Praise and Blame for American Women From Dr. Emil
Reich—Earl Grey and Secretary Root Discuss the Relations of
Canada and the United States—William J. Bryan Defines the
Limits of Socialism—Rabbi Schulman Explains Certain
Prejudices Against the Jews—William T. Jerome, Senator
Lodge, and Norman Hapgood Criticize or Defend the Noble Army
of Muck-Rakers—With Other Interesting Expressions of
Opinion on Current Issues of the Day.
Compiled and edited for The Scrap Book.
American Women Are Like the Spartans
in Their Desire to Dominate the
American Man.
Dr. Emil Reich has been lecturing to fashionable London on such
universally fascinating themes as woman and love. According to the news
despatches, so great has been the popularity of his talks that there have
not been seats enough to accommodate his titled hearers, and at one
lecture the Duchess of Portland sat on the floor. He has said of "Love and
Personality":
Personality is always a mystery with its antithetically
mingled elements in man and woman. Women have loved wrongly
and known it, were perfectly aware of it—they only know
also that they were helpless to avoid it; the desire of
their lives has been gratified, something has happened.
What was there about George Sand, save perhaps pretty good
eyes, to send such men as Alfred de Musset and Friedrich
Chopin absolutely crazy? Nothing interesting about her—even
her unattractiveness enhanced by her constant smoking. Yet
she could inspire the "Prelude," which Chopin composed on
seeing her approach in a garden in Minorca—the greatest
piece of music ever compressed into a single page.
Goethe's Gretchen, the little bourgeoise, without apparent
attractiveness, yet inspiring his mighty genius—what is
this mystery of man and woman? The beauty of nations differs
very much. The Latins are less beautiful than the
Anglo-Saxons. The angularity of the North German woman is
notorious; an uncharming person. Why? It has nothing
whatever to do with race. The growth of the Hanseatic cities
brought great wealth in North Germany; money-bags married
money-bags; the result was a people of severely plain
aspect. There are not many money-bags in America, although
there are many money-bags in the hands of a few.
The American is insulted if mention of dowry is made in his
wedding arrangements. He marries because he loves the woman
and she him. Hence, the American people have become
exceedingly beautiful. Then the facilities for divorce
presented in the United States are an important factor in
the beautification process. Love is really at the bottom of
it all—not money-bags or race, but love.
The French are always talking about l'amour, l'amour; but
really there is no amour there at all—people generally
talk most about what they haven't got or don't know. Yes,
indeed, so rare is l'amour in France that it accounts for
the decline in facial beauty of the French woman—not in
movement, for in movement she excels the world, but in face.
Rome and Greece were ruined by treating marriage as a matter
of business.
Complementary to Dr. Reich's praise of the American woman's beauty is his
criticism of her love of domination. In that characteristic he reads the
doom of America. We quote his reasons from the New York American:
Nations differ in nothing so much as in their women. The
French, English, or American woman is easily
distinguishable. The American woman is totally different
from the English woman. So is the French woman, though the
difference in this case is not so intense; so is the German
woman; so is the woman of Italy. The American woman, while
differing from all her European sisters of to-day, bears a
marked resemblance to the woman of ancient Sparta. The
Spartans resembled the present-day Americans; the Athenians
were like the English.
I do not blame, I do not praise; I only say, and I say
emphatically, that the American woman is not womanly; she is
not a woman. The whole of the United States is under
petticoat government, and man is practically non-existent.
In America, woman commands man. Man does not count there.
The last man that came to America was Christopher Columbus.
To-day, man has no existence; he does not talk in the
drawing-room, but is a dummy. The woman lives one life, the
man another, and they are totally distinct from each other.
She is as new as a man born to-day is new; she is made up of
restlessness and fidgetiness long before she is twenty-five.
But she is very beautiful; she has the best complexion in
the world—better than that of any European woman. She is
also well built and handsome. You see fine specimens of the
American woman in Kentucky and Massachusetts.
A few miles distant from the Athens of old—what would be
but a short railway journey in these days—lay Sparta. The
Spartans were imperialists, and they wanted to conquer the
whole of Greece. The Spartan woman, as I have remarked, was
like the American woman of to-day. She never dreamed of
lovers; her idea was nothing less than conquering man; she
never thought of him as more than a fellow athlete.
There was no womanhood in them, no more than in so many
sticks. The Athenians said that they were very fine, but
there was nothing feminine about them. They were far richer,
too, than the men, for the men went to the wars and died,
and the women thus became rich. Aristotle said that the
Spartan woman was sure to ruin Sparta very quickly. And so
she did, for we find Sparta trying to rule Greece in the
fourth century b.c.; in the third century she was sinking;
in the second century she had ceased to exist.
