning, and the morning of this wonderful figure endured from Romulus to Caesar, its noon from Saint Augustine to Dante, and now the twilight of the Renaissance descends on a world withering under the immeasurable weariness of all the art and empire of a swift and abysmal civilisation. All supreme art is nothing but a stupendous effort to shorten the shadow of death that looms in perpetual menace before the imagination of the artist.

Compared with this mountain, always visible to the poet, all other realities appear as pleasant hills, fleeting clouds, and ,ephemeral passions; compated with this Reality the world itself is a sham, ambition a lie, popular applause a deception, the opinions of people a futile impertinence.

Dante's true greatness was shown in his attitude towards the world-he put it behind him long before he passed away, and in, the life of Michelangelo, who lived within the shadow of the mountain, nothing else mattered. The most robust genius seen in the light of the real becomes a phantom, like the plebeian politician and the back-biting mediocrity. Until we realise that nothing matters we are not fit to live. Until we realise that all is vanity we are not ready to die. But the one thing that all great artists got well into their heads was the fundamental, basic truth that the highest art has no more relation to the opinions of the world than i t has to the opinions of the man in the moon. Dante, Beethoven, Goethe, Michelangelo, and a thousand others here and there were, .and are, possessed by the one mystery, the unfathomable mystery that has nothing to do with praise or blame, censure or appreciation. The ar t is t whatever other people may do or say, must and will persist in working o u t what he sees and what he feels. The man who works for popular

applause does so ,either because he is limited to the little things of the day or because he has not yet learned to know his true powers.

It was to Santa Croce the poet Vittorio Aifieri used to come to seek for inspiration, and his lines beginning " O gran padre Alighieri," were addressed to the Dante monument here. For myself I prefer the much simpler and more poetic tomb of Alfieri. I t is the work of Canova, simple beautiful and serene; and perhaps after this tomb the one that impresses me most is that of Galileo, whose face is turned towards the skies, and whose attitude suggests the sublime thought of Im- manuel Kant, who said that the two things which moved him most were the " starry heavens and the moral law."

Exhibititis. By WaIter Sickert.

W H E N Bismarck was asked in 1893 by the American Minister for an expression of opinion on the World's Fair a t Chicago, he said, " If I were to give an honest expression. of my view it would not be what he re- quires. These exhibitions are of little value for industry and art, and are more for the benefit of hotel keepers and such people. They are good for those who feel bored who want a new sensation, new amuse- ments, and who have money enough to gratify their inclinations and afford themselves such pleasures."

Most politicians will admit, in private, that one source of stagnation in trade is that the price of labour has been forced up beyond its real value. As, however, they want votes from the electors, they will also admit that they cannot say this on a public platform When I have asked them whether they did not think it their duty to state their belief publicly, even at the risk of losing votes, I have not succeeded En getting very clear or coherent 'answers. I am sure that they have excellent reasons for not following the course I suggest, and that these reasons are probably such as it may be difficult to explain to persons having no political knowledge. A writer on the politics of the picture trade, however,

fortunately has no such reasons for reticence. Though it is probably a n unpopular thing to say, I am inclined to think that the stagnation in that trade, of which we hear loud complaints on all hands, is partly due to similar reasons. I think the price of the commodity has been forced up beyond its proper value. And of that forcing up I am inclined to think that the exhibition habit, developed to excess, is one of the chief causes.

Neither scolding nor lamentation will help us. I should certainIy not be depriving myself, as I am, of the little leisure that is left me by my own work, to handle such a detestable instrument as the pen, if I did not think I could point out certain useful truths. I believe that I see these truth's clearly enough, and I see no signs that they are sufficiently understood by writers on art who are not artists. " Si nous avons quitté nos travaux et nos plaisirs, Mister Jonson et moi, ce n'est pas pour des prunes."

Whatever I believe myself to have learnt in these matters is due to a residence of many years in France. I t is due to the observation of consequences that I can see have undoubtedly accrued to painters and painting in that country, from conditions and attitudes that do not prevail here. Not only do they not prevail here. Their existence and character are hardly suspected outside a handful of people almost small enough to be described as a family.

I believe that the painter is very largely the mere dupe in the prevalence of the exhibition habit. That he is playing the game of others with little advantage to himself. That he is making the running rather for landlords, dealers, framemakers, colourmen and, ex- perts, than for himself and his own development.

As in all human error, a large part is involuntary and passive. We do as our fathers did, only more so. They founded societies and academies. W e form more societies and more academies. They liked



“ honours.” So do we. If we cannot get the best letters after our names, we are inclined to form a new society and get other letters. One set of letters in the long run conveys as much as another set. W e think if we get into “ Who’s Who,” and our addresses into “ Art and Artists, ’’ and have our work reproduced in “The Studio,” it will somehow, in some vague and mysterious manner, do u s good, advance us towards the Millennium.. W e find that these things procure us wine merchants’ circulars, money-lenders,’ advertisements, and income-tax forms, and nothing much else.

In the production forced upon us by the exhibition habit, again, we are passive dupes more than active sinners. An exhibiting society is saddled with a heavy rent in an expensive quarter. Ready or not ready, the members must try to fill their galleries at least once, if not twice a year. In the election of members it is sometimes necessary to consider whether a wealthy painter whose work does not add to the strength of the exhibition is not worth enrolling. Once he is en- rolled he has sometimes a preponderant vote on the Council. His work has got to be hung. Probably his wife’s too. These are the minor, and only occasional .troubles.

The main and real sore is this. We are forced into painting the exhibition picture, on a scale that dues not suit either our modern technique, or our modern archi- tecture. And the only billet for the exhibition picture is the permanent gallery in the provinces or the colonies. And there are not ,enough colonies and provinces to go round. What does the rank 2nd file member of an exhibiting society get for h is good-looking half-dozen guineas or so, and his framemaker’s bill? An expensive cup of tea for his family and a small party of ladies at the private view, and his name, in bourgeois, in the papers, if he is lucky, once every six or seven years. He hopes that he is buying, dearly enough, a little accretion of prestige. Does he get what he is paying for? And note that in some cases the poor devil has the naiveté to put up with the chance of having his year’s work rejected, by a committee of his trade rivals, from the walls of which he is paying the the rent !

Books and Persons. (AN OCCASIONAL CAUSERIE.)

By Jacob Tonson. AFTER a very long interval I have been reading a book of Sir Leslie Stephen’s : ‘‘ English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century,” a volume in Messrs. Duck- worth’s half-crown “ Readers’ Library.” This “ Readers’ Library ” is an enterprise of great virtue. I t is advertised as “ a series of copyright volumes of individual merit and permanent value,” and it certainly contains books, by Richard Jefferies, W. H. Hudson, and George Bourne, for example, which are of permanent value. I find myself, however, unable to admit that Dr. Stopford Brooke’s “ Studies in Poetry,” or Mr. Joseph McCabe’s “ St. Augustine and His Age,” are any more permanent than a domestic animal is permanent. And I also respectfully doubt whether there is any permanency in Sir Leslie Stephen’s Lectures, originally issued seven years ago. To me they have already ceased to be comfortably readable. Of what intellectual, moral, or spiritual use they could have been to the students of Oxford who listened to their involved and mannered phrases I cannot imagine. They are difficult enough to follow even with the whole of the page before you, and freedom to retrace your steps when you get lost. And the sense of difficulty is not alleviated by the omission of the editor to provide a table of contents or titles to the several lectures. You walk into the porch of the book as into the dark. I have a considerable esteem for Sir Leslie Stephen, as all users of the “ Dictionary of National Biography ”

must have. His own contributions to the dictionary have always seemed to me to be very excellent. He is really erudite ; he differentiates well between the important and the unimportant; his taste is cultivated ;

and he can keep calm about heroes. But such qualities, sufficient for a dictionary article, do not suffice for the full equipment of a literary critic, who must possess creative force, imaginative force; he must possess an alluring or a compelling individuality. Sir Leslie Stephen lacks these. He may be able to condense; he certainly is not able to expand. He is admirable in the arrangement of dry bones, but a failure in clothing them with flesh. He can write perfectly when he imi- tates the terseness of the Code Napoleon; but when he tries to be the essayist he achieves nothing but a solid mosaic of the clichés of University extension. His style lacks colour, relief, simplicity and clearness. When I was young and timid I could not read Sir Leslie Stephen outside his dictionary. And I thought how wrong and shameful it was of me not to be able to read Sir Leslie Stephen with eager joy. Now I know that I was right in those early days. Sir Leslie Stephen is not a first-class nor even a second-class critical writer, for the reason that he has nothing individual to say. When he attempts literature he is immensely dull, in spite of his enviable equipment. I am reminded of a sentence in Mr. George Bourne’s new book, “ The Ascending Effort ” : ’‘ No energy proceeds from simply being aware of things, and perceiving their identities and differences.” Listen, oh mandarins ! I shall not class Sir Leslie Stephen among the mandarins, because he has the virtue of perfect modesty, denied to all mandarins. But the truth must be stated that his larger critical work is tedious, and therefore deprived of the slightest importance.

***

“ Rolfe Boldrewood,” the memorable author of “ Robbery Under Arms ” (which I have heard classed as a great novel by one of the finest critics of my time), has just passed his eighty-third birthday, and has made some interesting remarks to a journalist. He said that he made £1780 from “ Robbery Under Arms ” within a year of its publication, and that since then the book has never brought him in less than £150 a year. The book was issued thirty years ago. A t a time ‘when well-known authors are understood to make an average of £25 out of a novel, Mr. T. A. Brown’s confession is quite refreshing.

***

In the same connection I may state that at least one of the authors of the opening volumes of Messrs. Nel- son’s new series of new novels at a florin, has been paid by Messrs. Nelson a sum considerably exceeding £1,000 in cash for his book. Correspondents are apt to remark that I seem to be very interested in the cash side of literature. I am. Apart from an unholy desire to be able to look my landlord and my greengrocer in the face, I am very interested in the cash side because it is the sole index of the extent to which a book is read. Ir’ publishers are waiting around with cheques, then I know that my books are being read- and not otherwise. Having by every effort of sincerity and truth done my best while writing a book to alienate the public, I am naturally anxious that other people should make every effort, afterwards, to’ persuade the public to buy my book-for the public’s own good ! Only cash will demonstrate to me that my books are doing good to the public. Hence my frequent preoccupation with the cash side.

