The Ruin of Christ. (1916)

From the October 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

A note on a newspaper's wish for a United Church.

For nearly two thousand years people have been told that Jesus Christ came to the earth for the well-being of humanity, left a stock of immortal truths and after great sorrows returned to his Heavenly Father. From the Scriptures we read that The Man of Sorrows worked miracles, put beautiful parables into his public speeches, and was superior to the powers of Death and the Sea. In history we learn that his parentage was so obscure, the evidence of either his existence or his work so debatable, that opinion drift between two extremes, Renan believing him to be a humble, considerate man and Shelley an ambitious man who aspired to the throne of Judea.

Interest was centred on Christ until quite recently because of the nature of the claims on his behalf ; the divine power with which his name was invested, the singularity of his birth, the lowliness of his habits, his nobility and his patience. If, when we consider Jesus in the most favourable light, we find his parables not entirely uninstructive, we also see that under the care of the Church they have become either wretched or villainous. Jesus, like King Lear, gave his property into cruel hands. By popes and archbishops his ethics have been falsified ; by philosophers he has been stript of his divinity ; his Godliness has become the faith of the fool and the target of Historians. In the future, interest will centre on Christ chiefly in consequence of some articles and letters which lately appeared in the “Daily Chronicle.”

The editor of that newspaper is urging the adherents of the two-and-seventy jarring sects to unite into a common brotherhood. He thinks that with a little trimming of faiths, a modification of the gospel to meet the advancements of science, and sundry other things, that Christianity might still be a power in the land. Alas ! why do not your friends tell you, poor ”Chronicle” Editor, that a writer on such a theme may nowadays wear out a mine of nibs and use a sea of ink before a sceptic will even smile. Am I alone to tell you that you should close the lid of your pot and pack up your pens ? Your God has made another error in judgment ; you are born too late in the day. Somewhere in the sixteenth century your kith and kin in Spain did not use pens. I learn on good authority that the founder of the Spanish Inquisition, Torquemada, was never the editor of a newspaper.

But as I do not wish to be thought inconsiderate, or in any unworthy way to gloat over the downfall of Christ and his Church, I would like to openly consider some of the reasons for your proposals. Although I am an Atheist I see something infinitely pathetic in the fact that a people once so prosperous and proud, with abilities, as they once had, to construct their old giant crusades, with energy to war, with cunning enough to arrest the growth of science and art, should at last lose the power of their science-riddled Jesus and become dependent upon London newspapers.

In your columns you hint, as we have been told so often before, that religion is a necessity of national life : that God’s hand is in the work of the scholar and his influence felt in the life of the savage. With the latter half of your contention I am in complete agreement. Knowing something of the history of Christianity, and a little of the life of savages, it is difficult to see how they would lose anything by exchanging a crucifix of Christ for the images of wood and hobgoblins of stone to which they are devoted. But whatever loss they sustained, or whatever hostility the substitution aroused among the base Indians or the cannibals of Tierra del Fuego, the proposal should be insisted on English manufacturers would thus be able to export a large number of ivory Christs which are lying stagnant in the workshops. The other of your contentions I cannot so easily endorse. Voltaire, Tom Paine, Marx, Spencer, Darwin, were all great men ; so if it is true that the scholar cannot work without God’s help, then God alone is responsible for some of the deadliest arguments against his own existence and some of the wittiest satires on his own son.

We learn also that the Christian has worked and does work in the service of God. As a little pamphlet which we issue, entitled “Socialism and Religion,” deals with the birth, life, and death of the Idea of God, it will not be necessary for me to speak of it here ; I will alone consider the world’s work of his servants.

What has the Christian done in the world which the Atheist has not ? Point to an achievement of a saint who has the advantage of intimacy with the Almighty and I will counterbalance it with an important work of a Freethinker who is on no friendly footing with a divinity. Against the literary value of the Bible I place Shakespeare ; against “Genesis” and the “Book of Job” I place “King Lear” and “The Tempest.” We are told that St. Francis of Assisi held conversation with the sparrows and by the sea-side lectured the fishes. In contrast to these second-hand records of this laughable saint I place the beautiful lament of Burns over the field-mouse, written in subtle sweetness, not for the instruction of the simple creature which lost its nest under the ploughshare, but for the enjoyment of humanity. In the Psalms God gets praised in choice language, but no more tremendous melody of praise and sorrow has been penned than Shelley’s elegy on the Death of Keats—”Adonais.” Blake was intimate with the Almighty and kept in touch with the events of Paradise. Blake saw Eden and Hell. Blake had God as a model in his studio. Blake, so Blake claimed and many believed, passed through all the celestial and infernal valleys. He claimed that he had a special invitation, but I am inclined to think that it was just the result of an unsettled disposition. In any case his work has little artistic value or topographical importance. They are neither pictures nor maps of hell, so we must conclude that Blake was utterly foolish and could not learn, or that his divine instructor was out of touch with the modern French artists. I incline to the latter view after having read a biography of Blake by G. K. Chesterton. You may now agree with me, nearly-forgotten editor, that in works of beauty the saints are not supreme. But still the question remains—what have the religionists done which the sceptics have not ? For an answer we must look slightly at the noble work of the world.

Look to the early days of astronomy and you will find religion there as a worm in the bud. The slightest slip from the ritual of the Church, the publication of the feeblest heresy or the mightiest truth, was followed by hellish punishment. From the time when the priests first got power until the time when they lost it they struck right and left in a mad, blind fury. Up till the time when Voltaire lived eight million people had perished in Holy Crusades. There is no doubt the biblical God made priests in his own image.

