THE LITTLE REVIEW
_Literature Drama Music Art_
MARGARET C. ANDERSON
EDITOR
OCTOBER, 1914
Poems Witter Bynner
To the Innermost Margaret C. Anderson
A Letter from London Amy Lowell
Cause Helen Hoyt
New Wars for Old Charles Ashleigh
Ante-Bellum Russia Alexander S. Kaun
The Silver Ship Skipwith Cannéll
The Butterfly "
The Tidings "
Longing George Burman Foster
The Wicked to the Wise Arthur Davison Ficke
The Viennese Dramatists Erna McArthur
Editorials
New York Letter George Soule
Book Discussion:
George Cronyn and James Oppenheim
An American Anarchist
The Growth of Evolutionary Theory
Emma Goldman and the Modern Drama
The Whining of a Rejected One
A New Short Story Writer
A New Study of William Morris
Exaggerated Mushrooms
Sentence Reviews
The Reader Critic
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THE LITTLE REVIEW
Vol. I
OCTOBER, 1914
No. 7
Copyright, 1914, by Margaret C. Anderson.
Poems
WITTER BYNNER
Two Churches on Sunday
They stand and bark like foolish dogs,
"O notice us! O notice us!"
And then they stand and whine....
As if to say, "The good kind God
That made the world made even us,
All in the scheme divine."
And then they bark like foolish dogs,
And then they stand and whine.
The Last Words of Tolstoi
Awhile I felt the imperial sky
Clothe a sole figure, which was I;
Then, lonely for democracy,
I hailed the purple robe of air
Kinship for all mankind to share;
But now at last, with ashen hair,
I learn it is not they nor I
Who own the mantle of the sky,--
Silence alone wears majesty.
Apollo Sings
Here shall come forth a flower
and near him ever grow.
But his ear heeds me not,
and my hot tears mean nothing
to him who was dearer to me
than Daphne, he whose clear eye,
that dazed the sun, now droops near earth....
O hyacinthine flower, grow here!
Sweet were his lips as a flower touching
the feet of a bee in Spring, his lips
would repeat the word, "Love, love,"
all that was sweet in the world was reborn.
Death could not defeat him,
for his young lips, completing love, were eager.
His youth shall ever be fleet, evading death....
O hyacinthine flower, be sweet!
To the Innermost
MARGARET C. ANDERSON
The popular translation of that dangerous term, individualism, is
"selfishness." Self-dependence is a pompous phrase, and self-completion
a huge negation. The average mind seems never to grasp the fact that
individualism and democracy are synonymous terms; that self-dependence
is merely the first of one's intricate obligations to his universe, and
self-completion the first step toward that wider consciousness which
makes the giving-out of self valuable.
I am always feeling that some one will point out to me, with the most
embarrassing justice, the obviousness of observations like these. But
invariably, after a resolve to keep to those high levels which stretch
out beyond the boundaries of the accepted, some one engages me in a
discussion--some one who still believes in the antique theory that life
proceeds for the sake of immortality, or that a woman must choose
between her charm and the ballot; and I emerge therefrom convinced that
the highest mission in life is the dedication of oneself to the obvious,
and that a valiant preaching of truisms is the only way to get at the
root of intellectual evils. It has its fascinations, besides: to
convince a reactionary (not that I've ever done it) that renunciation is
not an ultimate end, or that truth is a good thing for all people, is
better than discovering a kindred soul. And so I proceed, without
further apology: that human being is of most use to other people who has
first become of most use to himself.
It is the war that has emphasized so overwhelmingly the triviality of
trivial things. Out of such utter dehumanization one has a vision of the
race which might emerge--a race purified of small struggles, small
causes, small patriotisms; a race animated by those big impulses which
have always made up the dreams of men. And then would come the more
subtle personal development: a race of human units purged of small
ideals and ambitions, cleansed to the point where education can at least
proceed with economy--that is, without having to destroy two ounces of
superstition to produce one ounce of knowledge. And at the foundation of
such a race structure, I believe, will be a corner stone of
Individualism--or whatever you may choose to call it. What it means is
very simple: it is a matter of heightened inner life.
Our culture--or what little we have of such a thing--is clogged by
masses of dead people who have no conscious inner life. The man who
asked, "Did you ever see an old artist?" put a profound question. People
get old because they have no vision. And they have no vision because
they have no inner life. Of course, any sort of inner life is impossible
to the man or woman who must be a slave instead of a human being.
And this brings us, of course, to a discussion of economic
emancipation--which I shall not take advantage of; because I want to
talk here not of what the individual should have done for him, but of
what he might very well do for himself. There are so many slaves whose
bondage can be traced to no cause except their refusal or their
inability to come to life; and the significance of the fact that
spiritual resourcefulness is most rare among those persons who have the
most leisure to cultivate it need not be emphasized even in an article
devoted to the apparent.
