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diff --git a/76075-0.txt b/76075-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..60f8009 --- /dev/null +++ b/76075-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,953 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76075 *** + + + + + + THE LITTLE REVIEW + + + Literature Drama Music Art + + MARGARET C. ANDERSON + EDITOR + + SEPTEMBER, 1916 + + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + Light Occupations of an Editor + The San Francisco Bomb Case: + What Can a Poor Executioner Do? Robert Minor + The Labor Farce Margaret C. Anderson + And—— + New York Letter Allan Ross Macdougall + The Reader Critic + Facts About the Bomb + The Vers Libre Contest + + Published Monthly + + 15 cents a copy + + MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher + Montgomery Block + SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. + + $1.50 a year + + Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, San Francisco, Cal. + + + + + THE LITTLE REVIEW + + + VOL III. + + SEPTEMBER, 1916 + + NO. 6 + + Copyright, 1916, by Margaret C. Anderson + +_The Little Review_ hopes to become a magazine of Art. The September +issue is offered as a Want Ad. + +... “The other pages will be left blank.” + +[Illustration: _Light occupations of the editor while there is nothing +to edit._] + + SHE PRACTICES EIGHTEEN HOURS A DAY AND— + + —TAKES HER MASON AND HAMLIN TO BED WITH HER + + BREAKFASTING + + CONVERTING THE SHERIFF TO ANARCHISM AND VERS LIBRE + + SUFFERING FOR HUMANITY AT EMMA GOLDMAN’S LECTURES + + [Illustration: _(Continued.)_] + + GATHERING HER OWN FIRE-WOOD + + SWIMMING + + THE STEED ON WHICH SHE HAS HER PICTURE TAKEN + + THE INSECT ON WHICH SHE RIDES + + + + + The San Francisco Bomb Case + + + What Can a Poor Executioner Do Against a Man Who Is Willing to + Die?[1] + + ROBERT MINOR + +I am glad that it’s Ed Nolan, Tom Mooney, Rena Mooney, Warren Billings, +and Israel Weinberg who are in jail at San Francisco, awaiting death—or +_friends_. Not that I want such men and women to meet death, but I wish +the friends to be able to come to the rescue, knowing that they are +worthy of the best effort that rebel ever put forth for an individual. +We are so tired of the revolter who whines when his turn comes to pay. +So we can almost laugh with an almost glee in the thought that we shall +not be cheated this time; these rebels do not whine. + +This is not a McNamara case. The prisoners are not going to “confess.” +Even if they wanted to, they’d have to get the prosecutor to write their +confession for them, for they did not cause the Preparedness Parade +explosion. I know they didn’t, as you would know it had you read the +transcript of the testimony on which the Grand Jury indicted them, or if +you could observe their open efforts to provide every possible light on +their actions. + +Dirty Hearst tried to lynch them. So did all the rest. All the rats from +the cellar of life—Pastors of the Lord, Broadminded Editors, Illustrious +Exceptions, etc., turned tail and ran—or helped in the near-lynching. +All except _one Catholic priest_! + +They all thought it was 1886, that “the anarchists were to be +hanged”—and one doesn’t believe in that _kind_ of thing, you know, and +can’t sacrifice one’s great opportunity to good in general—and every +skunk would stink alike, so all would be well. + +But this is _not_ 1886, and there _have_ been some to come forward, and +the men and woman are going to be saved. With all Prominent Persons in +their holes, a few unimportant workingmen, between announcements of +their own hangings to come, have stirred up some of the labor unions to +an extent that you would never believe possible, to do the unheard-of +thing to be loyal to their fellow members. + +The International Workers’ Defense League, thoroughly discredited, as +the papers announce, by having defended every labor rebel of recent +American history, is taking contributions to the enormously expensive +work. Simply to gather evidence and enlighten the few thousand who are +not afraid, and to pay a high-priced lawyer to array the evidence—that +is what we want your money for. Send it to the International Workers’ +Defense League, Robert Minor, Treasurer, Room 210 Russ Building, San +Francisco. + +And know that if we lose this fight it will be because a horde of +“business men” have been judge, jury, and prosecutor against their five +rebel enemies. It will not be because our men have flinched. When Ed +Nolan says “the fear of death is the beginning of slavery,” he speaks +the spirit of the five. We shall not be ashamed of these. + + + The Labor Farce + + MARGARET C. ANDERSON + +I really must say what I think about this ridiculous bomb business. + +You will find the facts of the case, about the five innocent people who +were indicted and why the Chamber of Commerce wanted them indicted, on +page twenty-nine. But what happened after the indictment is more +interesting and more horrible to me. + +The five victims were put into jail. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman +and a few other anarchists began a fight for them,—raising +money for lawyers, etc. The labor unions began to raise +money. After about three weeks of argument and hesitation +and won’t-it-be-better-to-go-a-little-slow and +is-it-advisable-to-distribute-pamphlets, etc., etc., no lawyer had been +engaged and none of the “workers” could agree about what “stand” to +take: would it be better to express sympathy openly with the +anarchists—(none of the five has ever claimed to be an anarchist, I +believe)—or would it be wiser to try to prove they were not anarchists, +or would it be safer to get a small lawyer who costs little and is worth +nothing or a big one who costs too much and might do something, or would +it be more expedient to keep out of it altogether, etc., etc., etc.,—or +shall we just do the best we can even if it isn’t much? Do you think +there was a single worker with the incredible inspiration to “do the +most we can and make sure that it is very much”? I saw Emma Goldman and +Berkman brooding over this strange and awful spectacle like two prophets +whose souls are slowly petrifying under the antics of their disciples. + +Just here some one told me a story. Once upon a time Björnstjerne +Björnson, up in Norway, heard of a little French seamstress who was +accused of murder in Paris. She was poor and quite unbefriended and +there was practically no chance of her receiving justice. Björnson +hurried to Paris, took her case, and won it in the French courts, in +French, for the simple joy of doing something he believed in. + +Can you imagine that happening in America? There isn’t a single labor +lawyer in the country who ever does it. If there are any who are willing +they are not able; if they are able they are not allowed. C. E. S. Wood +tried to do it for Caplan and Schmidt, but the workers themselves +prevented him from taking the case. They kept him trotting between +Portland and Los Angeles while they decided that it would be fatal to +have him come straight out with the fact that it was a labor fight. +Sometimes I imagine a young god springing up in labor ranks strong +enough to rush in and fight the courts for his people, young enough to +devote his life to it, naive enough to do it for an idea rather than for +a fee, and ironic enough to do it whether his people want it or not. + +But to continue about the bomb. Finally a prominent lawyer was found—one +whose name carried enough weight to impress even the important and +ignorant San Francisco citizens who were howling about “anarchists.” But +the fee he charged before even touching the case was so large that Emma +Goldman and the unions could raise only half of it, and the rest was +supplied by the daughter of a man whom the workers would call a +capitalist and whose money they would repudiate as having been drained +from the blood of their class. She not only supplied the money; she said +she would stand behind the victims if it took the last cent she had—_not +merely because they were innocent_; and the only thing she asked was +that the money should be used in a direct and active way and not for the +pretending and denying and covering up that characterize all labor +fights in this country. Well, I wouldn’t get half so disgusted with +labor if it would ever acknowledge that vision is not necessarily a +matter of class. It is almost terrifying to watch a labor propagandist +think. If he is talking about Henry Ford, for instance, he will sketch +the picture of a man who has created a $5 a day minimum wage only by +such speeding-up of labor that labor is too nerve-racked to benefit by +it; so that Ford becomes a clever rascal who makes labor rich only to +make himself richer. Of course Ford is an idealist of appalling and +marvelous simplicity, in quite the same position that an anarchist would +be whose scheme had begun to work, and no more to blame for the spots in +which it didn’t work. + +The propagandist can’t think. But for that matter only one kind of mind +really does _think_, and that is the artist kind. I mean this: only the +artist mind sees that this is the way things happen in the world and +refuses to sentimentalize over it or _to do nothing about it_. Here are +five labor people misunderstood by “society,” unchampioned by “labor,” +and rescued by the bloody capitalist who has neither the limitations +with which labor endows capital nor the limitations with which capital +endows labor. What fun! And some of the propagandists will feel like +“Major Barbara” about accepting that money. Only the artist mind knows +that it doesn’t matter where the money comes from: money is money, and +it is made of slavery whether it comes from a financier or a +coal-digger. Only the artist mind.... + + * * * * * + +Of course the point of the whole business is this: the labor farce isn’t +confined to labor: it is merely the farce in which all people +contentedly luxuriate. It is a matter of rebellions that never become +real. + +There is the sixteen-year-old girl living in the midst of a typical +American family. Now, no one can live long in such a place without +losing his mind—unless he has none to lose. But let the girl try to get +out of that hideous hell and the family detectives can have her back in +a minute and arrest any one who