Bruno suffered after Copernicus ; homes were ruined, arts and sciences enslaved ; authors, reformers, philosophers were blinded, branded, tortured, poisoned, or burned. Blind with the love of Christ, the Inquisitors did not know their own kith and kin. The friend of superstition died with its enemy. The poet was exiled and the astronomer murdered. Not a soul must breathe a syllable of any fresh thought. Those among our friends who know the joy of listening to or uttering fresh truths will understand the deep gloom of this enslavement. It is not alone to those rare and lonely martyrs of the cause of progress that we must always feel grateful, but also to those nameless thousands who have gone to their graves with the fire of truth in their hearts, with wonderful thoughts unpublished. Well we may remember the intellect and honesty of those olden mortals who braved the smiles, bribes, and fury of Christ’s ministers and dealt the first mortal blow to superstition, but we shall never know the details of the unhappy lives of those who were forced to let their poetry wither away—not so much as whispered—hide their yearnings, stifle their young dreams, as a mother the child she loves and yet fears to keep. We shall never be able to count the lost lives of the people, nor measure the infamies of the Church during those miserable years. The Church may do good by stealth, the rest of its work is on record,

Yet I am not of a spiteful nature, so I will offer Christians a few words of advice on how they may, if they will, become united. Do not write books, do not distribute crusts of bread, do not wage wars, for the love of God ; but sow and gather corn, weave clothes, build houses, on communal principles, for the love of humanity. Study the poets, historians, scientists, and architects, then in the music of their sentiments you will forget old hells, conjurors, and tricky heavens. In the knowledge of architecture and the love of nature which follow you will burn all the churches that have corrugated iron roofs ; in the strength of character which follows you will possess the foundations of future happiness.

No doubt you will often be told that an Atheist’s life is black and vacant. The men who repeat this stale nonsense are all men of less brain than Bacon, who says in his “Moral Essays” that “Atheism leaves to man reason, philosophy, natural piety, laws, reputation, and everything that can serve to conduct him to virtue ; but superstition destroys all these and erects itself into a tyranny over the understanding of men.” Irreligion certainly accompanies an understanding of Socialism, but we Socialists can enjoy the picturesque parts of all religions, from the beautiful mythology of old Greece to that of the “Daily Chronicle.” We may enjoy the beauties of the country, the wonders of the cities, the solitude of the sea, or its commerce. The riddle of the universe is still with us to test our wits and keep them keen. Books, music, and art are now strongly established as the elements. It is not much that we lose when we lose a Christ, a priest, and an iron chapel. We are progressing. The Bible can no longer be used as a weapon against us. It is rapidly becoming an entertaining book in our hands. With our complete freedom from superstition, political and industrial as well as religious, we shall have reached the time when the Chapters of Genesis may be raised to the superb dignity of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

The religion of Christ was no more fit for the guidance of the world’s workers than the fishing boat of Peter was fit for the circumnavigation of the world or the sandals of Joseph fit for a journey from Bethlehem to the North Pole.

But the old Church, the old slave-ship of Christ, last century was sinking fast and the wish to sail in solitary triumph was gone. Truth has been treated by their flinty clerics as a wolf with a small belly and a moderate appetite whose pursuit may be delayed with morsels of flesh. But Truth, instead, is like the sea on which no unprincipled ship can sail for long in security. The billows have been hammering at the old hulk of the Church for some ages now. Starting a voyage from Galilee, Christianity sailed smoothly for a thousand years or so, gathering up the slaves, stealing the treasures of free thought ; its blight was terrible, absolute, and swift. Thus astronomy rose like a whirlwind ; geology was as lightning. The surrounding sea beat harder and faster. The crumbling ship’s sails were ruined, its masts were snapped at the roots. The passengers and slaves rebelled and after much turmoil managed to get some kind of a Reformation. No one cared what was tossed to the sea so long as the crippled ship was saved. Year after year the storm grew worse and Christ’s compass led it astray. When their provisions were gone they turned cannibals : sect devoured sect. Last century the “Origin of Species” and the Socialist Philosophy were published and fell like thunderbolts in the old, rotten, rat-riddled, shattered ship. Amid the howling billows and gusts of wind the vessel sunk. In the wilderness of the waves it was lost with all its pretensions, tyrants, conundrums of Heaven, spectres of Hell, and the rest of its ghastly cargo.

I am afraid you cut a miserable figure, London Editor, as you stand on the shores of Fleet Street crying pitifully to the tempest: “Peace, be still !” Yet it will be interesting to see for how long an editor may sit by a grave trying to restore a corpse to health and strength, and remain free from pity and contempt.

H. M. M.

Artists and Potboilers. A Chapter on the Incentive of Gain. (1916)

From the August 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let Us Forget !

Little apology is needed for the scanty mention of the European War in this chapter. In the contest every kind of cannon has now been used ; every variety of dismemberment and death been suffered ; the whole thing is now grown monotonous and dull. When the French plains and the Flemish fields, the hills of Russia and the hills of Italy have been sufficiently dunged with rotten death to please the masters, the fighting nations will see that, far from any good coming to them from the bloodshed, it has resulted in a silly national division of the workers, which is not good, nor anywhere near good.

Let people for a moment forget all the ephemeral “Commissions,” “Reports,” “Investigations,” “Leading Articles,” ”Booklets, and “Volumes” that are born of the war, and turn to matters of permanent interest ; let people turn from the Newspapers to the Classic Books, from Cannon to Galleries, and they will see that the old delicate dramas, the fine new stuff, the sweetness of the masters in painting of Spain and France and Italy, the sunny Dutch work, the pallid Japanese, all the singular inspiration of China, the philosophy of Germany, all do, not merely at one time or another, but all times, peace or war, show the harmony of talents and disclose the comradeship of genius. The greatest of all nations are brotherly, and their fraternal work will help to bring peace permanently at last on earth : it will not be done with siege-guns, no matter how massive they be nor what powder they spittle. All Art nourishes the spirit of revolution ; against the shape and cut of a book or chair or house as Morris did ; against the shape or cut of the earth, as in Shelley.

Our masters know this and have in all ages endeavoured to alter the vital secular character of Art into a something vapid and servile ; it must be changed, they said, from the passionate and wayward to the didactic and mechanical : they spoke with tongues of fire and their syllables were prisons. Artists were driven into all kinds of occupations quite alien to them : chiselling ships and barrels of muskets, allegories, chapel-altars. Samaritans, Virgin Man’s, colouring monasteries, till a daring Italian boy of the thirteenth century started dreaming by his flock on the hills of Padua, and in the end found that the sight of his pregnant ewes was quite as inspiring as a pregnant Virgin. A new, self-reliant epoch commenced for Art, and the masters’ fires, prisons, and titles since then have only scared the unsound, bribed the less keen and valuable, and filled the archives Paying of Art with chronicles of sorrow.

Paying the Price.

Whether they be ancient or modern, whether they be Russian novelists, Dutch or French landscapists or English poets, they have prepared, and must prepare, in youth, for a life of affliction and a ceremonious funereal ; must have thought, must now think, that if the funeral ostentation is forgotten or neglected, posterity will, with bronze busts and posthumous marble, compensate them for the dismal doom they suffered and the misery they endured.