Human weakness is reducible to so many causes beside that much-abused
one of "circumstance." We talk so much nonsense about people not being
able to help themselves. The truth is that people can help themselves
out of nine-tenths of all the trouble they get into. (We'll leave the
other tenth to circumstance.) If they could only be made to realize
this, or that if they are helped out by some one else they might as well
stay in trouble! To be dragged out is more desirable than starving to
death, because it is more sensible, and because people are so
sentimental in their attitude toward receiving that one welcomes almost
any emergency which drives them to accepting aid with grace and honesty:
_anything_ to teach a man that he need not smirk about taking what he
himself would like to give without being smirked at! But in spite of
this, one must help himself to anything which is to be of positive value
to him; and must learn that personality gets what it demands. However,
this begins to sound like a pamphlet from East Aurora....
As a result of our shabby thinking on the subject of self-dependence we
have lowered our standards of the exceptional to an alarming degree. We
call that person exceptional who does what almost any one might do--but
doesn't. For instance:
The average girl of twenty in a conventional home hates to be told that
she must not read Havelock Ellis or make friends with those dreadful
persons known vaguely as "socialists," or that she must not work when
she happens to believe that work is a beautiful thing. She is submerged
in the ghastly sentimentalities of a tradition-soaked atmosphere--and
heaven knows that sentimentalities of that type are difficult to break
away from. It takes not only brains, but what William James called the
fundamental human virtue--bravery--to do it. And so the girl gives up
the fight and moans that circumstances were too much for her. The next
stage of her development shows her passing around gentle advice to all
her friends on the noble theme of not being "hard" and living only for
oneself; how one must sacrifice to the general good--never having had
the courage or the insight to find out what the general good might
really be. Thus are our incapacities extended. The girl who did break
away she regards secretly as remarkable--which is not necessarily true.
It is not that the second girl is remarkable, but that the first one is
inadequate.
The average man of thirty-five slaves all day in an office and comes
home at night to wheel the baby around the block and fall asleep over
the newspaper. He has lost any feeling of rebellion, simply because he
feels that he must. His permanent attitude is that all men are more or
less in the same condition (or should be, if they're well-behaved), and
that to part with a vision after college is what any man of sense must
do. His neighbor with an eye on something beyond an office desk and a
go-cart is a dreamer or a fool; if the neighbor makes good with his
dream, then he is a remarkable man of extraordinary capabilities. Which
is not necessarily true, either; the dreamer has simply scorned that
attitude which has been so aptly epitomized as "the second choice."
There are as many phlegmatic radicals as there are conservatives; and
there is no type among them more exasperating than the one that is
content to sit around and _be_ radical--and be nothing else. The lazy
evasiveness of the "revolutionary" with his the-world-owes-me-a-living
air positively sicken me. Why should the world owe anybody anything
except a protection against that _lack of struggle_ which cramps one's
intellectual muscles so hideously?
And then there is that most unpleasant type of all--the man who boasts
of how he will use his chance when he gets it. He always gets it, of
course; but he doesn't know it. And when it comes out boldly and takes
him by the ear he becomes terrified and slips back under the cover of
things as they are. His is the most unattractive kind of intellectual
cowardice, because it involves so many lies; it is simply a rapid
sequence of boasting and fright and refusing to meet the truth.
Here they all are--the uncourageous company of the second choice: the
half-people, the makeshifts, the compromisers, the near-adventurers. How
pale and ambling they look; how they crawl through the world with their
calculating side looks, ready to take any second-rate thing when the
first-rate one costs too much. Oh, it is a sad sight!
We must be more brave! We must be more fine! We must be more demanding!
The saddest aspect of the whole thing is that choice is such a tiny
element in the process of becoming. It is after one has chosen highly
that his real struggle--and his real joy--begins. And only on such a
basis is built up that intensity of inner life which is the sole
compensation one can wrest from a world of mysterious terrors ... and of
ecstasies too dazzling to be shared.
Souls are weighed in silence, as gold and silver are weighed in
pure water, and the words which we pronounce have no meaning
except through the silence in which they are
bathed.--_Maeterlinck._
A Letter from London
AMY LOWELL
_August 28, 1914._
As I sit here, I can see out of my window the Red Cross flag flying over
Devonshire House. Only one short month ago I sat at this same window and
looked at Devonshire House, glistening with lights, and all its doors
wide open, for the duke and duchess were giving an evening party.
Powdered footmen stood under the porte-cochère, and the yard was filled
with motors; it was all extremely well-ordered and gay.
I watched the people arriving and leaving, for a long time. It was a
very late party, and it was not only broad daylight, but brilliant
sunshine, before they went home. They did have such a good time, those
boys and girls, and they ended by coming out on the balcony and shouting
and hurrahing for fully ten minutes. How many of those young men were
among the "two thousand casualties" at the Battle of Charleroi, of which
we have just got news?
