Part 1

THE LITTLE REVIEW

Literature Drama Music Art

MARGARET C. ANDERSON EDITOR

NOVEMBER, 1914

Lyrics of an Italian Scharmel Iris Zarathustra Vs. Rheims George Soule The Cost of War Clarence Darrow A Social Comedy Lawrence Langner “The Immutable” Margaret C. Anderson Poems Maxwell Bodenheim The Spiritual Dangers of Writing Vers Libre Eunice Tietjens Tagore’s “Union” Basanta Koomar Roy War, the Only Hygiene of the World Marinetti Noise George Burman Foster The Birth of a Poem Maximilian Voloshin Editorials My Friend, the Incurable Ibn Gabirol London Letter E. Buxton Shanks New York Letter George Soule The Theatre Harold Bauer in Chicago Herman Schuchert A Ferrer School in Chicago Rudolf von Liebich The Old Spirit and the New Ways in Art William Saphier Book Discussion Sentence Reviews The Reader Critic

Published Monthly

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MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher Fine Arts Building CHICAGO

$1.50 a year

Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, Chicago.

THE LITTLE REVIEW

Vol. I

NOVEMBER, 1914

No. 8

Copyright, 1914, by Margaret C. Anderson.

Lyrics of an Italian

SCHARMEL IRIS

The Forest of the Sky

High in the forest of the sky The stars and branches interlace; As cloth-of-gold the fallen leaves lie Where twilight-peacocks lord the place, Spendthrifts of pride and grace.

The grapes on vines are rubies red, They burn as flame, when day is done. The Dusk, brown Princess, turns her head While sunset-panthers past her run To caverns of the Sun.

She throws cord-reins of sunbeams wrought, About the sunset-panthers, fleet, And rides them joyously, when caught, Across the poppied fields of wheat— Their hearts with terror beat.

They reach the caverns of the Sun, The raven-clouds above them fly; Dame Night her tapestry’s begun. High, o’er the forest of the sky The moon, a boat, sails by.

Iteration

My son is dead and I am going blind, And in the Ishmael-wind of grief I tremble like a leaf; I have no mind for any word you say: My son is dead and I am going blind.

April

I loved her more than moon or sun— There is no moon or sun for me; Of lovely things to look upon, The loveliest was she.

She does not hear me, though I sing— And, oh, my heart is like to break! The world awakens with the Spring, But she—she does not wake!

Scarlet—White

(_Struck at the double standard_)

The woman who is scarlet now Was soul of whiteness yesterday; A void is she wherein a man May leave his lust to-day.

’Twas with the kiss Ischariot A traitor bore her heart away; Her body now is leased by men That kneel at church to pray.

Three Apples

I who am Giver of Life Out of the cradle of dawn Bring you this infant of song.— He has a golden tongue And wings upon his feet.

The apple of silver he holds Once lay at the breast of the moon; I give him an apple of gold ’Twas forged in the fires of the sun; This apple of copper I give That Sunset concealed in her hair.

When from the husk of dusk I shake the stars, Down slumber’s vine I’ll send him dreams in dew, And peace will overtake him like a song Like thoughts of love invade a lover’s mind. The spear-scars of the red world he will wear As women in their hair may wear a rose.

On the rosary of his days He will say a prayer for your sake, The hounds-o’-wonder will lie at his side, And lick the dust-o’-the-world from his feet.

The apple of silver will work him a charm When under his pillow he lays it at night; The apple of copper will warm his heart When a heart he loves grows cold on his own; The apple of gold will teach him a song For children to sing when he blows on a reed; The dew will hear and run to the sun, The sun will whisper it in my ear, And you, being dead, the song will hear.

Zarathustra Vs. Rheims

GEORGE SOULE

Hauptmann and Rolland have quarreled about the war, Hæckel has repudiated his English honorary degrees, and now Thomas Hardy has placed on Nietzsche the responsibility for the destruction of the cathedral of Rheims. The tragedy of nationalism, it seems, is not content with ruining lives and art; it must also vitiate philosophy and culture.

