CONTENTS.

PAGE

121
NOTES OF THE WEEK
.....................
THE QUEST. By E. G. Buckeridge
. . . . . . . . . . . . 123
AN ALBANIAN
MANIFESTO
AND APPEAL . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
FOREIGN
AFFAIRS.By S. Verdad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I25
THE FORCESBEHIND
THE THRONE.By T. H. S. Escott
... 126
A BUSINESS
Man A N D POLITICAL
ECONOMY.
By John Zorn ... 127
RUDYARD
KIPLING
: THEEURASIAN
OF GENIUS. . . . . . . . . 128
MAETERLINCK.By Ashley Dukes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
AMERICANNOTES. By Juvenal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
UNEDITED
OPINIONS.--III. A NEW ARISTOCRACY. . . . . . 132

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15 O
7 6

NOTES OF THE WEEK.

WE will not waste our readers time by detailing the
inferences which might be drawn from the results of
the first days poll. Despite the fact that there is a net
loss of three seats, the increase in the s u m of Liberal
votes (cast is considerable. This is the more surprising
i f we remember that a n old register i s generally a Tory.
Manchester has refused t o entertain the Paul of the
Tariff Reformers, Mr. Bonar Law; and one section of
London proves t o be more rather than less Radical than
i n January. On the whole, we may safely assume that
t h e result of the whole election, if the first day resembles
;the rest, will he to ensure the passage of the Parliament
Bill through the Commons for certain a n d through the
Lords in all probability; for we d o not expect that, after
t h e third time of asking, the Lords will refuse consent
a n d face the prospect of the wholesale creation of peers.
.On the other hand, t o make their consent easier, it will
plainly be necessary, unless a very decided wave of
democracy rises during the week, for the Cabinet, so
soon a s it reassembles, to set about defining the new composition of the Second Chamber, and even, if necessary,
o n calling a large conference for the purpose of discussi n g it. I t will not d o simply to abolish the absolute veto
of the Lords, then to introduce Home Rule, and afterwards to sit and wait until the prescribed two years have
fled, Great and striking plans must almost instantly be
outlined for constituting and employing the new instrument of constitutional government.
***

Rumours a r e being circulated that the old Tories will not

consent on any terms whatever to the proposed change: in

THEMAIDS COMEDP.--VI.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
BOOKSAND PERSONS.By Jacob Tonson . . . . . . . . . . . .
REVIEWS
: English Woodlands-Podmores Newer Spiritualism-An XVIII. Century Marquise--The Emancipation
of English Women
Climbing in Wales -Ancient
Etruria--The Soul Traders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
THEPOST-SAVAGES.
By Huntly Carter . . . . . . . . . . . .
LETTERSTO THE EDITORFROM R. B. Kerr, Frederick H.
Evans, William McFee, Edmund B. dAuvergne, Albert
E. Lwy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

PAGE

I33
135

--

136
140

142

the powers of the Lords. Like Sir Edward Carson and

his braggart, obstinate Ulstermen, these Lords a r e prepared to die in the last ditch in defence of their time-worn
privileges.
If they had taken this attitude from the
first, loftily declined to discuss their own reformation
and appealed to the love of Englishmen for a lord, w e
honestly believe they would be safe at this moment.
But having at that demagogue Mr. Garvins invitation
appealed t o Caesar at two elections (not counting the
Campbell-Bannerman Government), and unmistakeably
lost, it is unmanly, if not unlordly, to refuse the judgment. Unfortunately they have at the last moment discovered a brand-new alternative to their supersession in
the shape of the Referendum, a device which we a r e
quite ready to admit is as plausible as it is dangerous to
democracy, and by which, if the coalition forces a r e not
extremely careful, the victory over the Lords, which is
now in sight, will be converted into a democratic rout.
*

How clearly the Unionists realise the anti-democratic

nature of the Referendum it is impossible t o say.
Certainly they have, so far, concealed any trace of a
suspicion that it is not really a democratic instrument.
On the contrary, if their protestations g o for anything,
we a r e t o suppose that the Referendum. is suddenly
become dear to them exactly because they realise for
the first time that government is not nearly popular
(enough, and that the Referendum would make it so.
W h a t excellent deception o r , shall we say, selfdeception ! W e would have it plainly understood that
the Referendum is in actual fact the most deadly weapon
against democratic and representative government that
can possibly be forged.
There is literally no other
danger now ahead of the machinery o f democratic
government which is half so grave as the danger from
the Referendum.
We measure our words when we
declare that if the choice were between the retention of
the Lords without .the Referendum a n d their complete
abolition with it, we would prefer the former infinitely
before the latter. For this very reason we can well
understand the Unionist Party leaders executing a wardance and dance of victory on their inspired discovery of
this simple a n d taking device for disestablishing Representative Government while it is still in its infancy. On
the other hand, w e a r e amazed that professed friends,
and not only friends, but would-be tutors in Representative Government, such, for example, as the Nation
leader-writers and Mr. J. A. Hobson, should be so
blind as not to see that what the Unionists instinctively

122

hail a s an instrument of continued oligarchy can scarcely

at the same time be a n instrument of crescent democracy.

There are a t least nine and ninety ways of demonstrating to anybody with the mind to follow the utter
fallacy of the Referendum. Neither in theory, nor in
practice, nor even in the form of a compromise, can it
be maintained or tolerated for a single moment. O nt h e
very lowest grounds of commonsense it can. be conclusively proved to be actually ridiculious. For example.
I t is proposed that the Referendum shall be applied,
over the heads of the representatives, in what, in the
accepted phrase, are called grave issues. Very well.
What is the very gravest issue that can conceivably
come before Parliament for decision, and on which there
may be sufficient difference to warrant a Referendum, if
such a proceeding were a rule? Obviously the gravest
of all issues is whether in any particular conjunction of
circumstances the nation shall or shall not go to war.
In comparison with that issue every other issue, constitutional o r legislative, is minor, a s everybody will
agree. But for reasons plain enough even to the
Nation, it is precisely on that gravest of all issues
that a Referendum would not and could not be taken.
The veryidea of it is ridiculous. Mr. Balfour would
submit Home Rule and Tariff Reform to a plbiscite,
but he would not undertake to submit the decision of
war to a plbiscite. He would be a raving pedant if he
did. Not even on an electioneering platform would he
pledge himself to do it. Yet it is implied in all this talk
of a Referendum that the statesmen who may and must
be trusted to risk involving the nation in a war, and to
d o so without consultation directly with the people, are
quite unfit to be trusted out of the leading strings of a
fussy and suspicious electorate in matters of infinitely
less concern to the nation than war. The question to
ask of Referendum maniacs is therefore this, and the
more publicly it is asked the better: Would you be in
favour of submitting the decision of war to the Referendum; and if not, why not? That, we imagine, would
end the matter for people of mere commonsense.

But there are other plausible aspects of this wretched

invention which need apparently to be examined. W e
say that it is indefensible in theory, but the question
is, what theory? Publicists are such incorrigible wirepullers nowadays that we sometimes doubt whether any
of them have a theory of government a t all. Neither
the Spectator nor the Observer, we are certain,
has the smallest articulate notion of the bases of its
faith. That is intelligible to us since we perceive clairvoyantly that neither of these organs has any political
The Spectator has sentiments, the
faith at all.
Observer wears the ribbons of dead passions; but of
faith in the sense of a clearpolitical creed, resting on
consistent and valid assumptions, and supported by
facts and proving itself in practice, they are both barren
and agnostic. On the other hand, it might certainly be
expected that the heirs of Mill and the pioneers of
democracy would know what they were talking about,
and could Yell a democratic device from a device so
preposterously and palpably undemocratic as the Referendum. For in plain truth the Referendum is indefensible only o n one ground and by one theory, the
theory, namely, that we are attempting in England to
establish democratic government. If that is assented
to, we have only to prove that the Referendum is fatal
to democracy to dismiss it in theory as well as by
commonsense.

W h a t is the essence of democratic government? Certainly it is not government by the people. Government by the people is an unthinkable proposition to
apply to modern states, I t is applicable, no doubt, to
village communities where communal decisions can
actually be arrived at in the sight and hearing and with
the consent and under the direction of all the people.
Doubtless, also, it is a condition of affairs to which the
world will ultimately revert under Communism. But
here and now in states such as exist under our noses
it is absurd to speak of Government by the people
as if it had any sense in that form a t all. What,
plainly, it means, and what alone it can possibly mean
for u s is Government by the people through their
chosen representatives. The phrase, in fact, is mere
shorthand for a definition of Representative government. With that addition implied it is intelligible.
Without it, the phrase is meaningless.

Having got so far, we may confidently define the two

conditions of Representative Government as these : the
free election by the people of their representatives, and,
no less important, the free but responsible status of
those representatives when elected.
If on the one
hand, elections are not free, if the choice of candidates
is artificially limited, if various electoral dodges are
invented to whittle away the perfect freedom of the
public t o choose its representatives, then democracy is
still undeveloped-as,
indeed, it its. But, also, on the
other hand, if the representatives when elected prove
to be merely the paid delegates of sectional interests,
rich or poor; if they obey party whips instead of their
own best judgment; if they fail by any reason really
to be the word and act and thought of their constituents in sum (though not in part; if, finally, and on the
issue of the Referendum vitally, the elected representatives are prevented by their own constituents from
exercising freely and responsibly the faculties and judgment they were elected to employ-then, again, and by
damage done to a principle of democracy, democracy is
destroyed. You cannot have Representative Government and government by delegated gramaphone at one
and the same time. Either we frankly accept the postulates of Representative Government and give our
representatives complete powers to act as if for the
time being they were actually the people; or we abandon
the experiment and revert, a s assuredly we should, to
oligarchy tempered by mob-rule. For ourselves, there
is no doubt in our minds not only which of these prospects is the better, but that England is resolved on
democracy .

It will, of course, be said that the people make such

idiotic choices of representatives that one day we may
have a supreme House of Lunatics a t Westminster.
That, at least, is one of the assumptions both of the
advocates of the retention of an absolute veto by the
Second Chamber and of the advocates of the Referendum. The people, it is urged, must be defended
against the consequences of their own deliberate judgment. ?he very representatives whom they empower
to act on their behalf are to be lamed and pinioned lest
they should turn on their hosts. Even if this argument
had more validity than it has (and it must be admitted
there are grounds for it) we should not hesitate to
prefer the education of the people by the continued
abuse of its confidence, to the abolition of all confidence
itself. Referendummies claim for their precious scheme
that the people will thereby be taught political wisdom.
Nothing of the sort; they will acquire, perhaps, a little

THE NEW A G E

DECEMBER
8, 1910.

more political information and enlarge their vocabulary

of technical phrases, but of political wisdom there is
not a n ounce to be gained by merely dabbling a s
amateurs in direct legislation. Political wisdom in a
people consists in detecting the identity of Tweedledum with Tweedledee, and in knowing a man from a
monkey. It is exemplified in the rare moments of
popular insight when a Cincinnatus is taken from the
plough, a Lincoln from wood-chopping, and a Cromwell
from brewing, to be set a t the head of a people to be
the nations representative. If a t other times those
are chosen by the people who prove afterwards to be
charlatans, incompetents, and rascals, let the fault be
laid a t the door of the people, and the whole consequences with it. For we a r e not such pessimists as to
believe that good representatives are not to be had if
the people are in earnest in looking for them, or could
recognise them when they see them. And until this is
the case, until there are not 670 men in all England who
can and ought t o b e entrusted with representative
powers, it would be downright cowardice and a shameful shirking of their public duty for the people to abolish
representation altogether and to substitute a degrading
form of delegacy.

For let there be no mistake about it : not only will

Representation fly out of the window when Referendum
comes in a t the door of a Referenduma parliament ;
but with the degradation of status from representative
t o delegate the personnel of Parliament will be unquestionably lowered. Mr. Austen Chamberlain has already
had the courage to avow that he would resign office if,
while he held it, a Referendum went against him. Not
only would honourable men with a spark of self-respect
resign office if a Referendum went against them, but
ten to one they would never seek any public office again.
Why should t h e y ? There are only three inducements
to govern a people : money, honour, and power; and of
these money attracts only the lowest class of politicians.
If you subtract from the rewards of office honour and
power by robbing it of responsibility, YoU put your
government up to cash auction, and it will assuredly b e
knocked down to the lowest bidder. That is all that
need be said of the Referendum on its theoretical side.

There remains t o be considered the Referendum as a

lock upon Mr. Asquiths Parliament Bill when it is
passed. This suggestion takes form, naturally, in the
mind of the main author of the Referendum scheme for
England. Writing to the Westminster Gazette, Mr.
J. A. Hobson says : I would plead that Liberals
should not, without closer thought and invesltigation,
repudiate the whole policy of the Referendum. For
they may need it later on. When this Government is
returned to office with the power t o place their Bill
upon the Statute-book, the leaders of the Opposition,
if I mistake not, will, though bowing to superior force,
glace. on record their deliberate intention, when they
next get office again, to restore a veto t o a reformed
Second Chamber. And this intention they will carry
out, unless they are disabled from doing so. The only
effective method of disabling them is for the Liberal
Government, after passing the Parliament Bill and a
Home Rule o r Devolution Bill, t o frame and pass a
Bill submitting future Constitutional changes to a
Referendum. This limited Referendurn Act the Conservatives, when again in office, dare not reverse, and a
measure t o restore the veto to the Lords, submitted to
;1 Referendum, would certainly be defeated.

We are glad <tonote that Mr. Hobson is now content

t o confine his proposed Referendum to Constitutional
issues.
This is very different from the holus-bolus
scheme of only a few months ago ; but In our opinion
it is no whit better. The passage from his letter which
we have just quoted contains such a large number of
hypotheses that the application to them of a projected
Referendum reminds us of the imaginary mongoose
that was to cure imaginary snakes. We are to suppose
that in the event of the Liberals passing the Parliament

123

Bill the Conservatives on their next return to power will

reverse it unless such reversal is now made contingent
on a Referendum-which
latter Mr. Hobson is certain
would maintain the Bill. But in the first place, what
ground is there for concluding that if the Conservatives
are prepared to reverse the Act itself they would not be
equally prepared t o reverse the Act which sealed the
Act? Would they venture t o steal the cash-box, only
to lose heart when it came to stealing the key? Again,
is it not self-contradictory to assume that if a Conservative Government is returned, and presumably by a
majority of the electorate, the same electorate, when
asked a few weeks after the election to confirm their
votes by their Referendum, will not d o so,? Besides, it
is not improbable that the election itself would be fought
upon the issue of N o Veto or Restored Veto; in which
case, if the Conservatives won, the Referendum would
be unnecessary. Finally, it is in our opinion not merely
bad counsel but misleading counsel to direct the minds
of Liberals to attempting t o safeguard their Parliament
Bill by any such means, let alone by means which we
have shown to be on other grounds most perilous. If
and when the Parliament Bill is passed, there a r e two
ways of ensuring that it shall never be reversed: they
are, first, to proceed immediately to reform the Second
Chamber so that when the Conservatives return they
no longer find their discontented friends in the Lords,
but new Gallios who, care for none of the old things;
and, secondly, the Liberals must stay in office sufficiently long to give the new arrangement time to
became habitual. T h e Land-taxes, it may be remembered, took only twelve months to grow into our fiscal
system. The wildest of wild Conservative chancellors
would not venture now t o uproot them. The Parliament Bill, should it ever become law, will be accommodated in at most double that period. After two years
the issue that is now alive will be dead, and only revolutionists to whom nobody pays any attention would be
found to advocate its resurrection. Thus even on
tactical grounds the Referendum proves to he unnecessary io democracy.

THE QUEST.
We sailed in haste from the narrow townW h a t did it know of the dreams we dreamed?By the caked, mud flats where the sun went down
In the dull, blood haze, and the sea-fowl screamed.
Folly, it jeered, for folly it seemed
To hearts too old and wise to respond
To the vision we knew that beckoned and gleamed
In the unknown seas and the worlds beyond.
Wind and sun and the open sky,
Strange, hushed seas where the dawn lamp hung
Like a carven pearl, and the noons went by,
And the sunsets burned, a s ever we swung
Onward still, and the great stars clung
Low in the gloom of the lustrous nights,
And the velvet stain on the waters flung
Held drifting colours and magic lights.

S o we sailed as our hearts impelled,

Dared and desired the gold years through,
Followed and thrilled while the charm still held
Of the dreams to be and the things to do;
Peril was ours and sorrow we knew,
Sorrow of seeking the fates deny,
For never nearer the vision drew,
And the years went by, and t h e years went by.
W e have come back from the quest we made,
Back to the streets and the narrow town
And the narrow life of the men who stayedPoorer of pocket, and lean and brown.
And we watch the flats where the sun goes down
In a dull, blood haze, and the sea-fowl scream,
And wait for the death that perhaps will crown
The cravings of men who have dreamed a dream.

E. G. BUCKERIDGE.

124

Manifesto and an Appeal.

By the Central Committee of Albanian Students.

(Specially translated for THENEWAGE.)

