One of the characters in "A Prince There Was" is the editor of a magazine and, curiously enough, he has been made the hero of the film. Of course, there may be something to be said for editors. Indeed, we have heard them trying to say it, and yet they remain among the forces of darkness and of mystery. By every rule of logic the editor in any story ought to be the villain.
It is not the darkness so much as the mystery which disturbs us. Only rarely have we been able to understand what an editor was talking about. Sometimes we have suspected that neither of us did. There was, for instance, the man who tapped upon his flat-topped desk and said with great precision and deliberation, "When you are writing forBlank's Magazine, you want to remember thatBlank'sis a magazine which is read at five o'clock in the afternoon."
He was our first editor. Disillusion had not yet set in. We still believed in Santa Claus and sanctums. And so we took home with us the advice about five o'clock and pondered. We remembered it perfectly, but that was not much good. "Blank'sis a magazine which is read at five o'clock in the afternoon."How were we to interpret this declaration of a principle? It was beyond our powers to write with ladyfingers. Possibly the editor meant that our style needed a little more lemon in it. There could be no complaint, we felt sure, against the sugar. Ten years of hard service on a New York morning newspaper had granulated us pretty thoroughly.
Having made up our mind that a slight increase in the acid content per column might enable us to qualify with the editor as a man who could write for five o'clock in the afternoon, we were suddenly confronted with a new problem.Blank'swas an international magazine. Did the editor mean five o'clock by London or San Francisco time? Until we knew the answer there was no good running our head against rejection slips. There was no way to tell whether he would like an essay entitled "On Pipe Smoking Before Breakfast in Surrey," or whether he would prefer a little something on "Is the Garden of Eden Mentioned in the Bible Actually California?" Naturally, if one were writing with San Francisco's five o'clock in mind he would go on to make some comparison between Los Angeles and the serpent.
After extended deliberation, we decided that perhaps it would be best not to try to write forBlank'sat all. It might put a strain upon the versatility of a young man too hard for him to bear. Suppose, for instance, he worked faithfully and molded his style to meet all the demands and requirements of five o'clock in the afternoon, and then suppose just as he was in the middle of a long novel, daylight saving should be introduced? His art would then be exactlyone hour off and he would be obliged to turn back his hands along with those of the clock.
Of course, even though you understand an editor you may not agree with him. The makers of magazines incline a little to dogma. Give a man a swivel chair and he will begin to lean back and tell you what the public wants. Gazing through his window over the throng of Broadway, a faraway look will come into his eyes and he will begin to speak very earnestly about the farmer in Iowa. The farmer in Iowa is enormously convenient to editors. He is as handy as a rejection slip. In refusing manuscripts which he doesn't want to take, an editor almost invariably blames it on some distant subscriber. "I like this very much myself," he will explain. "It's great stuff. I wish I could use it. That part about the bobbed hair is a scream. But none of it would mean anything to the farmer in Iowa. Won't you show me something again that isn't quite so sophisticated?"
Riding through Iowa, we always make it a point to shake our fist at the landscape. And if by any chance the train passes a farmer we try to hit him with some handy missile. And why not? He kept us out of print. At least they said he did.
And yet though editors are invariably doleful about the capacity of the farmer in Iowa and points west, it would be quite inaccurate to suggest any fundamental pessimism. An editor is always optimistic, particularly when a contributor asks for his check. But it really is a sincere and deep grained hopefulness. No editor could live from day to daywithout the faculty or arguing himself into the belief that the next number of his magazine is not going to be quite so bad as the last one.
Unfortunately he is not content to be a solitary tippler in good cheer. He feels that it is his duty to discover authors and inspirit them. Indeed, the average editor cannot escape feeling that telling a writer to do something is almost the same thing as performing it himself.
The editorial mind, so called, is afflicted with the King Cole complex. Types subject to this delusion are apt to believe that all they need do to get a thing is to call for it. You may remember that King Cole called for his bowl just as if there were no such thing as a Volstead amendment. "What we want is humor," says an editor, and he expects the unfortunate author to trot around the corner and come back with a quart of quips.
An editor would classify "What we want is humor" as a piece of coöperation on his part. It seems to him a perfect division of labor. After all, nothing remains for the author to do except to write.
Sometimes the mogul of a magazine will be even more specific. We confessed to an editor once that we were not very fertile in ideas, and he said, "Never mind, I'll think up something for you."
"Let me see," he continued, and crinkled his brow in that profound way which editors have. Suddenly the wrinkles vanished and his face lighted up. "That's it," he cried. "I want you to go and do us a series something like Mr. Dooley." He leaned back and fairly beamed satisfaction. He had done hisbest to make a humorist out of us. If failure followed it could only be because of shortsightedness and stubbornness on our part. We had our assignment.
We have always wondered just what it is which frightens the after dinner speaker. He is protected by tradition, the Christian religion and the game laws. And yet he trembles. Perhaps he knows that he is going to be terrible, but it is common knowledge that after dinner speakers seldom reform. The life gets them. It was thought, once upon a time, that the practice was in some way connected with alcoholic stimulation, but this has since been disproved. After dinner speaking is a separate vice. Total abstainers from every other evil practice are not immune.
The chief fault is that an irrationally inverted formula has come into being. The after dinner speaker almost invariably begins with his apology. He is generally becomingly frank when he first gets to his feet. There is always a confident prophecy that the audience is not going to be very much interested in what he has to say and the admission that he is pretty sure to do the job badly. Unfortunately, no speaker ever succeeds in deterring himself by these forebodings of disaster. He never fails to go on and prove the truth of his own estimate of inefficiency.
Many men profess to find the greatest difficulty in getting to their feet. Perhaps this is sincere, but thetask does not seem to be one-sixteenth as hard as sitting down again. People whose vision is perfect in every other respect suffer from a curious astigmatism which prevents them from recognizing a stopping point when they come to it. We suggest to some ingenious inventor that he devise a combination of time clock and trip hammer by which a dull, blunt instrument shall be liberated at the end of five minutes so that it may fall with great force, killing the after dinner speaker and amusing the spectators. The mechanical difficulties might be great, but the machine would be even more useful if it could be attuned in some way so that the hammer should fall, if necessary, before the expiration of the five minutes, the instant the speaker said, "That reminds me of the story about the two Irishmen."
Funny stories are endurable, in moderation, if only the teller is perfectly frank in introducing them for their own sake and not pretending that they have any conceivable relationship to the endowment fund of Wellesley College, or the present condition of the silk business in America. To such length has hypocrisy gone, that there is now at large and dining out, a gentleman who makes a practice of kicking the leg of the table and then remarking, "Doesn't that sound like a cannon?—Speaking of cannon, that reminds me——"
Another young man of our own acquaintance has been using the same anecdote for all sorts of occasions for the last four years. His story concerns an American soldier who drove a four-mule team past the first line trench in the darkness and started rumblingalong an old road that led across no-man's-land. He had gone a few yards when a doughboy jumped up out of a listening post and began to signal to him. "What's the matter?" shouted the driver.