Devonshire House is as busy this afternoon, but it is no longer gay. In
the yard is a long wooden shed, with a corrugated iron roof; there are
two doors on opposite sides, like barn doors, and black against the
light of the farther door I can see men sitting at a table, and boy
scouts running upon errands. The yard is filled with motors again, and
there is a buzz of coming and going. Yesterday a man brought a sort of
double-decked portable stretcher, with a place above and below, and a
group stood round it and talked about it for a long time. For this is
the headquarters of the Red Cross Society. So, in one short month, has
life changed, here in London.
A month ago I toiled up the narrow stairs of a little outhouse behind
the Poetry Bookshop, and in an atmosphere of overwhelming
sentimentality, listened to Mr. Rupert Brooke whispering his poems. To
himself, it seemed, as nobody else could hear him. It was all artificial
and precious. One longed to shout, to chuck up one's hat in the street
when one got outside; anything, to show that one was not quite a mummy,
yet.
Now, I could weep for those poor, silly people. After all they were
happy; the world they lived in was secure. Today this horrible thing has
fallen upon them, and not for fifty years, say those who know, can
Europe recover herself and continue her development. Was the world too
"precious", did it need these violent realities to keep its vitality
alive? History may have something to say about that; we who are here can
only see the pity and waste of it.
So little expectation of war was there, so academic the "conversations"
between the powers seemed, that on the Friday, preceding the declaration
of war, we went down to Dorchester and Bath for a week-end outing. It
was rather a shock to find the market-place at Salisbury filled with
cannon, and the town echoing with soldiers. The waiter at the inn,
however, assured us that it was only manoeuvres. But the next day our
chauffeur, who had been fraternizing with the soldiers, told us that it
was not manoeuvres; they had started for manoeuvres, but had been turned
round, and were now on their way back to their barracks.
As we came back from Bath, on Monday, we were told that gasolene was
over five shillings a can. That was practically saying that England had
gone to war. But she had not, nor did she, until twelve o'clock that
night. When we reached our hotel we found a state bordering on panic.
There was no money to be got, and all day long, for two days, people
(Americans) had been arriving from the Continent. Without their trunks,
naturally. There was no one to handle trunks at the stations in Paris.
These refugees were all somewhat hysterical; perhaps they exaggerated
when they spoke of disorder in Paris; later arrivals seemed to think so.
But we are untried in war--war round the corner. It is a terrifying
nightmare which we cannot take for reality. Or could not. For it is now
three weeks since the war burst over us, and already we accustom
ourselves to the new condition. That is perhaps the most horrible part
of it.
But that first night in London I shall never forget. A great crowd of
people with flags marched down Piccadilly, shouting: "We want war! We
want war!" They sang the Marseillaise, and it sounded savage,
abominable. The blood-lust was coming back, which we had hoped was gone
forever from civilized races.
But the Londoners are a wonderful people. Or perhaps they have no
imagination. London goes on, and goes on just as it did before, as far
as I can see. I understand that the American papers, possibly taking
their cue from the German papers, say that London is like a military
camp, that soldiers swarm in the streets, and that its usual activities
are all stopped. It is not true. "Business as usual" has become a sort
of motto. And it is as usual,--perhaps a bit too much so. The mass of
the people cannot be brought to realize the possibility of an invasion.
In vain the papers warn them, they believe the navy to be invincible.
And Heaven grant that it is!
When, that first week of the war, bank holiday was extended to four days
instead of one; when the moratorium was declared, which exempted the
banks from paying on travellers cheques and letters-of-credit; and when,
to add to that, so many boats were taken off, and there were no sailings
to be got for love or money, something closely approaching a panic broke
out among the Americans. And what wonder! They felt caught like rats in
a trap, with the impassable sea on one side and the advancing Germans on
the other. For Americans have not been brought up with the tradition of
England's invincibility at sea. They have heard of John Paul Jones and
the "Bonhomme Richard." And they have imagination. I was told that one
woman had killed herself in an access of fear, and I have heard of
another who has had to be put in an asylum, her mind given way under the
strain. Many of these people had no money, and they could not get any;
they came from the Continent and had to find lodgings, and they could
offer neither money nor credit. The Embassy had no way of meeting the
strain flung upon it. The Ambassador is not a rich man, and the calls
for money were endless. Finally some public-spirited American gentlemen
started a Committee, with offices at the Hotel Savoy, to help stranded
Americans. And the work they have done has been so admirable that it is
hard to find words to describe it. The Committee cashes cheques, gets
steamship bookings, suggests hotels and lodgings, provides clothes,
meets trains. I cannot write the half it does, but it makes one
exceedingly proud. I do not believe that there is an American in London
who has not helped the Committee with time or money, or been helped by
it.
Perhaps the panicky ones have all been cared for and gone home, or
perhaps man is a very adaptable animal. But we who are still in London
have settled down and accepted things. The town is not like a camp, but
still regiments of soldiers in khaki pass along fairly often. And during
the few days when it was my duty to meet trains at Victoria Station, no
train from the South Coast either arrived or left without its quota of
soldiers. We motored down to Portsmouth last Sunday, and we were stopped
at the entrance to the town and asked to prove that we were not Germans.
