HOW I CAME TO WRITE "THE CITADEL"
Merwin, Samuel
How I Came To Write "The Citadel" By SAMUEL MERWIN THE ONLY WAY I can see to answer the question LA FOL-LETTE'S has been good enough to ask me is in the form of a narrative of the past decade of...
...Long thoughtful letters from sober, intelligent men and women—if I never receive another one, if not another copy of the book is read anywhere—the experience is worth while as it, stands...
...As a people we could begin to breath and stir—and think about catching up with the irresistible onward rush of the life about us...
...ence —taking part in the Official management of all the parties, The position of labor is changing so rapidly that one can hardly think fast enough to keep pace with it...
...A "Nonsense Machine" THE NET of this Washington experience was a curious sinking of the heart...
...editing a national magazine and for years reading intimate letters—tens of thousands of em, I guess—from every part of our country and all bearing on conditions, local and national...
...Most of them read it carefully, understood it, even praised it...
...sitting around, in England again, with members of Parliament, discussing Lloyd-George, So-eialism, Single Taxism, etc...
...Then years of first-hand acquaintance with Washington...
...Even many of the out-and-out stand-pat papers have reviewed it with the utmost seriousness...
...Knowing how hastily and casually most novels are reviewed in this country (I've done some of it myself) I really feared that the curious artistic form of the book would prevent its acceptance...
...going everywhere in the United States, studying municipal and state problems...
...There is confusion, of course...
...A wonderful tangle of cross purposes, of sub-institutions savagely fighting each other to a standstill, and achieving a triumphant and dignified immobility...
...Gilman's "Woman and Economics...
...And the whole thing in chaos...
...Our entire Federal Government was a colossal Burgessian "Nonsense Machine...
...They did neither...
...The men of government were all political men, party men, who not only talked the language and thought the thoughts of another and earlier era, but even wore the earlier clothes...
...I myself worked, as a Journalist, in the Pure Food fight—and after that organized and tried to sustain the short-lived "People's Lobby...
...It's Coming True AND ABOVE all these—reviews and letters—stands the bewildering fact that the spirit of the book is coming true all about us...
...A Surprise IREALLY THOUGHT the critics would either ignore it or kick it to death...
...The best and most stimulating of them all is from a lawyer—a stranger to me before he wrote, hut not now...
...But already Senator La Follette has introduced in the Senate a resolution embodying the vital piea—making the Constitution easier to amend...
...For the critics, like the rest of us, hate to make the effort necessary in grasping new concepts...
...Anywhere now one bears a slip of a girl calmly announcing that she (a above "marrying for a living...
...It was devised to get nowhere: it got nowhere...
...The final step, into a sense of the necessity of conscious social order, must follow...
...It must look into the heart of that people as it is—now...
...reading everything I could get my hands on that pore in any way on the world-wide social unrest—Shaw, Ibsen, Schreiner, Bri-eux, Wells—the psychologist...
...No reformer can get anywhere...
...And Oh, how wonderful they were at that...
...The Cabinet departments couldn't keep straight accounts to explain their operation...
...For these letters are in themselves reward enough for a lifetime...
...And meantime the financial class were getting off with the swag...
...That part of the experience has been astonishing...
...And the letters...
...With it captured, the iron rule of the courts that operate under it (and hold it back out of our reach) would he broken...
...Nobody knew, Congress couldn't even keep a straight account of its own expenses for stationery...
...It had to...
...So the book took its own form—grew in its own way...
...THEN it occurred to me to write a novel about a young Congressman who was unfortunately cursed with a little honest common sense—who would suddenly wake up, take a long look around, and speak out—tell the truth—worse, talk the real issues...
...Then worked with the early congressional insurgents...
...How I Came To Write "The Citadel" By SAMUEL MERWIN THE ONLY WAY I can see to answer the question LA FOL-LETTE'S has been good enough to ask me is in the form of a narrative of the past decade of my life—traveling around the world, discussing the stir of social problems in Japan, China, the Continent and England...
...The old sordid morality of the "economic marriage" is melting away before our eyes...
...The old phrases and the old attitude are passing, the new attitude and the new phrases are in every mind and on every lip...
...It gradually cleared up in my mind...
...years of membership in various kinds of liberal talking clubs...
...They have even caught the hints of spiritual and moral unrest that in the book as in life un-derlle the political and social stirrings...
...I sent a man once to check up one small financial matter—the cost per year of running Congress...
...The Government couldn't keep straight accounts—high officials frankly admitted that the finances were a joke—accounts padded, balances forced, etc...
...Women are for the first time—and all at...
...The only thing they could keep was a straight face...
...Such a novel, of course, could not be planned within conventional artistic limits...
...Because instead of working at the real issues he's got to turn back and wear his heart out fighting that sacred, immovable Constitution...
...Forel, Metchnikoff, Ellis, etc.,—you know the list—right down to that little woman who is one of the biggest of them all— Charlotte P. Gilman—and to Bergson...
...We could throw off our shackles...
...When I was writing it, it seemed a mere hope of future things, like "Looking Backward" and the earlier "Utopias...
...That Citadel must be taken first...
...But a great people is taking the big stop out of the old, ugly, individualistic philosophy of life into the new social consciousness...
...Ever read Mrs...
...But barring a half dozen ruthless young persons and a few frank standpatters, the critics, have handled the book with sincerity and understanding...
...It must penetrate, not the mood of a man or woman, but the mood of a restless people...
...It was comical, but mainly futile...
...listening to American-Canadian farmers calmly announcing that they prefer Canada because it is honester and better governed...
...He couldn't find out...
...Storm The Citadel...
...There will be blunders-and penalties...
...Then the million and one things an editor reads...
...They are even coming from lawyers...
...Next thought was—he couldn't get anywhere...
Vol. 5 • February 1913 • No. 5