THECentral Committee of Albanian Students, impelled

by the extreme gravity of the state in which the rights
of the Albanian people ,in general, and their educational
institutions in particular, have been placed by the
systematic persecution of the Government of the Young
Turks, vehemently appeal, in the name of right and
humanity, to the civilised world for protection from
t h e tyrannical policy of the Young Turks, who are
endeavouring to crush all hope of progress a n d enlightenment in Albania.
For five centuries the Albanians have freely shed
their blood to preserve and consolidate the Ottoman
Empire. T w o years ago, after the meeting of the
C z a r and Edward V I I at Reval, perceiving that the
existence of the Empire was at stake, the Albanians
Bought side by side with the Young T u r k s to overthrow
Abdul Hamid, thus saving the Ottoman Empire from
certain extinction.
But no sooner did the Young Turks become masters
of the situation than they forgot the promises made to
t h e various peoples of the Empire, a m o n g others those
by which the Albanians were to be free t o manage their
o w n affairs, and particularly to
educated in their
T h e ideal which the Young T u r k s
own langage.
from the beginning of their triumph have sought t o
realise has been the complete denationalisation of the
nations that compose the Empire, and their conversion
to Islamism by every possible means. I n Albanlia, to
obtain their end they began by terrorising and persecuting the inhabitants with greater fury than w a s ever
displayed by Abdul Hamid himself.
No longer hoping for any amelioration of such a
s t a t e of things, the Albanians now passionately appeal
for aid to the public opinion of the civilised world,
which has always been animated with the noblest sentiments of pity for persecuted peoples, with the object of
unmasking at once the tyranny of the present regime
of the Young Turks, who pose t o the world a s a n
element of order and civilisation.
T h e Central Committee of Albanian Students protest :
(I). Against the arbitrary measures directed against
t h e Albanian journalists, who without infringing the
laws in the slightest a r e being crushed by the suppression of their newspapers, a n d by condemnation to
varying terms of imprisonment and exile. T o be more
precise, we cite the following abuses which would not
b e tolerated in civilised countries to-day.
Feim Bey Zavalani, a n old supporter of the cause
won by the Constitutilonal rgime ,and the victim of
shameful persecution under Abdul Hamid, has been
sentenced as editor of the paper Bashkimi K o t b i t
of Monastir by a court martial held at Djakova to six
months imprisonment and a fine of ,Sixty Turkish
pounds, with the suppression of his paper and the
closing of his printing business.
Michel Grameno, one of the most distinguished supporters of the Constitutional cause, editor of the paper
Lidja
Orthodokse, h a s been sentenced o n several
occasions to imprisonment a n d heavy fines, the last
time merely for having reproduced certain passages
from articles that had appeared in foreign journals
relating to a meeting of Albanians in America, held for
t h e purpose of sympathising with their oppressed compatriots in Albania.
Lev Nozii, another old Constitutionalist, whose devotion t o the cause cost him banishment under Abdul
Hamid, and editor of the political and literary review
Tomori, is again banished for no other reason than
having printed a n article from the London Times on
the Albanian question.
Let us also cite the sentences passed quite recently
(September, 1910)agaist Albanians for unjustifiable
rea sons.
Hassan and Quamil Bey were arrested and condemned by court-martial, after a most summary

be

enquiry, to ten years exile, merely because their eldest

brother, Dervish Bey Elbassani, was president of the
administrative committee of the normal school. Dervish
Bey as well as Essat Pasha Tirana managed to escape
by flight from falling into the hands of the tyrants.
Hogia Alez Hibrahim was arrested a n d condemned to
ten years exile by court-martial for the simple reason
that he was professor of the Mussulman religion at t h e
normal school at Elbassan.
Demir Pasha Pekini and Fuat Bey Toptani were
arrested and condemned without being informed of t h e
reason of their condemnation.
(2.) Against the suppression of the Albanian newspapers :- Bashkimi Kombit of Monastir ; Lidja
Orthodokse and Kortcha of Kortcha; Shkiptar
of Constantinople and Tomori of Elbassan.
(3.) Against the prohibition of Albanian journals published in foreign countries from entering Albania.
(4.). Against the closing of the Albanian printing
establishments at Monastir, Salonica, and Kortcha.
(5.) Against the closing of t h e few primary schools
and the normal school a t Elbassan, which a r e supported
by the subscriptions of Albanians residing in t h e
country and abroad.
(6.) Against the exclusion of the Albanian language
in the Government schools throughout Albania.
(7.) Against t h e closing of the educational clubs
formed in accordance with the law.
(8.) Against the violence of which peaceable citizens
are daily the victims, namely, the assassination of old
men, women, and children, the rape of young girls, a n d
the outrages to which mothers of families a r e subjected
by the satyrs delegated by the Government of the
Young Turks.
(9.) Against intrigues of all sorts o n the part of t h e
Government to discredit the Albanian alphabet, which
was solemnly adopted by the people at the congress at
Monastir two years ago.
Rabid Chauvinists imbued with t h e ideals of the
Pan-Islamists, the Young T u r k s cannot view with a
friendly eye the desire of the Albanians to write their
language in Latin characters. To accomplish their
purpose, that is to stifle every attempt of the Albanians
to cultivate their !own language, they recoil from no
pecuniary
sacrifice, a n d whilst making attractive
promises have recourse to the most formidable threats.
In spite of all their rigorous measures, however, the
Albanians refuse to substitute the Arab for the Latin
letters in the teaching of their language, this language
being of Indo-European origin and not Semitic as the
Young T u r k s pretend.
Perceiving the failure of their tyrannical methods,
and confronted with the progressive elan of the
Albanians for the preservation of their national tongue,
the Young T u r k s have officially resorted to a brutal
system i n order to impose the Arab characters upon
the Albanian language.
But this system, far from
frightening Albanian patriotism, has provoked a recrudescence of indignation in every part of the country.
Hereupon the Government of the Young Turks a t once
prohibits our clubs, and declares a state of siege
throughout the country, which is immediately invaded
by more than 50,000 men commanded by Torgout
Pasha, who has been invested with absolute power in
order to stamp out even the germs of revenge.
Let t h ecivilised world mark this monstrous state of
things under the weight of which the whole population
of Albania, Christian a n d Mahomedan alike, is
groan ing .
I t is, in fine, a n insane persecution, in contempt of
the most sacred rights of man, of everything Albanian.
And this is occurring in the 20th century under the
hypocritical rule of the Young Turks, who thus cheat
the hopes of a new era in which we were promised a
government that would at least be democratic.
So we call the attention of the civilised world to our
wrongs, and implore it not to suffer the annihilation of
the Albanian people, who a t this moment a r e at the
mercy of a savage rgime whose unbridled fanaticism
and cruelty are to-day more than ever the scandal of
Europe.

DECEMBER
8, 1910.

THE NEW AGE

Foreign Affairs.
By S. Verdad.
HERR LEDEBOUR is a n important personage in the
ranks of the German Social Democrats, and it is unfortunate that he should be so well noted for his tactlessness. His latest and probably most tactless action
is that which is reported as having taken place when
the Reichstag proceeded to interpellate the Government
on the subject of the Kaisers divine right. When the
Chamber had recovered from the shock of hearing the
present Chancellor, Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, specifically repudiate the explanation given by his predecessor, Prince von Buelow, together with the alleged
guarantees given by the Kaiser to restrain himself in
future, it received an even greater shock when Herr
Ledebour admitted that what his party really wanted
\vas a Republic.
The, scene that followed was just what might have
been expected. The Berlin papers, Conservative and
otherwise, mention the rapidity with which Herr Ledebour s colleagues lowered their eyebrows and assumed
an air of indifference a s they heard their colleague pronounce the fatal words. They endeavoured to make
it appear that they had no further interest whatever
in Herr Ledebour. And, of course, the Centre and the
Liberals, in fact, every non-Socialist group in the
Reichstag, made haste to avow their loyalty to the
Emperor William. Those very members who, not
half-an-hour previously had been calling for the
Kaisers head, were ready to g o to any lengths to defend him from the wicked Socialists.
The entire
debate, which promised so well, and which, properly
handled by experienced parliamentarians, would have
led to momentous consequences, fizzled out and ended
in a complete fiasco.
The fact is, of course, the the monarchical instinct
is more strongly developed among the Germans than
any other nation in the world; and the mere sound of
the word Republic is sufficient t a turn indifference for
the Kaiser into sympathy for him. To let the cat out
of the bag a t such a juncture was a bad piece of electioneering tactics; for in the campaign preceding the
pollings of next spring the anti-Socialists are not likely
to omit the use of this useful political ammunition.
The Berliner Tageblatt, indeed, has already practically admitted defeat, and even Vorwarts is discreetly
silent.
Let no one overlook what was decided a t this meeting
of the Reichstag a few days ago. The Kaiser, it was
said beforehand, had given great off ence throughout the
country because in several of his later speeches he had
laid special emphasis on his government of Prussia by
divine right. This utterance was felt to be entirely out
of harmony with modern democratic thought, and it
was maintained for several days previous to the assembling of the Reichstag that not only the Socialists,
but also those members who might be described as
Liberals and Radicals, were determined to put a stop
to this sort of thing by insisting that the Emperor
should keep the promise he made two years ago.
Now, the Chancellor not only threw over this promise
and denied that it had ever been made, but he also
made it clear in addition, that the Hohenzollerns had
built up Prussia, and that, while the representatives of
the family had every claim on the Prussians, the Prussians themselves had none on the Hohenzollerns.
Now, this doctrine, far from being derided, was
accepted. Then came the Socialist leaders demand for
a Republic, followed by an outbreak of hostility against
them in the Chamber and, later o n in the country.
Readers of the Editorial Notes in this journal have
been warned against accepting the decisions of a
scratch parliamentary majority lest the measures passed
by it fail t o meet with the final and considered approval
of the electorate. A somewhat similar warning might
well be addressed to the German Social Democrats;
for, as I pointed out in these pages some weeks agothere is no occasion to shut our eyes to the factSocialism, as such, is making no progress in Germany.

125

The Social Democratic vote has increased; but that is

quite a different matter. The heavy cost of living and
the agitation against the high tariffs on imported meat
are factors, inter alia, that add to this vote; but they
by no means indicate that the country is making ready
far a Republic, f a r less for Socialism. Indeed, many of
the Social Democratic members in the Reichstag want
nothing more than what we in England have enjoyed
for years, that the Ministers shall be responsible to the
Reichstag and not t o the Kaiser; that a Minister who
has lost the confidence of the Reichstag shall not retain
his post merely because he still possesses the confidence of the Kaiser. If this and a few minor reforms
were granted-and
a long-sighted Government would
grant them-there
would be an enormous slump in
German Socialism. In other words, Herr Ledebour
and many others have looked upon certain votes as
having been cast for Socialism, when in reality they
were given to the Social Democrats for the purpose of
hastening a few political reforms that have about as
much to do with Socialism as with the Buddhas tooth
a t Kndy.
There is no need to emphasise this point; but there
is need to lay some stress upon the Kaisers undoubted
popularity throughout the country, even-what is most
important-among
the intellectuals.
T h e Emperor
Williams mind may not be profound; he may be nearly
as tactless as Herr Ledebour himself; his taste in pictures may be bad, and his taste in sculpture execrable.
Nevertheless, he has tried to do something for the
intellectuals.
H e has spared no pains to encourage
German painters, philosophers, and literary men; and,
although he has not always succeeded in choosing the
best, the genuine desire to give the intellectuals a legup is, there, and it incites the wealthy aristocracy to do
the same. I wish I could make the same statement
regarding the Court circles of this country. Two centuries ago, roughly speaking, our own aristocracy
ceased to support the intellectuals, so that from the time
of Pope the aristocracy has looked in vain to the intellectuals\ for support.
Here, on the other hand, i s a single instance of the
Kaisers encouragement to authors. H e picked up a
book written in German by a n Englishman, Stewart
Chamberlain, Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten
Jafirhunderts, and found it interesting. I t was, and
is, in my judgment, a work based on fallacious principles, and without what might be called guts; but it
did contain something original, no doubt. W h a t the
book is like, however, is not the point; the point is
that the Kaiser, being struck with it, ordered five hundred copies of it and distributed them. The Imperial
and Royal support of new ideas, however ill-chosen the
ideas may be, helps culture along, and makes for
freedom of thought among the people who are entitled
to think freely.
As I write another instance occurs to me, and I will
give it. The study of sex, the most important study of
our age, was ably treated by Bloch in a volume of
almost stupendous erudition entitled Unser Sexualleben.
The Kaiser took a warm intererest in this
volume when it was published in Germany, and its
merits were generally recognised.
But when an
English translation made its appearance-issued
at a
high price, and even sold subject to certain restrictions
-an interfering purity league of some s o r t or another
brought about its seizure by the police, on the ground
that it might debase the mind of somebody, I forget
But our aristocracy, our supporters and enwhom.
couragers of philosophy and new thought, where were
they when this was going o n ?
Apart from literature, however, the Kaiser is responsible for much of the progress of modern Germany. I t
cannot be denied that he is the founder of the navy, a
navy which has added immensely t o the strength and
prestige of his Empire. I n the face of a partly hostile
and partly indifferent public opinion he urged his theme
of a big navy on the people; and he got his way. H e
advertised his country ceaselessly-a thing, of course,
which we Britishers have no longer any need to do.
Germany has poked her nose into other peoples busi-

T H E NEW AGE

126

ness many a time, and has often had it punched, for

her pains; but she has now begun to make herself
felt in international affairs. This is largely the result
of the Kaisers pushful policy, and his people, on the
whole, admire him for it.
Another word about Germany, and I shall hava
finished. I t may be recollected that several German
bankers offered t o lend Turkey five or six millions
sterling a few weeks ago at the direct instigation of
the Kaiser. Owing to the Hungarian loan, however,
which I referred to at the time, they have had some
little difficulty in finding the money.
They are nlow
trying to borrow it from a group of Paris bankers. S o
France will probably do the financing after all, though
with different security.

The Forces Before and Behind

the Throne.
By ToH. S.

Escott.

THEpolitical struggle of the coming century will be

in its essence not the multitude against the monarch
and the caste privileges he represents, but Parliamentary government in its popular aspects against a more
or less patrician bureaucracy. Between these upper
and lower grindstones, the House of Commons may
find itself inconveniently squeezed. If, therefore, you
intend to write a book about it, you had better lose no
time, or you may have to compose, not a biography*,
but an epitaph, and that in spite of the good work
which in one way or another it has contrived to; do.
So, a short time before his death in 1894, was advised
the present writer by the historian, J. A. Froude. The
prediction now recalled seems strikingly apposite to,
even if not literally fulfilled in, the long, drawn-out
series of Parliamentary or national incidents, of whose
true inwardness the newspapers can do little more
than confess, if they do not parade, their partial or
complete ignorance.
In all this business the position taken by the
Sovereign is, as from the first it has been, consistent,
logical, and clear.
More than a year ago, the late
King, approached by the Prime Minister on the subject of the so-called guarantees, met the request
with what was practically a point-blank refusal, but
added : Convince me by concrete, definite evidence of
a real desire on the part of my subjects for what I
consider a change in the Constitution, I will consent
to it. Without ,such testimony, I am without the
power of doing so. These words supply the key to
King Georges real meaning and purpose when,
shortly after his accession, he said that, in all constitutional matters, he should follow his fathers example.
The same application a s was made to King Edward
by Mr. Asquith in due course proceeded from him to
King George, and in each case with exactly the same
result. According to the sense in which the platitudes
of the Ministerial Press are popularly taken, no specific
undertaking of the kind insisted on, as is said, by the
Prime Minister will issue from Buckingham Palace,
Windsor, or Sandringham.
Does it therefore follow
that, as the Tory and Radical stalwarts both find a
pleasure in putting it, there has already begun the
straight fight to the finish, in which no quarter will
be given or asked ,for, and truce or accommodation
is equally out of the question? Let us start from the
plain, indisputable truth, written in every chapter or
on every page of our social, political, and -ecclesiastical
history, that the British Monarchy, and the Chamber
considered its chief traditional bulwark, are as much the
embodiments of compromise a s the National Church.
Whenever our kings or nobles have been confronted
with something in the nature of a popular ultimatum,
they may have ended by coming out of the ordeal unmutilated and sound. But why and bow? Because to
retain something they have surrendered much.
The
* The advice was taken, the history was written, and the
book appeared under the title, Gentlemen of the House of
Commons. (Hurst and Blackett. 1902.)

DECEMBER
8, 1910.

best and most characteristic type of the hereditary

House, placed in one of its constantly recurring predicaments, was the late Duke of Devonshire, still perhaps
better remembered as Lord Hartington, equally successful in different phases of his career as Leader of
the Commons and of the Lords. He existed in a chronic
condition of grumbling discontent. At no time, however, did he put his back to the wall and hit out, or
to vary the metaphor, talk of dying in the last ditch.
The victim of the malady besetting the British peerage,,
known to foreigners as the spleen, he gave in exactly
a t the most paying time, not perhaps with a ,good
grace, but with the supercilious resignation which
caused a former Belgian Minister to say : W h a t I
chiefly admire about your Lord Hartington is his youb e d - - d n e s s . Of all the peers who were the Kings
personal friends, none had more influence a t the palace
This for the simpIe
than the Duke of Devonshire.
reason that king and noble looked a t things from t h e
same standpoint.
There is a very special reason for saying that t h e
blunt wisdom and shrewd insight into consequences of
the Victorian peer just mentioned are something more
than dim memories or mere traditions at the Court
to-day. Alone among the public men of King Georges
youth and earlier manhood was the Duke of Devonshire on terms of personal intimacy with King
Edwards successor. What, therefore, such a counsellor might have submitted to his Sovereign is not
unlikely to be the course which that Sovereign may
now adopt. Then there are those palace monitors who
now actually have the myal ear. Born and trained
within the St. James precinct, Lord Knollys, as
private secretary, cannot help being a courtier by profession.
Not less than the Hatfield Cecils is h e
descended from a wise line of Tudor statesmen, with
their sagacity for his inheritance. Pacific arrangement-not
might or even right .so much as policyis the watchword ever repeated to his successive
masters by this possessor of a common sense almost
amounting t o genius. Formerly Lord Knollys had to
combat counsels of a very different kind forthcoming
from the Ellises and Kingscotes, always for militant
methods. Those influences are now withdrawn. T h e
royal deliberations a r e still animated by the temporising
spirit of the Duke of Cambridge, who, in season and
out of season, impressed on his younger relatives that
the first lesson for princes to learn must be how to
give in.
On the other hand, look a t the forces threatening,
a s their enemies say, not only the scarlet benches at
Westminster, but the town and country abodes of
royalty itself. Fresh from his laurels won at the
Parnell inquiry of the last century, Mr. Asquith was suggested to Mr. Gladstone a s a coming Premier.
Forensic was the word constituting the old statesmans opinion. To-day Mr. Asquith receives warmer
praise even from his opponents than his followers for
the great qualities he has shown. He is, however, a
man of first-rate intellectual powers rather than of
great political or moral force. Those qualities belong
pre-eminently to those two colleagues of his whom the
Opposition loathes even more than it dreads.
Mr.
Winston Churchill at his first start began where his
father left off, and with a much greater equipment of
knowledge and pushfulness, of the attribute popularly
known as devil, than Lord Randolph Churchill ever
possessed. The powers which Mr. Lloyd George has
shown are such a s probably to ensure, a t some future
great shuffle of the cards, his reversionary claim to the
Premiership. This pair of allies, when they first commenced working together, agreed they could d o nothing
till they had hit upon a good cry. Rightly or wrongly,
they are now convinced they have that in the abolition
of the Lords veto, which formed so effective a refrain
of Mr. Churchills Ritchie letter. The Lloyd George
,and Winston Churchill faction has its own little
taper and tadpole chorus, just as Mr. Asquith can
boast his. The tapers and tadpoles, however, of the
two twin brethren are a good deal more clamorously
confident as regards their own particular cry than any

DECEMBER
8, 1910.

THE NEW AGE

rival tapers or tadpoles an either side. Here then is

the real difficulty in this direction of anything like a
climb down. Against this must be set the overwhelming interest on the opposite side of striking, even a t
half-past the eleventh hour, something like a bargain
with their enemies. At this very moment a whole
company of self-reforming peers are professedly vying
with each other a s to who shall be the first to eat most
of the leek, and how t o cook that excellent vegetable so
as to render it most wholesome, if not palatable. When
the event must so soon decide itself, prediction would be
equally foolish and futile. Everyone must decide for
himself what the day after to-morrow must bring. All
that can be attempted as regards that anticipation is
to supply materials for the estimate which all may
now form for themselves of the agencies between
which the collision has come, and the noise of whose
clash will soon deafen every ear.

Business Mans Excursion

into the Region of Political
Economy.
By John Zorn.

