A PAGE OF EXCLUSIVE FEATURES
A PAGE OF EXCLUSIVE FEATURES OH, BY THE WAY, A HAPPY NEW YEAR i g those who have followed this column from time to A time may have gathered. Dr. Nicholas Mut.ay Butw of Columbia University,...
...Along side of him stands our wise and locquacious pal, Calhoun Webster Steuermayer, counselor st law...
...It has become the standing complaint of their overjammed profession that, folks nowadays are entirely too healthy...
...First the commander of the Maiyland or the Utah must approve them...
...Let these and their kind stand forth as the crudest joke that Western Capitalism plays upon its people...
...Why should one 'whose own happiness and wealth depends upon our being bumped off in the shortest moment want us to be so full of joy and health and material riches, that we would keep him and his caskets, his sombre wagons, and solemn attendants, without employment for ever so long a time...
...It cannot be described accurately as a Socialist book: yet any Socialist might profitably ponder it and learn something from it...
...the conflicts of leaders...
...C«utinu«d From Page Four THE CHATTER BOX MUERJTS wishing you aU, A Happy and Prosperous ±l New Year"___What a phrase...
...In 1922 ("Chinese White") the poet wrote Dance Utile demon, dance and sing, He merry...
...He is certainly long-suffering...
...The moving passage in which Graf suggests the title of his book has to do with this counter-re volu tion: "Everywhere there were files of arrested workers, harassed, beaten tin the blood flowed, their arms held above their heads...
...He bows lo it, and says, 'Serenity...
...After three years of army life, during which he had been imprisoned several times for insubordination and had seen the inside of several hospita's, he deliberately feigned insanity in order to obtain his discharge from the army...
...Joseph T. Shipley...
...J* oft our bache^ for one minute and we can deliver • 70U within a reasonable period a world that will be *ittuch sweller and more exciting*and altogether more "¦ntlful and amusing and inspiring than this thing *i have now, that you'll think you've been living in a ¦•d-house, as indeed you have...
...One could go on in this way enumerating dozens of things that lawyers fatten on, and which a happy and Prosperous New Year would not supply...
...So of course, you wrote that as you write all your liberal" mullalley with your tongue very much in your (tack...
...Men and women and babes keep dying off* in no ordained ™?nn^r except that of long established habit...
...The author describes his visit with none of the odious condescension of the usual Yankee visitor...
...His wishes to us all for a prosperous snd happy New Year ought to raise s gargantuan giggle from Kan to Arc turns...
...Two of the vividest pages of the book tell of his first sex experience—with a prostitute...
...Iff the "emotional illusion harbored by so many liberlb and progressives that you get somewhere by "deanlng up the old parties from within" that makes ¦ go slightly ga-ga and bite the table-leg...
...the eternal need to explain away evil if there is God of good...
...No divorce* to coin into their grievous gold No accidents, no broken limbs, "no loss of personal services" to su* insurance companies with, or scare into contingent fee settlements...
...He was once so near to the front that he could hear the firing of guns, but he spent most of his time cleaning out stables and performing menial tasks for the officers of his regiment...
...PRISONERS ALL!—" • This pessimistic passage is in harmony with the spirit of the book as a whole...
...Her* in the East, thousands of idle snd able medicoes have been sitting for months, waiting, fuming, praying that the black cloud of the Western flu epidemic reach us in time so that their Xmas might indeed be merry...
...The really memorable section of the book describes the revolutionary ferment in Munich following the end of the War and the triumph of Bolshevism in Russia...
...some day, the ideal will actually triumph over the sordid real...
...The total impression conveyed by Graf is that life Is a chaos in which sloth and sensuality are dominating factors...
...And when he has atued that, he turns around to find a lady correspondent for a McFadden paper asking him how he keeps stand & couple of interviewers from the' Hollywood Hoopla wanting to know about the artistic possibilities •f the movies...
...Te all of these questions Mr...
...Recon2*tIon with the world is the beginning of senescence^ J day that you decide that the world is "a mighty* 5P Place after all," go and get your glands examined...
