last ten years in order to understand her present situation and
perspectives. The Russian people were neither prepared nor desirous of
fighting against Japan for the Yalou forests, a problem that interested
only a group of greedy capitalists. Nicolas was egged on by the Kaiser,
who was more than anxious to involve his neighbor in a mess in the Far
East, and thus to divert his attention from the Near East where the
interests of the Triple Alliance demanded the elimination, or at least
the weakening, of the formidable ally of France. The Czar caught the
bait, and was rewarded with the Treaty of Portsmouth, which put an end
to Russia’s ambitions in Manchuria and crippled her international
prestige, to the immediate advantage of Germany and Austria. The
defeated bear was forcibly driven to introspection. Her navy almost
totally destroyed, her army decimated and demoralized, her population
torn by revolutions and civil warfare, Russia faced a Herculean task.
The government was confronted with a double problem, to quench the
internal conflagration, and to get ready for “retaliation.” The first
aim was more or less achieved; the revolutionists were hanged, shot,
imprisoned, exiled; the moderate elements and the European financiers,
who demanded a guarantee for their enormous loans, were hood-winked by a
semblance of parliamentarism, the butaforial Duma, an institution
elected and managed practically by the Czar’s ministers. With feverish
energy the government set out to carry through its second purpose. The
Dumas were forced to sanction gigantic war-budgets, and the entire
bureaucratic state was thrown into a crucible of radical, sweeping
reforms. The reconstruction of the army has become the all-important
issue. Without naming the potential enemy, all parties, except the
Socialists, agreed that Russia must concentrate her forces on the
building up in the fastest possible time of an enormous, efficient,
_modern_ army. The majority of the people differed with the government,
however, on one point, as to who should carry out the great task. The
people have had little confidence in the capability of the bureaucracy
for self-reformation; they have applied to them the Russian saying,
“Only the grave can change the hunchback.” Alexander Guchkov, while
president of the Duma and later as an influential private citizen, has
revealed the hopelessly rotten state of affairs in the military and
civil organization of the country, managed by unscrupulous thieves and
grafters, by useless sinecure-holders from among the nobility and the
royal family. The reorganization of the state, pointed out Mr. Guchkov
and his followers, must be taken from the hands of the effeminate and
imbecile Grand Dukes, and entrusted to representatives of the nation.
For such a heresy Guchkov had to resign from his post as head of the
“parliament,” and the work of reconstruction continued to be handled by
the old _chinovnicks_, the puppets of the Czar and of his uncles and
cousins.
Public opinion in Russia has been crystallizing simultaneously with
military preparation and diplomatic negotiations. Austria’s annexation
of Bosnia and Herzegovina gave Russian diplomacy the gravest slap since
the Berlin Congress; Wilhelm’s threat to appear in “shining armor” to
the assistance of his ally compelled foreign minister Sasonov to
withdraw his protest against Austria’s act. The humiliation was felt
deeply by all classes; the Russian people have come to regard Germany as
their bitterest foe, responsible not only for their past and present
military and diplomatic fiascoes, but largely responsible also for the
internal retrogressive policy of their government. It has been widely
known that during the last revolution the Kaiser had counselled Nicolas
“unrelenting firmness,” and had even offered to “loan” his army for the
suppression of the uprising. The popularity of the present war in Russia
is thus explained. The conservatives see in it an opportunity to
strengthen the power of the autocracy through drummed up patriotism and
loyalty to the throne; the liberals hope that with the defeat of Germany
there will come an end to the “dark influence” of the Prussian
retrogrades on Russia’s policy; the masses are eager to fight against
the “Antichrists,” the enemies of the Slavs and of the Slavonic church.
Whatever the outcome of this war may be, it has done inestimable service
for the awakening of Russia. The country has been elevated and purified
morally and nationally. The abolition of vodka, the unification of
differing parties and of hostile races, the liberal concessions granted
by the government,—these are the few tangible results of the war that
can be checked off already. But there is considerably more to come. The
ignominious failures of the army have pointed a burning finger of
accusation against the real enemy of the people, the bureaucracy. The
Russian soldiers have fought like lions ... led by asses. The shameless
lack of munition, the use of antiquated guns, the wretched equipment of
the soldiers, the inefficiency of field-hospitals, the continuing graft
in giving out contracts, the presence in the army of such time-proved
nonentities as General Rennenkampf and other Manchurian celebrities,
these facts have shown to the people that the Czar and his clique have
forgotten everything and have learned nothing. The general
dissatisfaction in army circles and among the civilians may bring about
a storm that will sweep away the tottering throne of Nicolas Romanov.