"Shush! Shush!" hissed the outpost with great terror and intensity. "You're driving right toward the German lines. For Heaven's sake go back and don't speak above a whisper."
"Whisper, Hell!" roared the driver. "I've got to turn four mules around."
It may be that there actually was such an outpost and such a driver, but neither had any intention of acting as a perpetual symbol and yet we know positively that this particular story has been introduced as an argument for buying another Liberty Bond of the fourth issue; as a justification for the vehemence of the American novelists of the younger generation; and as a reason for the tendency to overstatement in the dramatic and literary criticism of New York newspapers. We are also under the impression that it was used in a debate concerning the propriety of a motion picture censorship in New York state.
Indeed the speaker whom we have in mind never failed to use the mule story, no matter what the nature of the occasion, unless he substituted the one about the man who wanted to go to Seville. He was a farmer, this man, and he lived some few miles away from Seville in a little ramshackle farm house. It had been his ambition of a lifetime to go to Seville and upon one particular morning he came out of the house carrying a suitcase.
"Where are you going?" asked his wife.
"To Seville," replied the farmer.
His wife was a very pious woman and she added by way of correction, "You mean, God willing."
"No," objected the farmer, dogmatically, "I mean I'm going to Seville."
Now Heaven was angered by this impiety and the dogmatic farmer was immediately transformed into a frog. Before the very eyes of his wife he lost his mortal form and hopped with a great splash into the big pond behind the house. To that pond the good woman went every day for a year and prayed that her husband should be restored to his natural form. On the first morning of the second year the big frog began to grow bigger and bigger and suddenly he was no longer a frog but a man. Out of the pond he leaped and ran straightaway into the house. He came out carrying a suitcase.
"Where are you going?" exclaimed the startled wife.
"To Seville," said the farmer.
"You mean," his wife implored in abject terror, "God willing."
"No," answered the farmer, "to Seville or back to the frog pond!"
The young man of whom we are writing first heard the story from Major General Robert Lee Bullard in a training school in Lyons. The doughty warrior told it in reply to the question, "What is this offensive spirit of which you've been telling us?" But with a sea change the story took up many other and varied rôles. It served as the climax of an eloquent speech in favor of the release of political prisoners; it beganan address urging greater originality upon the dramatists of America and it was conscripted at a luncheon to Hughie Jennings to explain the speaker's interpretation of the fundamental reason for the victory of the New York Giants over the Yankees in the world's series of last season.
Speaking of baseball, a great football coach once said that he could develop a championship eleven any time at all out of good material and seven simple plays well learned. Likewise, an after-dinner speaker can manage tolerably well with a limited supply of stories, if only they are elastic enough in interpretation and he covers a sufficiently wide range of territory in his dining rambles.
It is our experience that the most inveterate story tellers among public speakers are ministers. Unfortunately, the average clergyman has a tendency to select tales a little rowdy in an effort to set himself down among his listeners as a fellow member in good standing of the fraternity of Adam. Still more unfortunately the ministerial speaker often attempts to modify and deodorize the anecdote a little and, on top of that, gets it just a little wrong. No matter who the narrator may be, nothing is quite so ghastly as the improper story when told to an audience of more than ten or eleven listeners. Even more than a poetic drama a purple story needs a group, small and select. Any one interested in preserving impropriety might very well endow a chain of thimble theaters with a maximum seating capacity of ten. Some such step is needed or the off color yarn will disappear entirely from American life. It was nurtured upon big mirrorsand brass rails and, these being lacking, there is no proper atmosphere in which it may suitably be reared. Most certainly the anecdote of doubtful character does not belong to large banquets even of visiting Elks. Literature of this sort is fragile. It represents what the Freudians call an escape, and the most brazen of us is a little shamefaced about taking off his inhibitions in front of a hundred people, mostly strangers.
There must be something wrong with after-dinner speaking because it is notoriously the lowest form of American oratory. It if were not for Chauncey M. Depew whole generations in this country would have been born and lived and died without once having any memory worth preserving after the demitasse. The trouble, we think, is that dinner guests are much too friendly. It is the custom that the man at the speakers' table may not be heckled. He is privileged and privilege has made him dull. According to our observation there is never anything of interest said with the laying of cornerstones or the dedication of new high school buildings. On the other hand, we have frequently been amused and excited by tilts at political conventions and mass meetings.
William Jennings Bryan is among the prize bores of the world when he gets up to do his canned material aboutThe Prince of Peace, but no sensitive soul can fail to admire this same Commoner if he has ever had the privilege of hearing him talk down political foes upon the floor of a convention. All the labored tricks of oratory are forgotten then. Give Mr. Bryan some one at whom he may with proprietyshake a finger and he becomes direct, vivid and moving.
Colonel Theodore Roosevelt was a speaker of somewhat the same type. He did not talk well unless there was some living and present person for him to speak against. Upon one occasion we heard him make a particularly dreary discourse, and incidentally a political one, until he came to a point where a group in the audience took exception to some statement and attempted to howl him down. It was like the touch of a whip on the flanks of a stake horse. Roosevelt returned to the statement and said it over again, only this time he said it much more dogmatically and twice as well. Before that speech was done he had climbed to the top of a table and was putting all his back and shoulders into every word. Even his platitudes seemed to be knockout blows. He was inspiring. He was magnificent.
The after-dinner speaker needs this same stimulus of emotion. He ought to have something into which he can get his teeth. Every well conducted banquet should include a special committee to heckle the guests of honor. Even a dreary person might be aroused to fervor if his opening sentence was met with a mocking roar of, "Is that so!" Loud cries of "Make him sit down" would undoubtedly serve to make the speaker forget his entire stock of anecdotes about Pat and Mike. There would be no calm in which he could be reminded of anything except that certain desperadoes were not willing to listen, and that, by the Old Harry, he was going to give it to them so hot and heavy that they would have to.
The scheme may sound a little cruel, but we ought to face the fact that a time has come when we must choose between cutting off the heads of our after-dinner speakers or slapping them in the face. We believe that they deserve to have a chance to show us whether or not they have a right to live.
Bert Williams used to tell a story about a man on a lonely road at night who suddenly saw a ghost come out of the forest and begin to follow him. The man walked faster and the ghost increased his pace. Then the man broke into a run with the ghost right on his heels. Mile after mile, faster and faster, they went until at last the man dropped at the side of the road exhausted. The ghost perched beside him on a large rock and boomed, "That was quite a run we had." "Yes" gasped the man, "and as soon as I get my breath we're going to have another one."