* * * I am informed that Gabriele d’Annunzio, now visiting

Paris, is providing much amusement for that city. Paris, accustomed to the entertainment of sovereigns, has never before had two such operatic monarchs simul- taneously as d’Annunzio and Rostand. D’Annunzio, ravished by the beauty and elegance of the “ manne- quins ” of the Rue de la Paix, has announced his intention to write a novel about them, and may be seen (by the privileged) taking notes in the leading dressmaking establishments. It appears to me that from d’Annunzio we shall have no more “ Virgins of the Rocks.”

* * *

After all, I have not lived in vain. Mr. John, Murray is advertising a book of short stories frankly as a book

614 THE NEW AGE APRIL 2 8 , 1910

of short stories; not as a novel, nor even a s a “ work cf fiction.” With this majestic example of contrition and conversion before them, I trust that other publishers will now abandon the pernicious habit of falsely describing books of short stories a s novels.

Present-Day Criticism. IT is, pa-haps, too much to expect that the writers of inferior fiction should comprehend what suffering a reviewer has had to endure before he becomes belligerent. Lively and warm-blooded criticism is the resort of only very desperate reviewers ; reviewers, moreover, whom even the horrid insults offered nowadays to literature cannot induce to surrender the standard. But bad authors really need not agitate themselves about our attitude. For they are legion ; and we are very few.

So thoroughly have most critics learned that detach- ment is the best attitude for criticism, so over- thoroughly have we carried into practice this dictum, that the motive of criticism, which is to make the best prevail, has become obscured. The standard of taste is immaculate and invincible, and no man may touch it except by birthright ; but it may be obscured. The neglect of critics to keep the literary atmosphere pure has allowed the commercial author and the publisher to believe themselves dictators of taste.

Of recent years the early decease of reviewers has been made a bye-word. Conscientious critics die young. Alone, almost, if it be not for the “ Daily Telegraph,” Mr. James Douglas manages to keep his whistle wet. He keeps in tune with the masterpieces of the cuts-to-the-bone-and-bites-to-the-brain-and-blinds- the-judgment scale. But he achieves this by beating these tom-toms at their own game, an exploit impossible to anyone who happens not to he born with the ear for cacophony.

For a reviewer whom literary offences only render desperate, there are temptations to detest and hate and loathe and despise with a personal superciliousness the writers who take advantage of the nervous break-down of critics and of the consequent anarchy of taste. Both health in criticism, which health is free play of the mind, and the condition of health, which is liberty to express true opinion, will return, and the pack of charlatans and madmen who thrive now will disappear ; but not soon. There is small hope that lively and warm-blooded criticism may become early unnecessary.

One of the results of the continued ill-health of critics is the power exercised in English fiction by a large and unselect body of writers who have one and one only canon by which they work. They used, before this title became cheap, to call themselves artists. Some still so style each other. But the newest distinction among them is to be a literary craftsman. These craftsmen write you anything you will, from an epic to a paragraph. It must be admitted--and herein lies their power and the danger of them-that they are excellent craftsmen ; but that is all they are. And while they imagine themselves to be maintaining Litera- ture, they are actually depressing Art to the level of their excellent craftsmanship. Knowing the value of a tight market, they usually publish only one novel a year ; though, with truly mechanical ease, they could produce four or five works of equal quality. They have travelled a great deal. Everyone of their order has done the Continent, and it is profitable to peruse their books if you are going to Spain or Italy ; for they are better than Baedeker as guides to the most comfortable hotels and the boarding-houses where people absolutely unpick their mattresses every spring. They are to the unwary young writers, who take them for models, what a grammar is to a child-an inoculation against classical enthusiasm. They have perverted the public, and have made it a more desired thing to describe, with excellent craftsmanship, a dinner and the restaurant, or to copy down exactly the conversation of a rustic, or to ring the marriage bells for the billionth time, than

io offer the sacrifice of time and money and prejudices which fits a writer to treat a worthy and beautiful subject.

These excellent craftsmen, these engineers in literature, have constructed and laid down and macadamised to obliteration many of the ways. However, they have their limit. They would certainly not scruple to funi- cularise Parnassus. But they don‘t know where it is.

Though no one can prophesy, it is at least possible that if critics could reduce the pretensions of this class of writer-and every critic will recognise our description -a more natural, flexible, and imaginative form of fiction might be created.

REV REVIEWS. NOVELS.

Olivia L. Carew. By Hetta Syrett. (Chato & Windus 6s. There is no doubt that the author favours a particu

larly crude and unprincipled character. Richard Carew, a man who has a moderate inherited income, sacrifices a dream of succeeding as a painter for what was “ in his own mind almost as doubtful,” the chance of ex- celling as an architect. In this profession “ oppor- tunities are more concrete,” we are told, by way of explanation. Having thus chosen the second hest for himself, he becomes, in consequence, “ half-cynical, half-humorous ” towards life. He goes to America for a holiday, “ partly for business, partly because he was restless ”; this half-everything of a man. In Boston, he finds something which completely interests his nature. It is the spectacle of a girl, bent with all her mind and heart upon perfecting her intellectual faculties, and not merely desiring fame but honestly working to get it. Carew, “ thinking her the loveliest little creature alive,” and being troubled by no doubts as to his right as a second-best individual to persue her, marks down his quarry. And now we may examine the character of Olivia, because upon her actual character depends the worth cf the author’s deduction of Olivia’s probable movements. Miss Syrett makes the girl accept Carew’s unprovoked proposal of marriage, be driven to misconduct for the sake of experiencing. that passion Carew apotheosises, a n d finally, give up her intellectual ambition t o return to the arms cf her delighted and all-forgiving husband.

We soon discover by fixing our attention upon certain facts, that Olivia mas fundamentally the ideal partner for a cynical, sensual man. Her idea of culture mas to cram for examinations, read no novels, go to no theatres, talk about Emerson, and attend institutional lectures ! We are informed that “ she had the scrupulous nicety, that almost sacred purity of surrounding, which made her house, as well as her person, a temple of cleanliness, and the profanation of either the unpardonable sin.” So unpardonable in Olivia’s eyes was this sin that she accepted Carew’s proposal to marry after three days’ acquaintance, although she shrank from his kiss as a “ besmirch- ment of her purity. ” This soap-and-water cleanliness, this purity skin-deep acted as a mad incitement to the half-cynical, half-humorous Carew. He thinks her so young, so babyish, so fluffy. ’‘ In her lack of responsiveness he read merely a girlish modesty which he respected as he would have respected the innocence of a child. When she was his wife everything would naturally be different.” A month or so later, the “ child ” becomes his wife. And the rest of the book sneers and jeers while Olivia’s pretentious culture and shallow purity are gradually beaten down. She imagines that Carew will allow her to continue her studies in peace. He, of course, has only one idea in life, which is to see her compliantly returning his

passion.” The poor passion becomes “ bewildered, wounded, disappointed,” but it remains alive and keeps up its longing to see “ the child ’’ with child. This hope being baffled by Olivia, Carew deliberately forms a connection with a woman of light reputation, and flourishes his infidelity in Olivia’s face. She holds him off bravely after that for a few months, but then

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APRIL 28, 1910 THE NEW A G E 615

decides, after perusing a pamphlet on marriage, that men must be excused for their natural vileness. Having thus come along nicely she meets Alison, a real, “ great writer,” but a man only more impudent and cynical than Carew himself in his ideas of women. bliss Syrett takes Carew into the sentimental regions for a few months, and while his mind is conveniently engaged in appreciating the beauties of Italy, and of a certain young woman, Sylvia Carnegie, Olivia sits at the feet of Alison, “ with whom the libertine and the artist waged a perpetual war.” He praises her and takes the sting out of Carew’s brutal amusement at her ambition to be somebody. She soon insists upon a second separation, and when the inheritance of a fortune demands him, Carew goes off to England done . He goes trustfully believing that since he had no power to arouse Olivia’s senses, she certainly was ‘‘ safe ” from any other man. Olivia is left to the society of Alison and the Marsfields, both of whom privately call her bad names and declare that half-a- dozen children would serve her right, or, as they phrase it, “ do her good.” Olivia, left to herself, might have achieved something of her ambition. The modesty and purity which were only bodily skin-deep with her, as, indeed, with everyone else; this modesty and purity which need first knowledge of the power of the senses and afterwards eternal watching to keep control, were highly efficient and powerful in their influence over Olivia’s intellect. She was talented, painstaking, tireless. Alison gradually brings out in her the emotional capacity which Carew’s lunging sensuality had only affrighted. Months pass before the inevitable “ surrender,” and, meanwhile, Olivia has been to London, published a novel, and met crowds of very worldly-wise and experienced intellec- tuals. Her descent to the time when the author may write rapturously, “ Olivia was flesh and blood like other women,” is marked by a sudden interest in other women’s children, and a regret for her own still-born child. Olivia has a fine flesh and blood time with Alison in Italy, but soon the “ villain ” wearies, a s he always does in these histories, and the lady is left alone with her sorrow and sin; then, just as inevitably, she discovers that she has never loved Alison at all but Carew ! Fierce stabs of jealousy run through her as she reflects that Carew may have consoled himself with some other woman. A child comes along the garden, and Olivia seizes her in “ a desperate clasp.” Alison completes her salvation by telling her that he never really thought much of her writings. She calls him a cad, and the authoress arranges that Sylvia, who has been making up to Carew, shall nearly run over Olivia with a motor-car. Sylvia is sorry and sends for Carew. And Olivia, after a sixth or seventh baby incident, is taken back to be “ a lovable woman ” ever after.

So we see that Miss Syrett has well-fitted most of the action to the character. The whole book is one sustained jeer at the unhappy, pretentious little creature. That women writers have so often employed their talent to deride the aesthetic ambition of some small person like Olivia, to prove conclusively that the true sphere of such small persons is the nursery is a fact for the study of psychologists. We could name a round dozen novels by well-known women authors all devoted to this end, The plot is practically the sanie in every one of them, and whatever other differ- e x e s there may be, the trip abroad with the “ libertine ” who seduces the small persons back to their husbands, is a permanent feature. And for whom on earth has this sort cf thing been written all over again?

The Mystery of the Green Heart. By Mas Pem-

I t is altogether too early in the long-continued and still continuing period of development of the fictional a r t to define the limits of the novel. Some rules one may safely adopt as regards construction, and certain rejections may be made of subjects. The pure detective story does not seem to gain in interest by being drawn out over four hundred and fifty pages. Almost the whole of the material employed to make “The

berton. (Methuen. 6s.)

Mystery of the Green Heart” of six-shilling length is summed up by Mr. Max Pemberton in the evidence given by his detective-prince at the trial of the inevitably innocent gentleman charged with poisoning the owner of the jade heart.

