NOTES OF THE WEEK . WHAT Is TO BE DONE? By H. Belloc NIETZSCHE REVISITED : VI-“We By Janko Lavrin . THE NOTE-BOOKS OF T. by Herbert Read . . ” . Immoralists. READERS AND WRITERS. By C. E. Bechhofer E. HULME-III. Edited . A MISUNDERSTANDING. By C. C. Chien ART NOTES: Rayonnism. By M. Larionow . Drama: The Chances. By John Francis Hope . VIEWS AND REVIEWS : What Think Ye of Christ? By A. E. R. . REVIEWS : Christian Socialism. Forward from Babylon . LETTERS TO THE EDITOR from Will Dyson, John Francis Hope, C. B. . PASTICHE. By G. E. Fussell, Ruth Pitter . world that there is not room enough for more than one great exporting country on the planet? Foreign policiesare not the playthings of mere sentiment or reason, but the course inevitably pursued by currents and masses of economic facts; and to the extent to which the signatory Powers of the new Treaty actually require (by virtue of their domestic system) constantly expanding- markets for their constantly expanding“surpluses,” to the same extent they will come into collision at an increasing number of points all over the world. The Limitation of Armaments, under those circumstances, if it means the supremacy of the American exporter, will necessarily spell the gradual disappearance of America’s present rivals. On the other hand, if that supremacy is challenged, away will go the Limitation, together with all the pretence it now involves. The upshot, in other words. must either be a real submissionto American economic dominance or the abrogation of all the work of Washington-a choice which the world will find it difficult to make. Perhaps in that emergency the world may listen to something to its advantage, as it will not now. *** We are almost afraid to enumerate some of the considerations that must have been present in the minds of the representatives of the secret side of our diplomacy at Washington. So much has to be taken into account that the public does not know and that the Press cannot understand,-matters of intuitive estimate, calculations of possibly immediate, possibly remote, urgency, dynamic factors in the situation whose movements can only beguessed-that there is little wonder that not more than a dozen or so people possess the secret of any foreign policy. What, for instance, has been the influence of Inch upon the management of our affairs at Washington? It is clear that the example of Ireland, our submission to rebellion where reason had failed to move us, will infallibly be followed by Egypt and India; but the question to be answered by the practical directors of our foreign policy is When? In the case of India the question, moreover, is momentous in the extreme. The world had become so accustomedto coercion in Ireland, and had become so accustomed coercion in Egypt, and they are both only such to relatively unimportant areas, that rebellion and repression, followed by rebellion and repression, were almost the expected order of events. But India, it need scarcely Fe said, is on a different scale altogether, and in the event of a “rebellion” in that part of the world, “the vindication of the law and the strict repression of NOTES OF THE WEEK. THE great “triumph” of the Washington Conference, culminating in the five-Power ‘‘Treaty for the Limitation of Naval Armaments,” has passed, strangely enough, almost without public notice. Such an event, if it had had anything in the least degree real about it, would have lit bonfires all over the world. All the Magi would have brought presents to the cradle of the new prince of peace. But instinctively it has everywhere been recognised as the sham it is, an instrument, in the first place, not of peace but of economy, and, in the second place, not of agreement but of submission. For the astonishing fact is that outside a very few minds nobody believes that peace can be established by the limitation of armaments or even by the abolition of armaments. The world is absolutely sceptical on the subject, having, in the common phrase, had some too often and too recently. And the still more astonishing fact is that scarcely at all in America and only a little more clearly elsewhere is it realised that, at bottom, the present Treaty is the first act of the new American world-hegemony-we might almost say of American world-dictatorship. Mr. Balfour must surely be among the few, however, whose eves are not closed to the realities of the situation. Great Britain went to the Washington Conference nominally the greatest naval Power in the world and with a treaty with Japan; and she has left the Conference without an Ally and with a navy whose dimensions have been defined by America. And it is quite impossible, we imagine, that Mr. Balfour,at least, has not been fully aware of the one-sided character of the bargain into which he has been entering. But what else was to be done, he has probably asked himself? Actually America is already in complete control of the financial system of this country. Every ounce of gold nominally in the possession of the Bank of England is “on call” by America and is virtually a loan to us upon terms. And potentially, as everybody knows, America can outbuild us in fighting shins as soon as events care to put our relative capacities on trial. The conclusion is that discretion is the better part of our “ancient valour,” and that the sooner we agree with America while she is in the way of peace, the safer we shall be for at least the next few years. But how long, we wonder, will it last? How long, on the one side, will it take America to realise the demonstration has made of her power-and to act upon she it; and, on the other side, to convince the rest of the disaffection” will not be possible, in the first instance, and, in the second, could only be attempted either with the connivance of America or at the risk of bringingAmerica into the field as the champion of Indian liberty. Is it part of the arrangement that America shall be benevolently neutral in the event of a fresh outbreak in India? And is the price the admission of American plutocracy as the directing partner in the exploitation of the East? Recalling once more the fact that American finance now controls British finance, it would not surprise US to learn that the secret agreement at Washington concerns the division of the spoil and arrangernents for co-operation in the event of the attempt of any victim to escape. International finance, as everybody is non- beginning to guess, governs policy; and since, as things are, the dominant unit of value is the dollar, with the sovereign as its junior partner, an agreement between the dollar and the sovereign to play into one another’s hands is not at all improbable. The situation in India is certainly critical enough to make some such arrangement practically necessary; and we do not doubt that it was discussed at Washington, if not openly, then even more effectively. *** In his article, printed elsewhere, Mr. Belloc takes as gloomy a view as it is possible to take of our general situation. Not only Is it desperate-in which opinion we agree with him-but of all the current remedies, including the most “profound, ” namely, Credit Reform, not one, in Mr. Belloc’s judgment, is practicable. At the same time, however, since a patriot may despair but never surrender, Mr. Belloc continues his search for a remedy, and encourages his fellow-citizens to do the same But what is the use if the most “profound” remedy now on offer is impracticable by reason of the opposition of the capitalist oligarchy ? A more profoundremedy is not likely to be improvised in moments of rising crisis; and the faster the pace towards the cataclysm the less chance of bringing home anything from our desperate search. Mr. Belloc’s apprehension of the impracticability of the Credit Scheme is, however, considerably reduced in alarm for us by his employment of the ancient fallacy of our dependence upon imported food and raw materials. The opposition of the financial interests is, indeed, no bogey; we have proved it by experience. Rut the difficulties of foreign trading under the Credit scheme, as advocated in these pages, a re, equally certainly, bogeys specially manufactured by the same financial interests and for the same purpose, that of diverting attention from the need for Credit reform. Is the world so under-productive of foodstuffs and raw materials that this country could not obtain ample supplies, provided that in exchange she could sell manufactured goods below the price of any possible competitor? What, in fact, is the difficulty at this moment? It is not a shortage of supply of foodstuffs, are in wood, wool, hides and the ‘rest. They superabundance,in some cases actually, in others potentially. The difficulty, in short, is not in their supply, but in the price we demand for our goods in exchange. But suppose that by the institution of a price-ratio based, not on gold, but on our Real Credit, we could afford to export goods considerably below the apparent cost of production (and if this is impossible, the whole Scheme is moonshine, and not in the least “profound”), is there any doubt that we could, if we wished, “buy” all the food and materials on the world-market? Our only limits of supply would be, in fact, the limit of the world’s productivity coupled with the limit of potential demand for British goods at lowest world-prices. By controlling prices, we obtain control of goods. Pricecontrol is economic control. And since the whole object of the Douglas-New AGE Credit Scheme is to control Prices, unless it effects such control it is useless, while, if it does, it would settle the economic problem. Who controls international trade to-day and by what means ? The answer is the financiers and by means of priceregulation. The obvious remedy for this state of affairs is to obtain the use of the weapon which has proved so effective-the power to regulate prices, independently of the financiers. No other remedy need be looked for; there is none. *** Irish Labour has categorically declared the end of the truce which, like English Labour in the earlier part of the Great War, it had accepted during the time of national struggle. It is now determined to come into the field its an independent force and press to the utmost its sectional claims. Up to a point doubtless that is legitimate enough. The voice of every organic section of the community should be patiently heard in the political forum, and undeniably the views of Labour cannot make themselves effectively heard through the established agencies. Further, political parties generally busy themselves with everything but the economic issues which lie at the very base of the life of society ; and these must needs be the first concern of Labour whether it has anything intelligent to say on them or not. In itself therefore the mobilising of Labour for industrial and political action might well be welcomed ; but unfortunately the manifesto issued jointly by the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress displays as little vision or breadth of view as similar productions on this side of St. George’s Channel. Its demands begin with “A Republic in which those who give labour and service to the Commonwealth, and none but they, are the citizens, the rulers, and the owners. ” In other words, some cabal claiming to speak for “the proletariat”is, at its own discretion, to recognise, or refuse to recognise, whom it will as rendering useful “labour and service to the Commonwealth“ ; and no one else is to be suffered to live. This is practically a declaration of civil war on all citizens except wage-earners. But Labour must recognise that it cannot recast society all by its little lone self. It can be but one of various forces contributing to the -resultant and a diminishing one at that. Its claim to dictatorship is particularly absurd in Ireland, where an already highly successful movement is on foot, appealing to all classes and relying its special fulcrum on the peculiarly characteristic for element in the nation, the peasantry. The Agricultural Organisation Society holds within it a vastly better hope of an Irish co-operative commonwealth than any Labour movement ever could. It will most unfortunately have a very hard fight before it. the golden opportunity €or starting on novel and sound financial lines has been let slip by the new Government The advocates of Social Credit must now win their may by the same kind of long and difficult process as in this country, with the extra handicap lying on a small nation that has fallen into the grip of overseas financiers. Still whatever hope there is lies with “AE” and his friends. It is disappointing to find a journal with such pretensions to being- thoughtful and well informed as the ‘‘Labour Monthly, ” in its discussion of the situation, assuming without argument, as a mere matter of course, that the only point of serious interest is the prospect of securing an effective Labour movement. It is surely cognisant of the “Green Rising,” and must have some dim inkling that, in many countries and not least in Ireland, the future lies elsewhere than with “Labour” as defined and confined. *** We have already commented on the brazen complacency of the Chairmen’s manifestoes at the General Meetings of various Banks. Mr. McKenna’s address, however, will repay somewhat more detailed examination. It is typical of both the mentality and the tactics of the money lords. He discussed inflation and deflation, deprecating both in the conventional fashion. Of the former he thought it necessary to say no more than that it raises prices. This is exactly the same suggestio falsi that we have repeatedly exposed and that is being spread about everywhere with sinister ingenuity. Mr. McKenna is, of course, perfectly cognisant of the most serious proposal in the field for dealing with the financial situation. He knows as well as anyone that it hinges almost entirely on the policy of regulating prices, and that it only advocates inflation on this basis. In face of this, lie carefully abstains from dropping the slightest hint that anyone has ever suggested anything of the kind. Yet presumably he would himself not venture to deny that the root of the trouble is a deficiency of purchasing power. The problemthen is to increase this relatively to