It was not a very difficult task. Portsmouth is swarming with soldiers,
but until we reached it, the only evidence of changed conditions was the
strange absence of cyclists and motor-cyclists on the roads.
The other day I was waiting on a street corner. I was going to cross
over and buy a paper. (The papers bring out new editions all day long,
and in taxis, on buses, walking along the street, every one is reading a
paper.) Suddenly I heard someone shout my name, and there were Richard
Aldington and F. G. Flint. They were in excellent spirits; Richard
Aldington had just been down to put his name on the roster of those
willing to enlist. Flint cannot enlist; he is already serving his
country in the Post Office, and sits all day long in the most important
and most dangerous building in the world next to the Bank of England. It
is guarded by soldiers and surrounded by bomb-nets, but London is full
of spies! I thought of the exquisite and delicate work of these two men
in the _Anthologie Des Imagistes_, and it seemed barbarous that war
should touch them--as cruel and useless as the shattering of a Greek
vase by a cannon ball. I remembered the letters of Henri Régnault I had
read, long ago. I remembered how he gave up his studio in Algiers and
came back to fight for France, and died in the trenches. We read of
these things, but when we find ourselves standing on a street corner
talking to two young poets who are preparing to face the same
experiences--Well! It is different!
This is one side. There is, unhappily, another. Something that one
feared, and is not glad to see. There is not that realization that there
should be of the danger England is in, nor that rush to defend her that
one associates with the English temper. They are not enlisting as they
should, and that is the bare truth of the matter.[1] And there is a
certain hysteria beginning to show, which is terribly un-English, as
"English" has hitherto been. The appeal to men to enlist has become
almost a scream of terror. The papers are full of it, in editorials, in
letters from private persons. And still the Government delays to declare
general mobilization. Instead, it adopts measures which seem positively
childish. Lord Kitchener asks the taxi-cabs to carry placards urging
enlistment, and when some of the union cab-drivers refuse, the papers
solemnly urge a patriotic public to boycott the placardless cabs. And
all England is supposed to be under martial law! Could anything be more
miserably humorous? It is hard to imagine Wellington asking favors of
cabmen, and, when he was refused, begging the populace to punish the
offenders. The following advertisement in this morning's _Times_
illustrates the enthusiasm and the apathy which are rife at the same
time:
Doctor's wife, middle-aged, will undertake to perform the work of
any tramway conductor, coachman, shop-assistant, or other married
worker with children, provided that worker will undertake to
enlist and fight for his country in our hour of need. All wages
earned will be paid over to the wife and family.--Apply Mrs.
Lowry, 1, Priory-terrace, Kew Green, S.W.
Perhaps one of the saddest evidences of a changed England is Mr. H. G.
Wells's letter to Americans in _The Chronicle_ of August 24th. For an
Englishman to _implore_ a foreign country to do or not to do anything,
is new. Englishmen have not been used to beg weakly, with tears in their
eyes. Whatever one may think of Mr. Wells's contention in this letter,
the tone in which it is written is a lamentable evidence of panic. Panic
has never been an English trait, and neither has whining servility. And
the Americans are the last people in the world to be moved by it. We are
a just people, and we admire valor. I think Mr. Wells need not have
_stooped_ to ask us for justice or sympathy.
After all, it purports little to point out the spots on the sun. England
is still the mother-country of most Americans, even if that was a good
while ago. And we love her. She has given us not only our blood, but our
civilization. Since this war broke out she has harbored us and kept her
ships running for us. In Paris, one must get a permit from the police to
stay or leave. In England, one is free and unmolested. England has
always been the refuge of oppressed peoples. Does she need to ask our
sympathy now that she is, herself, oppressed? Neutral we must be, and
neutral we shall be, but we are not a military nation, and despotism can
never attract us.
Every American would rather a bungling democracy than the wisest despot
who ever breathed.
[1] This condition has somewhat improved since above was written.
Cause
HELEN HOYT
As the surprise of a woman
When she knows that she is pregnant,
Is the surprise of a murderer
Beholding that he has killed.
That so small a moment of time,
That so slight an act should suffice!
No plan, no purpose, ordained what befell,
Only the wild urging blood and muscle
And swift desire.
These,
In an instant,
Beyond retraction,
Could set in motion all the long inexorable processes of life:
All the long inexorable processes of death.
Could establish that which may not be effaced,
Which alters the world.
New Wars for Old
CHARLES ASHLEIGH
_The Mob_, by John Galsworthy. [Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.]
I confess to a certain disappointment at this play. Not that it is a bad
play. It would be hard for Galsworthy to write badly. But, both
dramatically and philosophically, it might have been better, and,
judging by Galsworthy's previous work, could easily have been better.
_Justice_, _Strife_ and _The Pigeon_, for instance, are immeasurably
superior to this play.
The theme of the play is the protest of an upper-class statesman against
a war of conquest with a small nation in which his country is engaged.
