The Egoist

Published the 1st and 15th of each month. The egoist AN INDIVIDUALIST REVIEW. Formerly the NEW FREEWOMAN. No. 19.—Vol. I. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1st, 1914. Sixpence. Editor: HARRIET SHAW WEAVER. Assistant Editor: RICHARD ALDINGTON. Contributing Editor: DORA MARSDEN, B.A. CONTENTS. Page. Women's " Rights." By Dora Marsden ...... ... ... 361 Views and Comments 361 Fighting Paris. By Madame Ciolkowska............ 366 Page The Songs of Maldoror. (Illustrated). By the Comte de Lautreamont ... ... ... 370 Some Italian Sonnets. Translated by John Felton ......... 374 The Prose of Frederic Manning. By Richard Aldington .. ... 374 Page. Art and Drama. By Huntly Carter 376 The Secret of Disillusionment. By Charles J. Whitby ...... 378 contrasts. By M. C. ...... 379 Correspondence ......... 379

WOMEN'S "RIGHTS." By Dora Marsden. The War—still the War—has brought the wordy contest about Women's Rights to an abrupt finish, and only a few sympathetic words remain to be spoken over the feminist corpse. Two parties were quarrelling about the validity of the one party's claims to " rights," and without any warning preliminaries both parties, with the rest of the world, stand spectators at a demonstration in the natural history of " rights." To " rights " in their maturity we have all been accustomed. Men as well as women had become so implicated in their matured existence that all were inclined to forget that " rights " had an era of birth and consolidation, as well as a period of maturity. The " Women's Rights " agitation was working industriously on the assumption that rights were conferred by ordination, and could be allowed by goodwill and favour, when the War arrived to shatter it. Incidentally it clears up a confusion between " absolute rights " and "courtesy rights": a confusion which has already addled not only the " Women's Rights " agitation, but also the proletarian agitation, and was within measuring distance of placing the German Emperor in the position of schoolmaster, authorised by divine right to enlighten the world as to the difference. The confusion has arisen out of an assumption that ultimate authority lies in words; that every difference can be settled amicably if only it is argued earnestly enough; that courts of arbitration are final; that the legislature is the fount of power. The Legislature, as merely the channel of power, has seemed a contradictory, illogical, perversely inclined institution to the vast body of opinion which starts out on its reasonings from the base that "In the beginning was the Word." Accordingly the " rights-claiming " women were only one band of a company of humanitarian, pacifist, proletarian, Christian believers, to whom the regarding of words as secondary phenomena, addenda attaching to forces with function merely to describe, assist, dis- guise and defend such, as circumstances might require, was simple blasphemy. As they now stand spectator to the birth-throes of a revised order of rights, horror at the blasphemy is the substance of their mutterings against the forces which have compelled the revision. Their curses do not spare their eyes the spectacle all the same; the forces take their course, leaving the verbalists to put what interpretation they please on them, since interpretations are as little germane to the forces as straws are to the force of a torrent which sweeps them along. What would be germane to the forces would be an exercise of force like their own; short of such exercise, words have the value—and no more—of the detonation of the combatants' guns: they have effects which impress the timid and the simple. At present, in the greater part of four continents, all " rights " are suspended, and if, owing to favourable situation of locality, and the force of long habit, the effect of possessing rights still continues, it can be regarded only as an accidental escape. In the countries at war the inhabitants are entitled to the rights of the inhabitants of Louvain, or to those of two aviators fighting in the air—i.e., to what they can get. Civil rights, as well as courtesy rights, circumstances have called in, pending a settlement of fundamental rights, the rights which tally with the arbitrament of might when exhaustion compels one body of combatants to ask for terms. Those terms will be the " absolute right " at the moment of settlement, and will be the foundation and the ultimate authorisation of all subsequent civil or permitted courtesy rights, both of which species of right those who control the armed forces of a community can abrogate whenever they see fit. The granting of civil rights, in the main, follows a tendency dictated by the nature of settlement with absolute rights : those in control granting rights to those who appear capable of making serious trouble if they are 362 THE EGOIST October 1, 1914 not granted. Might even in these deluding times still forms nine parts of most laws; the tenth part is the "scrap of paper" to correspond: the ocular evidence of might constituting a " right." Should the nine parts vary the tenth will rapidly vary to correspond, the flux of rights being only the outer evidence of the inner spiritual flux of might. Might is spirit; there is no doubt of that. All great military commanders, and the commonest observations of ordinary men, agree in that. ?Spirit translates itself as might—physical superiority a simple phenomenon of the spirit which verbalists seek to cover by labelling—in a hybrid lingo—spirit as morale. The great charters embodying new rights have all been given in response to actual or threatened insurrections in might—i.e., in spirit—of those who desired them, and as such they fall into harmony with the spirit of the absolute rights actually established at the sword's point. Between such rights and the courtesy rights which men have conferred on women there is a swing almost to an opposite; a sweep of difference, bridged to a certain degree by what may be called "bluffed rights"—rights conferred by astute politicians with an eye to popular favour in response to agitations too utterly feeble ever to put their issue to the test of any tribunal other than that of words and intrigue. It is a highly pernicious process, because it misleads and subdues spirit, and it is to this increasing vogue of ultra-modern political institutions that the "Woman's Rights" agitation is largely due. Such a vogue existing, women, naturally, who have to obtain most of their material requirements by "courtesy" means—by request and persuasion— could not be expected to believe that there existed anything obtainable on terms of talk which men might obtain but which women might not. Hence a "movement" founded in confusion: a confusion which women may truly say they became immersed in only when men themselves had become lost in it, and out of which, intellectually speaking, it has been left to the women themselves to make clear a way. ***# Women's ready acquiescence in the humanitarian belief that, back of all things, stands the "Word" (translated into practice that means that all powers flow from laws), led them to make the request— acidulated later into a demand—that they should be allowed to participate in the making of the laws. The request's refusal led to the reviewing of woman's status in the community, and it was the evidence brought to light in the reviewing which became in its turn accountable for an increasing acridity in the "request.'' For the first time women became aware in a general way of their secondary position—a realisation which, unaccountably as it may seem to men, came as a genuine shock to their pride, the reason for the surprise being that women, since men became articulate, have been the pleasedly persuaded victims of men's flattery. Women's actions, of course, flattered men; they were not sufficiently articulate to flatter them in words. Men, on the other hand, flattered mainly by words and women, believed in the superiority which men ascribed to them. The women who have an unshaken faith in the actuality of the lofty status ascribed to "woman" by the penny novellette far exceed in numbers those who have, at any time, followed the banner of the "Rebel Women." Hence the unpalatableness of the "facts," and the determination to alter their character at the first opportunity: hence the determination of " advanced " women to ladle out to themselves " rights " from their primary source—as they imagine, the legislature. Hence the "Votes for Women" agitation. * # * * A slightly increased power of observation in women made them aware that, while they were competent to secure for themselves every kind of material advantage, there existed a species of initiatory power, over and above all material wealth—and in fact the source of it— into touch with which their existent competence seemed powerless to bring them. They had the power to draw to themselves the results of the initiatory power where they found themselves belonging to men whose initiatory activity was satisfactory; they had no difficulty in securing their bun aggrandising with every form of wealth and comfort. They were the passive recipients on whom men—the active members—heaped their spoils. Physically weak, their men protected them as valuable property; mentally slow and unimaginative, men could win them by the evidence and results of their own mental alertness and imaginativeness, as they could keep them pleased and content with the flattering interpretation they placed upon the relationship. Men called them their "property" only when annoyed— their "own " was the more passionate and poetic—they were the masculine complement, and the better half at that; the stable passive element which was always reliable—and always there like the house and the farm-stock. In short, women found that the only thing which put men out was, not extravagance or graspingness, but a desire for activity beyond a circumscribed limit. Women's extravagance and irresponsibility has been regarded, in fact, always with indulgent eye as a very venal foible; but any enlarging ot the sphere of activity was frowned down as " dewomanising," shewing a break-down in fundamental womanly instinct. The whole weight of man's imagination, his " idealism," his pictured desire as to what women could mean for him was, is, set directly against it. Women imagined that " an appeal to reason" would win them their point (such as they vaguely conceived it). Off-hand they soothed themselves that their powers had failed in the particular direction for lack of insistence: lack of laying claim to it. Later, they found that by claiming it they had put themselves further off from its attainment than they would have been by quiet requesting and patient waiting for its conferment. The more they sought to strengthen their claims with reasons, the easier it became to frame opposition against it. They failed to appreciate that the appeal was silenced in advance by the counter-assault on vanity and pride; and where, women are concerned vanity is man's main feature. It is the pride of possession which has made it a comparatively easy task for women to turn men into toiling, hard-pressed, monotonous money-grubbers; and it is a most delicately ironical fate that confused observation should have led women into an attempt to carry the assault against men's vanity, when at the same time they proposed increasing the pressure on men's responsibility. * * * # Confused observation is the only explanation of the trend which has been set to the "Woman's Movement " during the century and more which constitute its first stage, and to which the war has now affixed the term. For instance, only confusion could account for women's umbrage at being " property," while at the same time they insist on retaining and augmenting those protective advantages they are possessed of, just because they are property. Property is that which, being a non-initiatory body, can offer no self-defence, and becomes, automatically, the possession of those who can best defend it. This does not mean to say it has no value:—its value increases with the power of its owner; one may not cast a glance awry at the smallest possession of the very powerful, but its value is to its possessor, not to itself. "Property rights" is a misnomer: accurately they are "property-owner's rights," just as it is " property-owner's responsibility." The property itself can have neither rights nor responsibilities. The rights of the owners work out at an agreed claim to accord and receive neighbourly assistance in the work of protecting the hold over one's property, and are based on reciprocal claims that each owner shall prevent his property from becoming a nuisance, either from allowing it to " run wild" or fall into such decay as to affect the well-being of his neighbours. Thus women, being property, have no rights beyond "courtesy" permitted ones; but their owners have responsibilities towards them,. which at October 1, 1914 THE EGOIST 363 their minimum they must fulfil because of the demands of their fellow-owners, and at their maximum in order to gratify vanity in the pride of possession, and to increase that attraction between women and their owners, which is at the root-cause of men's assumption of responsibility. * * * * * The stronger, therefore, the call for protection, the stronger is the implication that the responsible one is the owner and the protected one the property; and as it is the " advanced women" who have pushed the claims of masculine responsibility to hitherto undreamed of lengths, the fact that it is they also who make the outcry against women being ''property" invests the movement with the element of uproarious farce: the more so because they themselves remain sublimely unconscious of any element of humour. This explains why, by comparison with the "advanced women," the "womanly" women look the more intelligent. Actually there is, at present, no difference between the main objectives of either: they both seek to augment their status through the obliging acquiescence of their mankind, but they differ as to the means. Both want advantage in material affairs by civil means: that is, by avoidance of an appeal to physical force to which a male subject class would have to resort if it wished to carry an insurrectionary point, but the "womanly" women have the sense to see that such a procedure can only be put through by "courtesy" means. The desire for heightened status which is embodied in the "advanced" women's demands to share in initiatory power, of course puts the "courtesy" attitude for them out of the question: they feel they must needs demand because power is their right. A vague instinct that power must be self-bestowed is perhaps behind their "fight" for parliamentary enfranchisement. They imagine when they have laid hands on voting-power they will be at the source of initiatory power: that they will then be "free" (i.e., powerful) to help themselves. While this struggle for voting power has been proceeding, there has been too much heat engendered for the women to become aware that the reviewing of their position, which has revealed so much to them, has likewise been bringing into full consciousness in men's mind a realisation of women's position which was only subconsciously realised before. It is ceasing to be regarded as an unquestionable, divinely-ordained law of the universe that men should be "responsible" for their women kind: it is apparent that if responsibilities are undertaken they are so only in consideration of privileges in lieu. The day when women can invoke the responsibility, while denying the privilege, draws to a close after a brief noon. It is becoming clearer what, in the way of freedom of activity, women must needs renounce if they proceed with the one species of feminist propaganda, i.e., unrestricted entry into the labour markets, payment of wives, and the like; and equally clear, on the other hand, what responsibilities they must be prepared to take on their own shoulders if they press the opposing feminist shibboleths: "free" love, equal claims to divorce, and so on, is becoming clear. The two brands of the propaganda, though springing from the one source, are heading in opposite directions; but neither is aimless. One is the instinct towards the emoluments and conferred status which goes with "property": the other is towards the self-responsibilities of "freedom" which, being interpreted in its only useful sense, means "power." The question is whether women have the power, the genuine self-supplying power, and not the bogus counterfeit of conferred power. Because, if they have not, by assuming heavy and unaccustomed responsibilities, their ambitions are leading them towards disaster, just as inevitably as every Englishman believes that German ambitions, backed by over-rated powers, are leading their nation to disaster. For instance, every form of self-responsible power demands—not last, but first—capable physical self-defence. One might venture to say it would be impossible to find in these islands any "advanced" woman who has not felt herself made into something of a fool by the unequivocal evidence as to the position of women presented by the war—not merely in the countries actually devastated by the war—but here in England. They find that they may busy themselves with efforts to assist their less "protected" sisters towards maintenance: they may form an admiring audience: they may have the honour of being allowed to share in their country's defence by dint of knitting socks: or "serve," as one ungallant soldier put it, by providing one of the "horrors of war" as a Red Cross Nurse. In the war-area itself, they form part, along with the rest of the property, of the spoils of the conquered. One cannot easily refrain from the inference that, though they have weakened the pull of the old-womanly competence, the "advanced women" have done very little in the way of furnishing the necessary foundations for its successor. * # # # Whichever path one takes in considering this question of womanly complementariness or secondariness, if one so chooses to call it, always the same conclusion is arrived at: an effectual assertion of physical force is the first essential to any successful digression from the normal womanly protected sphere. It is a blunt fact, with a none too attractive sound, and there will be few women who will care to give voice to it: which silence, by the way, is more telling evidence of the amount of distance which the "movement" has travelled than fifty years of platform oratory. Poor Mrs. Pankhurst, to her bewilderment, found herself driven irresistibly against the fact only to gib at it each time she came up with it. She could not avoid it, still less could she go through with it. "Militancy" in its infancy and "Militancy" now, in its decrepitude, are the translations into practical effect of her realisation of and her revolt from it. * * * * Whether the "revolting" women will ever move on to the point of acquiring the elements of self-defensive and aggressive force depends on the extent to which the ardour of ambition can survive the depressing effects of the present too realistic presentation of their actual position. In any case, the set of circumstance and environment are against it. For it, there is nothing but pride of temper; the same ferment, however, which has been responsible for the rising of every subordinate race and class. If Englishwomen elected to, there exists nothing in themselves to prevent them from being as good a fighting force as the Japanese, for instance: and that would do to be getting along with. What does prevent them is lack of desire, and therefore lack of initiative; consequently there is no apparent necessity to make a drive through that heavy inertia which the substantial triumphs of passive womanliness have fostered. They are accustomed to win success almost solely through well-utilised inertia, and the better they succeed as "females," the more encouraged they are to remain inert. The spur of necessity, occasionally, will overcome it; but, lacking that, there is nothing to urge them on, and everything to pull them back. Even status— women's status—lies that way. Ninety-nine out of every hundred women can better hope to improve their status by looking to their marriage chances than by " carving a career." Only a personal pride (out of the ordinary), and intelligence, and the unique something which sets straight for individual power, remains to count on. Their possession is rare enough, and even when possessed are to be exercised only if something quite as vital to women can be fitted in alongside. In exchanging the old competence for the new, no women can afford to forego that end which was the main objective of the old competence, and which this earlier proved so superlatively successful in attaining. 