ECHOES FROM THE PRESS

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLES APPEARED IN THE NEW YORK NEWSPAPERS DURING THE EARLY PART OF THE YEAR. THEY ARE REPRINTED VERBATIM.

THE JUDGING OF JURGEN

Great Tumblebug States His Case for the Court of Philistia

James Branch Cabell

[From the New York Tribune, Feb. 8, 1920]

They of Poictesme narrate that in the old days a court was held by the Philistines to decide whether or no King Jurgen should be relegated to limbo. And when the judges were prepared for judging, there came into the court a great tumblebug, rolling in front of him his loved and properly housed young ones.

This insect looked at Jurgen, and its pincers rose erect in horror. And the bug cried to the three judges, “Now by St. Anthony! this Jurgen must forthwith be relegated to limbo, for he is offensive and lewd and lascivious and indecent."

"And how can that be?" says Jurgen.

"You are offensive," the bug replied, "because you carry a sword, which I choose to say is not a sword. You are lewd, because you carry a staff, which I prefer to think is not a staff. You are lascivious, because you carry a lance, which I elect to declare is not a lance. And, finally, you are indecent, for reasons of which a description would be objectionable to me, and which, therefore, I must decline to reveal to anybody."

"Well, that sounds logical," says Jurgen; “but, still, at the same time, it would be no worse for an admixture of common sense. For you, gentlemen, can see for yourselves that I have here a sword and a lance and a staff, and no mention of anything else; and that all the lewdness is in the insectival mind of him who itches to be calling these things by other names."

The judges said nothing as yet. But they had guarded Jurgen, and all the other Philistines stood to this side and to that side with their eyes shut tight and saying in unison, "We decline to look, because to look might seem to imply a doubt of what the tumblebug has said. Besides, so long as the tumblebug has reasons which he declines to reveal, his reasons stay unanswerable, and you are plainly a prurient rascal, who are making trouble for yourself."

"To the contrary," says Jurgen, "I am a poet and I make literature."

"But in Philistia to make literature and to make trouble for yourself are synonyms," the tumblebug explained. "I know, for already we of Philistia have been pestered by three of these makers of literature. Yes, there was Edgar, whom I starved and hunted until I was tired of it; then I chased him up a back alley one night and knocked out those annoying brains of his. And there was Walt, whom I chivvied and battered from place to place and made a paralytic of him; and him, too, I labeled offensive and lewd and lascivious and indecent. Then later, there was Mark, whom I frightened into disguising himself in a clown's suit, so that nobody might suspect him of being one of those vile makers of literature; indeed, I frightened him so that he hid away the greater part of what he had made until he was dead and I could not get at him. That was a disgusting trick to play on me, I consider. Still, these are the only three detected makers of

literature that have ever infested Philistia, thanks be to goodness and my vigilance, but for both of which we might have been no more free from makers of literature than are the other countries."

"Now, but these three," cried Jurgen, "are the glory of Philistia; and of all that Philistia has produced, it is these three alone, whom living ye made least of, that to-day are honored wherever art is honored, and where nobody bothers one way or the other about Philistia!"

"What is art to me and my way of living?" replied the tumblebug, wearily. "I have no concern with art and letters and the other lewd idols of foreign nations. I have in charge the moral welfare of my young, whom I roll here before me, and trust, with St. Anthony's aid, to raise in time to be God-fearing tumblebugs like me. For the rest, I have never minded dead men being well spoken of; no, no, my lad, once whatever I may do means nothing to you, and once you are really rotten you will find the tumblebug friendly enough. Meanwhile, I am paid to protest that living persons are offensive and lewd and lascivious and indecent, and one must live."

Jurgen now looked more attentively at this queer creature; and he saw that the tumblebug was malodorous certainly, but at bottom honest and well meaning; and that seemed to Jurgen the saddest thing he had found among the Philistines. For the tumblebug was sincere in his insane doings and all Philistia honored him sincerely, so that there was nowhere any hope for this people.

Therefore, King Jurgen addressed himself to submit, as his need was, to the strange customs of the Philistines. "Now do you judge me fairly," cried Jurgen to his judges, "if there be any justice in this insane country. And if there be none, do you relegate me to limbo, or to any other place, so long as in that place this tumblebug is not omnipotent and sincere and insane."

And Jurgen waited.

"THE RAINBOW" AND "JURGEN"

Cannan Says Posterity May Take Books Now Banned
By Gilbert Cannan

'Tis the voice of the sluggard

I heard him complain,

"You have waked me too soon,

You must call me again."

(From the New York Tribune, Feb. 8, 1920)

The familiar jingle is the best possible diagnosis of the trouble in which those singular beings, D. H. Lawrence and James Branch Cabell, find themselves. Humanity's chief trouble is inertia, and those inconvenient persons who attempt to break it are frequently themselves broken. However, let us, above all, be good-tempered about it. If posterity wants Jurgen and The Rainbow, posterity will print them. The present generation does not want them because they are in advance of current morality, and those whose idiosyncrasy it is to care for morals, to the exclusion of good sense and every other social consideration, demand their suppression.

In these matters there is no better text than that supplied by William Shakespeare in the line:

"Love is all truth; lust is all forged lies."

It may or it may not be a good thing to suppress vice. Personally as a libertarian, I incline to the view that every attempt to suppress only increases its frenzy, for, as they say, murder will out; but it is important that those who believe in attempting to suppress vice should learn to distinguish it from truth, otherwise they are apt to tamper not with the debauches of the human mind, but with its means of expression, than which it has no other means of development. Humanity wants to know the facts about itself and the need increases with its knowledge about the facts of everything else. Every new invention, every great social development imposes upon the writing artist a higher standard of integrity and urges him away from the charm and toward the necessity of his work. A modern novelist, living in a time of great stress and profound change, can no longer accept the convention which deprived the characters in a work of fiction of both passion and intelligence in order that novels might be read as easily and indolently as the newspapers, until at last novels came to be written as easily and indolently as they were read. Compared with such novels books like Jurgen and The Rainbow seem to be startling and violent. The men who wrote them have actually had the audacity to ignore the lassitude of the modern reader. They have discarded the superficial view of human relationships and have had the temerity to explore them. Lawrence insists upon their intensity, Cabell upon their transience; but both are good artists and are reverent before the wonder and mystery of their material. Unfortunately, the indolent modern mind, in the sluggishness of its decadent Puritanism, sees none of the reverence and is aware only of what seems to it the painful emphasis on these things, passion and intelligence, which it has for so long ignored. It is thrown into panic and imagines that here is an attack upon society. But artists do not attack society; they leave that to the prophets and social reformers. The artist's loyalty is to art and that loyalty is a thing that the layman cannot possibly understand. The layman, therefore, should leave well alone and not attempt the impossible. There is no earthly reason why he should read a book that offends him, but there is every reason why he should not attempt to prevent others reading it who wish to do so, for the social implication is profound and serious. Every clamor over the alleged indecency of a work of art rouses in the innumerable indolent readers of the newspapers the always present hunger for prurience which there are, in all conscience, books enough to satisfy. A work of art-like Jurgen or The Rainbow-is protected-if there were none of this unreasoning and well-intentioned interferenceby the fact that it is a work of art and outside the range of the indolent reader. When there is interference a work of art is exposed to the insult of being read for what it does not contain-witless salacity.

In salacity salted with wit there is no harm whatsoever-for persons of experience. "Ah!" say the well-meaning and censorious, "but we must protect the innocent." In reply, I would say that the innocent are of all classes of persons the least in need of protection, for their innocence has no clue to the meaning of human expression. All books to them are fairy tales, as witness