I deduce these reflections. 1. That as an engine of frightfulness the Zeppelin is over-rated. And the damage it does is comparatively unimportant. 2. That it is uncultured of the Germans to risk murdering the English Imagists and ruining the only poetic movement in England, for the sake of getting their names into the papers. 3. That I notice I never go to bed now earlier than twelve, and frequently go for a walk about eleven o’clock.
I can’t of course tell you where the bombs fell, as it is strictly forbidden. Still I can say this: that no public building of any kind was touched; that it looks jolly well as if our Teutonic friends made a dead set at St. Paul’s and the British Museum; that, without exception, the bombs fell on the houses of the poor and the very poor—except for a warehouse or so and some offices; that one bomb fell near a block of hospitals, containing paralytics and other cripples and diseased persons, smashed all the hospital windows, and terrified the unhappy patients into hysterics; that, lastly, it is a damned lie to say there are guns on St. Paul’s and the British Museum—the buildings are too old to stand the shock of the recoil. Voilà!
... Remy de Gourmont is dead.... Camille de Saint-Croix also. It is hard to write of friends recently dead....
The experienced artist knows that inspiration is rare and that intelligence is left to complete the work of intuition; he puts his ideas under the press and squeezes out of them the last drop of the divine juices that are in them—(and if need be sometimes he does not shrink from diluting them with clear water).—Romain Rolland.
Portrait of Theodore Dreiser
Arthur Davison Ficke
There were gilded Chinese dragons
And tinkling danglers of glass
And dirty marble-topped tables
Around us, that late night-hour.