364 THE EGOIST October 1, 1914 VIEWS AND COMMENTS. LET us rid our mind of cant'' : in which sentiment witness the hustle of the popular philosopher. Why rid ourselves of cant ? Who knows anything about its uses ? May not cant be a necessary utility like clothing: why, then, should we allow ourselves to be hustled into casting it off merely to live up to the exigencies of dramatic oratory ? Rather let us dissect: the one safe course to follow in doubling popular heroics back upon popular philosophy. To chant is to sing: to cant is to make—anything you please—into a song. The difference between the two is that each directs its emphasis towards a particular and different stage of the vocal process. To chant, i.e., to sing, is to have regard to the actual execution of the arranged harmony. To cant, i.e., the making of a song, concerns itself with the process antecedent to the singing: it is concerned with the construction of the song. Joy in the actual performance is the main attraction of the chant, and the substance and arrangement of the song subserves that. In canting the pleasure is in the substance and arrangement (selective interpretation!) and it is this which the pleasure of canting subserves. The difference between our local " philharmonic letting itself go on the Hallelujah chorus and Mr. Lloyd George or any other statesman letting themselves go on the causes of the war can be rendered down to this difference. * # -* * No one dreams of saying "let us rid ourselves of song!" Why then the difference in acquiescence when one says, "let us rid ourselves of song-making! " It is due to a recognition of the reversal in motive: it is due to suspicion: in a song the words are intended to heighten and increase the pleasure of the singing: in cant, the pleasure of singing is to further and enforce the substance embodied in the words. In the song the expression of emotion is the end. In cant the emotion embodied in the expression is utilised to serve the interests embodied in the words : with intent of making that interest paramount over all other interests. To heighten the importance of a matter by emphasis and reiteration is, in fact, just what the man in the street has always meant when he observed that someone is "making a song" about a matter. "Making a song" is a design to make one aspect of an affair all-absorbing by means of repetition, lilt, rhyme, rhythm: but above all by repetition. The song and cant (motives apart) are identical in this. Consider the common church anthem as an instance: a tag is taken : it is told once or twenty times over in the treble : it is told over again in the bass, and again and yet again in the tenor and contralto: then in twos, then the quartette, then the full chorus : a most pleasurable diversion altogether! And one does not forget that tag in a hurry : it " runs in the head " to the exclusion of all other tags, for days. Cant does the same thing, and is intended to. Atrocities, German atrocities, more atrocities, always atrocities, always German, bombs, cathedral-fronts, stained glass, women, prisoners, and so on without end. Cant! The journalists and mob-orators have considered it necessary to "make a song" about these things in order to impress permanently on the British mind the connection between atrocious deeds and a German. Evidently they consider it necessary in order to keep English rage up to the fighting point. Others may think it unnecessary, and only a very poor compliment to boot, but that for the present is a matter of opinion. One might, nevertheless, point out that with all songs at a certain stage there arises such a phenomenon as surfeit, when revulsion does the work of poetic justice and corrects the balance. We seem to be nearing it! Journalists and orators might note. * * * * But to rid ourselves of cant, how can we ? And why should we ? We can try to be clever at canting and not to allow a possibly useful weapon to be turned to our own disadvantage. Because cant is not the attribute of anyone in particular: everybody cants. Any particular man's cant is his emphasis of his own point of view, which inevitably he seeks to press home by all the agencies within his power, and of which wards have become the chief. Consequently, it is open to everyone to accuse any rival of canting. The Kaiser with his deity cants like chanticler: but he is lost besides our shrill roosters at home. The essence of cant is to fill the bill so completely and continuously with the statement of one's own case that the other side's case fails to reach the ear of the populace. We English have no "case" in Germany and Germany has no "case" here. In each country, however, there should be those in power who recognise the scope of cant: that it is only a preliminary defence. They assuredly should have heard to the last syllable the whole of their opponent's case in order to gauge the force of egoistic temper behind the force that will further it. It is essential to know the temper of the opposition they will be called upon to meet. Cant is not out of place with the multitude, if it were, it would not go down so well. In truth, it keeps them in good temper with themselves: but it would be fraught with the direst effects if it had influence with those who have to take stock and make plans. For the "masses" of the stout-heart but unbraced intelligence cant evolves a "battle-cry." It gives consistency to a possibly doubtful faith in the efficacy of the sword: it warms and expands the spirit like an intoxicant: those who fear to lose a point for hocus-pocus by using plain English would say it strengthened the morale. Undoubtedly the war-whoop is cant's primitive and undeveloped ancestor, as the ear-splitting detonation of the big guns is its modern offspring. The intent of both is to put the foe to confusion by bluster to one's own advantage. There is no cause for alarm, therefore, in that the parsonic hosts are placing their pulpits in the market-place, and filling them with cantatists of all orders, exhorting us to mend any small rent which we may have tolerated in our robes of thick British cant. This vigorous species with the bell-like tones may continue to assault the heavens, unique as ever in its lack of guile, too stupid and unselfconscious to be insincere. It will serve if, in the prosecution of their solid business, men are able to put cant in its proper place, and if in national affairs those who are charged with responsibility know at what point its good uses end: limited to fortify one's own spirits, to depressing one's opponents, to winning the applause of the onlookers, and—above all—furnishing our spiritless shibboleths with their natural antidote. In the timid, if piping times of peace, men having created a verbal "Wrong" which they hold to have an existence independent of the weakening of Might, i.e., of Spirit, it behoves them that at times when at all costs that error must be corrected they shall have at hand always a verbal means of escape. Cant enables them to dodge the "Wrong" label and holds it firmly affixed to the brows of their opponents. They cant themselves into the right by making a song about it: incidentally drowning for their own side the sound of their opponent's cant, which, be assured, is engaged in the same heartening business in its own behalf. So cant remains a thing of words always, an affair intended for the gallery: useful in its sphere. Its baleful effects begin when it is taken for something fundamental: when it convinces its victims that it seriously affects the issue. When men get into the temper which can sing: " For Right is Right, since God is God, And Right the day must win," cant looks likely to be dangerous. Men are so liable to overlook the subtlety of such a sentiment. "Right" always, as the hymn says, wins the day: that is, Might wins it, and having won it, is automatically invested with its new title of Right. Cant tends to antedate the birth-hour of Right: that is why it proves a snare if its influence spreads into the quarters that matter: into October 1, 1914 THE EGOIST 365 the initiatory quarters. Cant may not, with impunity, penetrate into serious business. There men must look facts squarely in the face if they are to prevent being hit in the face by them. The rough-and-ready effects of cant are out of order here, where success and precise observation belong to each other. In business as in affairs of state, of course, it is quite in the way to attempt to confuse one's rival with cant, if one can safely; but in reviewing one's own case for serious purposes, no. # # * * How far, therefore, men who are seeking to direct affairs on a large scale can manage to utilise the potentialities of cant, and yet keep themselves unspotted from it, becomes a nice question. Certainly by a sort of horse-sense even with the crowd, the man who has least to say carries most weight: certainly with the weighty: but there appears to be no end of good fun in exercising one's power to send thrills down the spines of audiences of thousands by audacious tickling of their vanity: in oratory that is, which orators a bit shamefacedly, it must be confessed, have called the exercising of a sense of power. Yet there is always a certain feeling of contempt for it: a feeling of the second-rate, and should be left for those "on the climb." Probably it is the uneasy realisation that out of an audience of ten thousand there will be five men who are chuckling under their breath at the spectacle: the five who stand for more than the remaining thousands. One cannot help feeling that if the itinerant Ministers, now on the rant, had decided to forgo the exhibition of their eloquence, British prestige would have been none the worse, but better rather, and more meriting the onlooker's respect. # * * # Mr. Lloyd George's flamboyant rhetoric about " scraps of paper " (over which effort, by the way, " The Times" gurgled a gleeful half-column of applause), would have come with undiminished dignity only from) parsons, ecstatic novelists, and journalists. Coming from a responsible person it flecks the brilliance of feats of arms with the dimness of unintelligence. Yet from beginning to end it is a triumph in the art of covering up one's opponent's point: it is first-rate cant in fact, glowing with the speaking, forming, and colour of the picturesque. "Have you any Bank-notes'? What are they? Scraps of paper! Made from rags! Tear them up! Burn them!" subserves exquisitely the arranged anti-climax that these have the "credit of the British Empire behind them! " It is in the choice of the anticlimax that the full artistry of cant is revealed: for does not the opponents' whole case turn upon the fact that it is just the credit of the Empire that is being questioned? If the Might of the British Empire failed to be reasserted on the spot the "credit of the Empire" would be rapidly run down to the level of rags and scraps of paper. Let a German government establish itself in London, and Mr. George's enraptured audience will swiftly apprehend the connection between " armed force" and "the credit of the Empire"—this or any other. # * # # "The Times," which on the eve of war was a valuable national asset, is now disporting itself in ungainly fashion trying to win the favours of the verbalist host whose influence it was mainly instrumental in overcoming two months ago. One must see in it another of the multitudinous uses of cant it is to be supposed! Having broken the pacifist temper from its moorings in the first place, it seeks now by a gentle impersonal chiding of pacifism subtly combined with encouragement and judicious personal flattery of pacifists, to manoeuvre them past the impending danger of making an outcry for an early peace. In keeping with its present tactics, it has delivered itself afresh on the " meaning of the war." The war is, it says, "when' reduced to its simplest expression—a struggle between false and true standards of life." It piously proceeds, " We stand for a principle that no might can, in the long run, maintain itself, unless it be founded on some moral law." The "some " is delicious: it is so safe: so safe that the leader-writer concludes that here he can do no better than leave it. If he developed his point he needs would require to enlarge on the " ethical law," and doubtless he has a strong premonition that, when formulated, his ethical law would bluntly run " Might is right." At least we gather as much when a little further on he plaintively—or is it satirically—delivers himself thus: " The people of this country have hitherto lived in the touching faith that, sooner or later, it is truth that tells. They have not only neglected," . . . etc., etc.—neglected, that is, to keep their powder dry by matching German "News" agencies with similar British "News" agencies, and out of his own text it is easy to double back on the pious sentiment of his first paragraph, and adapt its phrases to fit the model of " Ye perfect English." " Prussianised Germany," he says, " has staked her existence upon the claim that might is right, with the corollary that Prussian might gives the measure of others' right." Adapted, this would run, " England has had, reluctantly, and in spite of mumbo-jumbo, to confess that her ' right' to existence as foremost nation is staked upon her ability to refurnish the 'might' to prove it. Having proved it, the corollary follows that English might will give the measure of others right." It is a curious historical phenomenon to find two paramount nations with such completely identical characteristics. In their ambitions, their cant, they are one. Only the difference in their Might will define and divide them. # * # # There are arguments used, however, which it would perhaps be paying too great a compliment to describe as cant. They are too obviously just erroneous observations. If one said that two and two made three, it would not be cant: but just a silly mistake. Of such is the orators' argument that we oppose "material force" with "spiritual might." All directed forces are the outcome of the spiritual: that is, animated by the living spirit. A gun, an airship, all the material appurtenances of war are aggressive evidence that spirit has been previously at work. The army of the veriest tyrant is all composed of the workings of mastering spirit. It is not the material which has made and makes them formidable, but spirit. Those who look con-temptously on the material forces of armies, and call them material, have the eyes which see not. A big dream, shared and toiled for by millions, is embodied in those devised means of aggression. The Might of a force is indeed the measure of the amount of spirit, just as submission and unwilling preparations are the measure of the lack of it. If we are subdued by the German host it will be because their spirit has been greater than our own. It is because of the great spirit of the German that he animates material with which to measure himself against the world. It is a great-souled thing to do: not lightly to be undertaken because not lightly to be abandoned. The world should see to that: as it will if it has the spirit. Which is why talk of peace, before events have revealed unmistakably the victors and the conquered is childish. To challenge the world to a test of might is not a matter to be regarded airily, but a matter of life and death: as much so to the nation as to the individual. To know that this is so, is to hold the automatic check on irresponsibility and fool-hardiness. Might is not mocked: it is the one sphere where the genuine is winnowed from the sham. * * * * Nearer to the spirit of good cant is the surmise of the orator that the struggle is to espouse the "ideals of freedom against the oppression of the Iron Heel "—Iron Heel presumably meaning, " armed force." A politician, or any professional deceiver can always count on doing good cant-business if he flourishes the word " freedom " well enough. That is because there is an utter lack of comprehension as to the meaning of the word "free." The word "free," in fact, charming as to sound as it is, for explicitness is a word too many: it is the redundancy responsible for abortive attempts without number in 366 THE EGOIST October 1, 1914 social aspirations. The "free" and the "powerful" are one. When one has the power to encompass a certain end, one is "free" to do it: not before. To be free means no more than that—to be powerful in any particular direction specified: but the aspect which needs engraving on the human consciousness is that it means no less: the spurious " freedoms'"—"liberties" graciously allowed, without the power to enforce them if withheld: all that long list of "rights" held by powerless, enfranchised masses: these are the poor things, the winning of which makes the history of centuries: they are the liberties of sheep, of domestic beasts of burden: they have little or nothing to do with free men—men of power—capable of self-defence, forces to be reckoned with. D. M. FIGHTING PARIS. August 18.