I have your printed circular of 25 January, with an enclosed
bill for a subscription to the UNPOPULAR REVIEW through 1918.
I have, perhaps unfortunately, not received the January issue
of the review, which you say you sent me. This is no doubt due
to my removal from Princeton, New Jersey, and to the lethargic
Princeton post-office.
I had several reasons for not renewing my subscription. One
was a need for economy, and the feeling that I could better do
without the UNPOPULAR than without such a periodical as the
_New Republic_. Of the two, the UNPOPULAR mirrors much the
more closely some of my own convictions and principles; but I
find the _New Republic_ indispensable if I am to keep in touch
with the aims and purposes of present-day American Liberalism.
Another reason I had for not renewing was that the UNPOPULAR,
starting its career with the very greatest promise, had, to my
humble mind, managed very quickly to run up various
side-tracks and blind alleys of opinion, and has
since--amiably but with complacency--stuck there. And there I
am content to leave it, for in losing reality it has lost
life.
The lightness of touch which its editor has creditably sought
to impart to its contents will not do as a substitute for
life. And even that attempt has failed; it has resulted too
often in mere pertness or a lumbering buffoonery never
agreeable to contemplate, and least of all when invoked in aid
of a cause that demands above all earnest conviction and
anything but a stupid complacency from its adherents.
Yours faithfully,
(signed) ROBERT SHAFER.
It may be interesting to compare with this a letter from another
correspondent with a German name, printed in Number 17.