Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

sensational, and crudely quantitative contrasts, subordinating the mind to the senses, the thought to the sound, expression to depiction, óne has been unable to resist the suspicion that there is something fundamentally wrong in such an artistic materialism, such a policy of "frightfulness" in music. Such a policy, it would seem, too much ignores the mental, emotional, and spiritual side of art, which, though less obvious than the physical or sensuous, is, in music especially, far more vital. The essence of music is the thought, the melody. If this thought is commonplace, as it often is with Strauss, no splendor of instrumental embodiment, no glory of its flesh, so to speak, will permanently conceal the poverty of its soul. If, on the other hand, the thought is noble, profound, tender with the tenderness that comes only to a wise and chastened spirit, as so many of the melodies of that other great German of a far different ideal, Beethoven, so constantly are, then it needs no elaborate physical incorporation to make its quiet but potent appeal to our sense of beauty. The greatest of Beethoven's immortal thoughts need no more than two violins, a viola, and a violoncello to give them voice. Yet so full of meaning are they, so rich with garnered experience, with human sympathy, with spiritual aspiration, that it takes a lifetime of study to appreciate them.

Strauss is more easily approachable, infinitely more effective superficially, more satisfying to the man who listens with his ears rather than with his mind and heart. His vivid pictures appeal to many who do not yet respond to the deeper emotional power of music. He gives much, too, especially in such a masterpiece as "Till Eulenspiegel," to the purely musical faculty. But his increasing preoccupation with the body rather than the soul of art is disquieting. It indicates a materialism which may prove disastrous. For in art, as in ordinary life, it is possible in a veritable palace of luxury, fitted with "all the modern conveniences," to starve to death.

NEW GODS FOR OLD

The rapid strides made in industry and commerce during the nineteenth century by the application of science and man's inventive powers to the problems of his material existence have yet shown no indication of slackening in the twentieth century. We may be nearing the end of the era to go down in

history as marked by great inventions and industrial development, but there is nothing to indicate it. The displacement of the horse as a tractive power by the first elementary steam-engine was followed by displacement of this engine by another more. complicated, the displacement of that by a type yet more advanced, and so on, till we have come to the turbine and modern complicated steam-engine. Now steam is giving way to electricity as a motive power. So new gods supplant the old.

Recently the United States launched a new dreadnought driven by electricity generated by steam. Several railways have already taken the electrical power that has worked so well on street, elevated, and subway systems and applied it to their regular passenger service. But the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway has recently been the first one to inaugurate an epoch in transportation by establishing the first long-distance stretch of electrified track.

The Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul is already using mainly electric locomotives over a two-hundred-and-thirty-mile section of road between Harlowton and Deer Lodge, Montana. This section includes two entire " engine divisions" and traverses the great continental divide of the Rocky Mountains as well as the main ridge of the Belt Mountains. Officials of this road promise that in a few weeks not a single steam locomotive will be left on this section. And within a few months it is planned to complete the electrification already begun of two additional engine divisions comprising a stretch of track between Deer Lodge and Avery, Idaho, making the total distance of the four divisions four hundred and forty miles of continuous electrified track.

The advantages of the electric power from the passenger's point of view are evidentless noise, no smoke, and no cinders. From the point of view of the railway management, it is said that the electric locomotive excels the steam locomotive on stiff grades, particularly in winter, when the steam-engine loses much heat by radiation. The elimination of fuel trains, coal and water stations, and ash dumping is another advantage to the railway. The electric locomotive costs more to build than the steam, but costs less to operate, has a greater tractive power, and is much more responsive to an unexpected extra demand on its strength than a steam locomotive. Of course the initial cost of supplanting steam

power with electric is great, but more and more railway men are coming to believe that in the long run the substitution pays.

THE AMERICAN

ARTISTS' AID SOCIETY

The plight of the Blakelock family, to which The Outlook has already called the attention of its readers, also calls attention to the fact that, though we are in this country far from being as well supplied with material aid to necessitous artists and their families as is France, for instance, our artists have been endeavoring to do what they could among themselves. The result has been the formation of an Artists' Aid Society, which certainly needs wider support than it now has.

