THE

A WEEKLY REVIEW OF POLITICS, LITERATURE AND ART. vol. VII. NO. 15. THURSDAY, AUGUST I I, 1910. THREEPENCE,

NOTES OF THE Week . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VERSE. By Guy Kendall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FOREIGN AFFAIRS. By S. Verdad . . . . . . . . . . . . ROOSEVELT I N EUROPE. By H. G. Wells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MATERIALISM A N D CRIME. By Francis Grierson . . . . . . How THE RICH RULE Us. By Cecil Chesterton . . . . . . THE REPEOPLED PALACE AND THE PEOPLE'S HOMES. By

T. H. S. Escott . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SENTIMENTALISM By a Typical Sentimentalist . . . . . . THE GREATNESS OF CAESAR. By J. Stuart Hay . . . . . . A SYMPOSIUM ON ARCHITECTURE : Letters from Norman Shaw,

R.A., Ernest Newton, F.R.I.B.A., George S. Aitken, F.S.A.Edin., C. R. Ashbee, F.R.I.B.A., Reginald Blom- field, A.R.A., F.S.A., F.R.I.B.A., T. G. Jackson, R.A.,

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CONTENTS. PAGE

Professor W. R. Lethaby, F.R.I.B.A., Beresford Pite, F.R. I.B..A, Halsey Ricardo, F.R.I.B.A., Thackeray 'Turner, F.S.A., F.R.I.B.A., Raymond Unwin . . . . . . 348

BOOKS AND PERSONS. By Jacob Tonson . . . . . . . . . 350 A LETTER TO THE SLAV CONGRESS. BY Leo Tolstoy . . . . . . 351 MUSIC. By Herbert Hughes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 352 CORRESPONDENCE : Beatrice Hastings, R. Dimsdale Stocker,

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ARTICLES OF THE WEEK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . * ' * 359 BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF MODERN AUTHORS : E. Belfort Bax ... 359

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NOTES OF THE WEEK. EVERY now and again the English governing classes are made to feel the ground tremble beneath their feet. At such moments they realise in a flash their utter dependence upon the proletariat class for their own safety and for the security of their position. During this last week one such moment occurred when the news reached London that the shipbuilding industry was threatened with a standstill. The shipbuilding in- dustry ! Then what might become of our navy in the presence of a German attack? Suppose, horrible thought, that these damned workmen should take it into their heads to go on strike at the critical moment; what hope would England have of wielding her big stick? But fear on the one side must necessarily in- spire hope on the other side. We neither advocate nor anticipate the use by English workmen of the deadly instrument known as the General Strike; but it is obvious that if once the proletariat realise their power, it will loom behind their negotiations with their ern- ployers as effectively as Admiral Mahan assures us their respective armies and navies loom behind the negotia- tions of contending States.

* * * Fortunately or unfortunately this paralysing power of

the proletariat is not clearly realised by them. Like Ogier the Dane who fought the Saracens in his sleep, the British workmen arc scarcely conscious either of their strength or of their enemy. At a n y moment, however, the realisation may come and the labourer may ,

awake ; and in that day the accumulated injustice of centuries will be poured back upon the governing classes in a devastating tide. That the English trade unionists are even now growing electric is clear from what happened a few weeks ago on the North-Eastern Railway system. There, to everybody's amazement, a sudden impulse seized simultaneously upon thousands of workmen, compelling them without rhyme or reason to cease work until some trivial and ridiculous little matter had been satisfactorily settled. Nobody ap- peared to be in control ; there was no plot; there was no plan. The men's officials were as flabbergasted at the occurrence as the railway directors and even the men themselves. It was, as we say, an electric event; and chiefly on that account significant and, in our view, hopeful.

* * *

For what did it imply? W e have seen it stated that the event was symptomatic of bad discipline, etc., etc. ; that it showed a weakness of moral fibre and such like nonsense. But the very contrary is the case. For the first time for many years there were demonstrated an identity of feeling and a communion of feeling among members of the working-classes which are in the highest degree proofs of social progress. Hitherto there has been at best a union of interest among them, inter- rupted too often by jealousies that would put to the blush the nice degrees of court functionaries. But on this occasion everything artificial was suddenly stripped away. Porters, guards, drivers and cleaners acted together as a single man. Again, we would have it observed that the material interest was completely lack- ing. Nothing save a point of honour was at stake. The humble excuse for all the trouble was neither to be dismissed, reduced o r bullied ; he was to be simply moved a distance of a few yards in the same station. What an almost aristocratic (in the real sense) occasion for a dispute ! W h a t noble pride ! Almost the oligarchy might be persuaded that these brutes are men.

* * * W e a r e unable to discover even from the enquiries

subsequently made in the " Railway Review " how such a spirit of inflammability was engendered ; but we can readily guess its origin. It is all a question of atmosphere. Over and over again we have seen masters and their officials administer their business justly yet in such a spirit as really to administer un- justly. While, therefore, nothing is done on which the men can seize, an atmosphere of resentment is created

338 THE NEW A G E AUGUST II, 1910

out of which a lightning stroke may easily issue. W e wonder, indeed, that there is not more lightning. Angry clouds, as Blake says, sag on the deep over so much of our industrial life that it is almost by a miracle that more storms do not burst. But the moral is that to keep capitalism in existence at all and par- ticularly in countries where the proletariat are becoming class-conscious, capitalists will be compelled not only to study psychology but to practise it as an art as well.

* * * W e do not know that it is our business to teach

capitalists and the governing classes theirs; but we may as well be. frank with them. Every advance in the education of the wage-slaves of this country renders them more conscious of their ignominious position and at the same time better equipped to alter it. Of that there is no possible probable shadow of doubt whatever. The question is : will the ruling classes learn wisdom at an equal rate, or will they stagnate until they are removed by force? We are the last to desire any violent revolu- tion if it can be avoided ; but we should be the first to join in it if the ruling oligarchy in our opinion deserved to be destroyed. And they will certainly deserve to be abolished as an oligarchy if they do not note the signs of the times, adapt their methods to the increasing in- telligence of their subjects, and, gradually and bene- volently prepare for themselves subtler and subtler spheres of influence. Both as a warning and a lesson to employers, and as an inspiration and an example to their men, we, therefore, commend the singular occur- rence which took place among the railwaymen of the North. * * +

For the attenuated results of the Session now inter- rupted by a much-needed holiday nobody in particular is to blame. But if substantial results do not accrue from the resumed Session in November the blame will be equally distributed over the Liberal, Irish and Labour parties. For one thing, we do not believe that the Conference will be able to reach any agreement worth putting before the Coalition forces. And in consequence it seems to us necessary that the early autumn should be spent by members in acquainting their constituencies with the position as it will shortly stand. That position is briefly this : That an unmistak- able national demand must be made to ensure the right of the people to manage their own affairs. The phrase, we know, is cant at present; but it is the busi- ness of the Coalition rank and file to see that the phrase ceases to be cant by the time of the next General Election. Should that come in January as a sequel to the Conference failure or be postponed to next autumn in deference to the Coronation, the result should be equally assured. Liberalism has no future if the Lords have, and there’s an end of it.

* * *

W e confess, however, that we are less disposed now than we were sis months ago to regard the continued existence of a Liberal Government as indispensable to progress. If we can forgive them the inactivity which the death of King Edward necessitated, we cannot so easily reconcile ourselves to being repeatedly kicked downstairs without provocation. The Civil List was bad, the Honours List was still worse, but we are inclined to regard the Cabinet’s refusal to reprieve John Alexander Dickman as worst of all. W e hope w e d o not take an exaggerated view of this case, but it cer- tainly seems to us significantly sinister in the light it throws upon the disposition of Mr. Winston Churchill, the future Liberal Premier, and the strongest man in the Cabinet. W e understand from authoritative sources that Dickman’s guilt was proved to the complete satis- faction of the Home Office officials, including Mr. Churchill himself. Of course, it was proved to Sir Edward Grey, who took Mr. Churchill’s place at the Home Office during the critical days when the decision was to be made public. A man who could be convinced of the guilt of the Denshawai peasants could be con- vinced of anybody’s guilt. He would not even, like

Pilate, have washed his hands before the condemnation of Jesus of Nazareth. But the question we have to ask is what evidence, besides that made public, had Mr. Churchill in view in considering the case of Dick- man. If there was any evidence which had not been made public, then it is contrary to English justice to act on it. And if there was not, then we contend, and would contend before the tribunal of the world, that in the publicly available evidence there was altogether too much doubt to hang a man on.

* * * With capital punishment in its present revolting and

barbarous form we would have nothing to do. I t is in our opinion a crime far greater than murder to torture a man for three weeks before horribly mauling him to death. Society is fouled by the civil murder of murderers in this fashion. If there is to be capital punishment let it be by the lethal chamber and within twenty-four hours of sentence. It would not matter much if an occasional innocent man were put away by this means. Life for such as commit or even are charged with murder is not so precious a possession that society need go into mourning even if a mistake were made. But for torture of the nature we still wreak on guilty and innocent alike the nation should decently go into black, and stay there until the barbarous practice is abolished. W e half hoped that Mr. Winston Churchill had realised this. What with his engaging regulations of the smoking of taxicab drivers and his zeal in taking the credit for Mr. Herbert Gladstone’s Prison Reforms, there seemed some hope that he might use the large element of doubt in the public evidence of Dickman’s guilt to spare society the bloody business of another throttling of a pinioned man with a hangman’s rope.

* * * That he has not done so proves many things; first,

that Mr. Churchill is no sentimentalist as a well-known writer describes sentimentalism on another page, but a hard-mouthed materialist inaccessible to liberal or humane ideas when they come to him without votes in their hand; secondly, that he is under the influence of the most reactionary mind not merely in the Cabinet but in public life, Sir Edward Grey to wit ; thirdly, that he is timid of offending the Judges, those Aesopian ox- frogs of the legal marsh; fourthly, but not lastly, that he is no pioneer of society into the ways of humanisa- tion. W e add this further note. Mr. Churchill is re- ported to have once reflected on the fateful similarity of his own decisions with those of his father’s. Strange, he said, whenever an important choice is to be made I invariably like my father make the wrong one. The reference, we understand, was to his joining the Liberal party. But he may console himself while ratting ( :) in Asia Minor this autumn : he has never joined the liberal party.

H ELL-FIRES. Against the lurid sunset loom

The hearts that hear your threats of doom, The headlands black and bold;

Preachers, are hard and cold.

The glimmering wave, as fades the glow,

And grey the souls that chattering go Is glooming into grey,

From your sad church away. GUY KENDALL

ATHEISM. (From Mattial.)

Sergius has laid a heavy bet That gods exist not, heaven’s to let : His cash account confirms the odds, Still mounting while he mocks the gods.

GUY KENDALL.

AUGUST II, 1910 THE NEW A G E 339

Foreign Affairs. By S. Verdad.

W R I T I N G in this column a fortnight ago I expressed the opinion that, if the situation were not unexpectedly complicated, an amicable agreement between the Vatican and the Spanish Government might be looked for. Unfortunately, however, the situation has since been complicated in several ways, not the least im- portant being the much greater activity displayed by the Pretender. The strikes in Bilbao and other places have been skilfully exploited, first by the revolutionary elements, and secondly by the priests, for the purpose of harassing the Prime Minister, Sefior Canalejas, so that the Cabinet has deemed i t advisable to prohibit the monster demonstration which it had been arranged to hold in San Sebastian on August 7.

The necessities of going to press compel me to write before the result of this prohibition is properly known, as the revolutionaries and discontented Catholics threaten to hold i t in spite of the Government. During the past two weeks the northern provinces of Spain have simply been seething, and telegraphic messages assuring the Pope that so-and-so many thousand of the Faithful will shed their last drop of blood in defence of the true religion have been frequent. In the mean- time, however, those who are interested in this affair will probably have wondered why the negotiations be- tween Spain and the Vatican have been so protracted. Sefior Canalejas and I, however, are in possession of certain information which is not known to many out- siders, and it may serve to make the position of affairs a little clearer to the general reader.

For many months past two well-known personages at the Vatican have not been attending strictly to the injunction, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” I refer to Cardinal Rampolla and Cardinal Merry del Val, who have not recently been on anything like friendly- terms. The rumours going about to the effect that the latter Cardinal wishes to resign and has been pressed not to do so by the Pope is rather funny. If his Holi- ness could see the last of both Cardinal Merry del Val and Cardinal Rampolla a great load would be lifted from the mind of the latest descendant of St. Peter. But, apparently, the old firm is too well established to be put out of business just yet.

Now, any recent tactical slips which have been made by the Vatican within the last few years have been put down to Pius X., when, as a matter of fact, they have been due principally to his secretaries. I know a great deal more of the present Pope than most of his critics ; and he is certainly too good a judge of human character to indulge in the pin-pricking policy which has characterised the Vatican of late. No ; in propor- tion to the numbers, there is as great an agitation in the Vatican as there is in Spain, and the battle lies between the two Cardinals I have mentioned on the one hand and the Pope on the other.

T o give an instance of recent mismanagement : A few days ago a telegram was sent from Bilbao in the name of several thousand Roman Catholics assuring the Pope of their continued support in spite of what the Government might say or do, and at the same time another telegram was sent to Sefior Canalejas, as Premier, couched in terms which were certainly not flattering.

When the message in question was handed to the Pope, he saw at once what was the proper course to pursue, namely, to reply to the senders of the message, thanking them for their resentment at the proposals of the Government only in so far as the law was strictly obeyed. This view-obviously the only one in the circumstances-was instantly controverted by Cardinal Merry del Val, who flouted the wishes and instructions of the Pope, and replied to Bilbao in his own name, expressing the keen pleasure of the Papal authorities at the action of the Spanish Catholics and bestowing upon them the Apostolic Benediction. This answer was widely circulated throughout Spain, and was

looked upon jubilantly by the Clericals as expressing the real opinion of the authorities at the Vatican.

I have thought it worth while to devote some space to this incident, for it is but typical of what has been going on for a long time. At the moment Señor Canalejas is inclined to believe that Pius X. will suc- ceed in quelling the turbulent spirits under his com- mand, or in securing their resignations. In this case not even the interference of the Pretender or a strike in ‘every city and town in Spain would avail the Clericals ; for the Pope is fully convinced of the reason- able nature of the Spanish demands, and, although his classical education cannot be compared with that of his great predecessor, he is at all events familiar with the story of the Sibylline Books.

As for the statements in some of the French news- papers that the King and Queen of Spain have come to England to avoid assassination at this “momentous crisis,” no attention, of course, need be paid to them. If King Alfonso and Queen Victoria-Eugenia were afraid of bombs at the present time it is hardly likely that they would have left their children behind them in Spain.

Apart altogether from the question of the quarrels of Pius X. with his Cardinals, however, there is some excitement in Vatican circles owing to quite another cause. There is an influential clique which has always objected to the election of Giuseppe Sarto as head of the Roman ‘Church, and for six years at least a per- sistent effort has been made to induce him to resign. In all the long line of Popes, I think-speaking from memory-that there is only one precedent for this ; and I rather believe that Dante-speaking from memory again-says something about it. The fact that the clique I have referred to is urging upon Pius X. the necessity of resignation, in view of the world-wide excitement, not to say consternation, which would be caused by it, shows the lengths to which the intriguers are prepared to go.

Needless to say, the secrets of the Vatican are well kept ; and any of the ordinary newspaper statements regarding the inner workings of the great Papal head- quarters must be received with caution. Had the statements I have made not come to me from three un- impeachable sources I should not have given them. The truth is, the present Pope is. too liberal and im- partial in his dealings with “heretics ” to suit the taste of the more reactionary elements which predominate in the Vatican at the present time.

It is hardly likely that this information will ever be known to the crowds of Spaniards who are now urging their mayors and priests to send telegrams to the Pope in their behalf-even if they could read, which most of them cannot. News of this nature travels slowly in Spain, even, I mean, when known to Press- men ; for most people have an interest in keeping i t dark. Nevertheless, i t is interesting to lift the curtain from the Vatican once in a while, and to observe the very human nature of the awe-inspiring officials who regulate the concerns of the largest section of the Christian Church.

Roosevelt in Europe. By H. G. Wells.

[Reprinted from ‘‘ Collier’s Weekly ” by the courteous permission of the Editor.]

SOME years ago I made of President Roosevelt a symbol of the contemporary human spirit, described him as I saw him at the White House, a little strained in speech, a little forced in pose, kneeling up in a garden chair and gesticulating over the back with those clenched fists of his, to express just how, in any event, the struggle of life seems to him “worth it.” With most of the rest of humanity I have since been privileged to watch and hear the tremendous crescendo of the ex-Presidential tour, the vanishing into Africa, the interlude of sport, the reappearance about the head-waters of the Nile, the beginning and increase of

340 THE NEW A G E AUGUST II, 1910

speeches, Egypt, Italy, Paris, Sweden, Berlin. At last England. I find it hard to recall now the friendly grey-clad gentleman in glasses who discussed the destiny of mankind with me in that sunny Washington garden. No doubt he is somewhere near the centre of the immense effect this progress through Europe is making, but just where and just how he is connected with it exercises me profoundly. The Roosevelt that now engages so much American and European atten- tion is manifestly no finite human being at all, but one of those colossal monsters as artificial as King Car- nival, which journalism, photography, caricature, and the immense possibilities of reverberation in the modern world create. Roosevelt has ceased for a time

giant, a chimera, marching back to America with to be a man in the European mind, has become a

a n empire. At least I find myself assailed on every Seven League Boots to end a free repubiic and found

and occasionally i t demands a real effort to recall how hand by such nonsensical presentations of his passage,

little the intimate effect of him tallies with this mon-

known as Welt-Politik. strosity created by that form of contagious lunacy

It is curious to note how widespread and diversified is this suspicion of an effect elaborated, premeditated, and designed to an end. He has planned, i t seems, everything that has happened in America since his departure; his prescience has been divine in scope and diabolical in quality. H e chose Taft as a foil and Africa as a hiding-place sufficiently remote to fill the Repub- lican mind with a Sense of desolation. He created an immense hollow in American affairs that was empha- sised rather than mitigated by the distant reverberation of his guns. He banged away there, audible and yet unhelping. Significance departed from events; there was a silence and night of ideas and a sense of the last corruption beginning. Then over the heads of a select company of Egyptian officers far away there in the East, speech broke again, Roosevelt dawned once more.

He had retired only to gather force for a new effort to teach America her essential need. So far I follow the best authorities. It is universally agreed he returns to be President again, a new sort of President, to make enduring changes, to do vaguely apprehended but tremendous things. But the expounders and prophets vary widely about those tremendous things-agreeing only that they are tremendous. A day or so ago I read two 'of them in succession, and one had to tell me, with that a i r of assured if obscure omniscience which is dis- tinctive of the expert, that Mr. Roosevelt returns to take the trusts by the throat, fine, penalise, smash; then he will trample the Senate underfoot and inaugu- rate the millennium of the sturdy common man, while the other, with an equal conviction and a bolder rhetoric, would have had me understand clearly that the fundamental fact about Mr. Roosevelt is his hatred of labour, and to subjugate its insurgent spirit he will make war for the markets of China, and in the subse- quent struggle turn the States into a black tyranny and the Pacific Ocean, what there is of it, to blood. And so on with the others; they go up and down and about the scale between these extremes.

Only by a very considerable effort am I able to get away from this Titanic caricature. But I think have I managed it. I have been greatly helped by the lecture on "The World Movement " delivered to an audience of four hundred selected persons, Emperor, Empress, princes, ,chancellors in robes, generals and admirals in uniform, crimson-clad deans and purple-robed pro- fessors, heads of the students' corps (with drawn swords) in fantastic coats and feathers and sticking plaster-and, of course, reporters and reporters, in the University 'of Berlin. He was welcomed by the Rector Magnificus (in gold embroidered crimson) and

a lusty singing of " Heil Columbia, Glückliches Land," and against this deafening glare he became suddenly restored to finite humanity again and was manifestly a sober, authentic, thinking, stumbling, democratic in- dividual akin to you and me. I t helped this restora- tion very greatly that he began with apologies and com- pliments, was so hoarse as to be largely inaudible, overran his time and cut out portions of his lecture- impromptu omissions that meant rustling pauses to glance at and reject slip after slip of notes. The delu- sion of a gigantic histrionic attack on the liberties of America and the future of mankind as ugly as a sky sign, as monstrous as modern advertisement, as wicked as all the worst fraud in the world, vanished at that spectacle.

