All orders and remittances should be sent to the NEW AGE. PRESS, 38, Cursitor
Street, ..... tied up with the Triplice by an Agreement which is an open secret.
THE
NEW
AGE
A WEEKLY REVIEW OF POLITICS, LITERATURE, AND ART. NewSeries Vol. VII. No.
22.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1910.
THREEPENCE,
CONTENTS. PAGE
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NOTESOF THE WEEK FOREIGN AFFAIRS. By S. Verdad ............ FRANCE AND THE EGYPTIAN NATIONALISTS. By Duse Mohamed THE DOGMAOF FERRER’S CULPABILITY.By Luis Araquistain A PENNY FOR POSTERITY. By Stanley Morland ...... THE PHILOSOPHY OF A DON AUGUSTE STRINDBERG.By Ashley Dukes FERDINAND LASSALLE--11. By Alfred E. Randall
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BOOKSAND PERSONS. By Jacob Tonson ......... THE IMAGE,HEART’SDESIRE. By Beatrice Hastings REVIEWS. By Stanley Morland LETTERS TO THE EDITORfrom W. Beauchamp, Paul Adam, John Kirkby, Cecil Chesterton, R. B. Kerr, Chas. H. Fisher, S. Skelhorn, S. Verdad, E. Nesbit, E. H. Visiak, Haldane Macfall, Archibald Rowan Hamilton ARTICLES OF THE WEEK
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possibly could, and he believed they could, the financial liberties of the trade union movement.” There is some Great Britain. Abroad. loose language here, if Mr. MacDonald has been correctly reported. I t is not the financial liberties of the One Year trade union movement that are imperilled by the Six Months.. 7 6 8 8 Osborne judgment, but certain adventitiously acquired Three Months 3 9 4 4 political privileges. The Osborne decision makes no All orders and remittances should be sent to the NEW AGE inroads on trade union activity on its industrial side: PRESS, 38, Cursitor Street, E.C. it merely denies the legal and public right of trade MSS., drawings and editorial communications should be organisations to coerce their members for ends which were never contemplated. I t is a s well that the central addressed to the Editor, 38, Cursitor Street, E.C. fact of the whole discussion should be rigorously kept All communications regarding Advertisements should be in view, since the side issues are inexhaustible. addressed to the Advertisement Manager, 38, Cursitor * * * Street, E.C. The point is of importance since it is precisely on the political ground that we take exception to Mr. MacDonald’s conclusion. True, we foresee that the results of the unreversed decision will be to drive the unions t o resume their industrial activity and the Socialists their IF we had any doubt about the wisdom of our view of political activity; but these are fruits gathered by t h e last week that the Osborne decision should not be reway. W e look forward to both effects with eagerness, versed it would be removed by Mr. Ramsay Macand we shall be grateful to the Osborne decision for Donald’s explicit confirmation in his speech at Leicester having produced them. But, quite apart from these, on September 18. With his conclusion we no more and even if the immediate issues were less unmistakeagree than does the “Spectator,” though we should ably progressive, we should on political grounds alone hesitate to attribute it, as the “ Spectator” does, to oppose the reversal of the Osborne judgment and press cynicism. A new way of life in political controversy for Payment of Members. As we remarked last week, would probably discover in Mr. MacDonald’s attitude the Labour party, with its strictly limited and delegated more of pathos than of cynicism. I t is not easy to watch task, cannot be regarded a s a political party a t all. I t s the destruction of your own darling creation even appearance a t Westminster was not a political, but an if you know it in your heart an encumberer of the economic phenomenon. As such, and except by a ground. And the Labour party is a s much the creation privilege extended to its delegates, the Labour members of Mr. MacDonald as of any man. Under these cir- had no more political right to sit at Westminster than cumstances we are not surprised that he should have the delegates of any other intercessory interest. I t may decided against his better Socialist judgment to restore be true that many of the members of other parties are if possible the fallen fortunes of the Labour party even no more than veiled delegates, and that the House of at the certain and, t o him, clearly realised cost of deCommons is, in fact, the arena of a vulgar and inferring the success of a Socialist party. terested struggle of the pull-devil-pull-baker order. “The Socialist section of the Labour movement (he said) That is obviously the view taken by one of our correshad suffered financially by its association with the trade pondents. But the view in our opinion is not true; and union movement. A large number of their supporters had even if it were the remedy is not to legalise and inalways looked upon the Labour alliance with doubtful tensify the scramble by deliberately adding a new eyes, and the result had been that the ample financial reinterest, but to serve the remaining interests as the sources which they tapped before 1900 had been more or Osborne decision has served the Labour party. After less closed to them. The financial assistance that they got all, however corrupt our public practice of politics may from the Labour party looked large on paper, but in fact it was an absolutely negligible quantity. If he took a Sociabe, it i s the business of all-round reformers to stick to list party line he would not lift a finger to change the principles. Practice in the end will follow. Osborne decision. All the Socialist leaders had to do * * * if they wanted to make the trade unions far more revoluOf course, the Labour party will make a fight to retionary than they were was to go home, sit in their studies, tain its present powers. That is only to be expected. read the poets, and smile while the fruit of the Osborne decision quietly ripened by the ordinary operations of the I n fact, from what we gather in the “ Labour Leader,” laws of nature.” and elsewhere, the Labour leaders are regarding the Then followed Mr. MacDonald’s conclusion : “ SocialOsborne decision a s a welcome occasion, a s they imagine, of renewing their youth. On this a t any rate ists, however,. were not going to resort to that kind of tactics. They were going to restore, if they they are united, and for this they are prepared to stand
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shoulder to shoulder to die in the last ditch. “The supreme question for the Labour party,” says the “ Labour Leader,” “ is now the restoration of rights . If incarceration should result so much the better Exactly actly. By “incarceration ” on behalf of its “ rights)’ the Labour party would hope to regain its lost prestige. But, as we have already said, the hope i sv a i n Had the members of the Labour party been prepared some two years ago to risk “incarceration ” €or the sake of unemployment, their prestige would never have been lost. They are prepared to be “ revolutionary ” only when nothing but their own position is a t stake, that is to say, when public opinion is profoundly indifferent to them. W e may as well say that in our opinion nothing will be done to reverse the Osborne decision by the present Cabinet, still less by a Cabinet of which Mr. Austen Chamberlain is the second in command. On the supposition that the Labour members will endeavour to turn out the Government on this question in November, what would they gain if even they could do it? An Amurath an Amurath would succeed, and meantime the alternative remedy of Payment of Members would be probably lost.
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No, it is plain to us that the Labour party has at least as little to gain by rebellion as the Irish party. Both parties are, in fact, in something of a cleft stick. It is rumoured plausibly that the front Benches have already prepared their plans for keeping things a s they are until after the Coronation in June. Whatever may be the result of the Conference, the Liberals will stay in office until the national ceremonies are over. If the Irish and Labour parties chafe either separately or in concert they will be able to do nothing, since in that event the Conservatives would come to Mr. Asquith’s rescue by open or by secret means. Thus in all probability the appeal to Parliament to reverse the decision will be useless. And we should not like to stake anything on an appeal to public opinion. The sensible course is, therefore, the course we urge and the course urged by Mr. Sidney Webb-to appeal immediately on the re-assembling of Parliament for the promise of Payment of Members and to re-form the Labour and Socialist movements in accordance with the frankly accepted conditions.
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There are still vague yearnings in the offices of the Daily News ” and the “ Nation ” to discover a means of partially reversing the decision; but, for the life of us, we cannot see how it is to be done. The ineffable P.W.W. writes slackly of the “ real democratic sympathy ” of certain members of the Cabinet, and the “‘ Nation ” still imagines that the levies can be maintained without necessarily infringing the rights of the minority. Even if we cared twopence for the trivial question of majority and minority rights, we should be at a loss to know how legally to levy one without levying the other; nor has the “ Nation ” a notion of the means. But in truth the question is not of majority or minority rights at all; nor is it a question of the internal autonomy of the trade unions. The problem a s we shall continue to reiterate, is political and concerns public policy. The dogma involved is the absolute right of the community to deny to any organised section admission to the House of Commons by delegacy. The spirit of Parliament must -decline to admit to her councils any person who is not there primarily in the interests of the nation as a whole. For class or trade delegates a s such she has no place, however by defect of power she has tolerated both for so long. Consequently we are not even interested in the attempts of the two Liberal papers to find a modified reversal of the Osborne decision. Any conceivable compromise will be politically fatal. “
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The last argument we should have thought would be advanced for maintaining the political character of Trade Unionism is the “ Nation’s ” reflection that “ trade organisations, alike on the side of labour and of capital, must of necessity be utilised more and more by
SEPT.29, 1910
all modern States for administrative purposes ” s u c h , for example, as Workmen’s Insurance, Wages Boards, and Conciliation Schemes. How could such pseudophilosophical propositions be written by cool brains ? Is it not obvious that just in proportion as trade organisations are utilised by the State for administrative purposes their party-political character must be obliterated ? The State would certainly be corrupt that entrusted to the Tory caucus the administration, let us say, of Tariff Reform and of ‘Tariff Agreements with other countries. I t would be equally infatuate to entrust to trade organisations, whether of masters or men, administrative functions while the executives of the bodies were avowedly of a single political party. A more careless argument we do not remember to have read even in the “ Nation.” Actually the moral to be drawn from it is exactly the contrary of that intended by Mr. Massingham; and we hope it will not go unobserved.
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W e suppose, however, that it is too soon yet to expect any result in the Press from our notes of last week. Otherwise, not only the “ Nation,” but the “ Spectator ” and the “ Saturday Review,’’ would fairly come in for a little censure. W e have already referred to the “ Spectator’s ” shocking misunderstanding of Mr. MacDonald’s speech, a misunderstanding based on the entirely false assumption (as we proved) that Socialists are agitating for the reversal of the Osborne decision. Surely Mr. Strachey will have the honesty to admit that he is wrong. As a respected leader of the Conservative Press Mr. Strachey often sets the tone of public discussion. If, as we complain, it is low, whom shall we blame but the models? The “ Daily Express,” for instance, is undoubtedly a mere base reflection of the opinions expressed by papers like the “ Spectator ” and the “ Observer.” If these persist in writing of “ Socialist agitation to reverse the decision,” the “ Express” is bound, as it did last week, to publish headlines concerning “ Socialist tyranny. ” The worst of it is that mannerly disputants may by these devices be driven to oppose their own convictions. Bias remarked to his evil companions who prayed to the gods during a storm a t sea : “ Hold your tongues; don’t let them know that you are on board.’’ Similarly we are rather inclined to remark of the “ Express,” and even of its models. Like them, if for contrary reasons, we ourselves oppose the reversal of the Osborne decision ; but if their way of life continues to be so markedly and deliberately unjust, we shall be disposed to despair of any succour from reason.
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I t has been urged, we observe, that in the event of the disappearance of Trade Unions from politics the organisation of a working-class political party is impossible. That was the “ Nation’s ” view expressed last week, and‘ it is repeated in our correspondence columns this week. But we wonder who, besides a small handful of pessimists, really believes this. Plainly the only proof possible one way or the other is experience; but we are quite prepared to state on our own knowledge that preparations are already being made to accomplish the “ impossible.” As a matter of fact, the caucus of the Labour party has made politics unnecessary for the rank and file of the working classes. Our readers know that we have had to complain many times of the apathy of the rank and file; but that apathy was quite intelligible and, indeed, inevitable. They annually committed into the hands of their “ leaders ” their political interests, and, save for an individual here and there, thought no more about them. Where the leaders did everything the men were dispensed from doing anything ; and particularly since the leaders were not representatives in the sense that their views were closely in touch with those of their constituents, but delegates, and, as it were, “ m e n on the spot,” entrusted with plenary powers if only for a season. But the restoration of political responsibility to the men themselves would alter all that. After the Osborne decision it will be no longer a question of a small subsidy, indifferently or reluctantly paid, but a contribution, if
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anything at all, freely offered for a specific cause. Whoever supposes that under those circumstances either money or rank-and-file political enthusiasm will be lacking is either dubious of the existence of any real grievance or ideal such a s would thrust working men into politics, or is unaware of the early history of the Labour movement, or despairs of the working classes politically altogether. W e do none of these things. Politics will not be rendered less but more imperative for the working classes by the Osborne judgment; and we do not doubt for an instant that they will find the way of making politics effective.
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With regard to the Trade Unions, henceforth, we hope, to be debarred corporately from party politics, their future may be read partly in their past. Undoubtedly they have been during the last twenty years neglecting their industrial functions while gnawing a file at Westminster. Their leaders have been chosen and their major activity determined by political considerations of which neither they nor their leaders fully understood the purport. And what have they succeeded in doing by political means? W e have done our best to praise them on occasion, but their condemnation lies in the simple fact that wages in proportion to profits have declined during the period of their political embroilment. Now it is all very well to urge that working men should be in politics, but the object of their unions was not politics but economics. Definitely, exactly and exclusively the unions were formed for the defence and improvement of the conditions of labour. If, as everybody admits, the conditions of labour have not improved, but, on the contrary, deteriorated during the last twenty years, the conclusion is unavoidable that the unions have been practically wasting their time. The question remains whether by closing to their leaders the tempting avenues of political notoriety, the unions may not very soon succeed in replacing their present political guides by guides and leaders of another kind, by industrialists in fact who will prefer to raise wages or to lower hours of labour to making a splash in Parliament.
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I t may be asked, it has been asked by one of our correspondents, how is this to be done? What means have the unions of bettering the conditions of their members save by political pressure. Well, statistics prove that political pressure has done nothing; and industrial pressure cannot do much less. On the other 'hand, industrial pressure can do a great deal more. The most businesslike proposal made at the recent Sheffield Congress was to prepare a scheme for the Confederation of Labour such that, when occasion demands, the national industry should be threatened (and not vainly but effectively) with paralysis unless certain grievances are remedied. There is a weapon of absolutely boundless power. What has been called grandiloquently the " dignity of labour" might under the régime of the General Strike become a reality. At present it is humbug, and humbug it must remain so long a s the responsible directors of the Labour movement do nothing drastic to abolish the bestial conditions of places like Cradley Heath. Our correspondent asks if we would advocate a horsepond for the Cradley Heath employers. All we know is that if Labour had any " dignity " worth talking of, no employer in England would dare impose Cradley Heath conditions on working people.
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That, in short, i s the condition of affairs that we desire to be brought about by the industrial activity of unions: to make even the offer of less than a living wage or reasonable hours of labour an affront to working men. Rather than submit to degrading conditions of labour let working men starve, tramp, steal, riot, strike, boycott, intimidate, demonstrate, agitate, anything in short. The more organisation there is in all this the better, since it will then be more effective. The Osborne decision unreversed may lead to this, and on this account alone it should be maintained. Take care of economics and politics will take care of itself.
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Foreign Affairs. By S. Verdad. YES, a military agreement has been signed between Turkey and Roumania, and Roumania is seriously thinking of borrowing ten millions sterling with which to build a fleet. King Charles of Roumania, though a Hohenzollern, is a conscientious, honest, and talented ruler, now somewhere in the neighbourhood of seventy. For the last five-and-twenty years Roumania has been tied up with the Triplice by an Agreement which is an open secret.
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Turkey's ostensible move in forming this connection is to keep Bulgaria in order in case Greece should prove troublesome. Some ingenious critics have talked airily about an " understanding " between Greece and Bulgaria. I respectfully direct the attention of these learned men to a map of the Balkan Peninsula, where Turkey will be seen inserted a s a solid wedge between the dominions of King Ferdinand and the dominions of King George. There might be twenty understandings without one country being able to help the other in time of war.
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Although the intimate relations between Turkey and Roumania had been spoken of with some alarm in diplomatic circles during the last few months, it was the correspondent of the " Matin," I . believe, who made the first announcement in print. Since then I and a few other Foreign Editors have been not a little amused by the vague conjectures put forth to account for the phenomenon. The explanation is, indeed, fairly simple, and is not unconnected with the difficulty which the English intellect experiences in adapting itself to new conditions. Even the " Daily News " has to admit that the " Gladstone tradition " tended to make Turkey unpopular in this country. But that was in the days of Abdul Hamid, when there was some justification for saying that Christians, and, what was and is even more important, Christian funds, were not safe in Turkey. As a consequence the ex-Sultan was rather truculently treated by the British Foreign Office. Time after time he was given to understand that he was a naughty boy, and must behave himself. A somewhat similar attitude was adopted by France, Russia, and Germany, whenever those Powers had dealings with the Porte.
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Abdul, however, was deposed, and his place was taken by men of a different calibre-men who, in spite of their many defects, did set to work to bring the chaotic Turkish finances into some sort of order, to make the Turkish Army second to none in the Balkans in point of efficiency, and to make their Navy a navy in fact as well a s in name. There are many points from which I could criticise, and harshly criticise, the present Turkish Government; but they must, on the other hand, have full credit for what they have done. They have a Navy now, small it may be, but it floats, anyway, while the guns with which it is supplied can be fired without threatening to blow to pieces the very ship from which they are discharged. And this Navy is manned by crews who hardly knew what drill was until quite recently. The Turkish land forces, again, which include some of the best soldiers in Europe, have been put through their paces too. While an English admiral was putting the Navy in order, German officers were drilling the Army, and Turkish officials were busy with the hospital corps and the commissariat department and other branches of the fighting lines which are not usually thought of by the man in the street. I t need scarcely be said that all this was under the watchful eye of the man to whom the new Turkey is overwhelmingly indebted, Mahmud Shefket Pasha.
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Finance Minister, came to London several weeks ago, not necessarily to negotiate a loan, but to “ sound” people. T o his surprise, however, he was received a t the Foreign Office here as if he had been an emissary of Abdul himself. Pompous officials patronised him, a s if he had been an out-of-work politician looking for a place. Other majestic jacks-in-office “ took an interest” in him, as if he had been the superman or the missing link. But it was made apparent that, in the eyes of Europe, the Young Turks were still naughty boys, that they had doubtless made some progress, but, anyhow, they’d better be careful and mind what they were about.
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acted. H e made known his point of view to the Wilhelmstrasse. Instantly the messages exchanged between the two Teutonic countries and Turkey were couched in friendly, almost good-natured terms, partly to smooth down Turkey over the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, partly to lower the prestige of England and France in the Balkans.