Modern British men and women, what are they? That is what I
want to bring out. A nation can never survive with women of
the Spartan type, which, as I have told you, is the American
woman of to-day. The Romans were the same, and they ruined
their empire. They had one idea, an all-absorbing idea which
killed all ideas of religion, of art, of everything—the
idea of empire. They spent their entire life in that one
absorbing pursuit—domination; in such a country woman has
no place.
Development of New National Spirit in
the Dominion Discussed by Earl
Grey and Secretary Root.
Canada has been making tremendous strides in the last few years. The
opening up of the vast untilled grain lands of the Northwest has been
followed by an influx of new blood from other countries, and particularly
from the United States. Throughout the Dominion energy is dictating to
enterprise. In all the provinces there are stirrings of a new national
spirit.
Relations between Canada and the United States are certain to assume a
different character in view of the changing local conditions. The future
before Canada is so great in its promise that any pronouncement by high
authorities as to her newer feelings is at present very important. Such
pronouncement was made at the dinner given in New York by the Pilgrims of
the United States to Earl Grey, Governor-General of Canada. The earl and
Mr. Root, our Secretary of State, made significant speeches.
Said Earl Grey:
Any idea of the possible annexation of Canada by the United
States is scouted by us as an impossibility as great as you
would regard the annexation of the United States by Canada.
And now, gentlemen, may I say the more we see of Americans
the better we shall be pleased. All we want is to know each
other better than we do, and to help each other as much as
we can. If Canada can at any time help the United States in
any direction which will improve the conditions of life for
your people, she will consider it a blessed privilege to be
allowed to render that assistance; and I feel sure that the
people of the United States will also be only too glad to
assist us in our struggle toward the realization of high
ideals and toward the attainment of a national character
distinguished by the fulness with which the principles of
fair play, freedom, and duty shall be applied by the people
of Canada to the various occupations of their lives.
There are several questions outstanding between the Dominion
of Canada and the United States which have been left open
too long, and which call for settlement.
Both governments desire to take advantage of the opportunity
which the present feeling of amity between the two countries
affords, and I am persuaded that the people on both sides of
the frontier will be glad when their respective governments
have given effect to their desires.
Secretary Root denied the rumor that at this banquet any sensational or
unexpected announcement would be made, declaring that all existing
questions between Canada and the United States had been settled. "I wish,"
he said, "it was so." But he pointed out the attitude that must be adopted
to facilitate the settlement of disputes—an attitude considerate and
just.
Of the changed conditions in Canada he said:
I think the American people recognize the fact that much has
taken place on the other side of the border—much which
materially affects the theoretical, assumed, or supposed
relations between the United States and Canada.
It was with apparent doubt that the American people read the
treaty of the eighteenth century, whether Canada was to
become a part of the United States, and in 1812, the British
governor-general of Canada wrote that a majority of his
people were rather in favor of the Americans than the
English.
We must recognize that a great change has taken place.
Canada is no longer the outlying country that it once was,
when a few remnants of French descendants were left upon its
borders to subsist upon precarious livelihoods. It has
become a great community with increasing population and
wealth.
In her relations with England one can see that, while she is
loyal to her mother country, as she has attained maturity
she has contracted a personality of her own. Her relations
to us have become of great importance. With enormous natural
wealth, and with vigor and energy, she is protecting her
industries, as we are protecting ours.
Her people are proud of their country, as we are proud of
ours, and we appreciate that from what was a little dominion
upon our borders there has grown a great and powerful
nation. And the people of America look with no grudging or
jealous eye upon her development.
Bryan Suggests that "Individualism"
Best Defines Limit to Be Set
on Socialistic Tendencies.
A tendency toward factional alignment at present characterizes the radical
movement which has been sweeping over the country. The different elements
of that movement are beginning to offer their individual claims for
recognition. At this juncture William Jennings Bryan contributes to the
Century an important article on "Individualism versus Socialism," in
which he seeks to dispel the fogs which have enveloped the economic
situation. First, he defines the two terms opposed in his title:
For the purpose of this discussion individualism will be
defined as the private ownership of the means of production
and distribution where competition is possible, leaving to
public ownership those means of production and distribution
in which competition is practically impossible; and
socialism will be defined as the collective ownership,
through the state, of all the means of production and
distribution.
Mr. Bryan points out that much of the strength shown by socialism is due
to the fact that "socialists advocate certain reforms which individualists
also advocate."