His wife and family are all normally patriotic and his stand estranges
them. His governmental position is lost, as is also his parliamentary
membership. Sir Stephen More makes a magnificent stand for his ideal.
His courage and consistency result in his death at the hands of the
victory-drunken mob. And yet,--I was left cold.
It must have been my realization of the futility of his cause which
killed my warmth; and yet I am an admirer of forlorn hopes and their
leaders. It was, perhaps, more the artificiality of his espousement of
peace, and the grounds for this espousement, which failed to move me.
To begin with, More belongs to the class which really benefits by war:
the monied, aristocratic and governing class. To such people patriotism
is a natural and inevitable source of action, as it is rooted in their
very substantial stake in the country. Love of the fatherland, which has
given them so much, and the duty of fighting its wars, or of encouraging
others to fight them, is a very vital and vigorous thing in them.
Against this, More had nothing to advance but a very negative
propaganda: an appeal to the strong to act "honorably" by pitying and
sparing the weak (a perfectly sickening reason); and the invoking of a
hazy abstract idea of "justice" which has about as much power to
influence men's actions as a policeman has to maintain morality.
More was a member of the imperial class; and he became a "Little
Englander." He was a member of a soldierly class; and he became an
advocate of peace for peace's sake. He opposed a cloudy concept of
conduct,--utterly unrelated to the facts of life,--to a deep-rooted
instinct founded on the material benefit of his own class. And this was
the reason of his failure. He had nothing grippingly affirmative to give
the people, and he should have realized that to appeal to the rulers was
hopeless.
A great, popular, full-blooded thing like war must have a great,
popular, full-blooded thing to counteract it. Also, we must remember
that the life of the masses of people is not such a beautiful and
colored thing that death on the battle-field is such a very dreadful
alternative. Painting the horrors of war,--its sordid and unheroic
side,--is not enough. Nothing could be more sordid and unheroic than the
gray existence of the factory hand. A new, full gospel of affirmation,
revolt, and militancy must be set against the war-passion. The spirit of
conflict is good; it is essential to continuity; it is the breaker of
old forms and the releaser of new life. It can, however, be directed
along newer and more gainful channels than that of international
market-struggles.
The people who can stop wars are the people who fight wars. And they can
stop them by the divinely simple method of refusing to fight; and by
refusing to provide food, clothing, and transportation to any that do
fight. The worker operates industry and can shut off supplies if he
will. Anyone who preserves a faith that the governors may end war is
sustaining himself with a straw.
But if the people, the mass of producers, are to stop war, they must
first be stirred; and a negative pacific preaching will never stir them.
Only a call to a greater and more vital war can move them.
Such a war exists. It is the hand-to-hand struggle against exploitation,
against the economic bondage which has fettered the minds and bodies of
the larger portion of the race for ages past. This conflict is
affirmative: it calls for courage, endurance, and comradeship. Also it
is true, because it has its roots in the biological basis of life--love
and hunger. The stir of passion is in it: the passion of hate and the
passion of love, and also the love of a good fight; and without these
elements there is no war worth the while.
But all this, it seems, More did not realize. And, had he realized it,
he could have done but little. He was too removed from the "mob" to
speak their tongue, too far from them to share their feeling, too alien
for his words to gain a foothold in the crannies of their being.
The mob that killed More had made More, and all others of his kind. The
despised mob had fought his battles on the field of war and on the field
of industry. For the one they killed they had nurtured thousands.
Inchoate and all but inarticulate, in this mob is the divine stuff out
of which shall be formed the master-people to come, when once they
decide to fight their own war instead of that of their task-masters.
Nothing, not even conventional virtue, is so provincial as
conventional vice; and the desire to bewilder the middle classes
is itself middle-class.--_Arthur Symonds._
Ante-Bellum Russia
ALEXANDER S. KAUN
The effects that the European War will have--and is having already--on
the internal conditions in Russia are merely conjecturable, considering
the fact that since the first week in August we have had no sterling
news from the embroiled countries. I believe that a study of the pre-war
situation in Russia, of her recent moods and aspirations, will enable us
to venture a guess or two as to the potential results of the present
imbroglio. The forthcoming is by no means an attempt to exhaust the
problem: it is barely a bird's-eye view of contemporary Russian reality
as reflected in life and literature.
I
In a recent article an eminent Russian publicist thus characterizes the
modern literature of his native land:
It is quite clear: With the death of Tolstoy our literature also
expired. Not orphaned, bereaved; it died, came to an end,
perished....
In fact, what does our modern literature teach us? It positively
preaches all the instincts, the complete "credo" of the
bestialized criminal. Self-despite, sacrilege, sexual
licentiousness, political mutiny, commendation of crime,
hooliganish all-negation, stalest individualism, morals of an
outlaw, the ideology of fratricide-Cain, the codex of an apache
and Jack-the-Ripper.