There is apparently nothing new to be done in the amateur detective line. The Prince, like Sherlock Holmes, beats Sir Somebody of Scotland Yard at his own game, always foreseeing events and turning up a t crucial moments with tedious infallibility. In the Holmes stories, all capably short, the interest is hung upon the method of detection. Mr. Pemberton expects his readers to be curious about the personal history of the poisoned woman, Lady Anna ; and so every fresh arrival (and the newcomers are countless) upon the scene of the mystery contributes some detail of the lady’s character or of her past. A long chapter describes the trial of the innocent accused. It is not so interesting as a murder column in the “ Star,” because we feel sure Captain Ferman is going to get off. Mr. Pemberton saves trouble by conveniently killing the real assassin. So when everything is over Captain Ferman and the Prince-detective may arrange their respective marriages without delay.

The Wife of Nicholas Fleming. By Paul Waineman.

Among the many reefs upon which modern novels are stranded three, which perhaps account for most of the wrecks, are : (1) the psychological mania, (2) the theory that m y trifling act of life is significant, (3) the conviction that every conceit of the writer’s imagination is worth putting into a novel.

Mr. Waineman comes to grief on all these three reefs. His book, which is a psychological “study” of the maiden and married feelings of two feminine phantoms cf his imagination, begins with a psychological study cf two tomtits ! Mr. Waineman pene- trates to the minds of the tomtits in his very first paragraph. “They were quite unconscious of the near presence of humanity in the summer-house near by.” One pines to understand deeper. True, Mr. Waine- man tells us a great deal about how the dear birdies loved spring and how good the straw smelt in their nostrils. But even the precious information that they

vaguely” felt the delirium of youthful joys does not satisfy us. We cannot help wondering whether they knew Queen Anne was dead and such things so important to the story of the wife of Nicholas Fleming.

Both the feminine phantoms are the wife of Nicholas Fleming. They were so exactly alike, you see, that when one of them was drowned the other one took her place ! i n order to convince us of his truthfulness to life and nature, Mr. Waineman has written down everything the girls ever did. They never wondered, or leaned upon anything. or coughed, or were stung to the quick, or bit their lips but what their creator had it down in his notebook. He describes a sudden fear which came to one of their hearts, at ten lines’ length, and one is bound to believe it, because a page and a half afterwards it occurs again with natural pheno- mena to support it. “All a t once she shivered; the air became cold, and the atmosphere heavy.”

Palacio-Valdes said : “Epics which reflect entire civilisations do not contain a s many pages as many modern novels.” And he meant to complain about the insobriety of modern novels. But how querulous and unreasonable seems this sort of objection when one‘ compares, let u s say, the anger of Achilles the Achaian with the wealth and depth of emotion of an Anna Avelan of the Villa Mon Repos.

First Love. By Marie Van Vorst. (Mills and Boon. 6s.) Miss Van Vorst in her dénouement is guilty of a

very wicked lapse from moral logic. She tells the story of John Bennett’s love for Mrs. Bathurst, who has a pig of a husband. It is an old and ordinary situation ; but so long as the author sticks to realism she carries us along the old road a t a fine speed. John and Mrs. Bathurst are quite charming people, and conduct themselves with all possible restraint until the

(Methuen. 6s.)

“


husband dies. In the natural order of things they would have married each other, being nicely in love. This natural ending is rejected.

In a novel called “Valerie Upton,” by Anna D. Sedgwick, the very coarse conclusion ruins a good book. Mrs. Upton is represented as a woman of extreme refinement. Her daughter Imogen is a rough- shod Puritan, and supposed to inherit her heavy feet from “Papa,” who is dead. Imogen disgusts her lover, and finally she marries someone else. Jack comes to love Mrs. Upton, who is one of the eternally young women. He finds nothing to prevent an avowal, and he makes the avowal. She fences. He stammers : “ You-you haven’t anything else to say to me? ”

“Nothing, my dear Jack, except that I wish you were my son.” Miss Sedgwick does not allow us to suppose she sees anything vulgar and even brutal in this speech. from a woman whose tact and sensitiveness have made half the material of the story. But it is clear from that sentence that poor “Papa” was not altogether to blame for the bathos and brutality in Imogen. Mamma also could use the hobnail.

In “First Love’’ two people who have always be- haved with as much modesty and restraint as their unhappy circumstances permit suddenly are imagined by the writer to have become false to themselves. The thing might conceivably have happened in real life ; but then the man and woman, being at bottom merely conventional animals, would have betrayed their fundamental vulgarity in a score of ways. It is true that Mrs. Bathurst long endured the presence of an obnoxious husband, and the world nowadays might therefore suspect her of having a rather thick skin- On this suspicion her subsequent conduct is compre- hensible. But then Miss Van Vorst precisely gives us to understand that the wife has her own apartments. Also, Mrs. Bathurst’s supposititious callousness, even if admitted, would not account for the insensibility so suddenly developed by John Bennett.

W e must decide either that the two characters have ‘been wrongly presented up to the two hundred and eighty-fifth page, or that the author, thenceforth de- parting from realism and taking to imagination, falk into moral inverisimilitude. The book is worth reading for its earlier chapters ; the first one is truly affect- ing. The style is rather raw, occasionally uncouth ; but the veracity of the incidents and the natural dia- logue compensate for a small shock to literary taste. Miss Van Vorst would doubtless have avoided some pitfalls had she taken Mrs. Bathurst for her more intimate study instead of Bennett. However, she pre- sents him dramatically, not psychologically.

OTHER BOOKS. Folk-Lore of the HoIy Land. By J. E. Hanault-

Every race has its “folk.” The Germans have their little folk (kleinevolk), the Swiss their earth and hill people. And these weird people breathe into the ears of the country people superstitions, mythology, tradi- tions, customs, and what not. Mr. Hanault, a close student of Syrian character, has gathered into his book many of the stories of the Sinai-Arabs. It is difficult to tear remnants from these primitive Palestinian legends, anecdotes, ideas and superstitions. They are just a quaint compound of puerility and wisdom ; all alike delightfully fantastic and impossible, quaintly humorous and queerly realistic, and everywhere strange anachronisms project and stick like burrs. W e learn in one how the devil sneaked into Noah’s Ark under cover of a pious ass’s tail, and of the ass’s wild efforts to set aside the responsibility and consequences of this unconscious introduction ; in another “how the mos- quito came to buzz ”; how the old nurse on finding her charge, a prelate of the Orthodox Church, had got into heaven, where she considered he had no business, burst into tears, and was taken by the inhabitants of heaven to be “one of the damned who had got in by mistake.” W e also discover Satan under the disguise of a Russian pilgrim*; Adam “smoking his narghileh ”; and learn

(Duckworth. 5s.)

how Noah turned his bitch and she-ass into damsels and palmed them off on the two suitors who were clamouring for the hand of his daughter. Two or three features should be noted Though a book of Oriental tales it is one for polite ears, and readers of all kinds may turn to it without fear of encountering the frankness to be met in Burton’s “Arabian Nights.” Again, it has nothing to do with origins or the analo- gies of comparative mythology. It is a delightful book of quaint stories, with a charm and scientific importance of its own. This is the second edition. The notes are fairly exhaustive, but an exhaustive index i s still needed.

The Marriage Ventures of Marie-Louise. By

The lives of French queens seldom make interesting reading. They furnish for the most part records of women who are but mere cyphers, and whose careers are not by any means comparable with those of the fabled Egyptian and Assyrian queens. Occasionally, however, a woman has occupied the throne of France whom circumstance has conspired to invest with a robe of tragedy and the halo of a popular heroine. Marie Antoinette and Josephine are notable examples,. Such women deserve to be written about, but the rest- women who are not sovereigns by achievement, not reformers and intriguers, not utterly bad, not a power on or behind the throne, not prime movers in epoch-making events-these women might very well be neglected by biographers. Marie-Louise is a negligible quantity. She was an Austrian, and, like so many Austrian women, was fickle, weak, and unstable. Marie An- toinette and a recent Queen of Saxony are further examples. She was not even politically strong. Her one uncertain claim to attention was her commonplace mania for marrying. It is out of this slight material the author has made this book, .and in order to make it appeal to a wide audience that cares for society notes or court scandal of the Lady Cardigan brand, he has made it appear that the archduchess who married N a p - leon was an altogether irresponsible person. “ She was an altogether weak, unstable, undesirable person, indifferent alike to duty and decency, and gradually developed into a neglectful mother and forgetful, unfaith- ful wife. In truth, in the eyes of posterity, which soars above human weakness and vulgar passions, this woman, devoid of every virtue and unworthy of her destiny, had but one husband, the man foc whom she had no affection, the man who had placed her beside him on the proudest throne of the universe, whose colossal personality is still manifest in the politics of our days and to whom alone is due the great fact that her name is recorded in history.” All this sounds bad for Marie-Louise till side by side with it we place other facts, such as : her marriage was one of convenience, she never loved Napoleon, not as Josephine loved him, or even cared for him ; in fact, did not want to marry him. She knew that her own infidelity was matched by that of her husband, that Napoleon was a Don Juan, that when he went to Elba he took his Polish mistress with him. No doubt she believed that Napoleon would not return, and this may have led her to get deeper in the mire with Neipperg-with which .affair the book is largely taken up--than she intended. In any case her marriage with him would seem to point to the presence of a genuine passion. Again it was hardly her fault if she neglected the affairs of State. The allied Powers were in possession, and they had [placed Louis XVIII. on the throne, and they had no use for the wife sf Napoleon, who was best out of the way getting married if she liked. In short, if we weigh carefully the evidence both for and against Marie-Louise, which the author has neglected to do, there is little excuse for the existence of this book. Evelyn, Duchess of Welling- ton, has undertaken the translation, and some excellent plates complete the volume.

T h e Q u e s t of the Historical Jesus. A Critical Study from Reimarus to Wrede. (Black. 10s. 6d. net.)

