AN OBJECTION
John F. Weedon, Chicago:
Your menu promises “Literature, Drama, Music, Art,” and as your guest I sat down to enjoy one of those “feasts of reason and flows of soul,—so extremely rare since The Chap Book went out of print,—and I was immediately plunged into five or six pages of dyspeptic regurgitation of war dope.
I hate the war,—I am sick of the war. It is not, according to my well-worn lexicon, either Literature, Drama, Music, or Art. I came near pitching your magazine into the waste paper basket and getting a drink to take the taste out of my mouth.
Really, we caterpillars are tired of the war. Can we not find refuge from it even in The Little Review, or will you always get the head of Charles the First into your Memorial?
However, I admit the picture of Rupert Brooke alone was worth the price of admission; and Ben Hecht,—I don’t know who he is,—I could love like a brother. Lucian Cary is enjoyable, and your stuff is good but a little inclined to be sophomorish. I bet old Dr. Johnson would have insisted that “you define your terms, young man.”
Anyhow, as an elderly gentleman with a large family I bow to the superknowledge and exuberance of your youth, and freely admit you are giving full value for the money. But you will cut out the “vaarrr”—von’t you?
The following letter, typical of many that come in, expresses much of what we have hoped to do through The Little Review.
Until I read Mr. Ben Hecht’s article on The American Family in the August issue I had not believed that any one in America would have the courage to give expression to the terrible truth about our most prized institution, the family. It is splendid; it is the kind of thing we “struggling daughters” need to keep us from being unselfish once too often.
I imagine there are not enough emancipated souls in Chicago who are understanding your work to make a word of sincere appreciation a mere bore.... My social position is such that just a suggestion of the revolutionary things which are “going on inside” would be a matter for intense horror to most of my friends. The Little Review is one of the sources from which I am deriving strength to cling to my ideals, and to keep on hoping until school is finished and it is time to strike for freedom.