[NOTE.--In the supposititious case given in the following

article, the figures given are, of course, also supposititious.
My object is to indicate the lines upon which calculations
should be made in analagous cases occurring in real life.
It is in such calculations that the student of political economy
who has never been behind the scenes, and has no personal
knowledge obtained from life; study of the phenomena of
trade and finance, is apt to go astray by overlooking the
existence of important factors (and consequently ignoring
their power) in the problems of political economy presented
for solution.]
OTHERthings being equal, the. geographical employment of mobile capital is determined by the return upon
his investment yielded t o the capitalist. In other words,
mobile capital will be transferred from\ country to
country in accordance with the return obtained by the
capitalist. But the gain of an individual capitalist does
not necessarily mean a gain to the community of which
he is a member. For example :Plugson, of Undershot, has ~ r o o invested
, ~ ~ in~a
business in England which returns him ten per cent.,
or 10,000 a year. His annual turnover of capital is
large, and his ratio of working expenses high, so that
bis annual wages bill is 90,000 This represents the
employment of 1,000households at an average of 90
a year, or approaching 2 a week.
Plugson discovers that he can work cheaper in
Pannonia than at home. His agent over there, Swindilini having obtained a Government protectionist concession through a piece of jobbery, Plugson finds that
a transference of his works to Pannonia will cost him
a capital loss of ;G20,000, but that his annual profit
will be 20,000 instead of 10,000. H e accordingly
closes his factory a t Undershot and manufactures his
goods in Pannonia. His loss is 20,000, which two
years extra profit will recoup, and thenceforward his
annual gain will be IO,OOO.
So far as England is concerned with Plugson,
Englands loss and gain is identical with Plugsons.
The country loses 20,000 and gains IO,OOO a year.
Excellent business surely ! An admirable foreign investment.
But Undershot loses--Plugson.
House
property there depreciates to the extent of 100,000 on
the closing of the mills. I t takes over six months for
the thousand families earning 90 a year to get settled
at other trades. The loss of wages is 50,000 to say
nothing of morale.
England, then, has bought her
IO,OOO a year not for Plugsons loss of 20,000 of his
capital, but a t a loss of that 20,000 plus 1OO,OOO
depreciation of b u s e property, plus 50,000 loss of
wages ; that is, England pays 170,000 for a gain of
;f;ro,ooo a year. Plugson buys his IO,OOO a year for,
two years purchase. England buys hers for 17 years
purchase. But this is not all. Undershot kept Plugson
in England ; Pannonia does not. Part of his time is

127

spent in Pannonia, part in England, and part in Paris

and Monte Carlo.
The IO,OOO a year extra that
Plugson receives on his capital, is, so far a s England
is concerned, long circuited.
England only benefits
indirectly a s the worlds trade expands.
Now, while possibly it might be foolish to hamper
the transference of private capital and industries from
England t o foreign countries, a s instanced, we must not
lose sight of the fact that England has a vested interest
in her Plugsons and her Undershots, which represents
real national wealth, as much as does Plugsons
1OO,OOO; and it is cases like that I cite which underlie much of the cry for Protection.
Before, however, England embarks on the policy of
protecting Plugson,, it is for the advocates of Protection
to make out either that Protection is the only remedy,
o r that failing, that it is the best remedy.
Let u s
bear in mind that protecting Plugson involves that,
for keeping his capital and works in England, Plugson
is to receive the equivalent for his possible gain in Pannonia, o r 10,000 a year, out of the pockets of his fellow
tax-payers through the enhanced prices he charges them
for his goods, and that his fellow tax-payers must pay in
addition the cost of the collection of this 10,000
Now Englands loss caused through the transference
of Plugsons mills to Pannonia would be, as we have
seen, 170,000. To save this loss of 170,000 England is asked to pay Plugson 10,000 a year plus cost
of collection, say 1,000 a year more, or 11,000 a
year all told. The capitalised value of 11,OOO a year
a t 17 years purchase (the same figure that we took
in our estimate when we considered what England paid
for her gain of Plugsons additional 10,000 a year) is
187,000. Protecting Plugson is therefore a better
business for Plugson than it is for England.
In our estimate of loss we have made a liberal allowance for Englands indirect loss through depreciation of
house property, and Ioss of wages consequent on
Plugsons transference of his mills to Pannonia. W e
have, however, made no allowance for indirect injury
t o Englands other industries and other citizens which
may be caused through a protectionist policy, so that
the business of protecting Plugson is even more costly
in reality than it appears on the figures we have here
set forth..
If Plugson must be squared in one way or another,
then a direct bounty payment to him of 10,000 will
evidently cost less than a policy of Protection. Therefore Protection is not the only remedy, nor i s it
evidently the cheapest. The proposition that Plugson
must be protected involves, moreover, the supposition
that any other capitalist taking his place will demand the
same terms that Plugson does.
We have seen that in the Undershot mills there are
three vested interests :(I). The vested interest of Plugson the capitalist.
( 2 . ) T h e vested interest of the work-people who get
a livelihood from their employment in the mills.
(3.) The vested interest of England, embracing the
two preceding vested interests along with that of all
other English citizens.
Now the closing or maintaining of the mills is dependent on the first of these vested interests, that of the
capitalist.
If Plugson can reduce wages, so that his
profit in England will be equal to his profit in Pannonia,
he will maintain his millsopen in England. If England
can get capital for the maintenance of the mills at a
cheaper rate than from Plugson, England can afford to
keep the mills running.
Let us now take a wild flight of fancy.
The Undershot operatives a r e a shrewd and saving
sort, and when they hear that Plugsons mills a r e to be
closed, the heads of the thousand households each put
up 50 They then approach the Government, who
lend them 50,000 a t 5 per cent. per annum, and the
Undershot Co-operative Mills, Limited, is formed with a
share capital of 50,000 and a loan of 50.000 from
Government. Each workman is now a shareholder, and
each shareholder a workman.
These men are quite
content to keep the mills going for a profit of the
10,000 per annum that Plugson was abandoning for a
greater. I t pays them better t o get a low dividend and

128

1 He NEW

90 wages

a year than to get Plugsons rate of

dividend and no wages. That is the difference between
them and Plugson ; they can afford to continue running
the mills, because they and the Government are content
with a smaller return on their capital.
Let us now summarise the discoveries that we have
made :( I . ) A Protectionist policy in foreign countries may
cause a transfer of capital thither from England.
( 2 . ) This transfer of capital may cause a greater loss
to England than that measured by the capitalists initial
loss.
(3.) There are more ways of combating such a
transfer of capital than by erecting a tariff in favour of
the home manufacturer.
(4.) Bounties are cheaper than tariffs.
(5.) The factory whose workers are also its owners
can afford to work a t the lowest return on capital, and
consequently, other things being equal, can pay the
highest wages.
Summarising all our conclusions : If it be necessary
for a reduction to be effected in the expenses of a business so a s to face competition, then, whether such
reduction be effected a t the expense of the capitalist or
at the expense of his employees, will be immaterial to
the nation from a n economic standpoint, so long a s the
productiveness of the business be maintained unimpaired.
Whether this position be Socialistic or no I will not
venture to say. I am not a n avowed Socialist, but a
business man, studying the phenomena of trade from
life, and it is the position to which my reasoning has led
me. Meantime, I come back naturally to the p i n t from
which I started. Other things being equal, the geographical employment of mobile capital is determined
by the return, upon his investment yielded to the
capitalist.
In other words, mobile capital will be
transferred from country t o country in accordance with
But the gain of
the return obtained by the capitalist.
an individual capitalist does not necessarily mean a gain
to the community of which he is a member.

The Eurasian

of Genius.

We dont want to fight, but by jingo if we do,

Weve got the ships, weve got the men, weve got the money,
too ;
Weve fought the Bear before now, and while were Britons
true
The Rooshians shall not have Constantinople.
-Barrack-room
Ballads.
T h e Swedish Academy not long ago awarded a prize
to Mr. Rudyard Kipling for his literary services to
Idealism. There is another Nobel prize, that for services to the cause of Peace, to which he seems a t least
equally entitled, and it would be well for his friends to
submit to the judges a copy of his latest contribution
to Eurasian literature, a story in Pearsons
Magazine.
he plot of the story is not elaborate. I t would appear that the W a r Office, out of a base regard for that
most abject and loathsome of all human beings, the
British taxpayer (who must not be confounded for one
moment with that archangel in trousers, the British
citizen), has committed the crime of devising a dummy
horse on which to teach riding to cavalry recruits. The
villain of Mr. Kiplings piece is naturally Mr. Haldane,
who suffers, like 99.5 per cent. of Mr. Kiplings white
fellow-subjects, from the debasing stigma of being a
civilian. However, as Mr. Haldane is always careful to
inform us, in the true vein of a constitutional monarch,
that he is responsible for nothing done in his name,
he being the mouthpiece of my advisers, the shafts
of the satirist may chance to wound some sacred specimen of that superman in khaki, the British officer.
Be that as it may, the injured army appears to be
too meek to avenge its wrongs, and the cause of Idealism in horseflesh is championed by-of
all persons
in the world-a
naval lieutenant. This Nelson in
embryo buys a rocking-horse, affixes a firework to its
tail, and sets it up by night on a heap of turnips placed

AGE

DECEMBER
8, 1910.

between two opposing camps of soldiers engaged in

manuvres on the South Downs.
The result does not appear quite so creditable to the
discipline, temper and good sense of the British Army
as its Eurasian laureate would have us believe. N o
sooner is the firework ignited and the rocking-horse
perceived afar off than both the sleeping forces mutiny,
and, deserting their lines, swarm up the hill to pelt
each other with the turnips, the turnips presumably
being the property of some low-minded clod who had
been vile enough to contribute to the maintenance of the
excited heroes by paying-it is painful to have to soil
ones page with the word-taxes.
The mutiny may be excused as an outburst of manly
spirit against oppression-it is more than excused, it is
praised, by the author as a proof of the splendid pluck
of the British race (when in uniform). The stupidity
with which each side attributes the outrage to the other
is more characteristic of certain episodes in a recent war
than of the conduct of that cringing civilian, Clive, on
the field of Plassey.
But the supreme glory. of the
British Army is manifested in the fact that no one
gets hurt, the sole weapons used being the taxpayers turnips. Not a gun goes off even by accident;
not a sword is drawn; not a belt is unbuckled. The
mutineers emerge mutually unscathed from their grand
display of military spirit. I t is like heaven-like
a
Eurasian heaven. A thousand demigods battle with
each other for hours in a combat that must strike awe
into the civilian heart, and bring the blush of shame to
the taxpayers cheek, and at the end not one is a penny
the worse. I t is like a meeting of the Peace Society.
I t is more bloodless than football.
If the Norwegian Storthing cannot be moved by such
a picture it must be a very different body to the Swedish
Academy. An army that cannot hurt its enemies even
when it tries is almost too good for this world. I t is far
too good for England-for the tax-paying part of England. I t ought to be sent to Germany.
There is a darker element in this literary masterpiece.
Like a true artist, Mr. Kipling has supplied the brightly
humorous naval officer and the stupid but splendid
mutineers with a foil in the person of one of those libels
on human nature in which philanthropy refuses to
believe.
For there is a deeper depth than civilianism, even than
taxpaying. I t is-this time the shrinking pen refuses to
do its office and asterisks must be employedj*rn*lism.
Mr. Kipling is an authority on
j**rn*lism. He has himself passed through that hell,
and emerged, happily, without the smell of fire upon
his Eurasian robes. There is no corner of its dark recesses that his genius has not explored. What he has
to tell us about j**rn*lism is worth hearing.
A j**rn*list, one gathers, is a being, shambling upon
two legs and bearing a superficial resemblance to a
man, and even to a SOLDIER in mufti, who consents to
sell his soul to the taxpayer, as represented by the proprietors of the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph,
Morning Post, Times, and other grovelling and
unpatriotic sheets, in return for a beggarly wage. The
more beggarly the wage, of course, the baser the
j**rn*list; fat royalties and Nobel Prizes are for a
different brand of human kind. In return for a miserable pittance, barely sufficient to support his wife and
children-the
taxpayers of the future !-this
debatable
creature is found willing to furnish the taxpayer with
information as to how his money is spent-aye, even
should such a task involve the mention in less deferential language than that of lickspittle, of SOLDIERS, nay,
of O F F I C E R S !
In this story the Judas--Mr. Kipling does not flatter
him with that name : doubtless there are still viler
traitors in the Eurasian religion-the
Iscariot appears
upon the scene, not in a motor like a Prize Idealist, but
on a bicycle, and clad in knickerbockers-things
unknown to military tailors except by the name of
breeches. I t is not stated that he is a taxpayer, and
we may give. him the benefit of the doubt. Fleet Street
salaries generally come within the exemption, and a

129

paper that would stoop to report a maudlin row, .provoked by a senseless hooligan joke, like that chronicled
by Mr. Kipling, must be on its last legs.
Fortunately for the honour of the Army, and of England-the part of England that does not pay taxes, but
only spends them-there
is a champion to meet the
traitor. And what a champion ! A soldier? Of course.
An officer? Guess again. The hero is, if our dazzled
eyes have read the magazine aright, a BrigadierGeneral only very slightly the worse for dining at the
mess ! The old warriors heart is full-the mess champagne was good. H e has watched his old regiment
throwing turnips till the happy tears have started to his
eyes.
In a burst of pardonable, or rather laudable,
emotion, he seizes the Fleet Street abortion and, less
pacific than a mere private, ducks him in a horse-trough,
having less confidence than Mr. Kipling in the light in
which the incident would strike the British reader.
And what is it that, aided by the mess champagne,
has so promptly stirred that aged, valiant heart? Is it
the spectacle of a successful meeting? Is it the absence
of all sense of humour on the part of his old corps; or
their childlike unintelligence? I t is nothing of these.
It is the harmless character of the combat that moves
him to ecstasy--at least that is what appears from his
not quite sober ejaculations.
W e say again, if the
Peace prize be not won by a tale like this, then the
Swedish Academy must come to the rescue, and reward
the author with a second tribute in the name of
I deal ism.
In calling this stupendous literary performance a
work of Eurasian genius, it is not suggested, of course,
that Mr. Kipling is a Eurasian in any other sense than
that in which every Anglo-Indian is more or less a
Eurasian, and particularly such as come of Anglo-Indian
families, are born in India, pass a few years of boyhood in England, and then return to India for their
career. The caste is becoming distinct to every observer, and no one has done more to make it so than
Mr. Kipling.
The well-bred man does not feel called upon to
assure every one he meets that he is a gentleman; and
in the same way the thoroughly white man does not
feel obliged to emphasise a t every turn the natural and
obvious difference between himself and the black. I t
is when East and West meet most nearly that the feeling of racial aversion is most strongly developed. Of all
writers on India Mr. Kipling enjoys the honour of being
most cordially disliked by the people of India, who, so
far from regarding him as a great Idealist, appear to
see in his work the glorification of everything that is
snobbish, brutal and soul-destroying.
In Anglo-Indian society, whether it be located at
Simla or a t Cheltenham, everyone not in the serviceaccursed word !-everyone not in receipt of the wages
of the taxpayer is assumed to be a bounder, unless
he has a title. In outlying districts, where white men
are few and the club is hard up for subscriptions, outsiders are admitted in the persons of journalists and
similar white trash; but it is an understood condition
that they shall respect the tone of the set which tolerates
them, and shall feign, if they do not feel, abasement in
the company of Mrs. Potiphar and Captain Gadsby.
Those w h oaccept toleration on the terms of unstinted
homage form a social caste with characteristics very
strongly resembling those of the Eurasian by blood.
They are more military than the military man-because,
after all, there are plenty of gentlemen in the army.
They try to get rid of the unofficial taint by the violence
of their loyalty to the official world. They exaggerate
a sentiment which is rather in need of correction.
Their patriotism is of the brand of the member of
Parliament-probably
a taxpayer-who waves a Union
Jack in the faces of Mr. Kiplings Eurasian schoolboys.
Mr. Kipling has satirised himself. He is for ever bringing out that flag and waving it in the faces of those who
have stitched every seam, before Eurasia was conquered by a commercial companys clerk.
A man of genius i s a king in his own right. H e is
the natural superior of all the subalterns and commissioners who were ever invented. I t is Mr. Kiplings

misfortune that he has not been able to see this. He

is more proud of the patronage of his military friends
than of the honour done him so strangely by the
Swedish Academy. His latest story shows this. I t is
written in the Eurasian dialect. I t is an ugly scream,
the scream of t h e banderlog protesting its humanity,
and the burden of the Scream is :I feel half like a Parsee,
A Sikh or a Bengalee,
Or perhaps a rude Afghan ;
But in spite of all temptations
T o belong to other nations
I remain an Englishman.
ANTHROPOLOGIST.

Modern Dramatists,
By Ashley Dukes.
( AAll rights reserved.)

XI .-Maeterlinck.
THEguileless have said that Maeterlinck belongs to
no period. This is because they have lost themselves
so completely in his mystical forests that they can no
longer see the wood of modernity for the trees of illusion. To them his magic is witchcraft. In seeking
the source of the rainbow, they have found nothing
but mist. Nevertheless, the period claims him. The
opportunity of realism comes with the age of false
romance. And, in the same sequence, there is a time
for magic. It is the hour when all the world is
matter-of-fact.
The early eighteen-nineties saw the advanced
theatre besieged by social dramatists. They formed
a European ring ; Ibsen, Strindberg, Tolstoy, Hauptmann, Henri Becque and the authors of the comedie
rosse. Their social gospel varied, but they all practised in common the outward technique of realism,
with its perfection of modern dialogue and setting,
T h e subject varied, too. Here it was the life of the
bourgeoisie, there that of the peasantry or the slums,
Social politics were touched upon, as in T h e
Weavers or An Enemy of the People. An atmo
sphere of moral indignation pervaded the stage. Society
was unmasked ; convention was exposed ; new
moralities were preached. Each author, mounting the
realistic steed, set off a t a gallop in pursuit of Truth.:
And truth was the actual, the existing fact.
This was the destined hour of the magician, and
Maeterlinck appeared.
The apparition was startling,
and some critics, seeking a pompous imbecility to cover
their Gonfusion, named him t h e Belgian Shakespeare.
In this fashion Tchekhov might be named t h e Russian
Ibsen, or Hugo von Hofmannsthal the Austrian
Dante. Such is the disintegrating force of the new
idea upon the mind of the expert labeller.
The originality of the earlier Maeterlinck was
marked in three respects ; in setting, subject and technique. I take them consecutively.
The setting was a t first sight unfamiliar and (to the
The peasant cottages
social politician) reactionary.
and middle-class parlours of the realist drama gave
place to dim halls of feudal castles, gloomy mediaeval
forests and battlefields remote from space and time.
The atmosphere was that of a dream-world with the
surface ethics of a barbaric age.
So far, however,
Maeterlinck might be said only to have rediscovered
the vessel of the old romance which had lain unused
so Iong.
The subject was more unfamiliar still. Dramatists
of all ages had been concerned to lay bare the motive
of human action. Even the playwright-manipulator of
the market place, endeavouring to conceal the strings
he pulled, alleged a motive for his puppets ; and the
modern realists, challenging the order of society,
sought the true motive of actual men and women.
Shaw, hurling the thunderbolts of his prefaces a t an
astonished Anglo-Saxon world, denounced the attempt
t o found our institutions upon the ideals suggested to
our imaginations by our half-satisfied passions, instead
of upon a genuinely scientific natural history. Motive,

130

THE NEW AGE

then, was regarded as a fixed scientific fact, accessible

to investigation and exact analysis. I t w a s a definitely adjusted part of the human mechanism. Thus
the logical evolutionist, supported by nineteenth century thought. Maeterlinck modified this conception
without attempting a frontal assault upon it. H e went
deeper than the logicians, and sought the source of all
motive, the underlying self. Here he w a s supported
by modern psychology, which draws a distinction between the conscious and the sub-conscious ego. He
was concerned, however, not with a new scientific form
of drama to replace the old, but only with the expression of a temperament. He dramatised the sub-conscious, the subterranean and tremulous in man, called
it forth and gave it life. I t took the form of the childspirit, and its dominant trait w a s ever-present fear.
It was awakened a t night after the sleep of centuries,
and found the darkness peopled with t h e unknown.
Fate, a malignant horror with lean, clutching hands,
hovered in t h e gloom of the castle hall and crouched
behind every tree in the forest, purposing a rape of the
soul. Even the! blind were conscious of its presence.
T h e children fled before it, seeking to return t o their
sleep; but every way was barred, and they beat their
hands vainly upon heavy iron doors. Such children as
Pellas and Mlisande, Aglavaine and Slysette.
The technique was newest of all. T h e sub-conscious
mood, hitherto expressed only in music, found words.
It became articulate through symbolic speech, repetition, archaism a n d subtle delicacy of suggestion.
Above all, through a perfection of the artless.
This was the service of the earlier Maeterlinck; a
notable discoverer.
Monna Vanna w a s t h e turning-point.
I n setting,
the transition was from the mystical to the historical,
T h e place,
from the dimly imagined to the known.
Pisa; the period, the close of the fifteenth century. T h e
roaming symbolist, then, was tethered by his own
choice; and, feeling the unfamiliar pull of the imprisoni n g rope, at each browsing sweep he narrowed his
r a n g e of liberty still further, ending at last with many
plaintive bleats in a tangle of impotence. But of t h a t
later.
In subject there w a s a vaster change. T h e children
had grown up. They were no longer afraid of the
dark. They passed from moods to problems, from the
midnight dream-world to t h e high noon of passion,
A dictated
from a n atmosphere to a morality.
morality of unheroism, in accord with the movements
of the a g e ; such a gospel as sparkled in lighter form
through the pages of Arms and the Man. Some of
their former characteristics they retained-the
halfblindness of Marco, for example-but
for the most part
they were older and less ingenuous. Yet in growing up
they had grown no stronger. Their problems were too
great for them. Spoiled children from the first, they
became querulous and unmanageable. The reason for
this is not far to seek. T h e perfect simplicity of the
earlier Maeterlinck portrayed each individual as a
clearly defined, homogeneous figure, troubled by fate,
but yet limpid and serene within. The child-spirit was
a complete whole, the grown man a conflicting cosmos.
Instinct guided the poet in his native drama of the subconscious; it deserted him almost wholly in t h e drama
of action.
I n technique, too, there w a s a lapse. T h e artless g a v e
place to the artificial, a n d the old simplicity of speech
and form to a covenant with the theatre. T h e effective
thrill of Vanna, naked beneath her cloak in the tent of
Prinzivalle, her great s t a g e lie at the close, her allimportant aslde (Tais-toi . . . je te dlivrerai.
. . . nous fuirons) at the critical moment, the
explanatory speeches of Marco as raisonneur, these
were all commonplaces of the theatrical specialist, but
they were foreign to Maeterlincks genius. Moving in
t h e depths of the child-spirit he had been profound;
returning to the surface of life he was-superficial.
Let us took more closely at t h e figures of this drama.
Pisa is beleaguered by the Florentines and reduced to
famine. Guido, husband of Monna Vanna, commands
t h e garrison. The old philosopher Marco, his father,
returns from the besieging camp with terms of peace.