—Fine, not too warm, perfect soldiers' weather. News in the evening that the Kronprinz is wounded. August 19.—The " Echo de Paris " describes the landing of British troops in France, presumably at Dieppe, as I heard a lady the other day say that her son had been sent to Rouen to act as interpreter between the French and English officers there. This was a sight I would have given much to witness. It appears sign-posts in English have been put along the soldiers' route, as also notice-boards saying the rule of the road in France is to keep to the right. No lists of killed or wounded in the French troops are published, and as the military movements are kept quite dark the war, now the mobilisation is over, seems a long way off. I note an overflow of sentimentality in the French papers, for which I suppose allowance must be made under the circumstances. Thus I read in one the following quotation from a soldier's letter to his family: "Can you believe that the motor 'bus which brought our food supplies was precisely one of our brave, one of our excellent and dear Madeline-Bastille's!" War will induce people to use terms of endearment of a motor 'bus. Have been gathering fruit and making jam these last few days. We hear that Dr. P. is with his ambulance corps at Liege, and says there are very few wounded among the French, and in his regiment only one, while the German wounded are numerous. For the time being the French wounded are sent South, to Orange, Nevers, etc., when the cases permit transport. The wounds are chiefly in the legs. Mr. S. this evening was remarking on the quiet and emptiness of Paris. He counted four vehicles in the Avenue de l'Opera from one end to the other. August 20.—Charming, spring-like, not too warm weather. * An article in the Matin describes the arrival of British troops at Dunkirk. What a contrast there is in the tone adopted by the journalists in regard to everything British now to what it was, say, during the Transvaal war or Fachoda period ! I wonder what M. Willette thinks of it? Now everything English is praised, and the very matters which in those days would at least have been laughed at are admired. So much sweetness between two countries has never been seen. I quote this from the article in the Matin: " The methodical way in which they landed and took each his place was typical of our allies' orderly genius, that marvellous gift for organisation characterising the English. The men are, besides, surprisingly youthful and sturdy, and to this they add the calm and reflectiveness typical of the race. . . . And the 'Tommies'' conduct is faultless." The way a British soldier walks, eats and drinks, his uniform, everything about him is a subject for admiration ; ten years ago he often inspired scorn and ridicule. Such is the world. The same issue of the Matin contains caricatures of German types. And never was the hatred keener, the contempt bitterer for the Germans than it is now. Surely not in 1870. They are invariably called savages, ruffians, and not by street-boys and newspaper scribblers merely but by men like Barres de Mun. Not a German will be able to set foot in France or Belgium I should think for the next ten years. The gentle young man from Liege said to me as I ventured to doubt the "atrocities" attributed to them: " Madame, c'est vrai, ce sent des barbares; il ne faut pas avoir pitie d'eux " with great and indignant emphasis. It remains incredible that they shoot women under the eyes of their husbands, children in the presence of their parents, civilians before their wives, the old and defenceless, the wounded, the ambulance corps; or that they have their columns preceded by native women and children, and put on the uniforms of dead British soldiers as the papers report daily. If this were true the battle would not be on equal terms, and would become a chastisement and lose, therefore, in heroism. It is better to esteem one's enemy, regardless as to whether or not he really deserves it; better to over-esteem than to over-despise him. This inclination to be too contemptuous of the enemy is the only error I find to criticise in the French attitude at present. It is to be supposed that it has not spread to the army where contact with realities will dispel preconceived notions. I have been reading—the first book I have looked at for weeks—Le Retour dans la Nuit, by Martial Piechaud. H. S. C. has just come in with a paper announcing the death of the Pope. The camelet, whose cries had brought him out, observed on selling it him that all right-minded people put their flags half-mast! I do not remember whether I have mentioned that flags hang from all windows, or at least a great many, and it is said that the sight of them caused great surprise in the German prisoners passing through the city for, having been told it was in flames, they little expected such festive manifestations. The papers say the municipal council of Paris is changing the name of the Rue d'Allemagne to Rue Jean Jaures. Yet, if this socialist deputy had had his way the Rue d'Allemagne would not only have remained so in name but might have become so in fact. This is sentimentality at its most inane. It is the same spirit—for stupidity is international—that bothers itself about a motto for London. I am astonished by the stoicism of the people, a stoicism due partly to ignorance of the effects of events they cannot realise, partly to fatalism, partly to their immunity from all calamities. A little hunchback sempstress I employ has taken her nice-looking young husband's mobilisation very quietly, and what seems to have struck her most is that it took place almost at the same hour as that of her brother-in-law. Our maid tells us quite simply she has a sister whose husband has also gone, leaving her with five children, and dependent on the one franc a day allotted to her plus 50c. a head for each child. In a paper I read about a wounded soldier who, having taken a German cavalry man's boot as souvenir, observed that he hoped to be cured quickly so as to be able to go and fetch the other, to have the pair. August 21.—This morning we were awakened by gun-practice. Mulhouse is re-occupied by the French, and twenty-four German guns have been taken. A flood of "copy" will be made out of the war at its conclusion. Ten of the editorial and contributing staff of one review alone are in active service. Among these I note the name of M. Felicien Fagus who, in reply to an inquiry made on the subject, gave the following epigrammatic definition of the qualities constituting a good poem: "A good poem," said he, "is the solution of a problem in mechanics." It cannot be said that we have suffered any privations up to now. Prices are as low as at usual times, if not lower, and only here and there have certain supplies gone out. The telegrams we receive bear the mention " vise." The Liebig company finds it necessary to publish that it is an English firm. This shows how German trade will be affected by the war. August 22.—The Germans are occupying Brussels. The sentinel on the bridge here has drawn a caricature of the Kaiser on his box representing that gentleman's helmeted head impaled on the points of bayonets rising out of the earth's globe, and has written underneath: "L'Assassin sur des epines " (on thorns). In front of a locomotive I saw a picture framed in triumphal October 1, 1914 367 greenery representing a hog's head with the Kaiser's famous moustaches on a dish, while the legend underneath was a parody of an advertisement of certain culinary preparations. At the V.'s I hear the poet G. C. C. was at the Belgian frontier when last heard from, and had sent some verse descriptive of his camp-life which appeared in last evening's " Intransigeant." At the publisher G. C.'s, where The Egoist's bill hangs in a conspicuous position on the door, I am shown a letter to his wife from one of the clerks, who is within gun-range, and which appeared in a noon paper to-day. Someone tells me that General Joffre, the most taciturn of men, has been smiling during the last few days, than which nothing could be a more hopeful sign. A few days ago he had, as I was told, telegraphed to his wife that all was well. Conveyances still slow and crowded. Charming weather. A letter came this morning—four days on the way—from the painter A. J., who is with his regiment, and is disappointed that medical inspection has precluded him from the fighting ranks. August 23.—I was shown this morning the following letter from a good peasant woman in an Eastern province. It gives a picturesque account of the effects of the war on country life. Except for a few necessary commas I have preserved the original punctuation:— "Dear Neighbour, "Aren't you ever coming back? Here the streets are deserted; there are no men (that is why we want you like the Messiah), no horses, no carriages; the only life is supplied by the small boys and the women going every evening at six to the soup kitchen, one portion for each of them and each child, plus the 1 fr. 25 allotted to each soldier's wife, and 50c. to each of the children. The Maison familiale has been transformed into a Red Cross ambulance with Mme. O. as secretary; Mile. G. treasurer, M. D. chemist, etc. A subscription was raised here; these ladies and myself each gave 5fr. ; C, 300fr.; J., 50fr., etc. M. J. only sells his bread against cash; an old odd-man and E., who has not left yet, bake; there is no fancy bread made any longer, and the most particular don't complain. We have given your plums to Mr. J. to dry, for your garden is full of them. There are many greengages at Mr. J.'s, as also in our garden. We know nothing, or almost nothing; news from soldiers is so rare, and anxiety is written on the mothers' faces; Catherine K. and Mme. P. are withering with anguish; Mme. J. is often out of sorts, as to Mile. F. she is quite well and trotting about everywhere. If you were here you would certainly be doing the police, four hours now and again at the entrance to the wood to stop all the automobiles, for every driver has to show his papers. And then there is a Civic Guard, to which you would surely belong. Mr. P. has been named secretary to the Mairie by the Council, and does his task dutifully. Yesterday, the 15th, their sister, who died without an agony, was buried; she was carried to B. ; a car had been asked of J., a carriage of R., and on Friday there was requisition, the waggons being examined at V. Saturday at 8 o'clock. Imagine the excitement; fortunately one funeral conveyance was found at R., and all the troubles caused by the war persecuted us; no men to carry, etc., etc. "The courage of all the younger women, many of whom are future mothers, is admirable in its stoicism; Nadine has returned to her sister-in-law at R. until she has her little one. . . . What mourning there will be afterwards; Marie C. is very courageous. M. H. is at the fort at V.; the harvests are going on alright in spite of the lack of horses; there are seven at the farm and three at H.'s; the cows are requisitioned the first day. Good-bye to our nice cafe au lait. . . . When you come back you will do well to bring a netfull of supplies, for there is nothing at the stores here; the ' Economique' does not even open its shutters. The baker P. has left, and it is Pere V. who bakes; all cash. Amedee looks after Mme. C. and the maison J. The front of the old house has been redone up; the horse is at the wars. M. J. was always turning over in his motor; but for the last week interdiction. I am keeping on my workmen, as is also Mr. R., after which ... joy or sadness, God alone knows, shall we pick our grapes; another question. . . . Mile. F. has given old linen for the wounded, but I am wondering where competent nurses will be found. " Mass is said at eight o'clock each Sunday, and many people go; we all come back pious. The ladies P. often go to Low Mass. I am in the drawing-room waiting for Mile. F., who has been to her friend for news, and Mr. T. and we embrace you (on paper) in chorus. "P.S.—The nephew Rene came to say good-bye, and now there is no news of him any more than from the other soldiers; he looked very well. C, after nursing her sister-in-law a fortnight at R., has come back to us. M. U. has come but will not stay; he prefers Paris, where he has his habits, he says, more news and more papers. Suzette and her son (or daughter) are well; as liver is difficult to find we give her milk." This letter took a week to reach the capital. This evening we had our usual aeroplane, apparently doing scout-work. An incessant procession of cars carrying portions of flying machines come driving up our roads on their way to the military aviation centre at Chalais. To-night's paper refers to a great battle in Belgium. One has the greatest pains to accustom oneself to the idea. And the Germans are on the direct road to Paris. Things have never seemed so serious since Sunday three weeks ago—the first mobilisation day. Someone had been advertising for a lost sheep dog: "Perdu, Berger allemand." Underneath, a street urchin had scrawled, "II a fui." I noticed the Kaiser's will is no longer sold in the streets. These sort of pleasantries are, indeed, not timely. It is quaint of the wounded French soldiers to say that the Germans do not aim well. August 24.—The Abbe Wetterle, the Alsatian ex-Deputy at the Reichstag, writes as follows in to-day's " Echo de Paris" :— "It was a great mistake on the part of Jaures to have imagined that the proletariat on the other side of the Rhine had resisted Pan-German pressure. The German workman knows that if the army increases the national territory his custom is increased, his position therefore ameliorated and his wages higher. He is, therefore, as militarist as are the middle-classes. At the time of the bill for the last budget, the Socialist representatives made a purely formal opposition to the enormous increase in the army contingencies, then voted like one man for the one thousand million of extraordinary taxes permitting the realisation of this important reform. And why did they do so ? Because they knew that if they did not their labour electors would desert them." In this article the Abbe Wetterle concludes that the war was favoured by the people of Germany while really withheld as long as possible by the Emperor, whom the " Deutsches Tages Zeitung" called for his genuine pacifist tendencies, at the time of the Agadir crisis, " Wilhelm der Furchtsame." The sky has cleared—the sky of heaven—and the weather is again very hot. Yesterday's news of a battle in Belgium confirmed by today's papers. We have had no letters of any kind for some days and one feels very isolated. I am writing in the garden in the most delicious temperature. There are roses still on our rose trees, and bees are humming around me. Except for these the silence is only interrupted by the motors running to and from the aviation camp at Chalais, and that dog which howled so just before the mobilisation and again before the declaration of war with Germany has started its moans again to-day when the most serious news since that time reaches us. Nature, meanwhile, is at its most exquisite, and one's senses do not suffice to appreciate it. This evening the postman's ring, not having been heard for three days, caused excitement. It brought three cards all at once from Switzerland. The cards received bear no French postmark, but the Swiss stamp is dated the 20th in one case and 21st in the two others. N.'s card is obviously written in view of censorship and gives no news of Germany, although she is certainly informed. T. L. F. writes, "I say nothing here that may cause this card to be withheld." It is to be observed that the three correspondents use postcards. THE EGOIST 368 THE EGOIST October 1, 1914 August 25.—From last night's "Liberte": "After having withstood the German guns to the end, the Commandant Nameche, head of the fort at Chaudfon-taine around Liege, set fire to the powder and exploded the fort, burying himself in its ruins." The Germans are, it appears, terrified by the French African troops. At Dijon, the other day, a train-load of prisoners were very much alarmed at sight of some nigger soldiers who had just arrived from Algeria and who, having heard there were some of the enemy to be seen at the station, scrambled on the carriages to obtain a view of them. Their grinning faces caused the Germans to crawl under the benches and to cry for mercy and the officers had all they could do to get the black men back into their places and discourage their curiosity. This fear of native troops among the Germans is well known, and remembering it, a whole company, comprised chiefly of Parisians, got the idea to blacken their faces with boot-blacking and to attack the enemy with wild shrieks. " The effect," said one of them, on explaining the stains on his face, which the doctor at the hospital had difficulty in diagnosing, "was simply prodigious." Perhaps, too, it is easier to die in minstrel disguise. News of slight defeats at the front. To town by tram. Find some of the metro lines stopped, so have to take slow and crowded trams. Long waits. Saw an agent give warning to a hawker for crying "latest news" and another stop some men to examine their papers. Said good-bye to J., who is being repatriated to Russia on a French cruiser from Marseilles. The papers this evening contradict the morning's news that Namur had fallen, but confirm that of German incursions into French territory Lille and Tourcoing way. A man said to me this evening, "In our offices 24 out of 60 employes remain." Our maid showed me a letter she had just received from her "young man," who is at a military hospital in the south. The envelope had been neatly slit open and stuck together again with a piece of stamp-paper. Correspondence from England and Switzerland. The " Intran-sigeant" says, " The English soldier have been ' admirable ' under fire." The soldiers at Saint Cloud station had adorned it with triumphal arches, made of greenery and flags and pictures, representing the cock victorious over the eagle, and similar themes. It was curious to see the soldiers on the line gathered round the dinner-table lighted by a shaded lamp like bourgeois on a summer night in their banlieu garden. August 26.