Part 2

Can you blame Wilhelm for opposing the erection of a Heine monument in Düsseldorf? Those lines were written nearly four scores of years ago, a time sufficient for turning epithets obsolete. No longer is Prussia labeled hypocritical and sanctimonious; it is rather accused of rude frankness and insulting tactlessness. Yet the hatred for Prussia has not abated, but has been greatly enhanced. Heine died before the planting of the atrocious Sieges-Allee, that symbol of the triumphant pig; it is in the last forty years that the world has witnessed the development of Prussian forbearance, narrowness, machine-like preciseness, and soullessness. We have always preferred to distinguish Germany from Prussia; we have found delight in the thought that there is a Munich as well as a Berlin, a Nietzsche as well as a Haeckel, a Rheinhard as well as a Bernhardi.... Today we witness the hegemony of Prussia, a hegemony political as well as spiritual, for the great war has crowned with triumph not only the Krupp guns but also the Prussian idea of efficiency and preciseness. Our amazement at the achievements of the lightning-like army that has been almost invariably victorious during the eleven months of fighting and has held in its iron grip two hostile fronts, and our astonishment at the diabolical accomplishment of the submarines which have driven the English fleet to rest in North Scotland and have become the Flying Dutchmen of the seas, pale before our admiration for the wonderful spirit displayed by the German people within their country. Read their press; you find nothing bombastic or boasting, but calm reserve, set teeth, clenched fists, and deadly determination to fight for life, even if it be a fight against the whole world. “_Weder Schlafpulver noch Tonics!_” admonishes Maximilian Harden against drumming up illusionary hopes. “_Stirb und werde_,” he closes up one of his terse articles in the most virile publication I know of, the _Zukunft_. Bernhardi’s alternative—a World Power or Downfall—is not any longer a mere jingo-rocket but an imperative axiom uniting all Germans in a desperate decision to preserve their national existence in face of a universal hatred and complete isolation. They are not geniuses, those perseverant Teutons; rather are they the reverse of geniuses. They do not rise above reality; they adapt themselves to facts. They refuse to be Quixotic knights; they prefer to emulate Mahomet who went to the mountain when the mountain declined to go unto him; not to ride on the back of conditions and circumstances, but to hold tight their tail and be dragged after them. Herein lies the Teutonic victory, the victory of Blond Beast over Superman, the triumph of mediocrity over uniqueness, of fact over idea, of efficiency over idealism, of state over individual.

_The Prophecy of Rimbaud_

Arthur Rimbaud, the close friend of Verlaine, the “ruffian,” according to Mr. Powys (this I shall never forgive him), was capable not only of perceiving the color of vowels but also of foreseeing the political situation forty-five years ahead. _L’Eclaireur de Nice_ prints an interesting statement made by Rimbaud in 1871, a few lines of which I shall reluctantly attempt to translate:

The Germans are by far our inferiors, for the vainer a people is the closer it approaches decadence—history proves it.... They are our inferiors because victory has besotted them. Our chauvinism has received a blow from which it will not recover. The defeat has freed us from stupid prejudice, has transformed and saved us. Yes, they will pay dearly for their victory! In fifty years envious and restless Europe will prepare for them a bold unexpected stroke, and will whip them. I can foresee the administration of iron and folly that will stifle German society and German thought, in the end to be crushed by some coalition!

_George Brandes’ Neutrality_

There has been a good deal of misapprehension concerning Brandes’ attitude towards the war. His refusal to answer the interpellation of his friend Clemenceau, his condemnation of the Russian policy in Finland and of the cowardly and treacherous treatment of the Jews by the Poles, have given cause for suspecting him of pro-German sentiments. In a recent interview with the correspondent of the Paris _Journal_ the Danish critic avows his full sympathy for France. Although his statement is reserved and plausibly neutral, one easily discerns his dislike for Germany, in whose _Deutschland über Alles_ motto he sees a Jesuitic excuse for all means that may lead to her end. “German brutality is not instinctive; it is a scientific one, a theory.” The cause of the war he epitomizes in the _mot_ of Pascal: “Pourquoi voulez vous tuer cette homme?”—“Il est mon ennemi: il habite de l’autre côté du fleuve.” Brandes expresses himself more frankly in the Danish _Tilskueren_, where he interprets the war as the struggle between liberalism and personal government, between civil spirit and militarism, between a people (England) which accords others commercial freedom and self-government and a country overridden with economic protectionism, junkers, and bureaucracy. “England has an independent press and a government which voices the parliament and public opinion; in Germany the press is semi-official, the government is responsible solely before the Kaiser, and the Kaiser only before God.”