DECEMBER

8, 1910.

Marco has been the guest of the Florentine mercenary,

Prinzivalle, a n d h a s found him n o barbarian, as w a s
rumoured, but a man of parts, wise, reasonable and
humane.
B u t where, he asks, i s the wise man
without his madness, o r the good man who h a s never
harboured a monstrous thought ? Prinzivalles terms
a r e that Vanna shall go to him at night, naked beneath
her cloak, and shall p a s s the night in his tent; earning
thereby the safe entry into Pisa of a convoy with provisions and the raising of the siege. Marco urges his
son to accept them : DO what this madman asks, and
the deed which seems t o you hideous will seem heroic
t o those who survive. .
. I t is a n error to believe
t h a t the pinnacle of heroism is to be found only in
death. T h e most heroic act is the most painful, a n d
death is often easier than life.
Here is the new
morality of reason, linking Maeterlinck with t h e
tendencies of a period. Guido refuses; b u t Vanna
consents and g o e s to Prinzivalle.
Prinzivalle, unknown to Vanna, had loved her in his
youth. H e talks with her now; they speak frankly as
friends. She binds up his wounds, and treats him at
moments almost like a mother. T h e purpose of her
coming is barely touched upon. Her speech is halfnaive, half yielding. Very simply she expresses her
astonishment at being able to speak with him at all, for
J e suis trs silencieuse. ( W h a t sinuous magic in this
word !) Still Prinzivalle forbears to take her; a n d their
conversation is broken by a n alarm i n t h e camp. A new
detachment of the Florentines has arrived, a n d Prinzivalle is proclaimed a traitor. Vanna implores him to
return with her to Pisa, where he will be received
honourably as a guest. She kisses him upon, the forehead, and he carries her away in his arms.
Within the city Marco and Guido await them. Here
the conventions of the theatre gain the upper hand,
and, to borrow a phrase of Prinzivalle, ce dernier acte
est le seul qui ne prouve rien.
Vanna declares t h a t
she is unharmed; Guido refuses to believe her. Protestations a n d incredulity-these
a r e familiar scenes, but
they a r e at least convincing. T h e unreal triumphs with
the recognition of Prinzivalle. Note the gradual lapse
into t h e theatrical rut. Guido believes at first that
Vanna has brought him as a victim, to revenge her
wrong. She still protests : H e did not touch me.
Because
he loves me.
Guido is
W h y not?
tortured by ignorance, craves for certainty. At all costs
he must know the whole truth. Prinzivalle is seized
and bound for torture. Vanna rushes into the midst of
the guards, crying, No ! I lied ! He took me ! He
is mine ! (Aside to Prinzivalle, Be silent ! I will
free you ! W e will fly together !) Stage psychology
ready-made; a wild, clap-trap scene. For the sake of
form Guido asks W h y is he here? W h y did you lie?
and for the sake of form she answers, I lied to spare
you. . . . I brought him to revenge myself. The
play sinks fast, but Vannas proof touches the depths.
S h e approaches Prinzivalle a n d embraces him with a
show of hatred. T h u s and thus I kissed him !. . .
H e is mine! . . I will have him! . . H e is the
trophy of this night of mine! Prinzivalle is led away.
Adieu . . . w e shall meet againl! Then, taking
the key of his prison, s h e goes out alone to set him free.
ne prouve rien.
C e dernier acte. .
And the ethics? (For Monna Vanna h a s been
called a n ethical drama.)
Accept for the sake of
argument the wildly preposterous fact of Prinzivalles
demand. Marco urges a morality of unheroism a n d
sacrifice ; but he claims in the same breath t h a t it is
based upon the experience of age. H e foreshadows a
time when sole possession will not be the highest aim of
love; but his immediate instance is the prostitution of
the beloved to the caprice of a mercenary. Guido commands the garrison; but he allows Vanna to go against
his will. Having allowed her to g o , he stands upon his
honour and refuses to forgive her.
Prinzivalle is a
philosopher, but yet a madman. He loves Vanna,
but he does not take her. As for V a n n a herself, she
remains a mystery.
(Perhaps a mystery even to her
author.) She loves Guido a n d treats him almost with
contempt; loves Prinzivalle in a n instant, a n d saves him
in the next. T h e last impression of her is the strongest;

131

as the steam o f t h e theatrical machinery in the final

act. T h e motive of a n ethical drama of weaklings.
Let us be uncritical for a moment, even toward these
spoiled children. I t is ill work to be forever breaking
butterflies upon a wheel. And in this Monna Vanna
there is so much music of speech, so much brave show
of colour, so much pure joy of life.
There a r e
triumphant moments; as when Prinzivalle draws aside
t h e curtain of his tent, and the fiery towers of Pisa a r e
seen against the sky. These are in part a legacy of
past achievement; in part the flame of a fate at its
zenith. Monna Vanna is a landmark, a monument
at t h e parting of the ways. W i t h the earlier dramas, it
traces the history of Maeterlinck the poet.
He had
himself emerged from the gloom of t h e forest for the
first time; and if he blinked overmuch in the glare of
noon, a n d his mystical second sight deserted him, that
may have been little for him by comparison with the
new sense of life and passion. One should not darken
the eyes of the poet, a s finches a r e blinded to make them
sling more sweetly. H e must choose his o w n surroundings. Only, it is the song that matters .tothe world, not
the singer; a n d there is one of the riddles of a r t and life.
After Monna Vanna, Maeterlinck was no longer a
discoverer. H e became a purveyor of water after wine.
But the wine must first be tasted, before the water is
thrown away.

Island, on the sea coast. There are days, and sometimes whole weeks, when the nervous tension is maintained like the hum of a n electric battery attached to
the body.
*

An Englishman in America.
By Juvenal.
THEBowery is not far from Broadway, but t h e two
names represent two worlds.
Broadway stands for
the liberty of a cosmopolitan Republic; the Bowery
stands for the licence of a cosmopolitan proletariat.
There is a razzle-dazzle glare here, as in Broadway,
but the quality of the glare is on a lower level ; it is the
difference between gooseberries and grapes, t h e Seven
Dials and Piccadilly. No description of this quarter
could do the people justice. I have heard here German-American,
Irish-American,
Cockney-American,
New
York-American,
Yiddish-American,
DagoAmerican, Pidgin-English, and I dont know what
besides. If I were trying to describe the psychological
spirit of the place to a medical man I should liken it
to a seidlitz powder taken with a dash of rum, rhubarb, and red pepper, after a supper of Wiener
sausages and sauer-kraut.

A Bowery beer-hall defies description. There are

faces that stare with a brutal defiance, faces that glare
with the pent-up ferocity of-the half-tamed tiger, faces
t h a t leer in stupid apathy, faces on the qui-vive for
rows, sudden alarums, faces bloated with poisonous
alcohol, anaemic faces contemplating oblivion on t h e
brink of the abyss.

T h e Bowery must not be confused with the Tenderloin District, which is to Broadway what a bolt of
lightning is to a midsummer nights dream. Broadway is the Milky Way of the American constellation.
But t h e Tenderloin is Venusberg minus the Tannhuser
music. People promenade on Broadway, stagger
through the Bowery, and drop into the Tenderloin.
But the drop is towards the bottomless pit.
***

Murder is committed in the Tenderloin with a s much

s a n g froid as a gambler would feel in losing a fortune
in Wall Street. I a m not certain yet what combination of elements has produced so many desperadoes
in a city so European as New York. I t is probably
a combination of the electric atmosphere, the deadly
drinks, the hurry t o live, and the impatience to die.
New York was settled by the Dutch, the most stolid
a n d phlegmatic people of Europe, and here w e a r e in
t h e midst of a neurasthenic orgy which keeps on by
night as well as by day, and when summer comes the
excitement moves from the heated city to Coney

New York inspires mixed sensations? The first feeling is one of intense strangeness; and no doubt it is
this feeling that carries so many visitors off their
feet. When the fly enters the parlour of the spider, the
fly IS surprised, then fascinated, then obfuscated. T h e
fly is surprised at the pretty parlour ; it finds the
drawing-room a dream, but it is carved in the diningroom and eaten in t h e boudoir. Speaking of edibles,
New; York offers everything the earth produces ; but
as for drinks I prefer the kind that come from Burton
and the country north of t h e Tweed, which is saying
I know the difference between tweedledum a n d
No, New York will never catch me
tweedledee.
napping on the d r i n k question. But this wonderful climate gives me a ravenous appetite, and I can
eat almost anything, and have already eaten almost
everything : clam chowder, clam fritters, hot cornh e a d , stuffed peppers, succotash, buckwheat pancakes, Wiener wurst, porter-house steak, Scotch
haggis, roast turkey with cranberry sauce, stewed
oysters as big as saucers, hare soup, a n d twenty-one
kinds of pie.
*

Standing outside a saloon in the Tenderloin, I discovered a huge negro discoursing to a small group. He
was alluding to Johnson, the winner of the g r e a t prizefight : D e m white fellahs dey layin low and sayin
nuffin dese days; we cullud folks aint a-takin nuffin
from d e pure white trash. Bet yo bottom dollah de
cullud people gwine g e t dere rights, a n don y o
fogit it. T h e two heroes in America have been,
during recent months, Roosevelt a n d Johnson. I have
a very pronounced feeling that the majority of the
people of New York regard t h e big negro as the better
man. New York worships bullion and big biceps.
There are many millionaires, but only one black champion, the black pearl of great price.

Genius, of course, has no innings in a circus like

this. W h a t the New Yorkers demand is Roman
chariots, Coliseum gladiators with hips-on-the-dromes,
Spanish corridas and bronco-busters.
Something
must soon fill t h e place of the Teddy-bear now fallen on
grizzly times. T h e bear has danced through the
Cuban war, danced before t h e crowned heads of
Europe, and is now dancing o n t h e hot gridiron of
American politics .

But gridiron politics make a poor show compared

with the deadly gridiron football. An, American football match is ten times as dangerous as a Spanish
bull-fight. H o w comes it, I asked of a university
professor the other day, h o w comes it that you surpass Spain in brutality? T h e answer was : O u r
young athletes must have some deadly excitement. A
football match is a miniature war. W e cannot have a
big war, and we g e t the next best thing. A match
where one man. is killed and several carried off to the
hospital is to us what the bull-fight is t o the Spaniard.
It gives society a psychological reaction,. Nothing
is so soothing to neurasthenic nerves. T h e politician
who is afraid to take his political opponents by t h e
horns becomes excited to the verge of delirium at a
ball-match. T h e Spanish priests delight in t h e
horrors of the bull-ring ; and in America ministers of
all denominations may be seen a t a football match
getting what comfort they can out of other mens
broken ribs and pulpy heads. Nothing thrills like the
sight of a young man killed in the prime of life as you
sit in a safe seat, surrounded by all the luxuries
Yankee ingenuity c a n devise. But I must leave a
description of a gridiron match for my next sheaf! of
notes, when I shall compare a typical American g a m e
with a Spanish bull-fight.
(ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

132

THE NEW A G E

Unedited Opinions.
III.-A New Aristocracy.
FROMyour remarks of the other day I gather that you
do not believe either in Nietzsches new aristocracy.
Not in Nietzsches, but in a new aristocracy I do.
What do you find wrong in Nietzsches conception?
I t is vulgar, reactionary, and puerile.
A Galatian condemnation. Rut in what respects
are Nietzsches views so bad?
First, he has the vulgar conception that noble
natures desire to rule, after the manner of historic
potentates.
Secondly, he would turn mens minds
back to the brutal days when the government of sheep
by dogs or of men by their masters was considered
natural and tolerable. Thirdly, he is puerile enough
to believe this reaction possible.
What was his fundamental error, then?
H e was led into his fundamental error by a prejudice against Christianity which he never attempted
to overcome, but which, o n the contrary, he allowed
to overcome him. Failing to perceive that the essence
of the Christian doctrine of nobility is respect for the
will in man (a far nobler conception than his own
doctrine) he put himself into antagonism not only with
the dogmatic husks of Christs doctrine, but with its
living kernel as well. In erecting his noble caste he
was therefore driven to devising a nobility which
Christianity had already made for noble natures
ignoble.
How would you distinguish between Nietzsches
pseudo-nobility and *the Chrilstian nobility ?
Not as Nietzscheans would have it, by attributing
sentimentality to the Christian view.
The Christian
view of what is noble is no more marked by sentimentality than Nietzsches view of what is noble is
marked, as he supposed, by realism,. In fact, it is
demonstrable that Nietzsches view of nobility is in
essence the vulgar view, since it requires to be recognised, acclaimed and submitted to by the many in order
to become conscious of itself.
Christian nobility, on
the other hand, is nobility that stands in no need of
public testimony. I t i s nobility, to use Nietzsches
own phrase, without witnesses.
Y o u still leave my mind unable to grasp the difference.
Well, to put it grossly, Nietzsches view of nobility
is of that which commands to service by the use of
force; Christs view of nobility is of something that
attracts to service by the manifestation of beauty.
The former is the view of the ordinary man of action ;
the latter is the view of the artist, and a s such to my
mind infinitely higher.
But in practice do you not admit Nietzsches view
to be more applicable to men as we know them?
If you say more usually applied or more superficially effective, I agree ; but I deny entirely that when
government by: persuasion and attraction is on rare
occasions actually seen in practice it is less efficient
even in appearance than government by force; or,
further, that government by force ever accomplishes
Force is only
more than the appearance of effect.
effective while it lasts, but persuasion retains its effect
when the cause has been withdrawn.
Everything you say turns, of course, upon your
contention ,that will is the sole motive of men.
I do not say the sole motive, but the only spontaneous, self-initiating and self-sustaining motive.
Whoever, therefore, desires to move men , effectively
must appeal to their will. In impelling that they produce the maximum effect with the minimum of effort to
themselves-surely
a noble desire !
Nietzsches
nobles, on the other hand, must needs be always on the
alert, like busy foremen, lest their subjects desert,
betray, or defraud them.
But, surely, effective overseeing is the only means by
which anything requiring the services of underlings
can possibly be got done?

DECEMBER
8, 1910.

Not a t all, and even if it were the reply would be

that the Christian nobleman would decline to regard..
a s great anything requiring the services of underlings.
That is another distinction between Nietzsche and
Christ. Christ could not tolerate slaves and inferiors ;
H e would have them equal with himself. Nietzsches:
nobles, on the other hand, loved slaves and would reduce everybody to that state.
A s far as I can see, then, the Christian noblemenwould get nothing done.
Nonsense; you appear to suppose, first, that men
want to do nothing ; secondly, that they do not naturally
recognise their superiors in accomplishments, if not
in soul (for all souls are equal), and, thirdly, that in
pursuit of a task commonly desired men would not
naturally group themselves in order of rank about the
fittest among them to direct the rest. Take my word
for it, if a band of men desirous of saving their lives
o n board a crazy ship did not when they knew each
other configurate themselves around the best seaman
among them, all the stories of natural ascendancy are
untrue; a s they are not. No, what is eternally true is
this, and heres the end and beginning of the whole
matter : without forgoing equality of soul with all men,
a man discovers that there are things he can do and
things he, cannot do ; there are more things, he finds,,
that he cannot do than he can ; he is happy in doing
the things he can do and grateful to those who set
him doing them ; he is miserable when attempting to
do the things he cannot do and full of hatred towards
those who sert him trying to do them. On these facts
I would rest a new order of society.
Only to find it upset by the first conceited fool who
imagined himself able to do something that he could
not do.
Shall I tell you why there is so much unhappy conceit of this kind now in existence? For, remember,
such conceited persons a r e also wretched. I t is because while real equality has been denied, superficial,
equality has been taught as a duty.
In what sense do, you mean?
In this, that if you persist in regarding men as inferior in kind you must compensate them by another
lie, namely, that of teaching them that they can be
equal in accomplishment. Have you not observed that
with every step in the descent of mans hold on the
doctrine of real equality, he has had to promulgate the
idea that all men have potentially the same powers?
Tell a man that he i s your inferior, and he instantly.
sets about disproving it. Convince him that you
accept him a s your equal, and ha subordinates himself
in respect of his inferiorities.
A paradox.
However, we were discussing a new
And a truth.
order of nobility. W e appear to have wandered.
To resume, then. Tell me how your doctrine of
reverence for the will of man would work in practice.
W h a t would your new aristocracy do that Nietzsches
would not do?
Excellent question.
Well, the new aristocracy
would refuse to accept anything but willing service.
There would be tolerated no forced labour on their
farms ; no slaves, no malcontents, no fear-driven wageseekers ; it should be love o r nothing.
Oh, Utopia ! And would not the work be bad?
On the contrary, my friend, only work that is done
for love is ever good.
But not all t h a t ?
No, I admit, not all that. Hence my second qualification of the new aristocracy : not only will they not
tolerate unwilling service, but they will not tolerate inefficient service. That is where their absence of sentimentality becomes so precious.
Ordinary men, you
know, take the will for the deed, the voluntary service being permitted to excuse the inefficient service.
But our new lords will neither take the deed without
the will, nor the will without the deed.
They appear t o me to be going to be as brutal as
Nietzsches
bantams.
Well, after all, contraries do resemble one another
in description.

DECEMBER
8, 1910.

THE NEW AGE

The Maids Comedy.