Taking the above philippic _cum grano salis_, we must, however, consider
it as a characteristic phenomenon illustrating the contemporaneous moods
of Russian society in the process of its prolonged morbid crisis. For if
literature is supposed to be the mirror of life; if in literature we
find the true reflection of a people's feelings, cravings, ideals,
struggles,--then Russia presents the most vivid demonstration of this
truth. In no other country has literature reflected real life with such
a consequential and accurate preciseness as has that of the land of the
Czar in all its epochs and stages. If, therefore, the modern Russian
literature has a morbid aspect; if its heroes preach adultery, crime,
free love, and praise the lowest mob instincts; if it does, and to a
large extent it unquestionably does represent a base degradation, then
we must needs look into the very life of that unhappy country in search
for the causes of its mental affliction, then "something is the matter"
with holy Russia.
II
As a pendant to the quoted jeremiad, I shall cite another distinguished
Russian publicist, whose keen observation equals his absolute
truthfulness:
A filthy torrent flows over wide Russia--a torrent of savageness,
bloodthirstiness, cruelty, sexual wantonness, intoxicated
cynicism. The torrent overflows and deluges and infects all spots
of life and ruins the soul of the nation.... The man, the person
is of no value or consideration. There is no self-respect nor
respect for others. The provoked instincts know of no hold-back.
The sexual passion intermingles with the passion to torture and
to tyrannize. The atmosphere is veiled in a bloody fog. The venom
has penetrated all over, through all ranks of the population.
Bloody and shameful deeds have become an every-day occurrence not
only among the higher society--army officers, bureaucrats,
noblemen, cultured and uncultured capitalists; you meet with the
same crimes likewise among the poor urban populace, among the
lower strata, the so-called "masses"; similar dramas occur also
in the village.... The same all over. Everywhere the nonchalance
disposition. Everywhere the morbid passion in the first place. "I
want--and I must. And to the devil with the whole world and with
myself."
Exaggeration? Hardly.
The Russian dailies give amazing material for the student of sociology.
The impartial chronicling of daily events tells us a dreadful story of a
people that have lost every sense of moral sensitiveness and value of
life. Facts of wildest debauchery and corruption, murder and suicide,
defloration and parricide, to the accompaniment of governmental
executions, hanging and shooting, fill up column after column of the
periodical press. A Russian journalist remarks:
And this is our every-day life. This occurs every day, every
hour. It is not any more a sensation or a crying extraordinary
occasion that awakens general attention and astonishment. It
is--daily happenings. It is the general tone of our life.
Oftentimes one does not notice such items of news--so trivial
have they become. "Ah, another bloody drama! How tedious, by
God!" And the "citizen" lays aside the paper with a dull yawn.
Such is life in that strange country, and consequently such is its
literature, life's mirror, its product and interpretation.
III
The definition of Russian literature as Heroic was perfectly true until
a few years ago. The literature, like the life itself, had been a
continuous heroism. The harder the oppressions from above, the more
resolute was the fighting spirit below; the wilder the reaction that
raged over the throbbing country, the loftier were the ideals of the
struggling people; the more acute the sufferings of the gloomy present,
the brighter and the more attractive appeared the perspectives of the
future.
Ever since the first revolutionary outbreak in 1825, the so-called
Insurrection of the Decembrists, the Russian populace has had one great
ideal, one ardent all-embracing aim--the overthrow of the autocracy, the
impersonification of evil, injustice, and tyranny. This goal has been
the sense of life, the justification of man's existence, the holy spirit
elevating and purifying the miserable subjects of the Czar, the solace
for the eternal humiliation, the compensation for the unique martyrdom
of that unfortunate nation.
A great, an inestimable rôle has been played by Russian literature in
the education of the public. Though restricted by draconic rules of the
bigoted state censorship, it succeeded in speaking to the public in an
Aesopic tongue, training the readers in the gentle art of understanding
between the lines. It preached idealism, self-sacrifice, unbounded
devotion and love to their suffering compatriots, and unlimited deadly
hatred for the common foe--the Tyrant.
The elevating influence of that idealistic literature has been displayed
most manifestly upon Russian youth, particularly upon university
students. The susceptible young souls followed the call of their great
teachers and guides, and plunged with zeal and ardor into the battle.
Selfishness, life's diversions and conventionalities had no place in
their puritanic minds. To fight for freedom was their only "sport"; to
enlighten the masses, their sole "amusement"; to die on the scaffold for
the Ideal, the climax of happiness.
In that enduring bitter struggle there have been but two sides, two
antagonistic camps--the government and the people. On one side
rude force, violence, and outspoken retrogression; on the
other--notwithstanding minute differences in party platforms and
theoretical principles--an all-uniting ocean of lofty ideals, spiritual
forces, great hopes, boundless altruism.
_Noblesse oblige._ The great common cravings and aims must needs have
cultivated a high standard of morals and intercourse among the people.
The able correspondent of _The London Daily Chronicle_, Henry W.