the level of prices. Is it not obvious that this is exactly met by the two-handed weapon of expanding credit and simultaneously reducing prices? And, if that is not possible, by what other means can the requirement be met? Mr. McKenna’s whole ideal was contained in “stability of prices”; again the static mind, against which we are always running up in these controversies. Of course, as against the violent leapings up and down to which we have been accustomed of late, no one would deny that stability is desirable. Interpret it in a wider sense as a general atmosphere of steadiness, and there need be no quarrel about it. But what is wanted is a steady and continuous fall of prices. Undeniably our productivitycontinually increasing, and the consumers ought is all the time to be feeling the full benefit of this. Under a regime of “stable” prices the recipients of fixed incomes cannot share in the benefit. Even apart from that a constant readjustment of wages and salaries at short intervals is a clumsy and disturbing business, whereas prices, if regulated scientifically by a ratio, would always be automatically finding their proper level to a nicety. Mr. McKenna dished up once more the usual unintelligent criticism of ‘‘restriction of output” -on the part of the workmen; not a word about the far more wholesale and systematic restriction on the capitalist side. On one point, indeed, we entirely agree with him-that “our present taxation has probably exceeded the limit” beyond which it tends to hamper enterprise. But we most emphatically disagree with his conclusion that the only remedy is to reduce expenditure. He stipulated that this must be consistent with “our contractual obligations. ” We would point out that the “country fit for heroes” was every bit as solemn and explicit a contract on the part of the governmentas the interest on the war loan. Mr. McKenna exempted also “indispensable services. ” Exactly how much education does he consider “indispensable” ? *** There has been a serious collision between the unemployed and the police at Woolwich. For some time past activism on the part of the former had largely died down, and conventional public opinion was congratulating itself on the absence of formidable agitation. There seems now to be a marked recrudescence of the movement. We certainly have not heard the last of Poplar yet. The Ministry of Health has naturally condemned the proposed scale, alleging (very likely with truth) that it is illegal. For the present the Guardians have postponed its operation and are taking special measures to gather up all their financial strength. Their chief difficulty, however, is one with which local authorities and Trade Unions are painfully familiar ; they are heavily overdrawn at the bank. Still it is to be expected that before long they will find means of either putting the new scale in force or asserting themselvesin some other way not less awkward for the Government. The incident is at any rate a serious warning for the latter. They will find unemployment a problem that cannot be evaded when they are face to face with the electorate, however they may think they can afford to ignore it in their administration. *** If the public realised the pass in which our industrial fortunes are involved, if they visualised from day to day the meaning- of unemployed, there would surely be a loud outcry for a public inquiry into the financial situation. We are very glad therefore that Professor J. A. Hobson has been examining the Douglas-NEW AGE Scheme in the “ Socialist Review.’’ Any notice of the policy, favourable or unfavourable, by an economist of such repute, is bound to draw to it the attention of numbers who otherwise might barely have heard of it. We have no doubt that Mr. Douglas will be more than equal to dealing with his critic. Meanwhile we would make one or two comments. Professor Hobson rightly points out that the evil centres in a disproportionate employment of capital and labour in producing fresh capital, as compared with consumable, goods. But he very inadequately examines the causes of this. The mal-distribution, as between different classes, of the existing aggregate income is altogetherinsufficient to account for our troubles. Again, he has made no serious attempt to understand the rationale of the Producers’ Bank. He treats this as though its claim to finance industry were intended to rest solely on its money deposits. But it has been explained with sufficient clearness that it is designed to be a convenient machinery for consolidating and capitalising the Real Credit of the Labour side of the industry. If Professor Hobson has any criticism to bring against this conception of such Real Credit as being, in its own right, potentially money, let him produce it. Rut his present comment ignores the true issue. Finally, one of his chief points rests on the assumption that banks issue credit solely out of actual savings which are in their keeping. How far this is from the fact was demonstrated not long ago in our columns by an analysis of a tvpical balance sheet of a banking firm. *** Mr. Studdert Kennedy is one of those Anglican clerics who made their reputation as chaplains during the War. Since then he has held, in Church circles, a position hovering ambigously between Fame and notoriety. He is of a mercurial temperament, and consistency can hardly ‘be numbered among his virtues. Yet, however zigzag the line of his advance, he does seem of late to have been getting nearer and nearer to the roots of things. As he is, with little question, the most popular preacher and platform speaker in the Church of England, his views arc a matter of some importance. His latest outburst is eminently significant. It was delivered from the pulpit of a parish church at an official service for the mayor and corporation of Wallasey. Were any city fathers ever before challenged with such plain speech on one of these State occasions? “Nothing he saw in France,’’ he declared, ‘‘was so abominably disgraceful or so abominably unnecessary as the state” of the unemployed. He characterised the Dean of St. Paul’s statcment that they could all find work tomorrow, they looked for it, as “idiotic.” “There was no if necessity,” he continued, “for any child anywhere in the world to go hungry.” He denounced the assumption that, “because a man was successful in his own business,lie was a good man to advise on the policy of a nation. ” “The problem,” he insisted, “which faced them to-day would be solved when they made proper use of the gifts given them for the good of all.” Mr. Studdert Kennedy appears to have no use for the ordinaryepiscopal maunderings about “good will.” As he emphasised the need far “clear-sightedness and a big vision,” it is to be hoped that he will next time tell people straight out exactly what needs to be done, and that he will devote himself to a sustained propaganda of the Church’s own policy of the Just Price. But what a fascinating vista opens up to the imagination, if we speculate on the possibility of this “tumultuous priest” establishing a hypnotic influence over the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of London and “suggesting" to him his next public utterance ! Imagine the consternation of an eminently respectable audience when this sort of thing was flung at them in place of the suavely correct address which they had come to hear. What Is To Be Done? SOMEyears ago I was in a room where a man lay in peril of death. There were two doctors in the room, a nurse, and myself. The man was not dying, but he might die; and the air was full of that tension which marks the crisis of a tragedy. He might be saved or he might not be saved. It would shortly be decided. It was night. In the street without there rose the brawling noise of two youths disputing upon some petty game of hazard; pitch and toss or what not. “I sye yer did!” “Nah ! yer a loiar.” Then a shove and a scuffle. We heard the measured tread of a policeman (for the house was the house of a wealthy man) and the disputantswere silenced. It was an interlude, grotesque or shocking, according as one chose to take it. An exact echo of this rose in my mind last week, when I saw the newspaper owners filling their tawdry columns with the speeches and counter speeches of the politicians. All those speeches were made up of wretched little vulgar personal attacks and repliesand the background to it was the enormous crisis of England. This vast industrial society, packed into its hopeless great cities, is in mortal peril. It may be saved, or it may not be saved. Its enemies have taken for granted that it will die. Its own citizens (for it has no external friends left) nourish for the most part a habit of living in the prosperous past, and of refusing to believe in the danger. A more intelligent or more sincere, or more patriotic or more practical minority-it is a very small minority I fear ?-faces the facts. It appreciates the imminence of catastrophe, but it is not agreed upon what can be done. It knows very well that self-praise is a drug on very rare occasions useful to tide over a crisis, more often poisonous and sometimes fatal. It sees the country apparently (I say apparently, because known factors never cover the field of the future, and some unknown favourable factor may appear at any moment), it sees the country I say apparently withoutissue. Its system of industrial capitalism has broken its mainspring ; for the mainspring of industrial capitalism is the power to enforce the labour of the proletariat by the alternative of starvation. That alternative is now refused, the proletariat are in a permanent mood of successful revolt. They demand, and they obtain maintenance, irrespective of their exploitation. In such an atmosphere capitalism cannot live, any more than slave-owning could live when it became increasingly difficult to punish the slave. Again, the divorce between labour and the desire to produce, ever widening during the nineteenth century in England, is now complete. It is to the immediate advantape of the man who produces to produce as little as possible, and the argument showing that it is to his ultimate disadvantage, always of little effect, even upon the best instructed, has no effect at all upon the mass. Again, the subject markets are in revolt, armed when arms can he obtained: acting by boycott when they cannot. And the revolt is permanent. Again, the foreign markets independent of armed pressure from this country are, some of them, destroyed by civil war which has had a final effect, as in Russia, some of them lessened by the two prime factors of similarity in production and a higher productive power to each unit of consumption than our social machine will yield ; or, to put it another way. they are failing us because they can now make the things we used to make for them. and because they will cut and haul a ton of coal, or melt and puddle a ton of metal, for a less consumption in wheat and clothes and house room than will our people. The various symptoms of this terrible change are often taken for causes. We note the groww insufficiency of public life, itself the accompaniment and largely the effect of continual flagrant, cynical, and unpunished corruption. We note the grotesque blunders in foreign policy, the cutting down of the Navy in obedience to a threat from the United States, the abject surrender in Ireland, the cutting off of the Colonial system from the united foreign policy of the country. The substitution of international financial interests for British interests, and the substitution of abuse and insult towards rivals for policy restraining those rivals. But no one of these things can be changed to the advantage of the country, for the general disease from which they proceed has gone too far. While then it is the duty of every man who can express thought or mould it to insist, even clamorously, upon the scale of the peril, and upon, its pressing immediate character (for until that is appreciated nothing can be done), it is still more a duty to seek alleviation at least, and if possible remedy. The time is short; it seems but yesterday that the social machinery was in full working order, and already we are within measurable distance of repudiationpartial repudiation at first, of course-then of rationing, and then of famine. No one can say at what pace the tragedy will develop, but its rate is increasing progressively and so fast that the problem is already acute. What can be done? The answer to that question varies principally with two factors in the mind of him who attempts it; first, his judgment of what is cause and what is effect; secondly, his judgment of the sub-conscious mentality governing his fellow citizens. It is clear that the search for a remedy will be directed towards the causes of the evil, and as judgments differ as to what those causes are, so are the various directions divergent and even contradictory. It is equally clear that no remedy suggested is practical, unless one has guessed rightly what and how much can be done with the popular mind. The first answer given is this. Our trouble is due to the breakdown of public life; the incompetence and corruption of the little co-opting clique which lives off the taxes and professes to direct the State is the root of the evil. Let us break with that system altogether, and call in new men. That answer is erroneous, because there is no machinery for calling in new men, or for judging them. And in the second factor, the mind of the crowd, there is no machinery for making the mass accept new men. The politicians and the half-dozen owners of the Sunday Newspapers (which alone form the opinion of the mass) form one body. There is no avenue by which the personnel of government can be changed. But there is more than this. And even if you were to change the personnel of the Government you would not save the situation, for that personnel no longer controls the flood. A second answer given is that of THE NEW AGE: transform credit. It is far more profound, and more nearly satisfactory. But I suggest two obstacles to its achievement, and a criticism of its value. The two obstacles in the way of its achievement are, first, the possession of all the power by the other side : secondly, the vast complexity, length, and