CHAPTER VI.
Exhibiting a standing example of feminine folly but concluding
with a rally of heroes.
\VESTWARD, where the mountains were highest, some
great caravan was moving under a cloud of dust. Dota
Filjee, who had first seen it, said, L e t us hide the
steeds behind these rocks, mistress, and creep along
So they
by the stream to spy whats advancing.
I t thinned away and
came near the cloud ,of: dust.
disclosed a number of ox-wagons rumbling along the
road. These were filled with women and children,
mostly wearing pink sun-cappies, and sunburnt men
rode beside the wagons. On the first wagon a parrot,
chained, sat imitating the report of the whips and the
howls of the native drivers. Noting all these things,
Dota observed, T h i s is certainly a Nachtmaal trek,
mistress. The people have come from the farms in the
mountains, down the Groot Pass, da-a-ar hours away!
And they are going to the town t o buy stores, and t o
hear the gospel on Sunday, and to dance on Monday.
And there will be marriages and christenings, and all the
Ooms and the Tantes will shake hands and say : How
do you do? W h a t an age since we met my gracious !
And all the nieces and nephews will get engaged to be
married in three months time a t the next Nachtmaal.
Suppose we join them, mistress, then I can hand up t o
the Predikant the twopence I promised. But Dorothea
replied, Surely you a r e mistaken, Dota, for there lurks
a frightful wizard in the first wagon, beside that parrot.
Why, mistress, where a r e your eyes? Can you not
see that he whom you call a frightful wizard is the very
handsomest knight in the world ? Dota, thou poor
child, come away at once, whispered Lady; h e is
enchanting thee ! But Dota Filjee could not be drawn
from the spot, where the object of her admiration was
now passing. His person displayed no enviable heritage of feature. The ape-skull, high cheek-bones, flap
ears, hook nose, blackened teeth and white, gigantic
hands indicated the scion of a degenerate stock. He
was, in fact, a remittance man, one of those exported
wastrels whose merit is their average infecundity.
They often gain the tolerance of back-veld farmers on
account of some smattering of school-learning ; and
their astounding foppery and faculty for lying amuse
the Boers, sliem a s these are, and rarely more deceived than diverted.
Inch by inch, Dota Filjee moved along the bank after
her hero. H e yawned monstrously, for he had been
very drunk the night before. H e must be English !
Dota exclaimed, so loudly that Lady nudged her; he
has grown weary of his country where only turnips
grow, and n o doubt his father only sends him a pound
a month, though, be sure, the family has millions! I
saw one once who had only a pound a month though his
mother knew the Queen of England and he could play
the concertina, and his name was Mynheer Lord Putt.
Toch ! these English, how they hate their poor children !
Whatever and whatever, I will be his slave, for he
makes my heart to sing! To this Dorothea replied
nothing, but waited anxiously for the caravan to turn
off towards the town. At the cross-roads below the
Klein Pass where the inn was, t h e bearded Boers drew
the oxen round, shouting or coaxing, and labelling any
lazy o x with the epithet Engelsman! So they travelled
away down the white road and disappeared a s they had
come, in a cloud of dust.
Dota Filjee seated herself in a heap upon the ground
beside Witvoet. O h , mistress, she said; d o be sorry
for me, for I must tell you I feel my heart like water.
Foy, toch ! he had the nose of noses ! He had,
returned Dorothea.
Well, Dota, what isthy mistress
compared with a nose? For my part, I must tell thee
I like him as little as that fat woman thou didst dream
of with the snakes head on. Now that was a dream
of dreadful memory, and Dorothea could have hit u p n
n o more potent unspell. Ni, ni, exclaimed Dota,
rising in confusion; (when I am away from you there is
always trouble, or at most, twopence of good and

I33

that not t o be called ones own for five minutes. I will

follow you and think no more of a nose ,or many noses.
Lead on, mistress. But she climbed right heavily upon
Witvoet. Suddenly they heard the sound of numerous
horses feet, and the voices of people calling to one.
another, who were evidently very gay and contented,
The sounds came from the Klein Pass, and there down
rode a company.
Mercy me ! Dorothea murmured,
how on earth did they pass the barricade? W h a t
barricade ? asked Dota Filjee. Ah, Dota, thats all
a n affair which happened while you were away from me.
Stand by now and say nothing, whatever thy astonishment. By this time the troop was wending out upon
the flats. There were ten o r twelve gentlemen and two
ladies, well dressed and mounted a s suited people of condition. They seemed t o be instantly attracted by our
Lady, who was engaged as usual in weighing h e r
impressions, and they rode as near as civility permitted.
God s p e d you, fair friends ! said Dorothea; andwithout hesitation the first horseman, a jolly silverhaired man, returned the chivalric answer : Heaven
He reined in his horse; and t h e
guide thee, Lady!
company came up, one by one, bowing to Dorothea as
each caught her eye. T h e two ladies did not conceal
either admiration or surprise but rode close up, smiling
and evidently delighted at sight of the gallant damsel.
The elder one, who was a dark-eyed, handsome personage and wore a fawn habit, exclaimed, I hope you a r e
not lost, little Lady. Pardon me for enquiring but I
know these parts very well, and I think you must be
a stranger.
Then an idea struck her, and she
continued, (My dear, are you not the daughter of
Yes,
madame, replied
Mynheer D e Villiers?
Dorothea. (Then I am indeed fortunate, cried t h e
lady; I have desired to see you since I cant say how
long ! I n fact, I am only one of many who have heard
the most enchanting descriptions of your grace and
beauty, yet you have eluded us all. The people here,
gentlemen, she addled, turning to the company, (believe
this young lady t o be a myth, so we are happy indeed to
have her before our eyes. We were just this instant
speaking of you, she concluded to Dorothea. Doubtless, madame, you have come past my fathers house
and have seen there something to astonish you.
Enough to make us doubt our senses! cried the lady,
T h e inn is barricaded, and your father served us clad
in armour. W h a t is the meaning of it all? Alas,
madame, I can tell you no more than that I a m a homeless maid, now and from henceforth, until I can
find someone disinterested enough t o do battle with my
cruel father and force him to restore me to my rightful
place. But tell me, I pray you, did you see a captive at
the inn? Thereupon, the lady turned, addressed herself with much eagerness to one of her Companions:
(Professor, you were right. There was a captive. Do.
relate again what happened to you! T h e Professor,
that jolly, silver-haired gentleman, then replied in a
round tone, Er-I admit my unpardonable curiosity,
mademoiselle, I took t h e liberty of examining the formation behind your-erestimable parents abode. It is,
I find, aqueous, yes, certainly aqueous. Rogers, you
do agree now, dont you? T h e specimen, however,
will testify. I beg your pardon, Mrs. Myburgh! Erwhile I was detaching the fragment--absolutely thievish
of me, I confess-er-the
Knight in armour suddenly
came out of the back door with a book in his hand.
H e unlocked another door, flung in the book and locked
the door again. Then I heard-you
all heard thisa shout of laughter. Then I heard these words : By
Jove, t h e history of Don Quixote! So thats t h e
Oracle ! You all alleged my narrative t o be merely a
pleasantry in artistic keeping with the environment.
Now, perhaps, you will apologise. By no means !
retorted the man named Rogers, a sandy-haired
veteran. You have proved nothing, sir. You are
relying upon circumstantial evidence. Circumstantial
evidence is the least trustworthy. It is always capable
of two or more constructions, and is invariably pronounced strong by persons who wish less to prove the
truth than the plausibility of a given theory. W h a t
proof have you brought of any captive? A few words
-which, for all you know, may have been uttered by

I34

THE NEW A G E

a cockatoo. Besides, Professor, have we not all been

victims a t one time o r another of your practical joking?
For my part, I am prepared to consider as a reasonable
proposition, whether the whole of the adventure is not
your own amiable device t o deceive us into accepting
your notion that the world is mad. As for the specimen-
Ah ! interrupted Mrs. Myburgh, but now
we know that there was a captive because the little
Lady is enquiring after one. Pray, my dear, tell us
about him. There is indeed a captive ! I found him
soon after my father drove me away, He immediately
set off to remedy my misfortunes. My father met him
in combat, wounded him and took him prisoner. Me
h e thrust forth again, and here am I, an outcast, a very
distressed damsel. And s o saying our Lady began to
weep. The company grew! embarrassed and then indignant. Incredible ! Shameful ! I never heard of such
a thing! (they murmured; and one young man stammered : Something must be done, s-s-something. The
Professor alone appeared serene. Ah ! he said with
evident malice, you will admit now, Rogers, that the
affair is serious? At that, Rogers butted his horse
close to the Professors. I admit this, he muttered
i n French, that the apparition of this young lady is the
chef doeuvre of your entertainment, but, though I
will not spoil your fun, Professor, do not imagine to
keep me much longer dancing about in this steaming
heat. And a s for the specimen-
Rogers is proposing that we all ride back at once and release the
Agreed,
everybody
captive ! cried the Professor.
shouted; and Mrs. Myburgh, at a wink from the
Professor, turned her horse towards the ascent saying,
I would not waste another instant for a fortune!
Come, my dear! Come, everybody!
For the convenience of the reader who has, ere this, certainly
guessed very near the exact truth, it may be stated that
most of this company, obviously not Land folk, were
members of a British Society, guests for the time of
Mrs. Myburgh, the lady who knew these parts so well.
They had ridden from her house in the railway town
above the Stormberg, and were bound for a country
place belonging to Mynheer Theophilus Myburgh,
cousin to the lady, and a rich and eminent Dutchman.
From thence they intended t o witness the Nachtmaal
festival in the town on the flats. Rogers could scarcely
H e shut his prim lips,
refuse to follow his hostess.
settled his toupee firmly and turned his ambling steed.
Dota Filjee was the last to move. Throughout the
whole affair she remained listless, staring dolefully towards the town. She had heard, if it may be believed,
hardly a word of the matter. She sat dreaming of the
Englishman. Rich and handsome and wise the company variously might be, but, if Dota Filjee had noted
these qualities, they must have appeared just nothing
beside the nose of the Englishman. She heard her
Lady calling: Dota, Dota Filjee ! With a vast
effort she tightened her rein, and so doing jerked the bit
against Witvoets teeth. And ,in a twinkling that wild,
incalculable animal had galloped away, straight for the
town. Half of the company set their horses to follow,
dreading every instant to see the maid thrown; but she
kept her seat with much ease, and a t last everyone drew
off, since plainly no horse there could come near the
white-footed runaway.
Dorothea gazed mournfully
until the thunder of Witvoets hoofs resounded no more.
My poor maid was enchanted this morning, she then
said, to the joy of the Professor, who cast an eye a t
Rogers, who merely shut his : A dreadful wizard put
a spell upon her. I shall have to find some means of
disenchantment, but the captive must first be released.
Now, Mrs. Myburgh, although aware by hearsay of the
eccentricity of De Villiers, was secretly quite convinced,
with Rogers, that the adventure must be someones plan
of diversion. Her husband, or Mynheer Theophilus, or
the Professor (who, in his turn, suspected Mrs.
Myburgh), o r all three, she concluded, had arranged the
entertainment : so her utterances and queries were
directed to carry forward the play! ( Do you think
your knight-errant was badly wounded, my dear? W a s
h e struck down? Isaw him felled to the earth,
madame. My father, raging like Belianis, was yet

DECEMBER
8, 1910.

subtle in his thrusts a s Don Quixote when he slew the

two armies. W h a t a position for you, my poor
child ! You hear that, Mr. Rogers? The captive is
sorely wounded. Ah ? returned Rogers, and having thus acknowledged the ladys address he called to
the Professor who was ahead among the younger men
and discussing plans of attack. Sir Impresario ! you
have omitted a serious detail-we
are none of us
armed ! W e have decided to collect pieces of the
rock, Rogers. Having first demolished the cruel parent
with these invaluable specimens, I shall claim them as
additional support for my theory of the formation. The
laugh against Rogers left him perspiring in the rear and
gradually he fell further and further behind, so that he
was considerably distant from the rest when the party
turned the bend towards the inn and beheld De Villiers,
his tin armour blazing in the sun, mounted and keeping
the Pass.
Dorothea rode forward. Behold my knights ! she
cried. Seven I promised thee, and more than seven
are here. Choose thee, Sir Roderigo! Each is more
willing than the other to take up thy glove ! The innkeeper replied : Ladies off the field ! Retire, gracious
dames, and prepare to busy yourselves with the dying. .
As everyone hesitated he seemed to grow furious, and
hurling his horse at Aster, drove Dorothea some way
down the hill, apparently buffeting fier across the
shoulder with his mailed hand. Heavens ? he must be
hurting her, cried the Professor, now completely bewildered, and the ladies screamed.
The men then charged the innkeeper, who struck
several of them, and dealt the Professor a blow which
laid him flat along his horses back, whence he tumbled
off upon the road and lay motionless. Fly, fly ! the
gentlemen cried to the ladies, but both lingered, trying
to persuade Dorothea to leave. She, however, had dismounted and was lamenting the fallen Professor. The
men will see to him. Come,.youll be killed ! screamed
Mrs. Myburgh; and her friend, a strong young Dutchwoman, jumped off her horse and tried to lift our
Lady away from the body. But force seemed to be
wasted upon Dorothea. She remained a s if fettered to
the ground and sang sorrow for the vanquished ! Meanwhile the fight was proceeding amid yells and clamour
and the ceaseless rattle of De Villiers armour. Four
of the men had sufferedfrom that prodigious lance, and
were dizzily trying to regain their mounts. Blood was
flowing and the exasperation of everyone manifested itself in desperateIy repeated attacks against the invulnerable Roderigo. While two men carried the Professor,
Dorothea following, away from the edge of the precipice, the rest battered at the innkeeper. H e broke
away, set his feet hard in the stirrups and prepared a s
if to charge everybody over the edge. Then, and then
alone, they turned and fled, and Rogers came round the
bend. He was forced close to the wall by the galloping
horses. H e could not turn. He was therefore left, as
before, last of the party. De Villiers flanked him,
pricked the trembling steed to a run and ran him right
into the courtyard. Dorothea, with Asters rein over
her arm, kneeled beside the Professor. A truce !
she cried to De Villiers. A truce to attend the
wounded ! Off! he shouted, riding down. Off,
or I run him through. O h dear, my father! exclaimed Lady. Have I not brought enough knights
yet? Dost thou dally? asked De Villiers. No,
replied Dorothea, rising, but thou art very hard on
me, father. And she burst into tears. Go, damsel !
returned De Villiers in a strange thin voice. So she
mounted and rode away. She saw the flying company
careering down the Pass. One or two were pulling
wildly, a t risk of their horses rearing over the cliff, but
the better riders had given the animals their head.
Aster went steadily along the familiar road and neighed
now and again a s he was wont to do when Witvoet took
the bit. The other horses began to slow down, and
presently everybody reined in safe, though breathless,
at the bottom of the Pass. When Dorothea appeared
weeping, the young man who had said that something
must be done, stood binding up one wounded arm with

135

the other, almost a s badly slashed. Mrs. Myburgh lay

in a faint upon the ground while her companion fumbled
at her laces ; and such of the others as were not injured
were attending those whose wounds testified to the
earnestness of the outrageous Roderigo. They greeted
Dorothea with joy and a torrent of questions, and Mrs.
Myburgh, suddenly reviving, insisted upon feeling the
pretty child all over to make sure she was not hurt.
* And whatever shall we do? she enquired, adding, I
really doubt my senses now. At first I believed it all a
jest, but that poor man is quite mad. The young man
with the wounded arms came forward. H e trembled,
and his eyes, which were grey and wide apart, kept on
blinking a s though he had lost control of the lids. Im
g-going back, he stammered. Our P-p-professor is
too v-valuable to be left to be assassinated. I b-beg
your pardon! Ah ! go not, noble friend ! said
Dorothea.
Time would be lost.
I am afraid you
would do more harm than good by returning.
I
agree, rejoined Mrs. Myburgh; let us lose no time
b u t ride to my cousins house and send armed men
t o the inn. But where is Mr. Rogers? Taken
prisoner, Dorothea replied. Then everybody hastened
to mount and conceal the smile which would have been
shameful. Instantly they set off, and, riding fast,
arrived a t the house of Mynheer Myburgh. Mynheer,
amazed at their story, could not doubt the witness of the
wounds and despatched messengers to the town for
men and guns. It was near nightfall before the revenge
party assembled at the foot of the pass. Every man in
the district seemed to be present; but Mynheer
Myburgh selected six and begged the rest not to follow,
a s so great a number would be fatal on that dangerous
road. The seven picked men departed amid cheers.
(To be continued.)

Books and Persons.

(AN OCCASIONAL CAUSERIE.)

By

Jacob Tonson.

THEexhibition of the so-called

Neo-Impressionists
over which the culture of London is now laughing, has
a n interest which is perhaps not confined to the art of
painting. For me, personally, it has a slight, vague
repercussion upon literature. The attitude of the culture of London towards it is of course merely humiliating to any Englishman who has made an effort to
cure himself of insularity. It is one more proof that
the negligent disdain of Continental artists for English
artistic opinion is fairly well founded.
The mild
tragedy-of the thing is that London is infinitely too selfcomplacent even to suspect that it is London and not
the exhibition which is making itself ridiculous. The
laughter of London in this connection is just a s silly,
j u s t a s provincial, just as obtuse, as would be the
laughter of a small provincial town were Strausss
Salome,
or Debussys Pellas et Mlisande
offered for its judgment. One can imagine the shocked,
contemptuous resentment of a London musical amateur
(one of those that arrived a t Covent Garden box-office
a t 6 a.m. the other day to secure a seat for Salome )
at the guffaw of a provincial town confronted by the
spectacle and the noise of the famous Salome osculation. But the amusement of that same amateur confronted by an uncompromising Neo-Impressionist
picture amounts to exactly the same guffaw. The guffaw
is legal. You may guffaw before Rembrandt (people
d o !), but in so doing you only add to the sum of human
stupidity. London may be unaware that the value of
the best work of this new school is permanently and
definitely settled-outside London. So much the worse
f o r London. For the movement has not only got past
the guffaw stage; it has got past the arguing stage.
I t s authenticity is admitted by all those who have kept
themselves fully awake. And in twenty years London
will be signing an apology for its guffaw. I t will be
T h e writing will
writing itself down an ass.
consist of large cheques payable for Neo-Impressionist

pictures to Messrs. Christie, Mansom and Woads. London is already familiar with this experience, and doesnt
mind.

W h o am I that I should take exception to the guffaw?

Ten years ago I too guffawed, though I hope with not
quite the Kensingtonian twang. The first Czannes I
ever saw seemed to me to be very funny. They did not
disturb my dreams, because I was not in the business.
But my notion about Czanne was that he was a fond
old man who distracted himself by daubing. I could
not say how my conversion to Czanne began. When
one is not a practising expert in an art, a single word,
a single intonation, uttered by an expert whom one
esteems, may commence a process of change which
afterwards seems to go on by itself. But I remember
being very much impressed by a still-life-some fruit in a
bowl-and on approaching it I saw Czannes clumsy
signature in the corner. From that moment the revelation was swift. And before I had seen any Gauguins at
all, I was prepared to consider him with sympathy. The
others followed naturally. I now surround myself with
large photographs of these pictures of which a dozen
years ago I was certainly quite incapable of perceiving
the beauty. The best still-life studies of Czanne seem
to me to have the grandiose quality of epics. And that
picture by Gauguin, showing the back of a Tahitian
young man with a Tahitian girl on either side of him, is
an affair which I regard with acute pleasure every morning. There are compositions by Roussel which equally
enchant me. Naturally I cannot accept the whole school
-no more than the whole of any school. I have derived very little pleasure from Matisse, and the later
developments of Flix Vallotton leave me in the main
unmoved. But one of the very latest phenomena of the
school-the
water-colours of Pierre Laprade-I
have
found ravishing.