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The “ plant’’ worked, t h e plans of Count von Aehrenthal being facilitated by the bungling of the British Ambassador a t Constantinople, Sir Gerard Lowther, by the stupidity of Sir Edward Grey, and by the French anxiety to get what the Government con* * * sidered as necessary guarantees. For months numerous Somewhat astonished, greatly disgusted, Djavid petty incidents led to a steady diminution of British Pasha went elsewhere. The officials at the French and French prestige in the Balkans and a correspondForeign Office knew enough not to treat the man as if ing rise in German and Austrian influence: he were a child; but France had many bones to pick Enter at this point Sir Ernest Cassel, a man of parts. with the Young Turk Party. French financiers were A Jew, born in Germany, though now a naturalised interested in the Ottoman Empire to the extent of Englishman, he is one of those cosmopolitan financiers several milliards of francs; but, while Turkey thus lay whose influence may be thrown into the scale for good under large financial obligations to France, it was or evil. Sir Ernest Cassel has views of his own about Germany which, for the most part, was benefiting by the French money so invested. Armaments, above all, Balkan politics, though they are not views which are were being ordered from Germany in large quantities held in Foreign Offices. I t is an open secret that he and paid for by money which had been lent by French would like to see German and English differences settled investors. There were other matters concerning terri- in the Near East, and he had the impression, apparently, that a Turkish loan, floated in London and tory in North Africa, which the Liberal Press in this Berlin, would tend to this end. As the “ Daily News ” country has tried to magnify; but the main item which has pointed out, however, letting the cat escape for left a sore spot in the feelings of M. Pichon was the once, the Gladstone tradition remains, and Turkish financial one. In short, M. Pichon intimated, Turkey loans are not popular in London. The public, in fact, was not sufficiently grateful for all that France had would not look at the last one, floated about two years done for her. ago, and it had to be taken up by those who had under* * * written it. Of course, since capital still dominates the world, and Sir Ernest Cassel began negotiations with the Porte, is likely to continue to do so for many generations to and the result was an extraordinary inspired statement come, there is everything to be said for this point of given to Messrs. Reuter. The high official who gave view, if we look at the matter from the standpoint of what out the message said that this was nothing more or in America would be known a s horse sense. Turkey less than an attempt to blackmail France. Officially, is a country to be exploited. Germany is exploiting her however, the negotiations between the Turkish Cabinet with French money, and the French Government and the French Government will not be concluded until naturally objects to the process. I t will be fresh in the October I , and until then no definite pronouncement minds of those who read the papers that it is not so can be made. I think, however, that I have sufficiently long since both Djavid Pasha and Hakki Pasha visited indicated the tension that exists. MM. Briand and Pichon in connection with this acute As I have said, Turkey has for months past been financial crisis. Diplomatically high words were exdrawing closer to the Triple Alliance and away from changed on that occasion, and the half-promise which M. Pichon made was not, on reflection, deemed suffi- the Triple Entente. The Agreement with Roumania cient by the Turkish Ministers. Their pride as Otto- may be taken for all practical purposes a s binding mans was hurt by the French demand for “guaran- Turkey to the Triplice. Turkey is connected with tees.” Their point of view was that the setting in Roumania, Roumania with Austria, and Austria with force of the Turkish Constitution, and the proper estab- Germany. Where, it may be asked, does Italy come lishment of a two-Chamber Parliamentary system, had in? She doesn’t. She has long been showing signs of irritation, and in time of war, as I said a week o r two set Turkey on the same level as any other great European Power. Could they not be trusted, as another ago, the other two partners in the Triplice could not great Power would be trusted, without any special rely upon her assistance. But with Turkey a factor of immense strength would be added, a s I remarked on a guarantees? previous occasion. Indeed, on looking over some back * * * Apparently not. For on this question of guarantees numbers of THENEW AGE, I find that what most of the French Government refused to budge. Thereupon the English, French, and German newspapers are now Hakki and Djavid Pashas thought of going elsewhere ; saying about the Balkans was stated in this column but this trouble was spared them. Somebody else several weeks ago. Russia, it may be added, has sent a stinging Note to came to them, viz., Sir Ernest Cassel. Let us see how the Turkish Ambassador at St. Petersburg regarding this was brought about. the increase in the Ottoman Navy. The Albanians are * * * While Downing Street had been talking to the Porte in a sullen mood; and the restless bands of Kurds and as a grandfather might be expected to speak to his Arabs in Asia Minor are giving trouble now and then, grandson, while the Quai d’Orsay had been talking in so that managing the Turkish Empire is not altogether the style of a kindly father addressing his erring son plain sailing. W e have yet to see, too, whether a democratic Constitution is suited to an aristocratic and heir, Germany and Austria had been hobnobbing with the Turkish Ministers as one man of the world nation, for it must be remembered that the new Turkey with another. The first man in Europe to get his mind is yet but two years old. By the way, one of Djavid Pasha’s complaints clarified in regard to the new Balkan situation brought about by the deposition of Abdul Hamid was against the people he met here was that they were Edward VII., but he could not act, and the impene- inclined to be exceedingly envious of Turkey because trabIe stupidity of Sir Edward Grey prevented even the it was a Mohamedan and not a Christian Power. Nay, late King. . . however, we had better leave this Djavid has actually been heard to protest with some vehemence against English religious bigotry ! I suspoint over for THENEW AGE of the next generation. The second man to take in the position was Count von pect that, in view of the present Welsh Government, he Aehrenthal, the Austrian Foreign Minister, and he bumped up against a good many Nonconformists.
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France
and the Egyptian Nationalists.
By Duse Mohamed. THERE was a time when the people of Egypt were not only kindly disposed towards France by reason of her educational institutions in the country and her construction of the Suez Canal, but because they knew her to be the Modern European State from whence those eminently humanising elements of society, Fraternity, Equality and Liberty, sprung phoenix-like from the ashes of autocracy and repression. And in spite of much provocation this feeling remained unchanged until May, 1881,when France, without warning, aggressively seized Tunis, and when on January 6, 1882,the ambitious Gambetta concocted and launched the Joint Note, with Britain’s co-operation, upon the people of Egypt. Much, therefore, as it appears that M. Pichon’s action in prohibiting the Egyptian Nationalists’ Convention is due to the recent Pan-Islamic utterances of “Lewa,” the root of the trouble is much deeper, and the sapling was planted on July 9, 1878, at the Berlin Congress, and is consequently not a matter affecting Egypt alone, but the Turkish Empire and 325,000,000 Moslems of the entire Mohammedan world. As early a s 1857we find Napoleon III. making overtures to Lord Palmerston with a view to the partition of Northern Africa. In that scheme Morocco was to fall to France, Tunis to Sardinia, and Egypt to England. Lord Palmerston, however, said in a letter to Lord Clarendon, “ I t is very possible that many parts of the world would be better governed by France, England and Sardinia than they are now. . . . We do not want to have Egypt. W h a t we wish about Egypt is that it should continue to be attached to the Turkish Empire, which is a security against its belonging to any European Power. We want trade with Egypt, and travel through Egypt, but we don’t want the burthen of governing Egypt. . . . Let us try to improve those countries by the general influence of our commerce, but let us abstain from a crusade of conquest, which would call down upon us the condemnation of all civilised nations. ” According to Lord Palmerston’s view it would appear that both France and England, in their lust of conquest and their greed of gold, have become less civilised in proportion to the extension of their “ land-grabbing ” crusade. The pacific foreign policy of the noble lord and other English statesmen, which had gained for Britain the reputation for political probity in European chancelleries, doubtless influenced Lord Beaconsfield’s Guildhall speech some thirty odd years ago, when he spoke of the advantages that might accrue to England from a regeneration of Islam under British protection H e had bought the Khedive Ismail’s Suez Canal shares, but, a s far as my memory serves, he had not as yet signed that secret Cyprus treaty of San Stefano, which was destined not only to open the eyes of the youthful Sultan Abdul Hamid to the undesirability of English influence in his dominions, but caused the “ peace with honour” ( !) diplomats to return from their triumphal European progress to the accompaniment of the thinly veiled sneers of the plenipotentiaries to that “ famous *’ Congress. It may be of interest to set forth the conspiracy of these precious Christian diplomats against the poor “ benighted *’ Moslem. First we found a British Consul at Cyprus who, from interested motives, suggested to Disraeli the desirability of acquiring Cyprus because of its possible wealth. Then Turkey found herself in the merciless grasp of the persistent Muscovite, with a Russian army at the gates of Constantinople. England, in the interests of freedom, and her traditional protection of the Turkish Empire, sent a fleet to the Dardanelles, and by a naval
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demonstration wrested the treaty of San Stefano from a sullen but powerless Russia; and Sir Henry Layard, Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador to the Porte, by way of compensation, secured the signature of his Sublime Majesty the Sultan to the Cyprus Secret Convention, by which, in lieu of certain promises of reform, the integrity of his dominions was guaranteed to him, and in exchange for Britain’s parental protection, Cyprus was leased t o her. Certain travelling British military consuls were to be appointed to supervise the farmers of taxes in the Turkish provinces in order to prevent them from unduly squeezing the peasantry, advise and report grievances, and generally superintend the provincial civil administration, to see that the recruiting grounds of the Turkish Army were not depopulated by mismanagement. On these conditions Disraeli and Salisbury, the other signatories to the convention, meant to establish a sort of informal but effective protectorate over Asiatic Turkey. The really important object in acquiring the island was primarily to obtain the strategical control of Asia Minor through the previously-mentioned ambulant Consuls, whose real duty was to check the advance of Russia in the Mediterranean even as her progress had been Had this secret convention checked at San Stefano. been carried out, the British capitalist would have made a commercial banquet of Turkey, eventually trussing her up with the swords of a n occupying army in the same manner as Egypt has been treated. Retribution was, however, destined to overtake the “peace with honour ” apostles much earlier than they anticipated, for in less than two short months after signing the secret convention, the “ Globe ’* published the text of the convention, which fell like a thunderbolt from an azure sky on the deliberations of the Congress, on July 8, 1878,thereby proclaiming Britain’s Prime Minister and her Foreign Minister guilty of gross duplicity and recorded falsehood. For they, with the other Ambassadors, had given their word that there was no secret understanding with Turkey regarding the questions under consideration. Prince Gortschakoff, the Russian plenipotentiary, and M. Waddington, France’s representative, immediately signified their intention of retiring from the Congress, M. Waddington going so far a s to pack his trunks. Bismarck, however, patched up the trouble and rescued the English diplomats from their unfortunate dilemma by effecting the following compromise between the French and English Ambassadors :I . That as compensation to France for England’s acquisition of Cyprus France should be allowed on the first convenient opportunity and without opposition from England to occupy Tunis. 2. That in the financial arrangements being made in Egypt, France should march pari passu with England. 3. That England should recognise in a special manner the old French claim of protecting the Latin Christians of Syria. Thus, in order to cover up an act of political doubledealing and disgrace England’s Prime Minister handed over to France a province of his confiding ally the Sultan, setting the heel of the French Republic upon the neck of Tunis, and not only paving the way for the partition of Africa among the European Powers with its attendant miseries to the native populations, but for ever destroying Britain’s influence for good in the Ottoman Empire, making her name a by-word among Moslem peoples, and also causing Abdul Hamid to form his settled dislike to Western constitutionalism in his dominions, and giving birth to the idea of the pan-Islamic movement, which was primarily intended as a defensive weapon against the aggressive encroachments of Christendom. France, under the “ g r e a t ” Napolean, by her invasion of Egypt in 1799 created a precedent in aggression which was followed up in May, 1881, when she invaded Tunis under the transparent pretext of “protecting the Bey from the threatening attitude of his turbulent subjects ” ; and by this highly imaginary device occupied the western portion of that Regency and proclaimed a French Protectorate. The Bey of Tunis had neither forfeited the goodwill of his people, nor were there financial
THE NEW A G E
510
embarrassments or dangers to Europeans. And this illegal and highly aggressive usurpation of authority in the dominions of a mild and inoffensive neighbour was calmly accepted by Lord Granville, on the “assurance ” of the French Government that “the occupation of the Regency was only for the restoration of order.” If there were disorder it was introduced by France herself (for it is certain that the tribes of the desert took up arms against the invaders), and the disorder was not long in spreading itself to the Algerian Sahara, creating in its train a wave of anger against Christendom which, rolling eastward, culminated in the Egyptian army’s demand for selfFrance’s line of political fiction was, government. however, destined to be subsequently plagiarised by Lord Granville himself in Egypt a year later, when the positions of the two Powers were reversed. W h a t wonder, therefore, that “Lewa ” should by virtue of previous French aggression, protest against the Republic’s arbitrary methods in Morocco? For not only, as L e w a ” says, has France combatted the Islamic army in Morocco and the Islamic union, but she is even now using all the tricks known to diplomacy to sow discord amongst Moslem sovereigns. France, in making a cut a t the liberty and prestige of a country and nation,, has little cause for complaint if some 325,000,000 Moslems are furious over her invasion of Morocco. I t is, indeed, true that, as I have already pointed out, this was the plan of Napoleon III. in 1857, and doubtless M. Pichon discovered the draft of the third Emperor’s scheme ready to hand among the archives at the Quai d’Orsy ; but we expect better things from the French Republic than could have been possible to a Bonaparte with all the repressive and aggressive traditions of his house behind him. England, however, having comfortably settled herself in Egypt, and France having seized Tunis, according to the original scheme, Sardinia being out of the hunt, it only remains for France to occupy Morocco in order that Napoleon III.’s truly imperial dream may be abundantly realised M. Pichon’s prohibition of the National Congress at so late an hour was not only “mean and cowardly,” as the H u m a n i t é and the “Eclair” aver, but could not possibly have been anticipated from the representative Minister of a Power whose motto is E g a l i t é Fraternité Liberté ”
The Dogma of Ferrer’s Culpability.
By
Luis Araquistain.
ONLYa rnan with the scientific discipline of Mr. Simarro* could gather and unite logically the elements which have served accusers and defenders of Francisco Ferrer a s grounds for maintaining respectively the dogmas of his guilt of innocence. Until now most people have regarded the Ferrer case in the light of a dogmatical belief : some finding him guilty, without any definite proof of his guilt, and others considering him innocent, because they knew his peaceful nature and his exclusively educational ideals, but without concrete means of proving hi5 innocence. The lapse of nearly a year has been necessary to group and fix in a set of literary works, such as articles pamphlets, lectures and books, the separated and floating facts connected with Ferrer’s case. And, finally, all these scattered facts have found in the book of Mr. Simarro a common platform, a place of unity and logical sequence, where we see clearly the tragical force of Ferrer’s trial, a son a stage without wings
.
After
Mr.
Simarro’s
book,
both
dogmas
are
* “El proceso Ferrer y la opinión europea,” by L. Simarro, D.M., Professor of Psychology in the University of Madrid. Volume I--The Trial. (The second volume, not published yet, will deal with the European opinion).
SEPT. 29, 1910
destroyed: the dogma of the guilt of Ferrer is proved an obvious fraud ; and the dogma of his innocence is revealed as a scientific truth. Mr. Simarro has cleared from the blood-stained image of Ferrer the mythical and devilish covering with which it was wrapped by the theological hatred of Spain, and has shown him in the light of unquestionable truth. I t is known that Ferrer was condemned to death a s the organiser and leader of a military revolt. But it has been obviously proved already that the revolution of Barcelona was organised only by three Socialists, whose purpose was to carry out a resolution taken a t the Socialist Congress of Stuttgart, declaring the general strike as a protest against the shipment of troops for Melilla. The only foundation for the charge against Ferrer of being the revolutionary leader is the statement that a man who looked like Ferrer was seen a t the head of a group of rebels. This statement was made by a journalist who had never seen Ferrer, but had only seen a photograph of him. This is the centre of the tragedy. After the revolution was checked, nobody at first speaks about Ferrer. Conservatives vaguely accuse Anarchism, and concretely the followers of the Republican deputy for Barcelona, Mr. Lerroux, as being the original cause of the revolutionary movement ; a t the same time, the Clericals--Neocatholics, Carlists, Integrists, etc. -charge Freemasonry as being the obscure genesis of the revolution, and the concrete source of it is fixed upon the working of the free schools, that is to say, non-Catholic schools. But Anarchism and Lerrouxism on the one hand, and Freemasonry and free school teaching on the other, were foes too vague, and Clericals and Conservatives needed a better target a t which they couId aim their despotic and theological hatred. In this position the journalist mentioned, either deliberately or through error, reported from Barcelona to a Conservative paper of Madrid that he had seen Ferrer heading a group of rebels. As soon as the name of Ferrer was pronounced, Clericals and Conservatives found a solution of the psychological need of having a definite foe, in whom they could fight Anarchism, Lerrouxism, Freemasonry and free school teaching simultaneously. And in the eyes of reactionaries nobody could be the synthesis of those four confused enemies better than Ferrer. Firstly, Ferrer, as founder of the Escuela Moderna, was an implement of Freemasonry undermining their bases of society with the corrosive teachings of the rationalist school ; secondly, Ferrer, as the apparent accomplice in the regicidal attempt of 1906--on which charge he was acquitted-was the incarnation of Anarchism and its near relative, the revolutionary Republicanism of Lerroux. Never was a man born who was better representative of these four phantoms-Anarchism, Lerrouxism, Freemasonry and free school teachingwhich take up so much room in the heads of NeoCatholics and conservatives-those heads so tremendously destitute of any knowledge ! After having found the synthetical man, the revolution of Barcelona was explained by the reactionary elements of Spain as a logical product of the wickedness and devilism of the representative man-of Ferrer. As the explanation was concordant with the state of mind, and specially with the intellectual poverty of Spanish Clericalism, it spread and grew quickly, Iike a “snowbaII,” according to the expression of Mr. Simarro, who, being a n authority on psychology, has drawn in the Chapter III. of his book a short and excellent study of the development of myths through mental colIective action. In this case the myth was the culpability of Ferrer, which in the beginning is a solution of the psychological state of Clericals and Conservatives, and afterwards is turned into a closed dogma. You have, then, the reactionary dements of Spain and especially those of Barcelona convinced that Ferrer is the leader of convent burning-as firmly convinced as if they had received the news through divine revelation.
SEPT.
