from literature. Once there were no flappers and then F. Scott
Fitzgerald wrote "This Side of Paradise" and created them in shoals.
Germany had a fearful time after the publication of Goethe's "Werther"
because striplings began to contract the habit of suicide through the
influence of the book and went about dying all over the place. And all
Scandinavia echoed with slamming doors for years just because Ibsen sent
Nora out into the night. In fact the lock on that door has never worked
very well since. When "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was written things came to
such a pass that a bloodhound couldn't see a cake of ice without jumping
on it and beginning to bay.
If authors and dramatists can do so much with their limited public,
think of the potential power of the maker of films, who has his tens of
thousands to every single serf of the writing man. The films can make us
a new people and we rather think they are doing it. Fifteen years ago
Americans were contemptuous of all Latin races because of their habit of
talking with gestures. It was considered the part of patriotic dignity
to stand with your hands in your pockets and to leave all expression, if
any, to the voice alone.
Watch an excited American to-day and you will find his gestures as
sweeping as those of any Frenchman. As soon as he is jarred in the
slightest degree out of calm he immediately begins to follow
subconscious promptings and behave like his favorite motion picture
actor. Nor does the resemblance end necessarily with mere externals.
Hiram Johnson, the senator from California, is reported to be the most
inveterate movie fan in America, and it is said that he never takes
action on a public question without first asking himself, "What would
Mary Pickford do under similar circumstances?" In other words the
senator's position on the proposal to increase the import tax on
nitrates may be traced directly to the fact that he spent the previous
evening watching "Little Lord Fauntleroy."
Even the speaking actors, most contemptuous of all motion picture
critics, are slaves of the screen. At an audible drama in a theater the
other day we happened to see a young actor who had once given high
promise of achievement in what was then known as the legitimate.
Eventually he went into motion pictures, but now he was back for a short
engagement. We were shocked to observe that he tried to express every
line he uttered with his features and his hands regardless of the fact
that he had words to help him. He spoke the lines, but they seemed to
him merely incidental. We mean that when his part required him to say,
"It is exactly nineteen minutes after two," he tried to do it by
gestures and facial expression. This is a difficult feat, particularly
as most young players run a little fast or a little slow and are rather
in need of regulating. When the young man left the theater at the close
of the performance we sought him out and reproached him bitterly on the
ground of his bad acting.
"Where do you get that stuff?" we asked.
"In the movies," he admitted frankly enough.
There was no dispute concerning facts. We merely could not agree on the
question of whether or not it was true that he had become a terrible
actor. Life came into the conversation. Something was said by somebody
(we can't remember which one of us originated it) about holding the
mirror up to nature. The actor maintained that everyday common folk
talked and acted exactly like characters in the movies whenever they
were stirred by emotion. We made a bet and it was to be decided by what
we observed in an hour's walk. At the southwest corner of Thirty-seventh
street and Third avenue, we came upon two men in an altercation. One had
already laid a menacing hand upon the coat collar of the other. We
crowded close. The smaller man tried to shake himself loose from the
grip of his adversary. And he said, "Unhand me." He had met the movies
and he was theirs.
The discrepancy in size between the two men was so great that my actor
friend stepped between them and asked, "What's all this row about?" The
big man answered: "He has spoken lightly of a woman's name."
That was enough for us. We paid the bet and went away convinced of the
truth of the actor's boast that the movies have already bent life to
their will. At first it seemed to us deplorable, but the longer we
reflected on the matter the more compensations crept in.
Somehow or other we remembered a tale of Kipling's called "The Finest
Story In The World," which dealt with a narrow-chested English clerk,
who, by some freak or other, remembered his past existences. There were
times when he could tell with extraordinary vividness his adventures on
a Roman galley and later on an expedition of the Norsemen to America. He
told all these things to a writer who was going to put them into a book,
but before much material had been supplied the clerk fell in love with a
girl in a tobacconist's and suddenly forgot all his previous
existences. Kipling explained that the lords of life and death simply
had to step in and close the doors of the past as soon as the young man
fell in love because love-making was once so much more glorious than now
that we would all be single if only we remembered.