This is not a mere theoretic conjecture. Since 1904 an intense
revolutionary propaganda has been carried on within the army and navy.
The germ of rebellion has penetrated not only the common soldiers, who
are largely recruited from among the down-trodden peasants and
workingmen, but also the officers, who have learned a good deal in the
last ten years. A military _coup d’état_ after the model of the Young
Turks has become a popular idea with the intelligent officers who cannot
fail to see that the autocratic régime is a detrimental anachronism.
There have been persistent rumors about the high ambitions of the
ex-Supreme Commander. Grand Duke Nicolas is a happy exception among the
degenerated Romanovs. He has been long considered as the “strong man,”
and therefore feared and opposed to by the Court-camarilla. Necessity
compelled the Czar to appoint him commander; his appointment was
insistently recommended by Joffre and Kitchener. Unlike Kuropatkin, the
Grand Duke refused to follow dictations from Petrograd. When in early
spring he received an order from the Czar to evacuate Warsaw, the
commander telegraphed back that he was willing to obey, but that he
would move his army against the capital. The order was recalled. The
fact that he was recently removed from his post and exiled to Caucasia
shows the growing fears of the Czar, who has lost his head and is hewing
the branch on which he is still seated. The Grand Duke had performed a
difficult, although not very spectacular task—that of saving the
_unarmed_ army from the iron grip of the Germans. Petrograd demanded
“action,” as it did ten years ago from Kuropatkin. Now that the Czar has
assumed the commandership of the army one may expect rapid “actions,”
Sedans and Tzusimas and an early peace treaty as honorable as that of
Portsmouth.
The sentiments of the population were characteristically voiced by the
Jewish member of the Duma, Friedman. In his speech he recounted the
unbelievable atrocities of the Russian authorities performed over the
Jews in the war-zone. Yet he said: “It is true we are without rights, we
are oppressed beyond endurance. But we know the foundation of the evil.
It emanates from these benches (pointing to the Ministers). We are
persecuted by the Russian government and not by the Russian people. It
is not to be wondered at, therefore, that we are content to bind our
fate loyally and faithfully with the fate of the Russian people,
whatever may be done to us by the Russian government.” The best of
Russia are unanimously determined that “the foundation of the evil” must
go. In the last few weeks various bodies of the Russian commonwealth
have issued grave resolutions condemning the government and demanding
democratization of the state. A revolution seems inevitable, but, to
repeat, a military revolution is most likely to take place. The bulk of
the virile population is within the fighting ranks, and it is there, in
the army, that the national nerve pulsates at present. Whether it be
Grand Duke Nicolas, or another capable and popular leader, it is to be
expected that this time the army will pronounce the verdict over the
imbecile Czar and will cleanse the Augean stables of the corrupted
bureaucracy.
K.
Sophomoric Epigrams
There is no wisdom but youth. There is no vision but the unafraid
impulse of unfettered nerves. The follies of youth are the enduring
expressions of art. Man loses his Ego at thirty and becomes conceited.
He becomes conscious of others. Life becomes a quibble. But youth!
Youth, the flower before it has decayed into the mellow moss of age.
Youth that knows not itself or the world. Youth that laughs at tears and
weeps at laughter. Youth that paints queer pictures at which the critics
smile. Illogical youth; arrogant youth; forever annoying the world’s
stagnation. Youth capering like a fawn in the altar places of the holy.
Ho! you with the pedantic whiskers and the ossified serenity lurking
like a fog in your eye—there is no wisdom but youth. Ho! you with the
murk of maturity thick upon your tongue—will you shape morals? I will
unshape them. Will you rear dogmas? I will upset them. Will you burden
the world with your heavy sagacity? I will ignore it. Ho, you didactic
formulator, debauched with facts, man is born a butterfly and crawls to
his grave a worm. Man is born young and dies old. Man is born wise and
dies a fool. The ideas of youth are his wings. Do you see the lightning
maze of colors forever flashing over your head? It is youth.