Our young American pessimists see man at the moment he drops beside the road, and without further investigation decide that it is all up with him. To be sure, they may not be very far wrong in the ultimate fate of man, but at least they anticipate his end. They do not stick with him until the finish; and this second-wind flight, however useless, is something so characteristic of life that it belongs in the record. I have at least a sneaking suspicion that now and again there happens along a runner so staunch and courageous that he keeps up the fight until cock-crow and thus escapes all the apparitions which would overthrow him. Of course, it is a longshot and the young pessimists are much too logical to wait for such miraculous chances. As a matter of fact, they don't call themselves pessimists, but prefer to be known as rationalists, realists, or some such name which carries with it the hint of wisdom.
And they are wise up to the very point of believing only the things they have seen. However, I am not sure they are quite so wise when they go a notch beyond this and assert roundly that everything which they have seen is true. For my own part I don't believe that white rabbits are actually born in high hats. The truth is quicker than the eye, but it is hardly possible to make any person with fresh young sight believe that. Question the validity of some character in a play or book by a young rationalist and he will invariably reply, "Why she lived right in our town," and he will upon request supply name, address, and telephone number to confound the doubters.
"Let the captious be sure they know their Emmas as well as I do before they tell me how she would act," wrote Eugene O'Neill when somebody objected that the heroine of "Diff'rent" was not true. This, of course, shifts the scope of the inquiry to the question, "How well does O'Neill know his Emmas?" Indeed, how well does any bitter-end rationalist know anybody? Once upon a time we lived in a simple age in which when a man said, "I'm going to kick you downstairs because I don't like you," and then did it, there was not a shadow of doubt in the mind of the person at the foot of the stairs that he had comeupon an enemy. All that is changed now. During the war, for instance, George Sylvester Viereck wrote a book to prove that every time Roosevelt said, "Viereck is an undesirable citizen," or words to that effect, he was simply dissembling an admiration so great that it was shot through and through with ambivalent outbursts of hatred. Mr. Viereck may not have proved his case, but he did, at least, put his relations into debatable ground by shifting from Philip conscious to Philip subconscious.
In the new world of the psychoanalysts there is confusion for the rationalist even though he is dealing with something so inferentially logical as a science. For here, with all its tangible symbols, is a science which deals with things which cannot be seen or heard or touched. And much of all the truth in the world lies in just such dim dominions. The pessimist is very apt to be stopped at the border. For years he has reproached the optimist with the charge that he lived by dreams rather than realities. Now, wise men have come forward to say that the key to all the most important things in life lies in dreams. Of course, the poets have known that for years, but nobody paid any attention to them because they only felt it and offered no papers to the medical journals.
It would be unfair to suggest that no dreamer is a pessimist. The most prolific period of pessimism comes at twenty-one, or thereabouts, when the first attempt is made to translate dreams into reality, an attempt by a person not over-skillful in either language. Often it is made in college where a newfreedom inspires a somewhat sudden and wholesale attempt to put every vision to the test. Along about this time the young man finds that the romanticists have lied to him about love and he bounces all the way back to Strindberg. Maybe he gets drunk for the first time and learns that every English author from Shakespeare to Dickens has vastly overrated it for literary effect. He follows the formulæ of Falstaff and instead of achieving a roaring joviality he goes to sleep. Personally tobacco sent me into a deep pessimism when I first took it up in a serious way. Huck's corncob pipe had always seemed to me one of the most persuasive symbols of true enjoyment. It seemed to me that life could hold nothing more ideal than to float down the Mississippi blowing rings. After six months of experimenting I was ready to believe that maybe the Mississippi wasn't so much either. Romance seemed pretty doubtful stuff. Around this time, also, the young man generally discovers, in compulsory chapel, that the average minister is a dull preacher; and of course that knocks all the theories of the immortality of the soul right on the head. He may even have come to college with a thirst for knowledge and a faith in its exciting quality, only to have these emotions ooze away during the second month of introductory lectures on anthropology.
Accordingly, it is not surprising to find F. Scott Fitzgerald's Amory Blaine looking at the towers of Princeton and musing:
Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds through a revery of long days andnights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought; all faiths in man shaken....
Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds through a revery of long days andnights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought; all faiths in man shaken....
Nobody wrote as well as that in Copeland's course at Harvard but there was a pretty general agreement that life—or rather Life—was a sham and a delusion. This was expressed in poems lamenting the fact that the oceans and the mountains were going to go on and that the writer wouldn't.
Generally he didn't give the oceans or the mountains very long either. All the short stories were about murder and madness. We cut our patterns into very definite conclusions because we were pessimists and sure of ourselves. It was the most logical of philosophies and disposed of all loose ends. One of my pieces (to polish off a theme on the futility of human wishes) was about a man who went stark raving, and Copeland sat in his chair and groaned and moaned, which was his substitute for making little marks in red ink. He had been reading Sheridan's "The Critic" to the class with the scene in which the two faithless Spanish lovers and the two nieces and the two uncles all try to kill each other at the same time, and are thus thrown into the most terrific stalemate until the author's ingenious contrivance of a beefeater who cries, "Drop your weapons in the Queen's name." At any rate when I had finished the little man ceased groaning and shook his head about my story of the man who went mad. "Broun," he said, "try to solve your problems without recourse todeath, madness—or any other beefeater in the Queen's name."
And it seems to me that the young pessimists, generally speaking, have allowed themselves to be bound in a formula as tight as that which ever afflicted any Pollyanna. It isn't the somberness with which they imbue life which arouses our protest, so much as the regularity. They paint life not only as a fake fight in which only one result is possible, but they make it again and again the selfsame fight.
When Cinderella sat in the ashes she should have consoled herself with the thought of the motion-picture rights. No young woman of our time has had her adventures so ceaselessly celebrated in film and drama. Of course, she generally goes by some other name. It might be "Miss Lulu Bett," for instance.
For our part, we must confess that much as we like Zona Gale's modern and middle-western version of the old tale, Cinderella is beginning to lose favor with us. Her appeal in the first place rested on the fact that she was abused and neglected, but by this time the ashes have become the skimpiest sort of interlude. You just know that the fairy godmother is waiting in the wings, and you can hear the great coach honking around the corner. Undoubtedly, the order for the glass slippers was placed months in advance. More than likely it called for a gross, since there are ever so many Cinderella feet to fit these days—what with Peg and Kiki and Sally and Irene and all the authentic members of the family. Indeed, for a time, Cinderella was spreading herself around so lavishly in dramatic fiction that one sex was not enough to contain her, and we had a CinderellaMan. All the usual perquisites were his except the glass slipper.
And now the time has come when the original poetic justice due to the miss by the kitchen stove has quite worn off. Cinderella has been paid in full, but how about her two ugly sisters? They have gone down the ages without honor or rewards. Each time their aspirations are blighted. Although eminently conscientious in fulfilling their social duties, it has availed them nothing. We are determined not to welcome the story again until it appears in a revised form. In the version which we favor, Prince Charming will try the glass slipper upon Cinderella, and then turn away without enthusiasm, remarking in cutting manner, "It is not a fit. Your foot is much too small." One of the ugly sisters will be sitting somewhat timidly in the background, and it will be to her the Prince will turn, exclaiming rapturously: "A perfect number nine!"