—We learn the Cabinet has been changed. M. Millerand becomes Minister of War, and this appointment increases our confidence. Altogether a Cabinet of picked men. We are not surprised, for within the last few days the papers had quite evidently got out of hand; moreover, several directed transparent criticisms at the Minister of War in power at the time of the retreat from Alsace, so atrociously disappointing for the Alsatians, will very likely also have caused this change. The papers make very enthusiastic comments on Lord Kitchener's speech before the House of Lords. A writer in some paper has had the happy idea to suggest the re-opening of the Paris theatres. This absurd proposal shows how indispensable the theatre is to the average Parisian. Meanwhile trainloads of wounded are being brought from the front. I have been reading " Le Hasards de la Guerre," by Jean Variot (George Cres et Cie.), a not inappropriate way of occupying one's thoughts, as the title may suggest. But apart from the description of a pilgrimage to some famous battlefields, to Waterloo, the Beresina Pass, and so on, concluding with a sojourn of a few pages with the Legion Etrangere in Morocco, the book deals but little with warfare. Considering our re-awakened interest in Alsace-Lorraine the author might have dwelt longer on the peculiarities of that pathetically divided country, whose features he, as an Alsatian, alludes to with lingering and sympathetic melancholy. If his present share in the struggle for it spares him he will no doubt gratify the general curiosity by giving us a more complete view of the idiosyncrasies to which its sad and exceptional fate have given rise, for it is very difficult for an outsider to grasp the limitations of national feeling—so terribly tried in the last half-century—among this people. Their mingled customs, too, partly German, partly French, often purely autochthonous, their lore, their predilection for military and often, even, for naval service—strange to say—afford occasion for the most promising investigation. Last night's "Temps" described how a French soldier picked up his shot-off arm, taking it away with him from the battlefield to prevent the Germans getting it! The few advertisements contained in the papers are all distressing. Here is one: " The young men who were at Bensheim, at Professor Fritzmann's, are requested, if they are back in France, to be so good as to give news of her son, about whom she knows nothing, to Mme. Gaillard, 3 Ave. Ledru Rollin, Montpellier." August 28.—Letters from England four days old. I like the remark I find in a paper referring to Mme. Caillaux's organisation of an ambulance. "She had better," writes the journalist, "go to the front, seeing what a good shot she is." We hear our friend, Dr. de N., is with his ambulance at Gorbeil, "charmed with his fate and the happiest of men." We met Mr. P. in Paris to-day. He, like so many others of his period, has been sent back home from his regiment as the men are too numerous. A deficit of 20 per cent, had been expected, and it proves to be less than 1 per cent. He says equipment was not lacking in his corps. August 29.—The censorship exercised by the new Minister is evidently very severe, for news is again of the scarcest. We are simply told we maintain our positions at the frontier. Dr. P. has again written home from Belgium; he says the ambulance doctors have worked twenty-four hours at a stretch, and he among other doctors has been called by the Germans to attend their wounded, their own medical staff being overwhelmed. There will be no trains on the Nord line for travellers to-morrow, we hear. There is some alarm about the possibility of the Germans coming to Paris after all, notably among foreigners and the lower classes. The few of the former who remain are packing up in view of flight. The Chartreux monks have returned to their country—whence they were exiled—to take up service. August 30.—The Germans have been, or are, at La Forte, a fortified town 25 k. from Laon. How well I remember sitting on the beautiful ramparts of Laon last year with H. S. C. and Dr. de N., and the former observing, with reference to the great stretch of fertile, open country at our feet, that here the fate of France would be decided at the next clash with Germany. To market. This locality is quite deserted. Hardly anyone at the market, and little business done. M. O., who came to lunch, says Paris is in alarm, and at the market I heard people talking of sudden departures. Some friends leave for England ; M. O. goes to Normandy. A lady has arrived here from Sedan saying every house there has been burnt down, including her own, the French having been obliged to bombard it during its occupation by the Germans. What tragic episodes one reads of: General de Castelnau saw his son killed under his eyes while he was commanding his men, but did not allow the circumstance to interrupt his duties. General Pau's son is wounded; the former is commander-in-chief of the army operating in the East. Hot, very fine weather to-day again. One cannot realise there is war in the world. Letter from Mme. V. this morning saying how thankful she is she has been given occupation at a Red Cross hospital, occupation which consists mainly in washing floors and windows out of charity! The poet, G. C. C, was in the North when last heard of, that is in the midst of action. Card from T. L. F., the confirmed socialist and pacifist, who deplores he is not fighting, and hopes he will have a chance in Italy! He says our letter written to him in Switzerland a fortnight ago has only just reached him. The papers now often contain blank spaces—information blotted out by the censor at the last moment. Maurice Barres writes heroically and optimistically each day in the " Echo de Pans." He expresses the utmost contempt for the October 1, 1914 THE EGOIST 369 Germans, and to-day refers to them as "these eternal pedants who like to play at being demons." Everyone in this house a little downcast to-day. August 3].—The Germans are advancing from the North, but being repulsed in Lorraine. A German aeroplane flew over Paris yesterday, and its aviator threw a few bombs about, killing a woman. Information on this as on all matters scarce, and containing blank lines. Panic in Paris apparent by the number of people waiting again outside the grocer Potin's. The fun persistently directed at the Germans, their thought, literature, art, etc., in many of the papers (the " Temps" excepted), especially in the " Matin," seems singularly inappropriate; it will be time enough to laugh at them after the victory. But while their ambition to occupy Paris is not far from being realised, this sarcasm is ill-placed. I have just lighted upon a regrettable copy of the "Matin" of ten days ago containing caricatures of absurd-looking German officers. To Paris, where I learn from serious sources (not in the street or in the popular gossip, or in the papers which are quite devoid of news) that the Germans are at Compiegne where the English are too. Time will verify whether this is true. I am told, also, that there is discord in the command. If the enemy is at Compiegne this would be in agreement with their whole plan of campaign—namely, to occupy Paris. I was told also that the government was about to be transferred to Orleans in view of removing to Bordeaux later if necessary. I am assured the money at the Banque de France is safe. To M. O.'s to find she had left in haste this morning. The S. V.'s are packing to leave to-morrow. The terror of each is that he may have to pay for the deeds of franc-tireurs. Both here and in the city itself I have seen numbers of demenagement waggons, and taxis, cabs, hand-carts and every available vehicle filled with luggage or furniture, while large families troop by, each member carrying a bundle proportioned to age and size. The men of the territorial and reserve forces who were sent back a week or ten days ago have been called out again. Thus M. P., whom we met on Saturday, has returned to his regiment at Blois. The young men who were to have begun their service this year—the 1914 classe as it is called—have also been called out, so events agree with rumours. Another significant circumstance was that Paris was without lights last night. The effects of censorship can be very quaint. Thus a noon paper announced a column of news on the "Fighting in the North," but the column was blank from beginning to end, and only the headline remained. In future, says a new regulation, all headlines will be forbidden, and hawkers will not be allowed to cry the names of the papers they sell. Letter from Miss M. saying she leaves in two hours. Dr. S. tells me it was impossible to get a taxi to-day, a sign that more men have been called out, as also that what taxis there are are quickly snapped up by fugitives. I had noticed trams were rarer and very crowded. This morning I put away dress-suits and such clothes as we are not likely to wear for a long time. September 1.—The paper confirms the flight of another (or the same) German aeroplane above Paris yesterday. Two bombs were thrown, but no one (so far as the news goes) was hurt. The paper also says that the Germans are advancing on Paris, being on the banks of the Oise, but no mention is made of their being at Compiegne or as near as that. Card this morning from N., posted in Switzerland, on the 28th. B. is, as I noticed this morning, absolutely deserted except for waggons removing furniture, fugitives carrying bundles and luggage, and the usual military motors. One motor contained a Belgian officer. To Paris. The town is in some panic and the station was besieged with fugitives, and what taxis and cabs are to be seen are laden with families and luggage. Everyone carries a bundle, bag, or basket, and families are seen camping on the pavement. They say 10,000 people tried to leave the Gare Montparnasse this morning. Called at Mile. O. B.'s, then at a bank, where they refused to cash a cheque for me (I had been under the impression that the renewal of the moratorium permitted the cashing of cheques dated previously to the mobilisation); tried to buy some provisions at Potin's, but the waiting crowd was such that I preferred to go elsewhere to another stores where there was not a single customer and where there were supplies in plenty, except salt, which I could not obtain, being told that 50 kilos had been sold out in the morning, one kilo at a time. The rumours in Paris are that three generals are under lock and key at the Cherchemidi military prison—(as I write, the fourth aeroplane within the last half hour passes above our house; first came a monoplane at a good height from the Paris direction ; some little time after, H. S. C. called me to hear some rapid gun-shots; then in a few minutes a second monoplane appeared in the skies, also from Paris; since then two biplanes have made their appearance from the opposite direction, the one steered left, the other right ; the two biplanes flew low, a sign they are French)— Generals P., D., and a third, whose name I do not remember. Some say General P., recently revoked for having kept an order in his pocket for several days requesting him to send immediate reinforcements to Charleroi, was either shot or committed suicide. General D. is accused of having attempted to take Mul-house with insufficient forces. It is reported (not yet in the papers) that the government is about to be transferred to Lyon. I also heard that yesterday's German aviator sent a bomb on Notre Dame. The information the "Journal" had intended giving on the matter was censored, as a long paragraph under the heading is left blank. A lady in the train, on the return home, told me there were wounded from Amiens at the station and that she had spoken to them and found them in very good spirits. I met a Polish lady at Mile. O. B.'s, who had just returned from the Baltic coast. The Russian subjects (who were taking the sea-baths there were not gently dealt with but not very roughly either. Though they had bought first or second-class tickets they were all packed into fourth-class carriages and conveyed slowly and uncomfortably to the Danish frontier. We have been laying in a few supplies to-day in view of a bombardment—coal, paraffin, etc., in case fuel, electric light and gas fail us, but it is very difficult to make up one's mind as to how much to buy, and what. So we have taken but very elementary precautions. I am told that M. C, ex-Minister of Finance, is " Colonel-Treasurer Paymaster" to the forces. I heard also that the mobilisation had been ordered at General J.'s pressure, who had threatened M. Poincare, who was desirous of putting it off for awhile, with immediate resignation if it was delayed. Other people say M. V. (a fifth aeroplane has come, though it is almost dark, at a good height from the city direction and now steers a different way from the others) wanted it to be delayed. I have also heard that it was M. P. who had decided and ordered the mobilisation. Dogs barked a great deal last night, and are beginning again to-day. The darkness has fallen suddenly with hardly any twilight. All civilians were ordered out of Reims on Sunday. Numerous train-loads of wounded pass daily through Versailles. The French, the English, the Belgian wounded are "brave," in the French journalist's language; the Germans deserve no epithet. It was pathetic to-day to see, shifted on side-lines, numerous troop-trains still ornamented with branches (in the window-opening of one was a little bunch of withering flowers) showing caricatures of the Emperor William, and the usual scrawl in chalk against the official label, " Voiture a destination pour. . . ." with Berlin added. Strange to see this with the enemy at our very gates. There is a search-light on Mont Valerien to-night. September 2.—The paper confirms the German advance on Paris and the presence of a Taube over Paris yesterday afternoon Going out on some errands I meet with fugitives in luggage-laden motors or waggons, according to their fortune, on every hand. One lady sending telegrams off at the post office has a marmezet in a cage This evening an aeroplane passed overhead again, and again we heard shots. Going out we found a number of people massed on the railway bridge who said bombs 370 THE EGOIST October 1, 1914 had been thrown out of it. The shots came from rifles and from the guns on the Eiffel Tower. Trains with recruits—all very young fellows, those who were to begin their military service this autumn—have been passing with vociferations through the stations all day. The evening paper confirms the report I had heard privately on Monday, namely, of fighting at Compiegne with the English. A lady in a shop said she had heard that the forest of Compiegne was on fire. The Government left Paris this morning at 4 o'clock. Dr. S. tells us he saw the bomb which was thrown from an aeroplane yesterday afternoon and which fell in the Rue de Hanovre. Card from a friend, who talks of going south on account of the rumoured siege of Paris. September 3.—What nights are ours ! Every now and then one wakes up in a start reminding oneself that the Germans are at our very threshold. A glorious summer morning; swallows flit about, an exquisite stillness, broken only by the desperate shriek of passing trains. Never was there such a summer as this ! The "Echo de Paris" (now, for the first time, appearing on a single sheet instead of the two it kept up while all other papers had been reduced to one) announces the departure of the Government for some unnamed provincial town. The latest war news is of the 1st, namely, the engagements at Compiegne with the English. The shouts of passing recruits reach us just as on the first days of the mobilisation. To market, where there are any amount of supplies, but prices slightly raised. Meet waggons with poor emigrants from the outer fortified zone, who have been given notice to leave their homes, these being in danger and having to be destroyed. The wealthier population takes flight, too, but from choice. To Paris by boat—for there are no passenger trains for Montparnasse to be relied upon— provision hunting. Everything, or nearly everything, to be obtained still and, with a few exceptions, at the usual prices. Certain provisions, like salt and rice, are generally doled out in small and limited quantities. Charming but rather warm weather and the return home by boat exceptionally beautiful in a golden, hazy twilight. Such a summer as this I do not remember. A most magnificent sight is provided by the numerous barges, at anchor lying in endless rows twelve deep and occupying half the width of the river. Most of them are Belgian and many carry straw, which is being slowly unshipped. Dr. M. came to say good-bye, leaving on his bicycle—(for trains are not to be had except for people who took their tickets several days in advance)— for his home, where he hopes to be enrolled as ambulance doctor to some regiment. The establishment he conducted has been closed, the patients have left. Thus the smooth run of life is suddenly interrupted for each and all. The evening paper describes the departure of the Government and diplomatic corps for Bordeaux. British soldiers are to be seen about the town. The Bourse was guarded by military this afternoon, I am told, and papers and documents removed into waggons. September 4.—At half past two this morning we were awakened—if one can say awakened, for who sleeps?— rather, we started at the sound, muffled, distant but unmistakable, of firing guns. We first heard two separate shots, and a little later several consecutive shots. Then all fell back into stillness. How impressive was this grim interruption of the most beautiful of moonlight nights! A British aeroplane, with British aviator, patrolled the skies above Paris yesterday; we had seen it but could not, of course, guess its nationality. No post at all from abroad for some days—and no Egoist— but one letter from a friend saying her husband is worrying himself to death at not being able to make himself useful. This strain, in presence of so uncertain a future, will tell on many a mind and on many nerves. We left our youth behind us, I fear, on August 1st, 1914. Muriel Ciolkowska. (To be continued.) [Erratum —In the last issue (September 15th; a printer's error rendered menicite "monolith." Readers will, I hope, have corrected this in their own minds.—M.C.]