Take, for illustration, the public ownership of water-works;
it is safe to say that a large majority of the people living
in cities of any considerable size favor their public
ownership—individualists because it is practically
impossible to have more than one water system in a city, and
socialists on the general ground that the government should
own all the means of production and distribution. Then, too,
some of the strength of socialism is due to its condemnation
of abuses which, while existing under individualism, are not
at all necessary to individualism—abuses which the
individualists are as anxious as the socialists to remedy.
It is not only consistent with individualism, but is a
necessary implication of it, that the competing parties
should be placed upon substantially equal footing; for
competition is not worthy of that name if one party is able
arbitrarily to fix the terms of the agreement, leaving the
other with no choice but to submit.
The civil service, says Mr. Bryan, is our nearest approach to ideal
socialism. Does it afford a stimulus to the higher development of the
civil servants?
Justice requires that each individual shall receive from
society a reward proportionate to his contribution to
society. Can the state, acting through officials, make this
apportionment better than it can be made by competition? At
present official favors are not distributed strictly
according to merit, either in republics or in monarchies; it
is certain that socialism would insure a fairer division of
rewards? If the government operates all the factories, all
the farms, and all the stores, there must be superintendents
as well as workmen; there must be different kinds of
employment, some more pleasant, some less pleasant. Is it
likely that any set of men can distribute the work or fix
the compensation to the satisfaction of all?
At present private monopoly is putting upon individualism an
undeserved odium, and it behooves the individualist to
address himself energetically to this problem in order that
the advantages of competition may be restored to industry.
And the duty of immediate action is made more imperative by
the fact that the socialist is inclined to support the
monopoly, in the belief that it will be easier to induce the
government to take over an industry after it has passed into
the hands of a few men.
In the substance of his opinion Mr. Bryan's "individualism" does not seem
to be very far removed from Fabian socialism—or at least not from such
socialism as is expressed, say, by Robert Hunter, who said not long ago,
while speaking about the problems of poverty:
I have been asked if I think socialism is the cure for these
evils. As we do not know what state socialism would bring
about, we cannot say. But I am sure that certain socialistic
measures are necessary. We need municipal tenements, as they
have in Liverpool, Birmingham, and London, where the
children will have healthful surroundings, plenty of places
to play, and there are no landlords to exact profits.
Other places have nationalized the coal fields, and the poor
get coal at cost. At Rochester, in England, the death-rate
has been cut down one-half by the municipalization of the
milk-supply, and the children of the poor, instead of the
pale-blue poison they used to have, get a fine, healthful
food. These are socialistic measures, and every advance we
make is toward socialism.
That Sham Humanitarianism Has Become
a Stench Is the Declaration
of a Leading Humanitarian.
Andrew D. White, ex-president of Cornell University, ex-ambassador to
Germany—scholar, publicist, humanitarian—said wholesome words to the
Cornell students a few weeks ago on the problem of "High Crime in the
United States." The basis of his address was the fact that more murders
are committed every year in the United States than in any other country.
His attitude in regard to lynch-law is rather startling:
The number of homicides that are punished by lynching
exceeds the number punished by due process of law. There is
nothing more nonsensical or ridiculous than the goody-goody
talk about lynching. Much may be said in favor of Goldwin
Smith's quotation, "that there are communities in which
lynch-law is better than any other."
From this he proceeded to decry over-wrought sentiment in favor of
criminals:
Germs of maudlin sentimentality are widespread. On every
hand we hear slimy, mushy, gushy expressions of sympathy,
the criminal called "plucky," "nervy," "fighting against
fearful odds for his life."
It is said that society has no right to put murderers to
death. In my opinion, society must fall back on the law of
self-preservation. It should cut through and make war, in my
opinion, for its life. Life imprisonment is not possible,
because there is no life imprisonment.
In the next year nine thousand people will be murdered. As I
stand here to-day I tell you that nine thousand are doomed
to death with all the cruelty of the criminal heart, and
with no regard for home and families, and two-thirds of
those murders will be due to the maudlin sentiment sometimes
called mercy.
I have no sympathy for the criminal. My sympathy is for
those who will be murdered, for their families and for their
children.
This sham humanitarianism has become a stench. The cry now
is for righteousness. The past generation has abolished
human slavery. It is for the present to deal with the
problems of the future and among them this problem of crime.
Young men, like Jerome, like Folk and Hughes, resolve never
to be servants of criminals, but to do your best to punish
crime as it should be punished.
The Long-Existent Prejudice Against the
Jew Is Explained by a Leading
Rabbi of New York.
