1914

affairs according to its own judgment. Of course this has not been the attitude of largeminded people who know the Orient. It was not the view expressed by Admiral Mahan last June. "Personally," he said, "I entirely reject any assumption or belief that my race is superior to the Chinese or the Japanese." Until that assumption is abandoned by the leaders of the Western races the West will never understand the East and will never do it justice; and the peace of the world will never be secured.

For several years past there has been a deliberate, well-planned, and sinister propaganda to misrepresent Japan in this country and to alarm and inflame American feeling. A large number of American newspapers have fallen into the habit of automatically interpreting every movement on the part of the Japanese Government as inimical to this country. Again and again the most elaborate misstatements of facts have been cabled from Washington to Tokyo; and in that country there are many evidences of a studied attempt to irritate Japanese feeling and misrepresent American aims and purposes. Dr. Gulick

has called attention to. some recent evidences of this malign endeavor to embroil the two countries. A bogus telegram was published in Tokyo, in August, announcing the decision of the United States Government to send the entire battle fleet to the Orient; and this was taken as evidence that the United States intended to strike Japan while Great Britain was involved elsewhere. This was speedily followed by a detailed report of an alleged speech made by Admiral Cowles in Peking, warning the Chinese against the sinister designs of the Japanese. Of course the American Admiral had made no such speech; but the denial did not reach Japan until the mischief had been done.

When Representative Mann, in his speech on the Philippine situation, spoke in a general way of the possibilities of future misunderstanding between the East and the West, many American papers grossly misrepresented the speech in such headlines as : "War with Japan Certain !" These headlines were imdiately cabled to Japan, and Dr. Gulick reports that a friend of his in Japan had said that a few more militaristic speeches like Mr. Mann's might produce a very dangerous condition of feeling in that country. As a matter of fact, Mr. Mann's speech was not militaristic, and it was grossly misreported in headlines. Dr. Gulick himself has been the

905

victim of this irresponsible reporting. Not long ago in New York he spoke of the danger of the "yellow journal" attitude towards Japan, and sounded a warning against its possible consequence. The next day a responsible New York paper reported him as saying that war with Japan was inevitable within thirty years; the headline read: "United States-Japanese War Sure! says Dr. Gulick."

The country does not yet understand that it is in danger of too readily accepting as truth propaganda in the interest of Germany and inimical to Japan; that its ignorance of Japanese sentiment and opinion is being used by rumor-mongers unfriendly to both Japan and America. Since Japan's participation in the war Americans have been warned many times from German sources to beware of Japan. Recently, indeed, a writer defending the AustroGerman cause in the pages of The Outlook went so far as to point out the peril to which this country was exposed from an invasion from Canada led by Great Britain and supported by Japanese and Indian troops! This is an instance of the extent to which the Teutonic hostility to Japan may be carried. Many similar tales are being told in this country.

We are glad, however, to note some evidence of a growing restraint and a keener sense of responsibility among American newspapers in dealing with the Japanese situation.

TWO AUSTRIAN MUSICIANS

If it is a place "in the sun " that Austria is seeking by force of arms, she is wasting her men and her treasures; for she has it already. Fritz Kreisler is an Austrian. He is an officer in the Austrian army, and has been in the trenches. But it is not on the field of battle that he has helped to win for his country that place in the sun, but on the concert platform. He is undoubtedly one of the greatest violinists of all time. Not all violinists are artists, but Kreisler is a great artist. There are few men who win for themselves such a host of unknown friends as he has won by his playing. And the reason is close at hand. His great skill he never uses for its own display, but solely to give fuller freedom to the soul that he finds on the printed page of the music. When the composer has finished writing what he has had to say, the work that he has created is still incomplete. It needs the interpreter. And if that work is to be really completed,

the interpreter, too, must be an artist. With each performance he, as it were, creates anew the composer's work of art. It is because Kreisler never forgets this and devotes his skill and his knowledge and his understanding to this art of newly creating what he plays that people crowd to listen to him with little regard to what is on his programme.