29, 1910
THE NEW A G E
With a dogma of Ferrer’s guilt so constituted, the trial is a theological work in which only the facts that agree with the dogma are argued, and all those that could contradict the dogma are refused. But really, as Mr. Simarro unanswerably expounds, there is not a fact concordant with the dogma ; and those which approach to it and are the central point of the accusation-as that of the journalist who thought t o have seen Ferrer a t the head of a group-lack accuracy, their outline is v a g u e and in most cases they contradict themselves reciprocally. On the other hand, according to the theological method, all means that could destroy the dogma are left out of the trial. The witnesses are banished who could throw some light upon those mysterious hours in which the bodily eyes of the accusers lost the track of Ferrer, while with the eyes of their ardent fancy they see him leading the revolutionary groups through Barcelona. At the same time some letters from Ferrer and some registered letters sent by friends of Ferrer to his defender are lost enigmatically. T h e defender, finally, expresses his inability to refute the dogma, because they have deprived him of every means of defence. And at last,, the corollary, or result of the dogma, comes with the shooting of Ferrer. When the founder of the Escuela Moderna fell for ever, all the civilised world felt a violent emotional shock; with Mr. Simarro’s book the shock will be intellectual, and therefore more intense, more lasting and more profitable. Then the indignant emotion of two Continents swept from government two poor men of confused heads: Maura and La Cierva; now, after the book of Mr. Simarro, we know clearly that the Conservative Government was n o more than the instrument which plutocratic Clericalism used to deprive Spain of her liberties and tu sink her in barbarism. This is, then, the great lesson we draw from the Ferrer trial examined by Mr. Simarro : the presence of a Conservative Government is a permanent danger to Spanish liberties, not only because amongst Conservatives there are few well organised heads, but because the facts are proving that a Conservative Government is the pivot required by many Archimedes of Spanish plutocratic Clericalism t o push Spain towards the past ages of servitude. Remember that period of repression under the Government of Cánovas del Castillo, when so many innocents underwent Dantesque tortures in the fortress of Monjuich. The inferred consequence of M r . Simarro’s book is a warning t o remain on the alert against Clericalism. But t o fight this widespread foe it will be necessary to point out firstly its heart, the regulating centre of its life. I t is believed that the centre of its vitality lies in the Religious Orders, and it is hoped that by submitting them t o common law Clericalism will die in Spain at last. But this can only be half a truth. The political force which is known as Clericalism is nut so much a danger for being religious as for being plutocratic. There are in Spain a small number of families who enriched themselves by means of monopolies, and with a system of Custom duties and of administrative plunder committed on a large scale. But everybody knows the nature of money in large sums, namely, it does not reduce the barbarism of the original moneymakers, and it increases the natural barbarism of their descendants. The men who became wealthy in Catalonia with the scandalous tariff protection, and the new millionaires of the Basque mining districts, have produced a generation composed of men educated by Jesuits, and unable by themselves to understand the human ground of social movements of the present day. Despotism, the only political ideal of these men, is the natural consequence of an education which stands aloof from the course of modern thought. They try to justify their position by saying that violent repressions and checks t o liberty are the only means of defending the existent institutions against Anarchism. But Spanish Anarchism needs a few explanatory words.
511
Spanish Anarchism, and especially Catalonian Anarchism, is simply the result of a system of monopolies and privileges which have impoverished the whole country. Through these monopolies and the working of a brutal custom-tariff, a handful of manufacturers enriched themselves some years ago, but industries, depressed by a n abusive protection, sank in ruin a s soon as Spain lost all her colonies. With t h e decadence of Catalonian industries, the misery of people grew greater and became still more grave under an absurd régime of indirect taxes. T h e less enlightened parts of Spain-those of the north-west and of the scuth--were bound to emigrate, and the more enlightened-the Catalonian, neighbour of France-have protested periodicaIly against misery by means of collective violence, or of individual attempts, which, in most cases, a r e ways of expressing a general uneasiness. Spanish Anarchism follows a close economic impulse. I t s remedy would be a better distribution of national wealth, by abolishing monopolies and reducing tariffs in order to lift Spanish industries out of their present stagnation. But this, which is a simple problem of economics, has been overlooked by the wealthy classes of Catalonia, who have given Anarchism a mythical value, regarding it as a hellish and mysterious organisation whose ends are the arbitrary extinction of existing order. There is in Spanish political language a n expression that Conservatives and Clericals use to describe this economic Anarchism o r Anarchistic hunger, and this expression is the “ revolutionary hydra. ” To fight this hydra, Catalonian plutocratic Clericalism-composed of sons of the men who enriched themselves by ruining industries-have no other desire than bloody repression ; and in using it the instrument has always been a Conservative Government. At the same time, Conservative Governments, lacking intelligence to see that the only way of fighting Anarchism is to cheapen the means of life and the better distribution of wealth, shared the same mistaken ideas as plutocratic Clericalism, and always reckoned bloody repression as necessary. Only through this mental narrowness can we explain the Monjuich atrocities during the life of Cánovas and those of a year ago in the time of Maura. This latter has been the mild tool of the Defensa Social, an organisation of Barcelona that means to be the visible head and the articulate body of Spanish plutocratic Clericalism. But the revolutionary hydra being a mixture of Anarchism and Lerrouxism, of Freemasonry and free education, Clericals and Conservatives wanted a synthetical figure who would embrace the four disorderly elements, and this figure was Francisco Ferrer, one of the hydra’s head sacrificed to theological hatred and to economic fear. Moreover, while monopolies, tariffs, large properties of undeveloped land and indirect taxes are in existence the revolutionary hydra-the hunger-will not disappear. So long as the system of privileges which impoverish Spanish people stands, hunger will continue to arm the hands that throw bombs, burn convents and to maintain alive in Catalonia the revolutionary uneasiness. It is a problem of bread. Only the helpless ignorance of plutocratic Clericalism could imagine that Catalonian unrest obeys one or several schools of philosophy and politics, and that by checking these schools, peace would be a fact. They thought that by getting rid of Ferrer--one of the most formidable heads of the hydra according to reactionaries-every seed of revolution would be destroyed. And the accomplishment of this belief was not only a lawful and theological crime, but it was an obvious proof that the Spanish Conservative classes are mentally incapable of dealing with the social problems of a modern country. The first volume of the work of Mr. Simarro will be for Europe the long-awaited Spanish echo of the European agitation with which he will deal in detail in his second volume.
THE NEW A G E
512
A Penny for Posterity. By Stanley Morland. A PECULIAR fatuity marks the worshippers of the literary genius of our ancestors. The Poetry Recital Society amused and amazed London by reverentially feeding the descendants of great poets as a tribute to their memory, and a proof of its admiration of the gift of song. Now the prose reciter of fantastical lies Charles Dickens is dead, so I is to be honoured. learn from an article by Mr. Arthur Waugh in the “Daily Chronicle,” dated September 9. Dead as the proverbial door-nail and though Mr. Waugh says that “no man living and writing to-day is half so much alive a s he,” not even the shadow of his ghost can be seen a t a séance But Mr. Waugh seems to be too practical to “call spirits from the vasty deep ” to compliment them on their living death: his ancestor-worship manifests itself not in raising ghosts, but in resurrecting royalties. Of whatever sort, a wind must be raised to celebrate the centenary of the birth of Charles Dickens. On February 7, 1912,Charles Dickens, had he lived, would have been a century old. I had nearly written “dead ” ; but of course he has not been dead so long. I t was, perhaps, with some prevision of the Dickens Fellowship, whose President, Mr. Waugh, has brought this proposal before the public, that Charles Dickens, now dead, declared in his will : , “ I conjure my friends on n o account to make me the subject of any monument, memorial, or testimonial whatever.” Mr. Waugh, then, is as much accursed a s the man who The statewould move the bones of Shakespeare. ment is unequivocal and they who would disregard it are not the friends whom Dickens addressed. But Mr. Waugh’s resources are worthy of a Jesuit: it is not really desired to demonstrate the greatness of Dickens to a sceptical age, but to impress the world with a due admiration for the admiration of a dead man. The Dickens Fellowship has become so proficient in worship, so adept in genuflexion, that it needs an excuse to parade its skill in posturing before an applauding crowd. “ I rest my claims to the remembrance of my country upon my published works,” wrote Charles Dickens. Here is the excuse for disobeying his last wishes. His works during his lifetime brought him thousands of pounds, for he had no cause to complain of public indifference. “ After his death,” says Mr. Waugh, “ his estate was administered by a friend steeped in professional knowledge of the value of literary property, and it is fairly certain that John Forster got a s much for the novelist’s family as the copyrights of his works would then fetch in the open market.” I t would seem, then, that Charles Dickens’ account with the public was satisfactorily closed. He died not in want, but in affluence: he. died beloved and admired of his generation, not hounded to a self-sought death by poverty, or maddened by disappointment or neglect. But the law of copyright says Mr. Waugh, is “obviously a great injustice, and the descendants of Charles Dickens have unquestionably suffered by it.” I t may be at once denied that the public owe anything to the descendants of anyone ; it may be emphatically affirmed that all the arguments against hereditary possession apply to literature as to land. A book at the expiration of the copyright becomes common property, and the Dickens family as well as everybody else have the right of issuing an edition for their own benefit. If they have failed to do this, I do not see why we should weep over the fact that the literary “property which was then valued at little short of £100,000 has been bringing in further interest ever since” to the publishers. Mr. Waugh laments : “The copyrights in nearly all
SEPT. 29, 1910
Dickens’ works have now lapsed, and, one by one, a s they fell out, the books have been reproduced by houses of business, some of whom have never paid a farthing to the source of their inspiration, nor raised a finger in recognition of the genius upon whose products they have been profiting. Suppose even a penny a copy had been paid to Dickens’ executors upon the sale of these honorary editions, what a warm little sum would have found its way into the bag ! ” I t is clear that Mr. Waugh is unjust to the publishers. They received no benefit from Dickens’ works while the copyright existed, so they owed nothing to Dickens. To his children they owe no more than the public. Mr. Waugh, then, in protesting against the exploitation for profit of common property is protesting against the law of the land, and his efforts to aggrandise the descendants of Dickens should obviously be directed to the task of making perpetual copyright legal. Mr. Waugh seems to be arguing that as there is an hereditary right to private property of all kinds, property which now becomes common at the end of a term of years should also descend by hereditary right to the descendants of its original’ owner. Every Tory will agree ; but those who already see the evil of hereditary private property will object to this demand. Anyhow, Mr. Waugh’s claim should’ be addressed to the publishers, and his efforts should be devoted to the alteration of the law of copyright. But political agitation to remedy what Mr. Waugh regards as “ a great injustice ” would not offer t h e proper opportunities for the worship of the dead. T h e Dickens Centenarians would not be able to fire off their praise of “the great fixed star of his genius,” they would not be able to publicly celebrate “ the stored-up gratitude of a hundred years of illimitable benefits ” (as though Dickens benefited the world before he wrote) : their transports would have to be moderated in the attempt to influence Parliament, and Charles Dickens might be forgotton with his worshippers. So the public is invoked. Mr. Waugh says : “We have only to cry his name from the housetops and all the street will be aflame.” This incendiary threat ought a t least to induce the public to purchase what is in the circumstances an assurance against fire for a penny. The Dickens Fellowship will issue a penny stamp, about the size of a book-plate ; and the public is asked to purchase one stamp for every volume of Dickens in its possession. Messrs. Chapman and Hall, the original publishers and the owners of the copyright, will make a free-will offering of a stamp with every volume of their “Centenary Edition,” thus paying another royalty to Dickens’ descendants. If by any chance the other publishers of Dickens should be burnt out, I shall firmly believe that Messrs. Chapman and Hall have been crying the name of Dickens from the house-tops, in the hope of retaining their monopoly of publication. But why should the public pay a n extra penny a copy? Are Dickens’ descendants poor? Can we only celebrate the centenary of the birth of a novelist by giving a penny to his children? Mr. Waugh speaks of “ a graceful and unostentatious way of celebrating the centenary”: how do the Dickens family like the idea of booksellers begging pence from the public for their benefit? ‘‘ Booksellers are to be invited to join the scheme, and whenever they sell a volume of Dickens, it is hoped that they will induce the purchaser to buy a stamp at the same time.” If the Dickens family have sense of dignity, they will repudiate this ludicrous claim on their behalf to the spare coppers of the public. They ‘have no legal right t o a royalty ; they have no personal claim to the consideration of the public ; and, a s they are not poor, this appeal to the charitable instincts of the English. people should be an offence t o them rather than a compliment to t h e memory of their father. I await their repudiation of a scheme that adds nothing to the lustre of their name, that sheds no glory on literary art, that in no manner perpetuates the fame of their father, but represents them as claimants to the beggarly bounty of people to whom they have done no service.
SEPT.29, 1910
The Philosophy XXI --The
THE NEW AGE
of a Don.
Superman as Philosopher.
IT was one of my late friend Shav’s most persistent
delusions that, while indulging in desultory damnation
of things and men, he expounded a “philosophy of l i f e I t was this delusion that sustained him in that perennial scorn of fools which, he said, was by fools mistaken for pride. His zeal, he declared, was not inspired by discontent against the world so much as by a desire to correct its errors. That he firmly believed all this I have not the least doubt, for it was not in Shav to deceive anybody except himself. Yet, as a matter of sad and sober fact, his philippics, on the most liberal interpretation, did not form a philosophy of life a t all, but only a gallery of portraits of the self-styled philosopher in his various moods. How could it be otherwise? Anyone who has followed carefully the disquisitions recorded in the preceding essays must have perceived that Shav’s “ philosophical ” method was a s unsatisfactory as it was simple. What pleased Shav was good, what did not please him was bad. Personal caprice was his criterion of excellence in all things-the rule by which he complacently measured his own merits and contemptuously assessed the demerits of his neighbours. H e never faltered in the use of that criterion, for it never occurred to him that any other was possible. There was no point of view except Shav’s point of view ; no other side to any question except the one to which Shav chose, or chanced, to commit himself. This curious characteristic came out with special vividness and unpleasantness when my friend handled a great political problem, such as Imperialism or Militarism. He always dealt with these problems in a spirit of irresponsible and irreverent censoriousness which no experience of life had tempered. But it was not confined to politics. Every department of public thought or action was weighed by Shav in the same private scales. Everything Shav did not understand was superstition, everything he did not possess was a superfluity, and nothing his eye could not see was worth seeing. Thus vegetarianism was good and patriotism was bad. Next t o cabbages, the only food fit for a Christian was human flesh, and so forth. In the same way he despised breeding, derided reticence, detested modesty, decried monogamy, denounced religion, disapproved of beef-in brief, he condemned all the principles of conduct which go to the roots of things, permeate human society, find their highest incarnation in the English gentleman, and are admirably synopsised in the English word “ respectability.” This lamentable narrowness of vision, combined with Shav’s temperamental levity, ended by turning his boasted “philosophy of life” into a life-long harlequinade with the “philosopher ” as the harlequin-inchief. For a good many years I treated Shav’s strenuous flippancy as a matter of amusement rather than of reprobation ; but lately I was compelled to reconsider my view and almost to agree with Chesterham in paying to my poor friend the serious attention due to a public danger. I did not arrive at this opinion precipitately, or without giving Shav ample opportunity for refuting it and retrieving his position in my esteem. T o what extent he succeeded may be left to the world to decide. I will content myself with giving an impartial and accurate report of that momentous interview from notes carefully taken at the time. I called a t my friend’s house early one afternoon, determined to extract from him a definite declaration of his attitude towards the universe. I found him still in bed, laughing over his latest effusion-an exceedingly offensive attack upon the character of a crowned head recently laid to rest. That neither surprised nor disconcerted m e ; for if Shav possessed one peculiarity more pronounced than another, it was, as the reader knows, his propensity to unseasonable hilarity. No matter how solemn or sacred the subject might be, he always laughed, and, what was more distressing still, he sometimes made even me join in
513
the laughter. On that occasion, however, I did not allow his infectious infirmity to divert me from my fixed purpose. After rebuking him, gentIy but firmly, for his unseemly mirth, I opened the question which had prompted my visit. “You are fond-perhaps, if I may say so, too fond - - S h a v of insisting that a man’s words and works should constitute a frank confession of faith or of the want of it,” I said, taking a seat near his bed. “But so far I have completely failed to gather from your own words and works any such confession. All your criticism seems to be directed towards the demolition of other people’s faiths ; which, to say the least,, is a somewhat profitless pastime. As the Poet has said: What use in life to make men fret, Part in worse humour than they met? Thus all society is lost, Men curse at one another’s cost: “ Great teachers always begin by demolishing other people’s faiths regardless of the cost. Established formulae, consecrated fallacies, superannuated systems, and all other shams, superstitions, and stupidities, to destroy these has ever been the Prophet’s duty. To make men fret is the logical corollary of his divine mission. ” “ I know that. But every prophet and teacher worth his salt regards demolition a s only the means towards re-construction. Otherwise his mission would be no more divine than a thunderstorm, an earthquake, a flood, a fire, a plague, or any other natural calamity. You seem to regard the means as an end in itself. You have never yet stated what is the creed by which you propose to replace the systems that stir your choler. You always shoot your critical shafts from behind cover. That, not to put too fine a point upon it, is hardly sportsmanlike.” “ I agree. But you are vastly mistaken if you imagine that I have no faith of my own. There is a tremendous grimness behind my grimaces,, though you may not think it. I have views as definite as anybody else. Only my views are not those of everybody else. They are original.” “ Original Views, in the sense-the only possible sense at this time of day-of being sincere and unaffected views, are things worthy of respect. But they need not necessarily be sound; and I think that soundness, on the whole, is more desirable than originality .” “ I entirely agree. I regard a man who is vinced that his views are sound because they are his own as a very dangerous kind of lunatic. He is to be found in every asylum; and his delusion is that he is the Pope, or even a higher authority than the Pope.” “But, my dear Shav, that is precisely your own habitual attitude. You always speak ex cathedra. You have no reverence whatever for the sanctity of common sense. You seem to think that you have a right to judge the world like a n infallible Pontiff. When you argue, you do so as one who would say ‘ Logic is a n unnecessary nuisance. By mere dint of reiteration and vociferation I will terrify all men from ever again questioning any postulate that I may think fit t o make.’ The result is that you waste your life treading on other people’s principles, instead of proving your own.” “ I confess that it pleases me to tread on other people’s prejudices ; but I do it not from mere love of amusement. I do it a s a vintager treads on grapesto squeeze the juice out of them,” he said, with a laugh. “You don’t seem to believe me.’’ “ I wonder what is the power-divine or diabolicthat impels you to make yourself so disagreeable to your fellow-creatures ?” “Have I not often told you that it is my Moral Adviser ?” “DO I understand you to mean seriously that you are possessed ?” “Yes, I am possessed-by an unconquerable belief in my Reason. You may charge me with egotism, mysticism or whatever ism you will; but that does not alarm me. When I said that I regard the man
con-
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THE NEW AGE
who is convinced that his views are sound because they are his own as fit for an asylum, I said it with a mental reservation. I did not intend it to apply to myself. My views may be sometimes wrong, but even my wrongest views a r e sounder than other people’s rightest views. Of that I am absolutely persuaded.” “ W h o has persuaded you?” “My Reason-that is my guide and my god. I t is, according to my Moral Adviser, the one and only true guide and living god. So I adore and follow it with all my heart, leaving the vulgar to prostrate themselves with fear and trembling before their false idols.” “But the vulgar, as you call them, have some authority outside themselves for worshipping the gods they do worship. They have a Revealed Scripture-that is their gods’ patent of divinity ; and you have no right to revile them a s false idols until you have produced for your own god better credentials ?” “Nonsense! The gods of the vulgar owe their existence to a gross error: The ordinary man sees his own reflection in the magnifying mirror of his fancy and mistakes it for a g o d : that comes from being born without Reason Now, see where I differ. I do not mistake the distorted projections of my own imagination for divine realities. I know that Reason alone reigns supreme over all things. I have captured that truth, tamed it, harnessed i t ; and now, borne aloft by it, I look down upon the errors of other men with becoming disdain.” “That’s very pleasant, no doubt. But it seems to me that, before you look down upon other men’s opinions, you must prove that your own are true. They, a t all events, have a written code by which they can test the truth of their beliefs. Where is your written code? Where are your god’s commandments recorded ?” “ I gather the commandments of my god, not from any written records, to which my belief does not extend, but from the unwritten and spontaneous impulses of my own nature.” “ I n other words, your god derives his being from the same source as the gods of other men-he is a reflection of your own personality in the magnifying mirror of your vanity. And inasmuch as he is the reflection of,one individual nature only, instead of human nature as a whole, he is a much smaller god. But I will not ‘press the point,” I said, knowing how much easier it was to confound than to convince Shav. “Tell me only in what respect do you think that your nature differs from that of other people?” “ I t would take too long to describe my nature in detail. But I may say that its principal attribute is an (extraordinary capacity to discern wherein lies its perfection and happiness, and a courage, no less extraordinary, to pursue the same earnestly, resolutely, and uncompromisingly--like a bee intent upon extracting honey wherever it can be found, from roses and the soot of chimneys alike-not distracted by humbler insects’ opinions but satisfied with acting in conformity to its own. In this single-minded pursuit of the perfection and happiness of one own’s self, I take it, lies human virtue, as in deviating from that path lies human vice ; and every particular action is either virtuous or vicious according as it leads to that end or away from it. The whole of my creed may be summed up in one sentence: ‘Seek what is in accord with your own natural inclinations and press towards it through good repute and ill.’ ” “ I am afraid your creed rests upon very indifferent sanction. ” “ I t needs none : the quest of one’s good is its own sanction. “ “ I t is a most dangerous and unsocial, not to say unholy and damnable, doctrine. If every man pursued what he considered to be his own good, without reference to the good of other people, what would become of the world?” “Ah, every man cannot pursue his own good, because he lacks the power of perceiving it. That power is only given to supermen.” “Suppose that all men became supermen !”