And they lived happily ever after.
And while we are about it, a good many of the fairy stories can stand revision. This Jack the Giant Killer has been permitted to go to outrageous lengths. Between him and David, and a few others, the impression has been spread broadcast that any large person is a perfect setup for the first valiant little man who chooses to assail him with sword or sling. We purpose organizing the Six Foot League to combat this hostile propaganda. Elephants will be admitted, too, on account of the unjust canard concerning their fear of mice. We and the elephants do not intend to go on through life taking all sorts of nonsensefrom whippersnappers. The success of Jack and all the other little men of legend has undoubtedly been due to the chivalry of the big and strong. Dragons have died cheerfully rather than take a mean advantage and slay pestiferous and belligerent runts by spitting out a little fire. Why doesn't somebody celebrate the heroism of these miscalled monsters who have gone down with full steam in their boilers because they were unwilling even to guard themselves against foemen so palpably out of their class?
Take St. George, for instance. Do you imagine for a minute that his victory was honestly and fairly earned? British pluck and all the rest of it had nothing to do with it. The dragon could have finished him off in a second, but the huge and kindly animal was afflicted with an acute sense of humor. Between paroxysms it is known to have remarked: "I shall certainly die laughing." It could not resist the sight of St. George swaggering up to the attack in full armor like an infuriated Ford charging the Woolworth Building. And the strangest part of it all is that the dragon did die laughing just as it had predicted. St. George flung his sword exactly between a "ha" and a "ha." The tiny bit of steel lodged in the windpipe like a fishbone, and before medical assistance could be summoned the dragon was dead. Of course it was clever, but we should hardly call it cricket. All the triumphs of the little men are of much the same sort. Honest, slam-bang, line play has never entered into their scheme of things. Their reputation rests on fakes and forward passes.
Then there was the wolf and Little Red Riding-Hood.The general impression seems to be that the child's grandmother was a saintly old lady and that the wolf was a beast. Let us dismiss this sentimental conception and consider the facts squarely. Before meeting the wolf Red Riding-Hood was the usual empty-headed flapper. She knew nothing of the world. So flagrant was her innocence that it constituted a positive menace to the community. The wolf changed all that. It gave Red Riding-Hood a good scare and opened her eyes. After that encounter nobody ever fooled Red Riding-Hood much. She positively abandoned her practice of wandering around into cottages on the assumption that if there was anybody in bed it must be her grandmother.
The familiar story, somehow or other, has omitted to say that Miss Hood eventually married the richest man in the village. Perhaps the old narrator did not want to reveal the fact that on top of the what-not in the palatial home there stood a silver frame, and upon the picture in the frame was written: "Whatever measure of success I may have attained I owe to you—Red Riding-Hood." And whose picture do you suppose it was? Her grandmother? No. Her husband? Oh, no, indeed! It was the wolf.
The legends of the world have been devised by timorous people. They represent the desire of man, sloshing around in a world much too big for him, to keep up his courage by whistling. He has pretended through these tales that champions of his own kind would spring up to protect him. "Let St. George do it," was a well known motto in the days of old.
And we must insist again that such tales are false and pernicious stimulants for the young. We intend to tell H. 3d that when Jack climbed up the beanstalk the giant flicked him off with one finger. We want the child to have some respect for size and to associate it with authority. Otherwise we don't see how we can possibly prevail upon him to pay any attention when we say, "Stop that." If he goes on with these fairy stories he will merely measure us coolly for a slingshot.
As a matter of fact, he doesn't pay any attention now. The time for propaganda is already here. In our stories the ogre is going to receive his due. Of course, we will add a moral. It would be wrong to lead the boy to believe that brute force is the only effective power in the world. Now and then a giant will be killed, but it will not be any easy victoryfor one presumptuous champion with a magic sword. Instead we will explain that little Jack was not killed when the giant flipped him off the beanstalk. The huge finger struck him only a glancing blow. Nevertheless, it took Jack a good many days to get well again. It was a fine lesson for him. During his convalescence (naturally we will have to think up a shorter word) he did a lot of thinking. As soon as he was up and around he scoured the country for other boys and at last he managed to recruit a band of fifty. The first dark night Jack climbed the beanstalk again, but he took along the fifty. By a prearranged plan they fell upon the giant from all sides and managed to bear him down and kill him. We certainly are not going to admit that a giant can be opened by anything less than Jacks or better.
Following the account of the death of the giant will come the moral. We will explain that Jack is small and weak and that there are great and monstrous powers in the world which are too strong for him. But he need not wait for the superman or the magic lamp or anything like that. He must make common cause with his kind. At this point we shall probably digress for a while to go into a brief but adequate exposition of the League of Nations, municipal ownership, profit sharing and the single tax.
Dropping the serious side of the discussion, we shall add that even a great broth of a man can be spoiled by too many cooks. There is no power in the world great enough to resist the will of man if only he moves against it valiantly—and in numbers.
Maybe H. 3d will not like our version of "Jackand the Beanstalk" half as well as the original. But we fear that when he grows up he is going to find that there are still dragons and ogres and assorted monsters roaming the world. We want him to be instrumental in killing them. We don't want him to get clawed by going forward in foolishly overconfident forays.
There is the Tammany Tiger, for instance. Here and there a brave young fellow rises up and says, "I'm going to kill the Tiger." Having read the fairy stories, he thinks that the thing can be done by a little courage mixed with magic. He paints REFORM on a banner, charges ahead before anybody but the Tiger is ready and gets chewed up.
This is sentimentally appealing, but it has been a singularly useless system of ridding the city of the Tiger. I want H. 3d to know better and to act not only more wisely but more successfully. Somewhere in the story I plan to work in a paraphrase of something Emerson once said. Jack's last words to his army just before climbing the beanstalk will be, "If you strike a giant you must kill him."
There is one argument in favor of Prohibition. It certainly helps to make conversation on a railroad train. In the years before Volstead we had ridden thousands of miles silently peering at the two strangers across the smoking compartment and wondering how to get them talking. The weather is overrated as a common starting point. It dies after a sentence.
Now we have a sure method. Begin with, "Well, this is certainly just the day for a little shot of something," and you will find enough conversation on hand to carry you across the continent. Indeed, nothing but an ocean can stop it.
Some day, of course, we are going to run into a stranger who will reply, "Prohibition is now the national law of our land and I want you to know, sir, that I intend to respect it."
This has never happened yet. It makes us wonder how the drys get from point to point. Either they stay at home, abstain from smoking or betray their cause for the sake of friendliness. During two years of frequent travel we have never yet met an advocate of Prohibition in a smoking compartment.