“Nietzsche and his followers, Treitschke, Von Bernhardi, and others,” writes Hardy. In the next sentence he speaks of “off-hand assumptions.” One is tempted to write, “Christ and his followers, Czar Nicholas, Kaiser Wilhelm, and others!”

Nietzsche has been claimed as a prophet by hereditary aristocrats, by anarchists, by socialists, by artists, and by militarists. There is even a book to prove that he who called himself “the Antichrist” was a supporter of the Catholic Church. One suspects, however, that the Jesuit who wrote it had a subtle sense of truth.

The most fundamental truth about Nietzsche is that the torrent of his inspiration is open to everyone who can drink of it. His value, his quality, consist not in the fact that he said this or that, but that life in him was strong and beautiful. This is true of all prophets; how much more so, then, of the one who threw to the winds all stiffness of orthodoxy and insisted on a transvaluation of all values! “O my soul, to thy domain gave I all wisdom to drink, all new wines, and also all immemorially old strong wines of wisdom,” said Zarathustra.

But even in his teachings we can find no justification of the present shame of Europe. It was Darwin who laid the foundation for the philosophy of the survival of the fittest and the struggle for existence. With the shallow inferences from these conceptions Nietzsche had no patience. If the fittest survives, the fittest is not necessarily the best. The brute force which makes for survival had no attraction for Nietzsche. He called upon man’s will to make itself the deciding factor in the struggle. When he argued for strength, he argued for the strength of the beautiful and noble, not strength for its own sake. Of what avail is a great individual to the world if he makes himself weak and sacrifices himself to an inferior enemy? The French gunners who defended the Cathedral of Rheims might justly claim the approval of Nietzsche. If the Allies had turned the other cheek and allowed their countries to be overrun by German militarism, they would then have proved themselves Christian and truly anti-Nietzschean.

Moreover, Nietzsche uncompromisingly opposed the supremacy of mere numbers, the supremacy of non-spiritual values. He argued after the war of 1870 that the victory of Prussian arms endangered rather than helped Prussian culture. Culture is a thing of the spirit; it was undermined by the tide of smug satisfaction in the triumph of militarism.

“You say that a good cause will even justify war; I tell you that it is the good war that justifies all causes,” wrote Nietzsche. It is the logic of the newspaper paragrapher which makes this statement a justification of militarism. _The good war_—what is that? It is the quality of heroism, the unreckoning love of beauty, the pride of the soul in its own strength and purity. It is the opponent of mere contentment and sluggishness. It is the militant virtue which has inspired great souls since the beginning of the world; it is the hope of future man. If a cause is not justified by the good war what can be said for it? It is a pathetic absurdity to think that Nietzsche would have found the good war in the present struggle for territory and commercial supremacy. No, gentlemen of letters, fight the Kaiser if you must, but do not aim your clods at the prophets in your hasty partisanship!

For it is in this very Nietzsche and his good war that mankind will now find its spirit of hope. We who see that wars of gunpowder are evil, we who intend to abolish them, cannot do so by denying our own strength and appealing helplessly to some external power in the sky. We must say with Zarathustra,

“How could I endure to be a man, if man were not also the composer, the riddle-reader, and the redeemer of chance!

“To redeem what is past, and to transform every ‘It was’ into ‘Thus would I have it!’ that only do I call redemption!

“Will—so is the emancipator and joy-bringer called: thus have I taught you, my friends!”

In _Ecce Homo_ the word “German” has become something like his worst term of abuse. He believes only in French culture; all other culture is a misunderstanding. In his deepest instincts Nietzsche asserts to be so foreign to everything German, that the mere presence of a German “retards his digestion.” German intellect is to him indigestion. If he has been so enthusiastic in his devotion to Wagner, this was because in Wagner he honored the foreigner, because in him he saw the incarnate protest against all German virtues, the “counter-poison” (he believed in Wagner’s Jewish descent). He allows the Germans no honor as philosophers: Leibnitz and Kant were “the two greatest clogs upon the intellectual integrity of Europe.” No less passionately does he deny to the Germans all honor as musicians: “A German _cannot_ know what music is. The men who pass as German musicians are foreigners, Slavs, Croats, Italians, Dutchmen, or Jews.” He abhors the “licentiousness” of the Germans in historical matters: “History is actually written on Imperial German and Antisemitic lines, and Mr. Treitschke is not ashamed of himself.” The Germans have on their conscience every crime against culture committed in the last four centuries (they deprived the Renaissance of its meaning; they wrecked it by the Reformation). When, upon the bridge of two centuries of decadence, a _force majeure_ of genius and will revealed itself, strong enough to weld Europe into political and economic unity, the Germans finally with their “Wars of Liberation,” robbed Europe of the meaning of Napoleon’s existence, a prodigy of meaning. Thus they have upon their conscience all that followed, nationalism, the _névrose nationale_ from which Europe is suffering, and the perpetuation of the system of little states, of petty politics.—_George Brandes in “Friedrich Nietzsche.”_