Nevinson, who had had the opportunity of closely observing Russian life
during the unforgettable red years of 1905-1906, justly remarked:
To have a cause like that (the Revolution), to dwell with danger
for the sake of it every day and night, to confront an enemy,
vital, pitiless, almost omnipotent, and execrable beyond
words--what other cause can compare to that, not only in
grandeur, but in the satisfaction of intellect and courage and
love and every human faculty? So tyranny brings its
compensations.
IV
The general strike and uprising of October, 1905, compelled the
obstinate Czar to "grant" a tolerable constitution. It seemed that the
long struggle had come to an end, that the desired goal having been
reached, the bitterly fought-for concession having been attained, there
was no reason for continuing the bloody war between the government and
the people. The Manifesto of 30 (17) October, 1905, pledged liberty of
speech, press, and public meetings, equal rights for all, and a
representative government with a comparatively liberal election-system.
Only those who happened to abide in Russia during the autumn months of
1905 are able to comprehend the indescribable joy of the population at
the announcement of the Manifesto. An intoxication of happiness reigned
all over the country, strangers embraced and kissed each other, everyone
was addressed with the hearty "comrade," a sincere feeling of
brotherhood and mutual love overfilled all hearts, and from Finland to
farthest Siberia, from the polar regions to the Black Sea, over the
entire vast empire thundered the exalted cry: "Long live liberty!"
The enchantment, however, was of a short duration. The people soon found
out that they had put too much confidence in the paper pledge of the
Czar, and that they should not have laid their weapons aside. The solemn
promise declared from the heights of the throne was broken. One after
one the pledged liberties were taken away, and a wave of brutal
repression and massacre swept over the tormented land. Only too late one
could recollect with the American Russologue Joubert, the ever-new
aphorism of Bertrand: "The tree of liberty can grow only when it is
watered with the blood of the tyrants."
The government recovered its senses after the first collapse, and
decided to play its game on the obscurity and ignorance of the army. The
simple-minded soldiers, themselves miserable peasants or workingmen,
were ordered to shoot and flog their fathers and brothers, their friends
and defenders; and they fulfilled their official duty with incomparable
brutality. The revolution was betrayed and strangled. Its leaders were
shot, hanged, or banished; the free press shut up, liberal parties and
meetings forbidden, and once more the monster-bureaucracy held in its
claws the palpitating unhappy land.
V
Let us return to the problem: What is the matter with Russia? What is
the cause of its general decay and demoralization? The revolution proved
a failure. The masses--the army particularly--were unprepared for
carrying out the long cherished ideal. But that was not all. The Russian
revolutionary movement has been used to failures and temporary
collapses, the organizations have been destroyed and abolished many a
time, and yet like a Phoenix they would arise from out the ashes and
manifest their significant existence again and again. The cause, to all
appearances, lies with the modernized system applied by the bureaucracy
in its war with the people--the demoralization of the people. What
Nicolas I. could not attain through his iron despotism; what Alexander
III. failed to accomplish by means of crudest oppressions and
restrictions carried through by such arch-tyrants as Pobyedonostzev, D.
Tolstoy, Muravyov, etc.; what had been beyond the reach of Nicolas II.
during the dictatorships of his genial assistants of the type of Plehve,
the hero of Kishinev, or General Trepov, the man of Bloody Sunday
(January, 1905),--this important point was won by the gentleman-butcher,
the hangman in the frock-coat, the late premier Stolypin. The credit for
having succeeded in breaking the spirit of the nation and for having
brought it to the verge of demoralization is largely due to his policy.
To accomplish a _coup d'état_, to abolish the Douma and reinstall the
old order of things, was the easiest attainable measure for Stolypin at
the time of his appointment to the highest post in the state. The
opposition was silenced by military force, the servile European
financiers renewed their enormous credit to the "pacified" Czardom which
had been on the brink of bankruptcy, and it seemed an obvious step to
declare _urbi et orbi_ the successful restoration of the ancient
autocracy. But Mr. Stolypin was a politician of Bismarck's school. He
loathed the laurels of a Pyrrhic victory. The rich experience of his
ill-famed predecessors had taught him that the more harshly he
suppressed the opposition the deeper it would grow and develop in the
"Underground"; that the closer he stopped up the yawning crater the more
intense and terrible would be the inevitable explosion. A complete
return to the old regime would again unite the entire nation within and
the civilized world from without in common hatred for the outworn
Asiatic despoty. Instead the shrewd premier chose the old Cæsarean
maxim, _Divide et impera_.
To incite racial hatred among the heterogeneous strata of the one
hundred and thirty millions population; to provoke the meanest mob
instincts and to flatter the lowest chauvinistic sentiments; to create
mutual ill feelings in all ranks of society by various provocative
means; to incarnate espionage in the national life as a virtue; to
corrupt and prostitute all state institutions, so as to kill every sense
of confidence in the mercenary justice and respect for all authorities;
to arrest intellectual progress by barring and banishing the best
professors, by forbidding enlightenment organizations, by distracting
young minds from social problems through unscrupulous patronage of
nationalistic societies in the high schools and universities, of "easy
amusements" and all but clean sports; to augment crude force to the
degree of absolute right and sole law,--these have been the chief
strategic measures of the modernized absolutism.