Dr. Schwitzer’s latest light on “the quest of the historical Jesus ” is a negative one. In his book he brings together a great number of learned Germans--religion-

Max Billard. (Nash. 12s. 6d. net.)


ists and rationalists-Reinlarus, Hase, Schleiermacher, Strauss, and others. With them he associates Rénan and de Pressensé and one or two other Frenchmen, and as it were, sets them talking of Jesus-especially that Jesus which they were chiefly occupied in resuscitating by their researches. He does this so successfully that there is no chapter that is not sound and sketched in with a considerable knowledge and a wealth of detail of the philosophical and Christological speculation of the authors to which it is devoted. As a result of all this talk the author declares that “Jesus as a concrete historical personage remains a stranger to our time ; but his spirit which lies hidden in his words is known in simplicity and its influence is direct.” This failure to obtain a convincing portrait of the ‘historical Jesus is not surprising when we remember that the Son of Man comes to all of us, and to each of us he appears in a different guise. As a matter of fact, his portrait varies just as each individual experience varies, as each individual’s ideas and ideals vary. Perhaps if Dr. Schwitzer had borne this metaphysical truth in mind at the outset he would not have started on his quest, or at least have set about it in a different manner. He should have recognised that religions are always chang- ing, that in less than a century a divinity becomes unre- cognisable, that each century has its own religion and forms its own conception of the ruling divinity, that in time there, is nothing left but the spirit underlying these religions, and the only thing to do is to apprehend that spirit truly and to symbolise the divinity which it represents much as the Greek symbolised the collective spirit of the Christos. He should have remembered there have been all sorts of Christs-the Christ of the Romans, the Christ of Gregory VII., of St. Dominic, of Leo X., the anti-socialist Christ of Leo XIII., the Christ of St. Paul, and the Christ of to-day. Then he would have seen the hopelessness of his task of creating a satisfactory portrait of Jesus from the research work of a number of individuals, and would doubtless have planned his work to deal in order with the birth, development, and character of the Jesus-spirit, first in Christ-myths, then in Jesus as Son of Gold, then as Son of Man. In this case his conclusion would not have been pessimistic, but the reverse. The work as it stands is a scholarly survey of the investigation of the life of Jesus by Germans and other theologians. Self-Help. By Samuel Smiles. (John Murray. 1S. net.) Sinai and Palestine. By Dean Stanley. (John

The River Amazons. By H. W. Bates. (John Murray.

These are the first three volumes of Murray’s Shilling Library, and we could have wished for some more classical classics than these. Still, we have no doubt that they will appeal to a public that is not open to our influence, and as mere books they are worth the money. They are well bound and printed, appro- priately enough, on heavy paper, and we hope to see them peeping out of the coat pocket of every member of the Y . M.C. A . W e dubiously welcome them as being instructive.

Murray. IS. net.)

IS. net.)

Drama. By Ashley Dukes.

THE ominous sign of “ House Full ” has appeared of late upon the portico of the Repertory Theatre. I say orninous, not from any superior assumption that all plays attractive to the general public are necessarily bad, but because the present playbill seems to indicate that a halt has been called and that some struggle is proceeding within Mr. Frohman’s soul between business management and Quixotism. His original pros- pectus, issued to the Press in the form of a “ heart-to- heart talk ” about the theatre, showed that he had hit upon an unoriginal but entirely honourable method of losing a great deal of money. He was going to produce plays, plays by anybody and everybody, conver- sational plays and literary plays, plays with plots and plays without plots, debates and dialogues of every imaginable kind. In especial, he was going to produce

the New Drama. “ I advise the dramatist to learn the conventions of the theatre,” he said, “but chiefly in order to disregard them.” Indeed, Mr. Frohman seemed to have joined those enthusiasts who, in their hatred of the “ theatrical ” in every shape and form, will be content with no less than the complete emancipation of the drama from the theatre. One could almost hear them prompting him. A plot? Quite unnecessary. Action ? A superstition. Continuity, construction, technique? Away with them ! Form ? A sham. Stagecraft? A vulgar, laborious heresy. Let us soar !

The theatre has now been open for two months, and what has happened? First of all, every original play has disappeared. “ Justice ” had some twenty-five performances, which under a repertory system must be accounted a success.. “ Misalliance ” had eleven, Meredith’s “ The Sentimentalists ” only six, and “ The Madras House ” nine. These latter must all have been, commercially speaking, failures.

Meanwhile the repertory has been whittled down to “ Prunella ’’ and “ Trelawny of the ‘ Wells,’ ” both of them revivals and both clearly popular. Hence the “ House Full ” phenomenon. I remarked the other week upon the entirely new audience attracted to the theatre by the production of “ Trelawny.” The same audience was noticeable at “ Prunella.” It has a Dorothy-Minto-Irene-Vanbrugh air about it, and is no doubt largely attracted by these ladies, quite apart from the plays in which they appear. The little band of the faithful has withdrawn, and is waiting patiently in the hope of receiving further crumbs of modern drama at Mr. Frohman’s pleasure. As with the audience. so it is upon the stage. The moderns have been ejected for the moment, and repertory is a t a discount.

If all this only meant that we g-et “ Prunella ” instead of “ Misalliance,” I for one should not quarrel with the exchange. ‘’ Prunella ” was the Court Theatre “ Peter Pan.” It has a way of pleasing everybody, as far as it goes. And if that is not very far, there is no harm done. If you get tired of it one year, it comes back with a new freshness the next. Mr. Joseph Moorat’s odd, elusive melodies will bear hearing many times, and there are new actors to be seen in the old parts. As for the present revival, I thought it less happily conceived in cast and acting, but better in all other respects, than at the last performance at the Court Theatre in 1907. Miss Dorothy Minto seems to have got into a groove. As Prunella she does everything much as she used to do, but her work lacks imaginative quality. I like Mr. Charles Maude’s Pierrot better than Mr. Graham Browne’s, but Mr. Arthur Whitby misses the effectiveness of Scaramel. Mr. Nigel Playfair was far better at the last revival. The three old maids, Prim, Privacy, and Prude, are incredible as members of the same family. The new costumes are pleasing, and it was a happy idea to use Mr. Norman Wilkinson’s admirable scenery from “ The Sentimentalists ” for the Dutch garden.

Evidently this theatre will need, sooner or later, a safety-valve for its successes-another house, that is, whither plays like “ Trelawny ” and perhaps “ Prun- ella ” may be transferred for an undisturbed run. Unless some arrangement of this kind is macle, the

repertory ” will soon be no more than a name. Mr. Frohman owns or controls so many theatres that there should be no difficulty in establishing a second string, and he might have the additional satisfaction of malting up commercially in the one house what he lost artistic- ally in the other. This would probably have been Mr. Herbert Trench’s method at the Haymarket, had he not hit upon two successes a t once in “ Don ” and “ The Blue Bird,” and run them both out together. At all events, it is certain that the original repertory audience, an extremely coherent and reliable audience, although small, will grow restive under a long course of the present playbill. Mr. Frohman may object that it is nut worth his while to satisfy the wants of these few hundred, or a t most very few thousand, people, but without them he will not get any further.

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Another revival has been Mr. Lewis Waller’s production of “ The Rivals ” at the Lyric Theatre. Much of the individual acting here is good, but the whole performance lacks dignity and sense of form. It is a vulgarisation of Sheridan. The comedy of manners needs a high standard of rhythm of speech and restraint of bearing which this company seems quite unable to achieve. One never forgets that the actors are modern people, fresh from modern fashionable comedy, practising their own particular tricks. They seem out for fun at any price. “ The Rivals ” is certainly full of very good fun, but it is not €un of Mr. Lewis Waller’s and Mr. Robert Loraine’s especial kind.

ART. By Huntly Carter.

THE NATIONAL GALLERY is again the centre of divided opinion ; again a n object of sensational interest not only to artists and the artistic, but to every honest person that despises snobbery, jobbery, misappropriation of public funds, the fallacy of the traffic in aesthetic culture and a deliberate and impudent form of public taxation. The train has been fired by a letter to the “ Morning Post,” in which the writer, Mr. James Greig, claims to have discovered initials upon the Rokeby Velasquez proving incontestably that Velasquez did not paint it. Referring to the solemn pronounce- ments of pundits in the press, and some playful remarks which other persons have made about the Venus, I have received .a letter and a photo of Velasquez’ majestic portrait of himself in the Uffizi from a friend who resides abroad, and who advances the reasonable opinion that

As Velasquez was a man of superb dignity and taste and moved in the strictest court in Italy, he would have painted a recumbent nude, and a modest nude on the line of Titian’s great work in the Uffizi. The subject would have been in a natural position and facing one. The National Gallery

Venus ’’ is redolent of Paris and demi-mondaine life. Go 60 feet off and the contours of the figure are sharp and bad. The flesh colour is no longer there. The Velasquez test of distance kills it. Commenting on the fatuous remark of some person who said the Director of the Louvre certified its genuineness, and lamented its loss to Paris, he maintains that the Director certainly would lament its loss to Paris, seeing that it is a picture by a Parisian for a Parisian. All the married men of Paris would have crowded to the Louvre to gaze with greatest ad- miration on the bold and brilliant attitude of the figure. He adds in conclusion :-

Velasquez painted a nude-according to legend-but it never could have been this nude, because it has not Velasquez’ feeling or colour or exquisite art, and it is also obvious to any but ignorant people that the picture is not as old as Velasquez’ time.

“

* * * Looking through the correspondence called forth Gy

Mr. Greig’s letter, I find that my attack on the National Gallery Old Masters was in its main contention thoroughly justified, and I do not feel the least inclined to withdraw i t . What was that main contention? It was that the National Gallery does not fulfil its purpose, and is not by any means what it claims to be; and nothing justifies its high expenditure of public monies. Such a Contention was bound to call forth violent criticism. Several wrong-headed and perverse persons have opposed it. They, on their part, claim that the National Gallery does fulfil its purpose, and fully justifies its existence, and this for three reasons. It affords an historical survey of the great schools of painters ; and it produces and promotes aesthetic culture in the public. The reply to this twaddle of twittering sparrows is that the National Gallery is not a representative collection of the great schools ; it has big gaps, and it does not possess what it ought to possess. Many of the best specimens of the old masters in this country are not at the National Gallery. They are at Dulwich, and Windsor, and Hampton Court, and the Diploma Gallery, and elsewhere, and there they are

likely to remain till our peculiar and ha’penny paper views on art and art education have made their way to Hanwell. England once had the opportunity of form- ing a real and lasting representative collection of old masters. Charles I., who was an enlightened and intelligent collector, who not only encouraged great painters, but had agents in all the principal centres of Europe, died leaving behind him the nucleus of such a collection. This collection was’ so highly appreciated by his half-educated contemporaries, that the moment they had disposed of Charles’ mortal remains they set to work to dispose of his estate, with the result that many of the monarch’s good and precious pictures went cheap to dealers. Stili, it is not too late to repair this fearful initial blunder. If a proper representative collection of old masters is necessary to the salvation of the aesthetic soul of this country--which I very much doubt-it could he arranged on a smaller, cheaper, and much more efficient basis than that attempted by the National Gallery.

