THE WOLF AND THE LAMB.
(An imaginary conversation.)
[In his lecture at the Royal Institution, to which Mr. Punch recently referred, Mr. Alfred Noyes said that "our art and literature were increasingly Bolshevik, and if they looked at the columns of any newspaper they would see the unusual spectacle of the political editor desperately fighting that which the art and literary portions of the paper upheld.">[
Scene.—A Club-room near Fleet Street. The Political Editor and the Literary Editor of "The Daily Crisis" are discovered seated in adjoining armchairs.
Political Editor. Excuse me, but haven't I seen you occasionally in The Crisis office?
Literary Editor. Possibly. I look after its literary pages, you know.
P.E. Really? I run the political columns. Did you read my showing-up this morning of the Bolshevik peril in the House of Lords?
L.E. I'm afraid I never read the political articles. Did you notice my two-column boom of young Applecart's latest book of poems?
P.E. No time to read the literary columns, and modern poetry's as good as Chinese to me. Who's Applecart?
L.E. My dear Sir, is it possible that you are unfamiliar with the author of I Will Destroy? He's the hope of the future as far as English poetry is concerned.
P.E. (cheerfully). Never heard of him. What's he done?
L.E. (impressively). He has overthrown all the rules, not only of art, but of morality. He has created a new Way of Life.
P.E. Can't see that that's anything to shout about. What's his platform, anyway?
L.E. Platform? To anyone who has tho slightest acquaintance with Applecart the very idea of a platform is fantastic. He doesn't stand; he soars.
P.E. Well, what are his views, then? Pretty tall, I suppose, if he's such a high flier.
L.E. You may well say so. In the first place he discards all the old artistic formulæ.
P.E. I know; you write a solid slab of purple prose, scissor it into a jig-saw puzzle, serve it with a dazzle dressing and call it the New Poetry.
L.E. Have your joke, if you will. But, more important still, Applecart is a rebel against humanity and all its fetishes, social, ethical and political.
P.E. (startled). A Bolshie, I suppose you mean?
L.E. The artist is proof against all these vulgar terms of abuse, culled from the hustings. Call him a Pussyfoot as well; you cannot shake him from his pinnacle.
P.E. Yes, but look here—he's just the sort of pernicious agitator we're out against in The Crisis—at least in my department. My special article this morning—three thickly-leaded columns—actually revealed the existence of a most insidious plot to undermine the restraining influence of the House of Lords by the spread of Bolshevik propaganda masquerading as literature. You see, there's a certain section of the Lords, mainly new creations who've only recently been released from various employments, who now for the first time in their lives have leisure for reading; then there's the spread of education among the sporting Peers. Well, these people are ready to succumb to all sorts of poisonous doctrines, if they're served up in what I presume to be the fashionable mode of the moment; and I expect your precious Applecart is one of the Bolsh agents who are laying the trap. You'll have to stop booming him, you know. He's not doing the paper any good.
L.E. My dear Sir, literature takes no account of the fads and fancies of party politics. And I gather from you that party politics have no use for literature except from a propagandist view. Let us be content to go our own ways in peace.
P.E. Yes, that's all very well for you and me, but what about the Chief? How does he reconcile these absolutely conflicting standpoints? And what does the public think of it all?
L.E. (confidentially). Between you and me, the Chief knows his public. And the public knows its papers. The last thing it wants from us is consistency, which is always boring. Besides (still more confidentially), the public doesn't take us quite so seriously as we like to pretend.
P.E. H'm, maybe you're right. As a matter of fact (lowering his voice) I sometimes think I'm a bit of a Socialist myself.
L.E. Really? As for me (conspiratorially), I adore Tennyson, and Ezra Pound fills me with a secret wrath. Still, the public—
P.E. Ah, the public—! Have a drink?
[They pledge each other. Noyes without. They disperse hurriedly.
"In view of the serious shortage of female help, the United Boards of Trade of Western Ontaria have been discussing proposals to encourage the immigration of young women from Great Britain."—Morning Paper.
And have apparently feminized the Province in advance.
"If the Archdeacon of Coventry is correct in stating, as he did in Convocation, that the word 'tush' found in the Psalter means 'bosh,' it must in this sense be what the classical dons call a 'hapslegomenon'."—Evening Standard.
Which, again, must be what the classical undergraduates call a "slipsus languæ."
