B. H.
Rabindranath Tagore: A Biographical Study, by Ernest Rhys. New York: The Macmillan Company.
Shrill Chicago and thousands of similar examples of Western civilization have more to learn from a book of this sort than can be readily explained. Taking Chicago as fairly representative of the swiftest modernity, one must blush for the city of “I Will” whenever he picks up Ernest Rhys’s keen and quiet study of the talked-about Hindu. The blushes are for the vast herds whose only ventures upon new paths are to trample and set back, whose only ideals center in or near the stomach. In the white light of this book—reflected radiance from a first-magnitude luminary—Chicago and her kind appear as blundering heedless egotists who never listen. Their ears have not developed, their eyes are turned to the ground. “I Will”—what? To grow strong, high-minded, clean of heart, and wise of soul? Anything but this.
Tagore, by his very tolerance and avoidance of condemnation, seems vehemently to remind the thinker of all this—by force of the law of contrast. The clear-eyed Easterner even points out a scant virtue or two in Western civilization, such as the value of mastering materials, which the Westerner himself overlooks when in self-defense; and no blame is placed on the feverish civilizees. Tagore moves in a state of peace which is the very essence of activity, and has no part in the fanatics’ plan which begins with lassitude and ends in stagnation. He is a man of action, forceful, definite, wasting no energy nor sparing the use of it. Modern methods of doing things and “getting there” become mere feeble noises by comparison. This is not the tragedy, that Westerners blunder and fail,—the East has its failures,—but it lies in the fact that America arrogantly chooses not to listen, not to see and learn. A few scattered listeners must catch the harmonies intended for a whole nation, the majority having been sophisticated to extinction. The herds in Chicago and elsewhere will go on indefinitely in their own swaggering way, blind and deaf, sure beyond correction that the chief desirability lies in digestion, decoration, and diversion ... while Rabindranath Tagore and the beautiful element he personifies are ever-present, waiting within reach of all, working out the biggest things in the world, and living the last word of true joy.
Ernest Rhys is very gentle and sparing in making comparisons. He leaves this to his reader, and is mainly occupied with the re-creation of the steady magnetic atmosphere which is a natural attribute of Tagore. The paragraphs devoted to the boys’ school at Bolpur give one a feeling of something lost, at least to those who thirsted through the schools of the U. S. Rhys is successful in giving out an excellent idea of the great man and his works.
Herman Schuchert.
Militarism is the German spirit.
Militarism is the self-revelation of German heroism.
Militarism is the heroic spirit raised to the spirit of war. It is Potsdam and Weimar in their highest combination. It is Faust and Zarathustra and Beethoven’s score in the trenches.
For even the Eroica and the Egmont Overture are nothing but the truest militarism. And just because all virtues which lend such a high value to militarism are revealed to the fullest extent in war, we are filled with militarism, regarding it as something holy—as the holiest thing on earth—Werner Zombart.