tried to help her as an abductor. + +Such a thing happened the other day in Chicago. It happens every few +minutes all over the earth. The only way to get out of such a mess is +_to get out of it_—detectives, jails, families and friends to boot. +Follow through! Make it real! Your friends can’t afford to be very real: +one of them probably has a family to support and the others probably +couldn’t stand the horror of being in the papers! But a girl or a boy +can stand up to _anything_. If they can’t their old age will find them +among the rest of the botched and the weak. + +Ed Nolan says that the fear of death is the beginning of slavery. I +think it may be that the fear of life is the very beginning. + +---------- + + [1] The facts of the bomb case in detail will be found on page + 29. + + + + + And—— + + +There is Frank Harris’s _Oscar Wilde: His Life and Confessions_—a book +that will never disturb Wilde’s legend here, his peace of mind where he +has gone, nor his reputation as an artist anywhere. + + * * * * * + +Chicago—always bragging about having a sooner eye for Art.... And +Sokoloff out here in San Francisco.... And the Chicago Orchestra being +led on to the goal of music by efficiency like the Germany army getting +to Paris. + + * * * * * + +At the Grand Opera in Paris, in the première of _The Miracle_, an opera +by two young Swiss, I saw the great Marthe Chenal, who will sing in the +Chicago Opera Company this winter. I have had a creative memory of her +for five years. But I wonder what will become of it up against that +pinnacle of earthly glory, Mary Garden. + + * * * * * + +A. C. H. in _Poetry_ has done all that can be done for the new quarterly +_Form_. “Form”—that’s a name to start hope and the imagination; and then +... we have a story we’ll print sometime called “The Funny Shape.” + + * * * * * + +Why so much comment on John Cowper Powys’s _One Hundred Best Books_? +Powys should never write anything. People like Q. K. in The New Republic +come about as near to getting Powys as they would come to catching a +comet. Powys is not for culture-snatchers, matinee girls, or glorifiers +of the obvious. He is merely for those possessed enough of their +imaginations to fall for a miracle when they see one. Who goes to hear a +lecture on Nietzsche and Dostoevsky to find out what Powys thinks of +those men? You go—hoping through the gloom of Nietzsche and Dostoevsky +to catch a flash of Powys. Powys is the best thing that has come to +us—that mad wolf! I always feel sorry for Velasquez that he never had a +chance at him. + + * * * * * + +“Everything is just perfect,” as our Editor so ecstatically says: +Paderewski will make three concerts in San Francisco this month. + + * * * * * + +The Roadside Press is to come out with a Chicago Anthology, a hundred +and fifty poems, by Chicago authors. As _Poetry_ would say: “Most of +these appeared first in _The Little Review_; and will probably be +reprinted without any acknowledgment whatever.” + + * * * * * + +We have been waiting for what we hoped would be a good comment on +Sherwood Anderson’s first novel, _Windy McPherson’s Son_. All we will +say now is that it’s so much worse than Sherwood should ever be. + + * * * * * + +A few years ago you couldn’t talk to any one who wasn’t writing a play. +Now you can’t talk to any one who isn’t starting a theatre. If everyone +is mad for theatres, who are they that aren’t? Or why haven’t we +municipal theatres? One, out of all this, and that in the town of +Northampton, Massachusetts; and that isn’t what any one but a town would +call a municipal theatre. Sometime I’ll write about Donald Robertson’s +idea for a municipal theatre. He is always damned for being an +idealist—a sure sign that what he has is an idea. + + * * * * * + +Rabindranath Tagore is coming back to America to lecture. Go, if you +have never seen that slight presence with features drawn of air—with +eyes that seem never to have looked out—and let him put that white spell +of peace upon your complex futility. + +You sometimes wonder why men like Dr. Coomaraswamy come telling us +border-ruffians of Art about Ajanta frescoes and sculpture and the music +of India. Perhaps they know our homesickness and know that alone we +can’t even find the road. + + * * * * * + +Bernhardt is coming again. Well, that’s all right, too. And those who +jeer at her age never could have appreciated her youth. But you, young +ones, see her; and have the double joy of seeing her now; and, if you +have it in you, you will see her then, too. + + + At bottom everything in literature is useless except literary + pleasure, but literary pleasure depends upon the quality of + sensibility. All discussions die against the wall of personal + sensibility, which is flesh on the inside and on the outside a + wall of stone. There is a way to turn it about, but this you do + not know.