New York Letter
George Soule
Itwould be difficult to imagine a more fantastic occasion than a debate in New York on the justice of the cause of the Allies vs. that of Germany between Cecil Chesterton and George Sylvester Viereck. The gods permitted it to happen last week, much to the chagrin of the Allies, for the hyphenated Germans took good care to fill the hall and hiss every offensive statement. Mr. Chesterton, an honest fighter and a clever polemicist, who has leapt through every phase of radicalism into the enfolding charity of the Catholic Church, deserves to be known for his journalistic achievements and his exposure of graft in high places almost as much as for his brother Gilbert. Mr. Viereck, a sublime egotist, has come into sudden favor with his countrymen by editingDas Vaterland, although before that he had taken every known means to secure notoriety for a naturally obscure individual. He began as a poet of strange verse, both in German and English. When it became apparent that it wasn’t going to sell, he issued a last volume which he called his “swan song,” with the announcement that as this commercial age was unappreciative of his poetry he would write no more, and anyone who wanted a last chance to value him at it must buy this book. For himself, he was going to get in line with the genius of the century and become a Big Business Man, for he must make himself felt. He announced in a stentorian wail his admiration for Theodore Roosevelt, and was much chagrined when that celebrity would not let him trail along on the skirts of his ample publicity. Later on, when Alfred Noyes began to sell in large quantities, Mr. Viereck resumed his dictatorship of poetry, and by scurrilous attacks attempted to draw Mr. Noyes’s fire—and newspaper space. Now German Patriotism has lifted him to the headlines.
If Poetic Justice was present at the debate, she probably did not receive much enlightenment on the questions which are now vexing her in Europe. To quote any of the substance of the debate would be an insult to her intelligence.
A more serious event was Richard Bennet’s recent production of Brieux’sMaternity. Considering the deadly earnestness with which author and cast struggled to inculcate lessons, the apathy of the public in respect to moral instruction was pathetic. On the night of my visit there was exactly one normal “theatre-goer” in the house. There was a sprinkling of people who had long admitted what Brieux has to say, and went from “high-brow” reasons. There was a young society matron who had escaped from her husband for the evening and is taking an amateurish interest in social questions. There were numerous persons who are always on the lookout for a chance to cackle at what they consider broad humor. Theseblonde ladies furnished an interesting refutation of one of Brieux’s theories. In one scene various women tell their troubles, emphasizing the fact that all women are united in their sorrows and understand them, whereas men do not. Immediately after this the drunken husband returns and disgusts and outrages the wife. There were many laughs in the audience to greet him—but not one from a man. Even the blonde ladies’ fat escorts tried to quiet them while the rest of us were hissing.
Granville Barker opens this week withAndrocles and the Lionand some of the other recent London productions. A number of the backers of the old “New Theatre” are guaranteeing his expenses, a fact which is a historical corroboration for Mr. Barker’s wit. When he was brought over as the chosen manager for that institution, he objected to the immense size of the house. “But the alterations you suggest would cost us a million dollars,” he was told. “If you don’t make them, it will cost you three million,” he replied, and sailed back to London. His popularity with the New Theatre guarantors has been steadily increasing from that day to this.
There is even a rumor that if the present experiment succeeds, the New Theatre project will be resumed. This whisper aroused an answering howl from the American managers and actors. Why should good American money be spent in encouraging English talent, especially in such a disastrous season? they wailed. The answer was, in effect, the one that should be made to the whole “made in America” propaganda. What has American production done that it should be encouraged? When “made in America” comes to have any relation to honesty and intelligence, it will be time enough to invoke “patriotism” in its favor. In the meantime, the more disastrous foreign competition can be to our present shoddy products, the better.
This ironic year has produced few more strange reversals than the one which has brought Mr. McClure to the status of an employee of Mr. Munsey. When a man has apparently won his life campaign and written so engagingly of it as has Mr. McClure in his Autobiography, we begin to regard him as beyond the touch of the fates. Perhaps the present eventuality should be taken, however, merely as another proof that in our present arrangement of things it is less profitable to have a touch of genius than to become the owner of trust companies. At any rateMcClure’s Magazinehas apparently not profited much in recent years by Mr. McClure’s separation from its editorial policy.
There is one real consolation in a season which has brought such material devastation to commercial managers and magazines. When conventionally-planned “successes” don’t succeed, success comes to have less meaning. People who are after money in the promotion of artistic products are in their desperation more ready to try less “safe” ways of getting it, while the others have a decidedly better chance of gaining a respectful public attention.