Marvellous boys like Chatterton, are not prepared to suffer the fate that the stupid and mercenary arrange ; rather than a piecemeal death they end it all at once with a little acid. They think the worst acid better than the best editor. Some live on and fight. For this crime Dostoievsky is, in Russia, sentenced to death. The sentence is afterwards mitigated ; instead of death he is sent to Siberia (which he named the House of the Dead) for ten years. Out of Norfolk we get a hard instance. Old Crome, “the glory of the English landscape school” as he is now called by preface writers, was set on coach painting in Norwich. In the evenings and on Saturday afternoons, when he was not lining spokes and yellowing wheels, he did, in oils, the moons over Norfolk pastures, over massive scalloped cows ; shipping by the riversides he did after the manner of Hobbema, and Mousehold Heath with its chalk pits, donkeys, characteristic mills, as only Crome could—the lot to be sold for not many shillings. That picture of his in the London National Gallery was once divided in two and the the halves, when separately sold, brought him four guineas. It is very hard when a Preface Writer cannot say an artist’s unhappiness is due to a girl. Gainsborough, too, had to leave his “Market Carts,” his “Stricken Oaks,” his “Pools,” his “Sunsets over Devonshire Moors,” and for his pence, with his oils, flatter the fussy Duchess and the soft Earl.

The Martyrdom of Genius.

Also there was a Dutch painter born in a windmill some few hundreds of years ago Rembrandt van Ryn. He put his hand to the pallette and passed many a terrible day, for he did as his genius dictated. The feudal owners of much of the Dutch wealth did not like his Rabbis and washerwomen and singular mills and did not buy them. He was in the end driven from his Amsterdam shanty ; he took his wife, children, and paints from house to hovel and then along to humbler hovel. His name is now highest on the auction-room price list.

Last century a sad French boy worked a plough in Normandy. Until he was twenty, in his little leisure, he did, with charcoal only, snatches of beautiful country or the raw-boned, decrepit Frenchmen on the neighbouring’ farms. Eventually this mighty ploughman lived in Barbizon, a sad, colourless village jostled by massive, dark woods. He did then, as Rembrandt in Holland, follow where his talent of sorrow led. The Frenchman’s end was similar to the Dutchman’s. If joy isn’t yet, persecution is international. No one for many years would buy his “Dung Spreaders,” his “Peasants Reposing,” his “Potato Diggers”; so his suffering was distinctly hard, even in the catalogue of the hardships of artists. “My wife will be confined next month and there is nothing in the house. I do not know where to get my month’s rent” he wrote to Theodore Rousseau. He was found without fire or food. He was praised a little in the Press, but critics “Charm ache with air and agony with words.” Christy’s and Agnew’s know the man—they have lately sold one of his six-inch by five canvasses, of a “Shepherdess knitting,” for a thousand guineas. He painted “The Gleaners” and “The Angelas”—his name is immortal, Jean Francois Millet.

An Odious Comparison.

Under capitalism the man with colour schemes is no match in the market for the man with financial schemes : it is the nightingale against the vulture.

I could give instance after instance of the sorrow and pain which the talented in an enslaved community must endure if they watch or listen to the loveliness of the earth and then in any way tell it to others. The good men will cross the world, and, while a masterful class holds factory and field, while the democracy is content to be put off with an education, incomplete, suitable for commerce and nothing more, they must go without encouragement from the mass, without money from the opulent ; their telescopes will be broken in two, they will be sent, starved and pale, to their pallettes, and in rags to their violins.

But where in this record does the incentive of gain crop up ? If, as the merry masters say, it is for gain the best and the worst work, why do not the greatest leave their permanent, sincere work (which leaves them lean) and win gold with the transitory, the false, and the easily understood ? To hear our rulers speak one would think the poet sings because he wants butcher’s meat and wholemeal bread. He sings for nothing of the kind. He sings, as he draws breath, naturally, and he would die if he did not. It is idiocy to think he sings because it is hard to live, because engines and lands are privately owned, and would cease to sing to a wider world under Socialism. It is impertinence to say he sings at the bidding of silver and gold magnates and wouldn’t sing to a supreme democracy. As long as skies are blue and hills are green he will compose, whether dividends change or do not, whether money is or is not, whether the world listens or does not.

That, too, is the secret of the strength of the influence of minorities.

One Word about Potboilers.

One word about potboilers : we must never let them take up too much time. The artist is only hard hit when he stands tenaciously by his ideals. Some are, however, forced into apostacy or monotony, endeavour to repeat old masters, not because they are born rogues, not through any natural or youthful desire to emulate what is glorious, but because potboilers pay better. So we have a houseful of Academicians like La Thangue, with his geese, puddles, and red-hot, boozy-looking suns, his grizzly stacks with one star out beside a skinny, stippled moon ; a host of others doing silly, whitish Samaritans on shivering rags in a somewhat English, damp Egypt ; Leader who decorates Devonshire property with honeysuckle, spin and span labourers, Flaxman china, best food, best wives, best children. It will not profit us much to consider the yellow lies and pink apostacy of the other fellows who settle or pervert the national learning or taste in art. I need only say that a literate democracy would not have repetitions of dead masters, being familiar with the originals ; being atheistic, would not care whether the pallid Nazarene was in Egypt or out of it; being intimate with the fields would detest Leader’s landscape puddings. Under Socialism we will with our schools banish ignorance, with our Science banish Paradise, with our Art banish Academy sunsets and in consequence banish Academicians.

The work of the potboilers is made to be understood : it is fitted for dronish intellects ; it prospers under the hand of the aristocrat. On the other hand the work of the artist is always bewildering to the characterless slaves of his own particular generation and becomes the wonderment and delight of a remote posterity. But through illiteracy, which the Board Schools of the masters are instrumental in perpetuating, the worker takes small interest in Art. By cunning he is deprived of intellectual health and liberty, as he is of bodily entertainment and rest ; he is separated from Beethoven and Corot as from his loom and meadow.

It will be seen from the few illustrations I have given that while a few millions master the wonders and riches of the earth, the pictures, like the plough, the beautiful and the useful, will be the property of those who have too much gut to be satisfied with food and too little brain to be edified with Art.