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“ W h a t is the use of supposing the impossible?” “SOyou don’t believe in progress?” “No. The universe is a sort of wheel, passing through a ceaseless cycIe of change, but turning round a n eternal centre of essential sameness. That is the conclusion my Reason has led me to.” “ I t is a conclusion that cannot be reconciled with All the Christian or any other religious philosophy. religious philosophies are based on the principle that the universe is not a circle but a spiral, slowly but surely unfolding towards ultimate perfection. They are all inspired, in one form or another, by some such belief in development. I t is that belief which makes all religions sacred.” “ I see no reasonable grounds for such a belief, and I have small respect for the intelligence of those who fancy that they do. When I consider the absurdity and even the pernicious tendency of all religions that have been or are now established in the world, I can pay n o more regard to their sacred tenets than to their ridiculous rites and observances. I consider all those things a s owing their origin and force to nothing more sacred than a natural weakness of unreasoning men to fear and worship some power outside themselves. I do not share that weakness. M y Reason refuses to admit the existence of such a power, and my mind is quite free from that ignoble craving for credulity and consolation which sways common men’s minds. A religious person I can no more endure than a hard-boiled egg. ” “But, my dear Shav, it is not only religious persons who cling to the belief in progress, development, and ultimate perfection. Even Rationalists, who have lost faith in Heaven, still retain faith in Humanity. They hold that man evolves and grows in wisdom and knowledge generation after generation.” “My mind’s eye sees no sign of suck an evolution or growth; and what my mind’s eye cannot see does not exist for me. But don’t think that I have any desire to see the adherents of any system, religious or rationalistic, adopt my own conclusions. Not at all. Their creeds, provided they act up to them, though contemptible enough when viewed from my higher level, are nevertheless estimable in so far as they exercise on the credulous part of mankind the restraining influence which an efficient constabulary exercises over the criminal part. I am prepared to concede even more than t h a t : I recognise that in some cases those creeds have actually furnished the world with examples of positive, if humble, virtue ; which is more than one might have expected, seeing that thinking has long been extinct in the world. So I am content to let ordinary men go their own way, as long as they let me go my own. You know that my motto is ‘ Laugh and let laugh.: ” “ I admire your tolerance. I t must cost you a great deal of self-denial. But why laugh?” “Because I don’t believe that the value of words depends on their specific gravity. There is no ass like a solemn ass,” he said, suddenly sitting up on the edge of his bed and swinging his bare feet underneath in true Diogenic style. “ I prefer, like the famous judge at his mother-in-law’s funeral, to mingle grave thoughts with refined pleasantry. ” “ I fail to see how laughing at others helps you--or them. ” “That does not surprise me. When I was younger I was like you. I was courteous and considerate of others and took everything and everybody seriously. What was the result? I had spells of depression when it seemed to me as if Allah had made over the rule of the world to his rival. I looked at the endless, purposeless sufferings of my fellow-creatures and, as I pondered them, I pictured our life as a ship such as no opium-afflicted dreamer ever dreamed-Fury sitting at the helm, selfishness filling the sails, stupidity and cruelty plying the oars-and so the gallant craft flew gaily along with its freight of human lives, while the waters around ran hot with the tears of the innocents and the rocks ahead rang with their cries, to the accompaniment of a chorus of submarine demons.
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. . Well, as I grew older I began t o see that this to have made a home for himself somewhere in the borderland between the two states; but I could give sort of thing would not do. I came t o realise that the universe is immeasurably big and that I am immeasur- no definite name to that land. All that I can conscienably small. So, leaving tragic ships alone, I began tiously say about him is that he was half-cynic, halft o picture my life as a tiny balloon with a tiny passentimentalist-a perplexing mixture of egoism and charity ; withal, his ‘‘Moral Adviser and his senger and a cargo of tiny joys and sorrows in it, mystical god “ Reason ” notwithstanding, a genuine afloat in the misty immensity of the Unknown. This surrounded by a balloon-so small and so fragile-is son of Bohemia; but in no sense that Oxbridge has numberless fleet of similar balloons, each with its tiny ever recognised or will ever recognise, a philosopher. passenger and cargo of tiny joys and sorrows ; all drifting, more or less experimentally, upon the vast, shadowy Inane. Having mastered, more or less thoroughly, my own little lesson of how to make the Ashley Dukes. most of the little joys and the least of the little sorrows, 11.-Strindberg. I float cheerfully along, watching the other balloons a very pretty mess often they do around me-and IT is Impossible t o conceive a more striking group of make of it all. When I chance to notice one of the personalities than the three Scandinavians--Ibsen, passengers losing his rudder, or steering for what he Björnson and August Strindberg. They must be contook t o be the New Jerusalem and landing to find him- sidered contemporaries, for although Strindberg was self on a desert coast, or otherwise making an unborn in 1850,twenty years later than the other two utterable idiot of himself--well, my heart may bleed dramatists, his most important plays date from the for him, for I know what that sort of thing m e a n s ; 1875 and 1890. H e same period as theirs-between but, all the same, I cannot help l a u g h i n g I laugh still lives, but the close of his work was as clearly I t is the only and ask him to join in the laughter. marked in “ Sheet Lightning ” and “ T h e Great Highthing I can do for him. But is it not enough?” road ” as Ibsen’s in W h e n We Dead Awaken.” I answered nothing : Shav in a philanthropic mood Strindberg, however, was no follower of Ibsen ; he was a surprise to me. Accepting my astonished was his only considerable opponent. When “ A Doll’s silence for acquiescence, he continued : H o u s e ” appeared he attacked the play violently, not “ T h e man who has no laughter in himself, nor is from the standpoint of the Philistine critic who removed by the discord of incongruous sights, is not fit garded it as a n onslaught upon marriage, but from for this planet. H e may be an angel, he may be the that of the philosopher who saw in it the first signs of exact opposite ; he certainly is not a human being. the rise of feminism and t h e degradation of man. He Every well-organised community, I think I have already claimed that Ibsen demanded altogether too much of told you, needs, besides its priests and its inquisitors, Helmer and too little of Nora ; that she (Nora) was one that is greater than either of those functionaries : at heart no more than a doll, a puppet for the author’s its Jester. H e is the terrestrial vicar of the Recording sentimental propaganda. He would have none of Angel : registering the follies of his fellow-mortals Ibsen’s women. Hedda Gabler was for him simply a sometimes with a tear, sometimes with a sneer, always public nuisance, a candidatefor the whipping-post ; with a smile. He must feel with men just enough to Hilda Wangel an upstart minx, born to drive men laugh a t t h e m Less than this measure of feeling dism a d ; Rebecca W e s t a petticoated prig. In short, he qualifies him for the office and so does more: too rejected the whole theory of “ emancipation ” for much sensibility is fatal to mirth-and a curse to life.’’ women and ordered them back to the kitchen. This leaning towards the side of the man is seen in all of This outburst revealed to me all of a sudden hitherto Strindberg’s writings. It is shown most clearly in such unsuspected depths in poor Shav. H e had often plays as “ Creditors,” “ The Father,” “ Comrades ” and before maintained, in his splenetic, irresponsible way, “ T h e Dance of Death,” where the man (in Strindthat the world w a s going to the devil ; but I had never berg’s view the creative force, and the only force of attributed to those utterances any more importance real value in statesmanship, science or art) is in each than is usually due to the light-hearted cynicism of case hampered by marriage or association with a sensitive dreamers who have come to see that the real woman of intellect. If the man’s will is weaker than world is not quite all that their inexperienced imaginathe woman’s she robs him day by day of power as a tion had painted it ; €or a cynic often is only an idealist weasel sucks the blood of a rabbit, until he is ruined. who has had his feelings hurt. This speech, however, If his will is the stronger, there comes a moment in presented Shav in a new light. There was no ordinary which he forces her t o her knees in subjection, and cynic’s flippancy here : rather there were hard hits from henceforth (since the Strindberg women love power a strong and large-hearted man who had brooded over above all else in the world) she is his loyal slave. The the sorrows of suffering humanity and, unable to help former case is the motive of most of Strindberg’s it, had to content himself with hammering at its tragic dramas ; the second of his comedies. follies. I cannot illustrate this better than by one or two Unfortunately S h a v spoilt this noble presentment of passages from “Comrades,” a play written in Paris himself by what he said next : for the Théâtre Libre. I t s principal characters, Axel “ O h for a Fool,” he shouted, springing off his bed, Alberg and his wife Berta, are Swedish painters living “ a motley Fool-a merry Fool-a wise Fool in cap in Paris, and each has submitted a picture to the and bells-to go to and fro over the highways of the Salon. In the first act they are discussing their respecearth, diligently preaching the gospel of laughter and tive prospects :frolic: ‘ Be merry, ye sons of men ; laugh and be Berta: You are jealous of me. You would hate my picture merry, while there is yet time. Be merry, my to be accepted. masters ; for ye shall have an eternity t o be quiet in ! Axel: Believe me, Berta, nothing would delight me more. This,” he added, moving towards his bath-room, “ i s Berta: Would it delight you if I were accepted, and you my Hymn of Life.” were not? This grotesque peroration altered my view of Shav Axel: (laying his hand upon his heart) I must feel and see. No. It would annoy me. I grant you that. If once more, and I never succeeded in forming a view only because I paint better than you do, and bethat really did him full justice. W a s he a misanthrope? causeMisanthropy may, of course, be the fruit of disapBerta: You may as well say it at once. Because I am a pointed philanthropy ; for, after all, what is vinegar woman. but wine-sometimes very sweet wine-gone sour ? Axel: Yes. That too. I can’t deny it. I have a strange Rut Shav’s variety of the distemper did not quite bear feeling at times that you women are intruders, out that theory. Nor could I class him satisfactorily forcing your way in and demanding the plunder of the battles that we fought while you were still a s a cynic or a mystic-the two things that most dissitting by the fireside. illusioned men are apt to turn into, according to temT h e news Comes that Berta’s picture has been acperament. Shav w a s too intellectual for mysticism cepted by the jury, while her husband’s has been reand not unemotional enough for cynicism. H e seemed
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fused. She a t once begins to patronise him, and arranges as a crowning humiliation that his rejected painting shall be returned from the Salon during a n evening party they are giving the following day. Towards the end of the third act the following scene passes :Berta: And so you want t o be revenged, because you have been placed below me? Axel: Nothing could place me below you. I stood high above you, even when I painted your picture. Berta: When you painted my picture! Say that again, and I will strike you! Axel : You, who despise brute force ? Well, strike me if you will. Berta (aiming a blow at him) : Do you think I cannot? Axel (seizing both her wrists and holding them fast): No, not that. (A pause.) Are you convinced now that I am physically the stronger too? Bow down, or I will break you! Berta: Do you dare to strike a woman? Axel: Why not? I know only one reason why I should forbear. Berta: And that is-? AxeI: That you are not responsible for your actions. Berta: Ah, let me go! Axel: When you beg my forgiveness! Down upon your knees! (He forces her down with one hand.) Now look up to me from below! That is your placethe place you yourself have chosen! Berta: Axel! I don’t know you any longer! Are you the man who swore to love m e to help me? Axel: Yes. I was strong then, but you clipped my strength away, while my tired head lay in your lap. You stole away my power as I slept, and yet enough remains to crush you. Stand up! Enough of this squabble. Berta (falls upon the sofa and weeps). Axel : Why are you crying? Berta: I don’t know. Perhaps because I am weak. Axel: You see! I was your strength. When I took back what was my own, there was nothin left for you. You were like a rubber ball that I blew out; when I threw you aside you collapsed. In the last act, while the evening party is in full swing, the rejected picture arrives. I t is not Axel’s picture, however, but Berta’s with his number upon it. Axel, playing the “good comrade,” had changed the numbers in order to give her a better chance. Now Berta is willing to end the quarrel, but he has had enough of “ c o m r a d e s h i p Henceforth, as he remarks, he will have “comrades at the café but only a wife at home.” Plays like this have gained Strindberg the reputation of a “brutalist.” But if they are more carefully considered, it will be seen that there is in them none of the heartlessness of the comique cruel. Strindberg He never creates horrors for the sake of horrors. either loves or hates his characters ; he is incapable of standing aloof from them or of dangling them pitilessly over the depths to no purpose. H e is too great a dramatist f o r that. There is, indeed, a strange impression of a sympathetic personality even in his most outwardly repulsive scenes He is logically uncompromising, yet full of pity. I have quoted Strindberg’s note upon Björnson. Björnson himself writes : “ The Swedes are usually marked by their curious double nature. They are at once young and old, liberally minded and full of prejudice. But Strindberg remains young always and everywhere.” Schickele speaks of “that cosmos named Strindberg, breaking out in its course with the eruption of volcanoes, and swung upon its orbit in ever-widening circles.” The characters of his plays a r e first of all distinguished. They are not the determinist puppets of the modern realist drama, but virile creatures, gods and fighting men, with wills of their own. They are not content merely to live, but must criticise life. Intellect alone will not satisfy them ; they must have a philosophy. And in the clash of emotion and intellect, the subjective and the objective, personality and purpose, their dramatic force lies. More than the characters of any other modern dramatist,, they are “transition men,” groping their way out of old forms and prejudices into a newer age. These characters have often been called unnatural
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and extreme, and so, indeed, they are, if we accept the commonplace as natural, and find truth in moderation. Strindberg possesses none of Ibsen’s capacity for dramatising, and a t the same time humanising the bourgeoisie. H e is the most intolerant of artistphilosophers, and his method .of dealing with stupidity is cavalier enough. He ignores it. A historian of two thousand years hence, finding no record of this age but Strindberg’s plays, might be pardoned for assuming that it was peopled almost exclusively by painters,, poets, sculptors, journalists and authors of both sexes ; all of them persons with very bad manners and very sharp wits. For that is the impression which his plays make. Strindberg refuses to dramatise the mere conflict of social intelligence with social stupidity. He makes no direct attack upon conventionality or shams, such as Ibsen, for example, made in “The Pillars of Society.” H e exposes no social diseases, as Ibsen did in “ Ghosts ” and Bernard Shaw in “ Mrs. Warren’s Profession.” He offers no plea for justice as against injustice, as Hauptmann and Gorky have done. He stands altogether apart from politics and the immediate questions of the day. T o judge from his plays, he might never have read a newspaper. The problems of the dramatist-sex, love and hate, freedom and slavery, truth and falsehood-exist for him solely as eternal issues, worthy of discussion only by the highest intelligences he can create. For him, a n onslaught upon the existing order of society is flogging a dead horse. He writes of his peers, and for them. He attacks modern civilisation only by creating exceptional types. And so his characters pass out of present conditions into a world where reason strives to rule life, and feeling to depose reason. They are conscious of their a g e only in so far a s it trammels their individuality. So far, Strindberg ranks with the author of “ Hamlet,” Of all living dramatists, he aims highest, and his failings are the failings of the craftsman unable to set so prodigious a scheme convincingly upon the stage. Moreover, Strindberg’s characters have not only their own battles to fight, but their author’s. H e shifts his ground constantly, developing from play to play; from the early “ Meister Olof ” and verse-drama to modern naturalism, through a period of Swedenborgian mysticism back to historical drama, and again through dream-plays and legends to modern chamber plays and lyrical phantasies. W e have to deal, not with one person, but with many-poet and logician, realist and idealist, atheist and mystic. From the standpoint of the theatre his modern “ naturalistic ” plays are the most important. They were written during the period 1880-1895,and Strindberg describes them a s attempts to mould the form of drama in accordance with modern conditions. In the four longer plays, “ The Father,” “ Comrades,” “ The People of H e m s ö and “ The Keys of Heaven,” there is no especial originality of form. Written in the first instance for the Théâtre Libre, they demand only the simplest of scenery, but a high level of acting. Their “ naturalism,” in fact, has a double significance. Strindberg’s aim was not only a natural study of life, but its most natural reproduction upon the stage ; and this could only be achieved by a theatre bent upon essentials, and intolerant of elaborate decoration and scenic effects. “ Theatre reform ” was in the air at this time, and Strindberg was a theatre reformer a s well as a dramatist. Among other changes he urged side lighting instead of footlights, a smaller, properly darkened auditorium, less paint and “ make-up ” for the actors, a return to natural movements and tones of voice upon the stage, and the shortening, if not the complete abolition, of intervals between the acts. I n “ Miss Julia ” and “ Creditors ” he attempted a revolution in form in order to meet all these demands. Both are very long one act plays. “ Miss Julia ” requires two hours for performance, and the action is represented a s passing throughout a midsummer night. The dialogue is interrupted twice, once by a song and again by a dance ; and these represent the intervals of what is in reality a three-act play. In Strindberg’s view this
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device maintained the illusion undisturbed, without straining the attention of the audience too far. Another new development was the lessening of the number of characters. In “Miss Julia,” as in “ Creditors,” there are only three speaking parts, and two persons carry on a scene sometimes uninterruptedly for forty minutes. The theatrical audience is the most impatient and sensitive of all crowds, and it is clear that experiments such as this could onIy succeed in the hands of a master dramatist. There is nothing more difficult to sustain than a long duologue where the action consists solely in the interplay of ideas. Yet “ Miss Julia,” a naturalistic tragedy, remains Strindberg’s masterpiece. . . . . . Strindberg is the least popular of the moderns, and he is likely to remain so. His plays are not for the many, but neither are they for what are termed “ t h e cultured few.’’ . Strindberg loathes “ the cultured ” with’ a n unutterable loathing, as long as their culture means no more than good manners, good taste, academic familiarity with literature, University education and a respect for the prevailing standards of religion and morality. They are Apollans; he is a Dionysian. H e estranges the revolutionists by his contempt for politics, the feminists by his attitude towards women, the romanticists by his naturalism, and the realists by his mysticism. Only the philosophers remain, and he does not speak their language. Moreover, he is bold enough to change his mind. In this age he is an outcast. I need only add one fact which sums up the man and his work : Nietzsche admired him greatly.