There was nothing but the most fiery opposition on the part of the man who was going to Rochester.
"It's making criminals out of us," he declared severely but with an ill concealed joy at the thought of being at last, in ripe middle age, a law-breaker. He carried us into Albany with tales of men who "never touched a drop until they went and passed that there law." All these belated roisterers he pictured as reeling in and out of his office under the visible effects of illegal stimulation. He sought to create the impression that he thought the condition terrible, but evidently it had contributed a new and exciting factor to the wholesale fruit business. Even the pre-Volstead drinkers he seemed to find not unworthy of his concern. All of them used to take just one and stop. Now his life was beset with roaring graybeards.
Leaving Albany, the young man in the check suit took up the talk and began a vivid account of recent experiences in Malone, N. Y., which he identified as the strategic point in bootlegging activities. Opening on a note of pathos, in which he wrung the hearts of his hearers by recounting the amazingly low price of Scotch near the border, he introduced a merrier mood by relating a conversation between two farmers of the section which he had overheard.
"What style of car have you got?" asked one of the men in the allegedly veracious anecdote.
"Twenty cases," replied the other laconically.
According to the estimate of the narrator, a bootlegger passes through Malone every eight minutes. He saw one take a turn into Main Street careening along at fifty miles an hour and skid so dangerously that the auto tipped, throwing a case of whiskey clearacross the road. "He went out of town making seventy," added the story teller.
Invariably the bootlegger was the hero of his tales. These modern Robin Hoods he pictured as little brothers to all the world except the revenue officers. Once two revenooers caught one of the gallant company and were about to proceed with him to Syracuse, toting along four telltale barrels of rye. But they had gone only a short distance on their journey when they were overtaken by two men in a motor truck escorting a prisoner, heavily manacled, and ten barrels of whiskey. After a short confab they agreed to relieve the revenuers of their prisoner and deliver both miscreants to the proper authorities in Syracuse. The gullible agents of the law gave up their man.
"And," continued the rum romancer, "they never did show up at Syracuse at all. That second crowd they weren't revenue men at all. They were bootleggers."
Indeed, the young man declared that in Northern New York there is a well organized Bootleggers' Union, which pays all fines out of a common fund. So great was his seeming admiration for the rum runners that we suspected him of being himself a member in good standing, but soon we were moved to identify him as a participant in a trade still more sinister. An acquaintance came past the green curtain and inquired eagerly, "Did you sell her?"
"Twice," said the young man enthusiastically and without regard to our look of horror as we weremoved by circumstantial evidence to believe him not only a white slaver but a dishonest one.
"Yes," he continued. "I had my work cut out. You see he doesn't like Nazimova."
We were a little sorry to find that the young man was a motion picture salesman. It made us fear that perhaps some of his bootlegging yarns had been colored with the ready fiction of his business. Still it was interesting to sit and learn that Niagara Falls got "Camille" for only $300.
The middle-aged man, the one with the large acquaintance among belated drunkards, seemingly had little interest when the conversation turned from bootlegging to the silver screen. We never did hear what business "The Sheik" did in Albany because he was roaring at a skeptic about cabbage.
"I tell you," he shouted, "they got 110 tons off of every acre."
Now we yield to no man in love of cabbage, but we should not find such quantities appealing. It would compel corn beef commitments beyond the point of comfort.
The skeptic made some timid observation about onions. We did not catch whether it was for or against.
"Do you know," said the cabbage king, "that 75 per cent. of all the onions in America are eaten by Jews?" He said it with rancor, whether racial or vegetable we could not determine. To us it seemed an unusual tribute to an ancient people. No other story of their executive capacity had ever seemed tous quite so convincing. We marveled at the extraordinary coöperation which could hold a habit so precisely to an average easy to compute and remember.
We were also moved to admiration for the census takers. Statistics seem to us man's supreme triumph in solving the mysteries of a chaotic world. Creation, of course, was divine, but even that did not involve bookkeeping.
For a time we considered abandoning our project to write a novel about a newspaper man and his son and make it, instead, a pastoral about a hero simple and sincere whose life was dedicated to the task of determining the ultimate destination of every onion raised in America. Then, since art ought to be international, we planned to widen the scope of the tale and include Bermuda. This would enable us to develop a tropical love interest and get a sex appeal into the story. We are not sure that a book would have a wide sale on onions alone.
Of course other vegetables might enter the story. There could be a villain forever tempting the hero to abandon his career and go after parsnips. Titles simply flooded our mind. We thought of "Desperate Steaks," "Out of the Frying Pan" and "A Bed of Onions," although we had a vague impression that W. L. George had done something of this sort in one of his earlier novels. "Breath Control" we dismissed as too frivolous. "Smothered" was too sensational.
Eventually we abandoned the whole project. We feared that we might not be up to the atmosphere of an onion novel.
Still, the advertising might be very effective if thepublisher could be induced to bill the book under a great, flaring headline, "The Onion Forever."
But the train of thought was cut short when the demon vegetable statistician got up and said, "If I could have just one wish in the world, I'd choose a fruit farm between here and Lockport." Looking up to see where "here" was, we observed the Rochester station. The trip had seemed but a moment, and all because of Prohibition.
By the way, did you know that 14.72 per cent, of all the potatoes raised in America come from Maine?
Every evening when dusk comes in the Far West, little groups of men may be observed leaving the various ranch houses and setting out on horseback for the moving picture shows. They are cowboys and they are intent on seeing Bill Hart in Western stuff. They want to be taken out of the dull and dreary routine of the world in which they live.
But somehow or other the films simply cannot get very far away from life, no matter how hard or how fantastically they try. As we have suggested, the cowboy who struts across the screen has no counterpart in real life, but imitation is sure to bridge the gap. Young men from the cattle country, after much gazing at Hart, will begin to be like him. The styles which the cowboys are to wear next year will be dictated this fall in Hollywood.
It has generally been recognized that life has a trick of taking color from literature. Once there were no flappers and then F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote "This Side of Paradise" and created them in shoals. Germany had a fearful time after the publication of Goethe's "Werther" because striplings began to contract the habit of suicide through the influence of the book and went about dying all over the place.And all Scandinavia echoed with slamming doors for years just because Ibsen sent Nora out into the night. In fact the lock on that door has never worked very well since. When "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was written things came to such a pass that a bloodhound couldn't see a cake of ice without jumping on it and beginning to bay.
If authors and dramatists can do so much with their limited public, think of the potential power of the maker of films, who has his tens of thousands to every single serf of the writing man. The films can make us a new people and we rather think they are doing it. Fifteen years ago Americans were contemptuous of all Latin races because of their habit of talking with gestures. It was considered the part of patriotic dignity to stand with your hands in your pockets and to leave all expression, if any, to the voice alone.