No other race has been so vilified as the Jew. Hatred for Hebrews has been
endemic in Europe since the Dark Ages, and even to-day in France and
Germany the anti-Semitic movements have considerable strength. How can
this be? Is the feeling a survival of anger at a race which rejected
Jesus? Or is it based on desperate hostility toward a race which can
succeed in business where a Gentile fails?
The Rev. Dr. S. Schulman, of the Temple Beth-El, New York City, in a
recent sermon sought to answer these questions. Part of his discourse we
quote:
We are the victims of the world's literature, of its
prevailing creed, and the popular judgment. The greatest
master in the world's literature, seeking a type that on
account of peculiar conditions and circumstances could stand
for cruel hatred and implacable revenge, deliberately
changed the contents of a story and made Shylock the Jew
the embodiment of inhuman revenge.
The poet must have felt that if ever in a human soul there
could arise such unyielding hate as he desired to portray it
might, in a sense, be justified in one whose heart rankled
with the memories of ages of persecution and unjust hatred
to which his race had been subjected.
Here was one, the poet seemed to say, who could well execute
the villainies he had been taught. He therefore produced a
character dramatically consistent, but at the same time he
did an everlasting injury to the Jew, because he produced a
character altogether historically untrue. The Jew is
anything but vindictive; he forgets injuries readily; that
is why he is so optimistic; he has a horror of shedding
blood, and whatever vices the Jew may be capable of, the one
of ferocious cruelty cannot be saddled upon him.
Nevertheless, the word Shylock has become in English speech
synonymous with everything that is bad. This injustice in
literature will persist until some great genius possessing
the broad-mindedness of a Lessing and the dramatic power of
a Shakespeare shall arise among English-speaking people and
create an English Nathan the Wise.
The Western world's creed centers in an event which,
strictly speaking, belongs to the same category as that of
the killing of Socrates, the burning of Giordano Bruno, and
of Servetus. Thus, classic Greek, Catholic, and Protestant
were all equally guilty of sacrificing the best of their
time. The progress of mankind has, sad to say, often been
purchased by the martyrdom of some of the noblest men that
walked on earth.
Yet it is the Jewish people that have been singled out to be
held up to the world as Deicides, and every child at the
time when the soul is most receptive is inoculated with an
antipathy against every living Jew because of an event that
took place nineteen hundred years ago.
It is therefore no wonder that the world is prejudiced
against the Jew.
A Great Word-Artist Shows That Under
the Levity of Bohemian Life Is a Serious
and Lofty Philosophy.
The late Lafcadio Hearn was one of the great prose-poets of the time. The
glimpse into his intimate mind which the Critic affords by printing a
sheaf of his letters to H.E. Krehbiel, the music critic, will be
appreciated by all who followed his literary wanderings up to the time of
his settlement in Japan. The letters were written many years ago, when
Hearn was still in his early prime. When he learned of the death of Mr.
Krehbiel's child he wrote this exquisite expression of sympathy:
Your letter rises before me as I write like a tablet of
white stone bearing a dead name. I see you standing beside
me. I look into your eyes and press your hand and say
nothing.
Hearn was ever an artist, and he ever knew what art meant. In advising his
friend to break away from the exhausting routine of daily journalism, he
gave a typical expression of his philosophy of life:
Under the levity of Henri Mürger's picturesque Bohemianism
there is a serious philosophy apparent which elevates the
characters of his romance to heroism. They followed one
principle faithfully—so faithfully that only the strong
survived the ordeal—never to abandon the pursuit of an
artistic vocation for any other occupation, however
lucrative; not even when she remained apparently deaf and
blind to her worshipers.
The conditions pictured by Mürger have passed away in Paris
as elsewhere; the old barriers to ambition have been broken
down. But I think the moral remains.
So long as one can live and pursue his natural vocation in
art, it is a duty with him never to abandon it if he
believes that he has within him the elements of final
success. Every time he labors at aught that is not of art he
robs the divinity of what belongs to her.
Do you never reflect that within a few years you will no
longer be the young man—and that, like Vesta's fires, the
enthusiasm of youth for an art-idea must be well fed with
the sacred branches to keep it from dying out?
I think you ought really to devote all your time and
energies and ability to the cultivation of one subject, so
as to make that subject alone repay you for all your pains.
And I do not believe that art is altogether ungrateful in
these days; she will repay fidelity to her, and recompense
sacrifices. I don't think you have any more right to play
reporter than a great sculptor to model fifty-cent plaster
figures of idiotic saints for Catholic processions, or
certain painters to letter steamboats at so much a letter.
In one sense, too, art is exacting. To acquire real eminence
in any one branch of any art, one must study nothing else
for a lifetime. A very wide general knowledge may be
acquired only at the expense of depth.