And still more did it help to get back to a real and creditable Roosevelt to observe a modest, black-clad civilian walking in the procession at Windsor with a top-hat and a frock-coat and-because of the thunder in the air-an overcoat on his arm, at the tail of a long procession of nine monarchs, three abreast, King Alfonso of Spain and King Ferdinand of Bulgaria among others, and royal and serene highnesses and heirs-apparent and suchlike, too splendid and gold-laced for belief, and too numerous for exact computation. On the assumption that the European tour was a spec- tacular conspiracy designed to dazzle and overwhelm America, the death of King Edward VII. was a crush- ing misfortune, but from the point of view of Mr. Roosevelt as a very honest, fortunate, simple, and out- spoken great man, it had at least the one redeeming consequence of stripping off the appearance of paste- board and tinsel from the climax of his progress.

Now, to the mind of one European observer at least the things that ex-President Roosevelt may or may not have planned to do and the things he is or is not likely to do, are of much less consequence than the things he says. He is peculiar among the multitude of conspi- cuous and ruling people as man is peculiar among the rest of the animals in this-that he talks. W e under- rate the distinction and plastic value of talking and truth-telling; how i t is indeed a sort of Super-Doing that can melt and mould all things. There has always been Doing. There was no doubt a lot of strenuous mere Doing in the mesozoic period ; many of those hop- ping, flying lizard-beasts must have " stepped lively " quite remarkably and got through existence at a tre- mendous pace, but they hadn't this new-fangled trick of linking mind and mind and drawing all lizardom to- gether at last into a growing collective purpose. Mr. Roosevelt talks and he knows and feels the value of good, plain, sifting, fearless talk; he knows it instinc- tively for the central need.

My own almost certain conviction about him is that he came through Europe simply and solely to talk-to talk about his ideas and find out what people would say about them; he chose the Sorbonne and Oxford and the University of Berlin and all the other prominent chairs and platforms from which we have heard him, because so he has been able to state his convictions with the minimum of exertion to the greatest number of intelli- gent people. And it is as a revivifying, cant-dispelling voice, asking suggestive questions, committing “ in- discretions," popularising new thoughts, creating afresh unifying and co-ordinating conceptions of life and purpose amid shams and disingenuousness and the decay and wreckage of faded traditions and obsolete formulae, that his especial value to America and the world is to be found.

I t is as a talker rather than a teacher that Mr. Roose- velt is to be valued. It is curious to note, in the con- temporary criticisms of his utterances, the frequent hostility of the scholarly type, the attempted irony, the disposition to hint that at times a world-audible man is a little loud, that a mind which is really trying its utmost to grasp and induce others to grasp the manifest pro- blems before humanity is in some respects " obvious " in its method. But if Mr. Roosevelt hadn't the courage to be loud and obvious, he might be any timid little pro- fessor or man of letters for all the use the world would have for him. And it is also beside the mark that he does not so much proffer solutions as accentuate the

AUGUST 11, 1910 THE NEW AGE 341

moral issues before us. A problem broadly and truly stated is halfway to solution, and even a harsh and one-sided view vividly presented carries with i t the suggestion of its own correction.

There are three supremely important questions to- ward which Mr. Roosevelt has done more than any other man in turning the general intelligence. He has brought these questions from the sphere of specialised discussion into the forum of popular discussion ; even though he has not propounded vast changes he has prepared the way for vast changes in the human out- look and human organisation. The first of these is the paradox of population, the fact that in a competitive individualist civilisation children, and more especially numerous children, constitute an encumbrance and dis- advantage in the individual’s struggle for life. There has arisen a unique case in biology in which success in life carries with it a tendency to extinction, and prolific- ness a drift to lower standards of living and achieve- ment. Our world offers u s all the alternatives of rela- tive sterility or relative squalor. The ex-president’s disposition is to appeal to a higher ideal of family life, but although this appeal may be effective in this case or that, it is scarcely likely to prevail in the average instance against a steadfast economic and social pres- sure. Unless the insistence upon the ideal of family life becomes a collective insistence, operating through the law in restraint of socially disastrous competition o r in support of wholesome civilisation-making family groups, it will be only a passing fashion of no great arrestive value during a biologically decadent period. This all seems so obvious that the development of Mr. Roosevelt’s utterances in the matter during the next decade, leading as they will and carrying with them an enormous body of opinion in Europe and America, cannot fail to be of the utmost interest to every intelli- gent human being.

A second conception of which he has become almost the ‘embodiment is the assertion of the strenuous as distinguished from the trivial and dilettante life. But there again we have something as incomplete as it is stimulating and valuable. Mere strenuousness, as I have already pointed out, is a singularly abundant and valueless quality. There is probably nothing quite so full of strenuous exertion .as a fallen young horse in an overturned cart-and you have to sit on his head. So after the gospel of strenuousness must come the gospel of subtle strenuousness, and for that, too, we look with intelligent anticipation.

And a third topic which is rarely absent from this tremendous monologue, this humanity talking to itself, which is the essential Roosevelt, is the moralisation of rich people, the socialisation of wealth. And there I do think his influence has already been enormous. The value of a plutocracy-and in a large number of rela- tions the United States is a plutocracy to-day-depends almost entirely upon the quality and tone of the very wealthy men and women, lesser and greater, who con- stitute it. A plutocracy of vile and selfish men may easily be the most horrible form of social order; a pluto- cracy inspired with creative ideals, able, generous, am- bitious o f achievement, and personally modest, existing in an atmosphere of keen but honest criticism, may approach as nearly to true aristocracy as is possible in fallen humanity. I have no doubt that Mr. Roosevelt has raised the quality of life among rich Americans more than one could have expected of any single human being. Europe has despised America profoundly for nearly a century because it took its geographical ad- vantage for virtue and valued things by their price i n dollars, because it was conceited arithmetically, because it borrowed our children instead of breeding its own, and bought beauty instead of making it. N o one has ever given the European feeling toward the rich Ameri- can showing off his dollars altogether adequate expres- sion. But Mr. Roosevelt has made u s see America in another light, as a land of growing purpose and a new social conscience. That, I think, has been his car- dinal work, that is why he stands o u t before .all other Americans in the European imagination, and why so many of u s are disposed to watch him now with such unqualified expectations.

Materialism and Crime. By Francis Grierson.

W I L L materialism bring our civilisation to an end, (sr will crime and insanity compel our civilisation to get rid of materialism? The time has come not only to put these questions, but have them answered. They are exceedingly grave questions, not only for philosophers and politicians, but for the people who call themselves “ progressive ” thinkers, agnostic scientists without a fixed belief, and that numerous body of empirical “re- searchers ” who dabble in various quasi-scientific es- periments supposed to assist the mere believer to form a more positive and comforting conception of a state of the soul after death. Scepticism, when it endures be- yond two generations, ends in materialism. Scepticism, irony, pessimism, materialism, denial of the psychic part of man, disavowal of a belief in immortality : this is the order in which the intellectual decadence of any age or civilisation proceeds.

The Greeks and the Romans became decadent through scepticism ; they ended in national and spiritual disruption because there was no faith left on which to build anything, and crime kept pace with progressive decadence until there was no place left for g-enius and philosophy, and the arena of politics became a public slaughter-house for murderers and criminals cf every description. Jerusalem, Athens and Rome ended in materialism ; then came the new faith, which ?p- peared to the people as something absolutely convincing and satisfying. Christianity brought with it a new civilisation, a new art, and a new literature. It did not bring a new philosophy; but it has ended by introduc- ing, familiarising, and imposing a new science. That science is frankly and brazenly materialistic.

We are now at the point when, leaving out many other considerations, we have to ask one grave ques- tion : Will nations and individuals be compelled to sup- press materialism as they are suppressing consumption and other diseases, or will the great nations end in a universal orgy of crime?

In former times men feared God, but when they ceased to fear God they still feared death. Shakespeare makes Hamlet soliloquise about the after- life, and he frankly admits that were he assured that death ends all he would put an end to his life with a “ bare bodkin.” N o one can doubt the affinity existing between murder and suicide, both being in many cases the result of mingled scepticism, materialism, and a species of insanity arising out of inordinate ambitions, impossible vanities, and selfish pleasures. Germany is the hot-bed of modern materialism, and in no other country are there so many suicides. Haeckel, for example, attempts to explain away the universe from a scientific point of view, without leaving a gleam of psychic enlightenment. He tears down without giving so much as a hint for the building of a new structure. The consequence is he has added to the iron age of Bismarck a brazen plate with the words inscribed in bold letters, “ All hope of immortality abandon ye who read my works.” But Germany does not stand aIone in materialistic ascendency. America is, without a shadow of doubt, a rival of Germany. If Germany gives us scientific materialism, America is the home of the Christian materialist, where he uses the Church as a veil to hide the nature and the intentions of his greed, and his social ambitions. And the reason the religious spirit in America is at such a low ebb is because the churches are haunted and controlled by these ghouls of faith and hope. After America it is France which ranks next in the materialistic decadence. France has for a hundred years been passing from one phase of materialism to another, and of the two men of genius left one is an outspoken Agnostic, the other a sceptical Socialist, who is now ridiculing all things, including Socialism ; ‘’ L’Ile des Pinguins ” is the last petal of the last rose of the festive summer of Gallic optimism.

Our civilisation is not face to face with a mere ques- tion of religious form, but a question of far greater

342 THE New A G E AUGUST 11, 1910

importance. W e have to face the fact that the church a man belongs to counts for nothing now; his creed matters nothing, one way or the other. What does matter is the private belief of the people generally. W e have arrived at the supreme sticking point, which is this : Do you or do you not believe in the lmmortality of the soul? The question used to be, do you belong to. some religious sect? Business men used to put that question to young men seeking employment, bu t it is too late now to look for success in any such vain manoeuvring since it has been amply proved that pro- fessing or not professing religion makes no real differ- ence in the general conduct of the thing called busi- ness. The outward and visible form has ceased to count for anything; the one vital point to be con- sidered is the secret conviction of the individual ; what do all the millions think who jostle each other in the street every day--the soldiers, the sailors, the clerks, the stock-brokers, the lawyers, the judges who preside at great trials, the bishops and fashionable clergymen, th\e professional politician, the lords and the ladies who set the fashions and who hang on the skirts cf the court : what do all these people actually think about death and the after-life? Have they or have they not got a conscience? Do they stand in legitimate fear cf anybody or anything? If not, all alike are dangerous. An agnostic bishop is as dangerous to a community as a traitor in a high social position and far worse than a common murderer. A man who does not believe he has a soul is a man who does not believe I have a soul, and there is no secret trick too mean for him, there is nothing to stop him but fear of the law, and so long as he escapes the law he cares for no one. Why should he fear conscience if death is the end of consciousness? Christian civilisation has been descend- ing lower and lower for a period of four centuries. I t used to occupy the roof of a sort of tower of Babel which looked towards the stars. There was air, space, and vision. Civilisation and barbary are separated by a few laws, a few social conventions, one or two ideals, and a single religion. Nothing but a hatch now separates us from primitive barbary. Underneath is the lair of the wild beast, whose growls are as audible and menacing as were those of the old Roman arena when Rome thirsted for human blood.

It must be evident to anyone who gives the subject a moment's serious thought that no sane man who is a believer in the immortality of the soul would commit a murder in cold blood, although he might do so in a fit of rage. Nor would anyone who believes in a return of the dead ever think of murdering anyone. Nor is the question confined to murder : all the greater crimes are influenced more .or less by a man's secret beliefs. There never was a time when so many officers in Ger- many and France have tried to sell their country for “ a mess of pottage “ ; and it is not difficult to fix the blame on the spirit of materialism, which urges such people on to reap what pleasures they may before death arrives. W e may be at the beginning of a reign of a state of affairs the like of which the world has never known, a state of things which may cause a pande- monium of unrelenting fury in which all the so-called Christian nations, become materialistic at heart, after playing at hypocrisy so long, will throw off their masks and engage in an Armaggedon of slaughter and rapine in which the thing called humanity will have no part, in which the total destruction of commercial and social rivals will be the only incentive and the only aim. And the soldiers most likely to win in the final rounding up are the Russians in Europe, the Turks in the Near East, and the yellow races in the Far East. Because these people still believe they have immortal souls. They are not afraid to die. The materialist hates to die, although he may not fear death. His desire is to live as long as he can and enjoy all he can no matter at whose cost.

And not only this, but there is likely to come a time, and that before very long, when the soldiers of the sceptical nations will refuse to fight ; the feeling of patriotism will evaporate ; they will feel as if they were being used to no good purpose. When this happens they will feel as if one ruler is as good as another--a

I I Czar of Russia would prove as welcome as a King of England or an Emperor of Germany.

While the Continental nations like Germany and France have been made materialistic by science, Eng- land and America have been made so by a sentimental form of religion, with science and commercialism as simple excuses and props. We are an emotional people with sentimental whims, seldom able to give a sound reason for believing in anything, because sentimentalism and sound sense do not dwell together. This being so, there is a rude awakening in store for the Anglo-Saxon sentimentalist. In the hour of inexorable crime and universal upheaval all the sentimentalisms of the present would go as chaff in a whirlwind. The churches, being composed of sentimental materialists, without real faith in anything- or anybody, would fail to render to the people any courage or consolation whatsoever.

That our civilisation is becoming more and more materialistic is proved by the astounding number of child suicides which occur year after year. Two or three decades ago child suicides were rarely known. This state of things is the result of the first harvest of our materialistic sowing, and a curious phase of the union of materialism and sentimentality is the hatred of authority which the combination so often produces. Children left to their own whims and devices turn out unrelenting free-will sentimentalists. The wonder is that more suicides do not occur, and if blood-crimes do not increase under our present mode of civilisatinn it will be still more wonderful. One characteristic of murder is its frequent concurrence with suicide. Whole families often disappear instead of a single member, and double suicides are too frequent to cause any unusual comment. We are growing used to horrors. And what is still more curious, from lack of real ordeals produced by prolonged wars, people gloat over sordid crimes and vulgar criminals as they never did in former days. A murder mystery gives profound satisfaction. The most stimulating and melodramatic murders now occur in England and America, the two most “ religious " and sentimental countries in the world ; also the two nations where the dollar is most worshipped.

The void left by the passing of heroic emotions is filled by the horrible, the monstrous, and the sadic. Geneva, the greatest stronghold of sectarian religion in the world, is now to become an arena for the Spanish bull fight. And yet sentimentalists tell us that the passing of war means the arrival of the millennium. From having been heroic we have grown pusillanimous, superstitious, and cruel. W e seek for horrors instead of for heroes.

Another astonishing thing in this so-called scientific age is the prevalence of superstition. With all our science we were never so steeped in the slough of super- stitious Isms. We pretend to be agnostics and sceptics, while a cheap irony covers great chasms of fear, appre- hension, and dread. Irony may fool a good many people in the beginning,, but nothing so soon wears out. It is the one thing which is powerless to produce anything. It became fashionable at the break-up of the Victorian era, when the old Pickwickian humour had run its course and the creative faculty was as good as dead. When we become impoverished in pocket we buy the cheapest stuffs, when we become impoverished in mind we use the cheapest phrases, when we become bankrupt in morals we hide the nudity of our souls in ironic platitudes.

Irony is the bluntest arrow in the quiver of our in- effectual lucifers, who might rise to a terrestrial heaven if their wings, like their weapons, were not made of goose quills. Underneath all the persiflage is the- haunting fear of final collapse, for with the vanishing of the religious spirit there seems to be no place left for a sense of the higher mystical forces of the universe. Because, while wits, sophists, and empirics have practi- cally killed religion by their indifference and their es- ample, they have made it impossible for people to be-- come interested in any form of mystical aspiration. And without such an aspiration the human mind can never hope for real progress. There is but one thing that can lift people and nations above the sordid and the sen-.

AUGUST II, 1910 THE NEW AGE

sational, and that is a high order of mystical optimism which shall take the place of materialistic religion and materialistic science. This mystical consciousness can- not exist without a conviction of the soul’s immortality. Materialism is nothing but the shadow of the real. But the shadow has in it real terrors.

It is astounding how much abject fear can be lodged under the skin of an ironical sceptic ! As for certain superstitions, if they ceased to exist they would have to be re-created. A great revival of art, poetry, and literature will not be possible until a new and universal mystical spirit pervades the world, and when it comes it will rise above creeds, countries, and institutions. It will sweep everything before it, not by any material force displayed, but by a vitalising influence on the in- tellectual imagination of the educated and learned.

How the Rich Rule Us. By Cecil Chesterton.

I I I .-The Party Funds. W E are very fond in this country of boasting of the freedom of our politics from corruption, by which we mean that there is little or no direct bribing of members of Parliament. A little investigation wouid, I think, lessen our self-satisfaction in the matter. As I pointed out in my last article, hardly anyone is allowed to be- come a member of Parliament except by permission of the party caucus. This caucus is subject to the rich men who subscribe to its funds. Therefore it is not necessary to bribe members of Parliament ; they are generally bribed before they arc elected. One does not bribe one’s bought bond-slaves !

The most important factor in British politics is the factor that no one mentions--the Party Funds. How are these immense sums subscribed, and how are they expended? It is the very essence of my case that I cannot answer this question with precision. The sub- scription is secret. The expenditure is secret. But there is enough circumstantial evidence to enable us to give a good guess at the truth.

The Party Funds are subscribed by rich men whose names are carefully suppressed. The elaborate care with which this secrecy is maintained is of itself suf- ficient reason for suspecting that the subscribers have some motive for concealing their identity. Nor is this motive far to seek.

The ordinary method by which the Party Funds are raised is the sale of peerages and other honours. The existence of this traffic is notorious. The current price of a knighthood, a baronetcy or a peerage is as well known in Downing Street as the current price of cabbages in Covent Garden. There are plenty of lords and innumerable baronets and knights who are per- fectly well known to have bought their honours with the same tradesmanlike simplicity with which they might buy butter or a motor car. This method of raising revenue was ocassionally practised by the early Stuarts, but to do them justice they used the money S O raised for the general purposes of government. If honours are to be given in return for money, it seems reasonable that the money should go to the State rather than to private funds of the party that happens to be in power at the time. The present system degrades the Sovereign by making him the fountain not of honour but of dishonour, the paymaster in the dirty traffic carried on by an oligarchical ring in his name.

But the sale of honours, unspeakably dishonouring as it is, to the Sovereign, to the nation, to the persons “ honoured,” and to everybody concerned in the transac- tion, is perhaps the least serious aspect of the evil. I t is better that rich men should buy handles to their names than that they should buy the power to direct the national policy.

The precise extent to which subscriptions to the Party Funds deflect the policy of the Government cannot be ascertained with absolute certainty. Both parties to such transactions have every possible motive for maintaining strict secrecy, and the whole of our

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political machinery is devised with the object of making such secrecy possible. Still, sidelights are sometimes thrown on our politics which indicate something of what is going on.

W e know, for instance, from the correspondence of the late Mr. Schnadhorst, some time head of the Liberal Caucus, that Cecil Rhodes subscribed largely to the Liberal funds in the ’eighties, insisting at the same time that the Liberals should not evacuate Egypt. W e also know that the Liberals did not evacuate Egypt, though they had again and again declared their inten- tion of doing so. Now I do not say that the Liberals were wrong not to evacuate Egypt. There was doubt- less a strong case to be made out against such a course. But the matter ought to have been decided by open debate among British citizens, not by secret control through the Party Funds. Gladstone, we know, thought evacuation desirable, but Gladstone, the mere politician, was subservient to Schnadhorst, the party manager. And Schnadhorst was subservient to any- body who would give him money. That is English politics in a nutshell.