Watch an excited American to-day and you will find his gestures as sweeping as those of any Frenchman. As soon as he is jarred in the slightest degree out of calm he immediately begins to follow subconscious promptings and behave like his favorite motion picture actor. Nor does the resemblance end necessarily with mere externals. Hiram Johnson, the senator from California, is reported to be the most inveterate movie fan in America, and it is said that he never takes action on a public question without first asking himself, "What would Mary Pickford do under similar circumstances?" In other words the senator's position on the proposal to increase the import tax on nitrates may be traced directly to thefact that he spent the previous evening watching "Little Lord Fauntleroy."
Even the speaking actors, most contemptuous of all motion picture critics, are slaves of the screen. At an audible drama in a theater the other day we happened to see a young actor who had once given high promise of achievement in what was then known as the legitimate. Eventually he went into motion pictures, but now he was back for a short engagement. We were shocked to observe that he tried to express every line he uttered with his features and his hands regardless of the fact that he had words to help him. He spoke the lines, but they seemed to him merely incidental. We mean that when his part required him to say, "It is exactly nineteen minutes after two," he tried to do it by gestures and facial expression. This is a difficult feat, particularly as most young players run a little fast or a little slow and are rather in need of regulating. When the young man left the theater at the close of the performance we sought him out and reproached him bitterly on the ground of his bad acting.
"Where do you get that stuff?" we asked.
"In the movies," he admitted frankly enough.
There was no dispute concerning facts. We merely could not agree on the question of whether or not it was true that he had become a terrible actor. Life came into the conversation. Something was said by somebody (we can't remember which one of us originated it) about holding the mirror up to nature. The actor maintained that everyday common folk talked and acted exactly like characters in the movieswhenever they were stirred by emotion. We made a bet and it was to be decided by what we observed in an hour's walk. At the southwest corner of Thirty-seventh street and Third avenue, we came upon two men in an altercation. One had already laid a menacing hand upon the coat collar of the other. We crowded close. The smaller man tried to shake himself loose from the grip of his adversary. And he said, "Unhand me." He had met the movies and he was theirs.
The discrepancy in size between the two men was so great that my actor friend stepped between them and asked, "What's all this row about?" The big man answered: "He has spoken lightly of a woman's name."
That was enough for us. We paid the bet and went away convinced of the truth of the actor's boast that the movies have already bent life to their will. At first it seemed to us deplorable, but the longer we reflected on the matter the more compensations crept in.
Somehow or other we remembered a tale of Kipling's called "The Finest Story In The World," which dealt with a narrow-chested English clerk, who, by some freak or other, remembered his past existences. There were times when he could tell with extraordinary vividness his adventures on a Roman galley and later on an expedition of the Norsemen to America. He told all these things to a writer who was going to put them into a book, but before much material had been supplied the clerk fell in love with a girl in a tobacconist's and suddenly forgot all hisprevious existences. Kipling explained that the lords of life and death simply had to step in and close the doors of the past as soon as the young man fell in love because love-making was once so much more glorious than now that we would all be single if only we remembered.
But love-making is likely to have its renaissance from now on since the movies have come into our lives. Douglas Fairbanks is in a sense the rival of every young man in America. And likewise no young woman can hope to touch the fancy of a male unless she is in some ways more fetching than Mary Pickford. In other words, pace has been provided for lovers. For ten cents we can watch courtship being conducted by experts. The young man who has been to the movies will be unable to avail himself of the traditional ineptitude under such circumstances. Once upon a time the manly thing to do was mumble and make a botch of it. The movies have changed all that. Courtship will come to have a technique. A young man will no more think of trying to propose without knowing how than he would attempt a violin concert without ever having practiced. The phantom rivals of the screen will be all about him. He must win to himself something of their fire and gesture. Love-making is not going to be as easy as it once was. Those who have already wed before the competition grew so acute should consider themselves fortunate. Consider for instance the swain who loves a lady who has been brought up on the picture plays of Bill Hart. That young man who hopes to supplant the shadow idol will have tobe able to shoot Indians at all ranges from four hundred yards up, and to ride one hundred thousand miles without once forgetting to keep his face to the camera.
The entire orthodox world owes a debt to Benny Leonard. In all the other arts, philosophies, religions and what nots conservatism seems to be crumbling before the attacks of the radicals. A stylist may generally be identified to-day by his bloody nose. Even in Leonard's profession of pugilism the correct method has often been discredited of late.
It may be remembered that George Bernard Shaw announced before "the battle of the century" that Carpentier ought to be a fifty to one favorite in the betting. It was the technique of the Frenchman which blinded Shaw to the truth. Every man in the world must be in some respect a standpatter. The scope of heresy in Shaw stops short of the prize ring. His radicalism is not sufficiently far reaching to crawl through the ropes. When Carpentier knocked out Beckett with one perfectly delivered punch he also jarred Shaw. He knocked him loose from some of his cynical contempt for the conventions. Mr. Shaw might continue to be in revolt against the well-made play, but he surrendered his heart wholly to the properly executed punch.
But Carpentier, the stylist, fell before Dempsey,the mauler, in spite of the support of the intellectuals. It seemed once again that all the rules were wrong. Benny Leonard remains the white hope of the orthodox. In lightweight circles, at any rate, old-fashioned proprieties are still effective. No performer in any art has ever been more correct than Leonard. He follows closely all the best traditions of the past. His left hand jab could stand without revision in any textbook. The manner in which he feints, ducks, sidesteps and hooks is unimpeachable. The crouch contributed by some of the modernists is not in the repertoire of Leonard. He stands up straight like a gentleman and a champion and is always ready to hit with either hand.
His fight with Rocky Kansas at Madison Square Garden was advertised as being for the lightweight championship of the world. As a matter of fact much more than that was at stake. Spiritually, Saint-Saens, Brander Matthews, Henry Arthur Jones, Kenyon Cox, and Henry Cabot Lodge were in Benny Leonard's corner. His defeat would, by implication, have given support to dissonance, dadaism, creative evolution and bolshevism. Rocky Kansas does nothing according to rule. His fighting style is as formless as the prose of Gertrude Stein. One finds a delightfully impromptu quality in Rocky's boxing. Most of the blows which he tries are experimental. There is no particular target. Like the young poet who shot an arrow into the air, Rocky Kansas tosses off a right hand swing every once and so often and hopes that it will land on somebody's jaw.
But with the opening gong Rocky Kansas tore intoLeonard. He was gauche and inaccurate but terribly persistent. The champion jabbed him repeatedly with a straight left which has always been considered the proper thing to do under the circumstances. Somehow or other it did not work. Leonard might as well have been trying to stand off a rhinoceros with a feather duster. Kansas kept crowding him. In the first clinch Benny's hair was rumpled and a moment later his nose began to bleed. The incident was a shock to us. It gave us pause and inspired a sneaking suspicion that perhaps there was something the matter with Tennyson after all. Here were two young men in the ring and one was quite correct in everything which he did and the other was all wrong. And the wrong one was winning. All the enthusiastic Rocky Kansas partisans in the gallery began to split infinitives to show their contempt for Benny Leonard and all other stylists. Macaulay turned over twice in his grave when Kansas began to lead with his right hand.