(ALLRIGHTSRESERVED.)
A Grand Pretender. By Alfred
E. Randall. II.
THERE is nothing to indicate that Lassalle wanted to marry, or had even thought of sharing his prospective glory with a woman, at the time that Baron Korff discovered Helene. An ordinary knowledge of men, with the scepticism of their judgment that accompanies such knowledge, would have made Lassalle shrug his shoulders at the enthusiasm of his friend, and suspend judgment until the paragon appeared. H e could find no use for a wife except as the crown of his ambition. “ What would my ‘ golden child ’ say, if I led her in triumph to Berlin in a car drawn by six white horses, as the greatest lady in the land? ” Later he said, “ Stand by my side, and behold both of us in the glass ! Is it not a proud and regal couple? Did not nature create two such beings in her happiest mood, and don’t you think that power, the highest power, would suit us very well? Yes, child, you will be glad of your choice Long live. the Republic, and the golden-haired wife of the President ! ” Political foresight, particularly with so recent an example of successful pretendership as Louis Napoleon, would have taught him that a wife was unnecessary, and, therefore, a n obstacle in his path to power, until he could offer her the only position worthy of both of them. Louis Napoleon wisely refrained from marriage until he became Emperor, although he lost no time in seeking a wife when his ambition was realised. So eager was he to add domesticity to Dictatorship that he was refused once, and was transferring his proposals to another lady, in eleven days after the coup d’état. But Lassalle was only a popular leader without power or contact with its sources, was, in fact, without a party behind him, as Bernstein says, at the time that Baron Korff’s suggestion made him ignore the conditions of his ambition, and abrogate his personal choice of a wife. Helene and Lassalle met a t the house of some friends named Hirsemenzel. She had begged not to be introduced to him a t once, the plea that she wanted to hear him first being the merest concession to convention.
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That her imagination was quick with apprehension, and live with certainty, her own record proves : I was then placed on a little stool at the back of a tall sofa through the carved framework of which I could see the folding doors leading into the library. They opened and two gentlemen stepped with the host into the lighted drawingroom. I do not know why, but having heard continually of Lassalle’s mind and erudition, I had imagined him to be a little man with strongly marked Jewish features. As a matter of fact I had not thought much about his personal appearance, and one of the men was exactly as I have described. With him entered a tall figure with a Caesar-like head and expression. It never entered my head that this could be Lassalle--the little Jew must be he ! Clever men are ugly; but the tall imposing one began to speak, and I forgot all else. I could only listen and listen, and at last, in a flash, I realised that it must be he and no other. The Princess seems to have preserved this illusion of Lassalle’s physical magnitude throughout her life, but the unimaginative police at Dusseldorf, against whom his eloquence and the “ golden weapons of his mind ” were as ineffective as they later proved to be against Herr von Dönniges, described him a s being five feet six inches high and of slender build. The imagination of men, at least, demands symmetry and proportion in its creations : it refuses to believe that great powers can operate through persons who appear insignificant. W h a t perversity of mind caused the Princess to link her conception of Lassalle’s greatness with the figure of “ a little man with strongly marked Jewish features,” I know not; but her imagination amply revenged itself on her cynicism by making her see Lassalle a s a tall, imposing figure. She came prepared to be fascinated, a t least, by “ o n e of Germany’s most learned men, dangerous alike to men and women,” and had Lassalle been the little Jew, it would have gone hardly with his chances; but the suggestion was that he was learned, witty, and eloquent, and by these traits she identified him. That they met fully convinced of the validity of the judgment of Baron Korff and Dr. Oldenburg, without any questioning of it or any real intention of verifying it by personal observation, this passage will prove :Everyone in the room listened spellbound to his conversation, which was stormy and powerful, sweeping over everything I had hitherto considered as unalterable and sacred. He came into my life like the storm-wind that rushes over forests and plains, and destroys all that is crumbling and effete. I listened entranced, enthusiastic, but nevertheless not agreeing with everything he was saying. Suddenly I sprang up, and forgetting that this man had never seen me, I interrupted him by exclaiming, “No, I do not agree with you there!” For one moment he stopped ; the eagle glance of his commanding blue eyes was directed upon me, then a smile crept over his classic features, and stepping up to me he said, softly, “ Ho ! ho ! so this is what she looks like ! I thought so ! That’s all right. And,’’ laughing heartily--“No is the first word I hear spoken by this mortal.” It was all over. In that very first moment he could have said that which he did a little later: We both knew that we had met our destiny in each other.” The people around us were forgotten. We became oblivious of the little salon and all conventions. We discussed anything and everything between heaven and earth. We spoke of ourselves, and he mentioned our future, as if we belonged to each other as a matter of course, and as if our union were known and sanctioned by all. Of course we remained together the whole evening. The meeting was romantic enough and the contradiction with which their intimacy began was symbolic of it, and to so imaginative a man, or superstitious, as Dawson says, as Lassalle, it should have been significant. Meredith diagnoses some of the motives for this dissent with such delightful malice that I cannot forbear quoting the passage. The young flower of her sex burned to speak, to deliver an opinion. She was unaccustomed to yield a fascinated ear. She was accustomed rather to dictate and be the victorious performer, and though now she was not anxious to occupy the pulpit-being too strictly bred to wish for a post publicly in any of the rostra-and meant still less to dispossess the present speaker of the place he filled so well, she yearned to join him; and as,that could not be done by a stranger ap-
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proving, she panted to dissent. A young lady cannot so well say to an unknown gentleman: “You have spoken truly, sir,” as “That is false!” for to speak in the former case would be gratuitous, and in the latter she is excused by the moral warmth provoking her. Further, dissent rings out finely, and approval is a feeble murmur-a poor introduction of oneself. Her moral warmth was ready and waiting for the instigating subject, but of course she was unconscious of the goad within. Excitement-wafted her out of herself, as we say, or out of the conventional vessel into the waves of her troubled nature. He had not yet given her an opportunity for dissenting; she was compelled to agree, dragged at his chariot-wheels in headlong agreement. If Helene had been the mere coquette that Meredith assumed she was, this passage would have been a complete and accurate enough diagnosis of the reasons for her opposition; but the real reason lay deeper. I t is permitted to some men to mar their destiny, a s every mystic knows; and for those who work with the worldwill, as Ibsen called it, there are warnings at every turn of the way. If Lassalle had been a practical mystic, accustomed to read his fate in facts, this simple negative would have turned him back to his task, would have shown him that Helene might be the wife of the President, but was not for Ferdinand Lassalle until he had earned his triumph. Her beauty would have enhanced his glory, had he attained it, but she had not the ambition, the understanding or the will to help him to his destiny. Her ambition was “ to be the wife of Ferdinand Lassalle, and to share his fate.” She says herself, “ In spite of my youth, he must have placed me on a pinnacle, to consider me capable of understanding so entirely his ideas ”; and his presence inhibited her will in some mysterious way, so that she was incapable of doing what he desired or of acting on her own initiative. I t was his constant reproach to her that she had no will, and almost her last words on the matter express her wonder that ‘‘ his wonderful personality, with all his power of attraction, powerful, dominant,” should have b r o k e n up so miserably on such an insignificant thing as the weakness and cowardice of a young woman.” But by the time this knowledge came to them, their imaginations had mingled so inextricably, the primal suggestion that they were the only conceivable mates for each other had worked so strongly as to be identified with their own volition, that their infatuation was incurable. Everything conspired to turn Lassalle away from Helene a t this time. Their first meeting began with a contradiction and ended with diffident opposition. It was only when we arrived at my door, and when he said to me, “To-morrow I am going to grandmamma to get her consent,” that I suddenly awoke to the dreadful reality that this man to whom I had given in one instant my whole heart for all eternity, would never be accepted by any member of my family. Tremblingly I implored him not to do this, but to wait patiently, as the time had not yet come to take such a step. Seeing my anxiety he sighed and acquiesced, but said half-warningly, (‘May we never regret the time we are losing. We parted, and it was many, many months before we met again.
It is clear that so far only their imagination was a t work: they felt their fitness for each other, but there was no impulse of emotion to make their immediate union imperative. Neither had that crying need of the other that is characteristic of passion, and if Helene “ had given in one instant her whole heart for all eternity,” it was with mental reservations in favour of her father’s right to dispose of her hand. That Lassalle acquiesced so easily in her proposals to delay shows that their identity, if it ever existed, was of the imagination only. Their religious creeds were different, they were not of the same social order, and politically Lassalle was in antagonism to all that her father was and represented. “ The dreadful reality ” of marriage had to reconcile o r destroy these differences; but, a s so often happens, it accentuated them, and made them an impassable barrier between the two. Meredith puts a phrase into the mouths of both that might have been really uttered by them. “ Barriers are for those who cannot fly.” It is a matter of common knowledge that
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human beings cannot fly, so that the phrase is an admission of the reality of the barriers. Their imagination might soar above them, and in the ethereal region “between heaven and earth ” of which they conversed with such erudition, refine into elemental union; but if they were one a t the apex of the triangle, they were two a t the base, and neither knew enough of spiritual trigonometry to lay the base firmly on the solid ground. There at least were the barriers, sufficiently indicated by Helene’s trembling refusal; and the task for Lassalle was to remove them, to cut a way through them, or to g o round them. In the person of Herr von Dönniges he had an antagonist not unlike Bismarck, and he had to overcome exactly the same prejudices and powers to gain his wife a s to win the Presidency for her to adorn. H e was face to face with a foe entrenched who refused to battle in the air, but on his own ground would use every weapon. Lassalle might “ hold his golden weapons of the mind, the art of eloquence, charity, benefits to the poor, and the making of men of the working classes and the poverty-stricken; and above all his will, far higher than the mere brute force of the rusty Middle Ages ” ; but in a practical matter, against an antagonist who declined logomachy and trusted to mere brute force, he was truly “ the weapon-less prophet,’’ as Machiavelli said of Savonarola. (To he continued
Books and Persons. (AN OCCASIONAL CAUSERIE.)
By Jacob Tonson. MR. E. V. LUCAS’S third novel, “Mr. Ingleside” (Methuens, 6s.), will specially interest those who are interested in the form of the novel. His first was an epistolary novel, and despite the fact that the principal male character was quadrupled-that is to say, ‘‘ Listener’s was repeated in three characters Lure ’* remains in my mind, with Mr. C. F. Keary’s “ A Mariage de Convenance,” as one of the only two modern epistolary novels which I have read with real interest and joy. You know what I mean-you know the feeling of curiosity as to what the next chapter will contain, the anxiety, the tendency to hurry o n checked by the desire not to miss a word and t h e blank reaction, usual after having eaten your cake, when the book is finished. “Listener’s Lure” showed no novelty of form-the reverse; but in his second novel, “ Over Bemerton’s,” there were gropings after a new form, an effort, conscious or unconscious, to modify the ordinary form in order to suit the idiosyncrasy of a talent quite peculiar. “Over Bemerton’s ” was audacious in structure, seeing t h a t part of its scheme was to introduce very numerous extracts from other b o o k s but in matter it was timid. I t was the work of a man whose real individuality was struggling, not wholeheartedly, against the public’s definitely-formed but inadequate conception of that individuality. “ Mr. Ingleside ” is a better book, both in form and in matter. Its form, or its formula is well adapted to its purpose of enabling the author to comment on the spectacle of life rather than to present it. There is a certain amount of direct presentation-and a simply tremendous number of characters pass across the stage-but the presentation is most drastically simplified throughout, and the entire machinery of narrative is simplified. Nevertheless, due proportion is kept; the interest is continuously centralised on a very small group of persons, and problems concerning these characters are raised and are settled. In brief, the book has symmetry, and, with one exception, the multitudinous episodical excursions are artistically justified. This exception is the visit of the American, Mr. Waler, which is (if my purist critics will condone the phrase) just chucked into the book. Mr. Waler cabling to his wife that he has shaken hands with Mr. Edmund Gosse is a pleasing tableau, but it is not proper to the story, --
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whereas, with a sufficient effort of invention, it might have been made so.
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You will find in “Mr. Ingleside ” most of the things which you would expect to find in a book by Mr. Lucas. No lack of money, comfort, and good fare. Much bookishness and general collecting. Some excellent Lamb letters are brought out from the portfolios of Dr. Slaminer. (For example : “ D e a r Martin, a barrel of oysters has fallen upon us from the blue, we know not at whose bidding, but each has a guess. I like to stand aside and watch my friends engage in combats of generosity, and I care not who is the winner so they fight gamely and exchange shrewd blows. . .”) Also some enchanting citations of unconscious humour, this time from the works of a lady novelist named Ros. (By the way, in this connection, I would recommend to Mr. Lucas’s attention a novel called “Perfect Womanhood,” written by a gentleman named Gant, and published by Digby and Long. It is unsurpassable.) Also a n infinity of droll observations on a n infinity of droll people and droll facts, together with the “gentle irony ” which the public demands from him. T h e book is crammed with sheer readableness. But beyond a n d beneath all this you will find something more important and more essential, namely, a disclosure, less timid than before, of a definite attitude towards all the drollery, a n attitude marked by restrained but candid harshness, a n attitude in which dissatisfaction predominates, a n attitude which is sometimes disconcerting in its curt dismissals. I n t h e chapters devoted, for instance, to the three struggling Beautiman sisters, a n d to typewriting girls, a n d to the military household which lived facts of ugliness a n d on the breeding of dogs-the tragedy a r e faced. And above all there is Mr. Ingleside himself, with his profound and utterly comprehensive secret discontent, a n d his longing academic and yet genuine) to run away from his wealth and his situation and his culture and his friends a n d his London, a n d search for something t h a t would taste less like ashes. . . It is these things which give edge to the novel, communicating to all the drollery something of their wounding sharpness. It i s these things which ultimately make it fine.
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Mr. Frank Harris’s “ T h e Women of Shakespere ” will be published during the autumn, both in England and in the United States, by Mitchell Kennerley. Since its serial issue in “ T h e English Review ” the book has been largely rewritten. Mr. F r a n k Harris has also lately written a book entitled “Oscar Wilde and his Confessions.” I know nothing whatever about it except the title, but the title excites curiosity in a high degree. No announcement of its immediate publication at any rate in England, is, however, forthcoming.
The Image, Heart‘s Desire. At grey of eve a Muse, content, Sate where a mountain valley bended; T h e ancient m a d Was weedy strowed, The dimming larch and the pine-cone sowed, And half-shut windflowers up the ascent, And straying wild-rose wended. T h e brushwood burred as a breeze did stir it, Though no breeze shook the tattered brierCame up the vale A lover pale, A sombre youth, with sorrow’s mail Dropt, like a visor o’er his spirit, And his Favour was “Heart’s Desire.” H e wore it in his burning eyes, Upon his shadowy cheek it trembled, His lips’ dry fire S a n g “ Heart’s Desire ! ” His mien emblazoned him Love’s squire, For pride, though passion’s own disguise, Yet never passion dissembled.
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So as he came he cast aside Proud sorrow’s shield. And half his story, Ravelled and c r o s t Showed, and w a s lost, Like the o’erlaid tracings of winter f r o s t Till he paused the invisible Muse beside On a moss-knoll hoary. W h e n mortal near Immortal strays, Ethereal flame doth search him t h r o u g h ; And if his soul Be sound and whole He wins that day to his secret goal, But the evil-doer the flame betrays And turns to his nature true.
No ghoul took flight through wondering willow Nought hissed below or hooted a b o v e ; Nor turned the stain Of poison bane, Nor to newt, nor spider, nor asp, nor ane T h e youth-but he lay o n the piny pillow And sang of his love.
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there lie lost in any glade T h e flute of Pan, let me go seeking! A magic note Through pipe of oat, Would wile my love from the witchéd cot. I g a v e her a wreath that a fairy madeBut never she comes, and my heart is breaking. Breaking, breaking, All for a hermit maid!
‘‘ Love,
wert away o r a-weeping W h e n I hung my wreath at thy g a t e ? To the moon’s blue tent I t s incense went, T h e dusk seemed flowing with lilac scent. The moony vigil I still am keeping, Though lilac’s done a n d the robin cries ‘ Late! ’ Late, late, too late F o r the reaping! ” Twice over sang he ‘‘Heart’s Desire,” And twice the silence echoed him. Then a thund’rous blast Whirled high the mast, And down the mountains Winter passed, And, moaning faint, lay Heart’s Desire Beneath the blizzard grim.
T h e Muse with puissant finger brushed The reedy stop of her hollowed fluteBee ’gan to fly, Bird ope’d its eye, T h e wind-flower, breathing, thought daybreak nigh.. And all that night had hushed Grew bold as at day’s salute. Then a Shape, as bright as a flowery sheaf, Gleamed from tree to tree, and it carried A lilac spray And sped its way W i t h grace betiding vernal May. And nought it felt of the autumn leaf By the chill wind harried.
It stayed where the youth upstarted kneeling-It kneeled and caught him into its breast. It stilled his sighs, It soothed his eyes, I t sank beside him, lover-wise. But at sound of the eastern day-bell pealing, It shivered and sighed-and was pastDim lies the snow at grey of even, Summer is buried in cavern rough. W h e r e true-love kist The fay none wist, Save Winter, wrapping his sleeve of mist Round a slumberer dreaming that archéd heaven Is over his tomb in the clough. BEATRICE HASTINGS,
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REVIEWS. By Stanley Morland. The R i s e of Louis Napoleon. By F. A. Simpson.