...A little later, Gustav Landauer was killed in Munich by a ravening mob...
...He took part in the World War...
...Ruhl's book...
...The latest of these bores to report his interview with tta excessively eoniable Shaw is Gabriel Wells, a New fork book-collector...
...Its huge and undying intensity is -undeniable...
...The situation is not one that can be improved by soft-spoken diplomats who take the trouble to learn Spanish and to know the name of a Spanish poet or two, or by enlightened and benevolent landlords...
...Wells says: 'iWhen I asked Shaw how, with his strong views about everything in pneral, he became reconciled with the world, he rejHed, T am not reconciled with the world.' " This seemed to have knocked Mr...
...Time worn ae a p re-buffalo nickle and as trite aa a ward-heeler'i handshalw From too much J'"*w"gl even the gods have lost their lustre...
...You can bet your bottom boots we can...
...but we reach out to the stars...
...Yet all the while there is the sens* of a frayed garment, the aura of a serge suit that wear baa rubbed into a sad shine...
...For myself, there is confidence that all my friends mean what they express to me in their cards and oral greetings...
...As Graf emerges from a Munich prison in which he has been confined bv the Noske snlriltrv...
...tl eontralre, as we say in our impeccable French...
...there was no intention of dragging it along historical ruts...
...If ten yard steam shovels, fifteen ton tractor-trucks, movie actor* and divas wear oat wtth a surfeit of usage and repetition, why should go frail a human product as a string of words be lew Immune under similar stream...
...He has an appreciative eye for the picturesque and exotic Jungle country...
...I love you...
...Ruhl proves: "Yes, there'll be trouble one of these days . . ." From Mexico, that storehouse of social dynamite, seep explosive Ideas that will soma day make themselves felt...
...Confound it folks, we are playing a giddy joke on that ancient and honored profession...
...MTfOCP-'kk...
...Glaciers aren't like that...
...We Qjnk be is a sort of larm...
...Nicholas Mut.ay Butw of Columbia University, Is no boy-friend of ours...
...But when I started out on this rampage against "Here's wishing you a happy and prosperous etc...
...Her* they have gone and studied and moiled and slaved for seven long years, and when it is all over, they enter a world that is on the health upgrade, with consequent lessened demand for their services...
...While in the Pacific, the radio transmittsd the stories to an American cruiser in the Galapagos Islands, which relayed them to the government's Arlington station...
...Industrialized — the ; more will the Costa-Rlcan peasant-proprietor tend to become a simple wage-' earner...
...Wells rallied gamely however and came back *ith this novelty, "Do you think you could have made » better one...
...I think Shaw was a bit optimistic but at any rate he *¦» polite to the bitter end, whereas anyone not en*>*ed with the patience of a saint would have socked Wells in the jaw after the first question...
...Nothing can stop it...
...Yet, in spite of all, life goes on...
...Until Soctanstn puts this crazy house of ours in order, I must decline to receive from, and must out of sheer self -preservation refuse to send to any of the above mentioned gentry, the usual New Tear's Greetings...
...n«ed a rejuvenation expert to put into you the *™U>y germs of revolt and antipathy for things as No one who is alive but is at war with life, the Armistice in that struggle is declared, it is P*> "ho signs the...
...Civil war raged in the streets, and workingmen were shot down by the hundreds...
...Plough, then, through darkness...
...Be gets out of his bath in the morning and settles down to throwing away the mail, when the door-bell dags and he is informed that there is a gent outside *ho has come all the way from Peru, Indiana, to ask ban if he believes in a future life...
...I caught many a glance and nearly broke down, then pulled myself together and gazed into the eyes of another prisoner...
...We who have become sens' ve to a warping custom, and rebellious to ancient dullness ought to set our sharper skill to fashion newer and brighter ways of inhering in a New Year...
...A miracle has burst upon me," he writes to her, "and salvation, faith and hope...
...And that tie Democratic party would complete the suicide at thick it has made so many hopeful attempts ? i Surely, Doc, you don't mean the half of what you ay...