The Cost of War

CLARENCE DARROW

Along with the many other regrets over the ravages of war is the sorrow for the destruction of property. As usual, those who have nothing to lose join in the general lamentation. There is enough to mourn about in the great European Holocaust without conjuring up imaginary woes. So far as the vast majority of people is concerned, the destruction of property is not an evil but a good.

The lands and houses, the goods and merchandise and money of the world are owned by a very few. All the rest in some way serve that few for so much as the law of life and trade permit them to exact. At the best, this is but a small share of the whole. All the property destroyed by war belongs to the owners of the earth; it is for them that wars are fought, and it is they who pay the bills. When the war is over, the property must be re-created. This, the working men will do. In this re-building, they will work for wages. Then, as now, the rate of wages will be fixed by the law of demand and supply—the demand and supply of those who toil. The war will create more work and less workmen. Therefore labor can and will get a greater share of its production than it could command if there was less work and more workmen. The wages must be paid from the land and money and other property left when the war is done. This will still be in the hands of the few, and these few will be compelled to give up a greater share. The destruction of property, together with its re-creation means only a re-distribution of wealth—a re-distribution in which the poor get a greater share. It is one way to bring about something like equality of property—a cruel, wasteful, and imperfect way, but still a way. That the equality will not last does not matter, for in the period of re-construction the workman will get a larger share and will live a larger life.

As the war goes on, the funds for paying bills will be met in the old way by selling bonds. These too will be paid by the owners of the earth. True, the property from which the payment comes must be produced by toil, but if the bonds that must be paid from the fruits of labor had never been issued this surplus would not have gone to labor, but would have been absorbed by capital. This is true for the simple reason that the return to labor is not fixed by the amount of production, the rate of taxation, the price of interest and rents, but by the supply and demand of labor, and nothing else.

If labor shall sometime be wise enough, or rather instinctive enough to claim all that it produces, it will at the same time have the instinct or wisdom to leave the rulers’ bonds unpaid.

But all of this is far, far away; in determining immediate effects we must consider what is, not what should be. And the jobless and propertyless can only look upon the destruction of property as giving them more work and a larger share of the product of their labor. Chicago was never so prosperous, or wages so high, as when her people were re-building it from the ashes of a general conflagration. San Francisco found the same distribution of property amongst its workmen after the earthquake and the fire had laid it waste, and her people were called upon to build it up anew.

Carlyle records that during the long days of destruction in the French Revolution the people were more prosperous and happy than they had ever been before. True, the Guilotin was doing its deadly work day after day, but its victims were very few. The people got used to the guilotin, and heeded it no more than does the crowd heed a hanging in our county jail, when they gayly pass in their machines.

After the first shock was over, during the four years of our Civil War, wages were higher, men were better employed, production greater, and distribution more equal than it had been at any time excepting in the extreme youth of the Republic. Then land was free.

Then again, this world has little to destroy. After centuries of so-called civilization, the human race has not accumulated enough to last a year should all stop work. The world lives, and always has lived, from hand to mouth. This is not because of any trouble in producing wealth, but because things are made not to use, but to sell. And the wages of the great mass of men does not permit them to buy or own more than they consume from day to day.

It is for this reason that half the people do not really work; that the market for labor is fitful and uncertain, and never great enough; and that all are poor. After a devastation like a great war, the need of re-creating will turn the idle and the shirkers into workmen, because the rewards will be greater. This will easily and rapidly produce more than ever before. From this activity, invention will contrive new machines to compete with men, going once more around the same old circle, until the world finds out that machines should be used to satisfy human wants and not to build up profits for the favored few.