It may be said that there is no reason why a painter who becomes incapacitated or dies should receive greater material succor than if he had been in some other walk in life. Doubtless among plumbers, for instance, or bricklayers, there may be found quite as many cases appealing for aid. And yet the fact that men have enriched the world by painting beautiful picturespictures which go to make men finer in quality as they gaze at them, pictures which because of the inspiration of their creators awaken aspiration in the observers certainly gives to those creators a peculiar niche in the respect, appreciation, and esteem of the public.

The society in question is composed of artists not over fifty years of age who maintain a fund for the families of deceased members. But such a fund is far from being sufficient to meet all needs. We should have here, if possible, the French law, which requires from all sales of pictures at public auction a small percentage for the benefit of incapacitated artists or the estates of those deceased. Should an artist have no heirs, the portion of the fund that would go to his estate is accumulated as a benevolent fund for other artists.

A plan now proposed is that artists should receive a small percentage, say two per cent, of the increase in value of their pictures from each sale. Public attention has been justly aroused by notable instances in which painters failed to realize anything like the value of their masterpieces-such an instance as the now famous " 'Moonlight," sold by its creator, Blakelock, for $400, and resold a few weeks ago for $20,000. A reproduction of this picture appears on another page.

COURAGE WITHOUT FORESIGHT

The unconditional surrender of General Townshend's forces, long besieged in Kut-elAmara by the Turks, ends, for the present at least, England's brave but ill-considered Bagdad adventure. The loss does not in the least affect the major battle-lines of the great war; from the large military standpoint it is insignificant; it does not appreciably diminish the Allies' prospect of final success. What is important is its moral effect. The attempt was doomed to failure from the outset. English soldiers have everywhere fought well, but English generals and war councils seem slow to learn the lesson of the Boer War; over and over again-at Gallipoli, in the case of Servia (and, some would say, of Belgium), in the Balkans negotiations, and in the Mesopotamian campaign-they have moved too soon or too late; they have fought without taking account of the odds; they have been ill served by their information departments. Dogged does it " is a capital motto, but "Haste makes waste" is equally sound. To push ahead in a bull-headed way and hope to "muddle through" somehow is disastrous. Fortunately and again exactly as in the Boer War-hard experience has had its effect, and since this Bagdad fiasco was entered upon the reconstitution of Great Britain's war methods at home and in the field promises better foresight and judgment than were seen in Churchill's belated and weak attempt to relieve Antwerp; or in the blunders which lost the chance of breaking the Turks' defense at Suvla Bay, as frankly and convincingly told by Sir Ian Hamilton; or in the blindness as to seemingly obvious probabilities which led to this Kut-el-Amara surrender.

66

Gen

The Mesopotamian campaign was a huge blunder. It was to be a dash to Bagdad from the Persian Gulf—that is, a "dash" over hundreds of miles in a difficult country against a fortified enemy of unknown strength. eral Townshend's army started with at least twenty-five thousand men; it surrendered less than ten thousand strong. What has become of the rest? It was sent (English newspapers say against General Townshend's judgment) up the Tigris River, with no rail communication, nearly five hundred miles from its water base, to attack whatever army the enemy might have. Victorious in its earlier actions, it was first checked at

[graphic]
[blocks in formation]

AB-1-SARD

KALA-1-RAZA

TIGRIS

KUMAIL

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

SAMAWA

SEA

R.