delay of a transformation. It is not conceivable that if ever the new scheme of credit were to take its first step towards realisation there would not be an immediate and formidable repression of it. That repression would certainly be successful unless you could get strong public opinion in favour of the change, which you certainly could not. Next, even if you, by a miracle, got the new scheme under way, the pace of the transformationwould he much slower than the pace of our general catastrophe. As for the general criticism against the scheme, it is this:-First,Credit is not everything; it is not even the original force behind production, vast as is its present artificial power. It is still a power parasitical upon the prime process of production, which is the application of human energy, initiative, and intelligence to the operation of instrumentsand stores of necessities to natural forces. Secondly, it applies to production within the country. For instance, millions of men need boots, the machinery is there to provide them with boots. It is absurd that a community needing boots should leave that machinery standing idle. But the machinery could not produce hides. Again, any theoretical or practical transformation of our capitalist production might set to work the machinery for cutting and adjusting wood for house room. It is absurd that people needing protection from the weather should have the machinery for cutting the wood and adjusting it, and yet go ill-housed and crowded into dens. But the machinery and the labour cannot provide the wood. Again, millions of men need warm clothing and have it not. The machinery is there to spin and weave and cut and sew it in abundance. It is absurd that a community needing clothes, and having them not, should leave the machinery standing idle; it is a true capitalist absurdity, but the. machinery would not provide the wool. In general, however you might reorganise the domestic mechanics of production, you could not get three quarters of your wheat, half your flesh, all your tea, coffee and petrol without a corresponding export or tribute. Now the tribute has been lost, and the export seems irrecoverable. There are other solutions, other answers; some dead (like Marxian, nonsense), others fantastic, like the proposal for military congress, others childishly insufficient, like the idea that preventing the French and Belgian peasant from getting the reparation and claiming some small part of the German surplus production, as profit for our bankers and traders would fill the void. There is the solution by emigration, which is comic, and the solution by starvation, which is very tragic indeed. There is Mr. Wells’ solution, which has innumerable followers in the middle classes of this country, and not a few in America; that the whole world should adopt the ethics of his and their Non-Conformist tradition, with a special tenderness for those who are just now in a hole, and who happen to be, by a curious accident, informed with relics of that religion. This solution finds expression in leagues of nations, conferences, and disarmaments ; the special characteristic of which last is the disarmament of our rivals, and the complete armament of ourselves-and all that to be had for the asking, without fighting for, it ! These follies may be neglected. But if, as is plain, these various solutions are either insufficient or negligible, what is the true solution? It is possible that there is none, and that the answer is doom, but no patriot must give that as a final answer. We must still seek, and I confess that for my part I have not yet found. H. BELLOC. A BRIDAL SONG. My company is of the stars The darkness and the dew, Upon the hills and chimes and scars To-night the moon is new, As in the years gone by when I walked here with you. The tide, its trouble and desire, Is even as we heard That night upon the cliffs expire; To-night the mind has stirred The dingle as when we listened there without a word. Beneath the press of night, below The sound of tide or tree, Our sundered natures crave to go Together secretlyHere to beget a ghostly child of memory. JOHN HELSTON. Nietzsche By Janko VI.-“ WE Revisited. Lavrin. IMMORALISTS.’’ I. WE saw that one of Nietzsche’s disciplinary, or, better still, self-preservative measures, was the exercising and forcing of his will in the direction of his own antithesis; hut, at the same time, we noticed also another, parallel, tendency-the tendency to try his strength on various ‘ ‘atrocious aspects of existence,’’ destroying almost with a frenzy all the traditional religious, philosophic, moral or aesthetic veils and shelters. Many of his inquisitive excursions into the remotest domains of theory of knowledge, of psychology and of human consciousness in general, were dictated not so much by a search for “knowledge” as by a search for risks, i.e., for proofs of his strength. For thegreater the (theoretical) risk a man can face and survive, the greater the feeling of power he derives from it-that feeling which alone can justify his existence from the standpoint anascending Life. Consquently, of the conquest of the greatest risk-the risk of a world without God, without t finality and meaning-would be tantamount to the highest pitch of his own strength. All the more so because in Nietzsche’s own words the degree of man’s will-power “may be measured by the extent to which he can dispense with the meaning in things, by the extent to which he is able to endure a world without meaning.’‘ There is a kind of profound ecstasy derived from one’s “inward union with God” through which life and world seem to become perfect for a while and full of an eternal sense. But this mystical ecstasy has its counterpart in what we might call a magic ecstasy, with its two aspects-religious and irreligious : the first aspect we see in a Luciferic believer who repudiates God in the name of his own, cosmic, independence and an self-assertion; the second we may study in unbeliever who realises all the senselessness; all the horror of a Life and Universe without God, and yet tries to face it unflinchingly with that superhuman defiance from which he may obtain an inward intoxication with his own power and an ecstasy as great as that of a mystic, although these two ecstasies are on the opposite poles of human consciousness. Certain profound but utterly desperate and therefore reckless souls may have recourse to this intoxication in the same way as many unhappy people have recourse to alcohol. For what other mental drug could give them, for a time at least, the illusion of that incredible inward daring, of that [tension and depth of life which our commonplace and sober external reality can never supply ? This ecstasy may be sometimes even intensified by the feeling of the absolute independence of a man who is left in the middle of an eternal void-without any moral, religious or other solace-to create his own values. It is natural that many thinkers prefer stealthily to return even through the backdoor to the comforting hypotheses of God and Absolute mora! Value, rather than face this “new terrible liberty” and cosmic loneliness of Man. Does not Kant’s Categorical Imperative so does belong to this kind of backdoors? And Tolstoy’s stunted “Christianity” ; for both Kant and Tolstoy tried to secure their backdoor by proclaiming man’s moral conscience as something beyond all questioning, the eternal law and voice of God Himself. as Nietzsche, on the other hand, seemed to coquet with a certain pleasure (derived from the very awe before his own recklessness) just with those possibilities and problems which are thoroughly avoided, or at least thoroughly masked, by the majority of seekers and Accepting the “death of God” as a fait thinkers. accompli, he did not shrink from all the other unpleasant conclusions, realising perfectly well that “the belief in the utter immorality of Nature, and in the absence of all purpose and sense, are psychologically necessary attitudes when the belief in God and in an essentially moral order of things is no longer tenable. ” And with his usual ruthlessness he now sets to work to show to us not only the utter immorality of Nature, but also the immorality of our current morality itself in so far as the latter is judged by the standards of Life. I I. Having done away, however, with God as the “Categorical Imperator,” i.e., with every possibility of a religious or transcendental justification of morals, Nietzsche was bound to be confronted sooner or later with the notorious formula, “Nothing is true-all things are lawful.” And is not this formula in itself a most dangerouscrossways whose main road leads straight into the deepest recesses of pessimism and moral nihilism ? Nietzsche saved himself from this road on the one side by his instinct for “Promethean” defiance, and on the other, by his “transvaluation of values” which in essence was but a continuous “pragmatic” attempt on his part to save Life from being engulfed by the great void. His very first step in this direction was a radical emancipation from Schopenhauer’s Buddhistic pessimism, for “a patient has no right to be pessimistic. ” He did this by transvaluing Schopenhauer’s concept of the “will to exist” into the concept of a striving Will to power which he proclaimed as the basic impulse of all life. And his next step was his passionate appeal to the “higher man” to take the whole responsibility of Existence into his own hands and to mould Life according to the highest valuations that are within his scope and ken. “To continue the chain of life so that it becomes ever more powerful-that is the task. ” And this task may be achieved only by a continuous growth, by continuous new interpretations and valuations in the name of an ascending life. “That the worth of the world lies in our interpretations (that perhaps yet other interpretations are possible somewhere besides mankind’s) ; that the interpretations made hitherto were perspective valuations, by means of which we were able to survive in life ; that every higher degree of strength or power attained brings new views in its train, and teaches a belief in new horizons-these doctrines lie scattered through all my works,” he assures us in his “Will to Power,” referring thus not only to the relativity of “truths,” but also to the relativity of morals.* What, then, is good in the light of these relative valuations ? Everything that comes from an abundance of life, that elevates life, the will to power and power itself in man; while all that proceeds from weakness and generates weakness is bad. Especially injurious are those moral virtues whose real origin is a masked weakness, cowardice and lack of vitality, And so a merciless analysis and exposure of these “good” virtues will necessarily form the first phase of Nietzsche’s moral transvaluations. As is known, Nietzsche discovered many such virtues in our Christianity, in the modern democratic movement, as well as in the whole of modern “decadence,” with its inherent tendency to protect the quantity of the species Man at the expense of its quality. he sees in the whole of our prevalent “herd-morality” only a hypocritical garb for that incurable weakness and anaemia of will from which our modern humanity is suffering “All the forces and instincts which are the source of life are lying beneath the ban of morality : morality is the life-denying instinct. Morality must be annihilated if life is to be emancipated.” Why? Because the fundamental tendency of allweaklings is to undermine the whole of life by enfeebling the strong and reducing them to their own level-by means of their * As a matter of fact, it is just this complete relativity of moral values (and not immorality!) that has been given by Nietzsche the misleading title, “beyond good and evil.” “moral” principles. This is the main reason of Nietzsche’s indignant exclamation : ’‘I loathe Christianitywith a deadly loathing, because it created sublimewords and attitudes in order to deck a revolting truth with all the tawdriness of justice and godliness. ” And in his “joyful Wisdom” he asserts even more categorically : “The European disguises himself in morality because he has become a sick, sickly, crippled animal, who has good reasons for being ‘tame,’ because he is almost an abortion, an imperfect, weak and clumsy thing. . . it is not the fierceness of the beast of prey that finds moral disguise necessary, hut the gregarious animal, with its profound mediocrity, anxiety and ennui.” Whence follows (in Nietzsche’s opinion) that all current morality is “a sort of counter-movement opposing Nature’s endeavours to arrive at a higher type. Its effects are : mistrust of life in general (in so far as its tendencies are felt to be immoral) ; hostility towards the senses (in as much as the highest values are felt to be opposed to the higher instincts) ; Degeneration and self-destruction of ‘higher natures,’ because it is precisely in them that the conflict becomes conscious .” III. As a counter-measure against this “Christian morality of taming” Nietzsche devises, not immorality, but what he calls the morality of rearing. The methods of rearingmight easily seem immoral if viewed’ from the standpoint of the values of taming. This does not, lion-ever, imply that the former are any more immoral in themselves than the latter ; for, according to the principle the relativity of morals, no values are moral or of immoral in themselves, but only in our attitudes to them. And Nietzsche expresses his “biological” attitude fairly clearly when he says : “Rearing, as I understand is a means of husbanding the enormous powers it, of humanity in such a way that whole generations may build upon the foundations laid by their progenitorsnot only outwardly, but inwardly, organically, developing already the existing stem and growing stronger. ” A dangerous, heroic life with a continuous self-conquest and growth as against the comfortable and cosy stagnation of our modern Philistines whose only object is a kind of petty utilitarian “happiness”-this was Nietzsche’s antithesis so far as our “modernity” is concerned. As he wanted to rear, not “good” men, but powerful men-men who are strong enough to manage even their most dangerous instincts-he preached not the elimination passions and “evil” instincts, but their utmost of development in so far as they also are elements which we must conquer and sublimate for the sake of our own growth; for, the so-called evil and terrible features may even be the best school for our “will to power” if we are able to overcome them and become their lords. “With every degree of man’s growth towards greatness and loftiness, he also grows downwards into the depth and into the terrible: we should not desire the one without the other-or, better still, the more fundamentally we desire the one, the more completelywe shall achieve the other.” This is one of the reasons why Nietzsche rates the so-called barbaric “beast of prey” (he liked “colossal” words!) higher than the civilised “tame and sickly animal.” He finds the former more hopeful with regard to new possibilities and potencies of life. As a tonic against the growing softening of modern Europeans Nietzsche found it even desirable that a kind of “Promethean barbarians”--to use his own expression-should force their way into our present civilisation ; barbarians coming from above, and not from below : “ a kind of conquering and ruling natures, which are in search of material that they can mould.’’ NOW, in order that these “conquering and ruling natures” of the future should not he quite devoid of their material, Nietzsche seems to be kind enough to offer to them all the rest of mankind. Or, at any rate, as long as he is sure of a powerful elite of real "masters”he does not bother very much about the fate of the rest of humanity. He does not even preach the abolition of ‘‘decadence” in its totality ; what he really seems to want is but a kind of quarantine--a strict line between the ascending- and the decaying- elements, that is to say, between “the masters” and the “herd.” At last he goes even further : he proclaims decadence as a necessary condition of growth itself. According to him, it is simply disgraceful on the part of the Socialists, for example, to argue that “circumstances and social combinations could he devised which would put an end to all vice, illness, prostitution, and poverty” ; for decadence necessarily belongs to all periods of human history. Where there is growth there must be also refuse and, decaying matter; such is the law of vital processes. So much so that the highest culture and the greatest corruption are always parallel phenomenathey go, so to speak, hand in hand. IV. But if the law of vital processes requires decadence as well, then the struggle for the abolition of “refuse and decaying matter” would be a struggle against life itself. How are we then to reconcile in such a case “the decadent’’ with the “reverse of such a creature,” especially if these two elements are so interwoven that a demarcation-line between them is almost impossible ? Nietzsche settles this question in a very straightforward almost military way. He admits of a parallelism of ascending’ and decaying values ; he even advocates the co-existence of entirely opposite kinds of morality -in so far as this co-existence is regulated by the principle hierarchy, or, as he himself puts it, by the order of of rank. “My philosophy,” he says in “The Will to Power,” “aims at a new order of rank : not an individualist morality The spirit of the herd should rule within the herd-but not beyond it : the leaders of the herd require a fundamentally different valuation for their actions, as do also the independent ones or the beasts of prey.” And the standard? “The modicum of power which you represent decides your rank; all the rest is cowardice,” replies Nietzsche in the manner of a general who is distributing his forces before the battle. Carried an-ay by his idea of a new order of rank (which in his case is the logical outcome of “relativity” in morals) Nietzsche suddenly becomes an enthusiastic supporter of those decaying elements which are necessary order to fill up as well as possible all the in departments of his order of rank. “We are atheists and immoralists, but we take care to support the religions and the morality which we associate with the gregarious instinct : for by means of them, an order of men is, so to speak, being prepared, which must at some time or other fall into our hands, which must actually crave €or our hands. Beyond Good and Evil-certainly ; hut we insist upon the unconditional and strict preservation of herd-morality. The continuance of the Christian ideals belongs to the most desirable of desiderata : if only for the sake of the ideals which wish to take their stand beside it and perhaps above it-they must have opponents, and strong ones, too, in order to grow strong themselves. That is why we immoralists require the power of morality : our instinct of self-preservation insists upon our opponents maintaining their strength -all it requires is to become a master of them. the levelling of the mankind of Europe is the great process which should not be arrested; it should even be accelerated. necessity of cleaving gulfs, of distance, The of the order of rank, is therefore imperative; but not the necessity of retarding the process above mentioned.” And so on ! v. What strikes one in reading these and similar passages is the fact that, in so far as the organisation of collective humanity is concerned, Nietzsche advocates, on the one side, the application of rules and divisions reminding us a little of the tendency towards a strict hierarchy and discipline of the Prussian army of yore ; and on the other, his recipes for a collective treatment arc at the same time largely an extension and a generalisation of his own self-treatment and self-discipline. It seems as though Nietzsche had projected (consciously or unconsciously) his personal tragedy and dilemma upon the whole of modern sick and decadent Europe, almost identifying its disease, its fate, with his own. In the dangers threatening the organism of the European humanity he rediscovers, as it were, his personal dangers, and vice versa. And so his own fight, selfdiscipline, and will to victory gradually acquire in his eyes a symbolic, a general significance. It is not only his own disease and fate that are at stake in his personal struggle to overcome them; for his self-cure and selfconquest will show the way to the cure of humanity ; while his defeat would mean also their defeat and rain. And since his philosophy is (in his opinion) the only radical cure, he is the only real, no, the greatest living philosopher on earth. He is, in fact, “a fatality.” It is hardly necessary to say that such an attitude towards his own pains on the part of Nietzsche must needs deepen riot only the significance of his personal tragedy, but also the feeling of his responsibility, of the importance of his own struggle, as well as his pride in being a sufferer on a “titanic” scale, or even a kind of “crucified” Redeemer. Those transvaluations which he originally took as necessary measures for his own self-preservation he now continues subspecie mankind. He now destroys and builds with of the proud consciousness of a teacher and prophet who has a great “mission” and who is working for millennia. Thus we arrive at the strange line where the growing egotism of a sufferer overcomes itself through its very excess, as it were, touching at the same time upon that plane where egotism itself becomes "transvalued” into something that is of a higher order. A study of this boundary line will give us perhaps a few more clues to the “real” Nietzsche THE HIGH TIDE. I know a southern valley where A river joins the sea. There is a music in the air, A fragrance on the lea. The long waves fall upon the sand In curves of white and green; Fold upon fold the low hills stand, The river winds between. . . . . There rose one night the south-west gale Whose breath no mercy yields ; The tide swept up the smiling vale, The waves broke in the fields ; And now, where once the daisies bloomed, And birds played elfin flutes, Dark piles of seaweed show where boomed Billows, that bore strange fruits From lucid orchards of the deep Where never spring-winds blow ; Where never bird may sing or sleep, Nor bee drone soft and low. . . . . O gentle daisies What news had Brought by the Of meadows far starry-eyed, you that day, fierce, wind-driven away-- tide, Of ocean-meadows deeply still, Where emerald sea-weeds twine, And gem-like fishes, bright and chill, Flash, quivering, through the brine ? What felt you ’neath the waves’ salt kiss? What saw in those wild hours, Whelmed in a trance of fear end bliss ’Neath drifts of sea-foam flowers ? Eva MARTIN. Readers and Writers. It is not so easy, if one is living in London, to arrange one’s reading that it may he regular, ordered and progressive. Whatever plan one may decide upon at the beginning of the year (I speak of very noble natures) or the month (still magnificent determination) or the week (which is more or less my level), circumstances will usually prevent one’s carrying it out, or on the other hand will compel one to make large additions and interludes. For example, suppose me to sit down in the coming week to read, shall we say, the complete works of Theodore Dreiser. I know what would happen. I should be in the middle of “Sister Carrie” on Monday morning and a post would come in from America with one or two new books that must absolutely looked at. be Perhaps they will need merely skimming and putting aside for future perusal; so much the better. But more likely, since publishers do not send review books entirely for my personal amusement, they will need to be read and commented on. Then on Tuesday, an English publisher, greatly daring, will perhaps send me a book, with the same result. On Wednesday-and here I stop-some one will probably bring me in a couple of books, tell me about them. urge me to read them at once, and practically put me on parole to do so. I shall read my Dreiser without fail, days still having twenty-four hours, but, short of my going and living in the country without leaving an address for parcels to be forwarded, my reading of him will not be the pure and undiluted process that I should like it to be. Such are the woes of a reviewer. *** All this is to explain why it is that I am turning again to Mr. D. H. Lawrence in these notes. Heaven knows this publisher does not encourage the reviewing of Mr. Lawrence’s books-it is easier to pull a camel through the eye of a needle than a review book from Mr. Secker-but his admirers are most persistent. Last week somebody brought me a copy of “Women in Love” and ordered me to read it at once; two days later I met somebody else who claimed to be portrayed in this novel and also insisted that it was my duty as a friend to read it. I was trying hard to read again Tod’s “Annals of Rajasthan”-two enormous volumes, weighing about ten pounds each at least-but I have succumbed to Mr. Lawrence’s admirers and taken “Women in Love” as an interlude to the adventures of the royal house of Udaipur in the time of the Mogul Emperors. The contrast between “Women in Love” and men in action is too extreme, I trust, for my impressions of either book to be affected by the other. *** Mr. Lawrence’s novel consists, I imagine, of some 150,000 words-there are over 500 pages of smallish type. It is monumental as a modern novel, and yet when one has finished it, precious little is found to have come out of it. The main theme is the contact between two sisters, Ursula and Gudrun, and two young men---Gerald, a rich young colliery-owner with blue eyes, slender loins and what Mr. Lawrence calls a male moustache, and Birkin, a more philosophic young man. There are several minor themes-the relations of Birkin and an old friend, Hermione; an affair between Gerald and “Pussum,” an habitue of the Cafe Pompdour, which is, of course, our old friend the Cafe Royale ; and various other less important incidents. But if you were to ask me to set down in outline the progress of the major themes, I could not do it. I know that at the end Ursula, Gudrun, Gerald and Birkin go for a journey to Switzerland together; Birkin and Ursula marry, but Gudrun on intimate examination decides that Gerald is a bore, and that a little foreign artist is a more attractive companion for her; and in the confusion occasioned by this discovery Gerald dies in the mountains. Otherwise I can only say that the way to distinguish Ursula from Gudrun in the body of the book is to realise that she is Mr. Birkin’s lady, while her sister is Gerald’s Otherwise, so roughly and unconvincingly has Mr. Lawrence outlined them, you cannot keep them apart. *** This is perhaps the most curious defect in Mr. Lawrence. His characters are so indefinite that they merge one into another. You cannot keep them apart. But while this is true of his main characters, it is quite the contrary in the case of the minor ones. His thumbnail sketches are brilliant; he can draw a character in a dozen lines so that he or she lives in your memory long after the book is set down and its themes forgotten. I think the explanation of this inconsistency in Mr. Lawrence might be explained by saying that he invents his chief protagonists and copies his supers from life. Whether this is true or not, I have no means of being certain; but I think it is probably so. Mr. Lawrence is a weak inventor ; his dramatic incidents are so vague that they usually cease to be plausible. But when he is describing something that he must have watchedwhen, in short, he is drawing from life-then his writing is always good, sometimes amazingly skilful. There are two passages in particular in “Women in Love” that seem to me wonderfuI penwork. One is a description of a man holding a frightened horse to the gates of a level-crossing while a noisy goods train passes; the other, not so spectacular but not easier to write, describes a little girl fondling her puppy. *** Here are one or two sentences from the first passage I have mentioned, though I should advise the reader to turn to the original (pages 113-4-5) for the whole incident. The locomotive chuffed slowly between the banks, The mare did not like it. She began to wince hidden. away, as if hurt by the unknown noise. But Gerald pulled her back and held her head to the gate. The sharp blasts of the chuffing engine broke with more and more