—_Remy de Gourmont._ + + + + + New York Letter + + + ALLAN ROSS MACDOUGALL + + + _A New Playhouse and a New Play_ + +I have always felt that the hope of a new spirit in the theatre will +come not so much from amateurs and their talking organizations as from +the rebels within the theatre and the work they can accomplish. I agree +with Gordon Craig when he says that no one has any right to meddle with, +and potter about, the theatre who does not know it from the inside. In +no other field is there such a gang of busy bodies—old women of both +sexes, who have the ignorant reformers talking sense developed to such a +pernicious degree. The air is dark with the empty words they belch +forth, but from their deeds the world remains light and free. If the +regeneration of the theatre from the base influences that now possess +it, is to take place it will not, I am sure, be by the work of the drama +leagues and so-called “art” theatres. The work of such managers as J. D. +Williams and producers like Granville Barker and B. Iden Payne does more +for the theatre by the working out of certain ideals than all the talk +about those ideals and the jumbling with them by the old ladies’ leagues +and the “arty” amateurs. A plague on them all! + +In New York this season a new theatre is to be opened. Helen Freeman, +who for a time was a Belasco star and later the leading woman with +William Gillette, is to own and direct this latest attempt to establish +a new spirit in the theatre. With Miss Freeman will be associated a +group of six professional actors. All of them, like their director, have +ideals which they plan to work for. For the first few months they are to +produce one-act things. Among them will be plays by Evreinov, a young +Russian not yet “discovered” by this rapacious country; two plays by the +Spanish dramatist, Jacinto Benveneto, of whose seventy-five excellent +plays not one has yet been given here; plays by other unknown European +dramatists; new plays by Zoë Akins, Witter Bynner, Rollo Peters, and +other American writers. + +Miss Freeman has chosen as a name for this interesting theatre the hour +of the curtain rise. It will therefore be known as “The Nine o’Clock +Theatre.” Much is expected from Miss Freeman and much from her theatre. +Success to it, and to her! + + + _A New Play_ + +When I heard that a new fantastic play was to be produced by Arthur +Hopkins, and that the scenes and costumes were to be designed by Robert +Edmond Jones, I booked seats as early as I could. I remembered the work +of Jones in Anatole France’s _The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife_ and his +work on the inner scenes and costumes of the Shakespeare Masque. Both +were the works of a new decorative genius who had much to give to our +theatre that is barren of the work of artists. I expected much of the +new play, and lo! what was disappointment was waiting there. + +The play first. It is the story of a princess of a mythical land, whose +lover has been killed in war and who in the last act joins him. (The +play is named _The Happy Ending_). The curtain rises on a dark forest, +through which the princess is wandering and posing, and mumbling and +moaning to herself. Comes then three Maeterlincian maidens also mumbling +and playing chorus to themselves. Exit the mumbling maidens and enter +the King and Queen of this mythical land. Mumbleth then these two for a +while, till, without any warning, the King bluntly asks the Queen for a +child! Yes! Right there in the forest he does it. It’s the last thing +one expects in a fantasy, this realistic demand for a son and heir. But +that’s a minor point. Like many another thing that happened, it had +nothing to do with the drama. + +After a dreary scene, in which the wandering princess seats herself on +some potato sacks and mumbles to the accompaniment of “yes, princess,” +“no, princess,” spoken at half minute intervals by a dull-witted +woodsman, the curtain rises on a scene, entitled in the programme “The +Hereafter.” What a Hereafter! A bank of sunburnt stage grass: a bilious +yellow tree: much amber light. Crowds of children with squeaky voices +lolled and pranced about the place. The authors seem to have taken their +cue from the old hymn: + + Little children will be there, + Who have sought the Lord in prayer; + In Heaven we all shall meet, + Oh that will be joyful! + +I can assure you that it was anything but joyful. A sort of stagey joy +was evident but not a sight of the real spontaneous feeling. There was a +sort of Queen-hostess, who welcomed everyone. I have an idea she was +Mrs. God or maybe assistant to St. Peter. She wore an elaborate shiny +yellow evening gown; and a set smile after the fashion of the ladies in +charge of Y. W. C. A. hostels on earth. A nice, well-spoken motherly +sort of person this Queen was, who did her best to make everybody feel +at home. + +When there was a wreck at sea or a railway accident, many male and +female supers waddled their bodies in joyous movement across the stage +and laughed and made mouthy noises. Oh, so glad they were to be in +Heaven after the shocks they had gone through on earth. It was curious +to note that they all entered Heaven with whole bodies and unmessed +clothes, these merry wreck and collision victims. + +When the curtain rings down on the scene of the Hereafter it does so to +the sound of cheering. And why? A whole army has just been annihilated, +and to the tune of “John Brown’s Body” their spirits are marching toward +Heaven. And so the happy inhabitants of the Hereafter must cheer to +think of this influx to their land. After the tawdry Heaven one is +refreshed by the beauty of the unnecessary scene, “On the way to the +islands of sleep.” They still use rowboats in that land it seems, but as +they are rowboats with beautifully lighted innards one doesn’t object +very much. One does object, however, to the next scene. It is called +“Space.” Imagine Space as a back-drop sprinkled with stars like an +old-fashioned frosted Christmas Card. In the middle of this a scarlet +circle with the continents of North and South America painted in a muddy +brown color. A sorry picture of space to come from an imaginative +artist. + +The last scene, and the best from the scenic and dramatic standpoint, +takes place in the palace of the King. Here comes the princess after +having wandered through the forest awake and the Hereafter in a dream, +and after falling in some queer kind of fit dies and so joins her dead +lover and the rest of the cosmopolitan group in Heaven. + +A mess by masters! A very messy mess. A sloppy play to start with. Bad +acting to carry it along. Mediocre music and stage setting that seem to +have been influenced by the play instead of rising above it. I await +with interest to see the work that Jones is to do for the Russian +Ballet. He will have his chance to re-establish himself. I’m sure he is +artist enough to grasp it. + + + + + The Reader Critic + + + Infantile Paralysis + +_D. H., New York_: + +Congratulations! You have the capacity for suddenly turning back and +becoming young enough to say “All or nothing.” And subconsciously +realizing that you will get mostly nothing, you threaten your readers +with blank pages. And all those who thought that _The Little Review_ did +publish only artistic writing have had the veil torn from their eyes and +their faith in you begins to waver. Perhaps to vanish altogether! + +Is all of the _Meistersinger_ one continuous “Preislied”? Is all of +Beethoven equal to his “Ninth”? Is all of Pachman as marvelous as his +Chopin? All or nothing! You would feast, and have your readers feast, +upon the perfection of art and give them none of its strivings? + +Your challenge will remain unanswered. If you dare, or through sheer +carelessness, allow this to appear in the next issue, I shall suspect +you of considering the writing of an artist a work of art—even though he +speak not in his own tongue. + +Your challenge will remain unanswered! For who are _you_, to expect a +staff of ready geniuses to fill your pages? You should be grateful for +one pearl you may find among hundreds of near-jewels. And the world is +grateful for one _Ave Maria_ (Schubert) among a thousand near-songs. I +preach no gospel of meekness to you, for I know you will turn again and +leave your youthful—nay, puerile,—cry of “All or nothing.” It is the cry +of the mad—of the foolish, impatient ones! You only want the miracle? +You are like the child crying for the moon and, like him, you will +accept a round cheese instead. + +Do come to New York, and I will play more than an hour uninterrupted for +you, and perhaps for five minutes (if I am lucky) you will have a +miracle. If I am unlucky you will have only a near-miracle, which will +be just very good violin playing. + + * * * * * + +But what did I say about wanting only the perfection of art and none of +its strivings? I said—Art. That includes the strivings, doesn’t it? +Surely we needn’t go back to definitions. Ezra Pound has a nice analysis +somewhere—to this effect: In such measure as an artist expresses himself +truthfully, he will be a good artist; in such measure as he himself +exists, he will be a great one. I want a record of the process of that +“existing” from as many artists as possible. The process of each will +include many things that are not perfection, but who ever told you that +perfection and Art are synonymous terms? Some one sent me a sketch, in +answer to my editorial, with this note: “You said you wanted Beauty. I +am sending you something which I think has it.” I thought it had beauty, +too; but it had no Art. What do you people think I meant by the +“miracle”? I meant simply those _strivings and achievements_ which show +that the great process is really “on.” We published Ben Hecht’s _Night +Song_. It had much beauty and no perfection, but it had Art quite apart +from either of those elements. Amy Lowell’s poems (not _Off the +Turnpike_) have an Art that happens to include perfection. The “miracle” +was very much present in _Malmaison_, for instance. Flint’s _London My +Beautiful_ has it. The principal trouble is that miracles usually have +to be explained to be recognized. It’s like the painter who took a +friend to hear Powys. The friend went to hear what Powys had to say—“and +I told her what he looked like,” said the painter—_M. C. A._ + + * * * * * + +From your letter you sound like a lot of other young things paralyzed by +smugness and complacency. You become a one-stringed instrument and you +hope to play the violin. If you dared to be an artist, and all that +means of madness and impatience and foolishness and crying for the moon, +you’d dare promise more than five minutes miracle in an hour. It would +be outside of promises.