The sentiment of patriotism is a sublime and lovely sentiment, but it cannot be nurtured by self-deception, by vainglorious boasting and sycophantic adulation. There is far too much talk about our superiority as a people and far too little thought about means of making that alleged superiority actual. We are hearing much, and we shall hear more, about the spiritual exaltation and the fine idealism which has recently carried us into the Great War,—but such talk is not honest. We had as much reason to enter the War in 1915 as we had in 1917. We have entered it, primarily, from self-interest, for self-defence,—to fight now, in Europe, in order that we need not fight, hereafter, in America. Let us be honest and outspoken about our course. It is idle to seek, as some of his “very articulate” political opponents and detractors do, to lay the blame of our unworthy delay on Woodrow Wilson (one of the great men of modern times) or on any other man or group of men. The blame rests squarely on the people of the United States as a nation. The spirit of our country is and long has been one of pagan Materialism, infecting all branches of thought, and of unscrupulous Commercialism, infecting all branches of action. Foreign elements, alien to our institutions and ideals as to our language and our thought,—seditious elements, ignorant, boisterous, treacherous, and dangerous,—have been introduced into our population in immense quantities, interpenetrating and contaminating it in many ways: in the face of self-evident peril and of iterated warnings and protests, immigration into the United States has been permitted during the last twenty years of about 15,000,000 persons—including vast numbers of the most undesirable order. We call ourselves a civilized nation—but civility is conspicuous in our country chiefly by its absence. Gentleness is despised. Good manners are practically extinct. Public decorum is almost unknown. We are notoriously a law-contemning people. The murder rate—the unpunished murder rate—in our country has long been a world scandal. Mob outrage is an incident of weekly occurrence among us. Our methods of business, approved and practised, are not only unscrupulous but predatory. Every public conveyance and place of resort bears witness to the general uncouthness by innumerable signs enjoining the most elemental decency—and by the almost universal disregard of the enjoinments! Slang and thieves’ argot is the prevalent language of the people and there is scarcely a periodical or a newspaper in the land which does not exhibit and promote the corruption of good manners diffused by that evil communication,—while the publicist who dares to record the facts and censure the faults is generally stigmatized as a fool or ridiculed as a pedant. The tone of the public mind is to a woful extent sordid, selfish, greedy. In our great cities life is largely a semi-delirious fever of vapid purpose and paltry strife, and in their public vehicles of transportation the populace—men, women, and young girls—are herded together without the remotest observance of common decency,—mauled and jammed and packed one upon another in a manner which would not be tolerated in shipment of the helpless steer or the long-suffering swine....
If true civilization is to develop and live in our country, such conditions, such a spirit, such ideals, manners, and customs as are widely prevalent among us to-day, must utterly pass and cease. The one rational hope that they will so disappear lies in disseminating Education,—not merely schooling, imperative as that is; but, far more, a truer and higher education imparted by the ministry of beauty; education which recognizes that material prosperity and marvellous discoveries of science are not ultimate goals of human pilgrimage but mere instruments to be used in spiritual advancement; the inspiration of noble ideals, gentleness, refinement, and the grace of manners; cheerful courage, resolute patience, and the calm of hope. For that education Society must look largely to the ministry of the arts and, in particular, to the rightly conducted Theatre,—an institution potentially of tremendous beneficence....
Few managers have been able to take or to understand that view of the Stage. David Belasco was one of them. It is because his administration of his “great office” has been, in the main, conducted in the spirit of a zealous public servant; because for many years he maintained as a public resort a beautiful theatre, diffusive of the atmosphere of a pleasant, well-ordered home, placing before the public many fine plays, superbly acted, and set upon the stage in a perfection of environment never surpassed anywhere and equalled only by a few of an earlier race of managers of which he was the last, that David Belasco has, directly and indirectly, exerted an immense influence for good and is entitled to appreciative recognition, enduring celebration, and ever grateful remembrance. And, though on the two occasions when I differed with him I vigorously opposed his course, it is a comfort to reflect that nothing ever chilled our friendship and that all that could be done to sustain and aid his great and worthy purpose and to cheer his mind was done while he could benefit by it....
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Among American theatrical managers David Belasco was long unique,—the sole survivor, exemplar, and transmitter of an earlier and better theory and practice of theatrical management than is anywhere visible now. When he came to New York, to the Madison Square Theatre, representative theatre managers of our country were Lester Wallack, Augustin Daly, John T. Ford, Samuel Colville, Dion Boucicault, J. H. McVicker, R. M. Hooley, Henry E. Abbey, Montgomery Field, and A. M. Palmer, and our Stage was dominated and swayed by the influence of those men and of such players as John Gilbert, Joseph Jefferson, William Warren, Charles W. Couldock, Edwin Booth, Lawrence Barrett, W. J. Florence, Tommaso Salvini, Fanny Janauschek, Helena Modjeska, Ada Rehan, Mary Anderson, Henry Irving, and Ellen Terry. When, in 1895, Belasco first successfully struck out for himself, great changes had taken place and greater ones were impending. When, in 1902, he at last succeeded in establishing himself independently, in a theatre of his own, it was in almost a new world that he did so! Colville, Wallack, Ford, Boucicault,
Photograph by William S. Page. Belasco’s Collection.
BELASCO AT ORIENTA POINT—SUMMER HOME OF HIS DAUGHTER, MRS. GEST