force on her. The repeated sharp blows of unknown, terrifying noise struck through her till she was rocking with terror. She recoiledlike a springlet go. But a glistening, half-smiling look came into Gerald’s face. He brought her back again, inevitably. The noise was released, the little locomotive with her clanking steel connecting-rod emerged on the highroad, clanking sharply. The mare rebounded like a drop of water from hot iron. . . . But Gerald was heavy on the mare, and forced her back. It seemed as if he sank into her magnetically, and could thrust her back against herself. . . . The locomotive, as if wanting to see what could be clone, put on the brakes [curiously but typically raw, this sentence] and back came the trucks rebounding on the iron buffers, striking like horrible cymbals, clashing nearer and nearer in frightful strident concussions. The mare opened her mouth and rose slowly, as if lifted up on a wind of terror. Then suddenly her fore feet struck out, as she convulsed herself utterly away froin the horror. Back she went. . . . . At last he brought her down, sank her down, and was bearing her back to the mark. But as strong as the pressure of his compulsion was the repulsion of her utter terror, throwing her back away from the railway, so that she spun round and round, on two legs, as if she were in the centre of some whirlwind. . . . Meanwhile the eternal trucks were rumbling on, very slowly, treading one after the other, like a disgusting dream that has no end. The connecting chains were grinding and squeaking as the tension varied, the mare pawed and struck away mechanically now, her terror fulfilled in her, for now the man encompassed her; her paws were blind and pathetic as she beat the air, the man closed round her, and brought her down, almost as if she were part of his own physique. *** There are not many people who can write such descriptions as this. It is curious that Mr. Lawrence, whose descriptions are as exquisite and skilful as a Japanese woodcut, should be full of the desire to formulate the depths of the souls of his characters in the manner of a Dostoevsky. The difference between Dostoevsky and Mr. Lawrence is just the difference between success and failure. Dostoevsky shakes the world of his characters and something happens; with Mr. Lawrence, thunderclouds of emotion and passion collect, but they never burst; the rain never falls, the lightning never flashes. To adapt a trite phrase, Dostoevsky’smind masters matter ; but with Mr. Lawrence his material goes far beyond his powers of interpretation. But when he ceases to plot and simply draws from life, I know no living English writer who can describe some sorts of scenes and some sorts of people better than the author of “Women in Love.” C. E. BECHHOFER. The Note-Books of T. E. Hulme. (Edited by Herbert Read.) III.-CINDERS (Continued). THE sick disgusting moments are part of the fundamental cinders-primeval chaos-the dream of impossible chaos. The absolute is invented to reconcile conflicting purposes. But these purposes are necessarily conflicting, even in the nature of Truth itself. It is so absurd to construct an absolute which shall at each moment just manage by artificial gymnastics to reconcile these purposes. Philosophical syntheses and ethical systems are onIy possible in armchair moments. They are seen to be meaningless as soon as we get into a ’bus with a dirty baby and a crowd. Note the fact that all a writer’s generalisations and truths can be traced to the personal circumstances and prejudices of his class, experience, capacity and body. This, however, is not an instance of error or hypocrisy. There is no average or real truth to be discerned among the different fronts of prejudice. Each is a truth in so far as it satisfies the writer. We must judge the world from the status of animals, leaving out “Truth”’ etc. Philosophy is about people in clothes, not about the soul of man. Animals are in the same state that men were before symbolic language was invented. The world lives in order to develop the lines on its face. These little theories of the world, which satisfy and are then thrown away, one after the other, develop not as successive approximations to the truth, but like successive thirsts, to be satisfied at the moment, and not evolving to one great Universal Thirst. Through all the ages, the conversation of ten men sitting together is what holds the world together. Never think in a book: here are Truth and all the other capital letters ; but think in a theatre and watch the audience. Here is the reaiity, here are human animals. Listen to the words of heroism and then at the crowded husbands who applaud. All philosophies are subordinate to this. It is not a question of the unity of the world and men afterwards put into it, but of human animals, and of philosophies as an elaboration of their appetites. The importance of the circle of people. Sailors telling tales. Sailors looking at a map-it exists in all their minds. Words. Heaven as the short summary paradise of words. The ideal of knowledge : all cinders reduced to counters (words): these counters moved about on a chess board, and so all phenomena made obvious. A Something is always lost in generalisation. railwayleaves out all the gaps of dirt between. Generalisations only means of getting about. are Cf. the words love, sex, nude, with the actual details. I hate more than anything the vague long pretentious words of Wells-“indefinable tendency in events, ”etc., etc. Always seek the hard, definite, personal word. The real levelheadedness: to be able to analyse a pretty girl at first sight, not to be intoxicated with clothes, to be able to imagine the effect of dipping in water-this is what one must be able to do for words, and for all embracing philosophies. We must not he taken in by the armchair moments. The World is Round. Disillusionment comes when it is recognised that all heroic actions can be reduced to the simple laws of egoism. But wonder can even then be found in the fact that there are such different and clear-cut laws and egoisms and that they have been created out of the chaos. The pathetic search for the different (Cf. Gide). Where shall they find it? Never found in sex. All explored sex is the same. World as finite, and so no longer any refuge in infinities of grandeur. Atomism. Resolution of apparent flexibility and continuity into atomic structure. Oratory and fluency mean a collection of phrases at fingers’ ends. This seen in Hyde Park, the young men, Christian preachers. Escapes to the infinite : (i) Art, blur, strangeness, music. (ii) Sentimentality . The sentimental illusion of a man (invalid) who takes pleasure in resting his head in a woman’s lap-it is a deliberate act, work on her part. While he may feel the sentimental escape to the infinite, she has to be uncomfortable and prosaic . All experience tends to do away with all sentimental escapes to the infinite, but at the same time to provide many deliberated, observed, manufactured, artificial, spectacular, poised for seeing continuities and patterns. The universal conspiracy : other people unconsciously provide the sentimental spectacle in which you luxuriate. The world is nothing more or less than a stage. There may be an attitude which sees that most things are illusions, that experience is merely the gradual process of disillusionment, that the new as well as the old ideals turn out to be partial, non-continuous or infinite, but then in face of this decides that certain illusions or moods are pleasurable and exhilarating, and deliberately and knowingly encourages them. A judicious choice of illusions, leading to activities planned and carried out, is the only means of happiness, e.g., the exhilaration of regarding life as a procession or a war. In the opposition to Socialism and Utopian schemes comes the insistence on the fact of the unalterability of motives. Motives are the only unalterable and fixed things in the world. They extend to the animal kingdom. They are the only rock : physical bases change. They are more than human motives: they are the constitution of the world. That great secret which all men find out for themselves, and none reveal-or if they do, like Cassandra, are not believed-that the world is round. The young man refuses to believe it. For discussion. (i) How far the pretensions of science are true. How far there are such things as non-laws. (ii) The nature of truth. (iii) Laplace’s fallacy. It is not in the nature of the world to be calculated; the future is variable. Refuse World as a unit and take Person (in flight from the word fallacy). But why person? Why is the line drawn exactly there in the discussion of counter words? We are becoming so particular in the choice of words and the rejection of symbolisms that we are in danger of forgetting that the world does really exist. The truth is that there are no ultimate principles, upon which the whole of knowledge can be built once and for ever as upon a rock. But there are an infinity of analogues, which help us along, and give us a feelingof power over the chaos when we perceive them. The field is infinite and herein lies the chance for originality. Here there are some new things under the sun. (Perhaps it would be better to say that there are some new things, under the moon, for here is the land pre-eminently of shadows, fancies and analogies.) Danger : one must recognise thought’s essential independence of the imagery which steadies it. Subtle associations which familiar images recall are insinuated into the thought. Though perhaps we do not realise it, we are still governed by the analogy, by which spirit was first compared to the wind. The contrast the same as the one between the little box and space, between the court and cinders-that between the one that thinks of a man as an elaborately built-up pyramid, a constructedelaboration, easily upset and not flexible, only functioning in one direction, the one in which he was made, and the other that considers him as a flexible essence, a spirit, like a fluid. We can all see that there is an eternal flexibility in the most obviously constituted man, but we realise the contrast best when looking at a tailor’s model of a man in dress, whose limbs move and flex. In the problem of ghosts which bend and flex lies the whole difference between the two world philosophies: I. II. Flexible essence Built up stuff. A Misunderstanding. By C. C. Chien. IN the sixteenth year of my age I entered Peking University. There I made many girl friends, among whom Miss C. Seng was the most beautiful and accomplished. Young as I was,, I understood love only in the abstract, and read of it in poetry. When I began to experience it, Miss Seng was the object of my passion. Even in the lecture rooms I always studied her face with mute rapture. And when my eyes met hers, at which she generally smiled, my pleasure was inexpressible. One day I went to the mixed students’ common room and found her alone. We talked to each other for the first time and as we were very shy, when another student came in, we each, took up a newspaper and pretended to read. As time went on, our friendship was gradually cemented. We sometimes had tea at the same table, She and sometimes, walked together in the garden. told me that her father had died not long after she was born and that her mother had brought her up through many difficulties. She had neither brother nor sister, very few relatives, and only one or two true girl friends. These facts aroused my sympathy and especially when she turned her eyes to me as if she sought approbation and confidence, I really did not know how to console her. Once we discused our studies, including Psychology, and came to the problem of sex impulse. “ Is it natural that man should love woman and woman man? ” I asked. Miss Seng blushed, and answered in a low “ voice, “ I don’tknow--probably it is, I think. . . . . Her conversation was interrupted by another girl student who came to fetch her to a Club Meeting on “ The Emancipation of Woman.” Away she went. I turned my steps homeward. The following night I dreamed of her. I felt as if I were descending a mountain. I saw a girl in the distance with a musical instrument her hand. As I looked upon her, she applied in it to her lips, and began to, play upon it. The sound was so sweet that my heart was almost melted. Soon the music stopped, and I drew near her. It was Miss Seng. Her flute was now resting on her lap. I approached her silently and stood behind her. Putting my hands over her eyes and imitating a girl’s voice, I asked her to guess who I was. “ I can’t,” she replied. ” Please take away your hands, because I feel giddy.” I obeyed her, and she, after having recognised me, said “Oh, how you startled me, You must not do it again.” Then she invited me to sit by her side. We talked sweet lovers’ talk, so sweet, that I must confess that I had never experienced moments of more exquisite felicity. My dream was, however, interrupted by something could not remember I Next morning when I met her in the lecture room, I blushed; the cause of my blushing she could ne\-er know. The New Year was, drawing nearer. Having decided to take her to the “New World,” a music hall, for an evening, I wrote my first letter to her which, to tell the precise truth, took me three days to compose. The letter was sent, and I awaited her answer with feverish excitement. Two days later, it cane. Her refusal disappointed me very much, but it did not make me despairIn the New Year, she went to her home, which is thirty miles from Pelting. I sent her a Chinese History, a present for which no return was anticipated, but I did expect to get a few lines from her saying that she liked it. Day after day, week after week, she kept silent. The University reopened on January 15. I was there early in the morning in the hope that I might be able to see her. But she did not come to the lectures until the end of the month. When I saw her again, she had worn herself out, her face was pale, and her hands were thin. What was the cause of her altered looks? I advised her to take some exercise, arid she agreed to dance in the University hall three times a week. the first day she went in, as I could not dance at that time I looked on, but no one