The poem like the engine, the landscape picture like the land, to do good must be freely held by the democracy. To get this we must, by the unity of the workers of the world, destroy the tyranny of those who have not enough intelligence to produce any music nor sufficient diligence to sow wheat. Socialism means the ownership, by the community, of all society’s vital machines and land, and a redistribution, in consequence, of that possession, of books, pencils, and violins. With these things, and the life-long love of comrades, we will become the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon.

H. M. M.

England’s Engineers. (1917)

From the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Engineers have recently fought for the repeal of the Munitions of War Amendment Bill. For that particular purpose they fought solidly and well. The masters tried their damnedest to beat and overwhelm them with lies and conquer them with hunger. They placarded the Midland towns with crafty official notices. They tried to split the strike with lies and scorn and they tried to split it with bribes and threats. Yet the engineers ignored splendidly the Government promises, official and outside opinion, together with the cowardly threats.

For years the engineers were half-asleep. Hopefully, innocently, patriotically, they abandoned all those rules which they held to be valuable and precious in their union. Soon after the original sacrifice, as early in the war as the Autumn of 1914, they were bound to the benches and engines by sheaves of laws. Act after Act took away their strength as a fighting union. The men they trusted told them that the Allies could never win the war if the union remained as strong, or the men as free, as in the days of peace, so the engineers, like other large bodies, cheerfully gave over the ripest of their plans of advancement, the richest of their trade-union possessions. For it was promised by those they trusted that not a hair of their heads would be hurt through any concessions they made.

Then Acts were passed in a trice; rapidly passed, almost secretly passed, so that after a few months of warfare the workers of Britain had their customary weapons of defence broken or blunted and the finest of trade union safeguards cast into the official dust-bin. The engineers, like the rest, surrendered the trade-union defences of their personal welfare in what they considered to be the national interest. The unions were emasculated.

Then thought these men, surely there can be no harm in this. By the might of our numbers we can easily enough recover at our will what we give away freely. So they believed the finely-spun tales that were told. Yet still in their minds was a little nervous doubt which a generation of conflict had stamped there. Nevertheless the first months passed away silently enough. This and that call passed ringing through the land. At a word from some chief the munitions wheels went whirring on continuously through a lengthening day. What the engineers had to give they gave generously, without murmur or question. Then England became more deeply involved in the Continental struggle. Side by side with that new vast entanglement came the pinch of direct hardship in the engineers’ conditions. Then they first felt the discomforts and misery of the new laws, which were fashioned in the days they had almost forgotten. There was no relief from their insufferable toil. Holidays were stroked out. The intense strain, which commonly they experience, was increased. The Government pacified them with flattery and their trusted men lectured them on patience. Nevertheless the engineers began to regret the day when they broke their own weapons of defence and made their unions a dead letter.

At last the oppression became so unbearable, the injustice so apparent, that little scrappy revolts and outbreaks ensued. It was seen that trusted and prominent men, both Parliamentarians and trade union officials, were associated with every piece of legislation that fettered the workers more. As these outbreaks were only spasmodic they were easily over-ridden by the ruling class. The Clyde trouble of Christmas 1915 is perhaps the best specimen of these sectional and local revolts. The principle of the men was strong, but they were driven down by lies, hunger, victimisation, deportation of their leaders, and, what is more important still, because the strike was local.

It is the mass of engineers only, and not a locality of engineers, who can successfully fight. Ten thousand engineers on strike in a town may gain something in a month for that town’s men—or they may not; fifty thousand spread over one industrial area may force amendments to an  objectionable Bill from a reluctant Cabinet, while one hundred and fifty thousand men who leave their engines, with all their force concentrated on one particular principle, striking at a vitally important time, stand a good chance of getting what they ask for.

Though at the time of writing there is still some doubt as to the issue, the men may get entirely or largely what they want. Their demands are small. Such a strike is just a little barrier raised against a perfidious and dangerous enemy, a little wall between the engineers and their life-long and inveterate foe, the master class. Soon there will be fights for different purposes, fights for higher principles, fights for nobler conditions, fights for a more peaceful and prosperous basis to life and what not.

The efforts of  the engineers are making for the repeal of the Munitions of War Amendment Act, considering they have no strike pay, considering the domestic suffering, starvation almost, which must follow this state of things, is splendid. But if the strike shows how closely industrial slavery is allied to Parliamentary action, what trivial improvements reforms effect, how unreliable the labour leaders are, it will be invaluable as a practical lesson to the engineers and their kindred of other unions.

Let it be seen, too, that if all the things the engineers demand in this strike are conceded by the Government, still will these proven enemies of the workers be left in full command of the Parliamentary power, which they will use more craftily against the workers at a later date.

However, considering the difficulties in their way, the engineers’ struggle has been splendid. At this point our sympathy with them must stop. They have found no new key to the prevention of these periodic upheavals, in which they fight for ordinary human conditions. They must find other principles for which they can fight as solidly as they have done (up to the time of writing) for the repeal of the Munitions of War Amendment Bill and the upholding of the Trade Card system.

Slowly, too slowly, the workers are finding out their true friends and true principles, their cunning enemies and their delusive ways. The change they make must be vaster than the repeal or modification of one Bill or the establishment of one unconnected wish. The thing that would bring them rest and peace can be done with one wish stroke. Instead of abandoning the political machine to ambitious wiseacres and unscrupulous plotters, and letting them, in the secrecy of Cabinet conclaves, everlastingly scheme to set the social changes on you, see to it that those who are now proven the enemies of your class are no longer sent to represent you. Fill their places with class-conscious men of your own ranks, controlled and guaranteed by the political organisation of your own class.

Engineers! At an early date you will be confronted with other trouble. We want your demands to be more exacting, and more deep the principles you struggle for. Fight with your brothers of other industries for these bigger and nobler things as earnestly and solidly as you recently fought. Fight politically as well as industrially, then, with the principle of the class struggle to guide your fighting, you cannot help but win.

Read our Declaration of Principles on the back page of this paper; earnestly consider them; join with us and help to establish them. Then will slave and master be abolished, and a real peace come, to all, including England’s engineers.

H. M. M.

Classic Reprint: At the conscientious objectors tribunal (1964)

A Classic Reprint from the August 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Devine Comedy of the Watford Tribunal

Dramatis Personae

Lord Clarendon – Chairman.

Mister Hudson – Clerk to the Council.

Mister Longley – Draper.

Mister Clarke – House Builder.

Mister Solomon – Photographer.