Ah! old Ossifus, your erudition is but the husk of my spirit. And my
spirit is the shop-boy whistling on his way to work, joyous without
reason for you have proved him an economic slave, stunted and damned
forever to rot in chains. My spirit is the lover going to his
ruin-woman, and tumbling out of heaven with a laugh. Ho! ho! old
Petrifus, you have proved her the root of evil, the despoiler of
greatness, the velvet vandal of illusions, and yet and yet....
And he is the artist running wild in the china-closet of the past. Have
you anything sacred, old whiskers? Have you something labelled right and
something labelled wrong? Show it to him. He will do for it. He is the
eternal monster killing the dead.
There is no beauty but youth. There is no beauty in age. Ho! you
doddering banality with the superior tolerance in your stutter, you are
decomposing on your feet. Age is soiled. Age is dirty. Age drips with
the phlegm of life. Age is the unclean residue in the cup.
Ho!—there is no tomorrow.
Blessed are the young in heart for they shall be God.
“A. E. D.”
Henri and Manship
One grows weary of the quibbling, the petty running about in circles of
critics, would-be-critics, and students with the eyes of their teachers
disputing “techniques,” values, and standards in regard to paintings
that somehow seem to live outside any limits pedants have placed. Out
from the noise the voice of the artist arises with a strength and
clearness in words similar to the quality of his paintings. Writing in
the February _Craftsman_ of this year, telling of his work, his ideas,
and his “people,” Robert Henri has this to say:
“My love of mankind is individual. I am patriotic only about what I
admire, and my devotion to humanity burns as brightly for Europe as for
America. It flames up swiftly for Mexico if I am painting the peon
there; it warms towards the bull fighter of Spain if in spite of its
cruelty there is that element in his art which I find beautiful; it
intensifies before the Irish peasant whose love, poetry, simplicity, and
humor have enriched my existence just as completely as though these
people were of my own country and my own hearthstone. Everywhere I see
at times this beautiful expression of the dignity of life to which I
respond with a wish to preserve this beauty of humanity for my friends
to enjoy.... The Chinese American girl who has found coquetry in new
freedom; the peon, a symbol of a destroyed civilization in Mexico, and
the Indian who works as one in slavery and dreams as a man in still
places ... all their lives are in their expression, in their eyes, their
movements or they are not worth translating into art.”
He very simply tells what he feels about technique, which ought to quiet
the objection to his or any individual’s methods:
“Technique is merely a language, and as I grow older and see more and
more clearly I have but one intention and that is to make this language
as clear and simple and sincere as is humanly possible.... It is a
language of no value for its own sake.... It must be so translucent that
it can be forgotten, the value of the subject shining through it.”
A woman who sat for Henri last year for her portrait has this to say of
him in a recent letter:
“To me he is quite the most wonderful man among American artists; so
very big yet simple as a child; so very human yet utterly unconscious of
his humanity. He is much like Whitman only more tender, more subtle. To
Henri life is his art. That’s what makes him truly great. That’s what
made him go to the Ferrer School and awaken talent and even genius where
no one else would have seen anything to awaken. As a teacher Henri is
perhaps even greater than as a painter. I heard him explain things to
his class only twice, but I have never heard anything more fascinating
and vivid. His greatest worth, however, is his sense of freedom, his
fervent belief that only freedom can bring out the best in the
individual. He is really an anarchist though he does not label himself
one.”
And thus the exhibit of twenty-five paintings at the Art Institute takes
on a broader and more beautiful air. It becomes human and alive even
though the noise from the studios is confusing.
* * * * *
Paul Manship also has a room at the Art Institute: Greek, Assyrian,
Japanese, Chinese, Egyptian, Italian, Roman, Gothic, and what not; but
where, oh where, is Paul Manship—“foremost American sculptor”? The
incongruous and nerve-racking thing about the collection is that besides
merely exactly reproducing all the above mentioned periods and styles he
goes so far as to use two or three in one piece of work. The _Infant
Herakles: fountain and bowl_ is a terror of complications, with gothic
gargoyles as the high points of one’s discontent. The American Indian
(with the African animal skin and the Egyptian hair and Roman face) and
pronghorn antelope (Egyptian bronze of Alpine antelope) is the property
of the Art Institute, having been purchased by the “friends of American
Art”.... The conventionalized Roman busts with the Greek lettering were
so top-heavy in appearance that I grew quite dizzy....