—_jh._ + + + A Word From Real Art + +_Frank Lloyd Wright, Chicago_: + +The less money _The Little Review_ has the better it _looks_ anyway! +Your resolve is interesting—but it looks like the end.... I don’t see +where you can find the thing you need. + +But miracles do happen—I wish I had a million or a pen. + + + Freudian + +_A Contributor, Chicago_: + +_The Little Review_ sickens me. I don’t understand why in the devil you +talk imagism and color and beauty and fill your magazine full of that +sputtering trash, that colorless-degenerate edgarleemasters junk. Why +not leave blank pages? And your article.... Good Lord!... It was like +warm candle grease just after the little candle flame has been sniffed +out. I see and feel _The Little Review_ as a case of feminine callowism +gone mad. + +The idea of writing anything about Masters fills me with disgust. +Masters doesn’t even inspire me with rage. I regard his work as a +pretentious mediocrity. There isn’t a poem in his books that I couldn’t +have written myself in twenty minutes on a typewriter. Why write about +Masters? He’s only one of the many dub artists overrunning the country. +He isn’t to blame, even if he is cocky about his success. In fact, he is +to be commended for putting it over. The fault, in my mind, lies with +the great tribe of morons who yap over his doggerel—pro or con. I have +read three or four things in his first book, and as many in his second +book, and I see no occasion for rubbing it in on him any more than on +Luke McGluke, the poet laureate of _The Hickville Clarion_. Put him out +of your head, why don’t you? Criticism doesn’t concern itself with the +feverishly inflated mob banalities of the moment. Selah! + + * * * * * + +You say _The Little Review_ sickens you? With the above temperature and +tongue? I should diagnose the case as autointoxication.—_jh._ + + + Query + +_Mitchell Dawson, Chicago_: + +I have read the August number, and have read only the poetry—which makes +me sad. Does the new cover represent the Western afterglow? + + + Consoling Us + +_Rex Lampman, Portland_: + +Don’t you think you’re asking a little too much of yourself and your +contributors, that _The Little Review_ be absolute in each number? + +No. I don’t mean that. It’s fine to aim at Art, always, but it isn’t +failure to miss it most of the time. + +As for me, _The Little Review_ has been an inspiration and a delight. A +paper that will publish anything so wonderful as John Gould Fletcher’s +_Green Symphony_ doesn’t need, so far as I’m concerned, to “do it again” +for quite a while, and I’m quite content that you should fill in with +such stuff as Ben Hecht’s _The Poet Sings to the World_ until you get +something as good, again, as the _Symphony_. + +I’m a newspaper man, and I’m supposed to “write something” every day. Of +course, it can’t be done; but once in a while, when the powers are kind, +I am permitted to write something that delights me and others. That’s +the best I can do, so help me, and I am reminded of the Western epitaph, +which went something like this: + + Here Lies + JIM JONES. + He Done His Damnedest. + Angels Can Do + No More. + +And so I hope you’ll never get out a _Little Review_ with any of the +pages blank. + +You are wonderfully honest—one of the honestest persons, I think, that I +know, and I shout for joy at your godlike impatience with imperfection. +But patience—pardon the platitude—is also a godlike attribute. + + + More Consolation + +_C. A. C., Chicago_: + +Bully! Since your outburst of righteous indignation towards yourself and +your contributors I have been comparing your magazine with the others I +receive. _The Forum_, _Vanity Fair_ (Oh, dear, yes!), _The Masses_, and +sometimes I see _The Bang_—a weekly pamphlet of Alexander Harvey’s, +which he distributes discriminately. Your wail seems not wholly +justified. True, Arthur Symons’s _Spiritual Adventures, Plays, Acting, +and Music_, and other essays, are things to be sought after by any +editor. His stuff is appearing in America in _Vanity Fair_ and _The +Forum_; it seems to lack his first fire, except that he has put a new +ring to Cleopatra’s statement of herself: + + Kings have cast their crowns + Into the dust, and kings that are my foes + I can take up into my hand and cast + Into the dust for love of me. I am a woman + But I have power greater than any man’s. + +And his poems—Symons never was much of a poet. Then, again, that Wright +person who writes for _The Forum_—any magazine is the better without his +squibs on Art. + +Max Eastman had an article in a recent number of _Vanity Fair_ on +“Magazine Writing.” He claims it is amazingly well done, so well done +that there is “not a speck on it”—the main fault being that “it is +professional. It is work and not play. And for that reason it is never +profoundly serious, or intensely frivolous enough to captivate the soul. +It lacks abandon. It is simply well done.” Now, the fact that the very +essence of your magazine seems “pure living,” brings it out of Eastman’s +indictment. One cannot say that Sherwood Anderson, Hecht, and Kaun, or +even yourself, have been guilty of “earning your living” at the expense +of play. “In that play alone is the heart altogether gay and +inconsiderate.” + +And _The Bang_ has been pounding away steadily for a magazine that +exists for the fun of it, the joy of it, and is not built upon the +circulation manager’s point of view. Does Harvey get your magazine? Does +he ever feel, if he sees it, that the “Ideal” he holds for magazinedom +is being realized in your magazine? + +Summing it up, Miss Editor, you who once declared you had none of the +qualifications of an editor, it seems to me you have been doing rather +well. We don’t want you to stand still—_you_ can’t do that—or to stop +trying. Please, for our sake, keep it up. + + + Casting a Slur Upon What? + +_Ruth C. Sweeney, Chicago_: + +I simply cannot understand how a person who could write such a beautiful +thing as your poem, _Life_, could allow _The Nymph_ to appear in _The +Little Review_. + +How can you hope to encourage Art when you will print such a thing? I +have noticed these free-thinkers, and with the casting aside of “forms +that have to be respected” has gone whatever taste they had. They gulp +down everything, provided it casts a slur upon something. Does one have +to lose all his finer sensibilities because he wishes to be free and +open minded? + +I have thought of you people when Nietzsche says, “Sensualists are they +now become—a trouble and a terror is the hero to them.” + +I join with you in your cry of blank pages if _The Nymph_ is the +alternative. + + * * * * * + +Give over reading Nietzsche for a bit; you belong in the primary class. +The person who wrote _The Nymph_ has a background of life, if not of +Art. And your hero? “A Trouble and a Terror” would make him appear the +villain.—_jh._ + + + Why Editors Go Insane + +_Alice Groff, Philadelphia_: + +I am going to tear to pieces your “A Real Magazine.” + +No one ever _reaches_ the “Ideal.” The moment he does, there has ceased +to _be_ an “_Ideal_.” Our ideal is an ever-advancing goal. Art is the +embodiment of the human ideal—which ideal is the ever-advancing goal of +human life. + +Art is _not_ the ultimate reason for Life. Life _is_,—for its own sake. +Life lives for the ideal—for the ever-advancing goal, which embodies +itself in Art—that Life may become ever more and more abundant _life_. +Life continually seeks to express its absolute essence in Art, and it +will never cease this seeking through all eternity. Such expression will +always be compelled by the aspiration to reach the ever-advancing +goal—the Ideal which will continually incarnate, and reincarnate, itself +in an ever-renewing body—Art. + +Art is the incarnation of the Ideal—the shed Chrysalis. The Ideal is the +Psyche—continually wending its way toward a new goal and a new Chrysalis +(which it continually sheds, leaving with us its mortal part only—Art.) + + + + + Facts About the Preparedness Bomb + + +Out here in the big West, a whooping, yelling mob of “Vigilante” +business men is trying to wipe out the last labor union. Hiring an army +of bristling gunmen for a spy- and strike-breaker system, they have +slowly advanced from conquered Los Angeles to the siege of San +Francisco. + +The opening fight here was to force Labor, against its will, into a +“preparedness” parade. Every organized man refused to move, and the +parade for military piracy was cut down to a handful of the unorganized +who were bulldozed into line. + +Organized Labor, victorious, was satisfied and completely through with +the affair before the day of march. + +But some individuals, fired by the wild propaganda for military +violence, sent hundreds of warnings through the mails, saying that they +would blow up the parade with a bomb. Employers and newspapers tried to +keep this quiet, but Organized Labor men discovered it and requested +their followers to avoid any chance for such a thing to be laid at their +door, by abstaining from all activity and treating the parade with +silent contempt. This was done. + +The ranks of the unorganized marched down Market street behind their +employers and society women, unaware of the warnings. A bomb exploded +which killed six people outright, three more dying later. A prominent +Chamber of Commerce man was heard to remark: “This is a fine chance for +the open shop.” + +Immediately the Chamber of Commerce, through its tools in public office, +swooped down on its most hated enemies in Organized Labor ranks. They +took the leader of the recent attempted street car strike, Thomas J. +Mooney (as well as his wife, an inoffensive music teacher), ignored his +complete alibi and charged him with heading a “conspiracy.” The chief of +pickets of the recent Machinists’ strike, Edward D. Nolan, was taken for +vengeance’s sake, without evidence, and they announce, in the papers +that they “have the hemp stretched around the necks of all.” Israel +Weinberg, prominent in the Jitney Bus Operators’ Union, which is +troubling the United Railways, was jailed and accused of murder. Warren +K. Billings, past president of the Shoe Workers, was charged with the +actual dynamiting, and an eye-witness who saw an altogether different +man