...Many correspondents of liberal newspapers are complaining that they cannot send their observations on opposition encountered in South America to Yankee imperialism's latest survey of its dominions...
...strata of...
...It shows how some Socialists are made, and It also shows how some lose faith In Socialism...
...One can imagine the expression in Mr...
...This seems to be the ultimate meaning of Oskar Maria Graf's startling book...
...In "Nursery Rhymes for Children of Darkness," (McBrlde, $1.50) Gladys Oaks travels the same path, in anguished questing, that scarce admits its tension, parades a light-heartedness, giving us "nursery rhymes," no more— but, "for children of darkness...
...Wells...
...He was utterly impractical...
...And what sjestions they ask...
...that has been keeping us ham-strung...
...I wanted to cry aloud, but I clenched my teeth and swaUowed my rage...
...Yet must I chant—my heart beat— and my breath Stake its high, mortal glamour against death...
...became a smuggler of contraband food-stuffs...
...but his narrative is chiefly valuable as that of a passionate and sympathetic observer of the birth-panges of the new Germany...
...tooth paste arid rubber" tires...
...And really, If all his wishes lor us came to full being, he might shuffle off before us, and then, (perish the rare concept), we would have the mean job of burying him ? But as he mails bis greetings, there Is the settled assurance that more certain than any of his phrases or ours is Death itself...
...Who ever heard the like of that...
...While we of course would lie quivering in chills, agues snd fever to the tus« of "Jingle bells" snd "Holy Night . . ." Galloping Gizzards...
...Nothing could have been less congenial to this natural rebel and misfit than regimental life, yet, when the World War broke out, he decided to enlist and was sent into Russia...
...Too much condemnation is not his just share...
...Her themes, Judas, Salome, Thais, return constantly to this division, and the search for unity of spirit-control and free, spontaneous passion...
...Why even you could have done better in •slang the world...
...What Shaw said was: "Of course I do...
...to the countless thousands of battlers-at-law for income and employment...
...The secret lies somewhere in darkness, perhaps of the womb...
...Navy Censoring Stories Of Hoover Trip South Naval captains are censoring every piece ot copy sent from President-elect Hoover's battleship...
...In his annual report as President of Columbia, Butier says: ¦If the emotional illusions and the intellectual bar|tliiess of current political controversy could be put Kty, snd if the American people would discipline £HBselves to look facts in the face as they really are, a* political life of the nation would take on a much...
...The Central Americans...
...Laugh, Celestial Clown, laugh1 Here in a we rid that boasts rational existence, a highly respected profession wishes us all a joyous, healthy and wealthy year, in which the fulfilment of their expression would mean certain economic misery for themselves...
...One reads of bloody rioting in Colombia and wonders when Central America will be experiencing similar unrest...
...Rather I meant to set up a few old and unerasable grudges to pop at, and so make a merry time for allin this organized lunacy we call modern society, there are three classes whose Happy and Prosperous NewYear Wishes ring with particular hilarity in my ears Whenever Tommy Campbell, the neighborhood mortician, (vulgarly known as "undertaker") sends out his batch of pretty cards with the seasonal salve about happiness and prosperity, the very backlash of its incongruity gives us mighty little chance for a grin...
...The result of this vicious process is a small, partly-foreign dominant class of landowners and a working class »-»t«*<Tig periously near a state of peonage and an industry dependent wholly upon a foreign market...
...the genius who has spent his splendid tal«*S fighting all the rottenness and bigotry of this *wld, vho has given to it as his last will and testaBent a plan for making it over, having to* stand up •Sd be asked whether or not he is reconciled to this •arid...
...And "Of Mary Magdalene," added, after the volume had won the $500 poetry manuscript prize, because "It Is beyond my will to omit the poem from this series," plays in Mary's mind her love of Judas' body against her love of Jesus' soul—and ends by giving Jesus little human bodily attributes and crying a last cry for Judas: / shall .'-.ate a little hut with him, with olive trees and aloes, For only half a god is Jesus healed of such a woe,— And perhaps he'll have a red-haired child and bless unholy lovers (O, Judas, tny beloved, your arms before / got) With the skill and complexity of modern spirits, whose psychanalysis, while offering on the one hand greater selfknowledge, presents with the other shrewder tricks of self-deception, Gladys Oaks finds many patterns for her dark mood And he whose greatest pride is to be proud Will laugh because he must not weep aloud...
