Topics of the Time
THIS number of THECENTURYcloses its eighty-sixth volume, and the November number will begin what we confidently believe will be the most important year in the history of this magazine. The period through which we are living is, in its display of scientific accomplishment and clashing social forces, the most broadly significant and humanly spectacular in our forty-three years of existence, and it is our ambition to be, as nearly as possible, representative of the times in which we live.
Recognizing that this is, in a real and vital sense, the very age of fiction, we plan that each number beginning with the November CENTURYshall contain, in addition to a leading article on modern conditions, an exceptional fiction feature. In fact the present number, containing the beginning of the anonymous serial, “Home,” and Colonel Roosevelt’s paper on the Progressive Party, illustrates our purpose.
In the November number the fiction feature will be an extraordinary story by Stephen French Whitman entitled “The Woman from Yonder,” and the non-fiction feature will be a paper entitled “The Militant Women—and Women” by Edna Kenton, which, for dignity, power, and clarity, states the case for the feminists as it never has been stated. Indeed no person with a mind in the least open can read Miss Kenton’s brief without sympathy and understanding. Also it is typical of many clarifying papers on many timely subjects which we plan to publish through the year.
In December the non-fiction feature will be an absorbing paper on “The Search for a Modern Religion” by Winston Churchill. In January the fiction feature will be a most unusual story by May Sinclair. In February we shall begin a new and important serial novel.
Of course this does not mean that our leaders shall exhaust our resources. Each number will contain other stories and other papers on subjects of current importance. The leaders, however, are intended to be the most important papers on their several subjects that the world can produce.
An eminent novelist declared to us years ago in his newspaper days his belief that reporting was the noblest work of man. In later years, when he had added art to his reports of life and was selling his novels by the hundreds of thousands, he confirmed the statement of his enthusiastic youth. Modern fiction is, literally, a report of life, colored by personality, and formed by art. Its appeal is universal. Its power is greater than any other engine of civilization. It is to this period what poetry, what preaching, what oratory, and what editorials have been to preceding periods. It is practically the only effective means of approaching the minds of millions of intelligent persons. It influences to a greater or a less degree the imagining, the thinking, and the living of nearly all who are literate.
During the coming years THECENTURYwill recognize this important function of fiction, but in so doing it will not the less regard fiction as an art. Roughly speaking, one half of each number will be devoted to serials and short stories, and we shall, in their selection, work toward an ideal. The problem of selection will be more complex than for some other magazines, perhaps, for CENTURYreaders are of many and varied tastes. There must be fiction for all kinds of cultivated readers, for the lovers of artistry and subtlety and the fine distinctions of human nature and for those who revel in plot and climax. There must be fiction for the laughter-loving and fiction for those for whom fiction seriously interprets life. But whatever its kind it must all possess a commonquality, and this, we realize, it will take long to attain consistently.
Apart from fiction and in addition to the distinguished series of papers on great current movements already foretold, THECENTURYhas planned for the coming year a number of features of extraordinary interest and value. In November, for example, Professor Edward Alsworth Ross, the distinguished sociologist of the University of Wisconsin, will begin an examination into Immigration which cannot fail to stir every American deeply, and undoubtedly will blaze the way to greatly needed reforms. This is no sensational “campaign,” nor is it a dry, scientific compilation, but a searching study of great human facts and conditions that make their own prophecy. And, early in the winter, Hilaire Belloc will begin an important series of papers on French Revolutionary subjects.
In literature we have in preparation several papers of permanent and vital interest. Albert Bigelow Paine, for example, the biographer of Mark Twain, will contribute, from European wanderings in an automobile under his own leisurely guidance, papers bubbling with the humor that is his special possession. The same note of vitality underlies the year’s projects in biography, history, and science.
In politics THECENTURYwill remain wholly non-partizan. From time to time, as passing events or other occasions demand, we shall deal with political personages and parties and policies from a point of view altogether remote from any mere political interest, and for the broad purpose of enlightening all citizens irrespective of partizan creed. We expect, for example, when new situations develop, to follow Mr. Roosevelt’s paper with papers by political leaders of equal prominence upon the changing purposes and objects of their respective parties.
Art has always been THECENTURY’Sspecial field, and our plans involve an interesting and important year. But there is another use for pictures than the selection and display of beautiful and admirable specimens of art. One picture is often more descriptive than pages upon pages of the most skilful text, and we purpose to reproduce freely, for the information of CENTURYreaders, examples illustrating the more important transitional tendencies in the art and sculpture of our day.