_Germanophobia ad Absurdum_

The French Immortals, too old for actual participation in the war, have found an outlet for their patriotism in shedding red ink of ridiculous chauvinism. It has become a matter of course to meet a name of some “Membre de l’Academie” signed under such outbursts as this: “Nothing of the Barbarians, nothing of their literature, of their music, of their art, of their science, nothing of their culture, of anything Made in Germany!” Another Academic gives vent to his ire against those Frenchmen who still find certain German things worth admiring, and he vehemently advocates the prohibition of the Barbarian music and art “by law, by persuasion, by force, by violence if necessary!” The octogenarian Saint-Saens has written a series of articles venomously attacking Wagnerian music, labeling traitor any Frenchman who favors the art of the arch-foe of his country. Even the semi-official _Le Temps_ was shocked by the violent tone of the old composer; it quoted Saint-Saens’s articles of the year 1876, in which the author appeared to be an ardent Wagnerite and appealed to his compatriots for broad-mindedness and toleration for “the greatest genius of our times.” As a substitute for the atrocious Wagner Saint-Saens recommends the return to Haydn and Mozart, even to Meyerbeer; Schumann’s Lieder he would ban for Gounod and Massenet; he favors even Dussek, for he is “only a Bohemian.” Patriotic as he is, he refuses to sanction the modern French composers, since Debussy, Fauré, D’Indy, and the rest are Wagnerians in his estimation. It is a case of “senile reactionarism,” as the _Mercure de France_ rightly observes.

_Comparative Morale_

It is very interesting to compare the barometer of public morale in the European capitals, judging from their amusements. Here is one day’s bill taken from the London _Daily News_, the Petrograd _Ryech_, the _Berliner Tageblatt_, the Vienna _Neue Freie Presse_, and the Paris _Figaro_; I have omitted the movies, which bear for the most part ultra-patriotic titles, and the vaudevilles. The London bill is quite poor: _Veronique_, a comic opera; _Mme. Sans-Gene_; Gaby Deslys in _Rosy Rapture_, presented by Charles Frohman; _The Girl in the Taxi_; Frondai’s _The Right to Kill_; _For England, Home, and Beauty_; and our old friends, the Irish Players, in the Little Theatre. Still more meager is the Paris bill: outside of _Cavalleria Rusticana_ (the chairman of the Walt Whitman dinner pronounces it Keyveleeria Rohstikeyna), it abounds with such tit-bits as _La Petite Fonctionaire_, _Mam’zelle Boy Scout_, _Mariage de Pepeta_, and so forth. Berlin has on that day three operas—_Don Juan_, _Elektra_, _Lohengrin_; three dramas—_Faust_, _Peer Gynt_, _Schluck und Jau_ (the last one in Rheinhard’s Deutsches Theater), not counting the minor affairs. Vienna’s bill took away my breath: a Schönberg-Mahler Abend, a Schubert-Strauss Abend, a Beethoven-Brahms Abend, a Brahms Kammermusik Abend, a concert under Sevcik; _Carmen_; a play by Fulda after Molière; Ibsen’s _Master Builder_ and _Ghosts_; Kleist’s _Kätchen von Heilbronn_. As for the Petrograd bill, I had better not say what emotions it has aroused in me. Judge for yourselves: five operas—_Traviata_, _Faust_, _Pagliacci_, _Ruslan and Ludmilla_, _Eugene Onegin_; a ballet by Mlle. Krzesinsky; two ballets by Fokin’s company; plays by Ibsen, Mirbo, Andreyev, beside _Potash and Perlmutter_ and other importations; an exhibition of paintings by Lancerè and Dobuzhinsky; a Poeso-Evening by Futurist poets with Igor Severyanin as leader; an Evening of Poetry under K. R. (Grand Duke Konstantine, whose play _King of the Jews_ recently appeared in an English translation); public lectures on _The Blue Bird_ in Our Days, on Dostoevsky and Nietzsche.... Allow me to stop. Are you inclined to draw conclusions and comparisons between the stage of war-ridden Europe and that of peacefully complacent America? I beg to be excused.