It is in talking to several of these painters, in watching their familiar deportment, and particularly in
listening to their conversations with others on subjects
other than painting, that I have come to connect their
ideas with literature. They a r e not good theorisers
about art; and I am not myself a good theoriser about
art; a creative artist rarely is. But they do ultimately
put their ideas intowords. You may receive one word
one day and the next next week, but in the end an idea
gets itself somehow stated. Whenever I have listened
to Laprade criticising pictures, especially students
work, I have thought about literature; I have been
forced t o wonder whether I should not have to reconsider my ideals. The fact is that some of these men
are persuasive in themselves. They disengage, in their
talk, in their profound seriousness, in their sense of
humour, in the sound organisation of their industry,
and in their calm assurance-they disengage a convincingness that is powerful beyond debate. An artist who
is truly original cannot comment on bootlaces without
illustrating his philosophy and consolidating his position. Noting in myself that a regular contemplation of
these pictures inspires a weariness of all other pictures
that are not absolutely first-rate, giving them a disconcerting affinity to the tops of chocolate-boxes or art
photographs, I have permitted myself to suspect that
supposing some writer were to come along and do in
words what these men have done in paint, I might conceivably be disgusted with nearly the whole of modern
fiction, and I might have to begin again. This awkward experience will in all probability not happen, to
me, but it might happen t o a writer younger than me.
At any rate it is a fine thought. The average critic
always calls me, both in praise and dispraise, photographic; and I always rebut the epithet with disdain,
because in the sense meant by the average critic I am
not photographic.
But supposing that in a deeper
sense I were? Supposing a young writer turned up and
forced me, and some of my contemporaries--us who
fancy ourselves a bit-to
admit that we had been
concerning ourselves unduly with essentials, that we

THE NEW A G E

136

had been worrying ourselves t o achieve infantile realisms? Well that day, would be a great and a disturbing day-for us. And we should see what we
should see.

REVIEWS.
By A. P. Grenfell.
Woodlands and Their Story.
By
Houghton Townley. (Methuen. I 5s.)
The title is unfortunate. Forest is strictly a legal or
historical term, and need not, as our author states,
imply so much as a single tree. In practice most of
one may be, and actually often is, unwooded, as we
see in the New Forest.
Used in a looser sense it
denotes any large tract of woodland together with the
waste and water within its boundaries.
Woodland
describes all land covered with woody growth, or more
widely any prospect where trees are the leading feature
in the landscape. For the author to confine himself
to a few well-known public and private forests, and,
apart from Burnham Beeches, to omit all reference to
such typical English woodlands, to name only a few, as
Highclere, Longleat, Cirencester, Woburn and High
Meadow Woods is misleading. Story, again, either
implies a fairly accurate account of their history, or
the, lessons we can learn from our forests in their
present condi tioa.
The forester in search of a convenient history, or
the antiquarian who would visualise the subject matter
of his records, has little to learn from this book.
Few artists other than Scene painters and caricaturists
would gather knowledge or inspiration from its plates.
In his title, as throughout the work, our author has
been misled by his constant leaning towards the
cheaply picturesque. Had he been less ambitious and
called his book Rambles with a Camera Through
Some English Forests-, by a Dweller in the Suburbs,
h e would have hit the mark, and one could have accorded his pretty photographs a fair meed of praise.
From this point of view the section on Burnham
Beeches is well done, although it is quite untrue to
say that it comprises within the small area of a
single wood nearly everything t o be seen in all the
forests of England, not even if he uses forest in
its narrowest legal sense. What Burnham Beeches does
show is nearly everything that can be seen in a neglected beech forest, which has had a long course of
bad treatment, followed by artistic (?) management.
The frontispiece is typical of Burnham Beeches, and
would be better but for the figures. The plate opposite
page 1 2 is good, and gives a fair idea of a decent
English beech wood. The intrusion of an obviously
posed figure is less out of place here than elsewhere.
Plates opposite pages 24, 28, 40, and 76 are good.
Plate 40 gives an excellent idea of birches ; 60 would
be good, too, but for a n unnecessarily large female
figure.
The author is most successful when those
he introduces are small and strictly subordinated to
the landscapes, like those in Near Mark Ash, New
Forest,) page 148, with their backs to the spectator.
This is a very good bit of woodland scenery, though
t h e camera has not treated it too well.
The best
effects are those of wood and water, page 5 2 , Hardicanutes pool, and plates page Go and 72, also page
168, a New Forest stream.
This is so largely because trees:naturally do grow in unruly fashion near
water. Where animal life is introduced-the
stag,
page 108 (if a single and not a double photograph),
New Forest ponies, page 132, the herd of deer, Long
Walk, Windsor, page 254, the sheep, Ashdown Forest,
page 292-not
only have clever photographs been
secured, but much happier effects than with the human
figure. This in nearly every case is self-conscious,
unduly prominent and quite of place, though it would
not have been quite so bad had the male been substituted for the female.
But his practice is better
than his precept : If you secure male models let them
be battered, ill-dressed, and as rustic a s possible.
This is probably not impertinence but the self-satisfied stupidity of the town dweller, who is unaware that
English

DECEMBER
8, 1910.

the woodman is frequently a man in his prime, not illdressed, since rural wages are usually higher in wooded
districts, and an intelligent man in winter uses suitable clothes. The note of the forest is far more often
virile than feminine, or pathological, as opposed t o
that arboriculture or the study of . diseased and distorted trees, which is what we are mostly shown here
by way of woodlands or landscape gardening. Compare the ruined temple, Virginia Water, page 258
with the beech wood in Savernake Forest, page 274.
Contrast the studied artificiality of the one with the
massive vigour of the other, which gives an excellent
idea of what goes to make a forest (remember our
author is really dealing with forests), and the exuberant life in its serried ranks. Adequately to master
the artistic side of our forests and woodlands demands
more than a sense of the merely pretty and picturesque.
A sense of form is wanted, also some sympathy with
and understanding of the craftsmen, namely, foresters
and woodmen, who work therein. Of this there is no
trace or feeling throughout the work, but rather the
needless obtrusion of the obviously suburban female.
The greater number of plates consist of quaint, illtreated old beech pollards, with a few old oaks and
young birches. These have their uses and value a s
historical monuments, curiosities, or warnings, and,
when dealt with by a n artist like Mr. Rackham, for
their humour. They do not, however, constitute the
As well contend that the
whole of the beautiful.
denizens of a pauper hospital surpass a guards regiment in beauty and strength.
Mr. Townley, gives
himself away badly when he lays down : I t is amusing
to (talk trees with an expert, or even [mark the even]
with men who guard the forests. Enthusiasts as they
are all, they cannot for long grasp the notion that
the forest monsters can be judged only from the point
of view of beauty-, and it pains them to hear a tree
described as fine, when it is crooked, hollow, half-dead
and growing in a most unhappy situation. This, if
not a contradiction in terms, is the pert ignorance of
the townsman; he cannot see the wood for the trees.
Until he has some sense of a wood as a whole, a s
a living, breathing entity, let him cease to prattle
about forests and foresters, but stick t o his suburbs,
his London parks with their mediocre to fair arboriculture, and to his Burnham Beeches monstrosities.
Here again his compositions are better than his letterpress, and a careful study of plates, pages 12, 28, 180,
274, 302, may serve to indicate the right track. Plate:
page 303 is spoilt by the figure ; it is too Iarge not to
destroy the sense of mystery and too small to suggest
its own theme, for which literature-compare
Miltons
Allegro-is
a safer vehicle.
Contrast him with
Maeterlinck :
(Plant [the park] with beautiful trees, not parsimoniously placed as though each of them were an
object of art displayed on a grassy tray, but close together like the ranks of a kindly army in order of
battle. Trees never feel themselves really trees, nor
perform their duties unless they are there in numbers.
Then at once everything is transformed, sky and light
recover their first deep meaning, dew and shade return,
silence and peace find once more a refuge.
And again, of the common Scotch pine:(You can picture nothing to compare with the architectural and religious alignment of the innumerable
shafts shooting towards the sky, smooth, inflexible,
pu re.
Let him ponder these things-but except the beeches
and a few oaks-even the single trees he cannot see.
Ash and sycamore are not unimportant ; while the
first is abundant in the Forest of Dean, including the
neighbouring High Meadow Woods. This is curious,
since the ash, for photographic purposes, is the most
lovely of trees, and its strikingly feminine grace should
accord with his perhaps excessive appreciation of the
female figure. Other trees, such as thorns, holly and
wild cherry, though common in the forests he
purports to describe, are absent from his pages. Our
indigenous conifers, the juniper and the yew, are not
so much as mentioned.

137

The letterpress contains an interesting account of

Mrs. Grotes battles with t h e lady of the manor. The
tales of the Cockney deerstalkers in Epping Forest
would be amusing if treated in a more farcical spirit.
The best of it is found in the quotations, which ai-e
moistly well known and need not detain us. For the
rest, original authorities d o not appear to have been
consulted, and had his own matter been more succulent it would have been a graceful act to indicate the
sources of his inspiration more fully (than by a casual
seferencc to the Victoria County History.
The book can be confidently recommended to country
cottage week-enders, directors of garden cities and
suburbs, and most members of Socialist societies.
With all its deficiencies it will be to them a steppingstone to better things. Our author really photographs
his beech trees as if he loved them. The last chapter
on tree photography is well written and useful.

By

*
*
*
Alfred E. Randall.

T h e Drifters. By W. R. Titterton. (Frank Palmer.

net.)

IS.

This is a reprint of Studies in Solitary Life.

Some of the stories have appeared in THENEW AGE,
and a reviewer is somewhat awkwardly placed if he does
not approve of them. If I were inclined to b e sweeping in my judgment, I should say that Mr. Titterton
lacks everything but impulse. Certainly, I look in vain
for any trace of the control of the creator, of the pitiless logic of beauty, of the articulation of an organism.
Mr. Titterton has two or three stories about tramps,
and pretends that the people who work the machine o f
civilisation have all a repressed longing for the road,
Yet he can ask us to be sorry for Smith of Gearys,
who a t the age of sixty, is thrown, out of work, and is
free to enjoy the nomadic life. Mr. Titterton cannot
have it both ways. If the life of the tramp is desirable, then the unemployed a r e to be envied their freedoni. But Mr. Titterton delights in ugliness. In The
Builders Dream, for instance, he spins a pretty
enough fancy of a man working after his vision has
departed?, piling course on course until a horror of
ugliness I S erected. A boy pelts the palace with magical
roses, and it changes to the vision which had originally
inspired the builder. But the builder is angry, and
tries to kill the boy, who touches him with a rose and
restores him to beauty.
The builder recognises the
transformed palace a s the house of his dreams, and
with a cry of gratitude passes through the portal a s a
rose flutters down to the threshold. A pretty enough
fancy, as I said, but Mr. Titterton must spoil it. As
the rose touched the builders head, i t turned into a
fools cap. An unwarrantable piece of artistic vandalism, It is not clever ; it is not witty ; it is a s far from
true satire as it is from beauty.
Nothing but wilfui singularity can make a man prefer ugliness t o
beauty.

T h e Soul Traders. By Elizabeth Goodrow. Frank

Palmer. 3s. 6d. net.)

A volume of short stories told to the author by
American prostitutes.
They are true enough, nu
doubt ; but a reviewer may question the aesthetic propriety of their telling. If Miss Goodnow had been one
of these girls, I should have had no complaint to
make ; far personal experience is a basis of art. But
she was a member of a Settlement, a police probation
officer (if the text is literally true), and she drew these
stories out of the girls t o make a book of them. Her
preface, with its expressed desire t o help these women,
does not convince me. The text is against her, and
there is the damnable mark of the connoisseur in such
a phrase as this : I was very interested in her a t
once, as Italians are very rare in the Night Court.
Moreover, as the author admits that she has no
remedy, that cleverer people than herself must solve
the greater problem, one can only attribute t o her?curiosity. The book stirs no other emotion in me
but irritation a t the sociologist and statistician who
can find euphemisms for syphilis, and murmur

clinical material a s she soothes the sorrow of a n

hysterical street-walker.

By Huntly Carter.
Newer Spiritualism. By Frank Podmore.
(Unwin. 8s. 6d.)
In this age of insipid fads, manias, eccentricities,
patent foods, and invasion scares, to be the founder of a
new ism, whether spiritualism, teetotalism, antediluvianism or any other ism appealing to the surviving
Plesiosaurian mind, is assuredly to be great. T h e
genealogy of the, ism is not difficult to trace. From
the newer ism it is but a step t o the new ism, and
but another t o t h e plain, unvarnished ism. Likewise
the descent of the ism is easy to predict. When we
had spiritualism no one doubted we were in for the
new spiritualism, or that the newer would come tripping lightly on the heels of the new. And here it is
according t o the late Mr. Frank Podmore, and t o all intents and purposes it offers a mortal insult to that which
it succeeds, and which is no longer immortal. For, if
we a r e to believe Mr. Podmore, spiritualism was but
a travesty of a travesty, while the newer i s but the
apotheosis of up-to-date witchcraft, to which one might
justly say, Break thou in pieces and consume to
ashes, thou foul, accursed minister of hell, during the
recital of which the offending brand of spiritualism
would of course vanish in a clap of thunder.
A
sudden icy breath then blows through the vault, and
the light goes out. In the darkness the Newer
Spiritualism is seen trying to get born with Mr. F. W.
Myers calling it to life with H u m a n Personality,
whilst Mr. Podmore stands by ready to slay the reanimated brazen snake called the souls immortality.
Ha is supported by physiologists, pathologists, and the
latest thing in mechanical psychologists, but nowhere
is t o be seen either the mystic o r metaphysician. And
he shares the limitations of his supporters, pretending
that it is possible to investigate and interpret the whole
range of human experience in the laboratory, the hospital and the asylum, and one can in fact weigh and
measure consciousness and subconsciousness much a s
recruiting sergeants weigh and measure a prospective
British army. This point of reasoning reminds one of
Mr. Benjamin Kidds pursuit of happiness which always
lies round the corner ready to bolt into the next street
directly the human race shows its nose. Mr. Podmores
pursuit of consciousness is similar. The greater part
of it lies not on the roof where Mr. Podmore was always
seeking it, but in the cellar where Mr. Myers is mostly
Iocated. In short, the examination of Mr. Podmores
volume is not a profitable undertaking. T h e best one
can say is that Mr. Podmores book constitutes a
painstaking survey of t h e history of Spiritualism, and
of the phenomena of the Newer Spiritualism. Judged
in the light of dispassionate reason, it is not a masterpiece of penetrating wisdom.

The

The Symbolism of the Bible.

(Times of India Press, Bombay.)

By Expectans.

If Rationalism and Science have been fairly busy

for some years stewing man in the cauldron of their
beliefs, intuitionalism is now no less busy attempting
t o rescue him from his uncomfortable position. So
to-day we see a somewhat murky and symbolical figure
Expectans is one of
rising amid the dense steam.
those who seek to rescue man from the seething
depths. His theory is that all forms of life are but
symbols of a universal intelligence ; that all activities rise and merge in that dim mystery called the
AIbsolute, and symbolise it. For proof he takes the
Bible and other Eastern literature,
The result i s a
masterpiece of ingenuity. It reveals a thinker out of
the ordinary, and one who has discovered in the cosmical process a s recorded in the Bible-the passings
in pillars of flame, the spreadings of darkness and infernal gloom over Egypt and other choice spots, the
cleavings of rocks by living waters, and other such
primordial doings and happenings-an
underlying
meaning that reveals the physical world as but a

THE NEW AGE

138

symbol. Everything in t h e Bible is, in fact, symbolical

of the activities of the Deity. It is not difficult t o understand that the authors zeal or industry has carried him too far. H e has needlessly and without
assigning a reason destroyed the history of the Old
Testament, the characters of which might quite easily
have -remained both actual and symbolical. H e might,
for instance, have; allowed the leaders of Israel and
their redoubtable armies t o continue to pitch their
tents by Shunen or elsewhere, and a t the same time
have discovered the presence of the Omnipresent in
their doings.
But this apart, the work is a n extraordinary one,
and it is quite impossible to do justice to it in a short
notice. To some it will appear an unnecessary exhibition of mental gymnastics ; while others may regard
it as an amazing exposition of an uncommon realisation
of a n inner or spiritual interpretation of a n outward,
literal, metaphorical or symbolical expression. In any
case, no one can deny that the whole work is packed
with deep thought. T h e author starts off with and
largely employs ,the sign-language of numbers, a s
defining indices to spiritual states or processes, and
this largely no doubt owing. to the country in which
the book was written.
Had it bean written in England, possibly he would have started off with our own
language. As, a matter of fact, t h e why and how and
where the book was written is largely, one believes,
dependent on the country where it was written.
Climbing in the Ogwen District. By J. M. Archer
Thomson.

(Arnold.

5s.)

I once met a man tramping from California to

Canada.
H e was not a professional tramp, but the
victim of a strange mania. H e told me in strict confidence that he hated railroads as the devil hated resurrection pie, and though well able to afford to ride had never
done so in, his life. Later, by a n odd coincidence, I
met the same individual a t Bettws-y-Coed in Wales.
Without going into the question whether he had walked
from America to Wales, I agreed to make some ascents
of Snowdon with him. I t transpired that his love of
mountaineering and rock-climbing had brought him t o
Wales to try conclusions with some of the most difficult
Cambrian climbs. Whether he ever accomplished his
aim, I am unable to say. But it would seem from Mr.
Thomsons admirable and fully illustrated little book of
climbs in the Ogwen district, that the possibility of his
still being engaged in wandering up and down the
Welsh mountains like a lost spirit, is not a remote one.
According to the author, As late as 1894 twelve climbs
only had been made in all the mountains of Snowdonia,
and virgin faces met the eye on every side.
Lliwedd
was spoken of with bated breath, and the veil of mystery
peculiar to the mountains hung impenetrable over
three of its four peaks. T h e major part of Tryfan
remained untrodden, and climbers were ignorant of the
charms of Dinas Mot and Craig yr Yofa, as were
Ordnance Surveyors of their names. The prescience
of Ordnance Surveyors is not exactly proverbial, and
I strongly advise them to study Mr. Thomsons account
of his adventures on the Cambrian heights. It is a
record of pioneering in Snowdonia that may never,
perhaps, be beaten, since men a r e beginning to revise
their actions of mountain-climbing. Some regard it
as a low form of amusement, and prefer a higher. So
they fly across mountain ranges.
Up Hill and Down Dale in Ancient Etruria. By
Frederick Seymour. (Unwin. 10s. 6d.)
A certain medical friend of mine who was apparently
unable to throw offthe queer associations of the dissecting room, was in the habit of learning his facts on
ancient history on anatomical lines. If he wished to
remember how the Medes and Persians, the dwellers
in Mesopotamia, and other fellow-pilgrims along the
road of life, supported themselves under more o r less
trying circumstances a t an early period in the worlds
history, he would draw a parallel between their
country and a part of the human body, divide the
former up into bones, muscles, organs, and so forth,
trace their origin and deevelopment and so systematically visualise and commit the whole thing t o

DECEMBER
8, 1910.
I

memory. Treated in this way a s a leg, Italy at the

time of Romes founding was very easily dealt with.
Rome formed the knee-cap and Etruria the thigh. As
to the vexed question of the origin of the Etruscans,
he was content to leave that t o the angels, o r t o
archaologists, who are anything but angels, and others
who think it worth their consideration.
H e believed
that Etruria, like many another State, arose spontaneously, grew under stimulus both from within and
without, flourished under the culture of a race which
had pretensions t o artistic taste, and came to an end,
just a s Rome which was founded by the Latins a s a
colony on the Tiber to guard against the Etruscans,
arose and fell. Mr. Frederick Seymour is a learned
archaeologist who is anxious to let off a few burning
and learned words on the whence of the Etruscans.
H e carefully examines, but refuses to accept, the
theories of a long and illustrious line of historians and
antiquarians, apparently having no use for the Lydian
Immigration one of Herodotus, while the Autochthous
theory of Dionysius leaves him cold. In his view t h e
Etruscan question, like the Eastern question and out
own delightful W a r Office muddle, is a s far off
settlement as ever, and the only thing to be done is t o
let the Etruscans settle it themselves. They are to
be their own historians and the materials for their history
are to be found in their monuments. The operation of
watching the Etruscans give an account of their early
affairs would be fascinating if only the Etruscans
could be relied on. But, unfortunately, they cannot,
and this. according to Mr. Seymours own showing.
H e tells us they kept n o record of their religious beliefs, but have decorated their bits of pot with the
religious motives of other races. Then they were connoisseurs rather than artists, and, accordingly their
artistic achievements have to be taken away from them
and assigned to the Greeks.
Again, they had no
literature to speak of.
I n this way Mr. Seymour
tends to contradict his own theory whilst sifting an
immense amount of archeological material in order to
do so, and for other pundits to browse upon.
How
did the Etruscans express themselves? still remains the
burning question of Etruria, the excuse for volumes
and volumes and volumes of the sort that lies before
me. Archaeologists will find Mr. Seymours book full
of useful material and the numerous topographical
illustrations very helpful in their researches. But the
book is not an urgent public need.