* * * As to the second point, I have yet to learn that bad.

sad, and mad pictures, made-up pictures, vilely- restored pictures, fakes and dealers’ booms, and pictures that sail gaily under all sorts of aliases, can in- spire and provide profitable study for the painter. With regard to the attempt to confer aesthetic culture on the people, it may be said at once it is an impossible one. The assumption that culture can be bought and sold like picture varnish is too silly even for the English race. But this question of the artificial stimulation of aesthetic culture I must argue when I have more space. It rests on that biological discovery which is leading LIS into a new age, and it is closely related to eugenics. Perhaps I might induce Sir Francis Galton, who has recently expressed cordial sympathy with the NEW AGE departures in Art and Science, to throw some light upon the subject. * * *

I have received further letters from painters and others who arc convinced of the advisability of artists taking up arms in their own defence. Thus, Sir W. B. Richmond writes :-

I have read all the art articles in THE NEW AGE just now. Absolutely healthy! ! If we allow the purely literary man to assume the place to be absolute arbiter it will be our fault. We must be up and at it, and teach the public not only by our brush, marble and stone. but by “words ” which, by-the-by?, artists use extremely well and to the point, however unacademic their diction may be, they read straight . . . I wish you success quite sincerely. It is jus: what is wanted. * * *

And Sir Hugh Lane says : “ The Art Supplement is; the best thing of its kind I have come across.” He is strongly of the opinion that painters should write about exhibitions. From Sir James Guthrie I have received the following :

I am very glad to see you so vigorously taking up the cause of art, and hope to be allowed to have my word among the rest.

Many who have adventured in the problems which art affords have forsaken wrangling and sought assurance in the quiet of the studio and the workshop ; feeling, I daresay. that by keeping their talent furbished they could make the cause a great one from the beginning, €or themselves at least. And I have shared this view of the matter, but have heard the rising tune of discontent and felt that we deserved not to wait long for public expression. Yet, to apportion blame would be hard while the artist is so willing to wait upon commerce (whose ideals he has apparently accepted as his own) and while a means of selling a vast accumulation of adventitious work is the estent of the reform he seeks.

Many things that needed to be said are finding their way into THE NEW AGE, thanks to your benign energy. I hope the obvious developments will follow; a mere supplement will not satisfy us €or long, you know.

BOOKS RECEIVED. Constantin Guys. By G. Grappe. Dante Gabriel Rossetti. By Arthur Symons. Hodler and the Swiss. By R.. Klein. Japanese Art. By Lawrence Binyon. (International

Art Series). Fisher Unwin. 5s. net each. Review later.



RECENT MUSIC. By Herbert Hughes.

Strauss and Anti - Strauss. Strong men have been belabouring each other

mightily over the question of “ Elektra.” The “ Spectator ” in its piety denounces it on the score of decadence, no less. Fancy dismissing Baudelaire or Verlaine from serious consideration as artists because of the “ decadence ” of their poetry. Surely it is one thing to object to Hofmannstaal’s rendering of the Greek tragedy, and quite another to discuss the music of Richard Strauss to that rendering. The “ Specta- tor ’’ is merely confusing morality and art. Posterity hasn’t yet had a chance of “ placing ” Strauss as a n artist, and the “ Spectator,” loathing- Strauss, loses no opportunity to instruct future generations in the ar t of appreciation and in the polite exercise of polemics. Mr. Runciman in the “ Saturday ” utters a different shriek, and to the uninitiated a more effective one. H e labels it Kapellmeister-musik. (Think of the anti- thesis.) Now this is effective because it is wildly untrue, and we suspect that Mr. Runciman knows that. In the correspondence columns of the “ Nation ” Mr. Shaw has firmly trounced Mr. Ernest Newman for raising the cry of “ banality,” which Mr. Newman will be rejoiced to see was also raised by the “ Spectator.” If a man actually does feel something to be banal it will take a lot of persuasion to unconvince him ; not even historical comparisons will do. Personally, I cannot conceive any honest human being considering the Chrysothemis music in “ Elektra ” banal. I can only think that the anti-Strauss critic, predisposed to fight against any sort of appreciation whatever, is so taken by surprise at the simple beauty of it that he seeks refuge in this cheap affectation. The score is spotted with uglinesses, but these are inevitable and are never insisted on for their own sake ; the drama has moments of horrible cankering agony, and the music in the most natural manner expresses this agony. S t rauss is a realist, but in “ Elektra ” he has successfully avoided anything that could be labelled as meri- tricious realism. In my opinion he has in this opera reached a height of passionate beauty he had never attained before. I will not believe that Strauss sat down deliberately to invent the ecstasy and delirium of this music. Ecstasy has not yet become an exact science ; thank goodness we have this one consideration left to us i n these post-Wagnerian days. Even poor old Prout never promised us that we could be obscene by formula.

***

A n entertaining concert was recently given by the Resident Orchestra of the Hague. Dr. Viotta, the conductor, came to the Queen’s Hall with quite a good character, and in a conventional programme-a Bran- denberg Concerto of Bach, Beethoven’s Fifth, Men- delssohn’s fiddle Concerto, and Strauss’s “ Tod und Verklärung ”--he indicated a charming and romantic misunderstanding of the classics. Under his baton Bach was fussy and Beethoven merely bland. The ’cellos were weak in the Brandenberg, which gave the feeling of the structure ever toppling over and never quite succeeding until the last bar. It was all played a t an angle of 22 1/2 deg. The Beethoven performance was very funny. I had never realised how urbane the Fifth Symphony could sound until the Dutch orchestra played it. It was played with the utmost good-nature and suavité, and sounded rather like one of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words. A s a matter of fact this is a romantic orchestra. The wind instru- ments are superb, the wood in particular reminding one of the Lamoureux in Paris; each man is an artist of high rank, and it is a great joy to hear them play anything. Their best performance of all was “ Tod und Verlärung,” a fine piece of Byronic romanticism- early Strauss (1889)--and in this I think they could give our orchestras a good coaching. * * *

Although they accompanied in the Mendelssohn Concerto abominably (obviously from lack of proper

rehearsal with the soloist), I rather liked the way the Dutchmen took the piece, or rather the way Miss May Harrison took them through it. There are two ways in which Mendelssohn is usually regarded : one as being the last of the Beethoven period, which is wrong ; and the other as being a romantic early-Victorian, which is right. As a classic he is played formally, which is absurd. Miss Harrison was not afraid to rub in the tempo rubato (more power to her elbow) of which many of her critics disapprove. She let us have all the .senti- mentality, all the dash, all the deportment of that in- famous composition. Truly he had the soul of a dancing-master.

***

Miss Harrison’s playing is immensely improved, and she is now a violinist to be reckoned with. As a native artist, very young, she is in the front rank, and I have no doubt that before long she will possess that coveted thing, a European reputation. Her manner is her own; and so is her tempo rubato.

***

Some books on music have recently come into my possession.* “ Music and Socialism ” is a well-meaning tract by Mr. Edgar Bainton containing a few excellent sentiments about music for the people and so forth, but of no literary or propagandist value. “ The Development of Chamber Music” by Mr. Richard Walthew is a reprint of three lectures delivered at South Place Institute. This should fill a little gap in the student’s library of text books. It contains some honest opinions. “ Music ; its laws and evolution ”

by Jules Combarieu is a worthy addition to the fine International Scientific Series of Messrs. Kegan Paul. It deals with the metaphysics and aesthetics of music in a profound and illuminating manner. It has been left to a French writer to present us, in this excellent translation, with our standard work on this subject. Until this appeared, we had not, in English, a volume of such importance, and to all those who care for the contemplation of music in its scientific aspect I can heartily recommend it. I cannot myself do justice to the book in a short notice, but I hope to refer to i t again. “ Unmusical New York ” is superfluous. I t is a bombastic advertisement of Mr. Klein’s experience in America, in which nobody but Mr. Klein can possibly be interested. It is vulgarly written, and fit only for an impresario’s bookshelf.

ship Press. 1d.)

Walthew. (Boosey and Co. 6d.)

(Kegan Paul. 5s.)

Lane. 3s. 6d.)

*” Music and Socialism. By Edgar L. Bainton. (Fellow-

“The Development of Chamber Music.” By K. H.

“ Music : Its Laws and Evolution.” By Jules Combarieu

“ Unmusical New York.” By Hermann Klein (John

CORRESPONDENCE MR. BELLOC v. MR. SIDNEY WEBB.

T O THE EDITOR OF “ THE NEW AGE.’? Mr. Charrington is very kind to me in the article which

he has written in the issue of April 21, but there are two points in his statements which call for a reply from the author of that article lest those who have read Mr. Char- rington hut not what I wrote, should misunderstand me.

I do not refer to Mr. Charrington‘s conception that I was writing something personal with regard to Mr. and Mrs. Webb : such an idea never crossed my mind. I have no sort of reason for action of that kind, and the term ‘’ statistician,” to which Mr. Charrington objects, though an honourable and correct one, I shall be delighted to exchange for any other more honourable and more correct at a moment’s notice. The point is the Bill, the philosophy behind the Bill. and my objection to both. Mr. Charrington uses the word “Capital ” in a sense different from that in which I used it. I said that this Bill and everything of its nature did nothing to distribute capital. By this I meant that it did nothing to make a larger number of citizens

I control the means of production. In that I was strictly right. If Mr. Charrington means by capital something other than that portion of the means of production which can be distinguished from land, we are using the same word to two different senses. Mr. Charrington further says I confuse


THE NEW AGE APRIL 28, 1910

--

money payment with real wages. I never said a word about either, and nothing I wrote was within a million miles of the subject. Mr. Charrington objects to my suggestion of a servile State, but he does not examine my definition nor attempt to expose any fallacy in it. I say that the unstable equilibrium of society like ours must end in one of three things : a collectivist State, a servile State, or a State in which the means of production are distributed among a very large number of citizens. I define the servile State, I say that it is an ideal antagonistic to the ideal of the collectivist State, and until Mr. Charrington or anyone else can show how or where I am wrong, I shall maintain that these three issues are the only possible issues to the present situation. Finally, I did not say that the appeal of some wretched poor man from this precious committee of well-to-do busybodies ought to be to a popular vote. I pointed out that it was not even to a popular vote. Any idiot can see that an appeal to a popular vote on each particular case would be impracticable. The point is that if you give these busybodies absolute power without any appeal, you are inflicting the maximum of injury upon their unhappy victims and giving them the maximum of arbitrary power. I do not, of course, deal with the negative side of Mr. Charrington’s article as, for instance, its failure to touch upon the chief servile feature of the Bill, the imprisonment and enforced labour of the poor. For were I to deal with merely what is omitted my letter might be of indefinite length, and I do not desire it to trespass too much upon your space. H. BELLOC.