_Edmond Rostand on the Lusitania_

Rostand is a member of the Academy; perhaps this affliction is responsible for his growing hoarseness as a Chantecler. Yet as of all recent war poems his is the best, I feel justified in citing it:

Les Condoléances

Bernstorff, pour aller à la Maison Blanche, S’est mis tout en noir. (L’onde a pris, là-bas, la dernière planche Dans son entonnoir.)

Il entre, affigé, refuse une chaise D’un geste contrit. (Des femmes, là-bas, heurtent la falaise De leur sein meurtri.)

Il tousse une toux de condoléance. Il s’essuie un oeil. (Les enfants noyés tournent en silence Autour d’un écueil.)

Il se mouche. Il dit—son mouchoir embaume:— “Je viens de la part De Sa Majesté l’Empereur Guillaume Vous dire la part....”

Derrière Wilson, dont on aime à croire Que tout le sang bout, Lincoln, la Vertu,—Washington, la Gloire, Se tiennent débout.

Le comte Bernstorff ne peut les connaître. Il ne les voit pas. S’il pouvait les voir, il aurait peut-être Reculé d’un pas.

“... Vous dire la part....”—O mornes allures! Touchant trémolo! (Les pêcheurs, là-bas, voient des chevelures Ouvertes sur l’eau.)

“... Vous dire la part que nous daignons prendre A votre malheur.” (Les flots verts ont-ils d’autres morts à rendre? Demandez-le-leur!)

Bernstorff pleure et dit: “J’ai su ce naufrage Et je suis venu. Ils n’ont pas souffert. Ayez du courage. Ils en ont bien eu.

“Je n’insiste pas. Je suis venu vite, Et puis je m’en vais. Mais vous sentez bien que, cette visite, Je vous la devais.

“Nous plaignons le sort des enfants, des femmes, Cela va de soi.... Ah si vous voyiez tous les télégrammes Que Tirpitz reçoit!

“C’est un grand succès pour notre marine. Je suis désolé. Veuillez constater que sur ma marine Ce pleur a coulé.

“Un pleur magnifique, en cristal de roche. Voyez, c’est exact. Je ne comprends pas que l’on nous reproche De manquer de tact.

“Berlin se pavoise.—Hélas!—On décore Le moindre faubourg. Ah je le disais tout à l’heure encore A Monsieur Dernburg.

“Si notre avenir—souffrez que je cache Quelques pleurs amers— N’est plus sur les mers, il faut que l’on sache Qu’il est sous les mers.

“Ceux qui malgré nous voyagent sur l’onde Sont les agresseurs.” (Là-bas, l’eau rapporte une vierge blonde Avec ses trois soeurs.)

“Les _Tipperary_ que chez vous on siffle Nous ont agacés, Et quand Roosevelt joue avec son rifle Nous disons: Assez.

“Qu’allaient donc chercher en cette aventure Vos Princes de l’Or?” (Là-bas, pour avoir donné sa ceinture, Vanderbilt est mort.)

“Il ne faudra pas que ça recommence. Ils sont bien punis. Veuillez exprimer ma douleur immense Aux Etats-Unis.”

(Il se fait, là-bas, d’horribles trouvailles Qu’on met sous un drap.) Et Bernstorff reprend: “Pour les funérailles, On me préviendra.

“Ce désastre a fait, en Bourse allemande, Monteur les valeurs. On me préviendra pour que je commande Les plus belles fleurs.”

Et comme Wilson dit, d’une voix sombre: “Nous verrons demain,” Et sent Washington et Lincoln, dans l’ombre, Lui prendre la main,

Bernstorff, en pleurant, regagne la porte ... (Il y a, là-bas, Deux petits enfants qu’une femme morte Serre entre ses bras.)