place the supposed suit-case bomb, was assaulted in the office of +the prosecutor. + +Five conspicuous enemies of the employers were thus caught and +apparently doomed. The warnings in advance that had been received +through the mails, were thereafter ignored. Direct evidence of +eye-witnesses was ignored. The Chamber of Commerce had the men it +wanted. + +Every newspaper blandly declined to print a word without approval of the +“Law and Order Committee.” Several newspaper men working on the case +came secretly to us to whisper that they knew the men were innocent, but +“for God’s sake don’t mention us!” One detective working for the +prosecution told a member of the International Workers’ Defense League +that the men were to be convicted on fake evidence, now being cooked up, +but “not to let on who told you.” Only by keeping the men from having +any defense could they be convicted, so the prosecution had the +indecency to try to prevent any prominent lawyer from taking the case. A +judge forced upon the principal defendant, fighting for his life, a +greenhorn lawyer of one year’s experience. + +By making it clear to a prominent criminal lawyer that the accused are +not guilty, we have gotten him, through a sense of justice, to take the +cases for a fee much lower than his usual charge. But we have not even +that much money. + +Twenty-one Thousand Dollars blood money is in the sight of the horde of +ex-Pinkertons and United Railways detectives, and they will not give up +their prey without a tough fight. The prisoners are in the hands of men +who consider labor unionism in itself a crime. They are now proving this +by making peaceful picketing a prison offense. + +We have demonstrated to many unions the innocence of the men and gotten +them to send delegates to the League. + +We are not defending bomb throwers, but innocent men. They will be +executed practically without trial if we don’t get the money to defend +them. + +Send money, and much of it, QUICK, to the International Workers’ Defense +League, Robert Minor, treasurer, 210 Russ Building, 235 Montgomery +street, San Francisco. + + + + + The Vers Libre Contest + + +The poems published in the Vers Libre Contest are now being considered +by the judges. There were two hundred and two poems, thirty-two of which +were returned because they were either Shakespearean sonnets or rhymed +quatrains or couplets. Manuscripts will be returned as promptly as they +are rejected, providing the contestants sent postage. + +We hope to announce the results in our October issue, and publish the +prize poems. + + —The Contest Editor. + + + + + IN BOOKS + + Anything that’s Radical MAY be found at + + + McDevitt’s Book Omnorium + + 1346 Fillmore Street and 2079 Sutter Street + San Francisco, California + + (He Sells The Little Review, Too) + + + + + The Truth From All Sides + + “_To understand all is to forgive all._” + + In an honest endeavor to present the truth about the great world + war now raging, THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY authorized its + London agent to obtain for publication in America books by + eminent and reliable authors in all the belligerent states. + + ROMAIN ROLLAND speaks for France in a wonderful appeal to + humanity entitled “_Above the Battle_.” _Cloth, $1.00._ + + HON. BERTRAND RUSSELL speaks for England and justice to small + nations in a veritable classic entitled “_Justice in War Time_.” + _Price, cloth $1.00, paper 50 cents._ + + DR. J. H. LABBERTON speaks for Belgium and the question of + Germany’s right to invade Belgium in a book entitled “_Belgium + and Germany_.” _Cloth, $1.00._ + + MARSHALL KELLY, an English radical and labor leader, writes a + bitter denunciation of England’s foreign policy during the past + twenty years in a book entitled “_Carlyle and the War_.” _Cloth, + $1.00._ + + S. IVOR STEPHEN, an international newspaper writer, denounces the + policy of newspapers in general and New York City in particular, + for their part in arousing prejudice in war time. His book is + entitled “_Neutrality_.” _Cloth $1.00, paper 50 cents._ + + ROLAND HUGINS, Cornell University, makes an eloquent appeal to + the American people for justice and moderation entitled “_Germany + Misjudged_.” _Cloth, $1.00._ + + These books should be read by every intelligent person, no matter + what his sympathies may be. It will help to enlighten this world + and drive away the hatred and prejudice which a one-sided view is + bound to engender. + + The Open Court Publishing Co. + 122 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Ill. + + + + + Transcriber’s Notes + + +Advertisements were collected at the end of the text. + +The table of contents on the title page was adjusted in order to reflect +correctly the headings in this issue of THE LITTLE REVIEW. + +The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical +errors were silently corrected. All other changes are shown here +(before/after): + + [p. 23]: + ... play is name The Happy Ending). The curtain rises on a dark + forest, ... + ... play is named The Happy Ending). The curtain rises on a dark + forest, ... + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76075 *** |