I found relief in the sculptor of the Ancient Greeks,—peace in the
simplicity of a strange inspired beauty that intricate handling which
draws on past glories can never produce.
C. A. Z.
Fairy-Tale Mysticism
_Jerusalem, a Novel by Selma Lagerlöf_ (_Doubleday, Page & Co., New
York_).
Those Scandinavians! I have often wondered at the combination of grim
strength with childlike imaginativeness that we find in the artists of
those pale cold lands. In the winter, at twilight, I like to sit with
closed eyes and to relive old and new Norse sagas, the unbelievable
wonders told or sung or painted with the perfect earnestness of absorbed
children; I like to dream then to the accompaniment of the not-smiling
music of the sad child, Edward Grieg.
_Jerusalem_ is not a novel, not according to the terminology accepted
_heretofore_. For—may I reveal a secret _en passant_?—we are on the eve
of the publication of a novel by a Chicagoan who will revolutionize the
prevailing literary classifications. Another thing which is not! Selma
Lagerlöf is _not_ a mystic, some of her friends want us to believe; not
in the Maeterlinckian sense. The book is a series of tapestries to be
hung in an ideal children’s-room; a web of fairy-tales told in the
Scandinavian, unsmiling, earnest way. Mystic? Yes, as much as all
fairy-tales are mystic, as much as all not “clever” and “wonderful”
children are mystic. A mysticism which instead of lifting us up to the
clouds brings the clouds down to us; instead of lending us wings and
making us soar in imperceptible intangible regions, anthropomorphosizes
gods and spirits and drags them down to terra firma. So convincing! We
actually see the dead Ingmarssons gathered in a large farm house up in
heaven; we see their ruddy hard faces, sandy hair, white eyes; we hear
their slow, heavy, laconic talk. We are not surprised at meeting Christ
among the pines in the glow of the autumnal sunset. The opening of
heaven on a winter night before the eyes of the two Ingomars appears as
ordinary reality. We are in a world where everything is simple,
believable, possible. And you cannot smile; you are in an earnest
childlike atmosphere.
Those Scandinavians!
K.
The Reader Critic
_UNWORTHY!_
_Rev. W. D. J., Riverside, Ill._:
I used to have great expectations for you. But, pardon the frankness of
one who has watched the careers of many writers in the past fifty years,
you are headed now either for _the lake or a padded cell_. God forbid
you reach either. Let an old man say that the only way to find life is
to lose it. Forget it and reach out a hand to the poor, the sick, the
suffering, and the sinning. Happiness comes only in forgetfulness of
self and ministering to others. It is never the result of a theory but
of action. I have seen so many wrecked on the reefs toward which you are
drifting that I am fain to call out and entreat you to find happiness
where alone it can be found, not in fleeing from the world or cursing it
but in thanking God you were born into a world where you can be of some
use to your fellows. Those lines of yours in the September issue might
have been written by a Heine, a Byron, or a Walt Whitman. But they are
unworthy of you. You were born to bless your fellows. Be true to your
vocation.
_AN EXAMPLE!_
_R. C. Smith, Chicago_:
Inspiration will never take the place of intelligence, nor enthusiasm
that of cerebration. Your magazine will die,—as a steam engine would
grow useless in which no direction toward any cylinder was given to the
indubitable forces generated in the boiler. For your pages are as a rule
careless, unconsidered, and inept. Let me give you an example:—
Mr. Huntley Carter, in your September number, wrote on “Poetry versus
Imagism.” I happen to consider his article an ill-digested congeries of
vague views; but other persons may feel differently about it. What,
however, can be the estimation in which every sane and intelligent and
decently responsible man will hold your magazine and Mr. Carter when he
has the effrontery to present to us such an example of ineptitude and
carelessness as this:—
“Browning ... gets to work in a businesslike manner:
_The sun looked over the water’s brim_
And straight there was a path of gold for him
_And a world of souls for me_.