THE SONGS OF MALDOROR. By The Comte de Lautreamont. Part I. MAY it please heaven that the reader, emboldened and for the moment as ferocious as what he reads, will find without disorientation his abrupt wild path across the desolate marshes of these sombre poison-filled pages; for, unless he brings to his reading a rigorous logic and a mental tension equal at least to his distrust the mortal emanations of this book will suck up his soul as water does sugar. It is not good that everyone should read the pages which are to follow ; a few only will taste this bitter fruit without harm to themselves. Consequently, timid soul, before penetrating further into such unexplored lands turn your steps backwards and not forwards. Listen carefully to what I tell you: turn your steps backwards and not forwards, like the eyes of a son who turns respectfully from the august contemplation of the maternal face; or rather, like an invisible angle of chilly cranes, meditating deeply, which during the winter fly powerfully across the silence, with extended wings, towards a pre-determined point on the horizon, whence suddenly rushes a strange, strong wind, precursor of the storm. The oldest crane, who forms by himself the van-guard, seeing this, shakes his head like a reasonable person, and consequently his beak also, which he clatters, and is not pleased (I should not be pleased either in his place), while his old neck, disfurnished of plumes and contemporary with three generations of cranes, trembles in irritated undulations, presaging the storm which approaches nearer and nearer. After having calmly examined every side with eyes full of experience, prudently, the first (for he has the privilege of showing his tail-feathers to the other cranes inferior in intelligence) with his vigilant cry like that of a melancholy sentinel, to repulse the common enemy, he turns flexibly the point of the geometric figure (it is perhaps a triangle, but no one can see the third side, which these curious birds of passage form in space) perhaps to larboard, perhaps to starboard, like a skilful captain; and, manoeuvering with wings which seem no larger than a sparrow's, because he is not stupid, he takes in this way another surer philosophic path. * * * Reader, perhaps you desire that I should invoke hatred at the beginning of this work ! How do you know that you will not snuff up its red emanations slowly and majestically with proud, large, thin nostrils, bathed in innumerable delights, as much as you desire, turning up your belly like a shark in the beautiful black air as if you understood the importance of this act and the no less importance of your legitimate appetite? 1 assure you they will delight the two ugly holes of your hideous snout, O monster, if you set yourself beforehand to inhale three thousand times the accursed conscience of the Eternal! Your nostrils, which will be immeasurably dilated with ineffable content, with immobile ecstasy, will ask nothing better from space, being embalmed as if with perfumes and incense; for, they will be glutted with complete happiness, like the angels which dwell in the magnificence and in the peace of the elegant heavens. * * * I will show you in a few lines how Maldoror was good during his first years when he lived happily. He afterwards perceived that he was born evil: extraordinary fate ! He hid his character as much as he could; but in the end because of this unnatural concentration the blood rose to his head every day to such an extent that, being unable to endure such a life, he threw himself resolutely into a career of evil . . . sweet atmosphere ! who would have thought it! When he kissed a little rosy-faced child he would have liked to take off its cheeks with a razor, and he would very often have done it if Justice, with her long train of punishments, had not prevented him each time. He was not a liar: he admitted the truth and said that he was cruel. Human October 1, 1914 THE EGOIST 371 beings, have you heard'? He dares to repeat it with this trembling pen ! Thus there is a power stronger than will. . . . Curse! Does the stone want to be subject to the laws of weight? Impossible. Impossible if evil desired to be allied with good. That is what I said before. * # •» There are some who write to gain human applause by means of the noble qualities of the heart invented by the imagination or which they might possess. I make my genius serve to paint the pleasures of cruelty ! Pleasures not transitory, not artificial, but pleasures which began with man and will end with him. May not genius be allied with cruelty in the secret resolutions of Providence ? or, because a man is cruel can he not also be a genius ? The proof will be seen in my words; it rests with you to listen to me if you so wish. . . . Excuse me, I thought my hair was standing on end; but it is nothing, for with my hand I easily replace it in its first position. He who sings here does not pretend that his cavatinas are something unknown ; on the contrary he flatters himself that the high evil thoughts of his hero are in all men. * * * During the whole of my life I have seen all these thin-shouldered men without one exception commit stupid acts, brutalise their kind and pervert souls by all methods. They called the motives of their actions "Glory." Seeing these things I wanted to laugh like the others, but that strange imitation was impossible. I took a pocket knife whose blade had a sharp edge and I spirt; my flesh at the place where the lips join. For a moment I thought I had attained my end. I looked in the mirror at this mouth gashed by my own will. It was an error! The blood which flowed abundantly from the two wounds prevented me from seeing whether it was really the laugh of others. But after a few moments comparison I saw clearly that my laugh did not resemble that of human beings; that is to say, I was not laughing. I have seen men with ugly heads and terrible eyes buried in dark sockets, surpass the hardness of rock, the rigidity of cast steel, the cruelty of the shark, the insolence of youth, the mad fury of criminals, the treachery of the hyprocrite, the most extraordinary comedians, the power of a priest's character, and the most outwardly secret beings, the coldest in the planets and in heaven; leave the moralists to discover their hearts and bring down upon them the implacable anger from on high. I have seen them all together, sometimes the most robust fist directed against heaven like that of a perverse child against its mother, probably excited by a spirit of hell, their eyes charged with remorse, corroding as well as malicious, in a glacial silence, not daring to emit the vast ungrateful meditations concealed in their hearts, so full were they of injustice and of horror, and saddening with pity the God of compassion; sometimes, at every moment of the day from the beginning of childhood to the end of old age, spreading incredible curses without commonsense against everything that breathes, against themselves and against Providence, prostituting women and children, and dishonouring thus the parts of the body consecrated to modesty. Then the seas lift up their waters and swallow the ships in their abysses; tempests, earthquakes, overthrow houses; plague, diverse diseases decimate whole families in prayer. But men do not perceive it. I have seen them also reddening, paling with shame for their conduct on the earth: rarely. Tempests, sisters of the storm ; bluish firmament whose beaty I do not admit; hypocritical sea, image of my heart; earth of mysterious bosom; inhabitants of the spheres; universal nature; God, who created it with magnificence, I invoke you— show me a good man! -. . ; But let your grace double my natural forces since, at the sight of such a monster, I may die of astonishment: people have died from less. * * * One's nails ought to be allowed to grow for fifteen days. Oh ! how sweet it is to tear brutally from its bed a child which has nothing on its upper lip, and, with wide open eyes, to pretend to pass one's hand over his forehead brushing the beautiful hair backwards ! Then, suddenly, at the moment he least expects it, to plunge long nails into his soft bosom, in such a way that he does not die; for, if he were to die one would not have later the sight of his miseries. Afterwards, one drinks the blood by licking the wounds; and during this time, which should last as long as eternity lasts, the child weeps. Nothing is so good as his blood extracted as I have just said, and still warm, unless it be his tears, bitter as salt. Man, have you never tasted your blood when you cut your finger by accident ? How good it is; for it is tasteless. Besides, do you not remember one day in the midst of lugubrious reflections to have carried your hand— hollowed at the base—to your sick countenance wet with that which fell from your eyes; which hand afterwards moved fatalistically towards your mouth, which drew up the tears in long draughts from their cup, trembling like the teeth of the pupil who looks sideways at him who was born to be his oppressor. How good these tears are, for they have the taste of vinegar. They are like the tears of her who loves most; but the tears of a child are better to the palate. He does not betray, not yet knowing evil: she who loves most betrays sooner or later. ... I discover this by analogy, although I know nothing of friendship and love (it is probable that I shall never accept them, at least from the human race). Then since your blood and your tears do not disgust you, feed yourself, feed yourself with confidence on the tears and on the blood of the adolescent. Bind his eyes while you tear his palpitating flesh; and, after hearing for long hours his sublime cries, like the piercing rattles which in a fight issue from the gullets of the agonised wounded, then, having dashed away like an avalanche, you will rush in from the next room and you will pretend to arrive in his aid. You will untie his hands with their swollen nerves and veins, you will restore sight to his terrified eyes while you recommence drinking his tears and blood. How true repentance is! The divine spark which is in us, which appears so seldom, now shows itself: too late ! How the heart overflows in trying to console the innocent whom one has injured: "Adolescent, you who have just suffered cruel pains, who could have committed on you a crime which I cannot name ! Unhappy one that you are ! How you suffer! And if your mother knew this she could not be nearer to death, so feared by the guilty, than I am now. Alas ! what is good and what is evil! Is it the same thing by which we witness our impotence with rage, and the passion to attain to the infinite even by the maddest ways? Or are they two different things'? Yes . . . may they be rather the same thing . . . for, if they are not, what shall I become on the day of judgment! Adolescent, forgive me; he who is before your noble sacred face—it is he who has broken your bones and torn the flesh which hangs from different parts of your body. Is it a delirium of my sick reason, is it a secret instinct which does not depend on my reasonings, like that of an eagle rending its prey, which has urged me to commit this crime; and yet I suffer as much as my victim! Adolescent, forgive me. Once emerged from this transitory life I desire that we should be interlaced for all eternity; to form one single being, my mouth against yours. Even in this manner my punishment will not be complete. Then you will tear me, unceasingly, with teeth and nails together. I will deck my body with scented garlands for this holocaust of expiation, and we will both suffer; I, at being torn, you, at tearing me . . . my mouth against your mouth. O adolescent, with fair hair, with eyes so gentle, will you now do what I counsel you? In spite of yourself I desire that you do it and render my conscience happy." After speaking thus you will have done evil to a human being and at the same time you will be loved by this being; it is the greatest happiness conceivable. Later you will be able to put him in a hospital ; for, being impotent, he will be unable to earn his living. You will be called good, and laurel crowns and gold medals will hide your naked feet, spread on the great tomb, with a face of age. 0 You, whose

HE DARES TO WRITE IT WITH THIS TREMBLING HAND. THE DOGS . . . HOWLING AGAINST THE WIND. 372 133

October 1, 1914 October 1, 1914 THE EGOIST 373 name I will not write on this page which consecrates the holiness of crime, I know that your forgiveness was immense as the universe. But I still exist. * * *- I have made a pact with prostitution so as to sow discord among families. I remember the night which preceded this dangerous liaison. I saw before me a tomb. I heard a shining glow-worm, as large as a house, say to me: "I will enlighten you. Read the inscription. This supreme order does not come from me." A vast blood-coloured light, at the sight of which my teeth chattered and my arms fell inert, spread through the atmosphere to the horizon. I leant against a ruined wall, for I was almost falling, and read: " Here lies a youth who died of consumption: you know why. Do not pray for him." Many men would not perhaps have had so much courage as I. During this time a beautiful naked woman came and lay at my feet. With a sad face I said to her "Arise." I held out to her the hand with which the fratricide strangles his sister. The glow-worm to me: "Take a stone and slay her." "Why?" said I. And he to me: "Take care of yourself; the feeblest, because I am the strongest. She is called Prostitution." Tears in my eyes, rage in my heart, I felt an unknown force born in me. I picked up a huge rock; after many efforts I raised it with difficulty to the height of my chest; I placed it on my shoulders with my arms. I climbed to the summit of a mountain: from this I crushed the glowworm. Its head was thrust a man's height into the earth; the stone rebounded to the height of six churches. It fell back into a lake whose waters sank for an instant, whirling round, scooping out an immense reversed cone. Calm reappeared on the surface ; the blood-coloured light glimmered no more. "Alas!" cried the beautiful woman, "What have you done?" I to her: "I prefer you to him, because I pity the unfortunate. It is not your fault if eternal justice has created you." She to me: "One day men will do me justice; I will tell you no more. Let me go to hide my infinite sadness in the depths of the sea. You and the hideous monsters which swarm in these black abysses alone do not despise me. You are good. Farewell, you who have loved me!" I to her: "Farewell ! Once more; farewell ! I shall always love you ! From to-day I abandon virtue." That is why, O people, when you hear the winter wind moan on the sea and near its shores, or over the great cities which for long have put on mourning for me, or across the icy polar regions, you shall say: "That is not the spirit of God passing: it is the bitter sigh of prostitution joined with the heavy groans of the Montevidean." Children, I tell you this. Then, full of compassion, kneel down ; and let men, more numerous than lice, make long prayers. * * * In the moonlight near the sea in the isolated parts of the country one sees—plunged in bitter reflections— everything decked in yellow, indecisive, fantastic shapes. The shadow of the trees runs, goes, returns sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly in diverse forms, flattening itself, pressing itself against the ground. Formerly, when I was carried on the wings of youth, this made me wonder, seemed strange to me; now I am used to it. The wind moans its languorous notes across the leaves, the owl sings its sad complaint which makes the hair rise on those who hear it. Then the dogs become furious and break their chains, escape from distant farms; they rush hither and thither across the country, a prey to madness. Suddenly they stop, their eyes on fire, glancing on every side with ferocious timidity; and, as elephants before death cast across the desert one last glance at the sky, lifting their trunks in despair, dropping their ears inert, so the dogs drop their ears inert, lift their heads, swell their terrible throats and begin to howl in turn, like a cat wounded in the belly on a roof, like a woman in labour, like a man dying of plague in a hospital, like a girl singing some sublime air, against the stars of the north, against the stars of the east, against the stars of the south, against the stars of the west; against the moon; against the mountains lying far off like giant rocks in the darkness; against the cold air which they breathe with full lungs and which makes the interior of their nostrils red, burning; against the silence of the night; against the screech-owls whose oblique flight brushes their muzzles bearing a rat or a frog in their beaks, living