_The Downfall of the International_

Another result of the war, already sufficiently crystallized, is the bankruptcy of the illusionary spirit of internationalism. In his remarkable book[1] Mr. Walling has taken the trouble of quoting resolutions of national sections of the Socialist party the world over, before and during the war. With a few significant exceptions the Socialists of the warring nations have had to exchange their erstwhile slogan “Workers of the world, be united!” for the less noble motto “Defend your country!” Even when the European armies had already been mobilized the Socialists held protest meetings at which they threatened to call a general strike if war should be declared. But with the first cannon boom the theoretic brotherhood evaporated and gave way to patriotic sentiments. The workers declared that they were Germans, Russians, etc., first, then Socialists. True, in the beginning the German Socialists claimed that they were fighting against the reactionary Czardom, while the Socialists of the Allies tried to justify the international carnage as the struggle against Prussian militarism; but ultimately such clear-headed thinkers as Kautsky and some of the English Socialists came to see the futility of endeavoring to discover idealistic causes for the mutual slaughter. The country is in danger, consequently we must defend it, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of its policy—this is the prevailing sentiment among the workers. The grandiose structure of the International has fallen in ruins; the “scientific” theories and calculations of the Marxians have received a blow by the underestimated imponderabilia, that of primitive patriotism. On the other hand, “applied” Socialism has won a considerable victory with the development of the war. Nearly all the belligerent countries have adopted State-Socialism in such measures as the nationalization of railways and means of production. The capitalists are evidently shrewd enough to utilize the doctrines of their opponents in time of need and thus to neutralize the sting of that very opposition. What will become of Socialism when at least its minimum-program is accepted and put into practice by the _capitalistic_ order without the aid of a social revolution, the inevitability of which has been scientifically proven by Marx and his disciples?

[1] _The Socialists and the War, by William English Walling. New York: Henry Holt and Company._

Artists should not see things as they are; they should see them fuller, simpler, stronger: to this end, however, a kind of youthfulness, of vernality, a sort of perpetual elation, must be peculiar to their lives.—_Nietzsche._

“The Artist in Life”

MARGARET C. ANDERSON

“People” has become to me a word that—crawls. If you have ever heard Mr. Bryan pronounce it you will know what I mean. He says it “peo-pul”....

And that is the way they act. Sometimes I see peo-pul in this kind of picture: a cosmic squirming mass of black caterpillars moving first one way and then the other, slowly and vaguely, not like measuring worms who cover the ground or like ants who have their definite business, but heavily, blindly, in the stunned manner peculiar to caterpillar organisms. They peer and poke and nod and ponder and creep and crawl and scramble and grow dizzy and turn around and around, wondering whether they shall go on the way they started or go back the way they came or refuse to go at all. Once in a hundred years one of the caterpillars breaks his skin and flies away—a butterfly through the unfriendly air. Then the black mass writhes in protest and arranges that the next butterfly shall have his wings well clipped. I know my metaphor is not scientifically intact, but what does it matter? It satisfies my impulse—which is simply to call names. So I might as well say “People are caterpillars” and be done with it.

* * * * *

I have a painter artist friend who says that to talk about the artist in life is simply to repeat one of those silly phrases that mean nothing. But it means entirely too much, I think—which is the reason there are so many of the species in evidence: about two in a million perhaps—and I know that is far too optimistic. That would mean some four or five thousand people in the living world who have nothing in common with caterpillars. The count is too high!

For really there are no artists among us. Living picturesquely, artistically, has nothing to do with being an artist in life; and even living with the poise that marks a good piece of art hasn’t necessarily anything to do with it. If you ask me to choose a type of the real artist in life I shall say Nietzsche rather than Goethe. For the artist in life has inevitably to do with prophecy rather than with holding up the mirror; and that means chiefly—to have strength!

Now where are the strong people? Of course “strength” is an indefinite term. Sometimes it seems a matter of dominating the superfluous; sometimes it seems the power “to meet fate with an equal gaze”; and sometimes the resource or the daring to push one’s fate to a farther goal. But these are beginnings! If you pick up what is known as your soul from a wreckage and make it march on you think you are very strong. If you manage to make it march with pride and joy you think you are a Superman. But this is easily within the effort of Everyman. I am talking of artists now and of the radiant possibility that such beings may develop in this uninspired land; and, in these terms, to be strong is to help create the farther goal!