(Murray. 12s. net.) Mr. Simpson, by a reference to “ a post-graduate year spent in collecting material for this work,” I judge to be a young man,, but his product is mature. Whatever labour he may have put into this book and a glance at the bibliography shows that it must have been enormous, he has kept the signs of it out of his text ; and his narrative moves easily to its conclusion H e has made a history of a romancej and has not dispelled the romance :he has shown u s the reality behind the glamour, and the reality of the glamour : he has not sacrificed the visionary to the vision, or the vision to the visionary, but with a clear perception of the power of faith, he has made his hero the heir of a legend by which, as by a lever, he overturned a throne. For the second Empire, says Mr. Simpson, grew out of the first. “Out of Elba could have come no dynastic resurrection,” but the six years on St. Helena that showed Napoleon as a ruined personality witnessed the most stupendous of his creations, the birth of the Napoleonic legend. Had Napoleon died a t Waterloo, he would have been remembered as the man who had lost France her natural frontiers of the Rhine and the Alps, who had decimated her population by his levies, and suppressed “ t h e glorious revolution.” But he spent his exile in educating the world by that judicious selection of facts which Cardinal Newman said would prove anything; by showing that Bonapartism was not a personal ambition but a national aspiration, not a pretence to a dynasty, but a n assertion of the sovereignty of the people, not a tyranny but a creed of political Liberalism. “ Authoritative democracy,” said Lord Rosebery in “The Last Phase,” “or, in other words, democratic dictatorship, the idea which produced the Second Empire in France, which is still alive there, and which, in various forms, has found favour elsewhere, is the political legacy, perhaps the final message, of Napoleon.” Mr. Simpson, in his opening chapter on “ T h e Birth of the Napoleonic L e g e n d shows clearly enough that without the post-Imperial work of Napoleon, the Second Empire could not have been established; but he also shows that without the will and faith of Louis Napoleon the coup d’état would never have been possible. For of all the Bonapartes, Louis alone had faith in the dynasty ; Louis alone accepted the legend a s his legacy, and foresaw that his destiny was the Tuileries. Without assistance from his family, without approval except from his mother, he set himself to restore the glory of France by seating himself on the throne. Exiled at seven years of age, it was not until he was forty that the sentence was repealed. “Thrice banished from his country; six years a captive ; deported once to America ; tried once for his life ; imprisoned a t Strasburg, a t La Conciergerie, a t H a m ; escaped from the bullets of Papal troops in Italy, and of the National Guard at Boulogne ; passed in disguise through French gaolers and Austrian soldiery ; Louis Napoleon, in the fortieth year of his age and the thirty-third of his exile, had returned to his birthplace in peace. And as the September evening fell, and the marvellous lights of Paris twinkled out in the gathering gloom, from the window of his hotel he could look full upon the towering column, whence the Emperor with folded arms surveyed his capital-and his heir.” I can best summarise the history of Louis Napoleon’s pretendership by quoting a passage from one of the letters he wrote from Ham, given on pp. 323-5 of this book :((No, there is nothing puerile in my efforts, however feeble they be, so long as they originate always from the same motive, and make always for the same end. In 1832 I wrote a treatise in Switzerland in order to gain the esteem of the people among whom I was forced to live. Then for nearly three years I devoted myself to a work on artillery, which I felt to be beyond my powers; in order that I might acquire by it some friends in the army, and show that if I held no command I had at least the know-
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ledge necessary to a commander. By this means I arrived at Strasburg. Then I had the Laity pamphlet published; not only in self-defence, but in order to give the Government a cause to have me expelled from Switzerland. In this I succeeded, and so recovered my freedom of action which I had in a sense lost by my forced setting at liberty. At London I published, against the advice of everybody, the Napoleonic Ideas ; that I might both formulate the political ideas of the party, and prove that I was not myself merely a reckless political adventurer. I tried to prepare the way for Boulogne through the newspapers. But it was no business for editors. They wished to get a living by political agitation: I wished to make them serve me. Here I failed. Boulogne was an overwhelming catastrophe for me. But after all I am pulling myself up from it, by that interest which always attaches to misfortune, by the inherent elasticity of all national causes, which although they are often compromised by events, always regain in time their original position. In fine, what results from all this series of little acts and cruel sufferings? Why, a consequence of immense importance to me. In 1833 the Emperor and his son were dead: there were no more inheritors of the Imperial cause. France knew of none. True some Bonapartes survived, here and there in the backwaters of the world ; bodies without life, petrified mummies, imponderable phantoms. But for the people the line was broken: all the Bonapartes were dead. Well, I have retied the thread; of my own self with my own strength I have resuscitated it; and to-day here I am, within twenty leagues of Paris, hanging over the Government like a sword of Damocles. In short, I have built my boat, I have raised my mast; now I only ask the gods for a wind to carry me forward.. . I n fine, would you know the difference which exists between you and me i n certain matters. It is that you proceed by method and calculation. I have faith, the faith that makes men endure all things with resignation, makes them trample underfoot domestic joys; the faith which alone is able to remove mountains.” W e may pardon the man for his variable metaphors when we reflect that he achieved what he set himself to do, and the remark about faith is seen to be no mere figure of speech when we remember that it was written while he was condemned to imprisonment for life. Such was the man who appeared to the diplomats of the nineteenth century as a Machiavelli made potent by Caesar Borgia. Mr. Simpson traces step by step his rise to the Presidency, emphasising the fragile beauty of the boy, the romantic chivalry of the youth, and the visionary nature of the man. But all through the story runs the thread of a fixed idea rather than an indomitable will. H e failed at Strasburg because he would not shed blood, and he failed at Boulogne for a similar reason. The attempt at Boulogne coincided with the entry of the Great Napoleon’s ashes into France; o n the morn of the coup d’état Louis Napoleon applied to Austria for permission to convey the remains of Napoleon II to Paris, the ceremony of interment being intended to coincide with the proclamation of a restored Empire. Mr. Simpson has written an admirable biography. H e has cleared up the question of Louis’ legitimacy ; he has shown him as a party to the delightful comedy of Switzerland daring France to cross the border to expel Louis Napoleon; and he has shown that if Louis Napoleon was a ‘‘prince among pretenders,” he remained a ““ pretender among princes,” a parvenu who was not sure of his title. I shall await Mr. Simpson’s promised second volume with interest.
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The Suggestive Power of Hypnotism.
By Dr. Forbes Winslow. (Rebman. IS.) This is a pamphlet presumably written t o familiarise the general public with the curative power of hypnotic suggestion. I t is a commendably brief sketch, and its survey of its subject is comprehensive enough. Dr. Winslow writes vehemently against the use of drugs, insisting on the superior virtues of psycho-therapeutics; and he contends that “ except in certain cases of nervous diseases, such as epilepsy, some forms of paralysis, melancholia dependent upon digestive disorganisation, mania dependent upon some sort of inflammatory condition of the brain and its membranes, medicinal agencies act purely by suggestion. ” Of the use of hypnotism in the discovery of crime, he gives one or two interesting instances ; but the question needs
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more exhaustive treatment than is allowed by the scope of this pamphlet if Dr. Winslow’s contention is to convince his readers. H e gives us the customary warning against unqualified practitioners of hypnotism, but he forgets t o mention the awful consequences that might follow its use by unqualified persons. It is, as Isaid, a popular pamphlet, and it has the merits of that class of literature; its defect, from my point of view, is that not sufficient evidence is quoted t o establish any of Dr. Winslow’s contentions, which seem t o be, therefore, too dogmatic in style.
The True Chatterton. A New Study from Original Documents. By John H. Ingram. (Unwin. 10s. 6d. net.) I am by no means sure that this book justifies its existence. Substantially, it adds nothing to the ‘‘ Life ” by Edward Bell prefixed to Professor Skeat’s edition of the poems; nor, so far a s the Rowley poems are concerned, does Mr. Ingram offer any evidence of Chatterton’s authorship other than t h a t offered by Bell and Professor Skeat collectively. In fact, Mr. Ingram’s textual criticism is in no way different t o and by no means a s complete as that of Professor Skeat. O n points of detail, such as Barrett’s connivance in the Rowley fraud, Mr. Ingram is doubtless c o r r e c t ; and his last chapter on the treatment of Chatterton’s family after his death is valuable. But we did not need a new “Life ” to make clear to us who slept with Chatterton a t Colston’s School, who defrauded him of his poems,, or to settle the Rowley controversy, which, according to Professor Skeat, was practically ended in his day. Mr. Ingram protests against the calumnies that have defiled the memory of Chatterton, and is angry with Walpole for the lies he told. But does he suppose that anyone in these days believes Walpole, or accepts the assertions of heated controversialists of the moral depravity of a lad who died a t eighteen, and wrote in six years a s much poetry a s some poets write in a lifetime? Mr. Ingram takes some credit for having published “ T h e Exhibition ’’ for the first time ; but as he omits the offensive passages, we are no better able than before t o judge whether it proves “ t h a t youthful purity had been sullied,” as Professor Wilson declared. I can only say that I find it as dull as most satires of the eighteenth century ; and if Pope’s satirical couplets are no longer read, Chatterton’s are not more worthy of our notice. Chatterton, the wonderful boy who wrote the Rowley Poems, was a genius, but anyone might have written his satires, and anybody may read them so far as I am concerned. But I d o not wish to end on this carping note. Mr. Ingram is whole-hearted in his defence of Chatterton, and that alone is a recommendation to those who rate poetical genius above all else. If he has added nothing to our appreciation of the boy, he has at least once for all cleared him of the accusations of licentiousness, of avarice, and of fraud in the criminal sense. But I do not think that a new “Life ” was necessary for this.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. TRADE UNIONS AND POLITICS. Sir-It will be a welcome change to see your “Notes of the Week” criticised. I ,can only think that the silence which greets these startling analyses is born of a fear at their strangeness and versatility. Nearly all your criticisms of the Labour Party are just; but those Labour M.P.’s who are “ class-conscious’’ are not without political and social theory. If, as you point out, they are only delegates, it does not follow that they would be better employed swinging hammers or inspecting water-closets. Rousseau has been responsible for better men than they going wrong. With you, they believe that England will go to ruin if the conditions of the workers are not evolutionised. If the only way to save England from ruin is to emancipate the workers then it is something more than “ a laudable ambition ” to attempt it. It IS politics. How glib and useless it is to talk of “the ideal member” who must in view of the necessary qualities be inhuman. It is the same sentimental clap-trap and misrepresentation as that which allows you to
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claim for Socialism virtues “class conscious” Labour does not possess. I n trying to evade “the lurid Adelphi atmosphere given to politics by Mr. Webb and others, you have introduced a smear of patriotism which very effectively hides the true colours. Which same is a great pity. I am sorry you have not seen an intelligent proposal of a modification of the Osborne Judgment. Will this d o ? The trade union shall ascertain by ballot i f a majority of its members are in favour of levies for political purposes, providing party pledges are dropped. If they are, the whole of the members shall submit to the levy. The N a t i o n is right when it says that the political organisation of the working classes is “ utterly impracticable,” that is, in our day and generation. The financial history of the I.L.P. and the S.D.P. is proof of this. The peoples’ brains are so constituted and trained that they cannot cause and effect in politics, consequently they don’t think politics worth paying for. W. BEAUCHAMP.
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Sir,-As a working-man, I must protest against your conception of English politics as expounded in last week’s “Notes.” To hear THE NEW AGE explaining that the Liberal and Tory Governments “ do habitually legislate with a view to public welfare” is calculated to make one wonder what all the Socialist and Trade Union bother has been about these last thirty years. I must remind you that it was simply because those parties did not legislate for the public welfare that Trade Unions and Socialist parties were formed. All the arguments that you bring out to condemn the Parliamentary Labour Party must apply with equal force to the other parties in the House. The Tory Party exists to keep the lower orders in its place ; the Liberal Party is that section of the Tory Party which timidly urges the granting of sops to the lower orders when the said lower orders bawl loudly enough. Thirty or forty Labour Members are elected to this delightful club for the purpose of taking a hand in the game, when out comes THE NEW AGE with the cry that Labour interests, being sectional interests, are corrupt and not for the public good. I believe that a few thousand people in this country own the land, and therefore control or throttle industry. Those few thousands are represented, at our expense, by the orthodox political parties. The Labour Party has attempted to represent the other millions of people in this country. It is an attempt to alter things, and it is of no use to apply the tests of pure Democracy in such a matter. You overlook the important fact that we live in the present. If the Labour Party lived up to your ideal of pure Democracy nothing would be better calculated to help the plutocracy to keep its power. You say the Labour Party has no political theory. What does that mean? The Labour Party hoped to be a strong lever in Parliament to get some better conditions of living and working for the working-classes. In many matters unreported in the capitalist press they do a lot of good, especially in Committees Of course, the older parties have a theory of government. We see its results all around us to-day. I now come to the Osborne decision, that thing of joy to the middle-class man, and the mean workman. By the way, my experience of those workmen who objected to paying the 3d. per quarter Parliamentary levy, is that they are nearly all close-fisted. There is precious little “principle “ in the matter. It is very clear that the Trade Unions are not going to sit down in this matter. You tell them that it is bad policy to bully Mr. Asquith’s Government, which has not as ye: refused to reverse the Osborne judgment. But surely Mr. Asquith has had long enough to consider the matter! He must know, too, that Government action is being anxiously awaited by the Trade Unions. Working-men have come to realise that silence, whatever it may mean in love affairs, in politics means indifference to their interests. Exactly what the Trade Unions will do if the decision is not reversed is not at present known. But the line of action proposed by Mr. Brace is the one that meets with a large amount of approval, and that is to levy compulsory subscriptions for Parliamentary representation. It would be a bold stroke which if engineered properly should unite all the members of Trade Unions against a power that they feel intends to break them. If the officials of the Unions are sent to gaol, well, we will elect some more cheerfully, and keep it up as long as they like. Any retaliatory action that the Government of the day or the employer class may adopt will have the effect of strengthening the growing feeling of unity in the ranks. Payment of Members and election expenses is an excellent proposal; it is a necessity of our political life. But it will not compensate for the Osborne decision. The very fact that the ‘‘Morning Post ” and the S t a n d a r d advocate payment of Members is sufficient warning for us to go
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warily. The working-classes want reforms when it suits them, not their masters. Your last paragraph is very unfair. You assert that the Unions should keep outside politics and confine themselves to details of pay and conditions in the factories. Then you mention the Cradley Heath chainmakers in condemnation of the Trade Unions. Any Trade Unionist will tell you that the Unions are engaged in a never-ending struggle with employers on points of every description. As a Trade Unionist, I am convinced that the Unions are doing good work for their members. There is another point I must make of considerable importance, which is possibly unknown to you. The Masters’ Associations make terms with the employees’ Unions, and the workman is compelled, on the pain of losing his job, to abide by the agreement. On the other hand, individual employers can not be compelled by their associations to abide by these agreements. Instances of employers seeking to go outside signed agreements are not uncommon. There is a limit to the amount of this sort of one-sided bargaining ; and considerations of pure Democracy (an ideal I very much fancy) will not deter the organised workers from getting on with the class war.
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PAUL ADAM.
Sir,- Once more your editorial challenges the Socialist rank-and-file, of which I claim to be a fair average specimen. I have carefully extracted from your remarks those stateI ments which call for immediate and flat contradiction particularly wish to point out that my negations of your statements, like the statements themselves, all hang together: one is useless without the others. You say, “Modern states are committed to the theory of representative government. ” I say modern states are not committed to anything of the sort. They are committed to the theory of government by kings. In Russia, Germany, and Spain, the kings are of the ordinary crowned type, to whom representatives may make representations. In the United States and Britain they are more numerous, and are of the uncrowned oligarchic type. They allow themselves to be elected; but they distinctly refuse to do what their subjects want, on the ground that they are not delegates-that is, servants. The powers they exercise are therefore their own, and they are masters: that is to say, kings. You say, “ T h e ideal member is undoubtedly the man who employs his talents under the guidance of his constituents in the interests of the nation of a whole.” I say a member who acts under the guidance of his constituents cannot employ his talents freely, because that involves a contradiction in terms. You are here trying to hedge between kingly tyranny and a truly representative system, which is delegacy. Moreover, no member can employ his talents in the interests of the nation as a whole ; because a modem nation which has ceased to be predatory upon other nations has no interests as a whole. You say, “ H e “ (the member) “is not at all less corrupt for being the mouthpiece of the selfishness of a whole class, rather than of a single constituency.” I say the mouthpiece of a single local constituency of any known pattern is the mouthpiece of the privileged interests of that constituency, and that is why we consider him to be corrupt. If he represented everybody in the place we should not call him corrupt; because then his principles, however reprehensible, would be the only principles we could demand in him as such representative Now, the mouthpiece of a class, however foolish, does represent them truly, therefore he is not corrupt: you had better indict his constituents for-“ selfishness.” You say, “Nobody. . can seriously maintain that Mr. Lloyd George’s Budget was introduced for the personal advantage of Liberals and for the personal discomfiture of Tories.” I say, Lloyd George’s Budget was introduced for that very reason, and quite rightly too-although he dare not say so. The Budget was intended to advantage industrious poor people who have no desire to make fortunes out of the exertions of their fellows. Liberals are mostly such people. Persons who are making, or who hope to make, money out of other’s work, i.e., Tories, naturally and rightly are disadvantaged by it. You say, Nor is Protection advocated by Tories in the economic interests of Tory voters alone. “ I say, Provided that the Tory voter is a Tory with his eyes open, and not a dupe, Protection is advocated in his interests alone ; because Protection increases the opportunities for dividing the human race into bottom dogs and top dogs. The Tory hopes to be a top dog. You say of the proletariat, “Nothing short of a revolution in their condition can save England from ruin.” I say, Taking the word England to mean, as usual:
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national glory and independence provided the Tories are wise enough to keep a fair number of picked men in a condition of well-paid flunkeyism, there is no reason why things should not g o on at a comfortable jog for ever and ever. You say, ‘‘ Workmen’s delegates, sitting at Westminster, have one object . alone: . to better the condition of nor the men who pay their salaries. . It is not politics political in the representative sense.” I say, Not only is it political in such sense, but it is the only kind conceivable in such sense. Can’t think what you mean. You say, N o nation, says Bacon, is fit for Empire that overtaxes its citizens.” And you go on to translate this into humanitarianism on a strictly national basis. I say, Bacon has nothing to do with the case. He was a Tory judge. You say that your attack on riches is in the interests of the nation as a whole. I say, Our attack is in our interests. The nation is beside the point. You say, “ I t is therefore by a purely national spirit that Socialists are compelled to concentrate on the economic problem of the distribution of wealth.” I say, If you take the national spirit as a basis of concentration, you will be surrounded and captured a t the very start-off. The national spirit views all measures in the light of the necessities of national independence; which, so far as concerns the many, include the elimination of personality by means of military discipline, and doglike devotion to a standard, irrespective of happiness and comfort. To this end it is absolutely necessary that the many, far from being generally uplifted and accustomed to value themselves, should remain in a state of poverty, dependence, ignorance, and desperation. That is why the moving spirit of democratic Socialism must be nothing narrower than international. You say, in regard to Mr. Sidney Webb’s statement that there was “ a deliberate conspiracy to get Parliamentary representation into the hands of the well-to-do classes ” :“These conspiracies . are merely figments of the imagination. “ I say, When the trade-union movement was becoming very effective by means of direct action quite outside politics, a Tory judge delivered the Taff Vale judgment, and in so doing so strained the law that the Court of Appealnot taking account, at that early date, of the political meaning of the dodge--reversed his decision amid the laughter of all good lawyers. When that judgment was unexpectedly confirmed by the House of Lords, Tory lawyers said (I heard ’em), “Bad law, but good sense.” Well, the good law had to be re-enacted, and Labour came to the House in force to re-enact it. If, in the face of these facts, you do not believe that the Osborne judgment is a concerted reply to the Trades Disputes Act, neither would you believe though one rose from the dead. So much for flat contradiction. Concerning your theory that the Trade Unions ought to “begin the work of reform in the places where men live,” I should like to administer interrogatories :I. If trade-unionism were shorn of political power, how could it, short of putting the employers in a horsepond, improve the position at Cradley Heath ? 2. If trade unions went in for supplementing the Government factory inspectors by Union representatives,” by what means would those representatives avoid being kicked out of every factory they showed their noses i n ? 3. Assuming a satisfactory reply to No. 2, and assuming also that the representative of the Union has got his report ready, (a) To whom shall he present i t ? (b) What good will it be, then, if the Government in power doesn’t choose to believe he is telling the truth ? 4. Since when did the British people cease to require Government authority before they would believe the truth ? JOHN KIRKBY.