Mister Gorle – Solicitor, Conscriptionist, Labour Leader and acquainted with the King of the Belgians.

Crowd of N.C.F Men, Comrades, Constables and attendants.

————–

The Bushey and Watford comrades did in the month of March appear before the local Tribunal with the now familiar result.

The chairman was the Lord and the Military Representative, symbolically enough, was on the left hand of the Lord. A Draper sat next to a House Builder and a Solicitor next to a Professional Photographer.

To the right of the Lord’s chosen people were portraits of two old-time councillors done by a Bushey painter, who, when he has no commissions from local legislators, will condescend to paint angels for church windows. These pictures were as interesting to artists as pathology is to humanitarians. No cantankerous sentiment could be detected on their placid faces, for when the local man took up his brushes there was no European War and all the Conscientious Objectors had been robbed of their telescopes and books and burned and decapitated many centuries ago.

But I must not digress now for I am come to the point when the Lord spoke. I had arrogantly suggested on my appeal paper that what was valuable and precious in Art and Science and Literature had emanated from intellectual research; and that militarism either supported or created all those things hostile to a free and secure existence. Before I came to these chosen of the Masters I had suggested that intellectual progress and military pursuits are antagonistic. Then when the Lord asked me if I was a Quaker I saw that my policy and sentiments still remained misunderstood, so I rose to explain that I had accepted the communistic principles of Karl Marx, and consequently believed that the world could not progress towards a beautiful ideal of society or a scientific one until the nations federated on an amiable basis. But while these words were yet unspoken the Solicitor, with prophetic acumen and godly insight, denounced them as “Propaganda”, while the Chairman said he was there to “elicit facts and not listen to speeches”.

This last indiscreet sentence must now pass as ignorance. This is the more lamentable as had it read, “elicit facts and not listen to the evidence” it would have passed with the public, not as bias and illiteracy, but as a decisive, rich, and becoming paradox. I had further evidence to show that the literature of Greece had done more for humanity than the wars of Greece; that Van Tromp, with all his magnificence did not do so much for Holland as Rembrandt and Discartis; that the Spaniards’ best day was not when the Armada was loosened but when Valasquez took up his palette. The Lord waved me down. How could I rise from my insignificance? I only had on my side the lessons of ancient decapitated scientists and charcoal heretics while the Tribunal were greatly inspired and strengthened by the methods of Torquemada. Their actions taught me that the man with estates was in the place of Democracy; the Camera Man in the place of the Artist; the Attorney in the place of the Economist, and the Draper of Bodies in the place of the Humanitarians. Before the Tribunals the appellant with artistic ideas is dismissed, the man with rheumatism postponed, and the wine merchant exempt from military service. Then after having stopped me speaking in my own defence one had the temerity to ask if I objected to bloodshed.

Our comrade Russ sat next before the Tribunal and his case was dealt with in the same clean and aristocratic spirit. They “elicited” genealogical facts about his grandmother and partly forgotten brothers; details which are most valuable to any analysis of scientific ideals or the individual conscience. But while on the side of lineage the examination was most wise and thorough, there are three small points to which the Tribunal was inexcusably indifferent. I admit that a consideration of the forgotten details would in no way have altered the result of the trail, for in all cases the conduct of the Tribunal showed great forethought and preparation. In no instance can I remember a hasty and spontaneous injustice being done to the appellant, for the Socialists were only dismissed after careful consultation with the versatile Labour Leader, while the Religionists were dismissed only after the Chairman’s chat with the Christian member. The first of these three unconsidered trifles in Russ’s case was that he wore a black scarf of crepe-de-chine, which should have been noted by at least one member of the Tribunal for its photographic possibilities; the second, that sometimes in the summer he slept in the open at night, which should have been elicited and condemned by the Builder; the third, that as a Socialist he would not fight in a capitalist war, which should have been considered by all, as in this assertion, all were alike equally implicated and condemned. But if we review the matter with a milder and less intolerant mind we will understand that if Russ did not know what parts of his Marxian economics were a heritage from his grandmother, his own statement of International Faith is, in the ten or twelve eyes of the Tribunal, robbed of half its value. But the trial ended well, for, as he declared he would not do medical work and assist the wounded, the Tribunal considerately gave him non-combatant duties in which he will only have to help the injured.

When our comrade Hudson sat next in the chair the modern God filled his pipe and the Clerk read the appeal. It was a reiteration of the communists’ ideal of Wealth Production. The Lord asked what denomination he belonged to. Now with myself, as I have a pale face, there was some pertinence in the Quaker question, but with Hudson it is different. He is not sickly or peevish; there is not a trace of suffering on his face. It would have been more relevant to have asked the noble Lord if he was the only support his wife had or ask a poet if he sold matches. Our comrade replied that he was an atheist. The Christian Draper sniffed. A man here who would not submit to Kitchener and denied the authority. “You are one of them who resent all kind of control then, eh?” he said. “Not all control”, our comrade replied, “only such as you have.” The Chairman was indignant to hear a youthful idealist give such a retort to a shopkeeper who has sold the best linen within a farthing of a shilling in the town; to a man who has distributed more bibles and advertisements and subscribed to more church organs in a year than the applicant would do in fifty years. In these days of heresy and commerce one can forgive a taunt to God, pass over a slight to Kitchener, but what Chairman of what Tribunal can pass over an Internationalist’s insult to a homely employer. He cautioned our comrade and later dismissed the case.

The next judgement was to be upon our comrade Wilkins. He too was an Internationalist. Had the first been the only one of the day the idea could have been discredited and regarded as isolated Quixotism and futile faith. The poor, bewildered master of the show moreover learned that this Socialist was a Monist. “What is a Monist?” Alas! My Lord, you have given Oxford over to ignominy; the hallowed pile is desecrated. In the past, we were told, much damage and havoc was done with the jaw-bone of an ass, but it was infinitesimal compared with that done to the gray and hoary university with the jaw-bone of our Tribunal Lord. Alas! Poor Chairman, you came, you told me, to “elicit facts” but you remain to complete your education. Although comrade Wilkins explained on his appeal paper that he could more effectively assassinate Rothschild with a new ideal or a new economic law than with an old hatchet—although unlike an Indian God he did not wear a necklace of human bones or a girdle of human skulls, they still enquired whether he was prepared to take life. He replied that he did not believe in the sacredness of the individual existence, only in the sacredness of humanity, and would therefore help to establish Socialism by the ballot if possible but by force if force was essential. “We dismiss your case, Mister Wilkins.” As the lordly judge spoke his loyal mouth pennies to the Escutcheon. “You may appeal to the County Tribunal”, he said. “To the County Press Gang”, our comrade retorted with such truth and emphasis that it became quite inaudible to the Newspaper Correspondent.