By Stanley Morland.
An Eighteenth-Century

Marquise. By Frank
Hamel. (Stanley Paul. 16s. net.)
This is more than a biography of Voltaires mistress :
i t might almost be called a biographical dictionary of
everyone acquainted with her.
Scarcely a person is
mentioned without a summary of his or her history ;
and Mr. Hamel almost spoils his narrative by halting
to describe a t some length t h e courts of the Duchesse
du Maine and King Stanislas of Poland. The result
is that we know more than the simple story of the
Marquise du Chtelet and Voltaire: we have a biographical breviary of the company of the salons, t h e
cafes, and the courts, in the first half of the eighteenth
century. The a g e was as corrupt a s it was courtly and
cultured, Madame de Teucin, whose salon began with
t h e visits of Fontenelle, Lamotte, and Saurin, and
speedily became so famous that Mr. Hamel says t h a t
those who did not know the salon in the Rue SaintHonor did not know Paris : this woman, whose
company was largely composed of her lovers, who
instructed her successor, Madame de Geoffrin, never
to refuse a man, for, though nine in ten should not
care a farthing for you, the tenth may live to be a
useful friend, may be taken a s the extreme type of the
age. I t was an age when women were mathematicians,
and men were poets : when everybody was literary, a n d
in love with the wives or husbands of everybody else.
I t was an a g e when treatises on geometry were loveletters, and people fought duels over epigrams ; when
assignations were made in algebra, and epithalamia
could be spun out to a thousand verses at twenty sous

DECEMBER
8, 1910.

THE NEW AGE

a verse. Emilie, Marquise du Chtelet, was certainly

better, as she was cleverer, than most of her s e x ; but
Voltaire, when he heard that Madame de Boufflers had
removed the portrait of Saint-Lambert from the ring In
which Emilie a t one time kept Voltaires portrait, exclaimed, Ciel ! women are all the same. I supplanted
Richelieu, Saint-Lambert ousted me. She was faithful to Voltaire for fifteen years, until she met SaintLambert ; and this is to her credit.
They were a
strange couple, as various in their abilities a s in their
moods. She wrote of Leibnitz, translated Newton,
and wrote an algebraical commentary on this work.
She sang in opera, acted in comedy, gloried in ftes,
and lost money a t cards. Voltaire and Emilie,
says Mr. Hamel, were in their element when playacting. She allowed her wild animal spirits to get the
better of her ; he was like an amiable child as well as
a sage philosopher. . . . They were indefatigable, and
tired everybody out. They had been known to go
through thirty-three acts of tragedies, operas, and
comedies in $twenty-four hours. But t h a t was exceptional. She competed for the prize offered by the
Academy for an essay on Fire, and combated the views
that Voltaire expressed in his essay. Neither got the
prize, a disappointment which each accepted vicariously; but the Academy published the essays a t the
close of the prize essays, and Emilie received a flattering letter from Frederick of Prussia. Yet she stormed
and raved a t Voltaire for drinking a glass of wine
against her orders ; it is even whispered that she threw
plates and forks a t him when angry, t o which he
retorted with impertinences about her squinting eyes.
She was jealous of Frederick the Great, as he was of
her ; she was jealous of everything and everybody that
took Voltaire away from her ; she suffered agonies in
his absence and vexed herself with his presence. Now
it is Voltaires coat that does not please hiss lady. She
begs him to change it. H e gives many reasons for not
wishing to do so-the chief one the fear of catching a
worse cold than the *one he has at the moment. She
insists. He sends his valet for another coat, and disappears. Presently a message reaches him, asking him
to return. The response comes that he is not well. A
visitor arrives. Emilie goes herself, and finds Voltaire
chatting gaily with his gros chat. At last he comes to
her command, but resumes his black looks and injured
air. Then she begins to cajole.
Presently they are
both smiling, and peace is re-established.
A reading
of Mrope takes place ; the quarrel is forgotten. Yet
in a real calamity their nobler qualities were manifested.
Travelling from Paris to Cirey in January, the hindspring of the carriage gave way, and precipitated t h e
divine Emilie, her maid, and a mountain of band-boxes
and parcels on top of the unfortunate poet, who lay
almost smothered until extricated from the debris by
the servants. And this is the account written, by
Longchamp, a memorable refutation of the proverb
about the hero and his valet. M. de Voltaire and
Mme. du Chtelet were seated side by side on the
cushions of the carriage, which had been placed on the
snow. There, almost transfixed with cold in spite of
their furs, they were admiring the beauties of the
heavens. The sky was perfectly calm and serene, the
stars shone brilliantly, neither house nor tree was
within sight to break the line of the horizon.
Astronomy had always been a favourite study of the
philosophers. Overcome by the magnificent spectacle
spread around and above them, they discuss, whilst
shivering, the nature and courses of the stars, and the
destination of the vast worlds hanging in space. Only
telescopes were wanting to their perfect happiness.
Their minds, soaring in the profound depths of the
sky, they saw nothing of their sad position on earth,
amidst snow and icicles.
They laboured prodigiously.
Frequently they
were not seen until supper-time, and they wrote
reams of letters when they were parted. Mme.
du Chtelet is said to have had eight quarto
That Mme. du
volumes of letters from Voltaire.
Chtelet turned to Saint-Lambert at the last is not so
reprehensible as might at first appear. Voltaire was
turned fifty, and was becoming a chronic invalid ; his

I39

fifteen years residence with her had somewhat tired

him of her passicmate caprices, and great as was the intellectual sympathy between them, he could not be the
lover she desired. Tyrant a s she was, she wanted a
lover who was all love ; and Saint-Lambert was a mere
flirt who was rather afraid of the passion that surged
about him. Voltaire, after his first explosion, accepted the position with the bitter remark : D O not
flaunt jour infidelity before my very eyes. He resumed his friendship for Saint-Lambert, and did not
depart from Cirey. When Emilie discovered that she
was about to become a mother, Voltaire jested with the
bitterness of disappointment. Since the child was to
claim no father, he said, it should be classed amongst
Emilies miscellaneous works. They all conspired t o
make the Marquis du Chtelet believe that he was the
father, and he was happy, with the news. The child
was born; but the woman who attempted suicide after
being disappointed by her first lover, Marquis d e
Gubriant, died within a week of bearing a child to a
lover who had been nothing but a vexation to her.
Voltaires remark that Saint-Lambert had killed her
may be taken a s true. A portion of Voltaires letter to
Frederick the Great may serve as her epitaph. S h e
was a great man whose only fault was in being a
woman.
A woman who translated and explained
Newton, and who made a translation of Virgil, without letting it appear in conversation that she had done
these wonders ; a woman who never spoke evil of anyone, and who never told a lie ; a friend attentive and
courageous in friendship,-in
a word, a very great
man whom ordinary women knew only by her diamonds
and cavagniole-that
is the one whom you cannot
hinder me from mourning all my life.
M . Hamel is to be congratulated on his subject, and
his treatment of it is admirable. I think, as I said
before, that his history of the courts of Mme. de Maine
and King Stanislas is a blemish on a good book, for it
does obstruct the narrative without really enlightening
u s concerning Voltaire and Emilie. I t seems to be an
unnecessary parade of historical knowledge. But the
whole period is so interesting, and Mr. Hamels vignattes are so well done, that it would be carping to
insist on this objection. The book is well funnished,
and has many good illustrations, besides an index that
is useful.

Home Fun. By Cecil H. Bullivant. (T.C. and E. C.

Jack. 6s. net.)

Mr. Bullivant has written a most comprehensive
manual of home entertainment. From hand-bell ringing t o hypnotism, the book ranges. All forms of
amateur theatricals, ventriloquism, juggling, are explained in the simplest manner ; even vamping accompaniments are simplified by Mr. Bullivant. Electrical
and chemical experiments, palmistry, fortune-telling,
all are treated. In, fact, there is not a form of indoor
amusement, from table-turning to tableaux, that Mr.
Bullivant does not explain with the utmost simplicity
and brevity. I n 550 pages he has given enough instruction to last the amateur entertainer a lifetime.
His devices for minimising the cost of these entertainments are decidedly clever ; and the average boy whose
pocket-money is limited will find it possible to try most
of these tricks, if his impecuniosity is equalled by his
ingenuity. I t is essentially a practical book ; it is
written in the simplest language, and its illustrations
instruct a s effectively as the *text. I t will make an admirable Christmas present to every boy whose parents
do not always live the higher life.

The Emancipation of English Women.

Lyon Blease. (Constable.

6s. net.)

By W.

In his researches into the history of womens emancipartion as recorded (chiefly in, the works of men) during
the last three centuries, Mr. Blease fails either to interest us much or to persuade our judgment. W h a t is
the use of rapidly summarising centuries in phrases, a
decade or so for each, even if quotations abound? The
method throws no real light on history, and strikes the
reader as perfunctory. And a s for Mr. Bleases judgment, what can we make of a professed feminist who

140

THE NEW A G E

thinks Mills book on T h e Subjection of Women of

more value than Mary Wollstonecrafts magnificent
Vindication of the Rights of Women ? Only that he
has, he also, the usual bias of men against women, who
must needs therefore do twice as well as a man to be
regarded a s equal. To this must be added, we think,
a little prejudice against Mary Wollstonecraft herself,
for Mr. Blease remarks that the great error of her
life was her union with Imlay.
Error is a strange
word for a feminist to use of a free union; and tragedy,
as it turned out, would be nearer the mark. But Mr.
Blease does not confine himself to history ; he undertakes to reason the case for womans suffrage. In this
he succeeds so badly that no one who was not already
convinced before would be convinced after reading this
book. What, we ask, is the real argument against
womans suffrage-real, we mean, not in the sense that
i t is sufficient but that it powerfully influences the
majority of anti-suffragists? I t is, as Mr. Blease quite
well understands, the fear that (to use Lord Curzons
words) political activity will tend to take away woman
from her proper sphere and highest duty, which is
maternity. Mr. Bleases reply to this is that it
simply wont. On the contrary, if the feminist movement in England has any character more pronounced
than the rest, it is the loftiness of its purpose, the purity
of its motive, the emphasis which it lays upon the
dignity of motherhood and the solemn duty of women
to maintain the purity and vigour of the race. W h a t
bathos ! And how ineffective as a reply to Lord Curzon
and the racial panicmongers! I t is like Mr. Balfour
assuring working men that on his honour their food
shall not cost them more when wheat goes up in price.
As a matter of plain fact, the objection of Lord Curzon
is not only quite valid to those who believe so mightily
in the dignity of motherhood and the purity and vigour
of the race, but it also indicates, we think, the place
in which the opponents of womens emancipation are
weakest.
The effective reply of feminists to Lord
Curzon and the rest is surely this (we state it a t its
baldest) : No votes, no race !
But so long as
feminist advocates shrink from this they leave untouched their main enemy. Mr. Blease is, however, incapable of this line of thought,, for he is solicitous to
maintain the maternal character of feminism to the
point of misreading history. Of Mrs. Josephine Butler
he says : Like most of the great women of the world,
she was full of the domestic virtues, and none ever excelled her in the performance] of the duties of a wife
and mother. Shades of Elizabeth and Sappho, how
touchingly untrue !
When Mr. Blease comes to deal with the political
situation of womens suffrage he is even more at fault.
H e claims a value for his views on the ground of an
impartiality manifested by his ability to see both the
point of view of the present Government and the point
.of view of the militant suffragettes. But this is either
mere confusion or it is a defect of moral courage. H e
cannot be both an adherent of the Liberal Cabinet
and an adherent of militancy. Either he must adhere
to the Cabinet, wrong a s he thinks Mr. Asquiths view
on suffrage to be, because he regards suffrage a s of
less importance than the other items of the Cabinet programme; or, like the militant suffragists, he must
put suffrage first and the Liberal programme nowhere.
He cannot take both points of view at once. In fact,
his treatment of this subject is extremely unsatisfactory. H e will not even discuss militant methods since,
in his view, that would be unprofitable. How then
can he, without discussion, condemn the Cabinet to
which he adheres and fling at its members phrases like
these : Incredible folly, perilous ignorance, sixth-form
schoolboys, stupid violence, etc.? Nor is his case improved by quoting a t Mr. Asquith this sentence of
Burkes : Legislators ought to do what lawyers
cannot, for they have no other rules to bind them, but
the great principle of reason and equity, and the general
sense of mankind. But it is precisely the general
sense of mankind on which Mr. Asquith can claim to
be relying in his opposition to womans suffrage. And
here, too, Mr. Blease is kind enough to point Mr.

DECEMBER
8, 1910

Asquiths contention. Writing of the reception of the

news that forcible feeding was being employed on
political prisoners, Mr. Blease remarks : By the House
of Commons and b y the Public it was regarded as a
new and splendid jest ; and every attempt at protest
was greeted with laughter and contempt. This account, fortunately, is quite untrue, as Mr. Herbert
Gladstones supersession by Mr. Churchill and the
latters abandonment of his predecessors methods
clearly prove. But suppose that it were true, as Mr.
Blease himself supposes, what becomes of Burkes
dictum that legislators must be guided by the general
sense of mankind? W e have yet to discover a better
book than Mary Wollstonecrafts Vindication.
Mezzogiorno. By John Ayscough. (Chatto and Windus.
6s.)

W e do not know who first set the fashion of writing

unctuously about the bourgeoisie, but we confess, a s poor
Socialists, that we hate them a s much i n literature as in
economics. Not a character in Mezzogiorno has an
original or spontaneous idea ; they are all middlemen
in morals, manners and opinions ; nor do we find what
Mr. Garnett found in Mr. Ayscoughs Marotz, a
complete philosophy of life. Gillian is the daughter of
a wandering painter. At his death in Tripoli she goes
through a form of marriage with Eustachio Zante, for
no other reasons, that we can gather, than that he is
like Antinous, and she is bored. Eustachio repudiates
the marriage, and dies in America, whereupon Gillian
marries the Duca di Torre Greca, who also dies. She
then comes to. England and marries Philip Andrews
(who does not die) and with him she lives in country
society with the usual amusements of hunting and
getting children.
At their country seat, Eustachios
brother turns up, disguised as Eustachio.
As he is
leaving the house after a scene, he is murdered by a
village labourer named Mark, who has fallen in love
with Gillian. Mark, of course, also dies, but before the
police can arrest him. Theres the plot, and, given
the bourgeois atmosphere, we defy anybody to make a
better novel of it.

T h e R.P.A. Annual,

1911.

(Watts and Co.

6d. net.)

The main interest of this years annual of the

Rationalist Press Association centres round the articleby Sir Hiram Maxim entitled Wanted, an anti-Missionary Society. The chief merit of the article lies
in the fact that it has stirred the clerical conscience, as
witness the correspondence in the Daily News, just
That correspondence was a triumph for
terminated.
Sir Hiram Maxim and the Rationalists. W e understand the wisdom, from the Christian point of view,
of drawing the veil over the doings of missionaries ;
feverish attempts are now being made to fill missionary
coffers.
To extort the pence of the unenlightened
some showmen interested in missionaries are at
present touring the provinces with spectacular shows !
Sir Hiram Maxims article is most opportune!

The Post-Savages.
By

Huntly Carter.

W E M U S T BE OURSELVES. From all the works

that count at the Grafton Galleries just now, comes this
insistent, exhilarating cry. W e must, will be ourselves.
W e will see with our own eyes, do with our own hands,
think and talk in our own language. To be ones selfcompletely expressed-that
is all that matters in art,
all that can ever matter. Complete self-expression is
art.

We must be ourselves. How the cry alarms and

maddens the Philistines. I t is an old cry. I t has been
uttered from age to age by individual painters, uttered
by them and heard and misunderstood by the mob.
Blake the mystic, Bell - Scott and Rossetti the poetpainters ; Havill, a founder of the water-colour school,
Madox Brown and the Pre - Raffaelites; Whistler;
Monticelli, who hawked his unique pictures from pot-

141

house to pot-house; Chardin and his school; Millet, the

peasant painter; Wiertz, the recluse of Brussels who,
sworn to art, refused to sell his works-these and scores
more of innovators, continuators, and re-innovators,
have sought to carry their emotions to their highest
point and to give them full expression, only to be reviled, derided and spat at. Look how Manet reaped
disaster, suffering and neglect for his devotion to his
ideal and his courage in expressing himself. For years
he was sneered a t and snubbed by the public and the
precious French and English Academicians. Yet his
only fault was that he wanted to be himself, to look at
things with his own eyes, to put them down in his own
way. To him the unfolding of his own personality was
far more precious than the exploitation of personalities
t h a t lay around him.

Manets remarkable strength, energy, and scorn of

convention has met the time honoured reward. After
being kicked down the academy steps into the mud he
is now exalted to a classic, and universally hailed as an
innovator. Mark the effect of his promotion a t the
Grafton. Note how quietly and reverently the Philistines enter the room where he is enshrined. They a r e
no longer afraid of his power, or irritated by his unexpected attack on their own demoralising gospel of
Ne soit pas, mon frres, ou je te tue-the gospel indeed
ofthe wholeBritish race which savs to other races.
Be not, my brother, or I crush you.
They seem to
understand that the great Frenchman is saying something on art, though what it is few of them can tell.
Some may be dimly conscious that he is repeating in
his own charming way the message of so many inspired
artists, and saying simply, Do not judge really great
works of art by mathematical rules. I admit that my
o w n technique preserves certain rules, yet it defies
them. W h a t is it that sets me and my colleagues so
much apart from many moderns? W h y it is merely
three things-aspiration,
intuition, and inspiration. I
have had a new impulse : have seen that it led to great
things; have had the passion of love to follow it out.
And see where this impulse has led me. I t has impelled me to moralise and to .make tradition. I confess there is a great deal in my work that appears
wrong, many of the details seem laughable, but as a
whole it is absolutely right, and must be judged as a
*whole not by set rules, but a s the result of inspiration. Yes, everything is right because I had the right
clue to work upon,. Lots of painters could do as I did if
only they had this clue. I knew instinctively where to
begin and where to leave off. There is not a touch too
:much or too little in any of my finished pictures. Then
again, I paid attention to the claims of emotion. I
deeply felt love and so expressed it. Notice how I
w a s in love with the head and face of the woman in
My devotion comes out in the
*the Folies Bergre.
splendid flesh colour and the beautiful painting. I was
in love, too, with other details. I could not resist the
c a l l of the rich browns and orange of the bottles and
t h e stand of fruit. Cut them out and they form perfect
little pictures in themselves. It was the same with the

Au Caf. picture.
I t came spontaneously, perhaps
-with much less effort than the other. I got my rich
colour with less labour. I t is a canvas full of inspired
devotion, beautifully painted, the merest touches suggesting something. That girls eye is wonderfully ex-pressed. The whole thing Iives and moves. Yes, I am
fully expressed in these two works. Do not look at those
sketches of subjects that I just drew in and rubbed in a
little colour. They ought not to be here, or a t least
should not be exhibited a s pictures. It does me no
.good. The directors ought to know better. I t is disgraceful. Czanne there is also an example of complete
self-expression and unselfish devotion.
His work,
too, exhibits ,all the difference between inspired vision
and interpretation, and scientific vision and interpretation. He knew the essential means to his end and
employed them and nothing more. Look a t his Les
Maisons, where the effect of a sullenstorm sweeping
down is so finely caught and expressed with such

strength and simplicity. What a big immense design.