In this particular case the facts are known. In many other cases they can be guessed. Why, for instance, did the last Conservative Government authorise the in- troduction of Chinese Labour? The clever politicians of the Conservative Party must have known that in sanctioning the Chinese Ordinance at the bidding of cosmopolitan financiers they were not only violating every tradition of honest Toryism, but were risking the explosion of public indignation which afterwards over- whelmed them, disillusioning the people with that Imperialism the popularity of which had been their stand-by, changing the popular enthusiasm for the war into frantic disgust with its consequences. They knew all this, but they knew something else a s well. Here again an accident gives us the clue. Dr. Ruther- ford Harris, accustomed to the more innocent corrup- tion of new countries, announced publicly that he had subscribed £1O,OOO to the funds of the Conservative Party. He and his associates spoke, and the Conser- vative leaders obeyed.

Another case may be selected relating to the other political party. If the Conservatives knew that Chinese labour would be unpopular, the Liberals knew equally well that their continual meddling with the people’s pleasures is unpopular. Every Liberal wire- puller dreads the raising of the ‘( Temperance ” ques- tion at elections. Whenever it is raised, as it was raised in 1895 and at the by-elections during the pas- sage of the Licensing Bill, it always spells disaster for the Liberals. At election times it is therefore always kept carefully in the background. Yet every Liberal Government, a s soon as it is fairly settled in power, is sure to introduce some monstrously oppressive measure professedly aimed at restricting the drinking habits of the people, some measure approaching as near to pro- hibition as the party managers feel they dare go. Why is this? Is it that the rank and file of the Liberal Party favour compulsory teetotalism? I will leave it to anyone who has ever visited a Radical Club to answer that question. Is it that the Liberal politicians are themselves vehement and convinced believers in teetotalism, so certain of their cause that they are pre- pared to enforce it on others by force? Not at all. Mr. Asquith is certainly not a teetotaler, and very few of his Cabinet are teetotalers. Why, then, do they try to enforce teetotalism on others, against both their own convictions and the interests of their party?

Of the rich men who subscribe to the Liberal Party Funds, some are, like many rich men, slightly mad. And, being mostly Nonconformists, the form their madness often takes is a horror of the traditional drinks of civilised man. Others have a much more solid reason for objecting to alcoholic drinks, namely, that they are commercially interested in the sale of non-alcoholic drinks. Others, again, are grocers, who sell alcoholic drinks, and rightly think that they would seIl more if the public-houses were closed. It should be noted that the Liberal Government refused to apply the provisions of the Licensing Bill to grocers’

licences. All these persons, however various their motives and private aims, have a common interest in attacking the public-house. And by their subscrip- tions to one of the great political parties they are able to enlist the whole force of that party in support of their attack. There is no doubt that this attack would have succeeded long ago, but that the brewers who own the public-houses subscribe to the funds of the other party, and so secure political defenders for their property. Meanwhile, the opinions and interests of the democracy count for nothing.

SO much for the method of raising these funds. They are given in exchange for services, sometimes for some title or honorary distinction, sometimes for some modification of the policy of the party. Now, how are they spent?

Briefly, they are spent just as Walpole's Secret Ser- vice money was spent, in buying the votes of mem- bers of Parliament. The only difference is that they are bought before election instead of after. This is more decent, perhaps, and probably, though I am not sure, more economical. Certainly it is more efficient, for it averts the inconvenient possibility of an incor- ruptible member.

The Party Funds are used to pay the election ex- penses of members of Parliament. It is obvious that a member so returned is as unmistakeably a placeman as if he were nominated under the old system for a pocket borough. H e owes allegiance not to his con- stituents but to the people who pay for his election. Let his policy be ever so popular with his constituents, if the party managers are not satisfied with him, they can at any moment destroy him by stopping supplies.

Such then is the general character and effect of the Party Funds. Raised by corruption, they are spent in corruption. They are the evil seed sown by night by the enemy from which spring up the tares that choke and destroy the good crops of democracy.

Now, I hope that no one will attempt the same trick with me which all the party papers attempted with Mr. Belloc, when he earned the gratitude of all honest men by raising this all-important question in the House of Commons. I hope, I mean, that no one will try to represent that the question is whether members of Parliament ought to be paid. Of course they ought to be paid. To refuse them payment is to shut the doors of Parliament against all but the rich. But they ought to be paid openly and publicly,, and out of an open and public fund. Everyone ought to know what every member of Parliament receives, and where it comes from.

If any man professes to be able to see no difference between such public payment and the private payment now in vogue, I can only invite him to carry his inno- cence into his business affairs, and find out whether the Law sees no difference between the honest wages which a man takes from his employers and the secret commission that he takes from strangers.

The Repeopled Palace and the People's Homes.

By T. H. S. Escott. As was foreseen in a recent anticipation of the new reign, addressed, by the editorial courtesy, to the readers of this journal, King George has not awaited investment with the full pomp of royalty a t Buckingham Palace for entering upon the social activities which form ao large a part of modern monarchy's functions, in a way that will have deepened and widened the favourable impression created by his earliest appear- ances, by his earliest performances in the royal rôle. Among recent utterances from the Throne not the least remarkable, characteristic, and perhaps generally wel- come, declare the nation's prosperity and strength, whether foreign or domestic, to have no safer founda- tion than a pure and healthy home life. These words contained a truth, which would once have been called

a truism, but which, in these latter days, have a sound of novelty, or which will be contemptuously dismissed as a n unfashionable and effete anachronism.

Amid the cosmopolitan distractions and glitter of the Edwardian era, the home experienced a n almost total eclipse. People contrived to have houses where they slept, made ready to go out, and perhaps snatched an occasional meal, but the home and home-life had quite gone out of date. London, Paris, and Vienna h.ad, from the "smart " point of view, ceased to be separate cities; they were each only among the component parts of one and the same pleasure-seeking European whole. The well-dressed people who met each other one day in Mayfair or Hyde Park, when they exchanged London for Paris or Vienna went on meeting each other in the Parc Monceau, under the shadow of the Arc de Tri- omphe, or, if at the capital on the Danube, within the limits of the Inner City and the Ringstrasse. The same ladies and gentlemen who formed the week-end party at the ornamental Maidenhead villa made up the band which went to see the Sunday racing at Longchamps. Whether on the Thames or on the Seine, there seems something pathetic in the sense of mutual devotion that bound together the different members of the same sets, and that prevented their finding any enjoyment among new companions. The one thing they could not tolerate was their own roof-tree. Royalty might be the guest of its favourite duke or duchess one week. The next week came the inevitable paragraph that the duchess and duke were making a short sojourn with royalty. The fondness shown by the illustrious owners of the palace of Sandringham formed the single instance of "home affection " in the great ones of the earth. As for the rank and file invited on these state occasions, in the regularity with which they appeared and re-appeared in the same setting they recalled the Adelphi guests under Benjamin Webster's management in the 'sixties. Half a century earlier the family forerunners of these court- circle butterflies, if compelled by the duties of the ses- sional season t o make London their summer residence, at weekly or fortnightly intervals revisited, if but for forty-eight hours, their country homes. T o the country, indeed, they still went often, but to their own rustic lares and penates, never.

The anti-domestic habit thus generated was confined, it may be said, to a limited section of the community. As a fact the example set by the heroes and heroines of society journalism had its followers in every division of the middle classes.

Worthy couples whose wedded life had been as long as that of John and Mrs. Gilpin, instead of being satis- fied with an annual wedding-day exodus, allowed them- selves to be persuaded by their pretty and aspiring daughters to give the servants in their Brixton home a holiday by trying the Sunday dinner at one of the new mammoth caravanserais abutting upon the Thames Embankment. Under the action of the same influences the great festivals of the Church saw them go further afield. For Easter they crossed the Channel, sometimes getting as fa r as Rome. Their Christmas dinner began to be eatmen in one of the Metropole hotels, which are the special glory of our Southern Coast. Scotland seemed to Dr. Johnson a fine country to get away from. Even so home seemed the most beautiful thing in the world provided one saw nothing of it. The process of converting insular Britons into citizens of the world did not end here. The Law Courts had become a school whose frequenters, surrounded by fashionable leaders of both sexes, and feasting on a succession of highly- spiced revelations, received object-lessons on the fragility of the modern marriage vows The Darby and Joan theory of wedded life became the subject of as much sniggering satire in the enlightened circles of the Bayswater bourgeoisie as in a Palais Royale farce. The semi-detached couple illustrated the only conditions on which the matrimionial experiment could properly be made by a lady and gentleman combining a sufficient Sense of duty to each other with a proper amount of society pushfulness for themselves.

Husbands and wives, it had been discovered, were socially more useful if taken, for a time at least out of double harness. When both together beneath the same

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AUGUST II, 1910 THE NEW AGE 345

roof or a t the same table they mutually obscured or eclipsed each other’s attractions. This discovery once made, the select circles which boasted the Court for their centre began to institute a sort of informal sepa- ration a mensâ between the two spouses. What Bel- gravia began one day was obsequiously, if rather clum- sily, reproduced in Brixton the next. Hence the per- meation of the humbler orders in the body politic of the idea that the fathers and mothers of families with the slightest claim to polite consideration, must not put themselves too much in evidence together. Did not the Court Circular daily proclaim that the two heads of the highest household in the land arranged their move- ments much upon the principle on which a meteorolo- gical toy, popular with children in primitive Victorian days, showed the family bread-winner going out to face the elements at the exact moment of the house-wife’s returning to bake the bread?

The head of English Society travelling incognito put, alike another Puck, a girdle round the world, explored every corner of Asiatic empire or advertised by his presence and patronage some new health resort or in- sufficiently known mineral spa in Central Europe. Mean- while the partner of his existence, or a t least of his fashionable functions, started on a round of visits in a direction exactly opposite to that taken by her lord. This single-handed go-as-you-please arrangement, initiated under such august auspices, was soon increas- ingly adopted by those who knew nothing of “smart- ness ” except its name and the dirt-draggled fringe of its social doings. About the period now looked back upon there was no song more popular in the theatre or music-halls, where the words were first heard, than that which described the Continental holiday of a British husband and father on his bachelor wanderings through European countries and capitals.

And so when I find myself tided To Paris, Vienna, or Rome,

I am sure it is best I decided To leave my good lady at home.

To some such effect as this ran the refrain of a ditty which in the ’seventies or ’eighties had as much attraction and applicability to Shepherd’s Bush as to Park Lane. Fletcher of Saltoun notwithstanding, it may be more important to make a nation’s laws than to make its ballads, but popular doggerel like that just quoted enshrines or reflects the prevailing temper of its time. The anti-domestic spirit exhaled by the dregs of the nineteenth century drew forth in the speech already mentioned King George’s implicit protest : that spirit itself, the best part of a generation ago, found its glorifying monument in the great restaurants that dur- ing the Victorian age began to change in character and appearance so many of our West End and even West Central thoroughfares.

Social smartness first became an English institution during the seventeenth century Stuart restoration. Its Hanoverian revival dates from the headship of Society assumed by Edward VII. as Prince of Wales in 1863. For some years after that the long forgotten Franca- telli’s in Piccadilly alone attracted diners of rank and fashion. Even there it was a moot point whether one could decorously take ‘one’s women-kind. To-day, so far as concerns its regular inhabitants, London is more of a restaurant-dining capital than Paris, for the Pari- sian loafers whom the stranger mistakes for the French people, and who form the native patrons of the levia- than taverns which line the boulevards, are not really representative of a frugal and industrious nation. Some three generations ago the great enemy to domestic life was discovered in the London clubs. These were dis- covered to encourage extravagance with other excesses and sins. To-day these institutions have become largely co-operative homes for poor gentlemen, most of whom make their most substantial meal from a cut off the joint and half-a-pint of light wine. The new mixed feeding-palaces in and about Piccadilly, long- before the present reign began, had become enemies more dan- gerous to English home life than were ever the joint- stock resorts for West End celibates. ’The chief habitués of these places a re of course pretty much con- fined to a single section of the community. But the ’

Society Press and the news paragraphs in the morning papers enable the young men and women throughout the length and breadth of suburbia generally to assist in imagination a t these public repasts, and almost to overhear the table-talk of the titled fugitives from domestic boredom, a t once the most regular patrons and chief attractions of the place. To a former unso- phisticated generation a collective visit to the play, with perhaps now and then something in the nature of supper .afterwards, sufficed upon great occasions for a family treat. Now the young ladies living in the Crystal Palace region, when visited by some well-to-do uncle from the Antipodes, think themselves hardly used if, before being taken to the opera or the play, they are not dined à la carte at the great Babylon refectory. Here every corner or each particular chair has for them associations calculated to make their Colonial kinsman gasp with amazement. Here one of his nieces can recall with pride a recognition with Viscount Ber- mondsey, who was dining at the next table, and to whom she had been recently introduced a t a subscrip- tion dance in a suburban assembly room. There his two nephews only a week or two since sat opposite the rather secluded nook occupied by Lady Emily Lootin, the Earl of Impecu’s eldest daughter, and Mr. Reginald Shekel, of the Stock Exchange. Only two nights before the interesting young couple were seen for the last time on British soil.

The social, like the political history of this country, a s of other communities, has always been and will cer- tainly remain that of action and reaction, ebb and flow, in an indefinite series or successions. I t is, therefore, quite possible that the encouragement given by King George’s words to the domestic instincts and affections of his subjects may coincide with a recoil from the habits and prejudices generated by the cos- mopolitan agencies of the last reign; for there can be no greater mistake than to suppose that, in social matters at least, the preferences and regimen of the palace only affect those who, are more or less in per- sonal touch with its exalted denizens. It is not only the professional courtiers, but the aggregate of the middle classes, that in England and elsewhere have ever been ready to take their manners, their morals, and their religion from the Court. If in matters of faith this had not been the case history would have recorded no Protestant Reformation under the two earlier Tudor sovereigns of the sixteenth century, no counter move- ment under Mary, and no completion of the severance from Rome under Elizabeth. With regard to secular affairs no Court-initiated action is needed to produce a practical movement for good or evil, to disseminate a movement or to prepare the way for a reform. “Smartness ” and all its works would never have seen such fruitful nineteenth-century growths could they not have sunned themselves in the royal smile. Similarly a few such sentiments clothed in apt words as those recently recorded from King George, and some occa- sional evidence that to him who spoke them such words have a real meaning, are quite enough to rehabilitate the well-nigh forgotten domestic ideal of English exist- ence-in a word, once more to make the home a living and a potent thing. To such an end nothing can be more unnecessary than that the monarch and his con- sort should decline the hospitalities offered them within or beyond the four seas. Nor is it only social and moral, but material and commercial, good which will follow the Court’s adoption or approval of a régime less locomotive, migratory and restless in its doings than that which dazzled an earlier generation. The monarch’s frequent excursions beyond the Dover Straits, combined with his consort’s re-appearances in the Northern land of her birth, t o a great extent neutral- ised the advantages to trade of a brilliant season, and even of the reception and continued stay of foreign royalties a t Buckingham Palace or Windsor. As for his paternal friends at Paris or elsewhere, they will not feel themselves neglected if for some time he confines his attention to the United Kingdom. On the other hand his subjects here will have good reason to wel- come the consequences that, as already pointed out, are sure, in a greater or less degree, to follow.

346 THE NEW A G E AUGUST II, 1910

In times of extraordinary intellectual activity the royal increments or example, even with a people heart and soul devoted to their rulers, may not count for much. For the present the grand mental forces of the nineteenth century do not animate the spiritual atmos- phere of the present day. Under such circumstances the knowledge of what finds favour with princes can- not but, for good or evil, produce a real and far-reach- ing result. Thus far at least the omens of the still new reign are auspicious.

Sentimentalism. By a typical Sentimentalist.

I AM a Sentimentalist. It is no use attempting to con- ceal the fact, for all my friends and enemies connected with the civil and military services of our Crown

Colonies, with mine prospecting, with the opening up of new territories to British commerce and industry, with the administration of the law as regards criminals -they all assure me of the fact. It is true I object to the promiscuous destruction and enslavement of native races, to the brutal repression of popular risings, to martial law, to the doing to death of convicts, termed capital punishment, and many more things of the same kind-and I object to them on grounds of principle and of the sentiment of justice and humanity within me. That is what makes me a sentimentalist. I confess, to come down to specific cases, to disapproval of the murder of Boer prisoners even by British soldiers, or to the employment of dum-dum or explosive bullets even against those at war with the great British Empire itself. I cannot deny being shocked at, what seemed to my sentimental soul, the cowardly butchery of a poor sick Boer officer who only fell into the hands of the heroic British troops owing to his state of physical weakness, to the wanton burning of farms, to the apparently wilful and planned destruction of Boer families in concentration camps, to the shoot- ing of the domestic pigeons belonging to Egyptian peasants by British officers, and to the subsequent torture and murder of the said peasants for objecting to this proceeding, and to the legion of similar incidents of this character with which the history of British Im- perial expansion has been adorned. But my senti- mental feelings of justice and human decency are not merely called forth in indignation a t the acts of British bureaucratic or military occupants of place and power. Such indignation is quite as much excited at the condition of Russian prisons, and at the methods em- ployed by the Tsar’s Government to avenge itself on all and sundry enemies. Yet again it is called into play by the treatment meted out to the conscript recruit .generally in the armies of the Continent at the present time. Once more my gorge rises against the advo- cates of capital punishment and against hanging judges. So you see I am a thorough Sentimentalist.

But-and this is a fact my friends and enemies who are fond of telling me I am a Sentimentalist do not always fully appreciate-my sentimentalism has an- other side to it. For example, I fairly chortled when during the South African war, I read reports of the “boys of the bull-dog breed ” being stretched out on the veldt as food for the vultures or other fearsome wild- fowl that disport themselves in those regions, by means of the very dum-dum bullets the British Government had provided for the depraved Boer who ventured to defend his country. I positively thirsted for good big British losses. But here strangely enough my hard-headed, practical non-sentimental acquaintances waxed lachry- mose and indignant. They whined about the wicked- ness of the Boer who could venture to shoot at a full- blooded Briton. They spoke of the Dutchman as an in- human monster. They cursed him in tones both loud and deep. In vain I remonstrated with them that they, .as being no sentimentalists, ought not to take on like that. In their turn they only abused me (me, the sentimentalist !) as a brute, and called in question the purity of my patriotism ! It is true that I never read the story of the Indian Mutiny and of the terrible things

inflicted by the Sepoys on the British intruders without a certain feeling of a just retribution which was no doubt wrong, but then I am before all things a senti- mentalist who is carried away by his feelings in these matters. Again, the slaying of the Czar Alexander II., of Plehve, and of other Russian governmental cele- brities has been a matter of keen delight to me. As for the foolish deeds of terrorist-anarchists in certain other parts of Europe, while fully recognising their folly and uselessness for any political purposes, I have never been able to spare much sympathy for their victims, still less to wax tearful over them. The fates of Kings and statesmen don’t seem to stir the senti- mental fibres in me either way. They leave me abso- lutely indifferent save for a feeling that these terrible occurrences, if they serve no other object, at least have their utility in affording lively and exciting copy for the public Press.

As before said, I am opposed to capital punish- ment and other brutal practices as a systematic method of dealing with common criminals, but I doubt whether my sentimentalism would show itself on its gentle side if I got certain judges who shall be name- less, or certain advocates of capital punishment, in my power. For example, the type of judicial scoundrel who can twist the law into meaning that a death re- sulting however accidentally from any unlawful act (e.g., from a push or trivial assault), is a “wilful murder ” ( !), or who lays it down that when two per- sons agree to commit suicide together, the survivor (if there be one) shall be indicted for the murder of his companion-a judge of this type, I say, who hungers for the hangman, if I saw him lying crushed and bleeding at the foot of an Alpine pre- cipice, I would refuse to go a sing-le step out of my way to assist, and would joyfully leave him to his fate. Neither would I, in punishing the brutal and callous occupant of place and power (used in the interests of wealth and privilege and caste), unctuously plead like the heavy humbug of the British bench that I was “only doing my duty.” But I would candidly confess that I did so because I felt a satisfaction in seeing him rightly suffer-in a word, because I liked it. For I am a true sentimentalist.

l think I have said enough to show the error of those who think that sentimentalism has only one side, and that a soft and gentle one, for if I am a senti- mentalist, as those who ought to know (good, sound common-sense Imperialists) assure me I am, senti- mentalism can be as truculent as sensible, sane, jingo- patriotic, law-loving, brutalitarianism itself can be.