It is interesting to hear that Kreisler proved a good comrade with his men and was popular with them; it is interesting to hear that he has undertaken to support some forty children whose fathers were his comrades at arms; it is satisfactory to know that the wound which he received has not impaired his musical powers; but it is exasperating to find that, for the sake of having one more officer at the front, Austria was willing to throw away, if need be, the life of a man who had already won for her more than she could gain by any feats at arms.

Fritz Kreisler appeared before an American audience again on December 12. Every one in that audience, it is fair to say, was a partisan of Austria-musically. The warmth of the welcome Kreisler received was due partly to rejoicing that so great a musician had escaped the perils of war, but mainly to admiration of the musician and of the art of which he is a consummate master. It seems as if Austria could make better use of such a man than in sending him to the trenches to be trampled upon by the horsemen of the enemy. What would it profit that. country to gain new territory if it lost in the process such a soul?

The

Another son of Austria who has helped to win for her her place in the sun is Erich Wolfgang Korngold. His "Sinfonietta " was played on Thursday, December 10, and Friday, December 11, by the orchestra of the Philharmonic Society in New York. This composition is, in fact, a symphony. diminutive form which the composer has given to its title is not indicative of diminutive size or proportion. It is perhaps simply a means of informing the audience that there is nothing heroic or grandiloquent about it. It has the joyousneess and exuberance of youth in it. Once upon a time Brahms wrote to a friend about his forthcoming "Second Symphony," saying that its tragic character would impel the players in the orchestra during its performance to wear crape on their arms. When the symphony was produced, it turned out to be the beautiful idyllic" Symphony in D Major," which has

nor sufficiently original creators to take the results of the experiments and form them into original works of art. It was perhaps inevitable that the effect on art of this experimentation could not be known until a composer should arise who had not only creative genius himself, but who would come upon these experiments not as something new and strange, but as something familiar. Apparently this has now occurred. Korngold was born into the world of Strauss and Mahler. What strikes the ear of an older person as strange and unusual is to him a matter of fact. And so he finds these products of experiment on the same level with Bach and Beethoven. What is the result? The dissonances that have seemed so blatant and self-assertive fall into their own place. The freedom from tonality that has seemed so often like the freedom of a bad boy consciously engaged in an escapade has become natural. Korngold is no more self-conscious in using a new harmonic progression or a new instrument in the orchestra than he is in profiting by the example of old Father Bach. He is not writing to show off his boldness of initiative. He is writing because he has something to say, and he takes means of saying it from Mahler as easily as from Mozart, and from Strauss as easily as from Schubert.

The first movement of this symphony begins with a buoyant melody in the strings. There is something elusive about this melody. The listener cannot carry it away with him ; but when it reappears he recognizes it. So it is with all Korngold themes, with one or two exceptions. Here is somebody that has the gift of melody who exercises it naturally and spontaneously in ways undreamed of a half-century ago.

One is tempted to write at length about such work as this; but there are three things that stand out and deserve mention. One is the fact that Korngold's sense of structure is sound. He has built up his work with regard to architectural values. This symphony is as definite, well built, and coherent as a symphony by Brahms. The second is the fact that Korngold's sense of rhythm is as great as his sense of structure. There is something almost American about his love of syncopation and of rhythmic beauty. In the third place, with all his freedom in the use of the orchestra, Korngold has shown his sanity by building all his instrumentation on the foundation of the string band. He has not only used the enlarged orchestra but

907**

he has justified it. Korngold is as different from Brahms as Brahms is from Beethoven or Mozart; but he has come back to the road that the great symphonists have traveled, bringing with him wealth that others have mined. In this symphony his temperament seems Mendelssohnian; but there is something in his work that is more virile than Mendelssohn's. It is risky business to predict what is likely to happen to such work as this; but it is a great temptation to say that this symphony is going to have a permanent place in the symphonic literature of the world.

Some of the characteristics of this symphony may be explained by the fact that Korngold is now in his eighteenth year. He

1

could scarcely have been much more than sixteen years old when he wrote this. His portrait appears in this issue. He is a native of Brunn, Austria, but now lives in Vienna, where his father is well known as a musical critic. We are told that at five years of age Erich Korngold could take part in four-hand performances at the pianoforte, and that he' composed a cantata at nine. When he was barely more than thirteen years of age, a musical pantomime of his was produced at the Vienna Court Opera House. Those who are looking for the renaissance of music may well pray that this young fellow's life may be spared-and not his life only, but his sanity and good sense.