invited Miss Seng to dance. Her eyes were fixed on the floor ; her face became scarlet,and at last she got up from her seat and went out. I followed her and called her name from a short distance.Her head never turned in my direction, and her feet moved quickly and heavily towards the women’s common room. For a little while I was annoyed but later on I thought it was my fault for not havingintroduced some friends of mine to her. “ What a. difficult position to sit lonely in the dancing hall without a partner!” Next day I apologised to her, but after that she was very cold to me. Some weeks later I wrote and asked her to come to a debate in which I was to take part. She did so and during the debate seemed very happy for a few minutes, but shortly afterwards, drooped her head again. She left the debating hall just as I was about to speak to her. This made me wonder “ Is she angry with me? ” “ Did I offend her? ” “ Why does she hold aloof from me? ” I asked myself. “ Oh ! I could not know what was in her heart.” As the summer vacation drew near the University gave a dinner on the last day of the session. I intended to get a ticket for her, and asked her frankly whether she would join me. She refused. What surprised me most, however, was that she was there. This, made me angry, and, all through the I came home dinner, I nevere spoke a word to her. and burnt all the poems which I had written for her. Watching the ashes disperse I murmured “ I have loved her very clearly, but she does not know. She is so indifferent to me. And now I can no longer endure her indifference. I must give her up, and start a new life.” During the summer vacation I spent part of my holidayon “ West Lake.” One evening a servant came to my room with a registered letter. It was readdressed from my home in Shanghai. I recognised the writing as that of the one whom I loved; the only one for whom I ever cared-Miss Seng. Opening it eagerly, and reading the contents I burst into an agony of tears. In the letter she said : . . . . . Do you know I have loved you and do love you and will love you even in my grave. Since the first time you spoke to me in the mixed students’ common room, I do not know how many poems I have written on you. and how many sleepless nights I have spent thinking of you. But as Poets say that a woman’s first love is always shy and silent, so it is particularly true of me. I have intended to express my love to you for a long, long time, but I did not do so Oh ! how silly I was? I know you love me too, but I often think I am an unworthy friend of yours. Last December you asked me to go to the “ New World.” I should have done so had I not been restrained by a needless fear that others might laugh at us, or even discuss us. I am sure my refusal disappointed you. In the New Year it was very kind of you to send me the volumes on Chinese History. I liked them very much and should have sent you a thousand thanks in writing had I not been ill, or had not my senses been morbidly dull. But being unable to write and not bold enough to ask my mother to do it for me, I kept silent till I saw you at the University. I never told you of my illness because I did not want to worry you. In the Spring, you advised me to take some exercise and I decided to dance. But in the hall no one came to ask me to be his partner, and I began to think that I had lost the good looks I once had. As I was physically weak, it was not quite possible to study hard, or to attain any honours. Depressed by these thoughts, I left the hail-you followed me and called me by my name. But I would not turn my pale and thin face to you at that moment. Later, I attended a debate, and was gladdened by your winning a prize. My happiness, however, was clouded. To think that you were so admirable made me realise how unworthy a friend I was. So I left without speaking a single word to you. Thereafter my head ached incessantly until a week before the University dinner. My health was very bad. In consequence I refused your invitation for the second time. But on the day of the dinner I felt a little better and I came up to the University and tried to find you but in vain. I got my own ticket intending to join you. But when you entered you were so angry with me. You did not speak to me nor could I to you. This drove me frantic. Since then self-pity has sapped my strength and, now, I am so much worse that I have only one wish, namely, to see you before I die. Come to me come to me at once, or you will be unable to see me again. Having packed my things, I caught a train to Peking. Two days’ journey seemed to be more than a year. During that time I scarcely ate anything or spoke to my fellow travellers. When the train arrived at Peking, I hastily went to my destination. Mrs. Seng met me and told me that her daughter was very anxious to sec me. She led me to her daughter’s room. Miss Seng, catching sight of me, started, then smiled, and then tears flowed from her lovely eyes down her hollow cheeks. “ My dear friend,” she said, “ I am so glad that you have come. I am very happy at being able to see you before I die. Please come near me.” She stretched out her right hand, and I clasped it in silent agony. Five minutes passed. Then she cried out “ It is too late! It is tool late! “ I felt her hand trembling in mine. Her face became very pale. Mrs. Seng ran out and rang up the doctor who was man.; miles off. Alas ! It was too late ! Before he reached the house Miss Seng had breathed her last. It is three years since she died. It was I who misunderstood her. It was I who made her such an easy prey to the spoiler Death. ‘‘ Mountain and rivers may undergo a change and disappear from the earth, but my repentance will have no end.” Art Notes : Rayonnism. BEGINNERS. How they are provided for upon the earth (appearing at intervals). How dear and dreadful they are to the earth. How they inure to themselves as much as to saywhat a paradox appears their age. How people respond to them. yet know them not. How there is something relentless in their fate at all times. How all times mischoose the objects of their adulation. and reward. And how the same inexorable price must still be paid for the same great purchase. I HEAR I?” WAS CHARGED AGAINST ME. I hear it was charged against me that I fought to destroy institutions. But really I am neither for nor against institutions. (What indeed have I in comman with them? or what with the destruction of them?)-WALT WHITMAN. Painting is independent, it possesses its own forms, colours and timbre. Rayonnism has for its aim the realisation of the forms created in space by the intersection of reflected rays from different objects; the artist chooses which forms are to be painted. Any style at the moment of its creation, especially where it manifests itself violently, is as incomprehensible as the styles of very remote times. A new idea always shows itself first in art, and from this spring all later movements and changes in life itself. It is impossible to value works of art by their age. They differ essentially only by their style and by the way in which they appeal to us. There are no copies in the sense in which the word is used to-day. There is always a work of art or nature itself to serve as a starting point. Painting, like music, has its own rules, which belongonly to itself They are as follows : Every picture must consist of coloured surface and texture; the third element is the feeling which arises from the first two. The only thing one can ask from an artist is to be a perfect virtuoso in all the ways of putting the colours on the surface. The Indians and Persians were the first to invent the fable of pictorial form. One may suppose that the whole real world as well as the whole spiritual world can be translated into pictorial form. What we praise in painting are the qualities peculiar to itself; the artist must find the point at which painting, although getting its impulse from real life, all the same remains entirely independent of real life. Just as music takes its sounds from real life and uses them according to musical laws, so painting- should use the colours which it takes from real life according to its own laws. Rayonnism has as its object to confine painting only to its proper aims, i.e., the translation of life into pictorial values. Our eye is not an absolutely perfect apparatus, and a great many things which we think we apprehend through the sense of sight really reach our nerve-centres, not by sight hut by other senses. The child in the beginning secs everything upside down and that defect is corrected by the other senses, so that however much he wishes an adult cannot see objects upside down. From this it is clear how important arc our convictions about external objects. Science proves to us that certain things are such and such, we are convinced that it is so, even if we cannot take it in directly through our senses. Rayonnism in fact is founded on the following proposition. The rays of light reflected from objects create in the intermediate space a kind of coloured dust, and also on the theories of reflectivity, radio-activity of rays, and ultra-violet rays. The picture is constructed out of the sum of the rays in the following way : The sum of the rays from the object A intersect the sum of the rays from the object B. In the space between A and B is created a form which the artist shapes by his own will; take, for example, a pair of scissors, a man’s nose, and a bottle. The colouring of the picture depends on the suppression of less prominent colours by more prominent ones, and on their mutual combinations. The most important thing to show is the culminating point of the colour expansion, its concentration and fullness must be clearly expressed. Any cubist or furturist picture reflected in space would give quite a different form. Thus all past art is as good a starting point as nature itself, and the artist is freed from the tyranny of copying and imitating, and indeed from all obstacles to free creativeness. This theory is a critical analysis general. of pictorial form in M. LARIONOW. Drama. By John Francis Hope. THE contrast between Mr. Montague Summers’ opinion of the plays produced by the Phoenix, and the effect produced by the performance, makes me wish that he would take a hand in their production. He described the last production, Fletcher’s “The Chances,” as amended by the Duke of Buckingham, as “a comedy of extraordinary liveliness and outstanding merit in the English theatre.” But one critic calls it an “antique pot-boiler,” another calls it “a musty farce” ; and I must confess that I sat through it without much interest except in certain parts to be mentioned later. Yet, curiously enough, these same critics praise the “production;" and it is precisely there that I feel uneasy. For, obviously, if in a performance we get one or two characters perfectly realised and superbly played, and the rest not in the picture, the production leaves something to be desired. That something, I feel sure, is understandingand enjoyment of the play; and if Mr. Summers can only communicate both to some of the players we shall be able to agree with his estimates of the plays. It depends upon the actor’s imagination and understanding of the part as to which way his creative power will work; if he has a clear perception and enjoyment of certain characters in certain periods, he will develop a style that is fitting, will seem to project himself into that character in that period, and will make the part seem real and convey to us the mood intended by the author. But if the actor has not this understanding, he will supposethat these are people just like himself, will try to express the Restoration in terms of a twentieth century masquerade, and leave us wondering why anybody ever thought the play amusing or interesting. We got examples of both methods in the production of “The Chances.” There was the Bawd, a portly figure flushed with “the canaries,” florid and frank and delightfully amoral, a character perfectly realised and expressed with gusto by Miss Margaret Yarde. There was her kinswoman, a tipsy gentlewoman, discreetly, delicately, drolly inebriate, played with most effective contrast by Miss Margaret Carter. Whether or not they were really Restoration types does not matter; they conveyed the impression that they belonged to a period cot the present, even the type of drunkenness was not such as could be produced by the drinks most in favour in these days. These were not “observed” but created Characters, and created, too, from an enjoyment of their singularity; and of course they seemed to be real, authentic persons, although of another period. They were examples of what the philosopher calls “ejection“ ; but for most of the others, “introlation” was the method, trying to explain the part in and by themselves, instead of expressing their creative imagination in the part. Miss Clare Greet, who played the Old Gentlewoman, Landlady to Don John and Frederick, was not quite settled in her part ; she wanted another rehearsal, I think, to complete her “ejection” ; but. if she had not quite got back to the Restoration, she was certainly nearer to it than she was to the twentieth century. She forgot to emphasise the contrast between her moral protestation of the good name of her house, and her offers of service to the young gentleman; perhaps she did not relish the fleshliness of the jest, but it is useless to try to refine the frank bawdry of this period. It was a “guffaw” scene, and should have been played for the guffaw. But for the rest, it was a haphazard collection of actors and actresses thrown on to work their will, to scramble through as best they could, unrelated to one another, to any period, or, so far as I could see, any general conception whatever. The sword-fight in the first act was the clumsiest scramble I have ever seen, with the exception of the fight in Nettlefold’s “Othello” when Mr. Saintsbury was hurt; and it was typical of most of the play. The scenes were not “made,” they were walked through, improvised, in the first style that came to hand. Mr. Bruce Winston, as old Antonio, a Falstaffian figure, did some good work in his scene with the doctor: but he made nothing, not even a character study of his fighting, or