The only difference is that Imperialistic and brutal- itarian truculency shows itself invariably on the side of wealth, place, power and the prejudices bred of wealth, place and power. Sentimentalist truculency, on the other hand, is dictated, as its name implies, by senti- ment-the sentiment of justice and equitable equality. I should say as regards this point that I am perfectly aware that a logical distinction has been drawn be- tween sentiment and sentimentalism, the latter term being applied not to an excess of sentiment-a purely arbitrary notion that may differ with each individual- but to an unequal and inconsistent distribution of sentiment as regards its objects. This scientific de- finition, however, is naturally ignored by the gentlemen I have in view, the bureaucrat and his followers, the hard-grained politician, the brutalitarian judge, etc. For the latter all is sentimentalism that has its roots in the sentiments of disinterested justice and impartial equality, and it is of no use preaching precision of de- finition to such as these, for precision and accuracy of language lie altogether outside their attitude of mind. My object, as a sentimentalist, as such men count sentimentalism, in writing this, is to point out that it is altogether a mistake to suppose that sentimentalism (in their sense) neces- sarily implies the soft and tender-hearted regard for everything and everybody they so much despise. If their implied picture of the sentimentalist were correct he would indeed be an unqualified idiot. But he is not always so bad a s he is painted in this respect.

AUGUST II, 1910 THE NEW A G E 347

The Greatness of Caesar. By J. Stuart Hay.

CONCERNING the early life of the pre-eminent we seldom know much, because early lives are so banal, and the world only wants to know about great men when they a re beyond comprehension, almost beyond respect, cer- tainly beyond criticism. Casca, Cinna, Brutus and the rest imagined that they could understand Caesar; their fatuity gave the one thing necessary to the ulti- mate success of that unconscionable radical, the man whose life made geography and whose death an- nounced the foundation of Imperial Rome. Well as Plutarch has described the hush that followed the mur- der, he gives us a better idea of the riot that followed the reading of the dictator's will-a riot that frightened a senate which frightened the world. Caesar meant Rome, and the populace knew it.

The man who knew how to give millions away and sup on dry bread was apt to conquer, not only pro- vinces, but imaginations.

The man who said he was descended from Venus and without an effort persuaded the multitude to believe the tale was obviously adored. It was not by force of arms alone that Caesar had taken Rome, and, being dead, was to hold Rome for centuries in a grip that meant magnificence, magnitude, wealth, luxury, everything, in fact, saving liberty, which, with the Eagles of the Empire, had soared so high above the earth that it left a liberty-perhaps divine-but which meant nothing so little as freedom for the upper classes (or for the middle and lower classes either for that matter) to do precisely as fancy listed and the law forbade. Certainly Caesar set Rome free, but it was not with a freedom that could be felt, not with a freedom which was visible, tangible, or in accordance with that lust for liberty which individualism dictates. I t was the freedom which is born of cohesion, of the knowledge that collectivism gives irresistible strength, but on one condition, and one condition only, when it is directed from one body to the use of one end. It is the force, not of units, but of armies, glorious and relentless in the aggregate and yet so full of tenderness and pity in the individual. I t is the force which is born of the knowledge that no man is for himself, but that, agglomerated under a visible headship, it can carry all before it, can sweep the units as chaff from the face of the earth, and create peace gloriously. And the man who can do this, who can bring peace through the turmoil, is not Cato, the pachydermatous symbol of reaction, neither is he the unstable and frothy demagogue of modern politics. H e is not necessarily the neuropath or the moralist : he is the man who knows how to project his soul into the ranks of his legions, to make them and their leader think as one. His ancestry may be legendary, but must also be typical, and, being above men by instinct (better still by birth as well), he will be the man who can call his subordinates comrades and make them know he means the term. Fop he may be, probably will be, since he knows it pleases to be perfectly well groomed, by instinct splendidly lavish, by nature ex- quisitely gracious, because he is born to charm; but under the plumage of the peacock there must be the beak and talons 'of the bird of prey, if all men are to respect, all to fear, all to adore this symbol of great- ness. The saviours of nations, the Caesars of history, a r e wholly modern, dissolute enough for any epoch, and yet possessed of virtues which their contemporaries cannot even spell. Tacitus tells us how Caius Julius of that name created a solitude and called i t peace. Later writers announced the fact that Philip II. did the same and called it civilisation, There is something in- tangible in the difference, something incomprehensible, and yet something true. In that difference lies great- ness.

Above all, Caesar captivated while he conquered. He threw the toga over all nations as he threw it over Britain; all, except the Suevians, that terrible people beside whom no nation could live; and in them (such was his prevision) he saw the fifth century and with it Attila, before the first century had begun. He was not strong, we are told; in all probability his health was

undermined as well by his debauches as by his cam- paigns, on which he travelled as lightning does. A phantom was not swifter than he, his sword seemed to flash simultaneously in Germany, on the Adriatic, even in that Ultima Thule where our fathers lived and put on insurgent airs. Strangest of all, from wherever he was he dominated Rome, filled the imagination and made enemies amongst those who thought they could under- stand him, who presumed to criticise the man who was trailing legions like smoke behind him, turning marines into infantry, building roads that are roads to-day, fighting with one hand and writing dramas, love-letters and epics with the other, permitting no question, and allowing the cowards to. hide where they liked, the man whose most sinister threat was that he would command a retreat.

Such was the Caesar who made Rome, and with it Africa, Asia, Europe, the world that then was and might be, for his intoxication knew no frontiers. There were the depths of hidden, Asia, the Vistula and the Baltic, the realms of Cyrus and Alexander. Truly Caesar was demi-god, senatorial, patiently aiding; but what was deity to one who would own the world? To him Rome must have been very small, petty and insig- nificant. Not that he disdained her, in any way neglected her; he re-arranged the calendar for her profit, drafted a new code for her disorders, and regu- lated the expenses of the most noble citizens by his Leges Sumptuariae. And Caesar was obeyed; he saw to i t that even the unwilling were compliant; not that he punished, not that he forgave, he merely disdained to punish, which was more galling to the effete than all the racks and tortures of a later régime. H e standardised the weights and measures of the markets; he appointed Ediles whose duty i t was each noon to verify the prices and examine the fish, flesh and vege- tables which were there exposed much as we should see them to-day; the fine great cauliflowers that came from the suburbs, the figs from Tusculum, pears from the Sabine gardens, onions and garlic, beans and fenu- greek. Liberty may have been departing, but sanita- tion, health and regularity were taking its place.

And it was all the work of one man-a man who had found civil dissension and strife in the city, and who brought order and peace through that concentration which lesser minds presumed to criticise and misunder- stand; men who, like Cassius and Atilius, thought how pleasantly the power concentrated in that one man could be distributed; thought, in, their foolishness, that, once remove greatness, and their mediocrity was bound to take its place. They decided that Caesar was in their way-so far, indeed, even a mole could have seen -and they decided to remove him, thinking it possible that they should fi l l his place. This pretext came, says Suetonius, when the Senate assembled to make him king, though this fact is uncertain. Was he not Caesar and Imperator through the length of his heirs-titles which a re still the proudest and most magnificent of Europe, or, indeed, the world? Caesar had no need of kingship; he was a king crowned ten thousand times in the hearts of men who were simple and could obey, recognising kingship; but the conspirators thought otherwise, and pierced his body with twenty-five wounds. Caesar was God, but not otherwise immortal; he was more than God, he was a tradition, a memory. When Brutus turned to harangue the Senate it had fled. There was no one in the Forum. It was the reading of his will that called together the whispering groups, which thickened as the reports spread, and whose voices mounted higher and shriller when they heard just a fraction of Caesar’s forethought : the gift to every citizen, the gardens in Trastevere to the people, his wealth and power to his murderers. It was enough. With a fine frenzy they seized benches, lat- tices and tables and burnt the sacred body where it lay, there before the rostrum, and then, carrying the flaming pieces of wood dragged from the fire, they ran to destroy the houses of those conspirators who had escaped none knew whither. Nor were the heavens silent : a comet appeared suddenly and as suddenly disappeared, announcing Caesar's transit; and it took a week, says Plutarch, for that great soul to reach Olympus.

348 T H . NEW AGE AUGUST II, 1910

A Symposium on Architecture. Conducted by Huntly Carter.

RECENT events have shown there is a tendency once more to raise the question of the relation between the artist and architecture. By some persons it is main- mained that the ‘‘ aesthetic ” movement in architecture is dying down ; that there is an increase rather than a decrease of ugly buildings ; and that th is is due to the fact that we have no art advisory body and art ists are not fully employed designing beautiful buildings. In order to ascertain to what extent artists, i .e., painters and designers, may be employed in the practice of archi- tecture, the following questions have been put by THE NEW AGE to several eminent architects+:-

1. Have recent developments, in your opinion, shown any advance in the direction of increasing the beauty of domestic and public architecture ? 2. Do you think that the artist , as distinguished from t h

artist-architect, should have a real place in the modern practice of architecture ?

3. Do you believe that this place should be limited t o design, decoration, or any one department of the practice of archi-

4. Would you say that the causes which prevent artists occupying this place are to be found in the artists themselves Or in the public and public administrators, or does the main cause lie in the limitations of our social l i f e ?

tecture ?

5 , Have you any suggestion ? MR. NORMAN SHAW, R.A.

Your proposed inquiries fill me with great interest. He adds that he regrets that age and ill-health prevent him taking an active part in them.

MR. ERNEST NEWTON, F.R.I.B.A. When an architect is asked whether recent building has

added to the beauty of London, whether the artist, as dis- tinguished from the professional architect, has a real place in the modern practice of architecture; whether this place should be limited to any one department of the practice of architecture; and whether the causes which at present pre- vent artists from being architects are found in artists them- selves or in the public administrators, he feels at once that these questions exactly represent the view of the general public on the subject of architecture.

To begin with, au architect i s an artist or he is not an architect at all. Curiously enough, though we in England have a school of Domestic Architecture which more or less sets the pattern for the rest of the world, the English public, speaking broadly, are completely unaware of the fact, and would be quite uninterested if they were. To them an architect is a professional gentleman, sometimes quite respectable, who is an authority on ancient lights, ground values, etc., with some small skill in drawing plans. To this section of the public art is painting, and an artist is a painter; they have no desire for architecture and no appreciation of it, and while on the Continent a n architect of Depute is accepted as an artist as a matter of course-in England this recognition is only accorded to him by a few cultured people.

This total want of understanding either of the meaning of architecture or the aims and accomplishments of the architect naturally produces a class of men who exploit this great art very much to their pecuniary advantage and greatly to the detriment of London and other big towns. It is amazing to find people who gaze open-mouthed at the masterpieces of a former age so completely indifferent to the architecture of their own times, that it is no exaggera- tion to say that they give far more thought and care t o the selection of their tailor than to the choice of an architect. Possibly ninety per cent. of the buildings put up in London at the present time are the work of men who have been selected quite at haphazard, because they are somebody’s cousin o r brother-in-law, or for some equally fantastic reason; no questions are asked-they are architects, and that is sufficient. Many of these men are architects in name only, but so long as they can pull the right wires their prosperity is assured.

Here and there a few buildings proclaim themselves as the work of accomplished men; and undoubtedly there is a gradual awakening to some sort of appreciation of the art of building. Many of the big commercial firms who twenty years ago would almost have chosen the first man who came along calling himself an architect are now realising that a beautiful building is an asset, and something that gives them real pleasure and enjoyment. There is also a decided increase in the number of those who take a keen,

appreciative, and intelligently critical interest in domestic architecture.

We want no advisory bodies. A bad painter or sculptor simply drops out; a bad musician is of no account, not because there are committees of taste, or censors ,of art, but simply because the public have sufficient appreciation of those arts to demand and so to create a high standard. If they will only learn to show the same appreciation of architecture there will be no .occasion to ask any of these questions. Every new building will add to the beauty of London, and it will be understood that an architect is an artist who has a real and unlimited place in modern archi- tecture.

MR. GEORGE S. Aitken F.S.A., Edinburgh. Your questions are very timely, and I trust the answers

you may receive, and your own actions thereon, may tend to the advantage of both art and architecture.

I . I ,do think the tendency in recent domestic and public architecture is towards greater beauty and interest, espe- cially in the latter, in which we could point to many build- ings which satisfy both reason and imagination. I think this class of building i s more original than it used to be, and more serviceable for its purpose. In times gone by, both Classic and Gothic were employed, when too much attention was given to accurate reproduction of the old and too little to adaptation to modern needs ; but, now that the process of assimilating these styles is over, architects are working on new lines without forsaking the old spirit. There is still, unhappily, a practice of classifying a building under a bygone period and designating it, for instance, if it be Gothic, as of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, but surely we will get rid of that in time, and architects will take the credit due to them instead of assigning i t to some- thing done by their forefathers.

The fact is, I suppose, as Mr. T. G. Jackson put It the other day in his reply when receiving the gold medal from the R.I.B.A., that the public do not care much for origi- nality. They seem to like something which remind:; them of what they have seen in other lands. The English clergy are considered responsible for much of this preference in relation to church architecture, seeing no value in any addi- tion or alteration to a church which is not a copy .of what has been done before. The feeling is a natural one, and most tenaciously held where ritual holds a prominent place, the architect is of course powerless to modify this, although the case is different in civic architecture.

I am not so sure about progress being made in domestic architecture, as there is a strong disposition to fall back on the past, people seem to like to live in the past, hence the demand for old furniture and careful copying of old work. The Garden City and Town Planning movements are how- ever all in the direction of consideration for the modern, and these accentuated by the use of new kinds of building ma- terial and the increasingly refined habits of the people must result in a great advance in domestic architecture. I do not understand why people are so much inclined to step back into the past. Is it due to a want of concern in realising that the duty of every one, artist as well as Social Reformer, is to speed the future; or is it due to laxity of disposition which inclines people to work on the easy pleasant side of things, avoiding calls for labour of thought and imagina- tion ? It is much easier to read other people’s hooks than to sit. down and do work of that sort one’s self.

2. I think the artist should have “ a real place in the mod- ern practice of architecture,” but this would be under the control of the architect and in collaboration with him, which means that the architect ought to be an artist in theory if not in practice. Many present-day architects recognise this, and are pleased when there is a possibility of the artist having a share in the work.

Sculpture and painting both play their part in relation to architecture more than they used to do, and this is an ad- vantage all round. The architect of course should have the control of the outline and scale of the sculpture and paint- ing, and I think it would be very much to the advantage of the sculptor if the architect invariably designed the base or pedestal on which the solitary statue or group of sculpture stands. There are many excellent examples of complete sympathy between the parts of such compositions; and to the contrary where the sculpture suffers from an ill-designed accessory.

3. I think the architect should not delegate strictly archi- tectural decorative work to others. He should design his own fittings for instance, so that there may be consistency throughout his work. There are so many skilled craftsmen in metal work as to make i t easy for him to secure that his designs be done justice to and yet to leave room for the in- dividuality of the work of the craftsman. Tt is here where the necessity of subordination comes in where the detail is part of a large whole, but where the work i s isolated and all detail that is another matter.

For every detail the architect ought to be able to give

AUGUST II, 1910 THE NEW AGE 349

some reason other than that it has been done elsewhere and before. The question with him should be, is it in accord with his present work.

4. I imagine that where the want of recognition occurs it is partly due to the artist himself, who so often wishes to go his own way, not inclined to subordinate his work to its pro- portionate place in the general composition.

There may be reasons for supposing that public authority is often more concerned about the individuality of the sculptor than of the sculpture itself. Perhaps the architect is partly to blame if he is more intent in repeating what has been done before than of adapting his work to the occasion, then the public will neglect him accordingly.

How far social life affects art is difficult to say. More serious matters than the advance of art have risen of late which prevent art and architecture from having their due place. But there are always people who take a wide view o r life, aiming at an all round development of human life, and therefore of the aesthetic as well as the practical and social side of it. I should think that a well-balanced mind of this nature would give art its rightful place. This is a well-ordered universe under a reign of law, but it is also closely allied with the beautiful, and the complete man will recognise both these aspects.

P.S.-There are favourable movements in Scotland. In Edinburgh and Glasgow there are the Technical Colleges with Professors, and in Edinburgh there is the Dean Studio where various branches of art are practised by amateurs, and the revival of ancient Scottish industries is encouraged in some quarters. All this effort is quite modern, and must result in the advance of art. But its advance of course de- pends on the study of principles as well as the practice of art.

The study of Garden Cities and improved Town Planning is engaging Scottish attention, and to Professor Geddes’ labours in Edinburgh and elsewhere in Scotland no small measure of acknowledgment is due for pressing this on and encouraging it. The hopeful side of it is, that it rests on foundational principles, that love of order and nature exist in the heart ,of every one, and therefore it will not be a mere passing fashion.

MR. C. R. ASHBEE, F.R.I.B.A. 1. A r c there any recent movements in architecture ? ( I ) There are no new movements in this country since

what has been called the A and C movement first started twenty-five years ago, and which gave birth to similar move- ments all over Europe and America. Its architectural work is best seen in the buildings of men like Lethaby, Ricardo, Lutyens, Holden, Voysey, etc.

In the last years there has been a set-back and checking of artistic architecture in England, due fundamentally to economic causes and the want of proper correlation of the various aesthetic functions of the community. Many Euro- pean countries, and now even some of the American States, are ahead of us in the correlation of these functions.

In architecture this set-back is best seen in the fashion that has grown up for Georgian decoration, excellent, no doubt, in its way, especially when in the hands of good artists like Reginald Blomfield, Lutyens, Belcher, etc., but not really progressive and not useful for the craftsman whose business it is to carry out details and do this in- ventively.

2. Have recent developments in your opinion, shown any advance in the direction of increasing the beauty of domestic and public architecture ?

(2) No, very little, perhaps none at all, as to public architecture ; but yes, as to domestic architecture. There are a very large number of well-educated architects now, who can plan and design good houses, but not so many who could do good public buildings, and it is indubitable that the best men are not employed in public work. Almost all the men who are esteemed by their contemporaries and fellow- designers as the best artists are so because of their private work, and the public leaves them severely alone.

This is due to the way in which commissions are given and to the ignorance of public bodies. It is different abroad and in America, with the result that public building is much better with us, e.g., America and Germany.

3 . Do YOU think that public authori t ies are availing them- selves as ful ly as they might of the services of artists ?

(3) No, certainly not. And one of our difficulties is the ignorance and timidity of public authorities. Of course, if the artists were more combined and their functions better related, they would have more weight with public autho- rities.

Another of the reasons why this question is to be consid- ered in the negative is because of the amateurishness of our educational system-the art schools ; the public does believe in them and does not use them properly. Such good

as they do is the work of strong individuals, and those men, as far as the public goes, are, as artists, unemployed.

The root of the. mischief seems to me to lie in the propo- sition held fixedly by Government departments that nothing of a saleable nature must be produced at any school for fear of injuring the susceptibilities of employers of labour or trade unions. This is, of course, part of the old competitive idea, and it must go. 4., F o u l d you suggest any means by which artists m i g h t be

enabled t o assert their claims t o take part in the construction and reconstruction of cities ?

(4) This question is too vague and hardly admits of a clear answer. I have outlined some answers in my book, “Crafts- manship in Competitive Industry.” The book upon which I am now at work, “ T h e Man and the Machine,” deals with others. Roughly, much more should be done for ( I ) educa- tion, for (2) bringing artists more together compulsorily (e.g., Parliamentary registration of architects ), (3) artists and craftsmen should be given public facilities for showing their work in municipal galleries rent free. It must always be remembered that every artist (except the picture painter) is in competition with the machine, that is to say, the redu- plicated product. Now the charges of handling and market- ing the reduplicated product are distributed over the whole number of reduplications, whereas the charges on the artist’s single product ail fall on that single product, hence he has to pay many hundred times more than the business man with a machine behind him, for the privilege of bringing his work to market. He ought at least to be eased of the bur- den of rent and establishment charges.

5 . What are the causes that prevent artists being more f u l l y engaged in city construction, improvement, and embellishment ?

( 5 ) Ignorance, conservatism, and want of imagination.