* * * To THE, EDITOR OF "THE NEW AGE."

Quite apart from the merits or demerits of the Minority Report and of the Bill which has been founded on it, will you allow me to tender a most emphatic protest against Mr. Charrington’s “reply” (!) to Mr. Belloc in your last issue ?

Personally, I have declared myself in favour of the broad principles of the Minority Report (though I am glad to think that on first reading it I blue-pencilled the mendicity and vagrancy proposals as intolerable), but I confess that I thought Mr. Belloc’s attack on the ‘(Prevention of Destitution Bill” a very damaging one, and at least three Socialists, who had previously been enthusiastic for the Bill, have told me that they were gravely unsettled by it. I was, however, prepared to suspend judgment until I had heard the reply of the other side. If Mr Charrington’s article is to be taken as that reply, I fear that judgment must go by ‘default.

Mr. Belloc’s criticism was a perfectly fair one. He con- tended that the provisions of the Bill tended not towards Socialism (which he understands, but rejects as undesirable) nor towards the wider distribution of private capital (which he advocates, but I reject as impracticable), but towards the reduction of the unemployed to the status of slaves. In support of this contention he draws a picture of the worker under “maintenance and training” separated from his family, compelled to work whether he likes it or not on terms dictated by others, forbidden to leave the "colony” if he wishes to do so, and obliged to accept any job that may be offered him. If this is a true picture, there can be no doubt that Mr. Belloc has proved his case.

Does Mr. Charrington attempt to prove that it is not a true picture? Not a single word. His article consists of comparisons of Mr. Webb to the Deity, charges against Mr. Belloc of holding opinions which everybody who has ever paid the smallest attention to his writings knows that he does no: hold, and shameless and unscrupulous appeals to religious prejudice which Mr. Belloc had done absolutely nothing to provoke.

As one who has engaged more than once in controversy with Mr. Belloc, I hope that for the honour of Socialism such methods will be abandoned and the case decided by the fair conflict of reason with reason.

CECIL CHESTERTON * * *

A CORRECTION CORRECTED. To THE EDITOR OF "THE NEW AGE."

Miss Florence Underwood informs an amused world of an inaccuracy in my article. She wishes it to be thoroughly understood that she “considers threepence too high a price to pay for a paper which is apparently run in the interests of her opponents, these being, of course, the Liberal Govern- ment.” Well, I will no longer suggest, since she objects, that she considers threepence too high a price to pay for the only paper in England which is open for free discussison. I will take her objection ad literatim. But in that case I am left wondering what her letter has to do with D. Triformis? I am most unhappy to have brought a hornet’s nest about the ears of THE, NEW AGE. It must be having such an anxious time already. Only last week I read, in the “Academy,” a paragraph almost threatening to disclose the exact sum THE NEW AGE received from the German Government for printing Mr. Titterton’s article "Why no: Surrender?” I devoutly pray that Miss Underwood’s

discovery may not be brought to the notice of Lord Alfred Douglas, for if anything happened I should feel, in a way, to blame. Nevertheless.’ it is quite clear that this lady would gather more distinction by making her profound charges in some such journal as the “Academy,” ‘(Votes for Women,” or, best of all, the "Vote,” than to readers who support THE NEW AGE mainly because the contras as well as the pros of any argument may be found therein.

D. TRIFORMIS. * * *

MRS. BRABY’S “DOWNWARD.” To THE EDITOR OF "THE NEW AGE."

One of the first principles of Eugenics is that a mother should prepare herself for maternity. At the least, preparation and conscious responsibility would scarcely increase the numbers of such “crowning glories” as the following among men: Charles Peace, Jack the Ripper, Emil Hoch, Nero, Brigham Young. Among mothers who have felt the "great golden moment when their babes quickened to life” one recalls Mrs. Dyer, Messalina and the Countess Tar- nowsky. The list need not be lengthened. To reflect that almost without exception the great female criminals have been mothers is enough to make anyone understand that Nature unrestrained willingly produces monsters, and that maternity as such no more uplifts woman than a tigress. Every one of our lunatics, criminals and diseased, had naturally a mother. It is time for women to cease gushing over themselves and to look at the facts of statistics.

EUGENIST. * * *

WHY NOT SURRENDER TO GERMANY? To THE EDITOR OF "THE NEW AGE."

I would add another to Mr. Titterton’s already convincing list of reasons in favour of our surrender to Germany without striking a blow. Under Teutonic rule, the “half-time system” of our industrial districts would no longer be permitted. In this great country thousands of children, are turned out of their beds by a steam whistle at five or six in the depth of winter to work in the awful noise and foul air of textile factories until noon. They should be at school or at play. It is a fact that many of them prefer the mill to the school., but that is the fault of the school, and this preference is a nasty smack in the eye for our educational system.

Why not surrender to France ? The British home might then begin to produce a decent cup of coffee.

KURLOS. * * *

A CORRECTION. To THE EDITOR OF "THE NEW AGE."

In the last NEW AGE (page 589, second column) I read that “Geniuses should not be any more ashamed of their warts than of their heads.” Accordingly, I lay my hand upon my wart and agree that warts are trumps.

E. P.

“EAST LONDON VISIONS.” To THE EDITOR OF "THE NEW AGE."

A man should not bandy compliments-or disparagements either-with his king, nor an author with his reviewer. On matters of fact, however, an author (or a subject) may perhaps be permitted to speak a word. Please, therefore, let me tell you that I have never heard of a book called ”The Valley of Shadows,” or of a man called Francis Grierson, although your reviewer regards my book (“East London Visions”) as the first fruits of that work.

Perhaps you think this “argues myself unknown.” Argu- ment is needless. Unknown is what I am, so perhaps the reviewer is a little hard even on Francis Grierson, who also may be unpleasantly surprised to learn that my book (especially if what the critic says of it is all true) is the first fruits of his.

THE AUTHOR OF "EAST LONDON VISIONS." * * *

HUNTLY CARTER AND THE NATIONAL GALLERY.

To THE EDITOR OF "THE NEW AGE." As a constant reader of THE NEW AGE and one particularly

interested in art, I hope you will allow me to add another protest against Mr. Huntly Carter’s gross exaggerations in the matter of the relative values of old and modern paintings. Enough has been said by your other correspondents on his extraordinary lack of vision in judging the artistic merits of most of the National Gallery pictures, but one of his remarks in last week's THE NEW AGE gives one a clue as to his methods of reasoning. He says: “No. 138, If a sane person saw this in a furniture shop in Italy he would roar with laughter,“ and of another picture, ‘(Italy is packed with such tame and unpleasant specimens of Old Masters, and all waiting to be snapped up by the tradesman- collector.” I quote the latter because it is too astounding



APRIL 28, 1910 THE NEW A G E 621

to be passed over in silence. I have not been a great deal in Italy myself, but a friend of mine who has recently poked about in most of the out-of-the-way places, and whose Judgment in the matter is particularly sound, assures me that among the dealers’ shops, with a few exceptions, she saw none but modern copies (which were certainly atrocious enough !)-the exceptions being Old Masters either at millionaire’s prices, o r so bad that evidently the tradesman- collector hesitates to buy them (or they would not be still there !)

Now as to the former, I don’t remember No 138, but be it good or bad, w h o in the name of all that is artistic, would ever dream of taking the “sane person’s ” judgment as a criterion of a work of ar t ? Isn’t it just that ‘‘ sane person ” who has done most of the damage to art and artists which MI- . Huntly Carter is for ever lamenting? Didn’t he (the “ sane person ”) laugh at Whistler and the Impressionists ? Wouldn’t he, doesn’t he, laugh at John and all the modern painters of that type whom Mr. Huntly Carter is admiring in the same article ?

Just a word further as to the lump of sugar which Mr. Huntly Carter always offers at the end of each article after the dose of bitter invective at the Old Masters. This would be amusing were it not so damaging to THE NEW AGE’S standard of sincere criticism so well maintained in the other sections. Each week we have a fresh selection of modern works which we are called upon to admire as being at least equal to the best Old Masters, with a fervour hardly to be surpassed by the halfpenny papers! As a painter in a very small way myself, I am hardly likely to cavil at the hunting- up of unknown and budding geniuses; but that there are quite so many of them as Mr. Huntly Carter would have us believe seems scarcely likely. MILDRED JENNINGS.

***

T O THE EDITOR OF “ T H E NEW AGE.” I must gracefully retire. I cannot get at Mr. Carter. He

takes cover behind generalities and consistently refuses to come out into the open. Having no time to circumvent him with metaphorical block-houses, I leave him in entire possession of his points and wish him joy.

In my last letter I issued a numbered challenge on the questions a t issue, none of which will he answer., I had hoped that he would take them seriatim and expound his views in the same vein as that in which he recently slew the Primitives, annihilated Velasquez, and reduced Raphael to artistic smithereens. Unfortunately he would not rise to the bait.

I positively refuse to repeat the hackneyed passage of Ruskin in which he eulogizes the National Gallery. The sentence triumphantly quoted by Mr. Carter referred solely to the many wrong attributions which existed at that period.

As to the (‘Venus “ (Mr. Carter’s “French painting ”), signature or no signature of del Mazo, it is by Velasquez. The only painter supporting him in his “French ” theory is Sir William Richmond, R.A., whose sole claim on posterity is the fact that some years ago he attempted to destroy Degas.

Last week Mr. Carter slaughtered the Salting pictures, and described the large Hals group as a “ pot-boiler.” If he cannot see masterly painting in this latter picture he can see it in nothing, ancient or modern.

I n his diligent search for restorations and repairs, he finds them where they do not exist, and passes over the most regretted example of all. Holbein’s famous “ Duchess of Milan ” is in a deplorable condition, the face especially has been badly damaged and repainted in several places. I will give him a loophole and say that perhaps it was this which made him describe Holbein’s work as technically bad. . . . Phew ! HUGH BLAKER.

***

VIVISECTION. T O THE EDITOR OF “ T H E NEW AGE.”

Mr. Rosmer, in a letter in your issue of April 21st, affirms that he is unable to decide which of two reasons it is that causes the public to remain inert on the question of vivisection His two reasons being: first, ignorance of what takes place ; second, that ((civilisation has made men unhumane and selfish cowards.”