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THE CHURCH UNDER SOCIALISM. Sir,--Will you allow me space to answer for myself the challenge addressed to me, together with my friend, the Rev. Conrad Noel and others, by Mr. John Fletcher in your last issue ? First of all let me point out that Mr. Fletcher seems to suffer from the very common but very perilous delusion that we (that is he and I and Noel and other Socialists) shall have the settling of such matters as he refers to, whereas if Socialism is to be of any use a t all they will be settled by the people of Great Britain, and quite possibly
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in a manner not acceptable to any of us. Having said this, I have no objection to saying how I should personally advise a Socialist State to treat the problems raised in Mr. Fletcher’s letter. ( I ) Of course priests and ministers have as much right to be paid for their work as anyone else, and this without any reference to the truth or falsehood of what they teach, but simply on the ground that a considerable section of the community regards their administrations as necessary to its well-being. As to the method of payment, there would be no alternative open to a Socialist nation if it desired to maintain (as I hope it would maintain) the absolute impartiality of the State in religious matters. One would be for the State to pay all ministers of religion, without regard to their tenets, provided they could show a reasonable demand for their services. This is, I believe, Mr. Bernard Shaw’s solution, and it was once mine. I still think there is a great deal to be said for it under existing circumstances, while the alternative is really between public endowment by the nation and private endowment by the wealthy. But a Socialist State, the rich class having ceased to exist and every citizen having a reasonable margin for expenditure over and above his absolute physical needs, the case for this policy seems much weaker, and I should on the whole prefer to leave the support of religion entirely to voluntary effort. In that case those who wanted the services of any priest, minister, mullah, ethical lecturer, or what not, would have to club together and pay for him. If the first (2) This question is answered by the above. alternative were chosen both the ordained and unordained preacher would be paid by the State. If the second, neither would be so paid. (3) Here again the State would have the option of teaching all religions or none. Personally I should prefer that it left religious teaching entirely to private effort. (4) The Blasphemy Laws are a disgrace to our Statute Book, and I hope we shall not have to wait for the coming of Socialism to be rid of them. (5) I imagine that any Socialist State would extend complete toleration to all forms of religion or irreligion. (6) I have already combatted the idea that Socialism involves any further interference with individual liberty. I imagine that a Socialist State will recognise a man’s right to privacy in his own home, and that it will concede the same right to men and women who choose to live together under a common rule of life. I may add to prevent misunderstanding that in my opinion, where, under the capitalist system, a religious community engages in industry and employs labour, its operations in this respect should be subject to exactly the same degree of inspection and regulation as any other industrial enterprise-neither more nor less. I do not quite know in what sense Mr. Fletcher uses the word “self-supporting,” but if he means, do I advocate the support of religious orders by the State, I do not. (7) I think a Socialist State would commit a grave error if it did not keep one day a week as a general holiday. Every community that ever existed in the world, so far as I know, has seen the advantages of such an arrangement which answers, I think, to something quite fundamental in human psychology. A Christian community o r one that had inherited a Christian tradition would naturally retain the historic weekly celebration of the Resurrection for this purpose. Those whose labour is necessary to the recreation of others would, I hope, receive an equivalent on some other day. Those then are my answers, and it will be noted that not one of them has any reference to my personal religious opinions. Indeed the difficulties presented by Mr. Fletcher, in so far as they exist, are just as much difficulties to the Agnostic Socialist as to me, unless he is prepared to say explicitly that he intends to make the exercise of the Christian Religion impossible-in other words to persecute. CECIL CHESTERTON.
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FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN AMERICA. Sir,-Evidently Mr. Verdad is under a strange misapprehension as to the amount of freedom of speech allowed in the United States. In order to bring the truth home to your readers, I will mention an incident that has happened within the past few weeks. A woman spy employed by the Post Office wrote to Dr. G . Alfred Elliott stating that she was a married woman whose health was being destroyed by excessive child-bearing, and imploring him to help her. I n reply he told her how to avoid conception. He was at once arrested, and sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude, and to pay a fine of $10,000 Many such cases occur every year. It is the same in all other matters. Indoor Socialist meetings are constantly broken up by the police before a word has been uttered. A few months ago Emma Goldman addressed a small group of friends in the garden of a clergyman. She was not absolutely silenced, but nineteen police-
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men were present, ready to pounce upon her if they could get the slightest excuse. After careful comparison, I have come to the conclusion that there is less freedom of speech and press in the United States than in any European country. In some things Russia and Spain have less freedom, but in the most vital things they have vastly more. For many thousands of years it has been the custom to try to belittle original thinkers by asserting that their writings are not “literature. ” Euripides underwent that experience in Athens, and Ibsen has gone through it within the memory of most of us. I am therefore not at all surprised to hear that the writings of Elinor Glyn and the hill-top novels of Grant Allen are not l i t e r a t u r e These writers are intellectually far in advance of the Ibsens and Shaws; consequently, they will be longer abused by conservative critics. It is amusing, however, to remember that Mrs. Glyn’s books were considered excellent literature before it was known that she held advanced views. So respectable a paper as “ T h e Sphere” said of her a few years ago S h e is at this moment our leading novelist of modern manners.” *
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R. B. KERR.
S. VERDAD AND FINLAND. Sir,-As I have been travelling abroad for the past four weeks, the recent numbers of THE NEW AGE have reached me only just now. I see that Mr. Verdad on August 25th honours me with a further reply which, however, in not one single line contains a refutation of any of my statements. Mr. Verdad only resents somewhat hotly my appeal to your readers for a cautious reception of his statements, and then adds some further inaccurate information on the political affairs of Finland. I must ask you, therefore, kindly to grant me some more space for a few final words. I n the first place I want to emphasize that it has never entered my mind to doubt Mr. Verdad’s bona fides, or to render it suspect; quite on the contrary, at almost every line he has published on the Finnish question I have been able to point out the sources, I mean the publications, from which he had obtained his information. So even in his last letter, where he, no doubt again bona fide, in serving up in your columns two more of the “wild stories,” already referred to in bulk, namely, that of the antagonism between Finns of Swedish descent and the pure Finns, and that of an alleged inclination towards a reunion with Sweden. Of that anon. If Mr. Verdad finds reason to complain of my manner in criticising him or, rather, his articles, he must look for the reason in his own writings. His journalism, which he is so anxious to distinguish from the ordinary kind, is of such an eel-fashioned sort that he cannot expect one to tackle him with kid gloves on. The rougher the hands are the greater seem to be the odds for dealing successfully with his admirable temperament. I cannot help wondering, though, at his waste of temperament on a question for the real meaning or final issue of which he, according to himself, does not care a brass farthing. I had always thought it was precisely this tour de force in penmanship that was ever regarded as common journalism. Be this as it may, I feel I must ask Mr. Verdad to pardon my modest display of temperament for the simple reason that I really care very much for what I have been writing about, although I must deny holding a brief of any sort for the Finnish cause, as Mr. Verdad presumes. I have no intention to grudge Mr. Verdad his pleasure of again and again reverting to the Treaty of Fredrikshamn, which is, indeed, if not the keystone of the RussoFinnish arch, most certainly the keynote of the hue and cry emanating from the party whose views Mr. Verdad has been defending. Nor have I or the Finns ever denied that Sweden was beaten by Russia in 1809, and has ceded Finland to the conqueror as a “captured” province. But Mr. Verdad should not twice have passed in silence my reference to the article of the same Treaty which mentions and confirms the assurance of the Finnish ‘‘Constitution.” As to the interpretation of this term I said in my previous letter I was not quite sure what Mr. Verdad’s definition would be, and therefore simply mentioned the legal terms by which the two laws forming the Constitution at that time are always quoted. Mr. Verdad, therefore, finds fault with my going back to 1772, as if there were centuries elapsed between that year and 1809;but he says not a word about or against my referring him also to the Constitution of 1869, which, of course I could not mention as long as we were talking of the year 1809. Now I wonder what sort of arguments Mr. Verdad is prepared to accept o r to discuss. But may none of your readers overlook the interesting fact that Mr. Verdad in his last letter has given a sort of definition of what his notion of the Finnish Constitution is. I was really taken aback when I read those lines at the top of page 404, for he interprets it as meaning “just as much as would be meant by King George V. if he took an oath to respect the Constitution of Canada!” I am very much obliged to Mr. Verdad for this concession, and Finland
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would be very grateful to him, too, if his connexions with the Foreign Office at St. Petersburg would enable him to get this view adopted by the actual Czar and his Government. If Mr. Verdad had stopped there I could have closed our controversy with this amende honorable. Unfortunately he was too much entangled in the various panslavistic myths regarding Finland, and took up the story that the Finns, be it even only those of Swedish descent, conspirate for or only desire reunion with Sweden. This again proves my former statement that Mr. Verdad’s knowledge in these matters is anything but ‘‘ first h a n d . If it were so, then he would certainly know that no such desire exists nor has ever existed for many generations even with the Swedish-speaking Finns at large or within the old or new Svecomane party. He would know, too, that even the Finns of Swedish descent do not exactly entertain what one could term a sympathetic feeling towards Sweden, although it may not be a strong hostile feeling either. This statement may seem incredible to Mr. Verdad on account of his very remote acquaintance with the country and people, but if he wants proofs let him look at the Swedish newspapers that were published in Finland during the time of the separation of Sweden and Norway. I am sure Mr. Verdad will never again revive this old Bobrikoffian calumny, now that he is informed how perfectly groundless it is. Mr. Verdad then makes a few statements on the Finnish class and party politics, which statements in substance are correct, but which are put forth in a form likely to produce a wrong impression with your readers. I t is as undeniable that the Swedes have brought culture into Finland as it is certain that Russia never yet brought anything of the s o r t into the country. And it is true that the pure Finns and Finns of Swedish descent o r tongue have quarrelled whenever they had nothing better to do, viz., jointly to defend their freedom. I and many others think that this strife and quarrel was rather wholesome for both parties concerned. I n the like manner the Vlamish and the French Belgians have quarrelled and quarrel still, but I d o not suppose Mr. Verdad would suggest that the former desire a union with Holland or the latter with France? But it is incorrect of Mr. Verdad to state that the better educated classes in Finland are of Swedish descent if h e does not add that in spite of such a descent and name they are in a very great number of cases considering themselves as pure Finns, and form part of the Finnish or Finnish-Socialist parties. And before all it was NOT the Russian Government that set the Finnish language at par with the Swedish, but this was done in the only possible, the lawful, constitutional way. And lastly Mr. Verdad ought to have stated that there is no dissension whatever between the parties whether Finnish or Swedish, bourgeoisie or Socialists, nor among the people at large, with regard to the question of the present constitution. Lastly let me thank Mr. Verdad for his valuable advice addressed to the Finns, “to lead their conquerors by the nose” as, according to him, was done for years by the Scotch, the Irish, and the Welsh (I may omit the Cretans, perhaps, as Mr. Verdad has made the mistake to overlook that the Turks have not yet been led by the nose by them, nor has Greece as yet conquered Crete). I have no right to discuss this statement, for I have to confess, what Mr. Verdad seems to have found out already, that I am not English. But I see in your last number that one Scotch gentleman only doubts the conquest, and not the l e a d i n g by the nose,” and I, therefore, am led to suppose that in this Mr. Verdad is right. Alas! I fear Mr. Verdad demands rather too much of the cleverness of the Finns, for my studies of foreign politics for the last score years have taught me that the Russians have been masters in leading all other powers “by the nose,” in Europe, at least, including Great Britain and all the small Balkan nations. But one more serious word I should like to address to Mr. Verdad, and it is this : if he really knew what the threatened incorporation of Finland into the Russian Empire means for the country and its people, if he would know the consequences, the swamping by a host of Russian official birds of prey, the great mass of “tchinovniks” of the worst kind who have been ready and waiting for the invasion of the unfortunate country for years; if he would realise what the deterioration of the schools, the police chicanes, the system of official robbery, theft, provocation, informership, ‘‘ administrative “ justice and arbitrary taxation mean-in short, if Mr. Verdad had ever lived in any part of Russia for a longer time not as a distinguished foreigner, for whom the Russian tchinovnik, high or low, overflows of politeness and amiableness, but as a simple though peaceful mortalthen, such is my strong belief in his sincere love of truth and right, he would have shown an altogether different view than he has done in writing of the hard struggle of a small, peaceful nation for mere existence as a civilised people. CHAS. H. FISHER.
SEPT.29, 1910
S. VERDAD A N D T H E GERMANS. Sir,--I have so often admired the dexterity which Mr. Verdad displays in extricating himself from a “tight place” and eluding his critics, that I hesitate before joining in the chase. A phrase, however, in his notes on Foreign Affairs in last week’s issue tempts me. Referring to Germany’s superior educational equipment he says, “ I n spite of excellent schools, educational methods, growing trade, etc., etc., the German still remains the most stupid nation in Europe.” Yet a few weeks ago Mr. Verdad told us that his literary appreciation was practically limited to the Greeks and “the great Germans.” How does he reconcile this self-contradiction? This, of course, is a small defect in a journalist whose writing is usually so clean, accurate, independent, and refreshing. I t only shows that even the most careful writers forget sometimes to dust the corners in dealing with their subjects.
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S. SKELHORN.
S. V E R D A D AND AMERICA. Sir,--Mr. Michael Williams’s gentlemanlike opening almost disarms further criticism ; for a courteous opponent -as any one may have seen by perusing the recent stack of correspondence regarding Foreign Affairs--is exceedingly rare. Let us nevertheless examine his arguments again. My critic, as on previous occasions, gives us the names of several American poets, and would, apparently, wish us to believe therefrom that North America is entitled to some cultural celebrity. I must, by the way, take an opportunity here of protesting against the twist Mr. Williams has given to my remarks on James Whitcombe Riley. I certainly did not “wave aside “ Whitman, Poe, etc., etc., and admit (‘only Mr. Riley to m e n t i o n I indicated-clearly enough, it seems to me-that Riley deserved as much mention as some of the other names; not that he deserved to be set above any of them. Now, I can assure Mr. Williams that I have always been in the habit of subordinating science to poetry. When, in dealing with Mr. Hirst’s book on Argentina, I wrote a paragraph which caused all the pother, I distinctly stated that the the creator, was supreme. In order to be a poet, however, a man must create; whereas Mr. Williams confronts me with mere versifiers. At the risk of provoking another discussion I beg to state that, in the opinion of those who have the best right to judge, Whitman created nothing. T o my critic this may seem lunacy or blasphemy; and in this case I refer him to his great countryman Whistler. Whistler expressed the opinion that the musician should not sit on the piano. Apply this to poetry, and we may see Whitman’s main fault. Whitman sat on the poetical piano Whitman was an anarchist in the domain of poetry. He found Life chaotic; and, instead of trying to bring the complexity into order, he made the chaos more chaotic still. Poe was what the biologist would call a sporting plant. His appearance in the U.S.A. was certainly mysterious ; n o wonder he took to drink, poor fellow. His father, however, was of Irish extraction, which accounts for a good deal. Even if Poe were all that Mr. Williams claims for him, though, I should still maintain that one oasis in a desert did not turn the desert into arable land. Now, the trouble with my critic’s happy band of “poets ” is this: they are impressed, no doubt, by the exceeding bigness of their country, its natural wonders and resources, and its position among the Powers of the world. They feel that there should be a national American poetry; and then, without possessing a particle of the creative instinct, they try to create-not in response to the inward inspiration of the true poet, who feels that he must sing, but in response to an outward and entirely imaginary want. The inhabitants of the United States of America, who have not even discovered a name for themselves yet (let us call them the Unistaters) don’t want poetry. If a poet “happened ” among them (like Poe) he would not find that moral, cultural, and intellectual support among the people which Shakespeare, for example, found in the England of his day. The Unistaters went dollars first, last, and all the time. A few of their millionaires have found out that older and more cultured countries attach a certain value to pictures and other works of art, so they feel that they should have works of art, too, just because other people have them. Now Mr. Williams tells me to leave Homer and AeschyIus out of the question, since, as ’he alleges, Whittier, etc., are sufficient proof that there is some imagination in the United States. But there is imagination and imagination. Sam Weller‘s celebrated love-letter, for instance, showed some imagination on the part of Sam Weller. Music-hall songs show a certain amount of imagination.. So do Mr. Hearst’s papers. But when, in connection with poetry, w e speak of imagination, it is understood that we refer to a much higher quality of it than is to be found in these
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cases. This higher quality, this creative imagination, is found in the Greeks, hence I mentioned‘ a Greek or two. But it is not found in the Unistaters. This poetical (i.e., creative) imagination, turned towards philosophy, is to be seen exemplified in Plato, Aristotle, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche--even in Fichte, Hegel, Schelling, and Kant. Hence I mentioned Plato, Aristotle, and the great Germans To take another point, Mr. Williams wants to know why I criticise the American mind as being Teutonic, why I support German philosophers in Germany and not in the U.S.A. I reply: Because, in comparison with the Latin intellect of South America, the Teutonic intellect of North America is, like the Teutonic intellect in Europe, more slow, stupid, and muddy. I n proportion to the population of Germany, the number of first-rate poets and philosophers produced by the country is very small; and the genius of those who have appeared is tinctured by the laboriousness, slowness, and tortured complexity of the average German mentality. Modern Italian and French psychologists have frequently commented upon this. And there are no great Germans in the U.S.A. To sum up the matter in a final paragraph, I quite admit that, if Mr. Williams could produce some American poetry, all sociology, ethnology, and biology would stand aside. But, as American “poets “ seem to exist as a sort of mutual admiration society, they are doubtless unable to judge the (I refer, value of their own mediocre performances. naturally, bo North America.) What they appear to think is poetry turns out, on examination, to be merely verse. Even now I sweat when I think of some of the Unistatic literary anarchists I have met. Bliss Carman ! Charlotte Perkins Gilman ! Wilbur Underwood ! Oh, Michael Williams, Michael Williams, oh! Some day, when I have time, I will write you such a beautiful article about Unistatic poetry. S. VERDAD.