It’s disgusting to realize that the people we know are not this sort. Take any twenty of your friends and classify them briefly as types. Perhaps there are five who have “personality”: but one of them has no energy, one no will, one no brains, one no imagination, and the other no “spirit;” there are five who have “intellect”: one of them has no “character,” one no strength, one can’t see or hear or feel, one sees so inclusively that he has no goal, and one sees so “straight” that he misses the road on both sides; there are five who have a capacity for art: one is lazy, one is ignorant, one is afraid, one is vain, one has a lie in him; and there are five who have a capacity for living: one can’t think, one can’t work, one can’t persevere, one can’t stand alone, one wastes his gift on others and never realizes himself. You can work out such combinations _ad infinitum_ and you can excuse them to the same distance by calling it all a matter of having the defects of your qualities. Why not call it a matter of having the complacency of your defects?

If you’ve not got imagination you can’t help it; if you’ve not got strength you can get it. It won’t make you an artist but it will make it impossible for you to be confused with the caterpillars. If you’ve got a vision—an Idea—and can find the strength to fly toward it you’ll be an artist in life. This is not to confuse the artist with the prophet. You can’t very well do that because the terms are so interdependent. There has never been an artist without the prophet in him, and there has never been a prophet who was not an artist. It’s a different thing if you’re talking about priests or about inferior artists. And then of course you have to remember that there are no such things as inferior artists. Priest and demagogue are the names for those who fail as prophets or as artists.

And what is the use of such a harangue? There is very little use. People won’t be artists. Peo-pul don’t change. But the individual changes, and that is the hope. Individuals are persons who can stand alone. There ought to be Individuals coming out of a generation brought up on Nietzsche. Such an upbringing has taught us at least two things: first that he who goes forward goes alone, and second that it is weakness rather than nobility to succumb to the caterpillars. Yes, and something else: that it is from superabundance rather than from hunger that creation comes. We start out fortified with all this. We don’t need to wrestle with our gods every time the old laws threaten to submerge us; our universe doesn’t totter when the caterpillars groan that we will be lonely if we go alone or hurt if we are misunderstood or tragic if we don’t compromise. We don’t mind these things.

It really all comes to one end: Life for Art’s sake. We believe in that because it is the only way to get more Life—a finer quality, a higher vibration. This bigger concept doesn’t mean merely more Beauty. It means more Intensity. In short, it means the _New_ Hellenism. And that is a step beyond the old Greek ideal of proportion and moderation. It pushes forward to the superabundance that dares abandonment.

Art and nothing else! Art is the great means of making life possible, the great seducer to life, the great stimulus of life.—_Nietzsche._

The tree that grows to a great height wins to solitude even in a forest; its highest outshoots find no companions save the winds and the stars.—_Frank Harris._

Poems

CLARA SHANAFELT

Fantastic

I have no thoughts, no more desires— It is green and gray like a garden Stirred by apple-scented wind, Quick with the sense of cool and silver joys That come in a rainy dance When soft hands of clouds have pushed away The round red stupid face of the sun.

In one day, I think, the wind Will not have had his will of the gleaming rain— They run about with tossed hair, The garden is silvered with their pleasure, Cool and sweet, shining As with arch laughter a beloved face. The musing pool Shattered in glancing flight by a sudden wing— This, which no words can name, This is my heart’s delight, Winging I know not whither; It has no measure.

Interlude

To sink deeper yet In the green flood of twilight— I grope for the rich chord of the full darkness That drowns the piping cries of light, For silence fretted by cadent rain And the monotonous cries of insects That lull the tortured sense in drowsy veils. I am weary of lights dancing In limpid streets, Lemon and gold and amethyst, The jewelled laughter and the scent, Weaving of uneasy colors.

I would rest now in green and gray Of an abandoned garden Where no more flowers are, Only grass and crabbed trees, Night— And the bitter aroma of herbs Trod out by myriad, whispering feet of the rain— Night and no stars.

Slobberdom, Sneerdom, and Boredom

BEN HECHT