But if Mr. Rosmer will lift his eyes from a too ceaseless contemplation of the vivisection question, he would, I think, discover far more natural causes than either of the two he has brought forward.

In the first place, the anti-vivisectionist is illogical. He flames and shudders against “those who surrender their morality ” in practising vivisection, men who, on the whole, are by far the most humane and tender-hearted of their species, but he ignores the open and shameless cruelty of sport ; he, doubtlessly, cheerfully and unenquiringly partakes of veal, and enjoys lobster, and he is able to read without a tremor that “Z. Y. Z. was yesterday morning executed at B.”

Now the merest tyro in the study of human nature must know that penal measures never make men humane. The

sportsman may, at some future date, be jubilant because the law has put a stop to vivisection, but he is not a whit more humane when he goes on that account with his friends to shoot down harmless birds, and when, as nearly always happens in these big battues, one, two, or three wounded, terrified creatures are left to helplessly flap life away all through the long night ; the suffering, as suffering merely, is as great as that of the animal under vivisection. Then again, there are rat-traps. Why are the tortures of a rat to be ignored if those of a dog are to make matters of intense public excitement! Has poor Shylock-rat no feeling ? Has he not heart, blood and veins like other creatures ?

I am not denying that it may be hideously unhumane to fasten an animal to a board and to operate on it, but it must be still more hideously unhumane to fasten a man within four bare walls, and to explain to him that for a certain number of days he will have nothing to think of save his own approaching violent and shameful death. His sufferings must of necessity exceed tenfold that of any animal, because men live by communication and sympathy with their fellows, and from these he is rigidly debarred ; he is able also to look forward, which an animal cannot do, and he will multiply in his poor warped mind the grim horrors of his hourly approaching murder. Therefore I contend that so long as the law and the much-boasted sportsmanship of Englishmen foster cruelty, it is to be lacking in sanity to attempt to rouse thoughtful persons into hysterics over vivisection.

If an earnest surgeon, fancies that by operating on rabbits and dogs he can discover a means of bringing some relief to the struggling masses of deformed and tortured human creatures, you are at liberty to disagree with him, you may even use that silly, selfish argument that you personally would refuse to benefit by the result of such trials ; but you have no right to insult and dishonour him, and you have no human right to ignore the multitude of groaning men, women, and children to whom he may, by increased knowledge, bring relief. It would be acting more logically to work first at abolishing the cruelty that exists merely for the gratification of self, either in the form of amusement, or appetite, and to set the face like a flint against murder by law.

The anti-vivisectionists resemble a waspish district-visitor who rails bitterly against a woman because the doorstep is filthy, but who takes no manner of notice of the greater filthiness of the woman’s children. ARTHUR HOOD. * * *

SOME CONSIDERATIONS. TO THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW ACE.”

Mr. Bax writes (THE NEW AGE, April 14) : “My chief point against Christianity is not the imperfections of the Christ-figure, but the principle of bigotry and persecution the religion of Christ introduced into the world.” Further down he says: “Christians were persecuted before they began to persecute, says Mr. Dunkley. Of course they were.” Here surely is a contradiction. If Christians were persecuted before they began to persecute, then they can hardly be said to have “introduced” persecution into the world.

But, Sir, I am not much concerned about Mr. Bax’s incon- sistencies ; the best of men are inconsistent st times. What I want to point out is the extraordinary attitude of mind which can say that the imperfection of the character of Jesus Christ is not the chief point against Christianity, but rather the principle of persecution which the religion of Christ has introduced into the world.

Why, Sir, Christianity stands or falls by the character of its Founder. If Mr. Bax were able to prove that the character of Christ was not a perfect character, then I, for one, should cease to be a Christian. His main charge against the “Christ-figure ” is still that of “real self- assertion draped in an ostentatious garb of humility.” Now I agree with Mr. Bax that if Jesus was only man, then His sayings display a self-assertion inconsistent with true humility. As Dr. Liddon writes, “Could any mere man claim that place in thought, in society, in history, that authority over conscience, that relationship to the Most High; could he claim such powers and such duties, such a position and such prerogatives as are claimed by Jesus Christ, and yet be justly deemed ‘ meek and holy of heart ’ ? ” Certainly not. Christians are not fools. They know that if Jesus Christ is not God, He is not a humble or an unselfish man. But they believe that He is God. They believe that something surpassingly wonderful came to pass in that stable of Bethlehem, that He who went about doing good and died upon the cross was more than man.

I should like to put this question to Mr. Bax. How does he account for the fact that One who was born, humanly speaking, with a stain on His birth, and lived as a small Jewish tradesman, and died a convicted felon, yet draws increasingly to Himself the loyalty and devotion of educated men of all races, so that it is no exaggeration to say, as a




modern writer has said, that “not Caesar, nor Napoleon, not Plato, nor Bacon, counts as a fact in the life of to-day for a tittle, or a thousandth part of that eighteen months’ ministry of the provincial carpenter.” The Christian explanation of the life and influence of Jesus is, I think, the only reasonable one, viz., that He who was born of the Virgin was God as well as man.

Believing this, then I really can’t trouble myself with the problem who first introduced bigotry and persecution into the world. In bygone centuries Christians persecuted unbteievers with the stake and the rack; now they persecute them by criticising their articles in THE NEW AGE ! We are more gentle now than- they were in the olden time, but why do Christians persecute at all? For the very simple reason that they believe that they know the truth of this world and the meaning of life, and they want unbelievers, for their own sakes, to know it too. Their methods of propagating their faith may be quite wrong, may be, in fact, quite inconsistent with the spirit of their religion, yet their intentions are good, and the end they have in view is intelligible. E. H. DUNKLEY.

“THE LOGICAL CLIMAX OF THE MODERNITY MOVEMENTS.”

T O THE EDITOR OF “ T H E NEW AGE.” My letter under the above heading in “The Academy,”

April 2, seems to have given your critic, Mr. Huntly Carter, a bad quarter of an hour. He realises the deadly blow this donkey’s tail masterpiece has dealt to these movements, so he mis-states the case and tries to insult and libel me. I overlook his insults; but to speak of a professional artist whose living depends on his brush as if the idea of a picture by him was too horrible to be thought of, is to sail in perilous waters ; and in fairness you must let me offset his opinion by that of a critic of higher standing who said, in “ The Illustrated London News ” : “ Idealist as he has often shown himself to be in his work, Mr. Wake Cook here appears as a consummate realist.” While another critic said : “ There is not a drawing in his (E. Wake Cook’s) little exhibition ;that is not an exquisite dream of beauty.” Leaving the critics to cancel each other, let us turn to the non-personal matter which concerns art and THE NEW AGE.

First to correct Mr. Carter’s mis-statement. “ T h e Sunset on the Adriatic ” was not “painted ” by an artist using a donkey’s tail as a brush, as he implies, but a brush was tied to a donkey’s tail and dipped in various colours, the donkey was irritated into whisking his tail in vigorous protest, the canvas was put within range, and in this way this masterpiece of Impressionism was produced, and hung in the Salon des Indépendants. Mr. Carter says that the society has no power to exclude such an atrocity ; what is this but the most abject form of “Anarchism in Art ” which I denounced in my articles in “Vanity Fair,” and in “The Throne ”

when I was its art editor, articles afterwards published in book form ?

Is not the position of the “Indépendants ” that of individualism gone mad? And as such, should it not be denounced by THE NEW AGE which stands for socialist and collective ideals ?

Then again, societies like the International and the New English Art Club really exercise a grinding form of tyranny ! Their practice and unwritten conventions force all their exhibitors to paint down to a low decadent level ; their works may not look like the world’s masterpieces as they would be denounced as “academic,” and subversive of the objects of these “Modernity ‘’ Societies. The Royal Academy is freedom itself compared with the restraints and self-imposed fetters of these little bethels of art. Here again, THE NEW AGE should denounce these hampering conventions if it is to be true to its mission.

The Modernityites have shown no gleam of new inspiration ; and while from such a mass of experimenting some successes have emerged, they have been the exceptions. There is no principle of progress in their efforts, and the last exhibition of the International was its worst.

“G. B. S.” tells us that we cannot have a new art until we get a new philosophy; we have got one, but only the negative the anarchical side of it has yet found expression in art. The twentieth century renaissance of art, to which J look forward, will come when the higher, the constructive side of this philosophy finds its expression ; and you, Sir, should surely cut yourself adrift from these dead and decadent modernity movements and promote a real New Age of Art. E. WAKE COOK.

* * *

* * * GROUP-PARASITISM.

T O THE EDITOR OF “ T H E NEW AGE.” The law-workers are indeed a vested interest. It is

sickening to hear some of those Old Bailey barristers talk, they have no more regard for their clients as human beings than butchers have for sheep- as distinct from mutton.

And many of those “ grave and hoary-headed hypocrites ”

who pass from being counsel familiar with all villainy where

they protest to know of none, have long become indifferent to suffering, and men like the late Mr. Justice Day would use the rack or break upon the wheel, were those barbarities still left them to employ.

Reform will not come through these hardened and long- since irreclaimable forensic sinners, and, as the writer of your article says, “they must be crushed by the democracy. “

In London there is a building we all know well ; upon it a brazen barmaid with sword and scales. Over its doors is sculptured a bloody motto, “Defend the children of the poor and punish the wrong-doer.” But yet it is just the children of the poor who will stand in that dreadful place and be con- signed to systematic degradation. This is the old-time story ; commodities are so dear and so precious, and human life is so cheap and of small account ; but “liberty cannot be granted, it must be taken.” TAB CAN.

* * * A PROPOSED TOUR IN HOLLAND.

T O THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.” For reasons given below, it appears to me possible to

arrange an enjoyable Whitsun tour, in which readers of THE NEW AGE should participate. The amount of touring on the Continent indulged in by the average man or woman is circumscribed by the limits of his or her income, and the fact is often overlooked that expenses are much reduced when such outings are not carried out on individualistic lines. Railway companies grant substantial reductions when twenty tourists journey together, and hotel proprietors have a reduced scale for a large company of visitors.

An objection often advanced, however, against touring in a party is the lack of a common denominator in tasks and ideas amongst the Co-travellers. One wants to visit the Louvre ; another prefers the “Folies Bergères.” The proper enjoyment of one another’s society might not exist between a Garden City artist and a Barnsley footballer. This consideration leads me to the point of my letter, which is to suggest that your readers have a distinct common bond in their appreciation of THE NEW AGE’S social gospel.