One may often regret the impulses that bring destruction of property, but before any one mourns over the destruction of property, purely because of its destruction, he should ask whose property it is.

Wedded:

A Social Comedy

LAWRENCE LANGNER

CHARACTERS

MRS. RANSOME. JANET RANSOME: Her daughter. REV. MR. TANNER: A Clergyman.

SCENE

(The “best” parlor of the Ransomes’ house, in a cheap district of Brooklyn. There is a profusion of pictures, ornaments, and miscellaneous furniture. A gilded radiator stands in front of the fireplace. Table, center, on which are some boxes and silver-plated articles arranged for display. Over the door hangs a horseshoe. White flowers and festoons indicate that the room has been prepared for a wedding. To the left is a sofa, upon which lies the body of a dead man, his face covered with a handkerchief. There is a small packing-case at his side, upon which stand two lighted candles, a medicine bottle, and a tumbler. The blinds are drawn.)

AT RISE

(Janet, dressed in a white semi-bridal costume, is on her knees at the side of the couch, quietly weeping. After a few moments the door opens, admitting a pale flood of sunshine. The murmur of conversation in the passage without is heard. Mrs. Ransome enters. She is an intelligent, comfortable-looking middle-aged woman. She wears an elaborate dress of light gray, of a fashion of some years previous, evidently kept for special occasions. She is somewhat hysterical in manner and punctuates her conversation with sniffles.)

MRS. RANSOME. My dear child, now do stop cryin’. Won’t you stop cryin’? Your Aunt Maud’s just come, and wants to know if she can see you.

JANET. I don’t want to see her. I don’t want to see nobody.

MRS. RANSOME. But your aunt, my dear—

JANET. No, mother, not nobody.

(_Mrs. Ransome goes to door and holds a whispered conversation with somebody outside. She then returns, closing the door behind her, and sits on chair close to Janet._)

MRS. RANSOME. She’s goin’ to wait for your father. He’s almost crazy with worry. All I can say is—thank God it was to have bin a private wedding. If we’d had a lot of people here, I don’t know what I should have done. Now, quit yer cryin’, Janet. I’m sure we’re doin’ all we can for you, dear. (_Janet continues to weep softly._) Come, dear, try and bear up. Try and stop cryin’. Your eyes are all red, dear, and the minister’ll be here in a minute.

JANET. I don’t want to see him, mother. Can’t you see I don’t want to see nobody?

MRS. RANSOME. I know, my dear. We tried to stop him comin’, but he says to your father, he says, “If I can’t come to her weddin’, it’s my duty to try to comfort your daughter”; and that certainly is a fine thing for him to do, for a man in his position, too. And yer father—he feels it as much as you do, what with the trouble he’s been to in buying all that furniture for you and him, and one thing and another. He says that Bob must have had a weak heart, an’ it’s some consolation he was took before the weddin’ and not after, when you might have had a lot of children to look after. An’ he’s right, too.

JANET (_Talks to body_). Oh, Bob! Bob! Why did you go when I want you so?

MRS. RANSOME. Now, now! My poor girl. It makes my heart bleed to hear you.

JANET. Oh, Bob! I want you so. Won’t you wake up, Bob?

MRS. RANSOME (_Puts her arms around Janet and bursts into sobs_). There—you’re cryin’ yer eyes out. There—there—you’ve still got your old mother—there—there—just like when you was a baby—there—

JANET. Mother—I want to tell you something—

MRS. RANSOME. Well, tell me, dear, what is it?

JANET. You don’t know why me and Bob was goin’ to get married.

MRS. RANSOME. Why you and Bob was goin’ to get married?

JANET. Didn’t you never guess why we was goin’ to get married—sort of _all of a sudden_?

MRS. RANSOME. All of a sudden? Why, I never thought of it. (_Alarmed._) There wasn’t nuthin’ wrong between you and him, was there? (_Janet weeps afresh._) Answer me. There wasn’t nuthin’ wrong between you and him, was there?

JANET. Nuthin’ _wrong_.