TABRIZ

DURAJI

NASIRIYELI

EZRA'S TOMB

EUPHRATES

KASR-BIR-SHAGRA

●HAWAIZE

WAIS

[blocks in formation]

ISPAHAN

5 10 20

[blocks in formation]

KURNA BASRA

7

MILES

[blocks in formation]

THE WAR IN ASIA MINOR

Two recent events in the war, reported this week in The Outlook, relate to the regions shown on these maps. The surrender of General Townshend's forces took place at Kut-el-Amara, shown here on the larger map, over 100 miles southeast of Bagdad. The Russian forces moving south toward Bagdad have reached Diarbekr, about 400 miles northwest of Bagdad-see small inserted map

[graphic]

Ctesiphon, about twenty-five miles below Bagdad, then driven back by an overwhelming Turkish army, in part outflanked, and finally shut in by the Turks in Kut-el-Amara, over a hundred miles south of Bagdad. There it has remained for several months, while a large British relief force has again and again tried in vain to succor it. Now, his supplies exhausted, General Townshend has been forced to surrender without condition and to hand over five million dollars in money to the Turks. The story in this bare outline shows on its face that the campaign was doomed from its inception, and doomed simply because, in the expressive slang of the day, Great Britain had no idea of what it was up against." The army of the relief expedition, it has been intimated, is itself in a dangerous situation. Bagdad may fall, but if it falls it will fall, not to England, but to the Russian forces advancing south from Erzerum and west from Persia. This may have an important influence over the relations of England and Russia as to Constantinople and Asia Minor in the final settlement after the war.

The loss of men, material, and money thus incurred by England is in such a vast war negligible, but the loss of prestige is more serious. The lesson will be a sharp admonition to England that political bickering, military red tape, and action without foresight must give way to harmony, sound leadership, and prevision, so that the valor of the fighting men may not be nullified by lack of sagacity in their leaders.

THE FIRST HUNDRED THOUSAND 1

Terence Mulvaney would like "The First Hundred Thousand." As a veteran of much fighting and a connoisseur of the failings of many recruits he would find in Ian Hay's description of the training of the first hundred thousand of Kitchener's volunteers enough food for a library of comment. Terence is still living, we hope that Mr. Kipling has already brought to his professional attention this record of the improvised troops who are carrying the standards of Great Britain in the war.

If

Ian Hay's book is an intimate picture of the struggle to turn a crowd of untrained, unorganized civilians into a coherent unit, able

1 The First Hundred Thousand. By Ian Hay. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $1.50.

2

to take its part in the first line of attack in a great war. The picture is painted with humor and sympathy and understanding. It is a picture which deserves more than a careful study by any American citizen who is interested in the problem of National defense.

The independent American who won't take orders from anybody, who considers even self-discipline an insult to his free-born inheritance, can peruse with profit the following account of the change in the mental attitude of the recruits in Kitchener's army as the progress of their training continued:

At home we are persons of some consequence, with very definite notions about the dignity of labor. We have employers who tremble at our frown; we have trades union officials who are at constant pains to impress upon us our own omnipotence in the industrial world in which we live. We have at our beck and call a Radical M.P., who, in return for our vote and suffrage, informs us that we are the backbone of the nation, and that we must on no account permit ourselves to be trampled upon by the effete and tyrannical upper classes. Finally, we are Scotsmen, with all a Scotsman's curious reserve and contempt for social airs and graces.

But in the army we appear to be nobody. We are expected to stand stiffly at attention when addressed by an officer, even to call him "sir"-an honor to which our previous employer had been a stranger. . . . The N. C. O.'s are almost as bad. If you answer a sergeant as you would a foreman, you are impertinent; if you argue with him, as all good Scotsmen must, you are insubordinate; if you endeavor to drive a collective bargain with him, you are mutinous; and you are reminded that upon active service mutiny is punishable by death. It is all very unusual and upsetting.

But military discipline and the hard facts of experience began to break through this crust of civilian habit and misunderstanding. After a time Ian Hay writes:

Presently fresh air, hard training, and clean living begin to weave their spell. Incredulous at first, we find ourselves slowly recognizing the fact that it is possible to treat an officer deferentially or carry out an order smartly without losing one's self-respect as a man and a trades-: unionist.