But love-making is likely to have its renaissance from now on since the
movies have come into our lives. Douglas Fairbanks is in a sense the
rival of every young man in America. And likewise no young woman can
hope to touch the fancy of a male unless she is in some ways more
fetching than Mary Pickford. In other words, pace has been provided for
lovers. For ten cents we can watch courtship being conducted by experts.
The young man who has been to the movies will be unable to avail himself
of the traditional ineptitude under such circumstances. Once upon a time
the manly thing to do was mumble and make a botch of it. The movies have
changed all that. Courtship will come to have a technique. A young man
will no more think of trying to propose without knowing how than he
would attempt a violin concert without ever having practiced. The
phantom rivals of the screen will be all about him. He must win to
himself something of their fire and gesture. Love-making is not going to
be as easy as it once was. Those who have already wed before the
competition grew so acute should consider themselves fortunate. Consider
for instance the swain who loves a lady who has been brought up on the
picture plays of Bill Hart. That young man who hopes to supplant the
shadow idol will have to be able to shoot Indians at all ranges from
four hundred yards up, and to ride one hundred thousand miles without
once forgetting to keep his face to the camera.
XXX
THE ORTHODOX CHAMPION
The entire orthodox world owes a debt to Benny Leonard. In all the other
arts, philosophies, religions and what nots conservatism seems to be
crumbling before the attacks of the radicals. A stylist may generally be
identified to-day by his bloody nose. Even in Leonard's profession of
pugilism the correct method has often been discredited of late.
It may be remembered that George Bernard Shaw announced before "the
battle of the century" that Carpentier ought to be a fifty to one
favorite in the betting. It was the technique of the Frenchman which
blinded Shaw to the truth. Every man in the world must be in some
respect a standpatter. The scope of heresy in Shaw stops short of the
prize ring. His radicalism is not sufficiently far reaching to crawl
through the ropes. When Carpentier knocked out Beckett with one
perfectly delivered punch he also jarred Shaw. He knocked him loose from
some of his cynical contempt for the conventions. Mr. Shaw might
continue to be in revolt against the well-made play, but he surrendered
his heart wholly to the properly executed punch.
But Carpentier, the stylist, fell before Dempsey, the mauler, in spite
of the support of the intellectuals. It seemed once again that all the
rules were wrong. Benny Leonard remains the white hope of the orthodox.
In lightweight circles, at any rate, old-fashioned proprieties are still
effective. No performer in any art has ever been more correct than
Leonard. He follows closely all the best traditions of the past. His
left hand jab could stand without revision in any textbook. The manner
in which he feints, ducks, sidesteps and hooks is unimpeachable. The
crouch contributed by some of the modernists is not in the repertoire of
Leonard. He stands up straight like a gentleman and a champion and is
always ready to hit with either hand.
His fight with Rocky Kansas at Madison Square Garden was advertised as
being for the lightweight championship of the world. As a matter of fact
much more than that was at stake. Spiritually, Saint-Saens, Brander
Matthews, Henry Arthur Jones, Kenyon Cox, and Henry Cabot Lodge were in
Benny Leonard's corner. His defeat would, by implication, have given
support to dissonance, dadaism, creative evolution and bolshevism. Rocky
Kansas does nothing according to rule. His fighting style is as formless
as the prose of Gertrude Stein. One finds a delightfully impromptu
quality in Rocky's boxing. Most of the blows which he tries are
experimental. There is no particular target. Like the young poet who
shot an arrow into the air, Rocky Kansas tosses off a right hand swing
every once and so often and hopes that it will land on somebody's jaw.