of his chasing his doxy. Certaily he was playing with Miss Muriel Pratt, and it seems impossible for anyone to do good work with her ; but he might at least have worked up some “business” for his fighting. Mr. Edmund Willard, who followed Garrick in playing Don John, had no reason to be jealous as Garrick was of the applause gained by his Constantia ; indeed, Mr. Summers’ notes arc tantalising, for he tells us of all the great actors and actresses who have played in these plays, and have moved their audiences to enthusiasm, and instead of Miss Muriel Pratt tryingto out-do Mrs. Abington, she just pouted, and giggled, and gurgled, as Miss Pratt always doles, and made me wonder how or why actresses, like Charlotte Butler, Nance Oldfield, Kitty Ciive, Mrs. Abington, Mrs. Jordan, and so on, could ever have aroused enthusiasm in the audience and jealousy in other actors if Miss Pratt’s idea of the part was the right one. That is the difficulty with these revivals. The “great” tradition is almost lost ; and the younger generation either so satisfied with itself or so incapable of is imaginative insight that it does not begin to recreate it. There was Mr. George Skillan, as Don Frederick, doing his best to imitate Mr. Ion Swinley, passim, as though Mr. Swinley were a master of the art; Mr. Edmund Willard, as Don John, playing himself rather well, and a very likeable person, too, but conveying no hint that he was a Restoration “blood,” or that the part was worthy of Hart, of Wilks, Hallam, Gifford, Garrick and the rest. That the tradition is not entirely lost, and can be revived, the work of Miss Margaret Yarde in this play and in “ Volpone,” Mr. Baliol Holloway’s also in “ Volpone,” Miss Edith Evans in “Venice Preserv’d,” and others, serves to show; and that the tradition itself needs, first of all, the exercise of imagination in the study of a part, the practice and development of a style different from the naturalistic method of modern “observed” life, I think there is no doubt. Rut these people come walking on from God knows where (where, for example, did Miss Isabel Jeans learn her craft : it has nothing to do with acting) and do God only knows what. All that is certain is that they neither know nor care for the fact that these plays belong to a period when people had manners, style, and address, striking personalities, and a culture not much hampered by sociological considerations. What they need is that someone with the knowledge and enthusiasm, such as Mr. Summers has, should get hold of them and make them enjoy the plays; they might then begin to want to act them, instead of playingthem as though they might have been “ great ” for Garrick or Nance Oldfield, but are really beneath the dignity of ex-students of the Royal Academy, or players from the repertory theatres. Views and Reviews. “ WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST? ”--I. THERE is no gainsaying the fact that the figure of Christ has extraordinary significance for Europeans. We cannot escape Him; at some time or other we are confronted with the question : “ What think ye of Christ,” friend? when all’s done and said, You like this Christianity or not? It may be false, but will you wish it true? Has it your vote to be so if it can? Confronted with that question, Europe has returned a myriad answers, most of which Dr. Stanley Hall considersin these monumental two volumes;* no man can create a culture-hero without first reckoning with the Christ, Nietzsche himself had to write an Anti-Christ as the very condition of the existence of his Zarathustra. confronted with the question, Europe has But always asked another : “What is Christ?” As Huxley said : “So it has been with me in my efforts to define. the grand figure of Jesus as it lies in the primary strata of Christian literature. Is He the kindly, peaceful Christ depicted in the Catacombs? Or is He the stern Judge Who frowns above the altar of SS. Cosmas and Damianus? Or can He be rightly represented by the bleeding ascetic, broken down by physical pain, of too many mediaeval pictures? Are we to accept the Jesus of the second, or the Jesus of the fourth Gospel, as the true Jesus? What did He really say and do ; and how much that is attributed to Him, in speech and action, is the embroidery of the various parties into which His followers tended to split themselves within twenty years of His death, when even the three-fold tradition was only nascent? If anyone will answer these questions for me with something more to the point than feeble talk about the cowardice of agnosticism,’ shall be deeply his debtor. Unless and until I they are satisfactorily answered, I say of agnosticism in this matter, ‘J’y suis, et j’y reste.’ ” Those questions have been answered in a myriad ways, which is really worse than if they had not been answered at all, from the point of view from which Huxley was considering- the matter. It has been shown, not very satisfactorily, that we must assume that Jesus was an historical personage; it has been demonstrated, much more conclusively, that He could not possibly have been an historical personage; He has been proved to be a solar myth, a composite of other religions, equal to the Indian gods as touching His godhead, but inferior to them as touching His cosmogony and theology, He has been proved to be everything from the hero of a secret society to the symbol of the human race-and the agnostic remains an agnostic in face of the overwhelming evidence that when everybody knows nobody knows. But one cannot remain an agnostic in the presence of a vital fact. Whether or not Jesus was a real person by birth, He has become a real power by creation, adoption. Emerson got very near the truth by of the matter when he said: “Christ is born, and millions of minds so prow and cleave to His genius that He is confounded with virtue and the possible of man.” Whether He was born or not, that fact remains; He is, for Europeans, the possible, or the ideal, of man, and we begin to see daylight in the confusion of * “Jesus, The Christ, in the Light of Psychology.” By G. Stanley Hall, Ph.D., Ll.D. (Allen and Unwin. 2 vols. 30s. net.) Christs. If Christ did not satisfy a need of man, there would have been no Christology; and the variety of Christs only indicates the variety of needs that human nature had to satisfy. “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a Jesus for?” is what Browning’s Andrea del Sarto should have said,. It is one of the earliest, probably the most fundamental, characteristics of the human mind to suppose that things are done by persons; we all tend to drop into animism when our emotions, are stimulated, we cannot even write poetry without personification, cannot for long tend a machine without crediting it with human whims and tempers and even sex. Man puts himself into everything he regards,; as Goethe said : “Man never knows how anthropomorphic he is”; and he needs, even as the simplestpsychological compensation, a figure to express his otherwise inexpressible longings. All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, That I will give to Christ, is the only psychological inference we can draw from the persistence of this figure, and the various and antagonistic interpretations of it. Culture-heroes, quite literally, live on credit; and the more we can credit them with the more significant they are for us. When Matthew Arnold, examining the evidence for the Resurrection, exclaimed : “Behold a legend growing under your very eyes’’ : he did not realise that the growth of the legend was more important, more significant, than the actual truth of its content. It is a vital necessity that man should not admit the supremacy of death ; and that it should take the form of supposing that one individual rose from the grave, a feat unknown in human experience, is simply a fact that requires interpretation. As Dr. Stanley Hall says : We must constantly translate what the dramatis personae of the New Testament said and did into what was really meant by it all. Of this they knew but little but only dimly intuited and strongly felt it. It is the self-same faith that Paul rhapsodised about, but which we conceive as the inner psychic evolutionary nisus of the racial soul in the individual. The New Testament writers spoke far more wisely than they knew, and hence we well call them inspired. But nothing in our own age of science so cries out for explanation higher than they have yet received than do these records. Thus to us to-day Christianity is less and less a solution, and more and more a problem, which like the riddle of the sphinx we must solve or be devoured by the minotaur of selfishness and animality. The state of the red knowledge of and feeling for Christianity on the part of the world of modern culture and the complacency of the Church in antiquated conceptions constitute to-day the one great blemish and the one great danger of our civilisation. The Church is a cult and no longer stands for the highest culture. It has become an idolator of its symbols, and lost the holy passion to penetrate ever deeper into their significance. It has lost control of and often all vital touch with the leaders of mankind, and makes only a falsetto, sporadic appeal to educated youth. Its mission is to save souls, but its very seminaries teach or care little about what the soul of man really it. It should take the psychology that deals with the deeper things of humanity to its very heart of hearts, instead of maintaining its attitude of suspicion and exclusion, and help to show forth the new sense in which our scriptures are being revealed as the world’s chief text-book in psychology. Thus true Christianity is of the present and the future far more than it is of the past. Its great triumphs ought to be those yet to come. In this connection, it is important to remember that one of the most important characteristics ascribed to the Christ was that He taught as “One having authority, and not as the scribes.” He claimed. at the same time, that He was not destroying but fulfilling the law; He was re-interpreting giving it contemporary man. soul demands of make Christs of it in the terms of personal experience, meaning and inspiration for That is one of the things that the racial its culture-heroes, and it does not its curates. A. E. R. Reviews. By Charles E. Raven, M.A Christian Socialism. (Macmillan. net.) Christian Socialism has not received the attention it deserves from the students of political and economical history; but the revival of interest in Chartism ought to lead on to a study of Mr. Raven’s elaborate work. THE NEW AGE, particularly, cannot ignore this volume ; for if Chartism failed because it did not recognise that “economic power precedes and dominates political power, ” Christian Socialism failed primarily because. it prematurely attempted to establish what we now call a Guild system. Its various forms of producers’ cooperation, although necessarily compelled in the beginning to take the form of self-governing workshops, were all intended to develop under one co-ordinated scheme, with a central governing body to prevent its falling asunder into competition or coalescing into it Syndicalist monopoly. On its theoretical side, it did definitely offer an alternative to the wage system; and its services to the Labour movement generally have been incalculable. It is no exaggeration to say that the consumers’ co-operative movement, for example, would not have had its wonderful record of success if its constituentsocieties had not been registered under Slaney ’s Act; and Slaney’s Act was the work of the Christian Socialists, derived from their own experience. It was a time of’ great mental fertility, and the Christian Socialists were men whole-heartedly determined to put into practice those ideas that seemed immediately practicable, necessary, and capable of progressive development. It is true that they began and ended with education (the Working Men’s College is their monument) ; but between those two landmarks are the ruins of ’Tailors’, Builders’, and Hatters’, and Printers’, Ironworkers’, and Shop-keepers’ groups, et hoc genus omne, on which Vansittart Neale alone lost Mr. Raven sums up admirably : “They rallied and united co-operators all over the kingdom ; they gave them a platform and secured for them the attention of the public and of the legislature; they provided the movement with a legal status and an organic corporate life; they supplied out of their own number men who were prepared to spend and be spent as “the trusted legal experts and political advisers of the leaders of Labour for the next forty years; more than any other men, they made the co-operative movement.” If generosity could solve the social problem, they would have solved it ; for they gave not only money, but themselves,time, labour, technical knowledge, everything to the movement. But it is only more “blessed to give than to receive” when what you have to give can be received in the same spirit; it requires two to make a virtue as well as a quarrel. The Christian Socialists succeeded when they bestowed mental gifts ; their educational and legal work is really beyond praise; they failed in their attempt to bestow spiritual and material gifts. Their self-governing workshops broke down and failed because Neale’s excessive generosity pauperised the men; they did not, as did the Rochdale Pioneers, accept the scheme as their own and work for it with a sense of their responsibility for its success. “They come into it with the idea that it is to fill their pockets and lighten their work at once, and that every man in an Association is to be his own master. They find their mistake in a month or two, and then set to quarrelling with everybody connected with the Association, but more especially with their manager, and after much bad blood has been roused the Association breaks up insolvent, has to be reformed under stringent rules, and after the expulsion of the refractory members. ” There is a lesson for Guild Socialists like Mr. G. D. H. Cole, who are fond of democratic constitution-building, in Richard Isham’s report. “The great evil is too many disputes, too many discussions, too many meetings, too much interference” ; as manager of the Printers’ Association, he spoke from experience. But we suspect that another reason for failure is to be found in the interpretation of “Christian” in this connection. It seems to us that, in this connection, Christianity is not a confession of faith in certain theological interpretations of reality, not an act of associated worship, but the application ad hoc of a psychological technique that makes for successful work. Maurice’s talk about (‘God’s order, ” Ludlow’s insistence on “the religious basis of the movement, ” is unnecessary and obstructive; we cannot see the trees for the wood in this perspective.We can only learn virtues by practice, one at a time ; the immediate need of making an Association a success calls for the exercise of a number of virtues, and the greatest of these is equality. “Where equality is undisputed, so also is subordination,” said Shaw. But the Horatian rule is as sound in industry as in drama; neither should a god intervene unless a knot befall worthy of his intervention ; and “God’s order” will probably be better established if we drop the clergyman’s insistence on it, and concentrate on the job in hand. ’Team-work may be Christian, but not every team-worker will accept the name. Forward from Babylon By Louis Golding. (Christophers. 