RUSSIA AND AMERICA[91]
[From Russia's Message (New York, 1908)]
Russia, like the United States, is a self-sufficient country; more than a country, a world. Like the new world, the Russian world forms an almost complete economic whole, embracing under a single government nearly all, if not all, climates and nearly all the raw products used in modern life; both countries are large exporters of agricultural products, both are devoted more to agriculture than to manufacturing industry. Both of these worlds are composed largely of newly acquired and newly settled territory; though both are inhabited by very many races, in each a single race prevails numerically and in most other respects over all the rest, and keeps them together as a single whole. As the result of the mixture of races and the recent settlement of large parts of both countries, their culture is international, world-culture, unmarked by the comparatively provincial nationalistic tendencies of England, Germany, or France. We may look, according to a great German publicist, Kautsky, to America for the great economic experiments of the near future and to Russia for the new (social) politics.
America is essentially a country of rapid economic evolution, while Russia is undeveloped, economically and financially dependent. America is the country of economic genius, a nation whose conceptions of material development have reached even a spiritual height. The great American qualities, the American virtues, the American imagination, have thrown themselves almost wholly into business, the material development of the country. Americans are the first of modern peoples that have learned to respect the repeated failures of enterprising individuals with a genius for affairs, knowing that such failures often lead to greater heights of success. They have learned how to excuse enormous waste when it was made for the sake of economics lying in the distant future. They can appreciate the enterprise of persons who, instead of immediately exploiting their properties, know how to wait, like some of our most able builders that, foreseeing the brilliant future of the locality in which they are situated, are satisfied with temporary structures and poor incomes until the time is ripe for some of the magnificent modern achievements in architecture, in which we so clearly lead. All three of these types of men we admire are true revolutionists, who prefer to wait, to waste, or to fail, rather than to accept the lesser for the greater good.
So it is with Russians in their politics. There seems no reason for doubting that the near future will show that the political failures now being made by the Russians are the failures of political genius, that the waste of lives and property will be repaid later a hundredfold, and that the hopeful and planful patience with which the Russians are looking forward and working to a great social transformation promises the greatest and most magnificent results when that transformation is achieved. Already the political revolution of the Russian people, though not yet embodied in political institutions, is becoming as rapid, as remarkable, as phenomenal, as the economic revolution of the United States.
[THOMPSON BUCHANAN]
Thompson Buchanan, novelist and playwright, was born at New York City, June 21, 1877. Before he was thirteen years of age his family settled at Louisville, Kentucky; and from 1890 to 1894 he attended the Male High School in that city. Being the son of a retired clergyman of the Episcopal church, it was fitting that he should select the University of the South as his college, and in September, 1895, he reached the little town of Sewanee, in the Tennessee mountains, and matriculated in the University. He left college without a degree in July, 1897, and returned to his home at Louisville, where he shortly afterwards became police court reporter for the now defunct Louisville Commercial. Mr. Buchanan was connected with the Commercial until 1900, save six months of service as a private in the First Kentucky Volunteer Infantry during the Spanish-American War. He saw service in the Porto Rico campaign with his regiment and, after peace was declared, returned to his home and to his position on the paper. In 1900 Mr. Buchanan went with The Courier-Journal; and during the same year he was dubbed a lieutenant in the Kentucky State Guards. In 1902 he left Colonel Watterson's paper for The Louisville Herald, of which he was dramatic critic for more than a year. The year of 1904 found Mr. Buchanan in New York on The Evening Journal, with which he was connected for four years, when he abandoned journalism in order to devote his entire attention to literature. Mr. Buchanan's first book, The Castle Comedy (New York, 1904), a romance of the time of Napoleon, which many critics compared to Booth Tarkington's Monsieur Beaucaire, was followed by Judith Triumphant (New York, 1905), another novel, set in the ancient city of Bethulia, with the Judith of the Apocrypha as the heroine. His dramatization of The Castle Comedy was so generally commended, that he decided to desert the field of fiction for the writing of plays. His first effort, Nancy Don't Care, was met with a like response from the public, and the young playwright presented The Intruder, which certainly justified belief in his ultimate arrival as a dramatist, if it did nothing more. The play that brought Mr. Buchanan wider fame than anything he has done hitherto was A Woman's Way, a comedy of manners, in which Miss Grace George created the character of the wife with convincing power. Marion Stanton is quite unfortunately in love with her exceedingly rich, but bored, husband, Howard Stanton, who seeks the society of other women, one of whom happens to be with him when his motor car is wrecked near New Haven at a most unseemly hour. The New York "yellows" are advised of the accident and they, of course, desire details—which desire precipitates the action of the play. "Scandal," in type the size of an ordinary country weekly, is flashed across the "heads" of the big dailies, extras are put forth hourly, a family conference is called at the home of the Stantons, a rich young widow from the South is regarded by the papers as Stanton's partner in the accident, and a very merry time is had by all concerned. The way the woman took out of her difficulties is unfrequented by many, although it should have been well-worn long before Marion made it famous. The drama was one of the authentic successes of 1909, and it certainly established its author's reputation. A novelization of A Woman's Way (New York, 1909), was made by Charles Somerville, and accorded a large sale, but how infinitely better would have been a publication of the play as produced! Quite absurd novelizations of plays are at the present time one of the literary fads which should have been in at the birth and death of Charles Lamb. The Cub, produced in 1910, a comedy with a mixture of melodrama and farce, was concerned with a young Louisville newspaper man, "a cub," who is assigned to "cover" a family feud in the Kentucky mountains. That he finds himself in many situations, pleasant and otherwise, we may be sure. A celebrated critic called The Cub "one of the wittiest of plays"—which opinion was shared by many who saw it. Lula's Husbands, a farce from the French, was also produced in 1910. The Rack, produced in 1911, was followed by Natalie, and Her Mother's Daughter, all of which were given stage presentation. Mr. Buchanan spent most of the year of 1912 writing and rehearsing his new play, The Bridal Path, a matrimonial comedy in three acts, which is to be produced in February, 1913. None of his plays have been issued in book form, but, besides his first two romances and the novelization of A Woman's Way, two other novels have appeared, entitled The Second Wife (New York, 1911); and Making People Happy (New York, 1911). That Thompson Buchanan is the ablest playwright Kentucky has produced is open to no sort of serious discussion; with the exception of Mr. Dazey and Mrs. Flexner he is, indeed, quite alone in his field. Kentucky has poetic dramatists almost without number, but the practical playwright, whose lines reach his audience across the footlights, is a rara avis. Augustus Thomas, the foremost living American playwright, resided at Louisville for a short time, and his finest drama, The Witching Hour, is set wholly at Louisville, although written in New York, but Kentucky's claim upon him is too slender to admit of much investigation. Mr. Buchanan has done so much in such a short space of time that one is tempted to turn his own favorite shibboleth upon him and exclaim: "Fine!"
Bibliography. The Theatre Magazine (April; May, 1909); The American Magazine (November, 1910); The Green Book (January, 1911).