M R . REGINALD BLOMFIELD, A.R.A. , F.S.A., F .R.I .B.A. I bave unfortunately mislaid your letter. It must, I

think, be obvious that unless a painter, or whoever it may be, has received a thorough training in architecture, he is not qualified to design architecture, in other words, that only a trained architect can be an architect; and this is more than ever the case under modern conditions of practice.

M R . T. G. JACKSON, R.A. I . I think the best of what has been done in London lately

is better than any preceding modem work, but for the most part vulgarity, ostentation, and the abuse of ornament have made serious advances, and appear to command popularity. There is not yet enough leaven to leaven the mass.

2 . 3. 4. I confess I do not understand the distinction you draw. Architecture is an art or it is nothing, And archi- tects should be artists or they have no right to the title of architects at all.

I do not understand what is meant by ‘‘the artist as dis- tinguished from the professional architect.”

I consider that architecture is only the art of building beautifully, and is therefore applicable to all buildings, great or small, rich or plain, civil or ecclesiastical, and the man who designs them, the architect, has scope for his ar- tistic powers in every one of them however humble or how- ever fine.

On pointing out the sense in which the word artist is

The Co-operation of a studio artist with an inartistic builder would make things worse and worse. Architecture 2nd construction are inseparable if any good result is to be obtained. Consequently a studio artist is ipso facto inca- pable of architecture.

PROFESSOR W. R. LETHABY, F. K . I . B.A. I find some difficulty in answering your questions. We

always think of one who is really an architect as a n artist. Certainly I think a Board of such architects and sculptors and painters is desirable for directing City improvements. When--if ever-the improvement of London is seriously un- dertaken such a Board will be necessary, and will, of course, be appointed as an early step. However, it is a matter of machinery, the artists can have little effect if nobody will listen to them. The most necessary first step is to direct public opinion to see London as it is, and to compare its progress with other foreign cities.

Apart from their quality the dearth of our public buildings is amazing. Is there a good lecture-hall in London? Think of the dark holes in dirty corners where London lectures the carried on. The other day we wanted to find a library for a boy who reads. There doesn’t appear to be a public library in Paddington or in several adjoining districts. Look at the poverty and disorder of most of our railway stations, and the litter of paper in our streets ; it is not only a question of “ artists,” but of tidyness, smartness, discipline, efficiency, civilisation.

Won’t someone interested in the formal “economic” way of looking at things, tell us something as to the relation

here used, Mr. Jackson replied :-

350 ~

THE NEW AGE AUGUST II, 1910

between cost “ and beauty of the city ? How is a city like Munich paid for, and does it pay? How are East, South and North London paid for, and do they pay better than if they were better? Evidently cost is to some degree a matter of taking money from one pocket and putting it into an- other. Yes, but if you increase building. you drain from other industries. True, but buildings remain ; they are tools for further increase ; they are productive capital, and labour would be absorbed into fine forms of craftsmanship. Net result, a beautiful city, with more masons and carpenters, and fewer shopkeepers, and the shopkeepers are going anyhow.

It cannot be said how i t would work out, it is so compli- cated ! Quite so, but does it not seem that a beautiful city may be the proper thing to aim at merely “economically” ? If so, beauty, health, and joy would be thrown in as bonuses. Still there must be a limit! Yes, limits of minimums as well as of maximums ; which are we nearer? It is all a small section of the “ Political Economy of Quality” which will be written some day.

MR. BERESFORD PITE, F.R.I.B.A. I. Yes ; doubtfully. 2. No; decidedly. 3. To arts supplementary to building. 4. Yes ; to all. 5. Education in art of a broad and general character.

Cultivation of taste, i.e., of ideals of beauty, by exhibition to classes of children, youths, grown-ups, in primary, secon.- dary, and technical schools and universities, of illustrations of art development in all the crafts of building, mainly by historical series with directed criticism, i.e., not the per- sonal opinion merely of the exhibiting teacher as yet but by books of doctrine. These are not yet extant. So the first requisite is a liberal, gracious, widely practical teaching of the intimate connection of beauty with beautiful building, i.e., building beautifully done, as in a motor-engine. plus an ideal based on historic allusion.

MR. HALSEY RICARDO, F.R.I.B.A. I I am not sure that I understand the thesis you propound.

“Artists are not employed designing beautiful buildings.” By artists, do YOU mean painters and sculptors as differenti- ated from architects? Every good architect in an artist; but as his art is based on a thorough and sympathetic knowledge of his building materials and the purposes for which his building has to serve, he has to undergo a lengthy and severe training in the science and craft of his profes- sion, and unless he is very much a proficient in these re- quirements, he cannot be a good architect. How then can the easel picture-maker or the portrait bust sculptor propose to act as architect, unless they undergo the course of train- ing for that career? But, probably, I have mistaken your point. Architecture, of course, reaches its highest point by means of co-operation with the painter and sculptor- and both these artists now need a special training to enable them to paint and sculp monumentally. The days of Bru- nelleschi-who was architect, painter, and sculptor-are gone beyond recall ; modern conditions are so many and so complex that it takes a man all he knows and taxes all his genius to be a master merely in one department.

MR. THACKERAY TURNER, F.S.A., F.R.I.B.A. I gladly respond to your inquiry, but fear I can hardly

I think in many ways that architecture is going back, as I give my reply to your questions in order.

a necessary step to a further advance. Journals and periodicals, as well as many illustrated books, have given the public so much information and superficial education with regard to building that there are very few people who do not believe that they are perfectly competent to direct building operations. I t is a matter of congratula- tion that the laity, in spite of their very slight knowledge, are giving real attention to the subject, for at all great periods of building architecture was not a close profes- sion, but understanded of the people.

Architects at the time of the Gothic revival believed that the beautiful features of ancient buildings had only to be reproduced and beautiful building would result. It has taken them many years to learn, by bitter experience, that copying is not art, and that art is creation. That it has no existence apart from man and that it must have the higher aspirations of man in it. Architects have gone all through this, and the layman has now to learn it also.

Architecture differs from paintlng fundamentally, be- cause a picture has its value from its unity as the creation of one mind. The unity of architecture is essentially the result of the union of many minds. Its finest results are achieved when all the plastic arts are working in harmony and the whole is the vernacular of the people. We are a long way from being in this happy state, but the fact that laymen are at present hindering the architects by being a long way behind them is more than compensated for by the

fact that when laymen have learnt their lesson we shall be doubly strong.

The painter is probably the worst educated man to have any control over‘ building, because he practises his art completely uncontrolled, whereas the architect, or whoso- ever takes his place, is entirely dependent on others for what he produces, and must learn how to get the best out of them, as well as to work with them.

The ideally perfect building will of course have paint- ings upon it, but not easel pictures which are painted in one place and placed in another, and removed at the dis-

It seems to me that to work hard at teaching the layman is the only possible line of advance. Let him learn that so-called walls formed of two bricks laid lengthways and tied together with bits of iron, although they may keep out the wet, are but temporary walls, and buildings where they are used are temporary buildings, and that decoration of temporary buildings does not help the advance of art. Let him learn that good buildings must come before de- coration, and that art cannot be got on the cheap. Also that fine buildings can be had which are innocent of decora- tion.

I cannot leave the subject without saying I feel sure that the foolish and unnecessary restrictions contained in build- ing by-laws all over the country are doing untold harm, and are acting as a blight upon the advance of reasonable building.

MR. RAYMOND UNWIN, HAMPSTEAD GARDEN SUBURB. I am very busy organising a Town Planning Exhibition,

which is to be held by the Royal Institute of British Archi- tects in October, in London, and I think that this exhi- bition may afford material for answering some of your questions perhaps.

I can only say generally that I think we are only beginning in this country to realise the importance of civic art, and that perhaps the municipal public realises it less than anybody.

I am very sorry that I have no time at present to go further into the matter.

~ cretion of the owner.

Books and Persons. (AN OCCASIONAL CAUSERIE.)

By Jacob Tonson. IN their comely and compendious series of “ Little Guides,” Messrs. Methuen have at last published “ Staf - fordshire,” by Mr. Charles Masefield (half-a-crown). I have examined it with peculiar interest, since I hold a brief for this misunderstood county. As a complete, well-proportioned guide to Staffordshire i t suffers neces- sari ly from the fact that i t is written in the tourist in- terest and in the tourist sense. I t deals mainly with archaeological and picturesque aspects. But although these aspects of Staffordshire are enthralling, they are not nearly so important as the modern human aspects of i t , to be s tudied a t i t s south and north extremit ies , namely, the Black Country and the Potteries. Mr. Masefield, since he touches on geology, might at any rate have disclosed the geological mysteries of the in- dustries which to-day make Staffordshire so consider- able an i tem in the catalogue of counties. As a fact, he gives s ix pages to “ Industries.” I do not blame him for not giving more, but I regret that i t did not occur to him that a new sor t of guide, more captivating than the old, is waiting to be writ ten. The book is well and very carefully done, in a conventional and slightly sentimental way. It resolves itself chiefly into a gazetteer of the county-and an exceedingly useful gazetteer. Somewhat less than seventy pages are given to general descriptions-situation, geography, climate, flora and fauna, antiquities, history, biography and biblio- graphy; and near ly two hundred pages to the gazetteer. Of the two par ts into which the book is thus divided, the f irst is too cursory to be of much value. Yet if it had been more thorough, the gazetteer must have been less thorough. Perhaps the gazetteer might with advantage have been less thorough. The sec- tion “ Staffordshire Worthies ” ought e i ther to have been suppressed or to have been very much better done. It shows less than thirty names. And what can be the utility of a précis of Samuel Johnson’s career in a page and a half? Surely

AUGUST 1 1 , 1910 THE NEW A G E 351

it is superfluous to inform the readers of a guide to Staffordshire that Johnson’s “force of character, hatred of cant, passion for truth, tenderness of heart, and supreme greatness as a talker are, thanks to James Boswell, beyond the reach of the tooth of time ” ! From the bibliography is omitted Rupert Sims’ “Bibliotheca Staffordiensis,” an unreliable, hut an immense, amus- ing and indispensable monument of capriciously-directed industry. The photographic illustrations are decidedly good. Bartholomew’s four-miles-to-the-inch map of the county is old-fashioned and obscure in just the places where perfect clearness is required ; it exempli- fies the painful inferiority of English maps to French. I t is not even free from misprints, as, for instance, ‘‘ Dunsdale ” for ‘‘ Dimsdale.” As a guide to county seats the map is excellent, but the day when the chief duty of the county map maker was to indicate the rela- tive importance of county seats is gone by. At least I think so. The railway map which decorates the front end-paper, and which is signed “ B. C. R.,’’ is merely ridiculous. Despite its maps, Mr. Masefield’s “Staf- fordshire ” is a book that all Staffordshire men simply must have. Unstaffordshire men are notoriously stupid, but if the work reaches any of them it may knock into even their noddles the indubitable fact that the county transends in all fine characteristics many other counties of wider celebrity.

* * * The creative artist,. poor devil, is always with us ;

and at last something is apparently going to be done for him. At present, owing to the fact that our legislative system is the production of classes who have not fur- nished three first-rate artists in three hundred years, he ‘is looted right and left with the consent and encouragement of the law. In fact, he is treated just as though he were a native of a protected country. For example, an author has no copyright in a title. If titles are not stolen, it is merely from courtesy. Again, if an author while young publishes a work which by chance becomes standard and hence a source of regular income, circumstances may easily arise in which shortly after his death, at the moment when they need that income, his widow or his children may be legally robbed of it by anyone in command of a printing press. Again, there is nothing to prevent any rascal with a sufficiently ingenious pen from making a play out of an honest man’s successful novel, or a novel out of his successful play. Indeed, if the rascal is quick enough and clever enough he can legally prevent the honest artist from producing a play adapted from his own novel. The position of the literary artist is bad. But the position of the musician, the painter and the sculptor is decidedly worse. Of late years many song-writers have been merely and totally ruined because the law allowed them to be robbed openly in broad daylight in the Strand, with the police looking on. It is true that their ruin involved no great artistic loss to the country. Eut that is be- side the point. The ruin of Mr. Andrew Carnegie would involve no appreciable loss of any kind to the country, might, in fact, bring innocent joy to the hearts of untold thousands both here and in America ; but that would not be considered a good reason, in the House of Lords, for knocking him on the head, turning Skibo Castle into a home for incurable poets, and distributing his steel-trust scrip among the needy Socialists who for a livelihood write the political articles in Tory news- papers. No ! There would be a hades of a row if Mr. Andrew Carnegie was robbed even at dead of night in Scotland ; and if a gang of thieves set on him in the Strand as he emerged from the Savoy after en- tertaining the Duke of Devonshire a t lunch, it is quite probable that a policeman would take it upon himself to interfere.

* * *

I was about to say that the Report of the Imperial Conference on Copyright has been issued, and it recom- mends that this once great country (now, alas ! under the heel of Germany !) should come into line with the Berlin Convention of 1908. The “Daily Mail ” and other organs of the old nobility will doubtless object to

this. Nevertheless, it is practically certain that the recommendation will be followed. And when the neces- sary legal enactments have been made, the works of all creative artists m-ill be completely protected until the expiration of half a century after their death. I say “completely ”; I ought, no doubt, to say “almost com- pletely.” For it is a certainty that some fool or some scoundrel, in the House of Commons or the House of Lords, will come forward and do his best to mutilate the proposed Bill. This has happened before, in Bills relating to artistic copyright, and to the lives of the poor and such-like details of national existence. It has notoriously happened before.

* * Y

In the issue of July 28 I commented unfavourably on certain detective stories written by Mr. Austin Free- man, and now being published in an American magazine which I did not name. The magazine in question was “McClure’s,’’ and in “ McClure’s “ Mr. Austin Freeman was editorially described as the editor of the London “Lancet.” I naturally accepted the description a s correct ; but it now appears that the description was inaccurate. I learn that Dr. Squire Sprigge is the editor of the “Lancet.” Both Dr. Squire Sprigge and the owners of the “Lancet ” are justly annoyed that the name of that paper and of its editor should be connected in the mind of the public with mediocre detective stories. I much regret the error, though I cannot blame myself for it. I am familiar with only one book of Dr. Squire Sprigge’s. I read it a considerable time ago, but the impression of its serious and austere excellence remains fresh .in my mind. I t would be interesting to know why “ McClure’s ” described its contributor as the editor of the London ‘‘ Lancet.”

A Letter to the Slav Congress in Sofia.

By Leo Tolstoy. I HAVE received your invitation and would have come to you with pleasure if it were not for my age and ill- health. I would have come in order to talk to you personally about the subject which has brought you together. I shall endeavour to do this in writing at least.

Unity amongst men, for the sake of which you have come together, is not only the most important work of humanity, but in it I see the meaning, the aim and the well-being of human life. But in order that this acti- vity may be beneficial it is necessary that it should be understood in all its significance without detraction, limitation or perversion. This holds good in regard to all the most important activities : it holds good in re- gard to religion, love, service to humanity, science, art. We must follow out every principle to the end, to its farthest conclusions, no matter how strange or un- pleasant they may be to us. Everything or nothing. It must be absolutely everything, and not something, because all the great activities of the human soul, while they have not been extended to their utmost, are not only not useful, not only d o not render any benefit, however slight, as many people think and assert, but are ruinous and, more than anything else, retard the attainment of that very purpose at which they are obviously aiming. So it is with religion which admits blind faith, so it is with love which admits struggle- resistance-so it is with the service to mankind admitting violence against people. So it is with every- thing, especially with the activity whose aim is the unity of mankind.

People who are united are undoubtedly stronger than those disunited. A family is stronger than an in-

~ dividual. A band of robbers is stronger than each separate robber. A community is stronger than individuals. A state unified by patriotism is stronger than separate nationalities. But the fact is that the superiority of united people, over those disunited, and

352 THE NEW AGE AUGUST II, 1910

the inevitable result of this superiority-the enslave- ment, or at least the exploitation of the disunited--calls forth in the disunited a natural desire to unite in order a t first to counteract violence, and subsequently to commit it. It is natural for the Slav nationalities which experience the evil of the combination of the Austrian, Russian, German and Turkish states, to desire to form a combination of their own in order to counteract this evil ; but this new combination, if it is ever formed, will be drawn into similar activity, not only into strife with other combinations, but also into suppression and exploitation of the weaker combinations and of individuals.

Y e s , the meaning, the aim, and well-being of human life are in unity only when there is the union of all mankind in the name of a principle which is common to all mankind, but not the union of small or large sections of humanity in the name of limited, private aims. Be it the union of a family, a band of robbers, a community or a state, nationality, or the “holy alliance ” of states-such combinations not only do not assist but, more than anything else, hinder the real progress of humanity. Therefore in order to serve progress con- sciously-I at least think so-it is necessary not to assist any of such partial combinations but always to work against them. Unity is the key liberating peoples from evil. But in order that the key should Serve its purpose it is necessary that it should be put right in, UP to that point where it unlocks but does not break itself and does not break the lock. It is the same with unity; in order that it may produce the beneficial results natural to it, it must have the union of all people as its aim, in the name of a common principle recognised by all people. And such unity is only possible if it is based upon that religious principle of life which alone unites people, and unfortunately is thought of as unnecessary and out-of-date by the majority of people who direct nations at the present time.

They will tell me : we also believe in this religious principle, but we do not deny the tribal, national, State principle of unity. But the fact is that one excludes the other. If universal religious unity be recognised as the aim of human life then this very recognition repudiates any other principle of unity, and vice versa, the recognition of the tribal, national, patriotic, or state principle as the basis of unity inevitably denies the religious principle as the real basis of life.

I think, I am almost convinced, that the thoughts experienced by me will be deemed inapplicable and in- correct, but I have considered it my duty to state them quite frankly to people who, in spite of‘ my repudiation of the tribal and national patriotism, are yet nearer to me than the people of other nations. I will say more, waiving the consideration that my words might bear evidence against me as to my being inconsistent and contradicting myself-I will tell you what in particular prompted me to write these words :-My belief is that this principle-the principle of the universal religious unity, which, alone, by uniting people more and more can lead them to the well-being natural to them, will be embraced by the people of the Slav race before any other nation of the Christian world.

(No rights reserved.)

RECENT MUSIC. By Herbert Hughes.

‘ Feuersnot . STRAUSS’ comic opera is not at all funny. It pretends to that class of stage play known as opéra comique-a class which includes such operas as “ Figaro,” “ Hansel und Gretel ” and “Much Ado About Nothing,” each of which, however, possesses some element of humour. Mr. Beecham should have called it a musical comedy ; we might then have known what to expect. The “plot,” the humour of the situations, the intellectual brilliance and wit of the dialogue are of that exalted order associated with the high traditions of the Gaiety Theatre. The libretto, which is by Herr Ernst von

“

Wolzogen and partly derived from an old legend, is the most insulting piece of impudence ever hurled a t a patient public. No doubt Mr. William Wallace did his best with the translation, but i t would weary the readers of this paper if I were to quote more than a line or two of this very German drivel. The Three Playmates : Gently upbraiding

Kiss and be quits ! Diemut, Diemut, Where are your wits?

Young People : Now, don’t you shilly-shally, You know the only way- So, Honi soit qui mal y Pense. . . Foldre-rol-de-ray ! ! !