Should this view commend itself to a sufficient number of readers, action might be taken forthwith. A definite objective must then be chosen; why not a conducted tour at Whitsuntide to the Hague, Scheveningen, Amsterdam, and Rotterdam? The cost would not exceed £4 in any case and might be less. One detail is essential, namely, the immediate adhesion-conditional adhesion would suffice--of not fewer than twenty readers. WEEKENDER.

[Replies to the above letter may be addressed to THE NEW AGE, 38, Cursitor Street, London, E.C.--EDITOR

Articles o f the Week. ADCOCK, A. ST. JOHN, “ The Ordinary Man :

His Political Outlook,” Daily Chronicle, Ap. 22.

AFLALO, F. G., “ About Animals : A Tr ibu te t o the Zoological Gardens,” Morning Leader, Ap. 18.

ALLEN, GEO. J., “ Of Beauty,” Morning Leader, Ap. 21.

(ANONYMOUS), “ Socialism : Its Meaning and Origin, ” Quarterly Review, April.

ANSON, Sir WM., “The Government and the Lords,” Times, Ap. 20. (Letter to the Editor.)

ARCHER, WM., “ The European Table d’Hôte,” Morning Leader, Ap. 23; “The Shakespeare Fest ival : The Russian Dancers at the Palace Theatre,” Nation, Ap. 2 3 .

BAILEY, Mrs. FRANCIS, “ T h e M a n of Method,” Morning Leader, Ap. 22.

BAKER, ERNEST A., “ Low-Level Climbs at W e s t - dale,” Morning Post, Ap. 23.

BARING, MAURICE, “ Velasquez and Venus,” Morning Post , Ap. 23.

BARNETT, Canon, “ East London Visions,” Nation, Ap. 23; “Pract icable Poor Law Reform,” Westminster Gazette, Ap. 20.

BARR, R O B E R T , “ M a r k T w a i n : Some Personal Recollections,” Morning Leader, Ap. 23.

BELLOC, HILAIRE, M.P., “The Mercy of Allah : III.,” Morning Post, Ap. 23.

BENNETT, ARNOLD, “ T h e D r a m a of the R.A.,” Daily Chronicle, Ap. 19.

B L A T C H F O R D , ROBT., “Triumphant Demo- cracy,” Clarion, Ap. 2 2 .

BOURGEOIS, LEON, “ V u e s Politiques,” Revue de Paris, Ap. 15.


BROOKS, SYDNEY, “Mark Twain : An Appre- ciation of the Great Humourist,” Daily Chronicle, Ap. 23.

BURGESS, JOS., “ Reminiscences of a Socialist Agitator : Comedy and Tragedy at Leicester,” Chris- tian Commonwealth, Ap. 20.

CARPENTER, EDWD., “ A Drama of Injustice,” Labour Leader, Ap. 2 2 .

CHESTERTON, G. K. , “The Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds,” Daily News, Ap. 2 3 .

COCHIN, DENYS, ‘‘Vues Politiques,” Revue de Paris, Ap. 15.

COX, HAROLD, “The Attractions of Tariff lie- form,” Free Trader, May.

DALZIEL, Sir HENRY, “The Coming Constitu- tional Crisis,” Reynolds’s, Ap. 24.

DAVIDSON, MORRISON, “Sir Charles Dilke : A Great Reformer,” Reynolds’s Ap. 24.

DAVIES, EMIL, “The Nationalisation of Rail- ways,” Labour Leader, Ap. 22.

De BROKE, Lord WILLOUGHBY, “ A Plea for the Backwoodsman,” World Ap. 19.

D I C E Y Prof. A. V., “ Lord Rosebery’s Appeal,” Times, Ap. 23 (letter to the Editor.); “The Referendum

and its Critics,” Quarterly Review, April. DOUGLAS. JAS., “The Snob State : A Defence of

Tipping Morning Leader, Ap. 18. DUNSANY, Lord, “The Unhappy Body,” Saturday

Review. Ap. 23. GAUNT, MARY, “ Australian Encumbrances,”

Morning Post, Ap. 20. GLASS, PERCY, “The Cotton Trade and Tariff

Reform,” Morning Post, Ap. 21. GRAI-l’AM, R. B. CUNNINGHAME, “ Ave Caesar !”

Saturday Review, Ap. 23. GRAYSON, VICTOR, ‘‘ The Genus Politician,”

Clarion, Ap. 22. HARRISON, AUSTIN, A Record of German

Policy,” World, Ap. 19. HIRST, F. W., “The City and Free Trade,” Free

Trader, May. “ HUBERT,” “ An Impracticable Proposal : Reasons

why the Unionists cannot Drop Tariff Reform,” Sunday Chronicle, Ap. 24.

HUME, MARTIN, “Diaz and Mexico,” Daily Chronicle, Ap. 19.

IONIDES, C. C. L., “ Neaped on the Maplins,” Evening News, Ap. 23.

JAURES, JEAN, “ Vues Politiques,” Revue de P a r i s Ap. 15.

JOWETT, F. W., J.P., “ Terrible Tim and the Mis- guided Mullah,” Labour Leader, Ap. 2 2 .

KITSON, ARTHUR, “ Does Protection Protect ?” Westminster Gazette, Ap. 19.

LANG, ANDREW, “The Origin of Cocks and Hens,” Morning- Post, Ap. 22.

LUCY, Sir HENRY, “ The Ministerial Position, ”

Observer, Ap. 24. MACDONALD, MARGARET E., “Women and

Labour Exchange;-,” Labour Leader, Ap. 22. MACKENZIE V. ST. CLAIR, “Cowper and

Democracy,” Outlook, Ap. 23. MCMILLAN MARGARET, “ Silver-Tongued : The

Heritage of the Dumb,” Morning Leader, Ap. 21. MEDLEY, AUSTIN, “ New Year Poetry-making in

Japan,” Nation, Ap. 2 3 . MONEY, L. G. CHIOZZA, “ More Work and

Wages,” Morning Leader, Ap. 22; “Free Colonial Wheat : Mr. Balfour’s Election Sop,” Daily News,

MOORE, Lt.-Col. NEWTON, J. (Premier, Western Australia), “Wanted, Men in the South : What West- ern Australia Offers the British Emigrant,” Daily Express, Ap. 20.

O’CONNOR, T.P. “ A Changed Outlook,” Rey- nolds’s, Ap. 24.

OWEN, HAROLD, “Crown and Party : The Next Tory Battle-cry,” Daily Chronicle, Ap. 20.

PEARCE, A JAS., “The Cost of Living,” Morning Post, Ap. 23.

PURVIS, WM., “Whitewashing the Puritan : The Evangelical Hatred of Art,” Sunday Chronicle, Ap. 24.

Ap. 22.

RAPHAEL, JOHN N., ‘‘ Le Grand Teddi : How the French Regard Mr. Roosevelt,” Daily Express,

RATCLIFFE, S. K., “ Indian Nationalism : Reform and Reaction,” Christian Commonwealth, Ap. 20.

REYNOLDS, STEPHEN, “ Beachcombings : Flot- sam and Jetsam,” Westminster Gazette, Ap. 23.

ROBINSON, WM., “The English Garden,” Satur- day Review, Ap. 23.

ROOK, CLARENCE “Clean Springing,” Daily Chronicle, Ap. 21.

ROOSEVELT, THEODORE, “ African Game Trails; : Great Hippo. Hunt,” Daily Telegraph, Ap. 23.

RUNCIMAN, j. F., “National Opera Once More,” Saturday Review, Ap. 23.

SALT, HENRY S., “ Beyond the Pale : An Ameri- can Study of Crime,” Morning Leader, Ap. 20.

SEWELL, HY., “ The Ethics of Journalism,” Vanity Fair, Ap. 21.

SHARP, EVELYN, ‘‘ The Life that is not Simple, ” Morning Leader, Ap. 20.

THOMPSON, ALEX. RI., “ Westward Ho! The German Point of View,” Clarion, Ap. 22.

TILLETT, BEN, ‘‘ The Labour Victory i n Aus- tralia,” Justice, Ap. 23.

TITTERTON, W. R., “ On Hustle and Art,” Vanity Fair, Ap. 21.

TOMLINSON, H.M., “ All Hands! A Ream Sea in the Bay,” Morning Leader, Ap, 19.

TOLSTOY, LEO, “ A Talk with the Wayfarer, ‘ ’ Westminster Gazette, Ap. 23.

WAKEMAN, ANNIE, “ A Professional Talker : Another New Occupation for Women,” Daily Ex- press, Ap. 20.

WILLIAMS, LEONARD, “ The Riddle of the Rokeby Venus,” Daily Mail, Ap. 21 and 22.

W O L F F , H. W . , ‘‘ Liberals and Small Holdings : The Need for Co-operative Ranks, ” Daily Chronicle,

YOUNG FILSON, “ A Tropical Island : V. Quam

Ap. 2 2 .

Ap. 18.

Dilecta,” Saturday Review, Ap. 23.

Bibliographies of Modern Authors, 23. G. K. CHESTERTON

1904

1905

I905

1906

1904

1908

1908

1908

I909

1909

1910

WILD KNIGHT. Volume of Poems. (Dent.) DEFENDANT. Essays. (Out of print.) GREYBEARDS AT PLAY. Nonsense Poems.

TWELVE TYPES. (Out o f print). (Hatchards.) BROWNING (English Men of Letters.)

Biography and Critical Study. (Macmillan.

G . F. WATTS. Study. (Duckworth. 1/- and

CLUB O F QUEER TRADES. Fantastic

HERETICS. Controversial Essays. (Lane

DICKENS. Critical Study. (Methuen. 7/6 Also cheaper edition.)

THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING HILL. Fantastic Novel. (Lane. 4/8.)

THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY. An Extravaganza. (Arrowsmith.)

ORTHODOXY. Controversial Essay on Con- structive Christianity. (Lane. 4/8.)

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Reprint of Articles printed in “Illustrated London News.” (Methuen. 2/6.)

TREMENDOUS TRIFLES. Reprint “Daily News” Articles. (Methuen. 2/6 . )

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW. Critical Study. (Lane. 4/8.)

THE BALL AND THE CROSS. Fantastic Novel. (Wells Gardner. 6/-.)

(Out of print.)

2/8. )

2/-.)

Stories. (Harper.)

4/8.)

IN COLLABORATION. BIOGRAPHY FOR BEGINNERS. (Edited by “ E.

Clerihew. ”) With 40 diagrams by G. K. Chesterton. (T. Werner Laurie. IS . net.)


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A UNIQUE AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

FROM THE BOTTOM UP. By ALEXANDER IRVINE.

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