But with the opening gong Rocky Kansas tore into Leonard. He was gauche
and inaccurate but terribly persistent. The champion jabbed him
repeatedly with a straight left which has always been considered the
proper thing to do under the circumstances. Somehow or other it did not
work. Leonard might as well have been trying to stand off a rhinoceros
with a feather duster. Kansas kept crowding him. In the first clinch
Benny's hair was rumpled and a moment later his nose began to bleed. The
incident was a shock to us. It gave us pause and inspired a sneaking
suspicion that perhaps there was something the matter with Tennyson
after all. Here were two young men in the ring and one was quite correct
in everything which he did and the other was all wrong. And the wrong
one was winning. All the enthusiastic Rocky Kansas partisans in the
gallery began to split infinitives to show their contempt for Benny
Leonard and all other stylists. Macaulay turned over twice in his grave
when Kansas began to lead with his right hand.
But traditions are not to be despised. Form may be just as tough in
fiber as rebellion. Not all the steadfastness of the world belongs to
heretics. Even though his hair was mussed and his nose bleeding, Benny
continued faithful to the established order. At last his chance came.
The young child of nature who was challenging for the championship
dropped his guard and Leonard hooked a powerful and entirely orthodox
blow to the conventional point of the jaw. Down went Rocky Kansas. His
past life flashed before him during the nine seconds in which he
remained on the floor and he wished that he had been more faithful as a
child in heeding the advice of his boxing teacher. After all, the old
masters did know something. There is still a kick in style, and
tradition carries a nasty wallop.
XXXI
WITH A STEIN ON THE TABLE
Half a League would be better than one. Perhaps a quarter section would
be still better. The thing that sank Mr. Wilson's project, so far as
America was concerned, was the machinery. It was too heavy. Not so much
was needed. The only essential thing was a large round table and a
pleasant room held under at least one year's lease. Of course, it should
have been the right sort of table. If they had put knives and forks and,
better yet, glasses upon the one in Paris, instead of ink and paper, we
might already have a better world. Beer and light wines can settle
subjects which defy all the subtleties possible to ink.
What the world needs, then, is not so much a league as an international
beer night to be held at regular intervals by representatives of the
nations. Good beer and enough of it would have settled the whole problem
of the covenants which were going to be open and did not turn out that
way. The little meetings would have a persuasive privacy, and yet they
would not be secret to any destructive extent. An alert reporter hanging
about the front door could not fail to hear the strains of "He's a jolly
good fellow" drifting down the stairs from the conference room and, if
he were a journalist of any ability, he would have no difficulty in
surmising that the crowd was entertaining the delegate from Germany and
discussing indemnities.
Some persons were not quite fair in criticizing the shortcomings of
President Wilson at Paris. It was easy to seize upon "open covenants"
and to demolish his sincerity by pointing out the secrecy with which
negotiations were carried on. It is sentimentally satisfying to every
liberal and radical in the world to declare that all the walls should
have come down and to continue this criticism by suggesting that the
Arms conference ought to have been taken out of the Pan American
Building and transferred to Tex Rickard's arena on Boyle's Thirty Acres,
or the Yale Bowl. The notion is fascinating because it permits the
possibility of cheering sections and enables one to picture Henry Cabot
Lodge leaping to his feet every now and again and asking all the men
with the R. R. banners (Reactionary Republicans) to join him in nine
long rahs for the freedom of the seas. The delegates, of course, would
be numbered so that the spectators could tell who was doing the kicking.
It is appealing and we wish it could be done that way, but it is not
sound. We all know how bitter and destructive are legal battles which
have their first hearing in the newspapers. We also remember how
tenacious have been many of the struggles between capital and labor just
so long as the leaders of either side were talking to each other across
eight-column headlines instead of a table.
One may counter by calling to mind various evil things which have come
to the world from the tops of tables, but we must insist again upon
stressing the point that these were not tables which supported food and
drink. In Paris various points were lost to democracy because the
supporters of the right were outstayed by the champions of evil. In our
little club room it would be hard to put such pressure upon anybody. He
would need to do no more than shout for the waiter to fill up his mug
again and intrench himself for the evening. The most attractive thing
about our suggestion is that though it sounds like frivolous foolery it
actually is nothing of the sort. We are willing to accept modifications,
but the scheme would work. We have seen the pacifying effects of food
and drink upon warring factions too many times not to respect them.