After All, Says the New York "Times,"
It Is Doubtless Better for Man to Be
Chosen Than for Him to Choose.
Taking up a discussion inaugurated by the St. James Gazette, of London,
the New York Times says what it has to say on the subject of choosing
wives.
The English paper said frankly that the title would better be "The Choice
of a Husband," inasmuch as the male, though unaware of the fact, is
generally not the pursuer, but the pursued. This condition, however, is by
no means to the discredit of woman.
As the Times remarks, "A young woman whose intentions are both serious
and honorable has nothing at all to be ashamed of in endeavoring by all
womanly means to acquire the man whom she believes she can make happy and
knows that she means to try to."
In America and England there is objection to the man who marries for any
other reason than being in love. Yet the mariage de convenance is not
altogether without legitimate recommendations. To quote the Times:
If one is really bent on making a marriage of reason instead
of waiting for a "call," excellent recipes may be given him.
A wise man once advised his son, who had shown some
disposition to choose instead of waiting to be chosen, to
"look for a good woman's daughter." It would be hard to find
any better basis for a happy union.
In general, of course, mixed marriages, whether the mixture
be of religion or of country, would be viewed by a wise
adviser with apprehension, although Lord Curzon's experience
is only one of very many as to the possible happiness of
marriages between persons of different nationalities, much
more alike as are the nationalities of Lord and Lady Curzon
than any other two nationalities.
Dr. Johnson's famous saying that marriages would be happier
if they were arranged by the Lord Chancellor, due regard
being paid to the ages and conditions of the parties, has
never been accepted as a working rule in his own country. In
France, again, there is the wholly "reasonable" and
extremely circumspect Count Boni Castellane, whose marriage
of reason has so lately been shown to be so far from a
success.
There are quite enough more failures of the same kind to
offset the unhappy marriages of romance. It is of these, of
course, that Burton declares that matches are made in
heaven, though matches of the sulfurous kind, of which all
of us know some instances, suggest a very different place of
manufacture.
Swift's saying that the reason why so few marriages are
happy is that "young ladies spend their time in making nets,
not in making cages," is doubly outrageous. In the first
place, it is an outrageous begging of the question. The
testimony of less cynical observers in our day and country
is that most marriages are entitled to be called happy.
In the second place, it outrageously puts the whole blame
for unhappy marriages on the female partner, contrary alike
to probability and to fact. But at least as many of the
marriages are failures in which men "choose" their wives, or
think they do, as in cases in which men become the prey of
their own imaginations.
And there is this to be said from the point of view of
reason in favor of marriages with which reason has nothing
to do. In the first months of married life there are
necessarily very many differences to be adjusted and small
incompatibilities of ways of thinking and feeling to be
reconciled. That, as all experienced spouses know, is the
trying period.
Marriage is like life in that it is a school wherein whoso
does not learn must suffer. Now, to diminish the friction of
this trying time no better lubricant could possibly be
provided than the romantic love, which cannot be expected to
last forever, but which may very probably outlast this
greatest necessity for it of the early connubial period.
When the glamour of the romance "fades into the light of
common day," and a real man and a real woman take the places
of the creatures of each other's fancy, and passion cools
into at best the tenderest of friendships, both parties are
better off, and will acknowledge themselves to be better off
because the romance has been.
Instinct Best Determines What You
Should Eat, So Eat What Your
Normal Instinct Tells You To.
In that series of compromises which we call life there is no compromise
more perplexing than the compromise with the stomach. No problem requires
more earnest thought than the food problem. It is the stomach that makes
men work. There would be no produce exchange were it not for the
stomach—no yellow fields of wheat and corn, no grazing herds of cattle,
no fleets of white-sailed fishing-vessels. Clothing and shelter are
secondary demands. The stomach is master; and, as is ever likely to be the
case with autocrats, it is selfish—wherefore we humor it—we hold out
crutches to it—we offer it tempting inducements to be lenient with us.
A sense of relief, therefore, is produced by reading Dr. Woods
Hutchinson's article, "Some Diet Delusions," in the April McClure's; for
therein is advanced the doctrine of "intelligent omnivorousness." Says Dr.
Hutchinson:
Every imaginable experiment upon what would and what would
not support life must have been tried thousands of years
ago, and yet our most striking proofs of how highly men
value their "precious right of private haziness," as George
Eliot shrewdly terms it, are to be found in the realm of
dietetics. The "light that never was on sea or land" still
survives for the most matter-of-fact of us in the memory of
"the pies that mother used to make," and nowhere else do we
find preferences so widely accepted as evidence, and
prejudices as matters of fact, as in this arena. In fact, if
we were merely to listen to what is said, and still more to
read what is printed, we would come to the conclusion that
the human race had established absolutely nothing beyond
possibility of dispute in this realm.