The performance of this work by the Philharmonic Orchestra, directed by Josef Stransky, was admirable. The audience was rather unresponsive. It is perhaps too much to expect that a work of this sort should be generally appreciated at a first hearing; but the way the men of the orchestra played showed that it was appreciated by them and by their conductor.

A PLAIN LESSON

Fiction teaches us, among other things, that human nature is very much the same under all conditions; that virtue belongs to no class and vice to no locality; that good and evil are combined in all people; and that what creates character is not the absence of evil impulses but the overcoming of evil by good. The chasm which separates classes of people is apparent rather than real; it can always be crossed by kindness and sympathy. For this reason such books as Miss Myra Kelly's "Little Citizens" and Mr. Jacob Riis's vari

ous sketches and pictures of the kind of people he was trying to help are bridges across the chasm.

Last winter, on a very cold night, a wellknown and very successful man found himself on a trolley car opposite a very shabby and thinly dressed man who was evidently suffering from the cold. The successful man happened to be wearing a new and extremely comfortable fur overcoat, and the contrast between his condition and that of the shivering young man with the sensitive face opposite struck his heart. There was a considerable chasm between them, but he was able to cross it because he has a big heart and knows men. He began in a quiet way to talk with his neighbor by saying, "I suppose you are a workingman? I have been a workingman all my life;" and he proceeded to describe some building work in which he had been engaged. The young man's sensitiveness was disarmed; he found himself talking to one of the most interesting men in America, and this man seemed to be his friend. Presently there was a free exchange of opinions between them. Then the opportunity came to the prosperous man to say to the other: "I fancy you are down on your luck, as I often used to be. I am up on my luck just now, and I would like to be of some service to you; other men were to me. We workingmen must help one another." Before he left he had managed to slip a tendollar bill into the hand of a discouraged and half-freezing man.

Travelers who go through the Tennessee or Kentucky mountains, and associate stories of feuds with the strange-looking people and lonely houses they see, might imagine they were in a foreign country; but those who read "Mothering on Perilous last year know that the "humans" in the mountains are exactly like the "humans" in New York except that they are more elemental. That book was a romance of the realistic kind; the human story is always romantic when it brings to the surface the latent idealism of human nature. Miss Furman's "Sight to the Blind" (Macmillan) recounts an experience of special significance just now when many people are inclined to believe that the divine government of the world has broken down. The trained nurse at the Settlement School on Perilous gave a talk in a little district school-house on the causes and prevention of tuberculosis; and then a little farther on she talked to a group of mothers on the nursing of

typhoid and its prevention, as that disease had been epidemic in the country; and there she heard the story of Aunt Dalmanutha, who, before the judgment and curse of God fell on her, as some of the mountain preachers told her, was "the workingest and most capablest woman up and down Clinch." She could weave her fourteen yards, or hoe her acre of corn, or clear her man's stint of new ground a day; and she knew how to plan and manage. But, like Job, one calamity after another had followed her with such persistency that the mountain preachers were sure that God was punishing her; and the woman had turned on God and cursed him. Her husband had died, seven of her sons had followed him, and she had never lifted her voice, she told the nurse; and then she was reduced to a last son and to her little daughter, the child of her prayer. When that child began to grow pale and to pine, she had cried out to God to spare her. "It is cruel, it is onjust," she said. ". . . I will never endure it !" And then the child died, and later, with much weeping, her sight went out; she was old and lonely, desolate and blind. "It were cruel, it were onjust, it were horrible, it were wicked of God to treat me that way, and never will I say it wa'n't." And then the trained nurse waited a minute and answered quietly and slowly :

It was cruel, it was unjust, it was horrible, it was wicked, that you should have been made to suffer so; above all, Aunt Dalmanutha, it was unnecessary. With a little knowledge, and proper food and fresh air, your daughter's life could have been saved; with knowledge and proper treatment your sons need not have died of dysentery or typhoid or even diphtheria; with knowledge your blindness itself, which is no curse, but would as surely have come upon you had you never lost Evy and never rebelled in your heart, need have lasted only a few months. For these are cataracts that you have on your eyes, and nothing would have been simpler and easier than their removal.