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THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE QUESTION. Sir,-I have just seen Mr. Macfall’s letter, and I am interested to note that he says--at characteristic lengthexactly what, as I pointed out in my last letter, Shakespearians always do say. For if we reduce Mr. Macfall’s letter to its lowest terms, those terms are, “Don’t! I won’t have it. Bacon had nothing to do with the plays. William Shakespeare did write them. He did--he did--he did!” There is, you know a great deal of rubbish talked about the critical faculty, and the critics do not know nearly a s much about literature or music as they pretend to do. There are certain passages of Beethoven which even Mr. Macfall, if he had never heard them before, would attribute to Mozart; others which he would attribute to Haydn. And when an “Old Master” turns up without a signature, there does not fail of hot discussion as to whether it be the work of Velasquez or another. In literature; well, what about Mr. William Sharp and Fiona Macleod? Would any of us have guessed--did any of us guess--from Mr. Sharp’s critical journalistic prose that he wrote those poems? Why doesn’t Mr. Macfall say, I have read some essays by William Sharp. He couldn’t have written and didn’t write the poems of Fiona M a c l e o d One pictures him saying it and supporting it, not by argument but by dogma. As thus: Y o u could not deceive me,” Mr. Macfall would say, warmly, y o u could not deceive me, for instance, with the pen line of Beardsley as being the pen line of Phil May, which are much nearer of a likeness than the art of Shakespeare and the art of Bacon. Now take oneself,” Mr. Macfall would modestly continue, I presume I have an average sense of literary art; that is to say that the colour and rhythm of words are granted to me. I know William Sharp’s newspaper articles, or rather did know them, by heart. I have had a lifelong delight in them. I have, as probably most creative writers have, a n intense artistic sensing of the literary art in Fiona Macleod. I know the artistry of these artists so intimately that I could not possibly be mistaken.” Thus Mr. Macfall might have said. And yet, you know, he would have been mistaken. But, you will say, Mr. Macfall would have been rash in coming to the conclusion, after reading no work of Mr. Sharp’s save his newspaper articles, that Mr. Sharp could not have written the poems of Fiona Macleod. And if you do say it, you are quite right. He would have been rashbut no rasher than he is when he pretends to judge of the capacity of Francis Bacon by one work--the most condensed and least ornate of the works of that great man. Mr. Macfall has read Bacon’s essays. So have all the other Shakespearians. And they don’t seem to have read anything else. I recommend to Mr. Macfall a trivial work called “ T h e New Atlantis “ another called “ Henry the Seventh ,’; a few odd speeches and letters and other little things; in all, two thick, closely-printed folios. He had better just skim through these before he permits himself to write any more about his infallible literary judgment. But let me not be impatient with my opponent still less
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rude to him. After all, I am not a Shakespearian. Let me rather reason with him gently yet firmly, as a Baconian should. If Mr. Macfall and these other Shakespearians--forone supposes that h e is not alone in his eminent critical position -if all these people can distinguish so well the literary style of William Shakespeare from the literary style of other authors, whence the burning controversy that rages for ever in the heart of the Shakespearian camp as to who wrote Titus Andronicus ” and H e n r y the Eighth “ ? What part, if any, had Shakespeare in “Pericles ” ? Further, why are we to suppose that Shakespeare did not write “ The Yorkshire Tragedy,” “Sir T-Oldcastle,” and “ Locrine ” ?-all published under Shakespeare’s name. Perhaps Mr. Macfall would like to amuse himself--say, in the tram, or somewhere away from his reference libraryby distinguishing the style and naming the authors of the following quotations :“And t’were not hooped with steel my breast would break.” “If my heart were not hooped with adamant the conceit of this world would have burst it.’’ “Have need have their breasts hoop’t with adamant.” “Now patience hoop my sides with steeled ribs lest I do burst my breast. “ “ T h e spheres make music to the citizens in heaven.” “ T h e music of the spheres sounds not more sweet.” “ T h e music of the spheres attending on us.” “This silent war of lilies and of roses.” “ T h e lily and the rose most sweetly strange Upon your dimple cheeks do strive for change.” “ The moon so constant in inconstancy.” “ O Fortune constant in inconstancy.” W a s this the face that launched a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilium.” “She is a pearl whose price Hath launched above a thousand ships.” ‘‘Fortune (who is like the chameleon) variable with every object and constant in nothing but inconstancy-” “ Sea of troubles.” “ Sea of troubles.” “There do the stately ships plough up the floods, The greater navies look like walking woods.” L o v e must creep in service where it cannot go.’’ L o v e will creep in service when it cannot go.” “Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.” “Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.” And, still gentle, but firm, let me ask Mr. Macfall what constitutes fitness f o r literary criticism ; which ‘is the more fit to compare ideas and style, a learned German professor who has read all the works of Bacon, or an English art critic who bases his criticism on one book-and that book “ The Essays ” ? Let me repeat, still with firm gentleness, that the Shakespearians do not face this question of the authorship of the plays. They run away from it, and as they run they emit bitterness. Mr. Macfall says that what they emit is not bitterness, it is deserved contempt.” The following gems from Mr. Macfall’s letter may be contempt in Mr. Macfall’s eyes: to mine they look like bitterness:artistic ignorance of Baconians is only surpassed by their aggressive effrontery.” “ Baconian drivel.” “ vilely illiterate.’, “ not demand serious consideration for their effrontery.” “utter futility.” a fool’s trial.” ((fantastic and stupid slanders.’, There is no bitterness, says Mr. Macfall, in such expressions applied to (opponents who advance arguments which h e will not hear, and can still less refute. If the Shakespearians are not afraid of Baconian arguments, why not face those arguments? Again I ask what is it they fear? As Mr. Macfall so justly and beautifully says (in a phrase which, did I judge merely by identity of sentiment and phraseology, I should attribute not to him but to the poet Tupper)-“Weakness is not justice, nor is timidity reasonableness.” E. NESBIT. P.S.--I see that I have, in this letter, used the word “r a s h e r And I deliberately decide to let that stand. Who am I that I should deny to my opponents the chance for that sort of joke which Mr. Andrew Lang and Mr. Macfall enjoy in common, and of which the substitution of Gollop for Gallup is so happy an example? ((
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Sir,-I know nothing about the “ Bacon-Shakespeare” controversy; but if “of a thousand points they have in common,” Mr. E. Wake Cook’s two cited points are representative, the controversy must be, as it were, in a galloping consumption. First, Mr. Cook quotes Ben Jonson (who, ‘‘knew and loved the man [Shakespeare]”) in evincing that both Bacon and Shakespeare spoke “pressly” and could not forgo a joke. Who has not among his acquaintances at least two persons who can talk “pressly” and cannot forgo a joke? He next quotesShelley to the effect that “Bacon was a poet,” etc., and that it takes a poet to write the finest prose. . Were Sir Thomas Browne, Jeremy Taylor, De Quincy poets then? Yes; in Shelley’s sense, but not in E. Wake Cook’s. We must have something better than this if we are to believe that “our sweetest Shakespeare” was E. H. VISIAK. the mean snob and cadger, Bacon.
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Sir,-That Mr. Wake Cook should come between me and my point seems to be inevitable; that he should completely miss it is as inevitable. I t is exactly the sincere academic type which is so marked in Mr. Wake Cook that .misses always the deep significance of Art. It is the large mass of such men, really deeply interested in art, but mistaking art for an intellectual activity, whereas it is wholly an affair of the senses, that creates confusion on all matters of art. It is this mass of “culture” that creates the gullibility of intelligent men who would scream with laughter were you to prove that, because Turner had not a university education, his poems were painted by Disraeli or the Duke of Wellington. Into the innate falsities of the position taken up as to the significance of art, such as Ruskin and Mr. Wake Cook adopt, it would take too long to enter here. I am about to publish a book upon it this autumn. But Mr. Cook’s short letter bristles with them. Let all that go. And let us not be misled into all this vapid side-issue as to Shakespeare’s brain and Bacon’s brain. Shakespeare did not invent the ideas of his age. H e was an artist and but turned them into terms of art. The point is this: I stated in very full and simple terms what is the basic difference between the art of Shakespeare and the art of Bacon. I said nothing about style. Let me put it in the form of questions to Mr. Wake Cook. Does he sense the art of colour sufficiently fully to know the difference between a painting by Corot and one by Turner? Has he the musical sense sufficiently developed to tell the difference between the art of Beethoven and that of Chopin? Has he sense of the rhythm and colour and weight in words, the art of literature, quite apart from all intellectual or other values of literature, to sense the difference between the art of Shakespeare and the art of Bacon? Or do Corot and Turner seem the same to his eyes? Do Beethoven and Chopin sound the same? Or Shakespeare and Bacon sound the same in his hearing? I am not touching the hopeless difficulties that stand in the way of Bacon in writing Shakespeare’s plays. I do not point out to him that if Bacon had been writing “Julius Cæsar” he would have had no need to fall back on an English translation of Plutarch’s Lives; nor am I troubling him with uneasy problems as to why a learned man like Bacon put rapiers on the hips of Romans, where an unacademic man like Shakespeare would naturally make such mistakes. I simply say that to those who sense the art of literature it is as impossible to mistake the art of Shakespeare and Bacon as it is impossible to mistake the art of Turner and Corot, of Beethoven and Chopin, of Meredith and Nietzsche. If he says he cannot feel any difference between the art of Shakespeare and Bacon, then for him at least the greatest difficulty is swallowed. He has then only about two thousand difficulties to overcome. HALDANEMACFALL. P.S.--May I add that with Shelley I agree; but it has nothing to do with the case. I go further than Mr. Cook. No man can write artistic prose unless he be a poet. Poetry has nothing to do with verse. And I would add that I prefer Ben Jonson’s evidence to that of the Gollops or Gullops. I hold Bacon to have been one of the most exquisite writers of prose in all time. But Shakespeare’s art is as high above his as the flight of the eagle above the soaring of the lark. The art of Shakespeare is the greatest art of all time. There are artists in literature greater than Bacon. Had Mr. Wake Cook the sensing of words to realise this, he could never fall into Gollupry. But it is to out-Gollup Gollup for Mr. Wake Cook to drag Shelley and Ben Jonson into court as evidence that Bacon wrote Shakespeare.
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T H E DICKMAN CASE. Sir,-One of the most surprising obstacles encountered by those who, believing in Dickman’s innocence, tried vainly to secure a reprieve, was the attitude of his brother. This brother-the most natural friend on earth, one would have
SEPT. 29,1910
thought-not only refused to sign the petition, but adopted a slanderous attitude which must have greatly increased the sufferings of the unfortunate. In view of the fact that the vilest calumnies have continued to pour from Newcastle over the memory of the defenceless dead, I think it pertinent to inquire whether there is any truth m these significant rumours. (i) That Dickman’s brother owed him about £200 which he has not yet repaid. (ii) That all papers relating to this loan were seized by t h epolice who have refused all requests by Mrs. Dickman for their restoration. ARCHIBALD ROWANHAMILTON.
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CHESTERTONISM. Sir,-There exists and flourishes luxuriantly--it is not the most satisfactory sign of the times, nor does it redound exactly to the credit of the so much boasted Higher Education in this so enlightened country of ours (“this other Eden, demi-Paradise”)--a class of writers for the Press to whom to all appearances it is the chief object in life to “darken counsel,” to juggle with logic, reason, and truth, and, in brief, to “make the worse appear the better reason.” It seems to be the purpose of this somewhat extensive class by confusing the minds and by obfuscating the ideas of the not over-intelligent ordinary British middle-class citizen, to propagate the principles-if not to revive the amiable practices -of the “Middle Ages.” It is their purpose, especially, to discredit, by all means, the principles of Modernism and of Protestantism. I use the much misused term in its higher and worthier meaning. Whether it be that, like the Philopseudes of Lucian-that illustrious sworn foe of falsehood and of grovelling superstition of the third centurytheir predilection for untruth is innate, or, whether it be that they are inspired simply by desire for notoriety; in any case, the mischief they may effect is serious and extensive; which is the chaos and confusion of the conflicting elements of thought (or of its simulacrum). A chief and a constant hierophant of this religious philopseudism--it is a sufficiently pleasant fact-is, as is well known, the peculiar pet and protégé of a principal representative of (Orthodox) Nonconformity in the daily Press: to wit, the oracular writer whose metaphysical or metapsychical lucubrations are so frequently in request for the instruction or entertainment of the readers of the newspaper in question. And here one may pause to inquire, en passant, whether the admission of these conspicuous anti-Protestant gibes and flouts into the columns of that so respectable pillar of Nonconformist ‘‘Liberalism,” however entertaining, in a way; may not be a little perilous for its guileless readers, who so implicitly believe in its Protestant orthodoxy. The above philosophical reflections have been suggested to the present writer by the latest metaphysical legerdemain of Mr. G. K. Chesterton; and, as it would be greatly to the loss of posterity that they should be buried obscurely in the columns of an ephemeral periodical, I venture to think these la test specimens of his philopseudist speculations should be transferred to the permanent page of THE NEW AGE. Here they are in part (as entrusted to the columns of the ‘‘ Daily News,” of Sept. 17), apropos of a visit to the town of the West of England which glories in the possession of the Thorn of St. Joseph of Arimathea:-“ All this [preceding tirade against Rationalism, to wit] is not urged here,” oracularly confides G . K. C. to the readers of the “Daily News,” “with the notion of proving that the tale of the Thorn is not a legend; as I have said, it probably is a legend. It is urged with the much more important object of pointing out the proper attitude towards such legends, which is one of doubt and hope, and a kind of light mystery? The tale is certainly not impossible, as it is certainly not certain; and through all the ages since the Roman Empire men have fed their healthy fancy and historic mysticism upon the very twilight condition of such tales. But,,’ he proceeds, “real agnosticism has declined along with real theology. People cannot leave a creed alone, though it is the essence of a creed to be definite [ e . g , the Athanasian]. But neither can they leave a legend alone, though it is the essence of a legend to be vague. . . That sane half-scepticism which is found in all rustics and in all their ghost tales and fairy tales seems to be a lost secret, etc., etc.” [The italics the transcriber’s.] It is not long ago that we were informed, through the medium of the interviewers, that the Weed of the “Church Army ” has solemnly professed his inability to disbelieve the actuality of the biblical “Jonah and the Whale.” He, at least, is secure from the reprobation of “G. K. C.”--in regard to a “ healthy fancy” in legendary lore-without all doubt, presumably. I n all seriousness, I shall take leave to exhort these philopseudic gentlemen-whether it be ecclesiastical legend o r biblical fable which engages their pious faith-to a
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THE NEW AGE
SEPT.29, 1910
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course (the more strict and severe the better ,for their malady) of Lucianic medicine, and, in particular, to the dialogue entitled “ Philopseudes. MISOPSEUDES
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TP'S
WHAT TO READ.
MAGAZINE
Sir,-My sympathies are Socialistic, but in the course of discussions upon Socialism I have felt the need of a more thorough and convincing knowledge of the subject than I possess. I am anxious to acquire such knowledge and should be greatly obliged if you or any of your readers would recommend a short course of study which I might undertake with that object during the coming winter evenings. A STUDENT.
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Articles of the Week. ARCHER, WM., “ The God-like Playgoer,” Morning Leader, Sept. 24. BEGBIE, HAROLD, “ T h e Valour of the Peasant: How the Poor Suffer in Silence,” Daily Chronicle, Sept. 19 BLAND, HUBERT, “ The Labour Sphinx,” Daily Mail, Sept. 19, 2 0 and 21. BLATCHFORD, ROBT., “ An English Rouen,” Clarion, Sept. 23. CHESTERTON, G. K., “ T h e High Plains,” Daily News, Sept. 24. DIMNET, ERNEST, “ T h e Democratisation of the Sorbonne,” Saturday Review, Sept. 24. GIBBS, P H I L I P , “ T h e Social Evolution of the Journalist,’’ Graphic, Sept. 24. GLASIER, J. BRUCE, “ T h e International Congress,” Labour Leader, Sept. 23. GRAYSON, VICTOR, “ Revolution versus Resolution,” Clarion, Sept. 23. H O N O R E LEOPOLD, “ Alfred Philippe Roll, Painter and Sculptor,” Studio, Sept. 15. HOSSAIN, SYED, “An Empire in Eclipse: Is Islam Progressive ?” Morning Leader, Sept. 23. KALISCH, ALFRED, “ T h e Autumn at Covent Garden,” World, Sept. 20. LANG, ANDREW, ‘‘ Dreams, ” Illustrated London News, Sept. 24 ; “Rubber and the Native,” Morning Post, Sept. 23. MASSINGHAM, H. W., “South Africa : Parties and Politics,” Morning Leader, Sept. 21. MONEY, L. G. C H I O Z Z A “ O u r Place in the World of Ships,” Morning Leader, Sept. 22 ; “ A Penny a n Hour or Less: Sweating in 1910,” Daily News, Sept. 22 ; “ T h e Underpayment of Labour,” Labour Leader, Sept. 23. NEVINSON, H E N R Y W., “ A Scene from the Finnish Tragedy,” Nation, Sept. 24. O’CONNOR T. P., “America’s Revolt : An Insight into the Iniquities of the Protective System,” Reynolds’s, Sept. 25. PHILLPOTTS, EDEN, T h e Light of the Ling: Nature’s Hour of Splendour on Dartmoor,” Daily Chronicle, Sept. 20. PUGH, EDWIN, “ T h e Cockney Exodus : Has London Reached its Natural Limits ?” Daily Chronicle, Sept. 23. RUNCIMAN, J O H N F., T h e World’s Greatest Symphony,” Saturday Review, Sept. 24: SAYLE, CHAS., “ T h e University Library a t Cambridge,,” Country Life, Sept. 24. SIMS GEO. R., “Old Times on the Weekly Dispatch,” Weekly Dispatch, Sept. 25. SPENDER, HAROLD, “ France Militant : Visions of the Conquest of Germany,” Daily ChronicIe, Sept. 2 1 . S U T H E R S , R. B., “Good-bye,” Clarion, Sept. 23 (valedictory article). THOMPSON, ALEX. M., ‘‘ Labour Exchanges and Blackleggism,” Clarion, Sept. 23. TITTERTON, W. R., “ In Realms Celestial,” Vanity Fair, Sept. 2 1 . VON TYSZKA, Dr. CARL, “ T h e Policy of Dear Food : Prices of Provisions in England and Germany,” Westminster Gazette, Sept. 2 0 and 21. WHITLEY, W. T., “The National Competition of Schools of Art, 1910, at South Kensington,” Studio Sept. 15.
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