There was a long hush. The last of the pearls had been cast before the Tribunal.

The Draper demanded that the room should be cleared of the public. This was assented to by the Labour Leader, and endorsed by the Lord.

No one moved.

Then in this Earthly Paradise the Provincial God’s still, small voice with a slight Oxford accent, said “Let there be police”, and there were police. But this latter day Lord’s behests are not so instantaneously obeyed as formerly, for his wand is only a telephone and his angels wear thick-soled boots.

So there was still time left for further heresy and the “Red Flag” was sung, and just as it ended the Constables entered the room and faced the perplexed Tribunal and those pigment Councillors on the walls, whose pensive eyes are fixed on the distant utopian Watford when each of the ten thousand inhabitants was docile and diligent and none had dreamed of Marxian Economics.

H. M. M.

(Reprinted from the Socialist Standard, May, 1916)

An Old Man in a Tub. (1922)

From the April 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

  "Mankind must either look for salvation from within or without. Hellenism and Christianity bid him look within. The Marxian Creed bids him look without and expect regeneration from the agency of material conditions." From Editorial, Daily Telegraph, January 7th, 1922.

Once upon a time there was an old man who lived in a tub. According to the most reliable reports got from almost totally unreliable historians, that strange old man didn't want much of the stuff of the earth. In the middle of a market he would some times stand still, look blandly upon the good things of Greece, and melodramatically exclaim, "Good Lord ! how many things are there in the world of which Diogenes hath no need." Then he went again to his simple old home.

That is all I know of Diogenes, and all I care to know. He has always struck me as being a rather silly gentleman. Others seem to think him to have been a wise boy, and say (as Viscount Milner did in his address to the Classical Association, as the "Telegraph" did in its editorial comments on Milner's address) that it we were wise as he, Old Tubby, we wouldn't rush about on the earth for lamb chops and green peas and wines to wash 'em down, and clothes to keep ourselves warm, nor yet for houses . . . but instead we would get hold of a damned good book, soak our minds in sentimentality, forget almost we have bellies, and thereafter be content with plain living and high thinking.

That way of thinking won't do for us. Philosophy can help us a fair amount when we are in the thick of the natural and inevitable tragedies of life. Ordinarily, the human needs, physical needs, must be satisfied first. You may be idealistic; you may start life on oatmeal and water, and keep your pockets full of books; you may feed on an abundance of moonlight and music and a minimum of boiled rice; you may sit out the nights over Plato, Socrates, and the rest of the old crowd of chatterers; you may be Godly, Philosophic, Poetic; you may do all that and be all that—for only a short time. At the end of 12 months your anatomy will be distinct as a tree in winter. You will probably get the sack for being slow, and perhaps in the end you will have to look out for an old tub. And I think I should laugh to see the wind whistle through you as it does through a bare tree.

Far as I can see, the old man in the tub was wrong. And Milner is wrong, and even the "Telegraph" is wrong. We can't successfully ignore the facts of our place in the scheme of the universe, nor the character of our particular make-up. Before we can enjoy anything—the fresh air, the colours in skies or in fields, human companionship or any sort of books done by wise or passionate men—we must have a certain amount of flesh on our bones.

Nowadays thousands of people are far too thin. They are too thin to think. They are hungry, ragged, haggard, and full of bitterness ; but they are too thin to think. I will not now go into the sickening history of the workers. Those who suffer ought to know all about it. The awful curse of Capitalism was upon them from the first.

They have sweated in the pits and at the furnaces, and been heroic upon the seas. They have done weaving and made engines and ships. They have put numberless big buildings all over the country, and they have made some pretty good guns. But the people who have done all this are poor. And the monocled sensualist who would do anything to recover his youth, "except get up early in the morning, take exercise, or become a useful member of society," represents the class which, by its agents in Parliament, controls the guns which control you.

I haven't much more to say now.

Rub out all you have heard about politics. Try to get your second wind. If you don't, then the years will pass on as before —the shadow of Capitalism will be upon us all—the hate and sin and sorrow of this social system will go on, and millions of workers, will be needlessly crushed and treated worse than the beasts of the field. If you want to laugh then you will have to get blind drunk.

Our way is the best way. We want all people to be free and happy. Our Object and our Principles are printed plainly as possible on the back page of the "S.S." If you won't trouble to read them and thoroughly consider them, I may as well dry up, for you won't be bothered with anything I say here. If you think the "Telegraph," Milner, and the Old Man in the Tub to be right, if the affairs of the world are nothing to you, then you will let the capitalists still own and control all the wealth and all the sources of wealth.

If you think Tubby's philosophy to be wrong,

P.T.O.

TO

BACK PAGE.

H. M. M.

That aforementioned back page from April 1922.

Shelley: In His Way, One Of Us. (1922)

From the September 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

Innumerable days of my life I wish to forget; three days I will always remember with joy. On one of those latter days I read The Communist Manifesto for the first time. On another of the days I saw some of Van Gogh's pictures at the first exhibition in this country of the work of the post-impressionists of France. On the third, and almost the last, of my joy-days my father gave me a book, "The Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley."

Shelley is the poet I care for beyond all other poets. He dreamed, loved, wept, and sang; he helped his friends and those who were not his friends — he gave heaps of money away — he went his own way— none could tie him down — he was a wild yet gentle man, and his immortal “sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest  thought.”

I have for years read Shelley. I have not come across a more useful or beautiful purifying influence than Shelley’s work. And in his day he was a Revolutionist.

A Revolutionist! Never mind . . . he’s been dead a hundred years. Moreover, he believed if you only quietly proclaimed your ideas all would run smoothly. For a short time the rulers’ soldiers might “slash and stab and maim and hew” as they did at Peterloo. The business of the rebel was to look earnestly and pityingly upon the armed men. The soldiers would then sheathe their swords—the rulers would recognise the immemorial injustice done to the toilers, be purified by the martyrdom of the masses, and make amends for their tyranny. Shelley didn’t live to hear of the Commune of Paris. He couldn’t possibly have seen photographs in the picture papers of Lloyd George, hat in hand, before the Cenotaph.