The sorrowful woman had a brain, and she began to use it; she saw that she was holding God responsible for conditions which were of human making; and when her sight was restored, as it was when she knew where to go for advice and help, she became radiantly happy. She had lost her children, but she had regained her faith in infinite love. There are many people to-day who are holding God responsible for conditions made by men in defiance of his will, against his law, and in bitterest antagonism to his love.

T

HE Cedar Rapids (Iowa) "Gazette" chronicles the report that a Pennsylvania firm has received a big foreign order for submarines, and adds:

Back and forth, across the numerous countries ridden by war, flash automobiles, great, powerful machines, many of which were built in the United States and shipped to foreign ports for war usage.

Ammunition made in the United States was used until the supply was exhausted. . . .

Right now thousands of horses are being purchased in the United States for shipment to England and France. A purchasing agent was in Cedar Rapids this week to buy one hundred head. The slaughter of American horses has been tremendous, of such magnitude as to advance the horse market quotations in this country by leaps and bounds.

All these things, concludes the Iowa paper, tend to show that the United States has been implicated in the war to a considerable extent. "Some may even maintain that this country must carry its share of the responsibility for the war, inasmuch as it has done so much toward supplying the necessities."

Referring to the submarine order, the Philadelphia "Telegraph" thinks it a matter of course that Mr. Charles M. Schwab would agree not to construct submarines in this country for the use of belligerents in the European war if the Administration notified him, as was its duty, that such work would be a violation of neutral rights. The paper adds: Neutral nations have paid high for permitting that to be done, and England itself has had that experience, having paid the United States a large sum for allowing Confederate cruisers to be fitted out and sailed from her harbors during the Civil War. . .

The Administration has acted wisely in this matter, and has yielded no rights in relation to any of the belligerents. It has undertaken to maintain a strict neutrality, and the prohibition of war-ship construction is an essential part of that policy. To build and ship in sections would have been a mere subterfuge which could not have been explained.

The sale of arms and ammunition is large, according to the editor of the "Fatherland, a paper printed in this country in the interest of Germany and Austria. He reports, we do not know on what authority, that England is getting from one company 200,000 rifles and 200,000,000 cartridges, and that this com

pany will also send to England its total output of artillery cartridge cases; that from still another company England is getting 700,000 rifles and 200,000,000 cartridges; that another company has sold 15,000 machine guns and 50,000 revolvers to England; another, 200 armored motor cars, with machine guns; and another, 4,000,000 pounds of powder; that France has a contract for 900 howitzers, for 7,000,000 pounds of powder, for 100,000 rifles and 13,000,000 cartridges; that Russia has orders for artillery ammunition estimated to amount to $12,000,000, for 100,000 carbines and 100,000,000 cartridges, and for aeroplanes.

But the sale of arms and ammunition will be checked if Senator Hitchcock has his way. He has introduced a bill in Congress to forbid American powder and arms manufacturers to sell their products to belligerents in time of war. This legislation is urged because one group of belligerents which, with the ocean open to their vessels, is able to obtain these supplies secures an undue advantage over the group the commerce of which has been blocked.

The Milwaukee "Sentinel" may be taken as a representative of those newspapers, evidently in the minority, which look favorably upon the proposition. "We make bold to say," declares the Sentinel," "that it would be for the world's good and consonant with the higher progress if the law were changed." changed." The Milwaukee paper adds:

66

The Hitchcock Bill brings up the question whether, in view of Great Britain's ability to prevent direct shipments to Germany and her allies, the finer spirit of neutrality does not obligate us to prevent by statute the right of our citizens under international law to "vend and export arms."

Another Milwaukee paper, however, the "Leader," points out an obvious truth. It is difficult to see, says this Milwaukee journal, wherein the sale of war munitions after war has begun is more evil than the sale of war munitions before war has been declared. In either event a bomb or bullet is as deadly. "There were many of our citizens who thought it unfriendly for the Kaiser to permit the Krupps to supply Huerta with guns and ammunition after we had landed an expedition at Vera Cruz to prevent arms from reaching him, but the