I QUOTE FROM MEMORY, BUT I BELIEVE I QUOTE CORRECTLY.” (The capitals are
mine.)
May I ask—must an enthusiasm for or against the new movements obliterate
all sense of accuracy, all love of clear and rational communication, all
fidelity to honest statement, and all interest in truth? Your Mr. Carter
and his extraordinary indifference to the workaday obligations of
literary criticism have considerably discouraged my interest in the new
forces. I can imagine Mr. Carter writing—“Since, as Nansen says, ‘The
natives of the polar regions are coal-black,’—(_I quote from memory_),
it must be hotter there than at the equator.”
You have printed many encomiums of your magazine: I shall watch with
curiosity to see if you print this.
_THE WEAKNESS OF REVOLT_
_Dr. Weil, New York_:
The spirit of revolt is compounded from many causes. Even in the average
young girl of whom Mr. Hecht writes in the August LITTLE REVIEW it
arises as much from her digestion as from her incomplete physical
functioning, as much from her work as from her leisure, as much from her
friends as from her freshness. Mr. Hecht would be the first to admit
that; would he be equally willing to admit that it meets death
variously?
He talks only of the family as the snuffer for the flame. This does not
mean that he excludes other causes, but it does mean that he has
overemphasized one.
It is true, as Mr. Hecht insists, that the American family tends to
quell revolt. The battle of the generations is as old as the race; the
family has always struggled to bring the rebel into line for its own
preservation. But that struggle in all its various shades of acuteness
has become a truism of modern thought, thanks to a multiplex modern
drama, a scientific sociology, and even the daily press. Why discuss the
subject only to dwell again heavily on the obvious?
The problem is far more complicated. The verdict of guilt against the
family grows monotonous when returned at every inquest. To place a
single responsible cause for any tremor to revolt that dies abortive is
to lack subtlety.
Along with each verdict against the family there is also a verdict
against the individual. One is not to blame if she is not a genius, but
if even her greatest emotions are somewhat lacking in poignancy, the
fluctuating spirit of restlessness in her never reaches the heights
which demand action.
Along with each verdict against the family there is also a verdict
against the quality of the revolutionary spirit. Not only are its causal
factors weak and fluctuating, but the very vagueness which to Mr. Hecht
constitutes its charm spells also its damnation. A spirit of
restlessness is, in itself, nothing about which one can go to the
hilltops and shout, and when it crystalizes in some particular issue,—a
book, a picture, a small individual right,—the object often seems too
trivial to struggle for. To be sure the principle is not a small thing,
but a principle is abstract and when it confronts a concrete bit of
suffering, it fades by contrast.
The sordid bread and butter difficulties to be faced by one standing
wholly alone, the scathing force of public opinion, the pain of others
which, when you love them, is pain to you,—these are realities which
only the truly big souls dare to face. For most of us the spirit of
revolt is too diffuse even to demand action, and for most of the rest
action is too divine a consummation to be compassed by our weak human
spirit. Not to any external cause really, but to an inherent lack in us,
is it due that we slowly grow complacent, instead of crusading worthily
in behalf of liberty.
_Alice Groff, Philadelphia_:
The most of you publishers are such unspeakable Kaisers of Kultur that
you treat the geniuses who make you what you are as insignificant
privates in a literary army, which you deploy; keeping them dangling
upon your critical pleasure, or blowing them to pieces because they do
not happen to walk the line _you_ mark out.
I suppose this is inevitable, however, in the present social order and
that there will never be free literary expression until there is
publishing organization on the part of the whole people for the benefit
of the whole people. May the universe speed the day of such
organization.
Have You Read—?
(_In this column will be given each month a list of current
magazine articles which, as an intelligent being, you will not
want to miss._)
Gaudier-Brzeska’s Art, by John Caurnos. _The Egoist_, September 1.
Havelock Ellis on Birth Control in _Physical Culture_ for September,
October, November.
The Literature of a Moral Republic, by H. L. Mencken. _The Smart Set_,
October.
The Undergraduate. _The New Republic_, September 25.
Can You Read—?
(_In this column will be given each month a resume of current
cant which, as an intelligent being, you may wish to be diverted
or angered or stimulated by._)
International Duty and Hyphenated Americans, by Theodore Roosevelt. _The
Metropolitan_, October.