This is a translation by a sincere musical critic and composer, and I take it at random from reams of the same stuff. * * *

The action takes place at midsummer in Munich in the twelfth century. The people are celebrating the festival of Saint John’s Eve by lighting bonfires. This ancient festival, in Gaelic called Beltaine, is of pre- historic origin, diplomatically tacked on t o saintly worship by missionaries of the early Christian period. In Ireland the custom still continues in the remoter country places, and also in the north of Scotland, the peasants dancing (as in this opera) round and round the fire until dawn. According t a this story the chil- dren of the town go from house to house asking for wood for their bonfire. The burgomaster contributes a whole basketful, and less prosperous citizens make dole in proportion. Finally the children come to the house of Kunrad, a very ,studious and romantic young sorcerer. After a great deal of knocking on the street door they at length succeed in rousing the young hero from his alchemical debauchery, and he comes to the door rubbing his eyes and looking infinitely stupid before this crowd of laughing children. He is sud- denly, Faust-wise, inspired with the idea of enjoying life, to express which he proceeds to tear his house to pieces, and presents bits of chairs and doors and balustrades and shutters to the children for firewood. Having thus, so to speak, “Iepped the budget,” he makes a self-conscious dash for the pretty daughter of the burgomaster, and without so much as saying “How d’you do?” kisses her very enthusiastically on the lips. Some of the townspeople laugh, some are indigant, and Diemut (who is, of course, very much in love with him) is shocked beyond measure. * * *

Diemut plans revenge. After dark Kunrad is mooning about the street near the burgomaster’s house, when Diemut appears on the balcony ; she lets down her hair and commences to comb it. Kunrad comes out of the shadow and boldly asks her to come down and unlock the door and let him in. She sug- gests he should come up in a basket which is suspended from her window, and she will herself turn the wind- lass. Of course he gets into the basket ; she hoists him up a little more than half-way and-leaves him there. She has previously told her “playmates ” of the trick she intended playing upon him ; they tell their friends, and soon the whole town comes round to scoff and jeer at the unpopular youth supported in mid-air. He is annoyed. H e solemnly curses “all flame and fire,” and instantly the town is in complete darkness. The townspeople are now annoyed. Kunrad, who has by this time climbed up to the balcony, seizes the opportunity to harangue them from that position, and tells them what he thinks of them. The upshot is that Diemut come on to the balcony and pulls him back into the room. (This movement is very popular with the people, whom he has already converted with his elo- quence.) Incidentally he had explained that it was only by the love of a woman that the light in their town would be restored. The townspeople beg Diemut to hurry up and kiss him. Diemut fulfils this condition while the people are waiting in the street below. The lights in the town are at once restored ; there’s a grand flare-up, and everybody’s happy ever after. * * *

I have put the story as briefly and delicately as

AUGUST II, 1910 THE NEW A G E 353

possible. Some subtleties are omitted-one in particular is so subt le that I don’t know whether i t is a joke o r a metaphysical thesis or a foolish affectation. In Kun- rad’s speech from the balcony he tells the people that in his house once dwelt his master, Richard the First, the “lordly ruler of intellects ”-

In the house that I t o d a y did wreck Dwelt Richard the First, the master. He was no windy trickster, he- The lordly ruler of intellects !

In his harangue he reminds the people that they had discarded the teaching of Richard the First , and in del iver ing the “message ” of that master indicates that only “ through the love of a woman can the l ight be restored.” Then with the insolence born of a mag- nificent egotism does Richard Strauss take unto himself the apostolic succession-

Then spake Richard, my master of old- Vex not your heart, turn home again You shall inherit my haunted house, Sweep out the beetles and spiders too.

Great work was not accomplished at once

Go forth. . . . seek the fire that sanctifies Hid in the bosom of a maid.

One th inks of Wagner’s . “ Elizabeth ” and his pet theories of redempt ion and the g rea t “messages ” he proclaimed to the mere democracy of the world. If it hadn’t been for his drama and his very confounded “messages ” his operas would have been operas, and tolerable. Now comes along the self-appointed suc- cessor, and delivers the same flatulent “message.” I cannot believe in the sincerity of i t , any more than I can admit that the l ibret to of “ Feuersnot ” is anything but the poorest piffle. * * *

I do not wish to inveigh against piffle as such. We are frequently entertained by farce and nonsense, but this stuff is deadly dull and long-winded. The plot isn’t a plot at all-it is an incident, and could have been successfully disposed of in twenty or twenty-five minutes, “with music,” and thus have satisfied the re- quirements of the London var ie ty s tage, where, no doubt, i t would be performed with popular approval. (The screaming incident of the man in the basket would most certainly draw.) Strauss worries the sub- ject out in something under two hours, I think, and one experiences all the tortures of the Inquisit ion. The music arr ives in the same awful way as the drop of water fall ing on the prisoner in mediaeval dungeons. Of course the orchestra is very busy all the t ime, and l i t t le things happen that are interesting and instruc- tive to people concerned with the technique of orchestral “colouring.” The music, however,- comes slowly ; but when it does, then by al l the gods of Bach and Wagner , it is worth l istening to. I t comes wi th a sor t of hidden regularity ; in i ts last appearance i t comes as love music of supreme and gorgeous beauty-a few moments only, but enough to tantal ise and send one away impatient with the foolish and trifling affectations of the opera. * * *

The chorus work i s mas ter ly , and the s ing ing of the children highly effective and pleasing. Miss Maud Fay was a s good as she could be, but Mr. Frederic Austin wouId be more successful as an ar t is t if he were to master the simplicit ies of good English enunciation. I heard him pronounce the name “ Richard ” once or twice, but nothing else. * * *

“Die Fledermaus,” of the other Strauss , Johann, is a rough and tumble performance of Viennese quality. The orches t ra is too loud, and the people are too funny, but there is plenty of tune in it and an excel- lent pas seul. Mr. Walter Passmore was very much himself, but Mr. Joseph O’Mara, in being Mr. Joseph O’Mara, somewhat exaggerated his par t , and with less justification for doing so than Mr. John Coates in the ‘‘Tales of Hoffmann,” who overplayed his a little, Act I I . of the “Ta le s ” is a quaint savoury to follow the “ Feuersnot” music on the same evening. Mr. Beecham’s splendid orchestra exalted the artificial sentiment of

Offenbach’s superficial score into the regions of passionate artistic conviction. I t is not often that an orchestra can laugh u s ou t of an old faith.

CORRESPONDENCE. THE DICKMAN CASE.

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.” The question of Dickman’s guilt or innocence would no

doubt be settled satisfactorily for a certain type of mind by the news of his execution.. As one Newcastle paper obse- quiously observed after the failure of appeal : “ The last doubter should now be satisfied that the verdict given at the Assizes was the right one.“ The forty thousand (‘last doubters,” including three of the jurymen, are still, at this moment, protesting that the verdict was a wrong one, and that the Appeal Court decision was a grim farce. We, noted at that court how the Lord Chief Justice had come to praise his learned colleague. Lord Coleridge staked more than his own reputation in revealing that trade stock of legal platitudes and clichés and of tricks of suggestion and suppression--so old that some of them have Sanscrit names. The pride and honour of the Bar are none too secure in these scientific days. Lord Alverstone may go blue in the face protesting that he doesn’t care tuppence for public opinion. Justice PhiIlimore may burst himself in the Appeal Court laughing at John William Smith’s seven epileptic relatives, and justice Darling may denounce “these theories of atavism and irresponsibility of which the air is full ” (though goodness only knows how the learned judge heard the news). The fact is that many a young. student is better equipped to decide a murder charge than these elderly experts in the letter of the law.

Judges have never been popular; but, in these days their unpopularity seems clearer because humane persons speak more decidedly, knowing that science is behind them. I t is significant that judges should give each other loud cheers over post-prandial boasts of their indifference to public opinion. Some noise is needed to drown the growing clamour of public opinion against the crime of judicial murder; murder of epileptics, murder of men condemned on circumstantial evidence, murder of boys under age, and’ of imbeciles. I have cases of all four on my records. No amount of judicial boasting, however, will impress persons who realise how sadly the times have changed for judges since 1833, when Mr. Justice Bosanquet luxuriously sen- tenced to death a housebreaker of nine years of age ; since 183 I , when a lad of fourteen was hanged at Maidstone ; nay, since 1907, when Thomas Parrett, an imbecile, aged sixteen, was sentenced to death at Crewe by the Lord Chief Justice-this very Lord Chief Justice who found Judge Coleridge’s attack on Dickman so “fair and able ” as seldom he had ever read!

Let us take a sample of this fair and able summary. About the stain on Dickman’s gloves, a stain which might have been fish blood. Lord Coleridge said : “ T h e sugges- tion of the prisoner in respect of this was that his nose bled, but this might not appear to them a satisfactory explana- tion. The prisoner did not say that on that day his nose bled.” Very good reason why: his nose did not bleed on ((that ” day, and-a small matter this, of course-his evi- dence on oath was that he was not wearing those gloves on “ that” day.

How differently evidence against this prisoner influenced Lord Coleridge! Hall-Hall who omitted to tell the jury- men of his little peep at Dickman through the window-- Hall is positively apotheosised. In commenting upon this witness’s evidence the judge became rhetorical. “There are some persons so proud of their accuracy that in that very pride one may discover grounds for doubt. There are other persons scrupulous, careful, conscientious, etc.” (Roget, p. 159.) Hall’s evidence needs a few adjectives to draw a curtain over that window episode. Mrs. Nisbet, too, who omitted to tell the jury that she had known Dickman for years-but probably no one but a judge would judge this afflicted woman one way or another; merely putting aside her evidence. I say here, however, that it is a pity for the sake of justice that women are not on the jury.

In the middle of his summary Judge Coleridge made a table of the net result of the evidence “so far.”

I . The deceased was in the third compartment of the third coach.

2 . He was murdered between Stannington and Morpeth. 3. There was one man and one man alone in the car-

riage with him-certainly between Heaton and Morpeth. 4. The prisoner was seen with the deceased nt the sta-

tion in Newcastle apparently in companionship with him. 5. The prisoner was seen with a companion getting into a

compartment that was approximate at any rate to the one in which deceased was travelling. That’s the “net result.” Not a word of the defence, although

354 THE NEW A G E AUGUST II, 1910

the judge had previously been forced to relate portions of the defence. Of this numbered evidence, No. 2 is a lie. I t has never been proved to this moment where Nisbet was murdered. No. 3 depends on Mrs. Nisbet’s Identification. No,. 4 depends on Hall’s identification. No. 5 depends upon Hepple’s identification. Except for Hepple, Dick- man would probably never have been charged. Hepple passed this man he had known for twenty years a t a distance of eighteen feet, yet he never bade him good morning, nor did the twenty years’ friend give any greeting. Distinctly fishy! Dickman’s evidence was that he was already seated in another part of the train, and never saw Hepple at all.

Clearly, from the moment Hepple swore to Dickman and the police discovered, from Dickman himself, that he had no alibi, the man, if innocent, was in a horrible trap. Lord Coleridge, for the sake of argument, at one period chose to imagine Dickman as guilty, and he examined on that hypothesis the prisoner’s story of his movements. ‘(If you believe it,” he commented, after this able but unfair hit at the prisoner, (‘if you believe it, you must seek elsewhere for the murderer. . . There is no corroborative evidence that the prisoner had been on this road at all. Naturally, of course, a guilty man would seek in any may he could lay his hands on (sic) to account, otherwise than how it was spent, for the spending of that crucial interval.” Lord Coleridge fought Dickman--who had had no break- fast each day but skilly at 7.15 --as if this man were the grince of criminal intellects. What an ass he would have been however, on the judge’s eternal supposition that he nad planned the murder with marvellous foresight, to have provided no better story but that he went for a walk and was taken ill. That explanation seems too simple to be untrue. Counsel for the defence was ably undermined once or . twice. “ Dickman has been treated for this sickness in prlson,” counsel interrupted. His lordship observed that he had suffered from a malady no doubt. “ Does it not com- mend itself to your good sense,” the judge addressed the jury a few minutes later, “your good sense (a very able touch, this piffling moral bribery) that a clever guilty man would have said as much truth as possible without implicating himself ?,” If to drum in the minds of the jury a disbelief of every word uttered by the accused, if that is ability, then no doubt Lord Coleridge was temporarily very able, even though three of his moral victims soon turned upon him and u p o n themselves and remorsefully signed for Dickman’s reprieve.

I have previously referred to Lord Coleridge’s rule in summing-up this case, so that every hint, every suspicion, every bit of evidence against the accussed was arranged to strike last upon the minds of the jury. This method, suc- cessful as it was in oratory, thumps monotonously through pages of writing.

Turning from this tedious, inhuman though expert ham- mering upon a man in a trap, it is interesting to note that ex- traordinary charges have been brought against D i c k m a n no, no, never brought, only hinted and spread far and wide ! It has been told me on “high authority” that the Home Office knows-only it cannot prove-that Dickman did “ at Ieast” two other murders and many forgeries, ever so many forgeries. The Luard murder was hinted at ! Also the prosecution knew quite well, only it could not prove, that Dlckman actually had pistols. An old man was shot in Sunderland some time ago. Dickman. . . but Heaven de- fend us all if the authorities are going to judge us on secret information-too secret, too damned secret, to be made public. It is obvious that on the public evidence a re- prieve was Imperative. The Home Office must therefore have taken into account information not available for the public ; that is, evidence ,of so unsupported a character that it would not bear public investigation. I have personally received letters of unexampled spitefulness, testifying to the local prejudice and the determination to have some man or other bloodily executed for this crime. The authorities, for their part, are notoriously exasperated to have the Gorse Hall, the Luard and the Sunderland murders still unex- plained. The rumours that another warrant was out for Dickman proceeded from the police and no one else!

Whether Dickman was guilty or innocent may never be known, but what is certain to grow in the public mind is the suspicion that his death was determined upon to satisfy the police and to save Lord Coleridge’s reputation. When an innocent man is convicted, the judge is condemned. Dick- man on the evidence was doubtfully guilty. Lord Coleridge is more than doubtfully innocent.

BEATRICE HASTINGS. * * * THE CASE OF CRIPPEN.

T O THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.” Crippen is almost as good as dead !-almost, if not quite !

True ; certain formalities have yet to be gone through. The trial, for instance, has yet to take place. The evidence has

still to be heard. The verdict yet awaits us. And the sen- tence must be postponed to a convenient season. But “jus- tice,” in the days of marconigrams is executed instantane- ously. The need of the cumbersome machinery of the law is discredited for ever. Crippen is as good as hanged- con- victed, condemned, and sentenced to death, as far as the public are concerned. And the press has done it !

We cannot altogether blame the public. There are times when, in our haste, we are tempted to accuse it of sentimen- tality, want of judgment, or irrational prejudice. But, on the present occasion, neither one of these charges can, in fairness, be brought against it. If it has any feeling at all, it can only be on one side. And we know which side.

The faults of which the public is guilty may be many. It may be unreasoning it may be wilful, it may be short- sighted. But such faults are the faults of all groups ; and they are venial in comparison with those who exploit it for their own ends.

Who are the friends of the public? Ask Scotland Yard. Scotland Yard, with the perspicacity for which it is prover- bial, never hesitated for an instant. It knew from the first. No sooner had the “ Crippen Case” come before the public, than we read that the officials of Scotland Yard had wisely decided, with the sweet trustfulness which is well worthy of its tradition, to take the press into its confidence. And we can only hope that Scotland Yard is as well satisfied as we are sure the readers of the halfpenny papers must have been.

How Inspector Dew, for instance, must congratulate him- self! How ready he must be to enter into the rich joke. How pleased he must be to know that, having made sure of his man, he is equally certain of being backed u p by public opinion ! How these little things must help and encourage an officer of the law! What a thing it is, to be sure, not only to have right-minded friends, but to be able to count on their support !

Scotland Yard and the halfpenny press have no reason to complain. They have come well out of the business. But how about Crippen-and how about the public?

We are not hypocrites, and we are not capable of express- ing emotions that we do not feel. But, the question is, are we being made fools of ? Are our present feelings, no matter how virtuous they may be, worthy of u s ? And are these twelve good men and true, whoever they be, so sure that they will be ready to do justice to themselves when the time comes ? We have plenty of principle ; and we can find it in us not to judge too hastily-especially when an attractive young woman is concerned. But are ,our present principles, even when they are tempered by the sentiment of pity, of the kind that we want? Or is it our business to take our orders from our betters ? Crippen may be guilty-or he may not be. That is the question for us to decide. And it can only be hoped, for our own sakes, if not for Crippen’s, that we must not allow our halfpenny paper friends to influence our final decision.

R. DIMSDALE STOCKER. * * *

A PAPER CHASE. T O THE EDITOR OF “ THE NEW AGE.”

A rabbit nibbling a lettuce leaf one moment before it becomes a python’s dinner is hardly a spectacle fo r uni- versal and ironic laughter-whatever crimes the rabbit may have committed, whatever just hunger the python may feel. And yet if we are to believe the Little Fathers of Fleet Street the whole world has been bursting its sides over Crippen stroking a newly-grown beard and Miss Le Neve with her trousers safety-pinned on confronted by the Inspector from Scotland Yard and six good men and true snapped into a carefully prepared trap with that quiet air of triumph which doubtless distinguishes the true British sportsman. This nation of fair play seems satiated with small game, and in the desire to outdo “Teddy “ is on the warpath for human heads. Captain Kendall, supported by his Kermit of a first officer, has become the latest national hero, and I have no doubt but that he will be publicly presented with Miss Le Neve’s outfit of boy’s clothing to grace his pretty little country home in the vicinity of Pinner.

Perhaps we have underestimated the peculiar subtlety of the methods employed by Scotland Yard-perhaps full to the brim of that entente cordiale syrup which flowed at the funeral of our late lamented Peace Maker, they have banded all the nations of the world together as brothers-invited them down into the cellar to have a look on their own account and chase after the little man with bulging eyes and false teeth and his typist who proved her guilt by wearing another lady’s dresses. I believe that the English nation has the reputation of not being par- ticular with regard to its food-quantity, never mind quality, being the axiom. Certainly the stomach for which the Press caters is a mighty affair indeed, and now the staple joint of the Crippen menu being “ off,” demands the scrap-

AUGUST 11, 1910 THE NEW AGE 355

ings of prison plates which the “ Daily Mail ” so obligingly heats up for breakfast each morning.

There can be no question of judging Crippen. He can be bought outright, with a photograph and a book of words, by any street gamin possessed of a halfpenny.

Surely we .owe a debt of gratitude to all concerned who have shepherded us in this personally conducted tour into the hidden chambers of that machine which separates the wheat from the tares with all the impartiality and in- fallibility of ou r Courts of Law.

KATHERINE MANSFIELD. * * * CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

To THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.” If we cannot do without capital punishment for our moral

manlacs, why not execute them painlessly? Hanging is most barbarous. The ,old Greeks were more merciful with their paralysing hemlock. Why not employ laudanum?

E. H. VISIAK. * * + MR. VERDAD, MR. MASSINGHAM AND LIBERTY.

T O THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.’’ Mr. Verdad is so ingenuous in his foreign notes that the

heavy seriousness of Mr. Belfort Bax seems somewhat dis- proportionate. Like all his tribe, for I imagine he is or has been an official, he thinks that problems are to be solved by rigidly confining one’s self to a consideration of the facts (he might almost be the prototype of General Mitchener in Mr. Bernard Shaw’s (‘Press Cuttings”), and because the manners or habits of the Finns did not entirely please some Russians who fed him well, he is willing, o r seems willing, to acquiesce in the absorption of Finland into Russia. Mr. Massingham and Mr. Nevinson are sentimentalists because, disregarding the habits or manners of the Finns, they assert that the destruction of a people’s liberty is a foul thing. Mr. Bax really ought not to take stuff of this character seriously !

Mr. Verdad, however, completely gives himself away in the last issue of TEE NEW AGE in connection with his remarks on Mr. Massingham’s article on Sir Edward Grey in the “Morning Leader.” I do not propose to take up the cudgels on Mr. Massingham’s behalf ; he is quite able, if he thinks it worth while, to do so himself ; but I do desire to draw the attention of your readers to the following para- graph on page 316:-

Come down from your watch-tower, Mr. Massingham ; come down and go about the world for a time. Learn three or four languages, read a few books on ethnology, and try to grasp the distinction between the mentality of a Finn and that of a Copt, not to mention such subtleties as the difference between a Moslem reared in Cairo and a Moslem reared at Calcutta. When you have done this you may, perhaps, grasp the fact that the notion of liberty possessed by you is not precisely the notion of liberty possessed by a Bengalee, and that you have no right to force your morality down the throats of men born in a different climate, speaking a different language, and hold- ing entirely different conceptions of right and wrong.