Every would-be diet-reformer, and we doctors are almost as
bad as any of them, is absolutely certain that what
nine-tenths of humanity find to be their food is a deadly
poison. One philosopher is sure that animal food of every
description, especially the kind that involves the shedding
of blood, is not only absolutely unfit for human food, but
is the cause of half the suffering and wickedness in the
world. Another gravely declares that the only thing which,
above all things, is injurious is salt. Another takes up his
parable against pork. Still another is convinced that half
the misery of the world is due to the use of spices; and one
dietetic Rousseau proclaims a return to very first
principles by the abolition of cooking.
Another attacks the harmless and blushing tomato, and lays
at its door the modern increase of cancer, insanity, and a
hundred kindred evils; while Mrs. Rohrer has gently but
firmly to be restrained whenever she hears the mild-eyed
potato mentioned.
There is almost an equally astonishing Babel when one comes
to listen to the various opinions as to the amount of food
required. Eighteen grave and reverend doctors assure us that
overeating is the prevalent dietetic sin of the century,
while the remainder of the two dozen are equally positive
that the vast majority of their patients are underfed. One
man preaches the gospel of dignified simplicity on one meal
a day and one clean collar a week, while the lean and
learned Fletcher declares that if we only keep on
masticating our one mouthful of food long enough we shall
delude the stomach into magnifying it into ten, and can dine
sumptuously on a menu-card and a biscuit.
Fortunately, when it comes to practise, philosophers,
reformers, and doctors alike have about as much influence
here as they have over conduct in other realms—and that is
next to none at all. The man in the street follows his
God-given instincts and plods peacefully along to his three
square meals a day, consisting of anything he can find in
the market, and just as much of it as he can afford, with
special preference for rich meats, fats, and sugars.
Here, as everywhere, instinct is far superior to reason, and
a breakfast diet of sausage and buckwheat cakes with maple
syrup and strong coffee has carried the white man half
around the world; while one of salads and cereals, washed
down with a post-prandial subterfuge, would leave him
stranded, gasping, in the first ditch he came to.
All the basal problems of dietetics were, by the mercy of
Heaven, settled long ago in the farmhouse kitchen, in the
commissary department of the army in the field, in the
cook's galley amidships, and in the laboratory.
There is little more room for difference of opinion upon
them than there is about the coaling of engines. Simply a
matter of size of boiler and fire-box, the difference in
heating power and ash between Welsh and Australian, and the
amount of work to be got out of the machine, multiplied by
the time in which it is to be accomplished.
Dr. Hutchinson proceeds to give reasons why spices do not heat the
blood, why pork is a most excellent food, why fish is no better for the
brain than other things, why vegetarianism is a mistake, and so on. His
principal caution is not to eat in a hurry; his principal advice is,
virtually, to eat whatever seems to agree with you.
All of which brings to mind the story of the old dyspeptic who, after a
long term of misery, one day apostrophized his stomach thus:
"I have humored you for many years. I have coaxed you, coddled you, petted
you. I have gone hungry to please you. I have swallowed bad-tasting
medicines on your account. I have been your servant—but now I am through.
From this time I will eat what I please and drink what I please. If you
protest, I shall ignore you. Hereafter you are the servant, I am the
master. Now make the best of that!"
This brave man's stomach, we are told, was so thoroughly cowed by the
words that it never again demanded a milk diet.
Things That Are Being Said About the
"Journalism of Conscience" by Critics,
Passionate and Dispassionate.
When fire is discovered in a house it sometimes happens that the tenants,
in their excitement, hurl fragile bric-à-brac from the windows and with
much effort carry the feather beds down-stairs and out to safety. Suppose
that the incongruity of such action suddenly becomes apparent. The alarmed
tenants may reverse the process. Better still, they may endeavor to put
out the fire. But to cease all effort because they stand convicted of
excited folly would be absurd.
The inevitable reaction from recent wild exposures in finance and politics
has lately shown itself. Prominent men and leading journals have convicted
the "yellow" newspapers and magazines, and the people influenced by them,
of excited folly. Senator Lodge has said in the Senate, concerning
sensational contributors to the magazines:
Writers of that type come and go. They seize upon the
excitement of the moment and presently rise like a flock of
shore birds and whirl away to another spot where they think
they can find a fresh feeding ground. These modern imitators
of Titus Oates will pass away as he passed away. They will
bring no innocent heads to the block as he did, although
they may here and there cause distress. They will not end in
the pillory as he did, because the pillory has been
abolished, but they will go out of fashion just as he did
into silence and contempt.