It is true that a similar course, although on a considerably smaller
scale, has been pursued by the Russian government all through the
nineteenth century. The originality of Stolypin's methods and of those
of his less original successors lies in their up-to-dateness, their
quasi-modernism, their pseudo-constitutionalism, their hypocritical
jesuitism. Actually Russia represents the same old Asiatic despotism as
of olden days. Officially, however, it wears with a clumsy awkwardness
the European frock-coat of parliamentarism. It is a modern Janus, with
an artificial human expression towards the outside world, and with its
natural primitive bestial front at home.
The Douma, the long-cherished ideal of the people, was transformed from
a house of representatives into an ante-room of the government, into a
shameful profanation of parliamentarism. The first two Doumas gave an
overwhelming opposition to the government, and the latter found an easy
way to get rid of its disagreeable opponents by dissolving the
Assemblies and suing the deputies as rebels. The unscrupulous Senate
issued a series of "modifications" to the electoral laws, and thus
insured for the later Doumas a "desirable" element. Having deprived the
majority of the populace of voting rights, giving all means of
assistance and protection to the "Black Hundreds"--criminal societies
flourishing under the standard of patriotism, terrifying the average
voter and driving him into political absenteeism, the government
succeeded in gaining a majority of obsequious manikins who have sold the
people for a pottage of lentils and have debased the Douma to a purely
instrumental force in the hands of Stolypin & Co.
Even the moderate liberals of the type of Professor Paul Milyoukov or
Prince Eugene Troubetzkoy, who have been ardent supporters of the Douma
as a means of educating the people on constitutional ideas,--even they
are gradually losing their rosy expectations. Representative Maklakov, a
man to whom even the late Stolypin, his bitterest antagonist, paid the
highest respect, in his report on the Douma cried in despair: "One could
have hoped that the Douma was useless. Alas! It is getting harmful."
VI
About a year ago the writer of these lines thus summarized the
"Contemporaneous Russian Nihilism":
The bureaucracy celebrates its victory over the people. The
heretofore united forces are divided, the sacred ideal polluted,
the bitterly-fought-for constitution brought down to a mocking
buffonade, and the "Mighty Ham," whose coming was predicted a few
years ago by the illustrious Merezhkovski, has his day in the
degradated country. The Russian giant who had temporarily
awakened after a slumber of centuries, snores again hopelessly.
Over the vast continent reigns a suffocating atmosphere of
despair, decay, and demoralization. A thick fog of nihilism, not
the Nihilism of Turgenyev's times, but nihilism in its direct
negative meaning, enwraps the martyred land of the Czar, and one
can hardly discern a bright spot on the cloudy horizon.
In the past year the "cloudy horizon" has slightly brightened. Grave
symptoms have appeared in the seemingly calm atmosphere which suggested
Vereshchagin's _All is Quiet on Shipka_. Notwithstanding the strict
censorship of dispatches one could easily discern from the news items
that the volcano has not been extinguished yet. True, the orgy of the
reactionary forces has not abated; freedom of spoken and written word is
still a myth; the majority of the Douma is "a trillion times blacker
than black"--to use a Bodenheimesque figure; the revolutionary
organizations are dragging a pitiful existence in the underground, and
the average citizen is still seeking safety from the cossack's knout in
phlegmatic splein. Yet signs of gratifying unrest have been manifestly
displayed of late in various camps of the Empire. The rapidly developing
capitalistic class has come to realize the deadening effect of the
bureaucratic regime on industry and commerce, and resolutions have been
passed at numerous conventions of manufacturers, bankers, and other big
business-men, condemning the stifling policy of the archaic government.
The tragicomedy of the Beilis process which revealed the puerile
helplessness of the rotten State justice, has united all cultured Russia
in a tremendous protest against the existing order; lawyers,
journalists, physicians, artists, teachers, and men of other liberal
professions, signed fiery resolutions whose _leit-motif_ was Chekhov's
sad verdict--"Such life is impossible!" The unrest among the army, and
particularly among the navy, has had a great symptomatic significance.
Multitudinous arrests among soldiers and sailors, sporadic trials of
revolutionary military organizations, frequent transportations and
transfers of regiments and vessels, declaration of martial law in some
important ports,--such have been the albatrosses of the oncoming storm.
After the crash of the proletarian uprising of 1905 the remnants of the
revolutionists have concentrated all their forces against the stanchest
citadel of Czardom--the army and the navy, justly considering that only
a military _coup d'état_ could change things in present day Russia. The
situation became definitely threatening last July, during the visit of
President Poincaré, when the Russian proletariat, defying all manners
and _bon ton_ towards "allied France," suddenly and unexpectedly marred
the display of friendly demonstrations by an epidemic outburst of
general strikes in St. Petersburg (or _must_ we, by order of Nicolas
II., say--Petrograd?) and in other metropolises.