Sir Oliver Lodge, in a wireless message from New York, entirely approved of The Daily Mail's reading of Klingsor's character. He was clearly a scientist and a spiritualist of remarkable attainments. The defection of Kundry to the side of the Knights was a sad instance—but not without modern parallels—of the unrelenting pressure exerted on weak women by the zealots of orthodoxy.
Mr. A.B. Walkley said that he had long suspected Klingsor of being a crypto-Aristotelian, but the arguments of the writer in The Daily Mail had converted his suspicion to a certainty. He proposed to deal with the matter more fully in an imaginary dialogue between Klingsor and Sir Oswald Stoll (who was a devout follower of Herbert Spencer) which would shortly appear in The Times.
Mr. Devant professed himself delighted with the vindication of Klingsor, who was undoubtedly, like Roger Bacon, a first-rate conjurer, far in advance of his time, and with limited resources was yet capable of producing illusions which would not have disgraced the stage of St. George's Hall.
The Archbishop of Canterbury excused himself from pronouncing a definite opinion on the subject, but pointed out that it would doubtless come within the purview of the inquiry into Spiritualism undertaken by high clerical authority.
Mr. Jacob Epstein made the gratifying announcement that he was engaged on a colossal statue of Mr. Lloyd George in the character of the modern Merlin. His treatment might not commend itself to the leaders of Nonconformity in Wales, but his own artistic conscience was clear, and he felt he could count on the benevolent sympathy of the Northcliffe Press.
The Editor of The Times strongly demurred to the statement that Klingsor was an Arabian. The great authority on Klingsor was the anonymous thirteenth-century epic poem on Lohengrin, the father of Parsifal, and he had no doubt (1) that the author was either a Czecho-Slovak or a Yugo-Slav; (2) that Klingsor, as the etymology suggested, was of the latter race. In these circumstances the attempt to establish an affinity between Mr. Lloyd George and Klingsor was nothing short of an outrage, which might have disastrous results on our relations with the new States of Central Europe.
Mr. J. Maynard Keynes observed that the characterisation of Mr. Lloyd George, implicit in the defence of Klingsor made by the musical critic of The Daily Mail, indirectly confirmed his own impressions. It was true that the Premier did not physically resemble an Arab sheikh, and his knowledge of medicine, science or philosophy, to say nothing of geography, was decidedly jejune, but the sad case of President Wilson made it all too clear that he was capable of exerting a hypnotic influence on his colleagues. Mr. Keynes did not think Mr. Lloyd George was an Aristotelian; he preferred to consider him an unconscious Pragmatist. This view he proposed to develop in his forthcoming volume on the Subliminal Conscience of Nonconformity.
TO JAMES (MULE) WHO HAS PLAYED ME FALSE.
[Many mules are appearing upon the streets of London and are showing an extraordinary and unexpected docility amidst the traffic.]