A new fiction magazine makes its curtsey by deploring these facts and apologetically devotes its pages only to the highest forms of writing. Stuff! Why cringe to the Elder Brethren? An editor interprets the wishes of the public; he is not to suit his own whims, but to make money for the owners.
The public knows what it wants, and will pay to get it. The mystics may become the oracles of new cults, may set about remaking their own petty worlds after their hearts' desires; but they cannot make a living by the quill. Even the music critics have come from their misty pinnacles.
Simplicity has cash value. That is why the magazines pay such excellent prices for the clear word—which is the hardest of all to write.
LA CATHEDRALE ENGLOUTIE
Bells far and fine
Lost evermore
To the blue sky,
Yet still implore
And bid us fly
The citied roar,
To seek God's shrine
And hold divine
The rich, deep things
That men decry.
A bell that rings
And echoes o'er
On angels' wings;
Sweetly it sings—
"All life is thine!
Give God an hour
And feel His power
Steal far and fine
Like bells across
The city's dross—"
THE NAKED MAN
A section of the Argonne wood is feebly lighted by distant star shells. Over the mechanical and human wreckage eddies the vapor of poison gas; yet the two men sitting against the ruined gun-emplacement wear no masks, and seem not to feel the gas. One is a husky chap, a marine; his left foot, gone above the ankle, is replaced by an ineffectual tourniquet. The other is a conscript; across his breast is a wide gash of bubbling red.
Nearby lies a German, bayonet-gashed, who from time to time opens his eyes. At his knee lies an empty U.S.A. canteen.
The Marine: You were a damn' fool to give him that bottle! Not that it matters to us, only—