[ocr errors]

We are getting less individualistic, too. We are beginning to think more of our regiment and less of ourselves. At first this loyalty takes the form of criticising other regiments because their marching is slovenly or their accouterments dirty or-most significant sign of all-their discipline is bad. We are especially critical of our own Eighth Battalion, which is fully three weeks younger than we are, and is

not in the first hundred thousand at all. In their presence we are war-worn veterans. We express it as our opinion that the officers of some of these battalions must be a poor lot. From this it suddenly comes home to us that our officers are a good lot, and we find ourselves taking a queer pride in our company commander's homely strictures and severe sentences the morning after pay night. Here is another step in the quickening life of the regiment. Esprit de corps is raising its head, class prejudice and dour "independence notwithstanding.

[ocr errors]

This attitude of mind is not gained except at the cost of hard knocks and weary commands. There are those whose infractions of the military law lead them into serious trouble. There are those whose ignorance is a high stumbling-block on the road to the making of a soldier, and there are those who, like Wee Pe'er," have hearts too big and courage too great for the strength that is in their bodies. Ian Hay's story of Wee Pe'er is too long to retell, but it will be found to deserve many re-readings. The tragedy of Wee Pe'er and the story of the triumph of discipline and order belong to the later chapters of the book. In these chapters, as in the earlier record of the first elementary drills, there are many incidents made memorable by the Scotch dialect which Ian Hay uses so tellingly. There is the incident of the corporal who began (but did not complete) an explanation in the midst of a drill as to the reason why he had not passed an order more clearly:

I was sittin' doon tae ma dinner on Sabbath, sir, when my front teeth met upon a small piece bone that was stickit in

There is Private Mucklewame, who, when asked to describe a scout, replied, "They gang oot in a procession on Setterday efternoons, sirr, in short breeks.”

There is Private McSlattery, whose knowledge of geography is, to say the least, somewhat limited. It was Private McSlattery who, feeling that he was being kept back from the war for no good and sufficient reason, voiced the following complaint after he had been kept on parade for two hours in a northeast wind for the edification of certain spectacled dignitaries from the Far East :

"This regiment," he announced, "is no' for the front at all. We're jist tae bide here for tae be inspeckit by Chinese Ministers and other heathen bodies !"

As Ian Hay explains, for Private McSlattery the word Minister could have only one sig

nificance, and his strictures were occasioned by sectarian rather than by racial prejudice.

We recommend "The First Hundred Thousand" to students of Scotch, students of war, students of peace, and to students of good reading. If it comes into the hands of any one not included in this list, we recommend that it be read, anyhow, even if no specific excuse can be found for its perusal.

WHAT JESUS CHRIST THOUGHT OF HIMSELF

Coming to my table the other morning, I found laid upon it a letter from a correspondent asking me, "In what way can the divinity of Christ be proven?" and at the same time also a little book by Anson Phelps Stokes entitled "What Jesus Christ Thought of Himself," which seems to me to answer the inquiry of my correspondent. Not, indeed, exactly. It is not an argument to prove the traditional theory of Christ's divinity. It refuses to define, or even to consider, the metaphysical relations of the Son to the Father in a theological Trinity. Its author. concedes that some conservatives will think his conclusions unorthodox and not consistent with Nicene theology. I am much more concerned myself to reach conclusions consistent with common sense and the teachings of Jesus Christ and his immediate Apostles; and that this little book does so successfully that I make no apology for reporting its substance and its conclusions here.

In

Jesus Christ lived a thoroughly human life; he grew not only in stature but in wisdom. He was not only hungry, thirsty, weary, but he was sensitive, and at times sad, lonely, perplexed, sorely tempted. He was conscious of the limitations of his power and the limitations of his knowledge. Offices in the kingdom of God he said it was not his to give; knowledge of the time of his second coming he said that he did not possess. matters outside of the sphere of the soul's positive religious life and experience his information was based on that of his place and time. He constantly recognized the source of his wisdom and of his power to be not in himself but in his Father: "The Father hath sent me ;" My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me ;""As the Father said unto me, so I speak ;" "No man can

[ocr errors]

What Jesus Christ Thought of Himself. By Anson Phelps Stokes. The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.

« PredošláPokračovať »