Once, at a dinner we heard Max Eastman talk across a table to Judge Gary
and both enjoyed it. We do not mean to suggest that the two men arose
with all their previous ideas of the conduct of the world changed. Judge
Gary did not offer, in spite of the eloquence of Eastman, to curtail the
working day in the mills of the United States Steel Company, nor did the
editor of _The Liberator_ promise that thereafter he would be more
kindly disposed in writing about universal military training. But both
men were disposed to listen. Gary did not rush to the telephone to
summon a Federal attorney, and there was no disposition on the part of
Eastman to call the proletariat up into immediate arms. The most
friendly thing which anybody ever said about Mr. Wilson's League of
Nations came from those opponents of the scheme who called it "nothing
but a debating society."
Talk is lint for the wounds of the world. The guns cannot begin until
the statesmen have had their say. Any device which provides a pleasant
place and an audience for the orators in power is distinctly a move to
end war. The trouble with ultimatums is not only that they are ugly but
that they are short. If certain gentlemen from Serbia could have been
brought face to face with other gentlemen from Austria and empowered to
thrash it out the dispute between the two nations would by no means be
settled by now, but it would still be in a talking stage.
Arguments must be fostered and preserved. It may be a little tiresome to
hear premiers saying, "Is that so?" to one another, but the satisfaction
derived from such exchanges is enough to keep the conflicting parties
from seeking a blood restoration of national egos. Food and drink are
not only the greatest instigators but the best preservers of free speech
in the world. Undoubtedly everybody in his time has heard some
toastmaster or other insult a prominent citizen a few feet away in a
manner which would be unsafe on the public highway and nothing has
happened. It has been passed off as something wholly suitable to the
occasion. As we listened to Max Eastman talk across the table to Judge
Gary we wondered whether anybody would have even thought for a moment of
sending Debs to jail if he had only had the good fortune to talk from
behind a barricade of knives and forks. These are the ultimate and most
effective weapons of all peaceful men. With one of each in front of him
even a revolutionist may bare his heart and still be safe from the
bayonets of the military.
Of course, the value of the weapons is not unknown to the conservatives
as well. Many a rampant reformer has gone to Washington and has seen his
ideals drown one by one before his eyes in the soup. For years England
managed to muddle along with Ireland by inviting nationalists out to
dinner. With the spread and development of civilization the price of
pottage has gone up. To-day we can afford to laugh at poor ignorant and
deluded Jacob who let his pottage go for a mess of birthright.
In the light of these admissions it would be impossible to contend that
all the ills of the world could be solved by the device of international
beer nights. Even well fed men are not perfect. Alcohol is benign, but
it does not canonize. Schemes would go on even over demitasses. There
would be stratagems and surprises. And yet to our mind the stratagem,
even of a statesman, can never be so potent for harm in the world as the
stratagem of a general. Diplomacy is an evil game, chiefly because it
has been so exclusive. Our little club would be large enough to admit
all the delegates of the world. The only house rule would be "No checks
cashed."
We have no idea that the heart of man is not more important than his
stomach. The world will not be made over more closely to the heart's
desire until we are of a better breed. But while we are waiting,
friendly talks about a table may count for something. We might manage to
swap a groaning world for a groaning board. There is sanction for hope
in the words of the song. We know, don't we, that it's always fair
weather when good fellows get together with a stein on the table. All
America needs, then, to make the world safer for democracy is the stein
and the good fellows.
XXXII
ART FOR ARGUMENT'S SAKE
All editors are divided into two parts. In one group are those who think
that anybody who can make a good bomb can undoubtedly fashion a great
sonnet. The members of the other class believe that if a man loves his
country he is necessarily well fitted to be a book reviewer.