food, sweet to their young; against the hares which disappear in the winking of an eye; against the thief who flies on his galloping horse after committing a crime; against the snakes stirring the heath, which makes their skin tremble and their teeth gnash; against their own howls which terrify them; against the toads which they bite with a sharp snap of their jaws (why did they leave the marsh?); against the trees whose leaves, gently rocked, are so many mysteries which they do not understand and which they try to fathom with fixed intelligent eyes; against the spiders, suspended between their long legs, which grasp the trees to save themselves; against the ravens which have found no food all day long and return on tired wings to their perch; against the rocks of the shore ; against the fire which appears on the masts of invisible ships; against the dull sound of the waves ; against the great fish which show their black fins as they swim and then plunge into the abyss; and against man who enslaves them. After which they once more dash across the country, leaping, with bleeding paws, over ditches, roads, fields, grasses and steep rocks. They are as if seized with madness, seeking a vast mere to quench their thirst. Their prolonged howls terrify nature itself. Woe to the belated traveller! These friends of the graveyard will hurl themselves upon him, tear him, devour him, with their mouths which run with blood, for they have not spoiled their teeth. The wild animals, not daring to approach to share the meal of flesh, slink trembling out of sight. After some hours the dogs, harassed by running hither and thither, almost dead, their tongues hanging out of their mouths, fall upon each other without knowing what they are doing and tear each other into a thousand shreds with incredible speed. They do not act thus from cruelty. One day, my mother, with glassy eyes, said to me: " When you are in bed and hear the howling of the dogs in the country, hide under your sheet, do not turn to derision what they do: they have the insatiable thirst for the infinite, like you, like me, like the rest of human beings with long pale faces. I even permit you to stand at the window and to watch this spectacle, which is sublime." Since that day I respect the wishes of the dead. Like the dogs I feel the necessity for the infinite. ... I cannot, I cannot satisfy that need ! I am the son of man and of woman according to what they tell me. That astounds me. ... I thought I was something very different! After all, what does my origin matter? If it had depended upon my own will I would rather be the son of a female shark, whose hunger is the companion of tempests, and of the tiger of recognised cruelty: I should not be so evil. You, who look at me, depart, for my breath exhales poison. None has yet observed the green lines on my forehead ; nor the starting bones of my meagre face which are like the bones of a great fish or like the rocks which cover the sea-shore, or like abrupt alpine hills over which I often wandered when I had hair of a different colour. And, when I ramble about the habitations of man during stormy nights, with ardent eyes, my hair beaten with the wind of tempests, isolated like a stone in the middle of a road, I cover my withered face with a piece of velvet black as the soot in the inside of chimneys: eyes must not be a witness of the ugliness which the Supreme Being has laid upon me with a smile of powerful hate. Every morning, when the sun rises for others, spreading salutary joy and warmth through all nature while not one of my features moves, watching fixedly shadow-filled space, crouched in the end of my beloved cave, in a despair which intoxicates like wine, I tear into ribbons with puissant fingers the flesh of my breast. Yet I know that I was not mad ! Yet I know that I am not the only sufferer ! Like a condemned man who tests his muscles while 374 THE EGOIST October 1, 1914 reflecting on their fate and knowing that he will soon die on a scaffold, so, standing on my straw bed with closed eyes I slowly turn my neck from right to left, from left to right, for whole hours at a time; I do not fall in a dead faint. From time to time when my neck cannot turn any further in one direction, and stops so as to turn in the opposite direction, I suddenly look at the horizon across the rare crevices left in the thick branches which cover the entrance: I see nothing! Nothing . . . unless it be the country dancing in whirlwinds with the trees and with long files of birds crossing the air. This troubles my blood and brain. . . . Who hits me on the head with a bar of iron like a hammer beating on an anvil 1 (To be continued.) Translator's Note.—This amazing work, of which we print here the first instalment, is, in some ways, one of the most marvellous achievement; in modern literature; The author was a Frenchman from Montevideo. His name was Isidore Ducasse but he assumed the nom de plume of Comte de Lautreamont. The book was written when the author was seventeen years old in 1867. Ducasse died of fever at the age of twenty. Had he lived, he might have been " one of the glories of French literature." As it is, the work remaining is extremely unequal. Lautreamont was not mad, in spite of all opinions to the contrary. This has been proved by M. L. Genonceaux, in his preface to the "Chants de Maldoror." Neither did he suffer from any form of sexual aberration. He was simply an audacious genius who dared to think what no one had thought before and who dressed his thoughts in such supreme irony that he really appears mad to the bourgeois intelligence of the modern world.

SOME ITALIAN SONNETS. (TRECENTO.) THE GARLAND OF MONTHS. By Folgore da Sax Gemigxiano. July. For July in Siena of the paven ways I give you narrow-waisted flagons of sweet white wine, and in your cellars iced vajano wines, and morning and evening you shall eat in company Of huge jellies, roasted partridges, young pheasants, boiled capons, sovereign kids, and—for those that like it—veal with garlic sauce. And let the good time and good life pass by, and go not outside for fear of the great heat, but wear within doors thin silk garments of fair fashioning; When you carouse, do so quietly, and always keep your tables replenished and long for no wife to spoil everything. Angust. For August I give you thirty castles in a valley of the mountainous Alps where no sea-wind blows, and where you shall be healthy and clear as a star; And palfreys for you to mount and ride at evening and morning. Let each of your lands be near the others so that a mile's riding be your whole clay's work Turning the whole time homewards. Through the valley shall flow a stream running gently day and night; And you shall stay in the shade all the noontide; and keep your purses always open-mouthed for the best cheer in Tuscany. September. For September I give you many delights: falcons, goshawks, merlins and hawks, bird-leashes, short lances, jesses and shooting-bags, little dogs with bells, good meat and gauntlets, Darts, straight long-carrying cross-bows, long-bows, arrows, bullets" and bullet-cases, moulting gerfalcons and goshawks taken from the nest, and all other soaring birds Which are good for attacking and seizing; and all the time you shall give to one another and steal (?) without quarrelling ,' And when you meet with other folk your purse shall be ready to spend and all of you shall send avarice into exile. October. For October I beg you, my sons, to go to a fair house in the country and take your ease and go a-fowling on foot or horse back as it pleases you ; In the evening you shall dance in the ball-room and drink sweet new wine and get tipsy; there is no better life than this in truth, and this is as true as that a florin is yellow. And after you get up in the morning, wash your face and hands; roast beef and wine are good medicine By the mass ! and so you shall be healthier than fish in a lake, or river-fish, or sea-fish, living moreover the better life of Christians. November. And for November you shall go to the baths of Petriuolo with thirty mules laden with money; let the street be covered with silk, silver cups and pewter bottles, And let all the shopkeepers make their profit out of you. Your torches and candlesticks shall come from Chiareta, and from Gaeta your lemon-flavoured sweetmeats ; and let each one drink and rejoice the company. The cold shall be great and your fires frequent ; pheasants, partridges, pigeons, ragouts, hares, roebucks, roast and boiled— Let your appetites be always ready for them • at night there shall be wind and pouring rain but you will be well tucked-up in bed. December. And for December I give you a city in the plain, ground-floor rooms and huge fires, woven carpets, chess boards and games, and lighted torches; and do you have always gifts in your hand ; And I give you for host a wine-bibber and a gourmet ; and dead pigs and most skilful cooks, neat morsels, each one good and sumptuous (?) and wine-butts huger than San Galgano. And you shall be well-clothed and wrapped in long gowns, mantles and cloaks, and in fine voluminous hoods ; And make scorn of sad vagabonds, of miserable mournful wretches; misers—have nought to do with them ! The Conclusion. My sonnet, to Nicholo di Nisi, he who is full of gentleness, say on my part with much gladness that I am ready to do him any service, And that his friendship and company are dearer to me than the worth of all Paris, and that if only he had the Emperor's riches he would stand with me better than Francis at Assisi. Commend me to him many times and to his company and to Anchaiono, without whom the joyful band could not be. ''Your Folgore da San Gemigniano," say, "sends this." And make this embassy; that you come thither with his heart in your hand. John Felton.

THE PROSE OF FREDERIC MANNING. By Richard Aldington. SOME time ago an article on the prose of W. H. Hudson was published in these columns. That article was written mostly because I admired Mr. Hudson's prose, but it was also written to defend a critical attitude very dear to a certain slightly elderly friend of mine. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, my article did not please this gentlemen, who remarked that it was "the most insulting thing he'd ever read," or words to that effect. Now, if that very humble appreciation of Mr. Hudson was too luke-warm for this partisan of his, I know that an appreciation of Mr. Manning will drive my friend into an ecstasy of contempt for me, for Mr. Manning, for everything we ever wrote or said or admired. All this, of course, has nothing to do with the reader of this article, but it has something to do with the October 1, 1914 THE EGOIST 375 critical attitude. For, apart from mere reviewing— which covers nearly all our "criticism" and is indeed merely a subsidiary publisher's puff—there are now two Critical attitudes. One is the "sound" attitude; it believes what the Universities believe; if it ventures to praise any author not approved by the Universities it does so for two reasons. First, because this person is probably the sort of person the Universities will approve, and secondly, from motives of personal friendship. Sir K. L.'s book must be praised because he is a Balliol man, because the book is "sound"—i.e., stodgy—and because he is a friend of the critic. The other critical attitude is perhaps a little more stimulating and amusing. It condemns ferociously all works of whatever eminence, genius or beauty whatsoever, if they deviate from its strict and original rules ; it abuses the critic's enemies, all the enemies of his family unto the third and fourth generation; en revanche, it praises all the critic's friends, all the friends of his family, of his wife and of his wife's friends. Thus, if we suppose that one of the critic's rules is that the word " cow " shall never be used on the same page as the word "cough," and that an author should violate this rule, it then follows that such a book is bad no matter what its merit may be. Or if a book be written by a friend of some enemy of the critic—the critic's enemy having attained a more lucrative and honourable position in the literary world—then again the book is bad. But if, on the other hand, the friend of some titled lady who is a friend of the critic's mother-in-law should write a book, then, ipso facto, the book is good. The miserable book-lover, having suffered from the members of both these schools, emerges, as it were, from a violent strain, pale, wan, and with thin locks. He says to himself, "All these things are wrong; also, they are all rot." He says, "Any book of which one single paragraph makes me think or makes me feel is a good book." But, alas, he soon finds that every book can make him feel or think something, if it be only to think the author of the book an unspeakable ass and to feel a potent yearning to kick him. "Somewhere, somewhere," he cries, "there must be a real critical attitude, which is no respecter of persons, which is appreciative of merit in any and every form, and which is not blinded by charlatanism and personal feeling !" Is there such a thing ? I like to think that Mr. Manning possesses it. We have gone rather far before coming to Mr. Manning, but this question of criticism is of the very essence of our literature. It needs constant discussion. A man of parts who could really work out an original, sincere criticism could determine the literary taste of the next twenty years. Ruskin did it in his time ; Pater in his. To-day we either copy these two or weakly and petulantly react against their ideas. As far as I can see we have three men to-day who might, without arrogance, pretend to the title of critic. These are Ford Madox Hueffer, Sturge Moore and Frederic Manning. Each of these gentlemen has curious limitations and none of them have the influence we should wish for them. Wisdom is still received coldly while folly stalks well-paid through the pages of the Press. Mr. Manning is the youngest of these three; if he is the least original in manner, he is not the least fertile in ideas. And he has fascination. It is true, he has kept something of the University attitude; the pale shade of Pater dims some of his best pages, and not all the delicate irony, which he has inherited from modern France, can purge his pages of perilous Paterisms. But—and this is a large but—the fact that Mr. Manning has been bold enough to adopt and even embellish the Epicurean attitude is remarkable at a time when such an attitude is in great discredit with all young men of parts. It is absurd and ignorant to say that Mr. Manning is a repetition of the "nineties"; he has simply read the books of more languages and centuries, looked at more pictures, heard better music and thought more imaginatively than most of his contemporaries. " Ataraxia, a withdrawing, a folding of the hands," a standing-aside from the great noisy concourse of the world—that is the key-note of Epicureanism. We live in a world of vain phantasmagoria with which men are ceaselessly and uselessly troubled before they learn wisdom. Men are moved by gross or trivial passions, by blind affections, by pitiful devotion to vain, sounding abstractions—glory, honour, affection—and the tears and the gladness of this mean multitude are nothing, the race of man is but a few dancing motes, a pinch of colured dust between the fingers of death. But beyond the world, beyond the great rivers of the ocean of space, sit the high gods calm in the cool golden air; there is no snow nor wind nor rain in that place; and the sighs and prayers of men fall at the feet of the gods but cannot trouble their ineffable happiness. That is what the Epicurean believes, and he believes that happiness exists in becoming as like the gods as is consistent with the poverty of human strength. "To contemplate with appropriate emotions the spectacle of life "—that, or something like it, is the Epicurean attitude. If, by chance, that were read to Mr. Manning, he would probably say that it was nonsense, that it was not Epicureanism at all, least of all his Epicureanism. A chacun sa philosophic is the motto to-day, for "all that we know is that we know nothing "—and even that is not certain. Still, Mr. Manning's "Scenes and Portraits" are, we may take it, a series of studies in chronological order putting forth the critical attitude of the modern Epicurean towards life and literature. Towards literature largely, for though Mr. Manning discusses contemporary theories with great insight, he does so a little languidly and seems to be much happier when he is speaking of the people of books, like all Epicureans who seem to derive the vicarious happiness promised by their philosophy through the contemplation of literature rather than through the contemplation of life. It is this fact which explains the extraordinary hatred of Epicureanism