...Shaw is supposed to come back with some snappy wise-crack...
...There is the simple, rich loam of life in "To the Harvest...
...they were born into the world, trained by the rod, flung out to fend for themselves...
...Surely the added hokum of wild party and hootchery that has attended these seasons since) men ceaaed counting by the moon, ought to be flung into the garbage dumps of time...
...Why there are enough facts in the U. S. Census reports to start a first-class political revolution here any mild Tuesday...
...Facts...
...Perheps...
...And speaking of biting, it's always been a wonder tome that George Bernard Shaw has not taken to mayam in a large way...
...Scott the Great...
...Oskar Maria Graf, the author of the book, has published poems, tales and a novel, as well as this autobiography...
...It was during this period that the Spartacist leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, were murdered in Berlin...
...He had neither influence nor money...
...Let m* just wish you all who are not the average doctor, lawyer and undertaker, a happy New Tear...
...Nevertheless Dr...
...I love you unutterably . . ." The Revolution In Munich In the early years of his life in Munich, Graf was reduced to something very close to beggary...
...3.00) Central America is paying a prodigous price for this "civilization...
...And unless some mingle of science intervenes, here is one habit mankind will never break away from completely...
...And the more coffee-growing is done on a large and organized scale — i.e...
...Larm is hard to describe in jjld print, but it means a mixture of a stuffed shirt and ^ an ordinary—Well Just an ordinary, if you get flat we mean...
...We see Ernest Toller, the young poet and dramatist, who spoke, with Eisner, at great mass-meetings in the open air...
...But such is the life of creators, and makers of bread, and candles and cloth, that most man and women shrink in dread from Its starved promise snd wag...
...From too teary dawdling In mnatcal sentimento even "dear old mother" has faded Just a little...
...they were apprenticed and the rod was still in use...
...These are all my brothers, I thought overwhelmed with grief...
...But just the same it's true...
...AfcAjifle*v Coleman* Scanning The New Books "A Proletarian Golem, Groping His Way" By Leonard D. Abbott 4»TJRISONERS ALL" (Knopf, h) is • book that, like Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage," deals with the hopes, the fears and the disappointments «rf our human lot...
...And maybe, they in turn expect us to wish upon ourselves, death, divorce, mayhem, crime, bankruptcy, injuries by insured and responsible media, and so on, to assure that our reciprocal wish will grant them a real "happy and prosperous twelve month* to come • . ." It is obvious by now that I mean to haul in lastly Drs...
...I know bow sincerely the echoing wishes rise from my heart...
...Nothing could be more hideous, unless it is the account of his marriage, a few years later, to a wor *.n who is utterly unsuited to him...
...My eyes were hot with tears...
...Let us be short with his ilk...
...But his remedies for the ravages of the imperialistic glacier are nothing if not futile...
...We move for the canalization of St...
...Hoover, it is admitted, has spoken with the correspondents in the frankest terms about the purpose of the tour, \o boost American trade and to show Latin America the power of the colossus of the north...
...Clamber up the Volcano of Poas in that little nation and you will pass trim bungalows owned by young Americans who came down to the tropics with the proverbial shoestring and now own acres of coffee plants...
...Fertile Darkness IN the depths of the primal, the wombal darkness, D. H. Lawrence seeks— protection from?—solution to?—the questions life puts him...
...Wells's questions ? Aren't they exactly *" questions that every dumb conservative is forever *klng, even of us smaller fry...
...Prisoner* AH" Revolution in Munich was succeeded by the counter-revolution of the Hoffman Government and the Noske troops...
...When it comes it will not be unanticipated as a landowner's statement to Mr...
...He would work for a while (as an elevator boy, as a miller), then would throw up his job and wander off.^e£a*$jsmp Anarchist, or devise plans for coaxing money from those who had it...
