A Soldier of The Legion, by C. N. and A. M. Williamson. [Doubleday, Page and Company, New York.] The Williamsons know Northern Africa and if you know them—you surely do, this being their fifteenth book—you will know what to expect here. Those people who still can find time for nothing but war “literature” may be interested to know that the Legion described in this book is fighting in France for the Allies in the present war.
Private Affairs, by Charles McEvoy. [Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.] It is human to be curious, and when we get a chance we like to know all about the intimate affairs of other people. In this book the affairs are told in such a direct, interesting manner, without the pettiness of gossip, that we find sufficient excuse for our human weakness.
The Reader Critic
George Middleton, New York:
I read Wedded with much interest and really want to congratulate you upon your courage in producing it. As I told the author, whom I recently met, I do not think technically it is perfect: he has overdrawn the minister and made an author’s comment in his lines. I feel the last line absolutely out of key; for the effect, in my judgment, would have been much stronger if the minister had been less obviously the hypocrite. Aside from a little bungling in the opening, I think, however, that its sincerity is much more important than this captious criticism. I feel he put over quite clearly a situation in human life which should be presented. And it was courageous of you to affront public opinion, as you no doubt have, and give place to such a sincere little piece of life. I wonder when the world is going to let us talk about all the things we now smirk over and know. Once we can place these sex matters on the same plane of conversation as we do pork and cheese then they will really cease to be important. I believe in the reticences of taste and proportion—but not those of subject matter. And sooner or later the question of birth control must be given wide publicity, so that only wanted children will come into the world. So long as functionally the woman must bear the labour and thus suffer unequally in parenthood, so should we do everything through education to arm her against assuming unwilling burdens. When children are born of free choice in marriage then they will partake of a higher dignity, and parenthood itself will mean more than a functional disturbance and a matter of rebellion it now is with many. Any play which makes us question our nice polite functions about morality should be accessible to those not afraid of new ideas. It is curious how little faith the innate conservative has in human nature and the finer things of life. So afraid are they that they would bind people by old traditions and not personally-achieved opinions. Wedded presents in vivid phrase a fragment of life which has no doubt come to many a woman, and I heartily congratulate you for the courage which prompted you to give the author a hearing.
S. H. G., New York:
The November number is the best yet. I don’t like Iris’s work as well as I do Bodenheim’s; judging by these poems I think he has been too much praised. Bodenheim makes some superb contributions to language and imagery. Langner’s play doesn’t escape the querulous note in spots, but it is worth doing and is done well on the whole. Darrow’s article is well-knit and presents an idea. The best thing in the issue is Kaun’s translation. And I dislike very much your article on Emma Goldman, because it falls so far below the hardness of thought it should have had.
I have taken much to heart two articles in the first New Republic: Rebecca West’s The Duty of Harsh Criticism and the editors’ Force and Ideas. We who are saying things in public have a simply tremendous responsibility not only to feel, but to know, and to use the acid test on everything we say. Your article shows that you have been carried away by a personality to approval of a social program, and is the most convincing proof I have ever seen that belief in anarchism is a product of the artistic temperament rather than the result of an intelligent attempt to criticise and remould society. I know you did not intend it to be so; that is the reason it annoys me so much. It was a wise and necessary thing to correct misapprehensions about Emma Goldman’s personality; that you have done fairly well; though even that is marred by too much protesting and a substitution of a somewhat sentimental elation for power of mind and emotion. But your offhand generalities on the top of the third page are just the sort of shoddy thinking that justifies conservatives in dismissing social theorists with a sneer, and imprisoning them when they get dangerous. These generalities do not even accurately represent Wilde’s essay. It is not that I disagree with you; I recognize a fundamental truth in these things if it could only be disentangled, made definite, and applied. But to a discerning and unprejudiced reader it is quite evident that in order to save yourself the trouble and unromantic grind of doing this, you have made a lot of meaningless assumptions without really knowing very much about history or anthropology or psychology or any of the other wonderful tools which modern heroes have put at the service of the human will. You have the blind faith of a Catholic saint in divine revelation; the only difference is that the terms of the revelation are altered.
As a thing entirely apart from the above objection, the sporadic violence of the anarchists is puerile and ridiculous. The whole muddle in which the anarchists find themselves on account of their disagreements as to violence is an example of the necessity of efficient and intelligent organization—which is exactly what government in its essence is, to me (but is not now). My own position on anarchism has become more clearly defined than before. I stand fundamentally with Montessori on the position that the beginning and the end of revolution is improvement of the individual. I should be prepared to endorse a brutal autocracy if that bred better human stock. I am thoroughly convinced that Emma Goldman could preach until she lost her voice without producing an appreciable effect. The world has had too much preaching. There would be something finally tragic about the waste of such a personality as hers unless there were a better way of accomplishing her object. She has been working for years, yet ninety-nine per cent of Americans regard her as a sort of Carrie Nation. The more we long for her success the more we appreciate her personality, the more keenly we must criticise her method.
The question of how race hygiene must be applied is a profound and complex matter, impossible of solution by any individual. It will be solved gradually, and as a resultant of honest intellectual work by all forward looking people—more especially by your despised scientists. It will be a matter of inspired scientific education, of proper industrial conditions, of profound art stimulus, of sex reform, in short, of most of the things advocated today by the socialist party. I have a fair-to-middling imagination, but I totally fail to see how these things may properly be put into action without intelligent governmental organization. We simply must not narrow our minds by perfectionist generalities. It is the duty—and the inspiration—of the poet to understand and use science, of the scientist to develop the poet in himself, of all to face grimly every fact which concerns him and banish forever from his mind sentimentalism. Sentimentalism about ribbons and candy is sometimes pretty, but sentimentalism about the human race is a terrible form of blasphemy and the greatest of the sins of pettiness.