among the middle classes and among the writers of literary reviews. As a literary critic Mr. Manning is fascinating. There is not the faintest suspicion of charlatanism—with which so many of our writers are tainted—in any of his essays. He is always perfectly sincere, his views are mostly in accord with his main philosophy—I mean that he has no incoherences, no blatant contradictions, signs of fundamental insincerity—and he is often as original as a man can be in a world where nothing is new. At least one of his critical remarks, namely, where he says that the little genre pictures at the beginning of the cantos of the Divine Comedy are like large illuminated letters, has become classic among a small circle of his admirers. Indeed, his whole criticism of Dante is admirable. In a dialogue between Machiavelli and Thomas Cromwell— more in the manner of Pater than of Landor or Lucian— he criticises the political, religious and poetical aspects of Dante's poetry, and has some new appreciation, some new view-point for each of them. His decors are exact, and therefore beautiful. The villa at San Casciano is delicately described, unintentionally, as it were, by hints and casual remarks. The minds of Machiavelli and of Cromwell are indicated as much by their unconscious movements, by their clothes, by their jewellery even, as by their spoken words. And Mr. Manning, in each of his " scenes" has reproduced the manner of his period— a virtue our historical novelists cannot claim. For ¦instance, the letter written by Cromwell to his friend is, barring the spelling, so nearly like a piece of prose of the reign of Henry VIII. that it might have been written by the Blessed Sir Thomas More himself. Mr. Manning must be content to hear himself called an Epicurean, but the difference between his Epicureanism and that of Pater is that the latter seems always perfectly self-satisfied while Mr. Manning appears to suffer from a perpetual dissatisfaction. He seems to be struggling always towards something else, towards something more satisfying than Lucretius, but it looks as if he were damned by irony, the mark, the pleasure, and the curse of distinguished minds. Merodach, King of Ur, standing on his marble terrace, smelled the scent of flowers and heard the song of nightingales; and he grew sad thinking that he would die, and be forgotten, that his name and his palace and his people would be blotted out. When he does the 376 » THE EGOIST October 1, 1914 Epicurean thing, when he seeks ataraxia in the company of his wives, Mr. Manning cruelly comes to him in the person of Bagoas, the high priest, and macerates the soul of the unhappy Merodach with mellifluous ironies on the fragility of human happiness and the futility of human effort. Indeed, with all its charm and beauty, Mr. Manning's book reads like a commentary on the most famous quotation from Ecclesiastes. Merodach, Protagoras, Serenus —the friend of Paul—Cromwell, Machiavelli, Francis of Assisi, Innocent III., Renan, and Leo XIII.—through what Gourmont-like irony is it that Mr. Manning makes all these great men and their works seem vain and foolish? Perhaps it is not Ecclesiastes, perhaps he has only—like France, like Gourmont, like so many brilliant men of to-day—brooded something too deeply over the words of the " Master," as Mr. Manning calls him, over the tremendous lines of Lucretius. A book remains to be written on the influence of Lucretius on our time. In Mr. Manning's case the influence is shared by Plato among the ancients and Renan and France among the moderns. Perhaps The House of Euripides contains too many reminiscences of the divine dialogues, perhaps The Friend of Paul reminds one a little too much of the early part of Sur la Pierre Blanche, but one easily passes these trifles over in admiration for the general structure of Mr. Manning's book and for the many brilliant thoughts it contains. Dissatisfaction mingled with an exquisite appreciation of beauty, the irony of France wedded to the aesthetic perceptions of Pater—that is the book's character. Few people have loved more than Mr. Manning the poetry, the charm, the beauty of the life of Francesco Bernadone. But at the same time none of his lovers has so clearly realised the essential defects of the Franciscan movement. The Jesters of the Lord reads like an extract from the Fioretti, accompanied by a slightly ironical criticism. I do not recall anything I have read which was at once more beautiful, more pathetic and more ironical than the end of this exquisite essay. Francis and his followers returning gladly from Rome with permission to found the new order fall fainting by the roadside in the heat of the sun. A young man going by in a cart finds them and revives them with wine. When they got to Orte that night, Francis suddenly said, "That was an angel who succored us." And they marvelled that they had not known it sooner. "They were twelve fools," said the young man to his sweetheart. I called this "The prose of Frederic Manning," and I have not said a word about his prose ! It is, at least to certain tastes, a little too ornate, too finely chased, too precious. That is the inevitable result of the Epicurean attitude. But it is most certainly never cheap prose, and if we do not always hear Mr. Manning's own voice in his writing, if he gives us something which is less austere and restrained than the speech of "one gentleman talking to another" he has at least an academic grace of expression finer than any living Englishman and a felicity of epithet as mellifluous as that of Pater if not as precise as that of Anatole France. ART AND DRAMA. THE WAR AND SOME SURVIVALS. WAR has awakened the gregarious thrill. Patriotic devotion is about. The word soldier has not only originated a queer species of attachment between persons who are capable of murdering each other, but has become synonymous with every noble virtue. Of course all this glorification of the fifteen-penny hired cut-throat is the merest drivel of the drivelling. If soldiering in the beginning meant the strong gaining a natural advantage over the weak, it means so no longer. If war once had a biological cause and justification it has none to-day. In the old days every male member of a tribe went to war. Each went in obedience to primal instincts. Each knew that he must slay or be slain, that his own tribe would perish if it did not go out and exterminate an enemy tribe. That was the rule of the war game as it was played by physical natural selection. To-day the causes and justifications of war are not the same. If we analyse them we certainly cannot say they are biological. War as we know it is a form of political sport, and soldiers are creatures chosen for their fitness to take part in it. They are simply hirelings. Many I daresay have not an ounce of fight in them. They are bought to shoot or stab, and they go forth to shoot or stab, leaving the charlatans and weaklings behind them. This is the rule of the game as it is played by unnatural selection. * # # Modern war is the sport of kings, capitalists, political welshers, blacklegs, thieves, country snatchers, tricksters and journalistic loafers. It is approved by persons of mean intelligence. It is a dubious game, one to shudder at. Its chief aim is to make an end of the strong species. The German Emperor entered the present war with no illusion as to its killing off capacity. Pie foresaw that nine-tenths of his strongest Germans might "go down." But he was not so clear on other points. He declared that Germans were going to carry cultural enlightenment to the ends of the earth. But he did not say how they were going to do so with nine-tenths of their throats cut. Nor is the Kaiser's prophet, General von Bernhardi, more explicit. He states in his pamphlet on " Germany and the Next War," his conception of the biological cause and justification of the war and leaves it there. War, according to Bernhardi, is a natural law of the physical world; it is played both by the organic and inorganic. There is war in the air above us, in the earth beneath us, and in the waters under the earth. And I suppose there always will be war as long as micro-organisms, vegetables, animals and men have arms to fight with and long legs to bolt with. Apparently upon such physical facts Bernhardi builds up his wild doctrine of the inevitable-ness of war and its necessity to the advance of the German Empire. War, he seems to say, has produced the German super-professor. And he might have added, war will exterminate the said professor—if it lasts long enough. According to the Kaiser's intention, if the war began with the "flower of his flock," it will end with the " cats and dogs." . * * * Of course, Bernhardi is concerned with the physical basis of life, and has no apprehension of the metaphysical and mystic bases. Perhaps it is not unreasonable to say that war is inevitable upon physical conditions of existence, just as peace is inevitable upon spiritual or mystic conditions. The one presupposes material accretion with its enormous sacrifices of individual powers and joys; the other, spiritual simplification with its enormous gain of individual control of the great forces of life. The one breeds gregariousness, the willingness to serve others and the accompanying curse of mechanical drudgery, compulsion, service, and dirty work of all kinds for one's neighbour. The other fosters self-service, the power over self for self alone and not for the purpose of exploiting weaker selves. It may be that social service is at the root of modern war, and war will not cease till social service has been abolished. * * * War and conflict, then, have not a mystic basis simply because on the mystic basis conflict yields to unfolding. A mystic, in fact, is one who enters the kingdom of reality with the avowed object of attaining a reasonable self-interest in that kingdom. Nowadays he has no illusion about renunciation, and does not seek to become merged or lost in something or other. On the contrary, he hopes to find and assert his individualised soul, and to attain its highest strength and power by the simple process of unfolding in harmony with its spiritual environment. And it is conceivable that as he gradually finds and developes his Self in spirit, so all material objects become not only unserviceable but invisible to him. As he ascends he sees the light. And straightway all the things he knows, the burden of his five great physical needs, all that material civilisation has com- October 1, 1914 THE EGOIST 377 plicated, piled and fastened upon him, falls to the ground. He wants these things no longer. His soul will transmute Soul into sustenance. And as soon as Soul rules the body it will transmute that into its own. So he turns from physical to soul-subsistence. The natural effect of this development and the absence of disturbing forces, is the growth of inward peace and the consciousness that only through peace can man attain the highest strength and power. The inference from all this is that men must first be at peace with their own selves before they can be at peace with each other's self. * # * So it comes to this, that War or Conflict is the sign of man's physical consciousness; peace or unfolding, of his mystic consciousness. This distinction may be applied to plays. And if, as I believe, drama exists fundamentally in the motions of a fluid universe, and has, therefore, a mystic basis, only those plays which unfold in harmony with these motions, may be said to be truly dramatic. But I need not examine the point now. I hope to return continually to this subject of the mystic basis of Drama. The definition of Drama and the drama as un-warlike, affords a clue to the position of the English theatre and form of play both at the beginning and the end of the war. Roughly speaking, when war broke out both the English theatre and play had become thoroughly Germanised. I had just published a book on this aspect, of which the " Saturday Review " said: "The book is a long blast in favour of looking at the theatre in a true prospective. London is nowhere and nothing so far as the European art of theatre is concerned. It gets every vital idea after every other European capital has discarded it. . . . We cannot dance or sing or produce plays or light a stage without celebrating as a novelty something which has already been exhausted in Moscow or Berlin." Indeed, as the book shows, English producers have been busy for some time filching German ideas, notably those concerning the Repertory Theatre, ensemble acting, National Theatre and the application of the new principles of art to the theatre. Likewise the English playwright has borrowed the German dialectical form of play. Mr. Bernard Shaw seized on the form as the most suitable for agitating the country with Fabian schemes. Intellectually speaking, "the drama" at the beginning of the war was thoroughly militarised. * * ¦* What effect will the war have upon our study of German ideals? If, as some prophets maintain, the present war is going to kill the desire for war, it may put an end to the love of conflict in the theatre. A desire for peace might awaken a desire for plays with a mystic tendency. This would mean the encouragement of one German ideal at least. For it was Germany in the person of Wagner who made the modern discovery of the mystic form of drama, and bequeathed it to Craig, Reinhardt, and others. Wagner, in fact, introduced a fluid universe to the modern theatre. Ultimately, I hope, this universe will replace the grossly material world which now disgraces the theatre. In any case the seed is there. The German ideal has already initiated a search for intimacy, this being the first essential step in the wider search for the eternal principles and qualities of the Universal Spirit in the theatre. The war, as we know, has suspended the search, and for the moment Reinhardtism has disappeared from the London stage. All that remains is the rank odour of unintelligent imitation from "Kismet," and two recruiting plays that form an up-to-date variety of Parker's Potted Pageant. I will deal with the foolishness of the latter another time. The shrill stupidity of "Kismet" need not live so long. * * # "Kismet" exemplifies the commercial conception of play production. It has nothing to do with art, Let me illustrate my meaning by the respective conceptions of producing one act. The act in question is described as "The Courtyard of a Poor House." The commercial actor-manager's ideal is to produce a workmanlike act governed by the commercial laws of stagecraft. His great business in producing is to please the public and get knighted. In other words, to make a show of himself. So he is guided by two principles. The first principle is that the interest should be concentrated on him by every hackneyed mechanical device. The second principle is that the interest should be concentrated on him by the subordinate mimes. The principles are applied to the speech and acting, and not to the decorated screen projected by the act in order to conceal the bare walls of the stage and to heighten its own illusion. Obviously he does not understand the significance of the screen, nor its acting value, and is therefore unable to make it act. The result is an enormous waste of money and material. Hugh sums are spent on the "real thing" when an inartistic substitute would do. Interest is centred and frittered away on im-significant objects. And no intelligent use is made of decorations. They are false in key, have no relation to each other, and are obscured. For instance in " Kismet " a black figure is kept continually moving in deep black shadow. Thus, in the act under consideration, the screen (supplied to order by scene painter Harker), becomes an actor-manager's crude device for self-aggrandisement. # * * The ideal of the artist is different. He seeks to produce an act, having balance and harmony in all its parts and in which everything is subordinated to attain a single effect. His first business is to determine the screen demanded by the act. His second, to keep the lines and colours moving, composing and recomposing, to suggest the unfolding of the dominant and subordinate motives. In the act in question he is given a love motive which he is asked to unfold by means of three or four characters and his stock in trade of symbolic line and colour. Let us suppose that he sees this love motive creating the self-protective illusion of a courtyard whose walls are neutral in tone and Arabian in architecture. Across this background he draws a veil of grey and deep blue shadows. In thus starting with a cold register of neutralised reds, yellows, and greens, he would not only suggest the unhappy mood of the woman awaiting her lover, but allow himself scope for lifting the veil by raising the colours as the act proceeds. In order to show the