District Attorney William T. Jerome, speaking at a banquet in New York,
referred to magazine articles which have described the Senate as
treasonable.
Treason is an ugly word. It is punishable by death. We have
got so used to superlatives that our own racy tongue has
become debauched and we have no superlatives left. The
Senate of the United States—is it a treasonable body? A
body that holds a man like Murray Crane, of Massachusetts?
Because some men are there who ought not to be there—some
who bought the position—shall we say that the governors of
our body politic are guilty of treason? Base men are there,
but when in the bright, breezy sentiments of modern
newspaper life you assert there is treason, you either lie
or misconceive the meaning of the English language.
On the other side, Norman Hapgood says, in Collier's:
Who is doing most to make railroad and beef trust facts and
problems understood? Who but the same magazine which has
printed the history of Standard Oil and explained to the
people the needed changes in State and city government. What
a farce to speak of McClure's Magazine as yellow; what a
dull, injurious farce, unless by yellow we mean every
movement of benefit to our kind! Did Mr. Steffens's printing
of the news about Philadelphia do any harm to the
inhabitants of that town? Did it, or did it not, act as a
battle-cry which spurred the good citizens and the
newspapers of that town to action? When original, living,
and conscientious journalism speaks, the routine newspapers
are sometimes forced to echo bold words which receive the
public's approving seal.
So the balance of expressed opinion on the subject shifts up and down. In
all the confusion we sometimes hear an opinion like that, uttered by
Herbert S. Hadley, attorney-general of Missouri:
There is no reason to question the efficacy of existing laws
so long as they are supported by public sentiment, for law
is, in fact, merely the reflection of the moral sense of the
country. What I mean by that statement may be illustrated by
the fact that while a vast majority of lawyers, as well as
laymen, will to-day agree that corporations are amenable to
laws from which an individual might be exempt, the same
proposition would have met with violent refutation hardly
more than two years ago by most lawyers and many laymen.
But the public is now practically agreed, and the courts
have sustained this view, that corporations are not above
the laws of the State which made their existence possible.
An officer of a company may to-day refuse to answer
questions on the ground that he would himself be
incriminated by replying, but he cannot refuse to answer on
the ground that his company would be incriminated. In other
words, corporations are no longer considered to have the
same rights as individuals and cannot evade investigation
and prosecution by maintaining a policy of silence.
Such is the moral sense of the country and such is the law
as determined by the highest courts, and with such a
condition of public sentiment and law it is no longer
possible for public officials to plead that they cannot get
at the facts whenever there is a suspicion that any
corporation has failed to comply with the laws of the State
which created it.
Waxworks May Deceive for a Moment,
But They Do Not Leave the Lasting
Impression of Michelangelo's Moses.
Otis Skinner, the actor, recently made a plea for the teaching of dramatic
art in our public schools and colleges. In that way, he urged, public
taste can be improved to the point where a better quality of plays and
acting will be required to fill the theaters. He was speaking before the
Ethical Culture Society, in New York. In beginning he explained at some
length what he considered art, drawing his distinctions very carefully:
The purpose of the play is to hold a mirror up to nature,
although such things as horror, meanness, lust, or crime
must not be shown for their sake alone, merely to display
accurate dramatic photographs. They must be utilized toward
a definite end. The stage has many detractors, and among
them are the ones that say the stage does not represent real
life always. Nor should it. I will give you a definition of
art which I got from Dr. Adler. It explains what I mean:
"Art is the pattern, and not so many ells cut from the
fabric of life."
Some years ago in London I went to Mme. Tussaud's waxworks.
Curious to identify the figures, I turned to a lady and
asked her where I might obtain a program. There was no
answer. I became embarrassed and a little angry when I saw I
was the subject of amusement for the crowd. I looked closer.
The lady was made of wax. Well, I don't remember how she
looked, but I do remember every line of the beauties of the
Venus of Milo, which I saw in the Louvre, and of
Michelangelo's Moses. I did not consider them figures or
real persons, yet they live with me.
The charge that the theater gives too much attention to vice was discussed
by Mr. Skinner. When used on the stage to heighten the dramatic effect,
the simulation of drunkenness, he said, is ethically right. "Mrs. Warren's
Profession," he declared flatly, was quite properly suppressed, since
there was no reason for it except the exhibition of vice. False and
namby-pamby melodrama, on the other hand, is fully as detrimental to
dramatic art.