No . . . Such an idea of passive resistance was born of his own instinctive gentleness. Could Shelley, even with his wonderful mind, imagine the depths of fiendishness to which a ruling class will sink so they may keep all their privileges? He knew the schools of his day planted base ideas; he knew the churches were used to muddle the minds of potential rebels, and he exposed the crime; he fathomed the duplicity of Castlereagh and Pitt and Ellenborough, but I wonder if it was possible for any man in Shelley’s time to accurately picture the Society of to-day? For crafty brutality there was nothing like it in the old Roman days of slavery—in the morning of capitalism. The despots were somewhat inexperienced ; the arch-fiends and the master hypocrites of the afternoon of capitalism were unborn.

May be, inadvertently by innuendo, I am unjust. Perhaps Shelley advocated no definite “tactic” of Revolution. He looked around him and brooded upon the loveliness and the mighty riddles of the universe. He went down many rivers and came upon mountains. Throughout the year he was out in the open air. He became familiar with the silence and solitude of winter. He came to know the colours and noises and songs of the whole year by heart. And yet —“my fellow man is in chains”—he said. Not all the “unpremeditated art” of Nature, not all the music of a summer’s sky, could make Shelley deaf to the rattle of the iron. Million upon million died knowing nothing of the mystery and grandeur and joy of life. The milk and honey were possessed by liars, traitors, and fools—to the multitude, the dust and ashes.

Shelley wished everyone to be free. Have not all men worth their salt wished the same? All considerate men at some time or other have wished to “re-mould things nearer to the heart’s desire.” But the strange man whose boat got upset and broken in the Bay of Spezzia in 1822 was one of the most constant, indefatigable, and impassioned advocates of Freedom the world has ever known. His music of thunder and sweetness, love of liberty and antipathy to tyranny, has helped many a one to a realisation of the infamy of capitalist class rule. Shelley prepares the mind for the easy acceptance of the principles of Socialism. He fills the mind with a wild hatred of slavery. Marx gives that hate direction. Shelley was the trumpet that sang to battle. Marx supplies us with the weapons. We are encouraged, inspired by the writer of “Prometheus,” “Queen Mab,” “The Masque of Anarchy" “The Odes” . . .  we are awakened, infuriated by the thunderous, supremely impassioned music of revolt—then comes the cloudless reasoning of the philosophic, scientific Marx, saying: “ Go here—go there—destroy and build in this way.”

So we march forward with the times. The incessant songs help us on our way. They comfort us in the prisons, they give us heart when things seem still as death, they are the accompaniment to our words at the street corners. It is a strong, sweet and formidable music that is ours. It is the music of a whole storm—beginning, middle with its might, and end with its peace. The calm has yet to come. It will come if the workers "Defy power which seems omnipotent," as Shelley says, in the way Marx suggests.

In letters, leaflets, pamphlets, and poetry Shelley criticised the vile institutions of his day. He wrote exquisitely of comradeship and trenchantly of all forms and phases of injustice. Blockheads advised “Mr. Shelley” to renounce his “pernicious doctrines.” But “ Mr. Shelley” was wilful —in comparison with some contemporaneous public men, he was quite a naughty boy. Even after advice from “The Quarterly” he obstinately wrote poetry, “The Masque of Anarchy," in which he urged a nation of quiet slaves to "Rise like lions" in unvanquishable number, shatter their chains, and control the world and all its wealth.

That happened long ago. What would such an irreconcilable poet say to-day. Far as I can remember, one of his songs is a little like this :—

“Sow seed, but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth, let no imposter heap;
Weave robes, let not the idle wear;
Forge arms, in your defence to bear.”

Would he have been with Derby, Snowden, Churchill, and Macdonald on the recruiting platform in 1914? Would he, who succoured an unhappy prostitute, have smiled like a very Thomas upon the systems which make women prefer the streets to the workshop? Would he have written like Rudyard Kipling? Can a bird singing innocently among the clouds become a bird of prey?

Shelley was thirty years old when he went down in the waters of Italy. Think of the volume of his work—think of the way he strived to overthrow the tyranny he detested. Though we are not quite as Shelley was, still we can work as hard. His genius was particular and inimitable—his energy we may have. Francis Bacon loved roses. In their season they were on his tables every day. Macauley says that by putting roses upon our tables we may in one way at least resemble the philosopher. If resemblance to such men is desirable, then let us work hard for the emancipation of humanity, and in that way resemble Shelley. To get a rose in a jug on a table is fairly easy—the idler can do it, and then be as much like Lord Bacon as Churchill with a silk hat is like a statesman or an ape with a crown is like a king. But hard work upon right lines will prove manhood.

Shelley has played his part in the great awakening of men, just as Marx played  his, as we play ours, as all our readers can play theirs. The scientist, philosopher, and singer, age by age, so far as the development of Society would permit, have contributed to the freeing of our thoughts. They have given us ecstacy and knowledge. And the selfish ruling glass cannot understand this. Ecstacy and knowledge, music and wisdom mean as little to such people as Gallipoli and Russia or work and wages. Shelley liked such people much as we do; much as G.B.S. likes roast pork and a bottle of Bass.

But even if Shelley and Marx and lots of others have done their best, we still have a lot of cross-country marching to do. We will have to tread over much rough ground, and there will be a good many nights in between now and the end. Yet we must constantly go forward with a clear vision of that we wish to achieve. We will go on with light hearts; for have we not the companionship of the wonderfulest singer of all time? The “Unvanquishable number” will assemble in some night or other. The principles which, when accepted, mean Freedom will be understood by great numbers, and the wounds of the world will be healed by Socialism. In plain language, that means the people who now own the land and the machinery of wealth production will be dispossessed. It means the workers will take possession of the land and machinery necessary for the production of wealth—and wealth will be produced in abundance and distributed among the people who produce wealth. Even that is not stated so plainly as some writers for the Standard can state it. Read what my comrades say; study our principles thoroughly.

Finis! And yet I would say more. I would say that we find happiness in our work. There is fellowship among the workers for Socialism, life in the principles of Socialism, and selfishness and death elsewhere. Emulate the zeal and heroism of Shelley; fill your hearts, as they say, with his emotions and music, get a grip on the principles which actuate us, endeavour to make your fellow workers see the truth of your belief, and kick the capitalist along "The primrose path to the everlasting bonfire.”