MRS. RANSOME. What do you mean, then?

JANET. We was goin’ to get married—because we _had_ to.

MRS. RANSOME. You mean yer goin’ to have a baby?

JANET. Yes.

MRS. RANSOME. Are you sure? D’ye know how to tell fer certain?

JANET. Yes.

MRS. RANSOME. Oh, Lor’! Goodness gracious! How could it have happened?

JANET. I’m glad it happened—_now_.

MRS. RANSOME. D’ye understand what it means? What are we goin’ to do about it?

JANET (_Through her tears_). I can’t help it. I’m glad it happened. An’ if I lived all over again, I’d want it to happen again.

MRS. RANSOME. You’d _want_ it to happen? Don’t you see what this means? Don’t you see that if this gets out you’ll be disgraced ’till your dying day?

JANET. I’m glad.

MRS. RANSOME. Don’t keep on sayin’ you’re glad. Glad, indeed! Have you thought of the shame and disgrace this’ll bring on me an’ your father? An’ after we’ve saved and scraped these long years to bring you up respectable, an’ give you a good home. You’re glad, are you? You certainly got a lot to be glad about.

JANET. Can’t you understand, mother? We wasn’t thinking of you when it happened—and now it’s all I have.

MRS. RANSOME. Of course you wasn’t thinkin’ of us. Only of yourselves. That’s the way it is, nowadays. But me and your father is the ones that’s got to face it. We’re the ones that’s got to stand all the scandal and talk there’ll be about it. Just think what the family’ll say. Think what the neighbors’ll say. I don’t know what we done to have such a thing happen to us. (_Mrs. Ransome breaks into a spell of exaggerated weeping, which ceases as the door-bell rings._) There! That’s the minister. God only knows what I’d better say to him. (_Mrs. Ransome hurriedly attempts to tidy the room, knocking over a chair in her haste, pulls up the blinds half-way and returns to her chair. There is a knock at the door. Mrs. Ransome breaks into a prolonged howl._) Come in.

(_Enter Rev. Mr. Tanner. He is a stout, pompous clergyman, with a rich, middle-class congregation and a few poorer members, amongst which latter he numbers the Ransomes. His general attitude is kind but patronizing; he displays none of the effusive desire to please which is his correct demeanor towards his richer congregants. The elder Ransomes regard him as their spiritual leader, and worship him along with God at a respectful distance._)

TANNER (_He speaks in a hushed voice, glancing towards the kneeling figure of Janet_). Bear up, Mrs. Ransome. Bear up, I beg of you! (_Mrs. Ransome howls more vigorously; Tanner is embarrassed._) This is very distressing, Mrs. Ransome.

MRS. RANSOME (_Between her sobs_). It certainly is kind of you to come, Mr. Tanner, I’m sure. We didn’t expect to see you when my husband ’phoned you.

TANNER. Where is your husband now?

MRS. RANSOME. He’s gone to send some telegrams to Bob’s family, sir—_his_ family. We’d planned to have a quiet wedding, sir, with only me and her father and aunt, and then we was goin’ to have the rest of the family in, this afternoon.

TANNER. It’s a very sad thing, Mrs. Ransome.

MRS. RANSOME. It’s fairly dazed us, Mr. Tanner. Comin’ on top of all the preparation we’ve bin makin’ for the past two weeks, too. An’ her father’s spent a pile o’ money on their new furniture an’ things.

TANNER (_Speaking in an undertone_). Was he insured?

MRS. RANSOME. No, sir, not a penny. That’s why it comes so hard on us just now, havin’ the expense of a funeral on top of what we’ve just spent for the weddin’.

TANNER. Well, Mrs. Ransome, I’ll try to help you in any way I can.

MRS. RANSOME. Thank you, Mr. Tanner. It certainly is fine of you to say so. Everybody’s bin good to us, sir. She had all them presents given her—most of them was from _my_ side of the family.

TANNER. Did he have any relatives here?

MRS. RANSOME. Not a soul, poor fellow. He came from up-state. That’s why my husband’s gone to send a telegram askin’ his father to come to the funeral.

TANNER. How long will your husband be? (_He glanced at his watch._)