He outlined the plot of a play in which a poor young man, after rescuing
the daughter of a multimillionaire by a feat of virtually impossible
agility and strength, is promptly provided for by the thankful parent, and
marries the girl.
The story, as he told it, was glaringly untrue to life—wherefore he
denounced it as immoral. It represented the extreme of romantic falsity,
just as "Mrs. Warren's Profession" represented the extreme of disgustingly
literal reality.
In art no extreme is acceptable—a lesson which the Greeks, with their
supreme intuition of artistic fitness, taught the world once and for all.
The New York "Sun" Disposes of the
Old Notion That She is the Mere
"Beneficiary of Man."
The Rev. John L. Scudder, of Jersey City, recently preached a sermon on
the subject, "Business Women—Do They Reduce the Number of Marriages, and
Do They Make Good Wives?" He said, among other things, that if the
business woman marries, she marries "as an equal and not as a dependent";
that, therefore, we must expect fewer marriages in proportion to the
population. But he added:
The business woman of to-day refuses to be a moon revolving
around a masculine earth—she will be a twin star or
nothing. I believe her industrial training will make her a
better wife, for she will know the value of a dollar and be
able to sympathize with her husband in his daily toil.
She will apply business methods to domestic economy. Should
her husband attempt to maltreat her, she has courage enough
to separate from him and return to self-support. What she
has done once she can do again. Being fearless and decided,
she will be respected and well treated. The broader outlook
she has acquired in the business world will make her a
superior wife and a more capable mother.
The era of feminine imbecility and cowardice is passing
away, and in its place we see about us a new age of
well-rounded, exalted womanhood.
The New York Sun does not agree with Mr. Scudder. In the course of an
editorial on the subject it says:
It may be remarked that nobody who enters into a partnership
of any sort can expect to retain absolute personal freedom.
The rule is equally true in business and marriage. The
attempt to exercise absolute personal freedom by one or both
partners is pretty sure to result in disaster to any
enterprise of any description.
But this is not the main point. Mr. Scudder's most serious
fallacy lies in the notion that in any healthy marriage
relation the woman is non-self-supporting and the mere
"beneficiary of man." The proposition is as absurd as it
would be to say that the member of a law firm who pleads in
the courts is a mere tender, a mere appendage, a mere
beneficiary of the gentleman who sits in the office, sees
the clients, and collects the bills, or that the expert
engineer at the head of a steel plant is a mere tender to
the man who manages the finances of the concern.
Nobody earns his or her livelihood more honorably or more
directly than the wife and mother of a family who does her
duty. She is her husband's business partner in a phase of
his life which is at least as vital to his interests as the
outside one by which he makes his money under the eye of the
world. If the couple are partners in a poor and struggling
concern, the wife contributes as much to the general success
by the work of her hands as the man does by his; if they are
more fortunate, and prosperous, the woman's busy brain
contriving and ruling in the household is earning by
earnest, eager, expert, and honorable exertion as good a
livelihood as the husband is able to provide her with.
The law holds good in the realms of wealth and luxury. The
woman who creates and maintains an eminent social position
for her family is likely to be her husband's most important
ally, and her share of all the benefits that they enjoy in
common is not a mere gratuity; it does not come to her from
her husband's bounty; it is her compensation for the
services she does in advancing the interests of the
alliance.
Great Possibilities Lie Ahead for Us if
We Take the Lead in Teaching the
Chinese Western Ways.
Dr. Edmund J. James, president of the University of Illinois, favors the
appointment of an educational commission for the study of the social,
intellectual, and industrial situation in China. The reasons for his
suggestion are contained in a memorandum which he recently submitted to
President Roosevelt, and may be briefly stated as follows:
A great service would be done to both countries if the
government of the United States would at the present
juncture send an educational commission to China, whose
chief function should be to visit the imperial government,
and, with its consent, each of the provincial governments of
the empire, for the purpose of extending through the
authorities of these provinces to the young Chinese who may
desire to go abroad to study a formal invitation on the part
of our American institutions of learning to avail themselves
of the facilities of such institutions.
China is upon the verge of a revolution. Every great nation
of the world will inevitably be drawn into more or less
intimate relations with this gigantic development. It is for
them to determine, each for itself, what these relations
shall be—whether those of amity and friendship and kindness
or those of brute force and the mailed fist. The United
States ought not to hesitate as to its choice in this
matter.
The nation which succeeds in educating the young Chinese of
the present generation will be the nation which, for a given
expenditure of effort, will reap the largest possible
returns in moral, intellectual, and commercial influence.
