word and means a great thing, and the largeness of its service to mankind abundantly justifies its elevation into a law for conduct and a goal for science. But it is well to discriminate even in our worship of the worshipful. Truth avails only through its use or through its charm, and the idea that its usefulness is invariable is only a little less wild than the supposition that its charm is universal. Truth, in short, must be appraised by its consequences. There are facts which in moments of peril commanders withhold from their troops and governments from their peoples. No man would announce an only son's death to a mother at the turning-point of typhus fever. A man's faith in the primary and vital human values is part of his equipment for life; the same thing is equally true of a race: to rob man or race of that equipment is a wrong. It is a wrong particularly flagitious in a time of crisis when the remnant of hope and courage surviving in a racked world is its most valuable possession. "Respect the burden" is the law of generous spirits in every exigency. When the family is united and the wage is sure, a woman, in the frankness of conjugality, may call her husband a lazy and shiftless fellow, and remain, in her fashion, a good wife; she is not a good wife if she repeats the taunt on the morning when he goes to sea or into battle.

We talk of the morale of armies and of nations. The morale of the race is at stake, and if a large part of the most widely read literature is contributory to the disintegration of that morale, the literature in question must share the obloquy of the défaitiste. Obloquy only, not suppression; the bounds we set are destined for the critic, not the legislator. Let men see what they can, and say what they like, but let it be understood that the reception of their teaching must be gauged by its effect on the age-long undertakings of humanity. Many of these records are not facts, but if they are facts and are traitors to the ends for which we live, two courses are open to us; to give up those ends, a decision with which logic cannot quarrel, or to treat the facts summarily like other traitors. Half a man's manhood lies in the repudiation of certain valid grounds for fear and grief. Is the race's manhood gauged by other tests?

The above remarks may startle many readers; let us be quick

to specify their limitations. The consideration of evil is a main part of the business known as life; its disclosure is inevitable and wise. What is wrong is the separation of the message from the hope, faith, and courage which impel us rationally to know the worse that we may seek the better. A brave man, in communicating disaster, communicates bravery, and the trembling balance is not wholly lost. Mrs. Wharton's A Son at the Front is a signal instance of sound equipoise; if the weight of the accumulated suffering is mountainous, the book is invincible in its hold on the faith that removes (or shoulders) mountains. M. Brieux is sunny even in his Tartarus. Mr. Galsworthy's objects are high; what is less helpful is the acrimony of his sorrow.

Again, the strongest distinction should be drawn between the facts that aid the will by the offer of new directions or new instigations to conduct, and the facts-alleged or actual-that palsy or congeal the will. Everybody knows that evil abounds in the world, and the location and specification of that evil is a good. If an enemy exists, the man who tells you where the enemy is, and how many guns he has, is a friend; but he is not a friend who tells you that the enemy is invincible unless he purposes by that assertion to prevent the fight. Views which depreciate the worth of life and man have no pertinence as guides to conduct; they look to no remedial endeavor; they fail to voice even a resolute and purposeful despair. Let art play its little game with such pieces as its hand and eye approve-let it play its game of bowls with death's heads if it please—but let it be told roundly that its game is a game, and is no part of the tutelage or pilotage of a straining race in its grapple with unparalleled adversity.

V

Let us briefly summarize the argument. Realistic fiction is art; as art, its place is high, valid, and secure. It may employ truth as much as it will, provided that it employs truth for art's sake. But the moment it employs truth for truth's sake it is on doubtful ground, for truth, in the broad sense, cannot be effectually served by any agency that looks to other ends than truth. Truth is hard to reach when truth is the sole object; what hope can there be in the results of a divided purpose? The com

bination of truth with untruth in a fabric whose end is unconcerned with truth is perfectly legitimate; the combination of the purpose of truth with any other purpose is unsound. The words beauty and goodness have no place in the vocabulary of science. The attempt to be true and moral, or to be true and immoral, warps the truth; the attempt to be true and artistic, to be true and beautiful, to be true and interesting, warps the truth. The things may coalesce, but the purposes cannot mingle. Realistic fiction, if we put aside its art, is pseudo-science, and its place in the twentieth century is a place cheek by jowl with alchemy and astrology. Nevertheless-so strange are the vagaries of a scientific age-it exercises as teacher a great and a totally irresponsible power, and it uses that power to a large extent for the emasculation of the race at an hour when the demands upon its manhood are superlative.