How dramatic the whole thing.

As to the other painters I spoke of, they have plenty

of definite perception, of conscious and formal observation, but no aspiration worth mention, no intuition, no
inspiration. Go and look at their works. Examine the
machine-made pictures of the Russians, near by, tricked
out with meaningless detail. Examine, too, the works
of your three or four representative men who to-day are
dominating the London galleries. Orpen, Nicholson,
Strang, Steer, John, you will find them and their imitators everywhere. The Chenil Gallery, the New Portrait
Society, the New English R.A., the Goupil Gallery
.Salon, the International, know them and are heavy with
their products. There they are, faces made by Tussauds
and painted by Messrs. Orpen and Nicholson and Co. ;
gowns made by Morris Angel and painted by Messrs.
Orpen and Nicholson and Co.; landscape and landscape and landscape by and after Steer; heads and
figures, head and figures, head and figures, by and after
John; coloured oleographs to nausea, by and after
Strang. I admit that much of the work of these
leaders is immensely clever, their pictures are topheavy with too much brain-but
they are the productions of men who think like scientists. And then all is
drawing with them, they are in fact draughtsmen, who,
generally speaking, are enamoured of the school
methods of fifteen years ago. Bring them here and
watch the effect of the post-savages on them. I can
hear them say, W e have reached a stage of perfection
beyond which it is impossible to go. These works by
Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, and the rest of the crazy
school are absolutely bad. They defy all rules; are not
made; reveal no calculation; are not carefully thought
out andfinished ; they are not even foundations. To us
they are simply a phase of idiotic, indictable folly.
This, of course, proves not that Messrs. Orpen, Nicholson and their distinguished contemporaries are right,
but that if Philistinism there be on earth it has headquarters in the artist ranks.

I t was artists who levelled hostile jokes, insults and

anger a t me. I t is artists who will sneer a t the big
effective canvases of the decorators, Denis, Flandrin
(the idealist, not the cheap meretricious realist of t h e
gee-gee and two figures), Serusier, Vlaminck, Segonzac,
men who +obviously have an instinct for appropriate
stage decoration. I t is artists who will regard with
amused contempt the joyous but cultured shout of the
sun-worshippers, Seurat, Signac, Henri-Edmond Cross,
with their delicate and sincere application of scientific
formula. It is artists no less than the ignorant public
who will turn with ungovernable hatred, malice and all
uncharitableness at the sound of the wild exuberance of
such cannibals a s Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Matisse, who
have thrown off all restraint and are careering about a
seething cauldron in which the remains of scientific conventions are stewing. They will wilfully ignore the true
significance of what they see. They will attack and
denounce w i thou t d discrimination and judgment t pictures,
some of them exquisite in design and cotour, and many
others full of the primitive element, displaying un
doubted savage attributes in love of simplicity, wonderful decoration, and masses of gorgeous crude colour,
revealing, too, a childlike interpretation of a clear childlike vision of Nature, a s well as the power to feel, enjoy
and express the elemental emotions of life, to stand
naked and unashamed as it were, in a blazing carnival
of colour and light.
Works indeed exhibiting in a
marked degree the first fine impulse of the artist-soul,
which finds its natural outlet in full surrender to selfexpression.

This is the impulse that lies behind the whole of

the great epochs of a r t ; it asserts itself in all the
works of the innovators, in those of artists who have
sought the principles that underlie all forms of art, and
link them together in unity. The manifestation of this
impulse is absolutely consistent and defensible if a r t is,
as we are assured, to be stimulated by new ideas, and

THE NEW AGE

142

to g o on living in new forms. Let us violate the traditions of a r t ! Let us clear away the deadly obstructions
that others may see, as we do, the new growths! Let
us reveal vital principles that those t h a t come after
us may build enduringly! Let us see and do this
entirely in o u r own w a y ! This is all that the Postsavages are saying.
Their pictures will not be the
Many of them will not live,
pictures of t h e future.
except as records of a wonderful experiment. But the
principles they reveal will live, a n d upon them the
pictures of the future will be constructed.
T h e next
stage will be the restraint of the first wild impulse of
the post-savages and the elaboration of detail; a n d then
will come the larger beauty of simplicity and freedom.

So might Manet address the Philistines in the temple

of art which is just now situated in Grafton Street, and
which is less revivalistic and ritualistic than, it usually
is. Having concluded his address, t h e march past of
the Philistines would commence. At their head would
be found Mr. W a k e Cook, furiously flourishing a n asss
tail troubled with a death rattle. W i t h this weapon, he
proposes to slay the Samsonites just a s Samson smote
the Philistines with the other and more substantial end
of the animals anatomy. Standing a little apart is the
plain man from the country (Mr. Calderon) with a n
indulgent smile on his face, and not caring tuppence
who gets killed so long as his pipe does not go out.
Not far from him is the man who knows (Mr. H u g h
Blaker) who is seen wildly gesticulating, dancing with
his feet, and throwing his body about what time he
invites a n y broth UV e r bhoy ter trid on th tail U V me
iligant coat. Begorrah-h-h !

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

HISTORY OF FREETHOUGHT.
Sir,-Several writers in your columns have lately sneered
at Freethinkers. Those who sneer at Freethinkers know
little of history. If the whole programme of Socialism were
completely realised, it is doubtful if even then the Socialists
would have done as much to diminish human misery as the
Freethinkers have done already.
For practical purposes the Secularist movement began
with Epicurus. His aim was to make men happy, and in
looking round the world he saw two great causes of misery
-the fear of the gods and of death. Being a very practical
man, he made it the one aim of his life to abolish these
fears. He found able followers, among them the poet
Lucretius. These men we- so successful that among the
educated classes they almost entirely obliterated the fear of
the gods and of death. Everyone who knows anything of
classical literature must know what terrible fears these had
been. The most noble testimonial to the work of the
Epicureans is the tribute which Virgil pays to Lucretius:Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
Quique metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari. ,
However, the Epicurean movement failed to penetrate to
the masses, who were in those days desperately ignorant.
After a glorious career of six centuries Epicureanism was
overthrown by the Christians, who belonged to the multitude and shared its fears. In fact, they were worse than the
ignorant Pagans, for they believed in such horrible things
as foetal and infant damnation, and their hell was more
dreadful than the Pagan one. Atrocious pictures of hell
fire were painted by savage fanatics like Tertullian, and
with the fall of the Roman Empire the world sank under
the dominion of ignorant barbarians, who believed all that
the priests told them. Anyone who wishes to realise what a
cloud of fear hung over the world during the Dark Ages
should make a very careful study of Dantes Inferno.
It was written just at the close of the Dark Ages, and its
author breathes so much of their spirit that he has been
called the voice of ten silent centuries. I think anyone
who reads that book must admit that it is the most horrible
book ever written. We descend from circle to circle, and
we meet men, a large number of whom have been great
patriots and humanitarians, lying in red-hot coffins waiting
to have the lids put on after the Day of Judgment, or walking along for ever under showers of fire, o r standing up to
the eyes in lakes of boiling blood, or moving slowly along
dressed in mantles of lead.
0in eterno faticoso manto !
The Dark Ages believed all that. Nay, more, the world
continued on the whole to believe it. These terrors impressed Shakespeare so deeply that he could not help allud-

DECEMBER
8, 1910.

ing to them over and over again. I think he was speaking

largely for himself when he said: T h e weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury, a n d imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
Before Voltaire started his great Secularist movement in
the eighteenth century, even the bravest men of all nations
were oppressed by an ever-present feeling of dread. It was
always under the surface, even when wine or love caused
it to be forgotten for a moment. Over a large part of the
world this feeling still prevails. I was a child in Scotland
in the eighteen-seventies, and I have lain awake many a
night thinking of hell fire. My father was the best mathematician of his year at college, and could quote twenty lines
of Virgil on any occasion, yet whenever a thunderstorm
came he prayed all the time it lasted to be delivered from
bell fire. I have seen children of eight years old weeping
bitterly by themselves, for fear they might die and g o to
hell. There are still many thousands of such cases in
Scotland, and countless thousands more in Ireland, Quebec
and many other countries. I am sure there are a great
many in England. Protestants have improved a little of
late years, but Catholics still preach hell fire as uncompromisingly as they did in the tenth century.
Such are the terrors from which the Freethinkers are very
gradually delivering the world. The task is not an easy
one. Socialists and Suffragettes are mere dilettanti cornpared with the men who first struck a blow at the fear of
the gods and of death. From about 1200 to 1800 the burning
of infidels and heretics was once of the chief amusements of
Europe, and sometimes the amusement was varied by tearing out a childs tongue or breaking an old man on the
wheel. During the past century there has been a slight improvement, for such giants as Voltaire and Paine have
managed to produce some effect at last. Protestantism is
getting pretty well smashed; so is Roman Catholicism in
the Latin countries. But I advise the people of England,
Germany, and the United States to keep an eye on Rome.
Do not laugh. Horace and Ovid would have laughed
heartily if they had been told that in four hundred years
every educated man in Europe would believe in infant
damnation. Ovid had so little fear of a revival of superstition that he wrote:Expedit esse deos, et, ut expedit, esse putemus ;
Dentur in antiquos tura merumque focos.
You see, Ovid was quite up to date, and left very little to be
said by Messrs. Chesterton and Verdad.
R. B. KERR.

A SYMPOSIUM ON CRIME AND INSANITY.

Sir,-Your fourth query under above is, D O you agree
that juries should be constituted on more scientific lines
than at present? May I, as an ordinary layman, offer a
suggestion ?
It has always seemed to me that the haphazard selection
of men for juries has more than a touch of the farcical
about it. Our counsel and judges are elaborately trained
and highly paid; yet all their work is in the end at the
disposal, for guilty or not guilty, of twelve average householders, chosen haphazard; with no thought or reference
whatever to their fitness for the very special work they are
thus unexpectedly and suddenly called upon to do. The
task of sifting and comparing evidence, of listening with unflagging attention for hours to counsel and seeing through
their tricks of trade so that the real truth underneath
all their surface juggling may be got at and justice done the
prisoner; the task of listening to one counsel, and then
comparing his with the topsy-turvey version the opposing
counsel will present, is one to make even the most intelligent shrink from, let alone the odd lot that get congregated
together in our jury-boxes.
, Yet, one is loth to leave the final decision in one mans
hands. Our judges, fine body of experts though they are,
are as full of human frailties as the rest of us. My suggestion would be: that our juries should consist only of brief
less barristers. At a nominal fee of a guinea a day they
should be more than willing to undergo this most valuable
training in an essential part of their professional duty-the
learning to sift and compare ,evidence, to get used to witnesses tricks, to be able to see below the nervousness that
so often hides a mans real meaning and intention, to get
behind all the surface falsities apparently inevitable to our
legal procedure, and arrive at the essential truth, that our
law-courts may come to be also courts of equity.
And what joy for this ideal juror to check an over-zealous
or unfair counsel by discreet, pertinent questioning from the
jury-box! And how much more potent for good, in leal
leading, would be the judges summing-up ; not the mere
generalisation, bewildering to the poor untrained juror,
already befogged by all that has gone before; but a sum-

DECEMBER
8, 1910.

THE NEW AGE

ming-up for these trained jurors that would really lead to

a fair and impartial decision. Their discussion in retirement would be a real discussion, not the empty farce it
now usually is. The lack of intelligence of the average
juror being too painful to dwell on when one has in mind
the profound issues to the parties concerned and the monetary cost of all that has preceded it.
FREDERICK
H. EVANS.

MAN ,AND T H E MACHINE.

Sir,--Mr. Quennells letter in your issue of November 24
calls for some remark.
In the first place, Mr. Quennell does not elucidate the
reasons for the modem contempt for craftsmanship. When,
some years back, I attempted to explain the low status
of the artisan, the man who works with his hands, I found
very little in modern literature which could satisfactorily
account for it. Observing the world for a time led me to
fix the trouble upon the idea embodied in the word gentleman.
In Renaissance times the craftsman and skilled artisan had
a definite position in society which, backed by his own
dagger, was held in respect. He was neither a serf nor a
gentleman. In the twentieth century the unhappy craftsman, whether he be smith, sculptor, painter, printer, writer
or woodworker, sheds bis apron as though he were ashamed
of it, claims the absurd title esquire, and dons the black
garments of gentility.
De Mussets lively imagination saw in the Parisians black
coat Death walking the streets. It was to him an emblem
of the Revolution. To me, with a brain less lively, but
clear of alcoholic stimulus, the gentlemans black coat
is the antithesis of the artisans white apron. Mr. Quennell
will agree that Stamford Hill and Surbiton, East Ham and
West Kensington, would have infinitely more respect for a
short-sighted unathletic curate in a black coat than or a
man, say, like Stradivarius, wearing his white leather apron
as though it were the insignia of an honourable craft, as
indeed it was. Take off your coat! To me sir, that
phrase, when I hear it in the workshops, is pregnant with
meaning. It is the cry of the artisan to have done with
hypocrisy, to stand forth for what you are.
I recall, in this connection, a certain Saturday night hop
in Sunderland to which a shipmate had invited me. The
company was chiefly of the artisan and clerk class; blue
serge suits mingled with hired dress suits, pneumonia
blouses criticised dcolletages. I was aroused from my
intense preoccupation with a feminine product of Wearside
by a row between my shipmate and a pale creature in evening dress, who was, I believe, a ship-chandlers clerk. Doubtless the idea of a fight at a dance will shock Fabian ratepayers, but to my mind it gave to the scene that delightful
flavour of mediaeval virility so dear to the heart of G. K.
Chesterton and Mr. Belloc. Take off your coat ! came the
sharp challenge as my shipmates blue serge slipped from
his lean brown arms and muscular hands. His antagonist
wavered, refused. T h e M.C. fumed in vain. A murmur ran
round, anxious friends counselled a removal of the black
dress coat. The voice of the lady was added to goad him,
a blow on the chin clinched it. He removed his coat amid
shrieks of laughter, for his detachable cuffs and front were
fixed over a flannellette shirt. The man was a fraud, you
say, yet-men will respect him, and women will desire him
in marriage, thinking little of my shipmate, master of his
trade, certificated by the State, a very skilful and complete
man.
Mr. Quennell s letter misses many other interesting points,
of which I may not speak. But, as a professional mechanic,
I should be glad of clearer instructions regarding the use of
machinery in the arts. At what point does a (tool become a
machine. How does Mr. Quennell classify the sculptors
gauge, by which he tests the accuracy of his cutting? I
have it on the word of an eminent sculptor that mechanical
calibration is not used so much now as in the fifteenth
century
Again, it is nonsense to speak of all things being better
done by hand than by machinery. Has Mr. Quennell ever
ridden a hand-made bicycle, used a hand-made typewriter,
played a hand-made pianoforte with handdrawn wires ? Has
he ever deplored the use of machinery in the minting of
sovereigns? I look for a clearer manifesto on this subject.
WILLIAMMCFEE.

DEMOCRACY AND WOMENS SUFFRAGE.

Sir,-Under (Notes of the Week in your issue of the
1st inst., you quote with approval Burkes definition of
representative government as legislation and public conduct
determined only by general consent. In the same paragraph
you deprecate the efforts of the Suffragists to extort womens
franchise from any Cabinet of the day without any such

I43

general consent. I now ask you how the general consent

on this or any other question is to be ascertained so long
as more than half of the population has no means of expressing either consent or dissent. Male democracy seems to
me to be a self-contradictory phrase. It simply makes one
sex an oligarchy a t the expense of the other, Moreover, if
all the women but one in England were to decline the offer
of the vote, I cannot see why that one should be denied her
right to a say in her own government and the spending of
her own money. Your utterance on this question appears to
me in the nature of a conundrum of which I anxiously await
the solution. You want the general consent to the expression
of that consent !
EDMUND
B. DAUVERGNE.

FRANCHISE AND MILITANT TACTICS.

Sir,-Your general policy, as developed in your leading
articles, is so sound that one is surprised at, and looks
in vain for an explanation of, the extraordinarily illogical
attitude you take up on the question of woman suffrage. I
expect that between the many letters you have published on
the subject all arguments have been exhausted; but I cannot
refrain from pointing out that you yourselves in your last
issue supply all the arguments that are necessary to justify
the militant action you condemn.
You say, W e not only recognise that general consent to
lacking, but deplore that the miliwoman suffrage is
appear quite willing to extort from
tant Suffragists . .
any Cabinet a particular consent to which the general consent was not necessarily attached. You proceed to regret
that these tactics are being exclusively employed (which
is not true), and that though they will probably be successful, they are doomed to a perfectly barren success.
I fail to see what other success could be wished for than
that of the removal of the sex disability, and I do not believe
(nor do you) that such an achievement would be barren.
Quotations from your own leaders prove that the end justifies the means. For does not the majority of 1 1 0 for the
Conciliation Bill represent in some degree the best general
opinion of the day? and this is the norm you desire Mr.
Churchill to be influenced by rather than the voice-of-thegutter majority.
Granted, then, that woman suffrage is approved by the
best general opinion of the day, how do you justify your
condemnation of women who act as you approve the Welsh
miners acting, and for similar reasons ? You say : The only
defence the people have against arbitrary undemocratic
conduct on the part of their rulers is arbitrary undemocratic and violent conduct on their own behalf.
I do not think that it is special pleading to assert that
Mr. Asquiths refusal to grant facilities for the Conciliation
Bill in spite of its acceptance by a majority made up of
all parties-a
majority larger than that obtained for the
Budget-was arbitrary and undemocratic.
This being so, and the women realising the full import
of such unconstitutional procedure, protested in the only
way in which their protests have ever attracted any attention.
At best the deputations to the House were expressions of
disgust at the insults the Prime Minister has repeatedly
offered the women, at worst they were illegal assemblies.
Putting it at its worst, can we be surprised a t the indignation
of women and men, when a so-called Liberal civilised
Government refuses to allow the law to deal with its lawbreakers, but gives a license to a horde of brutal police
to deal with the women as they (the police) see fit?
So much for masculine chivalry!
ALBERTE. Lwy

....
..

***

T H E PARTING OF T H E WAYS.
Sir,-In this excellent number (Dec. I ) of THENEWAGE,
nothing is franker o r more to the point at the moment than
T h e Parting of the Ways. One cannot say with equal
truth, as J. P. Benjamin does in opening, that Nothing
is more difficult than for a man who has never known
poverty to put himself in the place of the poor man. There
is one thing not simply more difficult but actually impossible, but which men are constantly pretending they- can
do, namely, put themselves in the place of women. That
Man is man, and woman is woman is too deep a truth
to admit of any mans arrogating to himself the power to
think womans thoughts, and so to give the world the benefit
of the dual point of view.
Of course J.P.B. knows this, and h e will, I hope, give us
a further article on T h e Parting of the Ways with his
clarity of thought and directness of expression brought to
bear on the male and female counterparts of the population.
Though there is something analogous in these two pairs of
opposite, unlike the prospects of the former, the approximation of the latter will not occur till we arrive, as
the following article (Unedited Opinions has it, at the
R. H. P.
self-born.

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