...he Li greeted by a "dark girl" to whom he has now attached his affections...
...The first life that Graf knew was that of a peasant...
...But let us consider for a moment what a happy, healthy and prosperous year for the public, would mean to the average lawyer...
...Exult, exult in your purple wing, There's no time lo rue...
...It's the purely "emotional illusion...
...And George Bernard Shaw of all persons...
...The marriage was unhappy," he says, 'from first to last...
...I mean the courtesy with which he treats his interviewers...
...And now...
...He is only thirty-four years old, yet at times he seems to have lived, in suffering and experience, through eons...
...In the eyes of Thomas Mann, one of the most gifted of living German novelists, It marks the path of "a proletarian Golem, heavy as mud," who "gropes his way, has encounters which astound him, goes daft, runs amuck, makes his own way craftily yet bunglingly through a period that degrades and smirches him and yet in many respects is so neculiarlv his own...
...Apparently no fool sets foot In England but last he or she hastens to interview Shaw...
...yno is there who« is reconciled to the world as it is Jjhjr, who is any better than a milch cow...
...Hy God...
...Then what would be left, save a few real estate matters, a corporation paper or two to draw up...
...Joan did you say...
...A rooted flower or a foetus growing— Nowhere such downward power, such upward ease...
...They come along and say, "You Socialists are alkickir / Do you think you coJld make things "J" better it you were in power ? "And while we are ** George Bernard Shaws our answer should be the **• as his...
...Hillman Gets Harmon Award Pres...
...but continues to plan ahead for the balance of the year on now to bury us with accepted and honorable fashion...
...both strive to escape the Ignorance (hence the fear) life leaves us of its purposes...
...The progress of events left indelible impressions on his imagination...
...The madhouse, we call civilization looms above their cringing souls and they seek to escape the shadow...
...It is the eternal conflict of soul and senses that troubles Gladys Oaks...
...On the Atlantic, press dispatches must pass through government itiiiens at the Canal Zone or Porto Rico for transmission to Arlington...
...Graf thoroughly disliked his environment, and fled from it, as soon as he could, to the city of Munich...
...because they tried to bite, they are killed...
...Wells for a row < first editions...
...By Arthur Ruhl...
...Frustration greets him from his mirrored eye...
...Much of her material wealth comes as the precarious prosperity of a single-crop system...
...Sidney Hillman of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers has been awarded the Harmon Foundation gold medal and $1,000 for his "outstanding public service...
...Fly (in a cloud lo the woods, and seeing Chi a berry...
...9. A. de Witt...
...Our feet are in the mud...
...But he cherished the ambition to become a writer...
...the rivalry of Majority Socialists, of Independent Socialists and of Communists, are all conveyed in living prose...
...Prosperity would involve no bankruptcies for us or our fellow tradesmen, no commercial trickeries to invent, and no debts to collect...
...It is with downward power into the darkness that Gladys Oaks probes, and with upward ease of smiling that she records her spirit's quest...
...Refuge or research, indeed, are but different attitudes in the same quest...
...The marchings and counter-marchings of workmen and soldiers...
...Norman Stnder...
...Graf himself participated in social agitation, and on one occasion even organized a public meeting (at which he tried to make a speech and only succeeded in making a fool of himself...
...The union's achievements under Hillman's presidency, said the Harmon directors, included a successful plan of unemployment insurance, two cooperative banks with small loan features and $2,000,000 bousing cooperatives for members...
...and was drawn into the revolutionary struggles ol post-war Germany...
...Most of the chauffeurs who now hang around the plan looking for a fare used to work little farms of their own out In the hills...
...Thus the truth about Hoover's reception in Latin America will not be known until the mail brings native newspapers from the south, and the few critical reporters on board are landed in New York and released from navy censorship...
...Shaw's face " he gazed on Mr...
...His ruse was successful...
...Such lines as these recur so olien that, although they appear in portraits of others, they tempt us to attach them to the poet herself, as revealing the bravery of one who faces life in defiance of its present purposelessness, who seeks solution but will smile over romantic hopes of finding, who says to her lover (in the sturdy "Ballad of Yellow Hair and Red Beard") "Por we may be together then . . . when you are alone...