O. W. FIRKINS.

THE MERITRITZKY CONCERTO

BY SIEGFRIED SASSOON

My train arrived at Milan toward the end of a drizzling grey afternoon. Having arranged to break my journey there and go on to Florence next morning, I had wired for a room at the Hotel Mazzini, which had been recommended to me as quiet and comfortable. The Mazzini was more than quiet and comfortable; it was an exemplary "family hotel" which had, apparently, preserved its traditions; it had an air of being ready to receive a German Grand-Duke at a moment's notice without the least embarrassment.

As I sat in the lounge hall half-an-hour before dinner, I watched an assortment of slightly dowdy people emerging from the lift or entering it. None of them seemed likely to resent the absence of a jazz band. A few of them were sitting, as I was, in austerely upholstered chairs; most of them, myself among them, perused vaguely the pages of obsolete illustrated papers. The one which I had selected was the American Musical News, a periodical which made no pretence of being anything but a vehicle for the advertisement of world-famous virtuosos and those innumerable products of conservatoires who aspire to equal or excel them. My eyes rested on a paragraph about Paderewski, who, it seemed, had recently roused the music-lovers of Milwaukee to rapturous enthusiasm, after creating his customary furore in Chicago. While I was absorbing this information I became aware that someone was emulating Paderewski in an apartment overhead. This muffled music impressed itself on my critical faculty as having more historical than æsthetic value. It was a floridly efficient concert work composed somewhat in the manner of Mendelssohn. Is it a pianola? I wondered, until the repetition of an awkward octave passage revealed the humanity of the executant. The octave bravados were followed by tempestuous arpeggios, and the fleshy allegro concluded with a crash of

complacent chords. A shamelessly sentimental cantabile movement conducted me to the dining room where I lost touch with the performance. Over my soup I speculated on the identity of the composer-it sounded like a concerto, possibly by Hummel or Rubinstein.

After a prolonged and satisfactory dinner I returned to the illustrated papers. My thoughts were an indolent procession of automatic images evoked by photographs of pugilists, prime ministers, cinema actresses, and other public characters. After a while I ceased my casual inspection of their facial variations; and turned my attention to the hotel interior and its food-flushed occupants. After sorting them out according to their nationalities I ceased to expect any further entertainment. Specimens of mediocrity, they seemed, as they sipped their coffee and puffed their cigars and eyed each other with neutral tolerance or transient curiosity. Not far away from me sat an undersized, middle aged, shabby man with a straggling grey moustache. He was alone; and he was, I observed, reading the American musical magazine with an engrossed, rather worried look on his constricted face. Perhaps he is reading about Paderewski at Milwaukee, I thought-remembering the energetic musician overhead and wondering whether that enthusiast would be returning to the instrument during the evening.

eyes

A self-possessed man came down the steps from the dining room—rather a dashing sort of man-crisp black hair tinged with grey-the hero of a young lady's first novel (in the days before psychoanalysis came into its own, when fiction presented the passions with romantic simplicity). With large liquid brown he scanned the assembly; then he steered a debonair course in my direction. A chair was overturned somewhere near me, and I glanced round to see the negligible reader of the musical news, who had risen with a clumsy movement; a dim, astonished recognition animated his countenance. His apparent diffidence had vanished, and he was actually signalling to the black eyebrowed hero, who advanced, greeted him urbanely, and sat down opposite him. I was unable to overhear their conversation, but I watched them with some interest, thinking what a queerly contrasted couple they were. After a few minutes they made for