But traditions are not to be despised. Form may be just as tough in fiber as rebellion. Not all the steadfastness of the world belongs to heretics. Even though his hair was mussed and his nose bleeding, Benny continued faithful to the established order. At last his chance came. The young child of nature who was challenging for the championship dropped his guard and Leonard hooked a powerful and entirely orthodox blow to the conventional point of the jaw. Down went Rocky Kansas. His past life flashed before him during the nine seconds in which he remained on the floor and he wished that he had beenmore faithful as a child in heeding the advice of his boxing teacher. After all, the old masters did know something. There is still a kick in style, and tradition carries a nasty wallop.
Half a League would be better than one. Perhaps a quarter section would be still better. The thing that sank Mr. Wilson's project, so far as America was concerned, was the machinery. It was too heavy. Not so much was needed. The only essential thing was a large round table and a pleasant room held under at least one year's lease. Of course, it should have been the right sort of table. If they had put knives and forks and, better yet, glasses upon the one in Paris, instead of ink and paper, we might already have a better world. Beer and light wines can settle subjects which defy all the subtleties possible to ink.
What the world needs, then, is not so much a league as an international beer night to be held at regular intervals by representatives of the nations. Good beer and enough of it would have settled the whole problem of the covenants which were going to be open and did not turn out that way. The little meetings would have a persuasive privacy, and yet they would not be secret to any destructive extent. An alert reporter hanging about the front door could not fail to hear the strains of "He's a jolly good fellow" drifting down the stairs from the conference roomand, if he were a journalist of any ability, he would have no difficulty in surmising that the crowd was entertaining the delegate from Germany and discussing indemnities.
Some persons were not quite fair in criticizing the shortcomings of President Wilson at Paris. It was easy to seize upon "open covenants" and to demolish his sincerity by pointing out the secrecy with which negotiations were carried on. It is sentimentally satisfying to every liberal and radical in the world to declare that all the walls should have come down and to continue this criticism by suggesting that the Arms conference ought to have been taken out of the Pan American Building and transferred to Tex Rickard's arena on Boyle's Thirty Acres, or the Yale Bowl. The notion is fascinating because it permits the possibility of cheering sections and enables one to picture Henry Cabot Lodge leaping to his feet every now and again and asking all the men with the R. R. banners (Reactionary Republicans) to join him in nine long rahs for the freedom of the seas. The delegates, of course, would be numbered so that the spectators could tell who was doing the kicking.
It is appealing and we wish it could be done that way, but it is not sound. We all know how bitter and destructive are legal battles which have their first hearing in the newspapers. We also remember how tenacious have been many of the struggles between capital and labor just so long as the leaders of either side were talking to each other across eight-column headlines instead of a table.
One may counter by calling to mind various evilthings which have come to the world from the tops of tables, but we must insist again upon stressing the point that these were not tables which supported food and drink. In Paris various points were lost to democracy because the supporters of the right were outstayed by the champions of evil. In our little club room it would be hard to put such pressure upon anybody. He would need to do no more than shout for the waiter to fill up his mug again and intrench himself for the evening. The most attractive thing about our suggestion is that though it sounds like frivolous foolery it actually is nothing of the sort. We are willing to accept modifications, but the scheme would work. We have seen the pacifying effects of food and drink upon warring factions too many times not to respect them.
Once, at a dinner we heard Max Eastman talk across a table to Judge Gary and both enjoyed it. We do not mean to suggest that the two men arose with all their previous ideas of the conduct of the world changed. Judge Gary did not offer, in spite of the eloquence of Eastman, to curtail the working day in the mills of the United States Steel Company, nor did the editor ofThe Liberatorpromise that thereafter he would be more kindly disposed in writing about universal military training. But both men were disposed to listen. Gary did not rush to the telephone to summon a Federal attorney, and there was no disposition on the part of Eastman to call the proletariat up into immediate arms. The most friendly thing which anybody ever said about Mr. Wilson's League of Nations came from those opponents of thescheme who called it "nothing but a debating society."
Talk is lint for the wounds of the world. The guns cannot begin until the statesmen have had their say. Any device which provides a pleasant place and an audience for the orators in power is distinctly a move to end war. The trouble with ultimatums is not only that they are ugly but that they are short. If certain gentlemen from Serbia could have been brought face to face with other gentlemen from Austria and empowered to thrash it out the dispute between the two nations would by no means be settled by now, but it would still be in a talking stage.
Arguments must be fostered and preserved. It may be a little tiresome to hear premiers saying, "Is that so?" to one another, but the satisfaction derived from such exchanges is enough to keep the conflicting parties from seeking a blood restoration of national egos. Food and drink are not only the greatest instigators but the best preservers of free speech in the world. Undoubtedly everybody in his time has heard some toastmaster or other insult a prominent citizen a few feet away in a manner which would be unsafe on the public highway and nothing has happened. It has been passed off as something wholly suitable to the occasion. As we listened to Max Eastman talk across the table to Judge Gary we wondered whether anybody would have even thought for a moment of sending Debs to jail if he had only had the good fortune to talk from behind a barricade of knives and forks. These are the ultimate and most effective weapons of all peaceful men. With oneof each in front of him even a revolutionist may bare his heart and still be safe from the bayonets of the military.
Of course, the value of the weapons is not unknown to the conservatives as well. Many a rampant reformer has gone to Washington and has seen his ideals drown one by one before his eyes in the soup. For years England managed to muddle along with Ireland by inviting nationalists out to dinner. With the spread and development of civilization the price of pottage has gone up. To-day we can afford to laugh at poor ignorant and deluded Jacob who let his pottage go for a mess of birthright.
In the light of these admissions it would be impossible to contend that all the ills of the world could be solved by the device of international beer nights. Even well fed men are not perfect. Alcohol is benign, but it does not canonize. Schemes would go on even over demitasses. There would be stratagems and surprises. And yet to our mind the stratagem, even of a statesman, can never be so potent for harm in the world as the stratagem of a general. Diplomacy is an evil game, chiefly because it has been so exclusive. Our little club would be large enough to admit all the delegates of the world. The only house rule would be "No checks cashed."
We have no idea that the heart of man is not more important than his stomach. The world will not be made over more closely to the heart's desire until we are of a better breed. But while we are waiting, friendly talks about a table may count for something. We might manage to swap a groaning world for agroaning board. There is sanction for hope in the words of the song. We know, don't we, that it's always fair weather when good fellows get together with a stein on the table. All America needs, then, to make the world safer for democracy is the stein and the good fellows.