...Muvver's boy said a y. But has he sat down and thought what it would ataa if the American people became suddenly pregunt with political ideas founded on the facts of America life ? Has he thought that his own political party, simely the Republican, would be kaput...
...defender of lawbreakers, advisor in bankruptcy matters, collector of stubborn debts, procurer of marital freedom, chaser of intricate decisions and ambulances...
...Come to our arms, Nicholas...
...In Costa Rica, for Instance, where that crop is coffee, the higher the standard of living is raised, the more wants that are created, "the stronger will be the pressure to grow coffee, to grow It on an organised rather than on a small and personal scale, and the less will people be tempted to grow other things, such as corn, beans, rice, etc., which the country naturally uses for food...
...True he sought a quick route to an easy life, using petty tricks of words, sad low manners of evasiveness to escape useful, arduous labor...
...No quotations were permitted from his speeches on these occasions...
...And we in turn must truthfully reply, "May we all have the gout, the pip, and the Spanish delight, may the microbes of seventy plagues seize us, may we all toss and shiver snd gyrate on our beds for twelve months of operations, and blistering temperatures, may every disease sweep over us In recurrent hurricane, to that you, dear doctors, wOl indeed have a Prosperous and Happy New Tear . . ." Now, I'm too Stirling mad to go on...
...ij...
...That, at least, is what one gathers from Mr...
...Chisel bone and Tickletongue...
...which most directly faces life's fundamental urge: For of the gentleness we're rich with knowing Nothing at all is gentle quite as these...
...We get a detailed pen-portrait of Kurt Eisner, Independent Socialist, who led a successful coup d'etat In Munich, but was later assassinated...
...All newspaper dispatches must pass through several government channels before becoming available to the papers to which they are directed...
...document...
...Hanoiness would keep the families together...
...The animal appetites are represented as triumphing over the idealism of humanity...
...The entire atmosphere was surcharged with subversive and often mutually destructive energies...
...On either side and before and behind marched soldiers, who bawled when an exhausted arm dropped, struck the prisoners in the ribs with the butts of their rifles, and hit their trembling victims with their fists...
...as journeymen they were exploited, and In the end they became soldiers and fought for those who beat them...
...Scribners...
...The Yankee Glacier T>A8S by a ihop window or open a newspaper in Costa Rica and you will, like as not, be informed that Lucky Strikes are toasted and do not harm the throat—"estan tostados, pro teg en su gargantua...
...His father was a baker in Bavaria...
...What matters it you're the devil's thing?He is Cod's too...
...All about life and immortality and tta future of the universe...
...Hence they are thoroughly disgusted with their lot...
...And since when has Nicholas Murray Butler stood beneath a red flag ? Tf the American people ever got a good look at the (acts, sll your pals on Wall Street, all the fat invest-eent bankers, all the high-hat gyp artists who keep job in your job and come across every now and then lor a new dormitory for your college would be out pankndung for cots in a flop-bouse...
...Bernard...
...Even meek, though job hardly think of him as such...
...Good health would keep is from dying, ergo, no estates to play mud pies with...
...They have all lived a dog's life, as I have, and have always had to obey orders and to cower, and now...
...Think of it, here was someone not reconciled with the world...
...As uoeoce else said about someone else, Butler sounds l^ter than he is...
...Butler lately has been getting off .goe stuff that meets with our heartiest approval...
...And, boys and girls, do you get the deadly famili"ky of Mr...
...And in this certainty our friend Tommy Campbell does bis pious wishing to us...
...Everywhere in Central America there are marks of this inevitable glacier of Yankee civilization that is burying the dirty and picturesque, past under a jthick...
...The four principal themes of his book are sex, work, war and revolution, and all are treated with brutal realism...
...Yet the book ends on a note of sex idealism...
...Hence they suffer in income...
...The pages in which he deals with the War are farcical...
...We Socialists have teen saying it for years back...
...They, too are sending out the same New Year's cards...
Vol. 7 • December 1928 • No. 54