process of lifting the veil let me briefly describe one or two details of the production. The first scene of the act is simply a preparation scene. The love woman is expecting her lover, and the author has provided her with an attendant old woman for the purpose of preparing for his entrance. Both are seated centre. In Mr. Oscar Asche's production the love woman wears a meaningless costume and is seated before a loom with two balls of unimportant coloured wool. In the reconstructed scene she is dressed in grey blue and seated against the blue black doorway up centre. In front of her is a green loom with four balls of coloured wool, green, violet, yellow, and red. Above the doorway is a balconied window draped with touches of bright colour expressing joy and passion, and announcing the coming of the lover. Everything being ready for his entrance the old woman exits. As she does so the veil begins to lift and the colours brighten. The grey blue love woman crosses l. and places the green loom against the deep violet door. She returns centre and scatters the balls of coloured wool with rapid movements of expectant joy. (At the Globe Theatre no use was made of the wools or the colours. They were packed in odd corners and left there.) The light through the arched opening a. begins to intensify and floods the woman and the r. half of the scene with a rich joyous yellow, while a red lime thrown on the l. half of the scene intensifies the reds and gives a purple tint to the shadows. The latter half of the scene is kept in shadow to indicate the coming of the woman's father and the shadow thrown by him upon the love interest. The blacks are now violet, the grey reds, crimson and the ' yellows, full-bodied orange. A note of red in the lamp at the balcony window announces the approach of the 378 THE EGOIST October 1, 1914 lover. At a cue from the love woman the lover enters through the arched opening a. in the full flood of the yellow light in which he remains bathed throughout. He is dressed in a neutral costume and carries a cloak with two surfaces, one neutral, the other crimson. He uses the crimson to intensify certain love passages. For instance, as he makes a passionate promise to return this passage of rich crimson added to the rich orange and intense blue purples, together with the energy of line of the architecture, helps to key the scene up to its highest note of intensity. Continuing in this way, then, the artist produces the act. His great aim is to keep his materials a part of the fluidity of the drama, and not to pour them into a cast iron mould after the manner of the actor-manager. * * # It will be gathered from this suggestion for reconstructing the principal love scene in "Kismet" that act-designing and picture-making are not the same thing. The studio artist has in fact many problems to solve before he can hope to take the stage. Not the least of these is that dealt with in the "Mask" for July. If he turns to "Some Architectural Designs of Padre Pozzo (1649-1709)" he will learn that in designing for the stage he has to consider the problem of sight-line. Owing to the peculiar construction of the conventional theatre only one spectator, or row of spectators— seated centre with heads raised a little above the level of the orchestra—ever obtain a proper and full view of the stage. The others spectators merely get a partial and exaggerated view. Pozzo, who was one of the first to show the stage wings as we know them to-day, and "the method of designing them," has left a number of plans, some of which the "Mask" reproduces. A study of these sectional views of the stage and auditorium reveals how scenery is cut up and the perspective altered, falsified, and destroyed by the sight-line operating from all parts of a grossly absurd auditorium. I should mention that the "Mask" usually arrives so late as to be almost too remote for review. The present issue was two months forthcoming. It wore an immaculate golden dress and a damp collar. Can it be that Florence was reluctant to part with its yellow offspring. Huntly Carter. THE SECRET OF DISILLUSIONMENT. THERE are two tragedies in life," said the late Oscar Wilde, " one is not getting what you want, and the other is—getting it." What the observation lacks is novelty—and of course it is as old as the hills—it makes up in epigrammatic neatness of form— and universality of application. We have nearly all experienced that disappointment which follows the tame dropping into our laps of boons which we have desired vainly so long that we have almost become accustomed to regarding them as unattainable. But we never get quite used to the surprise which attends this disappointment. The one thing that we supposed necessary to our complete happiness—be it wealth, fame, love's fulfilment, or what not—is here in our hands at last; and, lo and behold, we are no whit happier than we were while we lacked it! Or only so very little happier, and only for so very short a time ! The glamour of distance is replaced by the crude realism of propinquity; the mingled pain and pleasure of desire by the mingled pleasure and pain of possession — and criticism. Criticism! aye, there's the rub: we had so deliberately and determinedly ignored its possibility in connection with the object of our desire—while it was only that. Here, at any rate, we had felt (because we must and would feel so), is a something whose flawless perfection will convert into a fellow worshipper that little imp which has taught us to mock at so many former idols. For, this time, it is not a question of an idol but of a " divinity, that is to say, an ideal. But the little imp of criticism is not so easily converted: his bump of reverence is sadly to seek; he invariably declines to become a worshipper, much less an idolater. "Wood, wood ! " he exclaims, " mere painted wood, as usual, my credulous friend. So much for your divinity ! What is there ideal about painted wood? " And the worst of it is that we almost always end by agreeing with him: "How short-sighted we must have been. The imp is right as usual. It is wood, after all." Such, almost but not quite always, is the verdict of human consciousness upon its realised ideals. That is to say, that, almost but not quite always, they come to be accounted worthless, or, if indispensable, to be taken as mere matters of course. Possession has robbed them of nine tenths of their virtue: we wonder what on earth could have ailed us in the days when we craved them so madly, valued them so highly. We must have been temporarily mad. The fact is that achievement is a test of sincerity, and a test from which very few emerge unscathed. It is also a test of the fastidiousness, or, more often, of the careless caprice, with which we have chosen our so-called "ideals." Most people have an unhappy knack of persuading themselves that they cannot do without anything which happens to attract them, provided only that it is for the moment beyond their grasp. They do not really want it; but they allow themselves to become obsessed by the idea that it is indispensable. That makes them happily miserable, because they feel that they have a grievance against destiny. There is nothing that sentimental people—and most people are sentimental—enjoy more. No wonder, then, that such people are disconcerted when ironic destiny gives them what they fancy they desire. They have gained a white elephant, and lost their pet grievance. It is in two ways a bad bargain. Their white elephant is inconveniently real: it makes real demands, which they are far from prepared to meet. Their lost grievance made none at all. They have to readjust their lives to the possession of their white elephant: to build a pagoda for it in their back garden, so to speak, and to supply its abundant needs. How exasperating that is to a sentimental dreamer, I need scarcely insist. The exceptions to the above rule of disillusionment are the almost negligibly few individuals who are capable of genuine desires. These are they who realise in advanc| the claims which their ideal will make when it becomes an actuality, and quietly prepare themselves to meet them, should they ever arise. They are conscious from the first of the element of glamour which in great measure accounts for the attraction of their ideal. They make proper allowance for that element, while at the same time utilising it as a motive power in working for their aim. No matter if it proves ephemeral; for the present it exists and constitutes a source of power. Such people, even if, on attainment, they are conscious of some disillusionment, are by no means disconcerted, because they have, all along, anticipated its occurrence. The predominant feeling is one of great satisfaction in that they have obtained what they genuinely desired. That it proves itself real by participating in the general imperfection of reality, is far from being a grave deduction from its value in their eyes: is, indeed, a main factor of its abiding charm. Having achieved one aim of existence, they go on to strive for the next. Charles J. Whitby.

ECSTASIES. When you approach I close my eyes To listen better, For, like the wind, Running through The eolian harp Your love, The sight of you, Your very recollection, Bestirs a music in me Fulfilling the promise Of instruments. M. C. October 1, 1914 THE EGOI ST 379 CONTRASTS. When you are not by my side, dearest, You are a stranger. You do not love me. I do not love you. You might be an hemisphere away Or dead. When you are by my side, dearest, Nothing exists but you. In you are sun and warmth and light And consolation And the very air I breathe, I am through you. When you depart I fail into space Darkness closes round me, I sink within myself And would fain be nothing And sleep. Until the hour of your return And I am faced by the pain Of meeting, or not meeting you. RONDEAU. I never even saw you But I felt you And heard you. Not a word had you spoken And I knew your desire. I felt your caress Before your lips touched mine. M. C.

CORRESPONDENCE. Note to Correspondents.— While quite willing to publish letters under noms de plume, we make it a condition of publication that the name and address of each correspondent should be supplied to the Editor.—Ed. # * * CONSCIENCE AND INTEREST. To the Editor, The Egoist. Madam, My remarks on classification seem to have had some effect on Miss Marsden, and she now recognises that one person can belong to several classes, whether the classification is by Initiative or by some other feature. In fact, as I said before, "initiative is never absent, and never twice alike." This is what makes generalisations about human classes so apt to be mere verbalisms. I will now try to show that some more of Miss Marsden's philosophy is merely verbal. Anarchist and Archist are not different persons, they are the same person seen from two sides. The Archist, by Miss Marsden's definition, is "one who seeks to establish the law of his own interests." Now the interest of the Anarchist is to live in a world where no one rules or is ruled. Hence every Anarchist seeking to win this ideal is an Archist. (By the way, I wish Miss Marsden would make her new words from some other source than the overworked and confusing Greek roots). It is indeed a most ludicrous error to assume that interests are all material—(page 342 of the last issue)— yet the gist of page 343 is that immaterial interests are "poetic babble." Nobody with any strength ever really fights to "Right the Wrong," thinks Miss Marsden, but I seek in vain some other set of words which will intelligibly express the motive of the average Briton in favouring war against Germany. Miss Marsden gives no help except some vague phrases about status and prestige. I don't know anyone who has any status or prestige, or wants any (I know I don't), yet I know some hundreds of people quite ardent for the war, and some who have gone to risk their lives. The fact is that the Humanitarianism, which Miss Marsden thinks so much weaker than Interest, is almost the strongest Interest there is. None but a few elementary physical needs are anything like so strong. He who can enlist it on his side nearly always wins; that is why all sides try to enlist it. "Merely the collective self-interest of the non-fighters," Miss Marsden will reply. Perhaps so; but in that case why call it poetic babble? For most non-fighters are possible fighters, and the collective interest of 2,000 million people makes a force which the force-worshipper must respect at his peril. That is why "noble eloquence" is not a mere sentimental satisfaction to oneself, as Miss Marsden seems to think, but a very practical weapon; it cements a million weak fibres into a club which would defy the axe of the superman even if he existed. (Miss Marsden says no-one speaks of the super-man now. I regret to see her so much afraid of Public Opinion as to let it defraud her of a convenient name. An Egoist should lead Public Opinion, not follow it). Humanitarian sentiment is stronger than melinite or turpinite, for it always controls them. Has not Miss Marsden observed the equisite humane sentiments which the Kaiser distributes from aeroplanes in Poland, and which rises in chorus from all the German newspapers, and in the letters found on German soldiers? Mere humbug, says Miss Marsden perhaps. Do people throw away their lives for humbug? Success justifies any cause, says Miss Marsden, and instances Cromwell's reputation as a kingly hero. I was brought up to think him a murderous hypocrite. I do not think so now, but most of the people I meet do, especially the young ones. As for Alexander, I never heard anyone admire him yet. Napoleon would have been a better example for Miss Marsden, only she chooses him as an example of failure unjustifying a cause! Caldwell Harpur.

Alston, Cumberland. EDITORIAL. Letters, andc, intended for the Editor should be addressed to Oakley House, Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C. PUBLICATION. All business communications relative to the publication of The Egoist should be addressed, and all cheques, postal and money orders, andc, made payable to The New Freewoman, Ltd., Oakley House, Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C, and should be crossed " Parr's Bank, Bloomsbury Branch." Terms of Subscription.—Yearly, 13/- (U.S.A., 3 dollars 25 cents); Six Months, 6/6 (U.S.A., 1 dollar 63 cents); Three Months, 3/3 (U.S.A., 84 cents). Single Copies 7d., post free to any address in the Postal Union. ADVERTISEMENTS. All orders, letters, andc, concerning advertisements should be addressed to the Advertisement Manager, The Egoist, Oakley House, Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C. 380 THE EGOIST October 1, 1914 READERS of THE EGOIST are asked to become SUBSCRIBERS This is the most effectual way of helping the Paper. SUBSCRIPTIONS must be sent to The New Freewoman Ltd., Oakley House, Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C. All Cheques, Money Orders and Postal Orders should be crossed " Parr's Bank, Bloomsbury Branch," and made payable to The New Freewoman Ltd. For Terms of Subscription see below. Poetry A Magazine of Verse. Endeavours to publish the best poems now written in English; Reviews and discusses new books and verse : Promotes in every possible way the interests of the art. If you believe that this art, like painting, sculpture, music, and architecture requires and deserves public recognition and support, subscribe. POETRY, 543, Cass Street, Chicago, U.S.A. Send Poetry for one year ($1.50 enclosed) beginning __to Name Address _____ - THE EGOIST Subscription Form Please send me THE EGOIST for __from__ for which I enclose Name, Address TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION :- Yearly ••• 13/- ; U.S.A., 3 dollars 25 cents. Six Months ... 6 6; Three Months 3 3; 1 dollar 63 ..... 84 Orders should be sent to The New Freewoman, Ltd., Oakley House, Bloomsbury Street, London, W.C. All Cheques, Money Orders, and Postal Orders should be crossed " Parr's Bank, Bloomsbury Branch," and made payable to The New Free-woman, Ltd. The Drama 736, MARQUETTE BUILDING, CHICAGO. A Quarterly devoted to the Development of a Wide and Intelligent Interest in Drama. Each issue of THE DRAMA contains a translation of a complete play. These plays, not otherwise accessible in English, represent especially the leading dramatists of the continent. THE DRAMA, in addition, devotes attention to modern stagecraft, new types of theater building, organisations for drama reform,': little theater " movements, and all pertinent subjects. Significant books on dramaturgy are reviewed. Single copies, seventy-five cents. Yearly Subscription, three dollars. Printed by Partridge and Cooper. Ltd.. Fleet Street. London, E.C., and published by the Proprietors The New Freewoman, Ltd., at Oakley House, Bloomsbury Street, London W.C.