8s. 6d. net.) This novel, flung with the dedication “For My Father” at the head of the bearers of tradition, is an expression of youthful revolt against Jewry. It has hints of a wider significance, of a revolt against the dirty disorder of industrialism that, curiously enough, impelled Disraeli in the opposite direction. He juxtaposed the glories of Jewish history and the dismal products of the dismal science, contrasted Damascus and Birkenhead, and asserted the superiority of Jewish over English “values.” But Mr. Golding’s hero, revolting First against life in an English industrial town, revolts also against the harsh traditionalism of his father, a Rabbi; he has the poetic temperament that, in its essence, is a desire for direct arid individual experience, a desire which is not often or easily satisfied by the authoritative teaching of tradition. What the boy really wanted was variety of experience ; and his peculiar position as son of a Rabbi was an added limitation. When he revolted, he revolted against the thing nearest him ; and the story of the warfare with his father, waged, on the father’s side, with brutality and on the son’s, with a natural but deplorable injustice, is painful reading. Mr. Golding deals powerfully and frankly with the peculiar difficulties of adolescence;but his hatred is a more powerful instrument of art than his sympathy. It is his Rab Monash who stands before us a complete figure, implacable, like the priests of tradition, and terrible, in spite of his sordid surroundings. The boy is, by comparison, a passionate but amorphous figure, a complex of energetic impulses without any clear aim and a direction only centrifugal, a turbulent-, incoherent hunger for emancipation. It is by no means a pleasant book ; it combines the two most hateful things in literature, squalor and tyranny, but its power cannot be denied. It has the terrible realism of the youthful, that harsh pre-occupation with the immediate that disguises the significance of things. Philip Moansh has vet to discover that religion is poetry, and Judaisim one of the most poetic religions. It suffers, of course, from a sense of oppression, maintains much harshness of racial spirit, and is, in that respect, inferior in spirit to universal poetry such as Shelley sung. But to such a character as Philip it must be a land-mark ; he is not a Gentile, and, outside Judaism, he is nothing but a castaway. Rack to Babylon with him. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. “ SYDNEY TO THE GOLDEN MILE.” Sir,-In granting the hospitality of your columns to Mr. Grant Madison Hervey for the purpose of criminally libelling Australia and its people you were not dealing with an American bagman as he leads you to assume. Hervey is a notorious Australian cheap-jack poet. To the best of my knowledge he has never been in America. He was born in Casterton, Victoria, where he made his first public acquaintance with the police of my native land-an acquaintance that later ripened into intimacy. He was for two years in their company in Sydney for one offence, ancl for two years more for another. During this Great Silence lie formulated a scheme for the establishmentof a limited Monarchy in the fruit-growing district of Mildura, with himself occupying therein as obscure an official position as would be consistent with the efficient exercise by him of the Royal Veto. When it became possible for hiin to do so, he told its residents --speaking in the role in which he addressed himself to readers of THE New AGE---that of the American Doer of Rig Things-that he was “their King and that he would be a cruel but a just king.” They tal-red and feathered him But this expression of public confidence came some time later. He had escaped from the town when the gaff was blown upon his impersonation of the Strong American Doer. But he returned at a later date ancl in the paper of which he announces himself the editor announced the bankruptcy of a rival by poster and otherwise. The rival was not a bankrupt. Other things seemed to have annoyed the citizens of Mildura Anyhow they tarred him and they feathered him and then went in a body to the police station and gave themselves up and as many as can be accommodated are being tried for this offence It is a unique one in Australian annals and the defence is that Hervey was attempting to blackmail the citizens of Mildura After this Hervey wrote articles upon the criminal origins and practices of the people of Mildura published elsewhere than in Mildura. It was not in the NEW AGE, though from what one can judge from meagre police court reports their tone was the same Nor were they published under his own name-the fact of his authorship of them was dragged from him with great reluctance in a local police court. May I add as a quite legitimate piece of literary criticism that Hervey was not so antagonistic to Australia before his experience of her jails became so complete ? Grant Hervey is the author of “Austialia Yet,” a hook of five thousand per cent. Australianism which was reviewed in your columns some years ago in a way that gave complete satisfaction to all save the author. My own feeling about my friend Hervey is that I can forgive him everything save the poems he wrote in praise of Australia. I trust that you will find space for this letter so that the more subtle among the psycho-analysts who read your paper may be enabled to discover the complex that underlies articles of Grant Madison Hervey the Will DYSON. *** THE POET REINCARNATE. Sir,-I suppose that the letter signed “M. L. S.” in your last issue has some reference to me, as my name appears in it; but I can find nothing of importance to reply to in all its length. “M. I,. S.” says : “It was a foregone conclusion that Mr. Hope should have little that was kind to say of Miss Dane’s play”; and most of those who have read or seen the play will agree with her. Miss Dane’s “Will Shakespeare” is an incomparably worse study of the man than, say, Rubinstein ancl Bax’s “Shakespeare” ; and the unanimity of condemnation with which Miss Dane’s pretentious rubbish was received was deserved. I was not singular in my opinion. But when “M. L. S.” goes on to ask : “but is he not being unkind to himself and to his readers in allowing his habitual feminismophobia to give an air of prejudice to an otherwise convincing narrative?” I ani unable to reply. I only wrote the article : I did not read it. But if “M. L. S.” is correct (and presumably she did read the article), I do not see that an “air of prejudice” can he discussed. I ani as entitled to my prejudices as any other man is, and if I have any “feminismophobia” Miss Dale’s “Will Shakespeare” is not a likely cure. As a matter of fact, I have no such phobia; I have criticised the works of men quite as much as the works of women. I admit that I loathe the incompetence that tries to treat geniuses like Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth as though they were just pretty-pretty people; and if that is feminismophobia, glad of it. I have no inore use for such I am feminist “values” than Queen Elizabeth had, or Queen Victoria; and the rest of the letter of “M. I,. S.” does not concern me. JOHN FRANCIS HOPE. *** PROPAGANDA. Sir,-May I ask your Civil Service readers to note that Major Douglas will address a public meeting- of Civil Servants in the Essex Hall, Essex Street, Strand, on Wednesday, February 15, Title : “The Invisible Government." Professor Soddy will take the Chair at 6 p.m. C. B. Pastiche. THE BACCHIC FRENZY. Twenty minutes to ten on Saturday night ! The big saloon bar is crowded with men and women. The atmosphere is hazy with smoke, and reeking with alcohol. The noisy talk and raucous laughter beat upon the ears like rollers on the shingle. Two heated and dishevelled women try their utmost to serve more than one person at a time. “Bitter, please ! ” “Two Bass ancl a whisky!” “Stout and a port!” The shouts ring out every second. One girl pushes back her moist hair frantically. “Yes, I can see you.” She pulls the cork-drawing machine with a crash, and pours the liquor into a “rinsed” glass. The counter is already sticky with slopped over and half evaporated drink. A drop more will not matter. A youth leans upon his elbow, all the lower part of his sleeve in the mess. The vacuous expression of semiintoxication is on his face as he teases the girl. She sweeps a damp cloth across the counter, and he hastily removes his elbow, grinning. “Busy ? ” he queries, facetiously. She throws the cloth under the counter, and returns to the hasty filling of dirty glasses with inore drinks. The demand is growing fast and furious now. It is almost ten. Shrill and silly laughter rises over the increasing noise : arguments grow fiercer, the tobacco smoke more dense, and the shouts for drinks more imperative. Then, “Time, gents, please,” a raucous voice yells. For a few more moments all continues. Again the raucous voice cries more violently. “Time, cents ! Time ! Come along, gents, please,” and slowly the drinkers pass outside. The weary girls collect the dirty glasses thankfully, and prepare to go to their rest. Outside a few inebriates converse disconnectedly and heatedly, but at last even these drift away to their homes. G. E. Fussel Merry DEATH. Death. the eterne beloved of my tongue, What doth avail the front of majesty, The sad-lined weed, and head with cypress hung, When thine is Cupid’s own inconstancy ? And thine too in a measure is love’s wound ; Men sing thee oft, but at the last abhor Thy presence. and grow paler at the sound Of thy slow footsteps on the chamber floor; And undiscovered of thy loves thou goest, Immortal, thy last ministry they need not : While men that mourn the havoc that thou doest Thine excellent and heavenly office heed not; See not thy melancholy-hued array Is stained but with the weathers of thy way: That with that kerchief coarse thy locks are shaded Since travellers never may be over-nice ; It is but the salt rain thy cloak haths. faded, The web is of the brede of Paradise; And for thy badge thou bear’st the yew, and berry Of ivy : yet methinks thine heart is merry. RUTH PITTER. Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin. By OTT0 JESPERSEN. 18s. “ All will appreciate the combination of erudition, common sense and humour which enables the author to give a living fascination to the most serious discussion of Sanscrit roots.”-Morning Post. ‘‘ His enthusiasm and humour work more spells even than his encylopaedic knowledge.”Birmingham Gazette. l Readers and Writers (1918-1921). The Foundations of Aesthetics. By A. R.ORAGE. 7s. 6d. (Just out). “Mr. Orage is a Salutary Influence. He is not a harsh, but an exacting master ; his manners are irreproachable, and his standards are severe.” -Morning Post. By C. K. OGDEN, J. A. RICHARDS and JAMES WOOD. Illustrated. 7s. 6d. “ In their criticisms of Croce and of the doctrine of ‘significant form ’ they are clear and cogent.” -Times. AN INFECTIOUS BOOK. Up Against It in Nigeria. with wit and By LANGA-LANGA. Profusely Illustrated. 18s. ‘‘ An excellent travel book-more fascinating than any novel. Every page illuminated humour.” --Daily Graphic. “ Full of life, and the joy of life and the fun of things.” -Pall Mall and Globe, The Revival of Italy. By PROF. G. D. HERRON. 5s. (Just out). Not since the great Renaissance has Italy been so full of promise for the rest of the world, and it is with a view to showing the importance of the presentItalian hour that this book has been written. Denmark: A Co-operative Commonwealth By FREDERIC C. HOWE. 7s. 6d. “Short and readable, it provides us with the really relevant facts of Danish agriculture and Danish co-operation.”--Daily News. Full Up and Fed Up By WHITING WILLIAMS. 12s. 6d. “A very serious, instructive, and, at times, amusing discussion. Mr. Williams’ observation is, in the main, obviously close and correct.”Times. Under By New Management. HUGH P. VOWLES, M.I.Mech.E. 6s. “He lends to his work an element of fascinating interest if only by dint of his outspoken and fearless logic.”--Yorkshire Observer. The Foundations other Essays. By HAROLD J. An attempt at the theory in terms, not traditional ideas, but and needs confronting of Sovereignty and The Social Philosophy Ruskin, By Both related era and thought nearly of Carlyle and LASKI. 15s. reconstruction of political of decayed institutions and of the actual institutions us to-day. Fourth Large Edition F. W. ROE. 12s. 6d. an interpretation of two great and literary personalities of the Victorian a contribution to the history of social in England. exhausted. COUE, at Nancy, Suggestion and Auto-Suggestion. An exposition of the work of M. EMILE By PROF. C. BAUDOUIN. ‘‘ The most exciting book since the ‘ Origin of Species.”-Nation. Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy. By BERTRAND RUSSELL, F.R.S. Elements By L. T. HOBHOUSE, LL.D., D.Litt. 6d. “Profoundly interesting . . . possesses the high quality of truthfulness and scientific good faith.”- Westminster Gazette. of Social Justice.