Precisely! That, surely, is what Mr. Massingham would argue : it is the converse of that which Mr. Verdad, judging from the tone of his previous article in THE NEW AGE, would have us believe. If I remember aright, we, according to him, are in Egypt and India, and the Russians are in Finland, for the good of the inhabitants of those countries ; we are, in point of fact, doing precisely the thing against which Mr. Verdad, on this occasion, protests : forcing our morality down their throats. What I desire to know is, why should it be sentimentality for Mr. Massingham to force his theory of liberty on the Egyptians, and not sentimentality for Mr. Verdad to do so ? for, remember, we occupy their country. As a matter of fact, however, the paragraph quoted above is not a rebuke to Mr. Massingham so much as a re- buke to Mr. Verdad. Mr. Massingham, so far as I am aware, does not wish to force his theory of liberty or code of morality on our subject races; Mr. Verdad does. Mr. Massingham I take it wishes us to leave them to govern them- selves, and to work out their own theory of liberty; Mr. Verdad desires us to govern them and to devise a theory of liberty for them.

In conclusion, the fundamental of Mr. Massingham’s phil- osophy and of those who argue, on the whole, with him, is not that all races have the same theory of liberty, but that they all have a theory of liberty. My philosophy of life may be the very antithesis of that of a Copt, but the thing which links him to me is that he and I do .desire space in which to express that phiIosophy ; that, in short, however much we may differ as to the meaning of liberty, we do definitely and passionately desire it. That is the fundamental which Mr. Massingham, I take it, wishes us to leave them to govern themselves, and to work out their own theory of liberty; Mr. Verdad has not and apparently never will recognise. does not require to have delivered messages for ambassadors to understand that. ST. JOHN G. ERVINE. One

MR. VERDAD AND HIS CRITICS. T O THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.”

I have no wish any more than my opponent to prolong this controversy, and am fully prepared to let Mr. Verdad strut and boast of his lunches with the understrappers of the Russian bureaucracy-retailing the “facts” with which they pack him as gospel truth while insult- ing all and sundry victims of oppression, Finnish or otherwise-without further animadversion on my part. As a final word I would only point out the conspicuously false interpretation placed upon the voting in the Stuttgart reso- lutions in Mr. Verdad’s letter of last week. To judge by his statements one would think that it was a question between Imperialism and anti-Imperialism, and that anti-Imperialism carried the day by 19 votes only. Instead of this, both resolutions alike are anti-Imperialist (or, shall I say, anti- Verdadian?). What was affirmed by the majority of 19 was not an anti-Imperialist, as opposed to an Imperialist, reso- lution, but a more drastic as opposed to a less ,drastic form of anti-Imperialist resolution-a very different thing. Then again,, as regards the English vote, the majority in the British delegation for the more “moderate ” of those reso- lutions could not under any circumstances be regarded as a Socialist majority, seeing that it came from the British Parliamentary Labour Party - a party officially declaring itself as non-Socialist, while some of its prominent members (e.g., Mr. Shackleton) avowedly proclaim themselves as anti-Socialists. In conclusion, I may congratulate Mr. Verdad on gaining the approval of so conspicuous an apostle of freedom a s Mr. Reginald Wade!

E. BELFORT BAX. * * Y

FINNISH FACTS AND FANCIES. T O THE EDITOR OF “ T H E NEW AGE.”

Let me hasten to assure Mr. C. H. Fisher and those who have read his letter in last week’s NEW AGE--although I should have thought that the refutation would have been un- necessary--that my political views are not influenced in any way by the quality of the dinners given me by friends or foes. Nor yet are they influenced by (‘wild stories,” from whatever quarter they emanate. I believe I have stated on a previous occasion that I always take the greatest pains to check my information from as many different sources as possible, and I am always chary of paying too much atten- tion to a statement coming to me from one particular quar- ter until it is confirmed or refuted from another.

I t is quite true, as Mr. Fisher surmises, that I heard wild stories at St. Petersburg-if I had taken them seriously I could easily have made THE NEW AGE foreign page the laughing-stock of the European newspaper press. But I did not. And, furthermore, I can assure my critic from long ex- perience that the Foreign Office at St. Petersburg is no worse, where “wild stories” are concerned, than the Ball- platz, and is certainly not nearly so bad as the Wilhelm- strasse.

Now, Mr. Fisher’s main argument, apparently, is that, as the Treaty of Fredrickshamn was made between Sweden and Russia alone, Finland had nothing to do with it, and Finland’s relations with Russia must be noted from a Pro- clamation issued from St. Petersburg in March, 1809, i.e., six months at least before the Treaty of Fredrickshamn, which was signed on 5-17th September, 1809. The cause of the Finns must indeed be in a bad way if an argument like this has to be brought forward to defend it. In the first place Mr. Fisher doubtless knows enough of diplomacy to be aware of the fact that a Proclamation has not the binding force of a Treaty, and that, in any case, a Treaty made in September would be sufficient to revoke a Proclamation made in the previous March.

There is, however, an even weightier objection to this ar- gument. Between March and September, 1809, the Swedish armies had been utterly routed by the troops of Alexander I of Russia, and Charles XVIII of Sweden was fain to sue for peace. The Treaty of Fredrickshamn distinctly refers to Finland as a Swedish province, and as one of the pro- vinces handed over to Russia by virtue of the Russian con- quests. No merely formal Proclamations can alter this fact ; and I do not think that any standard historian advises his readers to look for a statement concerning the right of Russia to govern Finland anywhere but in this well-known Treaty.

The assurances given (‘at the opening of the Diet of Borga” have been dealt with over and over again, and discussed and re-discussed until those who have ever studied the Fin- nish question must surely be sick of the phrase. Surely Mr. Fisher will recognise that the “les constitutions” referred to in these over-rated assurances have nothing to do with what is understood nowadays by the word ((Constitution.” T h e term “ les constitutions” refers merely to special privileges connected with Finnish administration, and nothing else ; and if the Finns desire their case to be sympathetically con- sidered by myself or any other student of foreign affairs who

356 THE NEW AGE AUGUST II, 1910

knows his business, they will cease from taking up their Stand on quibbles of this description.

As for Finland separating from Russia in 1854, “when British men-of-war blockaded their shores,’ I expect the Finns had sense enough not to jump out of the frying-pan into the fire. I have done a great deal more than merely “look into Russian history,” by the way-and Finnish his- tory, too-and am well aware of the separatistic tendencies which showed themselves in Finland from 1863 onwards.

Mr. Fisher’s intense desire to inform me about the dis- solution of the Finnish army is very flattering; but I already knew all that was worth knowing about the matter. True, the Finns have for the last ten years refused to serve in Russian regiments ; but how long does my critic think this state of affairs will continue? No doubt he is as much in- terested as I am to see just how much rope the Russians will allow the Finns before proceeding to tighten the noose.

Doubtless I have already trespassed too much upon your space to deal with Mr. Fisher‘s minor inaccuracies. The laws passed in the Finnish Diet for the disadvantage of Russians living in the country are notorious ; and, I repeat, it is better not to try to defend the Finns at all than to do so with arguments like this. Of course, it is possible to find Russian subjects living in Finland, especially when they have had disputes with the Russian police. The Russians, pace Mr. Fisher, have rights-in view of their present back- ward ethnological development I think they have quite as many rights as they deserve. I do not take the sentimental Liberal view of these matters; but rather a scientific view- more heresy ! Again, I have visited Finland-more than once ; and I do not depend on the “ Novoye Vremya.” I confess, as good Grumio would say, the Finnish canals and superior education ; but all this has nothing to d o with the Treaty of Fredrickshamn. And I fear that the Treaty of Fredrickshamn will take a deal of shifting and explaining away. S. VERDAD. * * *

THE ENDOWMENT OF GENIUS. T O THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.”

I have received the following letter on the subject from Mr. G. Bernard Shaw. UPTON SINCLAIR.

Everything that Upton Sinclair says in the circular is true enough, but it is not conceivable that any such fund as he proposes would get into the hands of those for whom it was intended. An original writer of genius always raises hostility and inspires terror and dislike. Committees always select the second-best men. Now, I do not say that the en- dowment of second-best men might not be better than no endowment at all, but it is not what Upton Sinclair is driv- ing at. Great men of the type he wishes to encourage are not really helpable in their beginnings. But it too often happens that the poverty through which they have to fight in their youth either dogs them unremittingIy through life, or returns in their .old age, especially if in their latest utterances they get further and further estranged from contemporary taste, as in the case of Turner and Beethoven. In this phase they might have just a chance of being se- lected by a committee for an old age pension. But that, again, is not what Upton Sinclair wants.

There is only one serious and effective way of helping young men of the kind in view, and that is by providing everybody with enough leisure in the intervals of well-paid and not excessive work to enable them to write books in their spare time and pay for the printing of them. Noth- ing else seems to me to be really hopeful. I myself seem an example of a man who achieved literary eminence with- out assistance; but as a matter of fact certain remnants of family property made all the difference. For fully nine years I had to sponge shamelessly on my father and mother; but even at that we only squeezed through because my mother’s grandfather had been a rich man. In fact, I was just the man for whom Upton wants to establish his fund. Yet for the life of me I cannot see how any committee in the world could have given me a farthing. All I had to show was five big novels which nobody would publish, and as the publishers’ readers, by whose advice they were rejected, in- cluded Lord Morley and George Meredith, it cannot be said that I was in worse hands than those of any committee likely to be appointed. Of course, Sinclair may say to this that if Morley and Meredith, instead of having to advise a publisher as to the prospects of a business speculation, had only had to consider how to help a struggling talent without reference to commercial consideration, they might have come to my rescue. Unfortunately, I have seen both their verdicts ; and I can assure Sinclair that I produced on both of them exactly the impression that is inevitably produced in every such case : that is, that I was a young man with more cleverness than was good for me, and that what I needed was snubbing and not encouraging. No doubt there are talents which are not aggressive and do not smell of brimstone; but these are precisely the talents which are marketable, except, of course, in the case of the highest

poetry, which, however, is out of the question anyhow as a means of livelihood. William Morris, when he was at the height of his fame as a poet, long after the publication of his popular poem, “ The Earthly Paradise,” told me that his income from his poems was about a hundred a year; and I happen to know that Robert Browning threatened to Ieave the country because the Income Tax Commissioners assessed him with a modest but wholly imaginary income on the strength of his reputation. Poetry is thus frankly a matter for endowment, but for the rest I think a writer’s chance of being helped by the fund would be in inverse ratio to his qualifications as conceived by Upton Sinclair.

BERNARD SHAW.

AN OPEN LETTER T O MR. UPTON SINCLAIR. T O THE EDITOR OF ‘(THE NEW AGE.”

If a man has genius he is already endowed. What else can he need ? Surely nothing? What else is he entitled to ? Surely everything; and between these two extremes a few hundred or thousand pounds seems but a poor kind of trash to offer to one already so rich.

It is begging the whole question when any such thing is suggested.

The man of genius is entitled to power during his life. Give him that.

And how is that to be done? By endowing publishers of literature and music, builders,

theatres, journals, and above all by endowing critics. In your symposium it seems you are thinking of one class of genius only-of the literary genius.

And I, too, must limit myself to speaking of artistic genius, leaving the other branches to those who understand them. A writer of genius needs one thing only-a publisher. Pub- lishers therefore should be endowed. With a publisher who would have scattered “Leaves of Grass” across the two con- tinents of America Whitman would have been sufficiently endowed, and, what is more to the point, America would have developed along better lines.

An architect of genius only needs a builder. Builders therefore should be endowed. I have known many archi- tects of genius who have died, not through lack of courage or bread, but because they starved for lack of material with which to give expression to their genius.

In the theatre the same scarcity of material creates the same want.

In a battle soldiers ask for powder and shot, not for money, and a country which stints these things is blind to its own interests.

Mr. Gerald Stanley Lee writes that “even men of genius themselves cannot discover one another, and it is still harder for the rest of us.” Certainly; and it is not the business of men of genius to go in search of each other; the “discov- erer” should be the critic; yet critics are so monstrously underpaid nowadays that it is only worth their while to praise those men of inferior talent whom it pays to praise.

If your philanthropist would endow critics, and endow a college for training critics, and afterwards would endow a journal in London, Manchester, Glasgow and Dublin, one in New York, one in San Francisco, one in Chicago, and if he would follow this up by endowing a publishing firm or two in England and America, at the same time a budding firm or two and a dozen theatres, then we should be coming some- where near the mark; genius would feel it.

But to offer vaguely to literary men only a prize which the man of genius would never even compete for seems to me not exactly adequate. It would make no impression on the thing you work to effect.

If you ask an artist what he wants he will tell you “the means to continue his work.” He wants studios, workshops, paints, canvases, marble, orchestras, theatres and actors to work them, vellum, morocco leather, gold, silver and pre- cious stones, wood, iron, stone, silks-in short, he asks for the earth so that he may handle it and restore it to the owners more beautiful than before.

+ * *

Is it too much, then, to give him the ear th? It is certainly too little to offer him a pension or an en-

And the first step to having the earth made more beauti- dowment.

ful by his hands is in my opinion to endow the critic. GORDON CRAIG. * * *

VOTES FOR WOMEN. To THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.”

The earlier part of Mrs. Billington-Grieg’s letter would deserve a more elaborate reply, were it not largely rendered nugatory by the 1atter part. As it is, I will deal with it very briefly.

If she means that her plan, or the plan of the Conciliation Committee, is more likely to commend itself to the oligarchy that governs this country than mine, I entirely agree with her. That is precisely my reason for distrusting it. But I think that she leaves too much out of account the fact that

AUGUST II, I910 THE NEW A G E 357

even in the House of Commons there must have been many who were impressed by the unanswerable attacks upon the Bill made by Mr. Belloc, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Churchill. The more the terms of this particular Bill are discussed the less people will, I am convinced, be found to favour a scheme which makes it easy for the old maid, the prostitute, and the divorcée to get a vote, but almost im- possible for the wife and mother to do so. Remember that we are not arguing on the basis of Adult Suffrage (which means justice for all), nor even upon the basis of “ Votes for Women on the same terms as men,” which has at least a plausibly logical appearance. We are picking and choosing women for the vote. Why we should deliberately choose the women who are of least value to the community I cannot imagine.

Briefly, if Mrs. Billington-Grieg wants a Bill which will slip easily through the two oligarchical houses, doubtless her Bill is better than mine, and a Bill confining the vote to women with an independent income of £5,000 a year would he better than hers. But, if she bases her case ,on democracy (as I thought she did), and if she wishes to appeal to the mass of the people she will, I think, find a measure that will enfranchise the wives and mothers of the poor more effective €or the purpose.

I need not, however, dwell too long upon this aspect of the question, because at the end of her letter Mrs. Bil- lington-Grieg frankly throws it over? and admits, as I un- derstand her, that she would oppose my proposal on its merits. She does this on the ground that it is “insulting to women ” that wives should be enfranchised and unmarried women excluded. She does not apparently see any “ insult” in propertied women being enfranchised and propertiless women excluded. If she thinks property a better qualifica- tion for the vote than motherhood, her oligarchic leanings hardly need further demonstration.

One word in conclusion. We are told that women are “insulted and demoralized” by “ getting things through men.” I doubt if the mass of women of the people feel like that. At any rate I, for my own part, candidly confessing that I have “ got” most things worth having, including my own body, from women, find it difficult to enter into that sense of humiliation. CECIL CHESTERTON.

+ * Y

NIETZSCHE AT RAY. T O THE EDITOR OF “ THE NEW AGE.”

We nonsensical Nietzscheans must appear at some dis- advantage in a public controversy; for, whereas we have read nothing save Nietzsche for the last ten years, our op- ponents seem to have read nothing at all for the last fifty.

Like the pioneers of science during the Renaissance, the moment we open our mouths we are cried down by a host of legends and superstitions which we had long thought exploded, and the consequence is, we have to go to endless trouble in educating our adversaries up to our standpoint before we can even hope to speak to them intelligently.

M. d’Auvergne, for instance, in THE NEW AGE of July 28 comes forward as a typical opponent of Nietzsche. Dr. Levy spoke to him in the language of the 20th century, and he replied with early-Victorian myths, the legends of the fifties, and the superstitions of superannuated materia- listic schools. Dr. Levy points to a weak feature in Shaw’s psychology, and Mr. d’Auvergne replies by evading the ques- tion entirely, and by saddling Shaw with a mediaeval fetich which I know our noble playwright would be the first to repudiate. Really, these things are exceedingly annoying- more particularly to one, like myself, who would fain close with his opponent right away, without first giving him a course of gentle instruction.

Passing over Mr. d’Auvergne’s more or less irrelevant re- ferences to Jews and Gentiles, Throgmorton Street, Seven Dials, Mr. Winkle, De Quincey, etc., etc.-for if Mr. d’Auvergne likes I can show him that these things are merely entertaining, and have actually nothing whatever to do with the point a t issue--let us turn to the rea! gist of the article “Nietzsche and Nonsense,” in paragraph five, and here we shall find that the only time Mr. d’Auvergne really makes a definite and scientific stand against Nietzcheism his weapons are of such an obsolete type that we from a mere sense of fairplay, are almost tempted to lay down our arms and wait. “ One would suppose,” says this entertaining raconteur

(for we bow to his superiority as a cheerful and fascinating dialectician), “that if one thing would tend more than an- other to produce a vigorous, active aristocracy, it would be strenuous competition and pressure from below.”

This, Mr. d’Auvergne will surely admit, is totally and obviously unfair. It is unworthy of him. He is not the kind of writer who knowingly takes a mean advantage; therefore, I must assume that in this case he acted in per- fect innocence. He evidently did not know that the words quoted above were superstitious, mythical, early-Victorian- in fact, to put it mildly, religiously nonsensical. Perhaps

he hates superstition as much as I do? In that case I exon- erate him : he didn’t intend. . . . Very well ! I went to great pains once-but shall not do so again-

to show that no competition, however strenuous, necessarily elevates any type. ’To say that it will is to misread even Darwin himself, not to mention Huxley, Spencer, and all the more or less sound evolutionists of last century. I am more particularly surprised at Mr. d’Auvergne for believing in this creed, seeing that it is precisely those people to whom he is most opposed who have always used it as a class- weapon in their own favour. I have pointed out elsewhere that, owing to an unfortunate choice or words (”the survival of the fittest ‘) English evolutionists have been greatly re- sponsible for one of the gravest sociological errors of the nineteenth century; but if they in their confusion have implied and given rise to false doctrines, a n independent thinker is in no wise justified in doing the same.

For almost threescore years-ever since the publication of “ The Origin of Species,” the smugly wealthy, and large numbers of the Tory party (Mr. d’Auvergne’s pet love, I believe?) have sat in their luxuriously upholstered easy- chairs, lisping complacently that all their privileges and fictitious superiority were good and wholesome, because they made competition below more strenuous. With the whole of science at their backs they have been able to declare that they were the fittest to survive, and, as capitalists, were above the criticism of their less successful fellows. The evolutionary hypothesis had given them a clean conscience wherewith they were able to stop the mouths of the poor and revel in their own super-humanity ! But we thought that the fallacy of this argument had become obvious to everybody. That is why we say that for a Socialist, like Mr. d’Auvergne, suddenly to turn round on a Nietzschean, and to argue like a Tory or a . successful tea-grocer, is unfair. We don’t know what his party thinks, but we feel sure that he will readily agree to this.

Let Mr. d’Auvergne understand, once and for all: and for Heaven‘s sake let him help me in preaching this fact far and wide, that strenuous competition will produce nothing de- sirable or undesirable, simply because it will produce nothing in particular. The aims, hopes, standards of value, and concepts of virtue and vice of a people-all these things must first give a certain direction to the competition, before it can be said with even proximate certainty that an eleva- tion will occur. Let me remind him that all parasites, all loathsome creatures that creep into crannies and contami- nate the air, are also the result of competition, and that to believe that anything necessarily desirable must result from a mere struggle, is once more to revive the Christian belief in a moral order of the universe. It is to assume, once more, that there is a divinity with an intention behind all phenomena, and that all of us can let things “ slide,” be- cause “God’s in His heaven,” and “All’s right with the world.”

This is an indolent, English, and unphilosophical assump- tion. It is simple because it shifts the responsibility for the fate of men off the shoulders of men, and elevates “laisser- aller ’’ and “laisser-faire ’’ to the position of godheads. But it is also unwarrantable. There is no evidence to support it, since the horse and the kitchen cockroach are both the outcome of competition. (And, even here, although we are obviously in need of an anthropecentric valuation, we are perfectly justified in applying it to the case).