H. M. M.

"Ghosts". (1917)

From the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not many years since Henrik Ibsen’s “Ghosts” was laughed from the stage. But we are now told that the life of those byegone years rang false; children were born into the shame of Peace, while the men-folk slept in the dull, deep dreams of the quiet of a prosperous world. All were wrapt in politics as shallow as Gladstone, were steadfast to the prudery of Victoria, read the feeblest novels, worshipped academic paintings and German sculpture. Never was an age fitter for the pen of the satirist nor for the reign of a queen without ability. Since it was dead as a doornail a great deal has been written to belittle the Victorian age, but if only we think of the old hostility towards Ibsen’s masterpiece we get one of the saddest, one of the gravest comments on the softness of that age it is possible to obtain.

The age demanded Purpose in everything so that in the end ethics became bracketed with art, became almost synonymous with art. This falsity and sentimentality was personified in Ruskin. He instructed the nation in life. He became artistic dictator. Under his powerful influence the picture became a scientific lecture, and the book a biblical homily. Landscape paintings became like naturalists' studies, while innumerable authors set to work to prove that the Lord Jesus had a hand in the fabrication of the primrose and the apple.

Some few did not submit to this vice, this cramp. The spirit of unrest was personified in Whistler. By the excellence of his work combined with the sting and brilliance of his wit he succeeded in lessening the power of the degenerative spirit. In literature the innovating spirit of romance was personified in Oscar Wilde. In painting, then, and in literature the principle of beauty, the principle of charm without Purpose, triumphed over the old principle of Purpose without loveliness.

Definite ethics, precise instructions on how to live, were forgotten in the passions of the new ideals. There was personality and not humanitarianism or science in the new nocturnes and landscapes, while in the new books the question of the divinity of Christ, even of the genesis of primroses, was lost in the fashioning of phrases.

This new movement in England with Wilde, Beardsley, Whistler at its head, with Shelley and Keats and some Frenchmen at its roots, soon became virile, influential, established. Slightly artificial at its birth, it soon added strength to its charm, till at last the pioneers decided to test their influence with the public by the supremely modern “Ghosts." I do not here pretend to give a complete account of the battles of the books and wits of that transitionary time, nor do I contend that the one or two masters of art named here were entirely responsible for the staging of "Ghosts." There were many men, who were sick and tired of the old stuff, who worked to further the interests of the new movements. But I do maintain that the revolt of these remarkable men against the straight-laced interests of the Victorian era made possible the production of "Ghosts." The public failed the play. The spirit of the public was not so fine or noble as the spirit of the play. The public, despite years of romantic tuition, was still interested in the theme of the play— in " what it was about." They were still spellbound by Ruskin and Carlyle and their principle of Purpose. They could not understand that what was purposeless and useless, even that which they might call immoral, might still be beautiful.

Now the play is again staged. The people go in thousands to see it. It is successful, and in consequence we are told that people have become enlightened People have become nothing of the kind. The play is successful because it has been boomed. It has been boomed by the authorities not because it is interesting to them as a wonderful drama, but because, owing to changed conditions, it has become useful as an ethical tract. The truth of the business is that at the time of the first presentation of "Ghosts" in England the masters had no use for it even as a tract. Not understanding the beauty and strength of its art, none of its characteristics appealed to them technically; its gravity and thought, its passion and lucidness, could not be seen by them. The mere theme of it was evident enough, but what Purpose could it serve, what good could it do to a generation nursed among bibles and crinolines?

“Ghosts” deals with the tragedy of inherited diseases. The pitiful condition of the young art student, Oswald Alving, is given with tragic tremendous power, and, although the interest in the theme is secondary to the real interest one should feel in “Ghosts" as a dramatic creation, it undoubtedly appeals very powerfully to anyone who takes even a slight interest in morality. To the utterly inartistic this ethical theme must come like a storm.

Well, it is this ethical thunderstorm that the masters need now. And this is why. Every man is needed for the Army. Yet the military cannot get every man, for thousands are severely suffering with syphilis; other thousands are suffering in varying degrees with this and other venereal diseases. To say thousands is no exaggeration. The numbers are so huge, and the diseases are spreading so rapidly, as to seriously weaken the armed forces. The only ways the authorities can try to stop the plague are by legislation and personal appeal. A bill dealing with these contagious diseases has recently become law; the personal message is being delivered in such dramas as “Damaged Goods” and this “Ghosts.”

But be the laws never so stringent, the sorrows of venereal diseases presented in never so pitiful a wav, still most this generation pay in pain and anguish for the generations of ignorance that have preceded it. It it useless to try and remedy the damage and wreckage of ignorance, of generations of capitalistic schooling and social conditions, with s couple of dramas, be they the greatest in the world. Dramas are not the palliatives of injustice, they are the tragic or sweet fruit of our lives. A man here and there may appear to change after having witnessed some didactic drama, yet he only alters in so far as his earlier life has prepared him for an acceptance of the play’s pronouncements. A development of emotions is what we should expect from plays, only that, and not any change in our ideas. Dramas should be beautiful and useless as music.

So the authorities are quite mistaken again as to the nature of Ibsen’s “Ghosts.” It is neither an immoral play as they first thought it, nor is it moral as they now think it It cannot be crushed for being the one, nor exploited as the other. It is almost worthless as a tract for soldiers. It is useless for the authorities to get soldiers with syphilis to go to the playhouse; it would be more remedial, by means of some royal proclamation, to get them to set spinach.

Poor Ibsen! It would have been better had your poor “Ghosts" rested this while in the shadows of the contumely of its earlier years than be dragged and boomed onto the robbers’ stage for as churchy a purpose as preserving army divisions. Still must those wonderful words in that gem of composition be the precious keepsake of the lonely student—at least till social wisdom brings the great reconstruction and brotherhood.

Then will a play be, not a thing like Synge's "Playboy of the Western World" to be hissed at for heterodoxy, or a thing like “Ghosts” to be given prominence as a moral tract, but a thing of beauty only (and both the above plays may be considered as such) to thrill and cheer and inspire those whose liberated minds can grasp the might and sublimity of dramatic construction. Science then will have its own just dominions; the theatre will have its own. When the world is free, when the harvests of the earth are sensibly gathered and distributed, then will the peoples congregate in the theatres for the enjoyment of the artistic presentation of all the beautiful, jubilant and woeful pageants of the world—and that only.

H. M. M.