V.
At the outset, while the old order is still relatively strong, and the new relatively weak, the spokesmen of the old order can afford to ignore the champions of the new. But as the established order grows more senile and the new order more vigorous, the defenders of the old order, by force or by guile, set themselves to root out the new, even though they should be compelled to destroy themselves in the process. Then there ensues a savage struggle in which wits are matched against wits and force against force. Families are divided; the community is split into factions; civil war rages; society is torn to its foundations. At times the struggle reaches the military phase, but for the most part it instills itself into the lives of the people until it becomes an accepted part of the day's work.
Then it is that the real test comes between the old world and the new. The old world holds power—economic, social, political. It holds in its hands income, respectability and preferment, with which it seeks first to buy, and later to destroy all who oppose its will.
Buying is the easiest, the safest, and in the long run the cheapest method of gaining the desired end.
Each generation contains some men and women possessed of unusual endowments—as organizers and enterprisers, as spokesmen, as singers, as seers and prophets. These gifted ones the old order sets out to win—lavishing upon them gratitudes, favors, rewards; filling their lives out of the horn of economic and social plenty; teasing their vanities and gratifying their ambitions; soothing, cajoling, flattering. By these means the rulers succeed in bringing under their control the strong thinkers, the capable executives, the sensitive, the talented—all in fact who are worth buying, and who can be bought for income and for social preferment, even though they may have been born into the families of the humblest and most oppressed of the workers.
Most men and women go where income promises and social preferment beckons. But not all! There are some whose love of justice, truth and beauty; whose yearning for betterment and increased social opportunity, outweighs the tempting bait of ease and respectability. Them the established order smites.
The strength of the old order is measured superficially by the extent of its control over the means of common livelihood and by the generalness of the satisfaction or discontent with which the masses receive its administration. Fundamentally its strength is determined by the direction in which its life is tending. The structure of the Roman Empire was apparently sound before it buckled and disintegrated. The French aristocracy was never surer of itself than in the gala days that preceded 1789. The old order may undergo a process of gradual transformation. In that case the change is slow, as it was when Feudalism gave place to Capitalism in England. Again, the old order may be exterminated as it was when Feudalism gave place to Capitalism in France. In one case the masters of life loosens the reins of power to ease the straining team; in the other case the masters hold the reins taut till they are jerked from their hands, as masters and team go together over the precipice.
The strength of the new order, at any stage in its development may be gauged by the solidarity of its organization, the efficacy of its propaganda, and the tone of its art. These forms of expression are necessary to the maintenance of any phase of culture, old or new, and by the last of the three, the esthetic expression of the culture, its morale may best be judged. It is for this reason that artists, musicians, dramatists and poets are so important a part of any order of society. They voice its deepest sentiments and express its most sacred faiths and longings. When the time arrives that a new social order can boast its permanent art and music and literature, it is already far advanced on the path that leads to stability and power.
VI.
The poems which appear in this volume are a contribution to the propaganda and the art of the new culture. "Above all things," writes Chaplin, "I don't want anyone to try to make me out a 'poet'—because I'm not. I don't think much of these esthetic creatures who condescend to stoop to our level that we may have the blessings of culture. We'll manage to make our own—do it in our own way, and stagger through somehow. . . . These are tremendous times, and sooner or later someone will come along big enough to sound the right note, and it will be a rebel note." It is that note which Chaplin has sought to strike, and that he has succeeded will be the verdict of anyone who has read over the poems.