It is the sign of a superstitious belief in the blind forces of nature, and, as such: it is unworthy of Mr. d’Auvergne’ a Socialist who must to some extent have faith in man himself as a useful pilot at the world’s steering-wheel, otherwise why on earth does he trouble to agitate for social reform ?

When Nietzsche, thirty years ago, stood up and opposed this ridiculous English optimism, when he inveighed against Darwin for having revived “a moral order of the universe,” in a modern scientific garb, when he declared that God was dead, and that man’s fate now lay in the hand of man, it was because he saw the terrible flaw in this typically British view He denied that blind forces necessarily pro- duce anything desirable, from a human standpoint ; he realised-far more poignantly than either Huxley, Spencer, or Darwin had-that to depend upon strenuous competition is to depend upon a mere fetich, and he ridiculed the “sur- vival of the fittest,” in so far as it was made to imply the survival of the better or the more desirable.

I t would be absurd, on my part, to plunge here into a long vindication of Nietzsche. Not only do I doubt whether the editor would allow me the space, but I also question whether there is any need of it. To those who are inter- ested, including Mr. d’Auvergne, I can but repeat the advice that I have often given already, namely: to go and read Nietzsche carefully, just as I have d’one (for ten years if necessary), and then to take the scientific and philosophical literature of the latter half of last century with that pinch of salt which would have been sufficient to modify the tone of such a production as “Nietzsche and Nonsense!’ very con- siderably. ANTHONY LUDOVICI.

358 THE NEW A G E AUGUST II, 1910

LITTLE PICTURES FOR LITTLE PATRONS. T O THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.”

I was glad to see the letter from “F. O. N. S.” in a recent issue. I am one of those who would gladly be a “little patron,” who would gladly spend a guinea now and again on a good little original picture. I would far sooner have one original picture than half-a-dozen copies, excellent though they might be, of old masters. But where am I to go for such pictures? I do not move in art circles, and my only knowledge of the subject is the knowledge of what does or does not please me personally. Pictures are of two classes only-those I would joyfully live with a lifetime, and those that nothing would induce me to hang in my house. If the art critic of THE NEW AGE could give people in my position any leading in this matter, he would be not only benefiting artlsts, but also conferring a boon on the picture-loving (and would-be picture buying) public.

M. S. T O THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.”

May I be allowed to endorse Mr. Sickert’s suggestion that artists should cater for small patrons. Artists might make a beginning by considerably reducing their prices. Fifteen or twenty guineas a picture is beyond the means of even an “ elderly tradesman” with a soul for art.

Perhaps Mr. Sickert is rather severe on literary men when he says that they cordially detest art. They could hardly be described as “ writers of intelligence” or possessing “ great hearts” if this were the case. Literary men are not indif- ferent or hostile towards the Fine Arts. They have merely neglected this important branch of life. I believe it was Darwin who regretted his ignorance in matters appertaining to art.

Still, if Darwin had allowed his mind to become “vacant,” and had turned with a daily and nightly hand the pages of Mantegna, perhaps his scientific researches might have suf- fered. Darwin excelled in his chosen walk of life became he did exactly what Mr. Sickert commends in the elderly tradesman-i.e., he minded his own business.

DOUGLAS Fox PITT. T O THE EDITOR OF “ T H E NEW AGE.”

I am ,delighted and encouraged by the confirmation the letter signed “F. O. N. S.” in your recent issue gives me. Of course there is no reason why painters who have reached c”ertain prices should come down from them. What it is vital for the rising generation to understand is that careers are not likely to be made any more ‘on the system of inflated prices and cosseted reputations, except in the case of pur- veyors of the fashionable brand of portrait. When English painters have learnt to imitate the French in meeting the means of middle-class customers of small means, there will again be a modern picture trade in this country on a healthy commercial basis. As to the details of “accosting” -surely the less organization the better. Let a would-be collector note the prices in the Allied Artists’ Association, ‘or any other gallery, and enter into direct correspondence with any artist whose work he fancies. Really that is what we are there for. You cannot be too shy to call a cab that is standing on the rank. WALTER SICKERT.

* * *

ART CRITICISM. T O THE EDITOR OF ‘(THE NEW AGE.”

I t is very exasperating to be told by Mr. Huntly Carter that we are “bloodless.” But I think one of the reasons why we, the general public, are indifferent to the arts is the para- lysing snubbing we receive as soon as we show enthusiasm in any particular direction. Personally, though I have been studying the picture-galleries for twelve years, have travelled some 250,000 miles to and fro across the world, have read many books, and conversed with men of many nationali- ties, I am indisposed to admit that I “like” anything. Mr. Carter calls this indifference, but he is wrong I have a love for Turner’s “ Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus.” I have read the wondrous tale; I have felt the charm of Sicily. But a critic snubs me by stating that the “Ulysses” was only painted .to please commonplace folk, that it has nothing ‘of Turner’s soul in it, and so on. I love Wagner’s “ Tann- häuser,” understand it a little, always go when I can to hear it. Mr. Grierson snubs me in a sarcastic article because I, that is the general public, have not yet understood the “ Ring.” I love the Old Masters, because I know what they were driving a t ; have spent hours in the shrine of Sanctu- ario, where you may see the same crude draughtsmanship offered to God to-day. And Mr. Carter drops on me, and I a m squashed.

Eleven months ago, when I was in Venice, I saw an artist in the Square painting St. Mark’s. A crowd of children pressed about h i m peering at the sketch. They were very quiet but very anxious to see. Suddenly he turned on them and gave the nearest lad a dab on the nose with his brush- a dab of brilliant scarlet. They looked at him for a moment, and then ran away. I often feel that I a m being dabbed on the nose WILLIAM MCFEE.

S. S. S. S. T O THE EDITOR O F “THE NEW AGE.”

Janet Achurch’s article in THE NEW AGE of August 4th went straight to my heart. I cannot approach her beautiful and vivid style, but I can give the results of my prolonged warfare against all forms of needless noise, for the benefit of other sufferers.

The cardinal reform needed-all other reforms are mere palliatives-is to transfer the onus of proof.

It is extremely difficult to say precisely what the law on the subject is, for much of it is judge-made, and much also consists of local by-laws, but I think I am right in saying broadly and generally that the onus of proof that a given noise is unreasonable rests with the hearer or victim. You will be only tinkering with, the subject until you make it a clear legal principle that it should rest with the maker of the noise to prove that it is reasonable ,or necessary in the general interest. We sufferers are, however, still far from such a charter of freedom, and in the meantime I should like to make a few observations of a practical kind.

First, I have been much struck by the fact that a great proportion of noises are made thoughtlessly, and my experi- ence is that when the makers of them are approached courteously they are willing, as a rule, to abate the nuisance. They have no nerves themselves, but they are ready to be- lieve in the existence of nerves in other people.

Secondly, you often hear local authorities abused for not dealing violently with this grievance, but really the wonder is that they are able to .do anything. As regards some classes ,of noises, they are subject to pressure from well- organised sections of voters whose livelihood may be in- volved. And when it comes to making by-laws, anything really stringent is pretty sure to be stopped by the Home Office or the L.G.B. In London the position is particu- larly ,difficult, because there the police are not controlled by any municipal authority, and I happen to know that they find it in practice impossible to enforce a great part of the by-laws which are made separately by each metropolitan borough council. I have always found the police most sympathetic and anxious to help, but their powers, especially in London, seem to be quite inadequate. For example, I believe I am right in saying that they have no power of summary arrest, however great the nuisance may be.

Something must be ,done, but what? Let us have Miss Achurch’s Society by all means, for public authorities of all kinds are very susceptible to pressure from societies, which they regard as public opinion. But in addition to that, I wish I could persuade every sufferer to write letters explain- ing his grievances to-

( I ) The M.P. for his constituency. ( 2 ) His local representatives on the borough, county,

(3) The clerk of the said local authority. (4) The local superintendent of police. After relieving his mind in these letters, he should go

over them carefully and delete all adjectives and violent expressions into which the thought of his sufferings will have betrayed him, and he should not send them off until he has made them quite dull and moderate statements of fact. It is most important, if we are to make the required impression on the official mind, that we should always rather under-state than over-state our case. Never give any official person a chance of using that fatal word “crank.”

If ,every sufferer did what I have described, and went on doing it, not being put off by official excuses and evasions, I am sure that the extent and reality of the grievance would begin to be understood by our right worshipful rulers, who really have bowels of compassion. So the way would be cleared for a comprehensive and consolidating Act of Par- liament. F.

urban district, rural district, or parish council.

* * * THE LABOUR PARTY.

TO THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.” I note in Mr. Ramsay MacDonald’s appeal for funds that

he remarks that “every section in Parliament has paid a tribute to the helpfulness of the (Labour) party.”

May I say that a Labour Party whose “ helpfulness” is acknowledged by the representatives of the plutocracy is, as Robespierre used to say, “ Suspect to me” ?

A SOCIALIST. * * * THE CONFERENCE.

T O THE EDITOR OF “THE NEW AGE.” Political parties hold ideals in trust for each other, and

an instinctive perception of this fact has accounted for the magnanimity of English elections. It was this aspect of our political life which was threatened at the last election, when every attempt was made to obscure the ground where interests could be shown not to be in collision at all. The Con- ference has a triumph before it, likely to become historic, if it can succeed to any extent in a re-definition of this ground. T. MARTIN WOOD.

AUGUST II, 1910 .THE NEW AGE 3 59

Articles of the Week. ADCOCK, A. ST. JOHN, “ William de Morgan,”

Bookman, August. ARCHER, WM., “ Half-Holidays in Spain,” Morn-

ing Leader, Aug. 6. BEGBIE, HAROLD, “A Shel te r -- for Good

Women,” Daily Chronicle, Aug. 6 ; ‘‘ Religion and Socialism : Divergent Forms of Both,” Daily Chronicle,

BELLOC, HILAIRE, “ The Way to Fairyland,” Morning Post, Aug. 6 ; ‘‘ Death Duties and Capital,” Fortnightly, August.

BENNETT, ARNOLD, “ The Lure of Life : Getting Away from the Office,” Morning Leader, Aug. 3.

BERNSTEIN, EDWD., “Tariffs and Trade in Ger- many : British Industrial Conditions Compared,” Daily Chronicle, Aug. 5.

BERRY, R. M. F., “The American Gipsy,” Cen- tury, August.

BINYON, LAURENCE, “Japanese Screens,” Saturday Review, Aug. 6.

BRADLEY, ROSE, “A Day in Provence,” Nine- teenth Century, August.

CHERADAME, A., “L’Autriche-Hongrie et la Suffrage Universel,” Revue de Paris, Aug. I .

CHESTERTON, G. K., “Fear,” Daily News, Aug. 6.

COLERIDGE, Hon. STEPHEN, “Financial Obli- quity at Some of the Great London Hospitals,” Con- temporary, August.

DESMOND, G. G., “Young Denmark,” Daily News, Aug. 2 .

DICEY, Prof. A. V., “The Strength and the Weak- ness of the Third French Republic,” Nineteenth Century, August.

DIMNET, ERNEST, ‘‘Fénelon’s Enemies,” Satur- day Review, Aug. 6.

FYFE, H. HAMILTON, “Ideal Prisons : I. The Hooligan; II. The Habitual ; III. The Convict,” Daily Mail, Aug. I, 2, and 3.

GLEN, RANDOLPH A., “Poor Relief in England in Olden Times,” Local Government Review, August.

GOOCH, G. P., “England and Germany,” Young Liberal, August.

GREEN, F. E., “The Small Holding in August,” Daily News, Aug. 4.

HARTOG, Prof. M., “On the Teaching of Nature Study,” Fortnightly, August.

HIGGS, MARY, “Hostels for Women,” Daily News, Aug. 2 .

ILBERT, Sir COURTENAY, “Conferences be- tween the Two Houses of Parliament,” Contemporary.

LANG, ANDREW, “Byron and Mary Chaworth,” Fortnightly, August ; “The Proposed Dickens Testi- monial,” Morning Post, Aug. s.

LILLY, W. S., “Talleyrand,” Fortnightly, August. MACDONALD, J. RAMSAY, M.P., “The Khyber

and the Pathan,” Daily Chronicle, Aug. I.

MCWHIR, JAS., “Scotland’s Debt to Scott,” Morning Post, Aug. 6.

MARRIOTT, CHAS., “The Basque Provinces : A Centre of Unrest in Spain,” Evening Standard, Aug. 6.

MASSINGHAM, H. W., “In the Balance : The Quixotic Conference,” Morning Leader, Aug. I.

MONEY, L. G. CHIOZZA, “Unemployment Still Bad in New York,” Morning Leader, Aug. 4 ; “Ought there to be an Annual Budget Wrangle?” Labour

Aug. 3.

August.

Leader, Aug. 5 ; “Most Favoured Nation : Sham or Reality?” Daily News, Aug. 5.

MOORE, FREDK., “The Opium Traffic : Britain and its Abolition, Morning Leader, Aug. 5.

MURRAY’, HENRY, “ What’s Wrong with the World?” Bookman, August.

NEVINSON, MARGARET WYNNE, “Workhouse Characters,” Westminster Gazette, Aug. 3.

NORMAN C. H., “Ought Dickman to be Hanged?” Daily News, Aug. G.

O’CONNOR, T. P., ‘ ‘ A New Mr. Asquith,” Reynolds’s, Aug. 7.

ROBINSON, J. CARTMEL, “The Club Holiday : 0xford and Some Comparisons,” Daily chronicle,

RUSSELL, G. W. E., “ Retrospects : IV. Oxford,”

SPIELMANN, ill. H., “ A Punch Artist : the Work

TITTERTON, W. R. , “The Case against G. K. C. ,”

W H I T E , ARNOLD, “The Break-up of a Great

YOUNG, FILSON, “ T o o Good a Thing to Lose,”

Aug. 2 .

Commonwealth, August.

of Linley Sambourne,” Morning Leader, Aug. 4.

Vanity Fair, Aug. 3.

Estate,” Daily Express, Aug. I .

Saturday Review, Aug. 6.

Bibliographies of Modern Authors, (Revised by the Author

39--ERNEST BELFORT BAX 1878 JEAN-PAUL MARAT, the “ People’s Friend.”

A sketch. (Modern Press. I/-.) 1882 KANT’S PROLEGOMENA, Etc. With bis-

graphy and introduction. (Bell. 5/-.) 1884 HANDBOOK TO THE HISTORY OF PHILO-

SOPHY. (Bell. 5 / - . ) 1886 THE RELIGION OF SOCIALISM. (Sonnen-

schein. 2/6 ; also in I /- edition). 1889 THE ETHICS OF SOCIALISM. (Sonnen-

schein. 2/6 ; also in I /- edition).

TION. (Sonnenschein. 2/6; also in I/- edi- tion.)

1891 OUTLOOK§ FROM THE NEW STAND- POINT. (Sonnenschein. 2 / 6 ; also in I/- edition.)

1893 THE PROBLEM OF REALITY. (Sonnen- schein. 2/6.)

1894 SOCIALISM: ITS G R O W T H AND OUT- COME (in conjunction with the late Wm. Morris). (Sonnenschein. 3 /6 . )

1894. HlSTORY OF THE PARIS COMMUNE OF 1871. (Twentieth Century Press. I /-.\

1897 OUTSPOKEN ESSAYS O N SOCIAL SUB- JECTS. (Reeves. 2 /6 . )

1901 LIFE OF MARAT. (Grant Richards. 10/6. 2nd edition 3/6 . )

1906 ESSAYS IN SOCIALISM, NEW AND OLD. (Grant Richards. 6/-. Cheap paper edition 6d.)

1907 THE ROOTS OF REALITY. (Grant Richards.

T H E SOCIAL SIDE OF THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY. A series published by Sonnenschein and Co.

1894 GERMAN SOCIETY AT THE CLOSE OF

1899 THE PEASANTS’ WAR IN GERMANY.(5/-.) 1903 THE RISE AND HALL OF THE ANABAP-

Some of the books are out of print.

1890 THE STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLU-

7 /64

THE MIDDLE AGES. (4/6.)

TISTS. (5/-.)

The Simple Life in the City Even if you cannot get a sun-bath in Cheapside you can

simple-life, pure-food, non-flesh luncheon at the Home The Home Restaurant Restaurant--a luncheon balanced in food-value, appealing to 3 1 , Friday Street, . . . E.C. eye and palate, attractively served in restful surroundings. (Between Cannon Street and Queen Victoria Street) Come, see, taste, enjoy and give thanks--at the cash-desk. Sensible M e a l s for Brainy Men.

360 THE NEW AGE AUGUST 11, 1910

The Celtic Temperament AND O T H E R ESSAYS.

By FRANCIS GRIERSON. 2s. 6d. net. MAURICE MAETERLINCK.

Une fois de plus j’ai respiré avec joie l’atmosphère privi- légiée, le parfum de la supreme aristocratie spirituelle qui émane de toute l’œuvre si spéciale d e Monsieur Grierson. I1 a, dans ses meilleurs moments, ce don très rare de jeter certains coups d’une lumière simple et décisive sur les points les plus difficiles, les plus obscurs et les plus imprévus de l’art, de la morale et de la psychologie. Ces moments et ces coups de lumière abondent, par example, dans “Style and Personality,” “Hebraic Inspiration,‘’ “Practical Pessi- mism,” “ Emerson and Unitarianism,” “ Theatrical Audi- ences,” “The Conservation of Energy,” etc. . . ces essays, que je mets au rang des plus subtils et des plus substantiels que je sache.

A. B. WALKLEY. The Celtic Temperament is full of subtle and “intimate”

things deep down below the surface of conventional thought, and for the sake of such passages I shall keep Mr. Grier- son’s book on the same shelf as “ Wisdom and Destiny,” and “The Treasure of the Humble.”

GLASGOW HERALD. This work will be read and re-read by all who recognise

acuteness of intellectual faculty; culture which has gained much from human intercourse; deep thinking, and a gift of literary expression which at times is quite Gallic in its epigrammatic force.

THE SPECTATOR. Mr. Grierson has a right to speak, for he uses with success

one of the most difficult of literary forms-the Essay.

ln Preparation, a New Edition of “ Modern Mysticism.”

The Valley of Shadows. By FRANCIS GRIERSON. 6s. net,

MANCHESTER GUARDIAN. Of the author‘s literature there can be no doubt, for Mr.

Grierson is emphatically what Henley would have called a writer.

PUNCH. Told with wonderful charm.. . truth, though often stranger

than fiction, is almost always duller. Mr. Grierson has ac- complished the rare feat of making it more interesting. There are chapters in the book that haunt one afterwards like remembered music, or like passages in the prose of Walter Pater.

LIVERPOOL COURIER. It has all the qualities of great romance, great scenery,

great men and women, great spiritual energy. Over it broods the mystery of impending conflict. I t is a contri- bution to the psychology of a great historic movement by a powerful and illuminating writer. There are chapters de- scribing Fremont’s first expedition from St. Louis to Cali- fornia, which are more exciting than anything Fenimore Cooper ever penned.

T H E TIMES. In “The Valley of Shadows” Mr. Grierson appears in a

different rôle from that of Essayist, in which he was so suc- cessful ; he recalls in vivid memories the wonderful romance of his life in Lincoln’s country, letting the political, social, and religious characters speak for themselves.

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH. I t was not until Mr. Grierson reached middle-age that he

gave any public evidence of his high literary distinction in his essays, which suddenly revealed a new critic of unsus- pected powers. In “The Valley of Shadows” the author depicts with a wonderful touch scene after scene, drawing the native characters with bold, impressive strokes; the work goes to the heart of a great crusade and shows us the soul of a people in travail.

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A great gallery of characters. . . we know them al! and see them vividly.

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BIBBY’S ANNUAL for 1910 I S NOW OUT,

and can be had at all Booksellers, Price 1s. net. The Editor of the above magazine believes he has a message for

the present-day Socialist as well as for others, and he will be glad to send a free copy of his magazine for 1909 an3 one for 1910 to any Working Men’s Club on receiving a post-card applying for same for use of members, and signed by its President and Secretary.

Address: Publishers BIBBY’S ANNUAL, King Edward Street, Liverpool.

N.B.-This advertsement will only appear once in “The New Age.”

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