All editors are divided into two parts. In one group are those who think that anybody who can make a good bomb can undoubtedly fashion a great sonnet. The members of the other class believe that if a man loves his country he is necessarily well fitted to be a book reviewer.
As a matter of fact, new terminology is coming into the business of criticism. A few years ago the critic who was displeased with a book called it "sensational" or "sentimental" or something like that. To-day he would voice his disapproval by writing "Pro-German" or "Bolshevist." Authors are no longer evaluated in terms of æsthetics, but rather from the point of view of political economy. Indeed, to-day we have hardly such a thing as good writers and bad writers. They have become instead either "sound" or "dangerous." A sound author is one with whose views you are in agreement.
So tightly are the lines drawn that the criticism of the leading members of each side can be accurately predicted in advance. Show me the cover of a war novel, and let me observe that it is called "The Great Folly," and I will guarantee to foreshadow with a high degree of accuracy just what the critic of The New YorkTimeswill say about it and also the criticofThe Liberator. Even if it happened to be called "The Glory of Shrapnel," the guessing would be just as easy.
The manner in which anybody says anything now whether in prose, verse, music or painting is entirely secondary in the minds of all critical publications. Reviewers look for motives. Symphonies are dismissed as seditious, and lyrics are closely scanned to see whether or not their rhythms are calculated to upset the established order without due recourse to the ballot. Nor has this particular reviewer any intention of suggesting that such activity is entirely vain and fanciful. He remembers that only a month ago he began a thrilling adventure story called "The Lost Peach Pit," only to discover, when he was half through, that it was a tract in favor of a higher import duty on potash.
A vivid novel about the war by John Dos Passos has been issued under the title "Three Soldiers." One of the chief characters was a creative musician who broke under the rigor of army discipline which was repugnant to him. Nobody who wrote about the book undertook to discuss whether or not the author had painted a persuasive picture of the struggle in the soul of a credible man. Instead they argued as to just what proportion of men in the American army were discontented, and the final critical verdict is being withheld until statistics are available as to how many of them were musicians. Those who disliked the book did not speak of Mr. Dos Passos as either a realist or a romanticist. They simply called him a traitor and let it go at that. The enthusiasts on theother side neglected to say anything about his style because they needed the space to suggest that he ought to be the next candidate for president from the Socialist party.
Speaking as a native-born American (Brooklyn—1888) who once voted for a Socialist for membership in the Board of Aldermen, the writer must admit that he has found the radical solidarity of critical approval or dissent more trying than that of the conservatives. Again and again he has found, inThe Liberatorand elsewhere, able young men, who ought to know better, praising novels for no reason on earth except that they were radical. If the novelist said that life in a middlewestern town was dreary and evil he was bound to be praised by the socialist reviewers. On the other hand, any author who found in this same middle west a community or an individual not hopelessly stunted in mind and in morals, was immediately scourged as a viciously sentimental observer who had probably been one of the group which fixed upon the nomination of President Harding late at night behind the locked doors of a little room in a big hotel.
The enthusiasm of the radical critics extends not only to rebels against existing governmental principles and moral conventions, but to all those who dare to write in any new manner. There seems to be a certain confusion whereby free verse is held to be a movement in the direction of free speech.
Novels which begin in the middle and work first forward and then back, win favor as blows against the bourgeois idea that a straight line is the shortestdistance between two points. Of course, the radical author can do almost anything the conservative does and still retain the admiration of his fellows by dint of a very small amount of tact. Rhapsodies on love will be damned as sentimental if the author has been injudicious enough to allow his characters to marry, but he can retain exactly the same language if he is careful to add a footnote that nothing is contemplated except the freest of free unions. A few works are praised by both sides because each finds a different interpretation for the same set of facts. Thus, the authors of "Dulcy" were surprised to find themselves warmly greeted in one of the Socialist dailies as young men who had struck a blow for government ownership of all essential industries merely because they had introduced a big business man into their play and, for the purposes of comic relief, had made him a fool.
Class consciousness has become so acute that it extends even beyond the realms of literature and drama into the field of sports. The recent "battle of the century" eventually simmered down into the minds of many as a struggle between the forces of reaction and revolution. It was known before the fight that Carpentier would wear a flowered silk bathrobe into the ring, while Dempsey would be clad in an old red sweater. How could symbolism be more perfect? Anybody who believed that Carpentier's right would be good enough to win, was immediately set down as a profiteer in munitions who would undoubtedly welcome the outbreak of another war. Likewise it was unsafe to express the opinion thatDempsey's infighting might be too much for the Frenchman, lest one be identified with the little willful group of pacifists who impeded the progress of the war. Eventually, the startling revelation was made by the reporter of a morning newspaper that he had seen Carpentier smelling a rose. After that, any belief in the invader's prowess laid whoever expressed it open to the charge, not only of aristocracy, but of degeneracy as well. After Dempsey's blows wore down his opponent and defeated him, it was generally felt by his supporters that the eight-hour day was safe, and that the open shop would never be generally accepted in America.
The only encouraging feature in the increasingly sharp feeling of class consciousness among critics is a growing frankness. Reviewers are willing to admit now that they think so and so's novel is an indifferent piece of work because he speaks ill of conscription and they believe in it. A year or so ago they would have pretended that they did not like it because the author split some infinitives.
One of the frankest writing men we ever met is the editor of a Socialist newspaper. "Whenever there's a big strike," he explained to me, "I always tell the man who goes out on the story, 'Never see a striker hit a scab. Always see the scab hit the striker.'"
"You see," he went on, "there are seven or eight other newspapers in town who will see it just the other way and I've got to keep the balance straight."
There used to be a practice somewhat similar to this among baseball umpires. Whenever the manbehind the plate felt that he had called a bad ball a strike, he would bide his time until the next good one came over and that he would call a ball. The practice was known as "evening up" and it is no longer considered efficient workmanship. That is, not among umpires. The radical editor was not in the least abashed when I quoted to him the remark of a man who said that he always read his paper with great interest because he invariably found the editorial opinions in the news and the news on the editorial page. "That's just what I'm trying to do," he exclaimed delightedly. "I'm not trying to give the people the news. I'm trying to make new Socialists every day."
It is to be feared that even those writers who have the opportunity to be more deliberate than the journalists have been struck with the idea that by words they can shape the world a little closer to the heart's desire. Throughout the war we were told so constantly that battles could be decided and ships built and wars decided by the force of propaganda, that every man with a portable typewriter in his suitcase began to think of it as a baton. There was a day when a novelist was satisfied if he could capture a little slice of life and get it between the covers of his book. Now everybody writes to shake the world. The smell of propaganda is unmistakable.
With literature in its present state of mind critics cannot be expected to watch and wait for the great American novel or the great American play. Instead they look for the book which made the tariff possible, or the play which ended the steel strike.