As a matter of fact, new terminology is coming into the business of
criticism. A few years ago the critic who was displeased with a book
called it "sensational" or "sentimental" or something like that. To-day
he would voice his disapproval by writing "Pro-German" or "Bolshevist."
Authors are no longer evaluated in terms of aesthetics, but rather from
the point of view of political economy. Indeed, to-day we have hardly
such a thing as good writers and bad writers. They have become instead
either "sound" or "dangerous." A sound author is one with whose views
you are in agreement.
So tightly are the lines drawn that the criticism of the leading members
of each side can be accurately predicted in advance. Show me the cover
of a war novel, and let me observe that it is called "The Great Folly,"
and I will guarantee to foreshadow with a high degree of accuracy just
what the critic of The New York _Times_ will say about it and also the
critic of _The Liberator_. Even if it happened to be called "The Glory
of Shrapnel," the guessing would be just as easy.
The manner in which anybody says anything now whether in prose, verse,
music or painting is entirely secondary in the minds of all critical
publications. Reviewers look for motives. Symphonies are dismissed as
seditious, and lyrics are closely scanned to see whether or not their
rhythms are calculated to upset the established order without due
recourse to the ballot. Nor has this particular reviewer any intention
of suggesting that such activity is entirely vain and fanciful. He
remembers that only a month ago he began a thrilling adventure story
called "The Lost Peach Pit," only to discover, when he was half through,
that it was a tract in favor of a higher import duty on potash.
A vivid novel about the war by John Dos Passos has been issued under the
title "Three Soldiers." One of the chief characters was a creative
musician who broke under the rigor of army discipline which was
repugnant to him. Nobody who wrote about the book undertook to discuss
whether or not the author had painted a persuasive picture of the
struggle in the soul of a credible man. Instead they argued as to just
what proportion of men in the American army were discontented, and the
final critical verdict is being withheld until statistics are available
as to how many of them were musicians. Those who disliked the book did
not speak of Mr. Dos Passos as either a realist or a romanticist. They
simply called him a traitor and let it go at that. The enthusiasts on
the other side neglected to say anything about his style because they
needed the space to suggest that he ought to be the next candidate for
president from the Socialist party.
Speaking as a native-born American (Brooklyn--1888) who once voted for a
Socialist for membership in the Board of Aldermen, the writer must admit
that he has found the radical solidarity of critical approval or dissent
more trying than that of the conservatives. Again and again he has
found, in _The Liberator_ and elsewhere, able young men, who ought to
know better, praising novels for no reason on earth except that they
were radical. If the novelist said that life in a middlewestern town was
dreary and evil he was bound to be praised by the socialist reviewers.
On the other hand, any author who found in this same middle west a
community or an individual not hopelessly stunted in mind and in morals,
was immediately scourged as a viciously sentimental observer who had
probably been one of the group which fixed upon the nomination of
President Harding late at night behind the locked doors of a little room
in a big hotel.
The enthusiasm of the radical critics extends not only to rebels against
existing governmental principles and moral conventions, but to all those
who dare to write in any new manner. There seems to be a certain
confusion whereby free verse is held to be a movement in the direction
of free speech.
Novels which begin in the middle and work first forward and then back,
win favor as blows against the bourgeois idea that a straight line is
the shortest distance between two points. Of course, the radical author
can do almost anything the conservative does and still retain the
admiration of his fellows by dint of a very small amount of tact.
Rhapsodies on love will be damned as sentimental if the author has been
injudicious enough to allow his characters to marry, but he can retain
exactly the same language if he is careful to add a footnote that
nothing is contemplated except the freest of free unions. A few works
are praised by both sides because each finds a different interpretation
for the same set of facts. Thus, the authors of "Dulcy" were surprised
to find themselves warmly greeted in one of the Socialist dailies as
young men who had struck a blow for government ownership of all
essential industries merely because they had introduced a big business
man into their play and, for the purposes of comic relief, had made him
a fool.