It would be childish to deny that the Austrians are Germans; but they are Catholic Germans who have been deeply Latinized through many centuries. The universality of the culture of the Viennese people, whose city was for ages the center of a great monarchy, is due to the fact that Slavic, Hungarian, and Germanic civilizations fused within their walls. The Viennese are a likable people; their taste is good, they are refined, they are gourmets and appreciate good food, as witness their exquisite little demitasses with whipped cream floating on top, and their flaky little pastries. To quote one of their own writers, they are 'whimsical, sensuous, Catholic, aristocratic, and ironic;' and they are very different from the 'classic, heavily intellectual, Protestant, bourgeois' Germans. It is generally admitted, even by the Germans themselves, that the Viennese, although their language is the same as that spoken in Germany, are intellectually much closer to Paris than to Berlin. In fact, German intellectuals have often protested at the frivolity of Viennese writers, infatuated with the French literary movement and showing an obvious affinity for the agility of the Parisian mind.

Teutonism is responsible for much of this complex and ancient Austrian culture, but not for all. It was, among other things, the product of a cosmopolitanism which undoubtedly represented a great moral progress. The AustroHungarian Empire and Switzerland, before 1914, were the two embryos of that United States of Europe which must be set up if the white race is to be saved. (Had the League of Nations not made its headquarters at Geneva, how appropriate it would have been to choose Vienna!) Today, we must ask to which of the two sources of her culture Austria means to cleave. It is true that we cannot get around the fact that, ethnologically speaking, the Austrians are Germans. If, as they drift backward, they decide in the future to be no more than Germans, it will undoubtedly be very difficult to prevent them from choosing their own destiny.

A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE

such a concession, the Germans would agree never to demand a change in the status of the Polish corridor. I fear that he is mistaken, at least on this latter point. And then, after all, is the Anschluss morally accomplished? I see no reason to be certain.

But the problem is deeper than that. Are the Austrians, in their own conscience, free to give up everything that assures them an outstanding moral position in European affairs, a position not at all influenced by the size of the territory they occupy? The vicissitudes of modern times may have destroyed the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but they have left an Austria whose duty it is to carry out her cosmopolitan destiny and, by being the first to renounce racial prejudice in order to save civilization, set a great example for the world.

Austria's duty is not toward Germany, but toward herself and toward humanity. Let Austria try to join Germany, and immediately the whole structure of peace in Europe is shaken and the dream of a United States of Europe is gone. Faced by a block of seventy million Teutons (a nation too strong to join with others on a basis of equality), all the surrounding nations will grow fearful and unite in self-defense; the race for armaments will go forward at full speed, and the curse of a new war will be in sight. After all, there is at least one thing for which Breitscheid, the German Social-Democratic leader, deserves praise. He very rightly said: 'The Anschluss depends not alone upon the wishes of the Austrian and German people. It is a problem for all Europe.' Monseignor Seipel is a passionate follower of the Christian faith, whose first command is the avoidance of bloodshed. He is certainly only waiting for a favorable opportunity to speak the clear words of wisdom which will discourage the efforts of those who, stubbornly working for the Anschluss, are in reality laying the basis for a new European conflagration.

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any encouragement to the organizers of the colossal German charivari in Vienna. Until the evidence convinces us otherwise, we shall never believe that Monseignor Seipel and Mayor Seitz, who profess humanitarian principles in theory, will fail to practice what they preach.

Finally, it is difficult to explain the rôle played by the German SocialDemocracy in this choral and oratorical tumult. The horror of war has always been accepted as that party's fundamental principle. Only a short time ago, Gustave Hervé assured us of its pacifism, even of its 'bleating' pacifism. Nevertheless its representative, Herr Loebe, President of the Reichstag, has several times come to Vienna and acted like a traveling salesman of Pan-Germanism. It is incomprehensible. Whom are they trying to fool? Who are these strange internationalists who are so desperately anxious to set up narrow nationalistic principles? It is not true, Herr Loebe, that the union of Austria and Germany is a holy work to which great idealists should give themselves. Yes, I know that the semi-official Viennese Correspondance Diplomatique assures us that 'it is completely idiotic to see a Pan-German movement in the movement for an AustroGerman union, or a claim to political hegemony in an appeal to the right of self-determination.' But such assurances are unconvincing. Although the agitation in favor of the union is carried on under cover of a certain spirit of play, a certain

Photo Wide World

Bacchic good fellowship, and a demonstrative pacifism, I feel certain that in practice the setting up of a block of seventy or eighty million Germans would soon take on a formidable significance that would inevitably threaten the peace in Europe. Possibly the 140,000 German singers led by Herr Loebe were mostly simpletons, but among the leaders and file-closers of all those blockheads there

'Pull in your horns, Herr Loebe, or at least pull out for Berlin!' The rôle which you presume to give Austria is not as great as that offered by her glorious destiny. Austria should not become a part of Germany alone, but of all civilization, of which Germany is only a part. There is no need for the Austrians to

Germans when simply by remaining as they are, keeping their freedom, refusing to oppose the pacification of the world, they can automatically become the first people of Europe. It is not a greater Germany that they should be instrumental in setting up, but a united Europe. One, I am afraid, excludes the other.

The Three Crows

By M. N.

The Spectator, London

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THE LONDON APHRODITE

HE FANFROLICO PRESS, London, has issued the first number of a new and perhaps unique periodical, unique in that it definitely announces that only six numbers will appear. One is allowed to suppose that it intends to flare up brightly and then cease to be, rather than drag on a precarious existence. This publication will be entitled The London Aphrodite, will cost nine shillings for the six bi-monthly numbers, and will be edited by Jack Lindsay and P. R. Stephenson. The numbers will not be sold separately. The current issue, which has not reached the United States at this writing, contains articles by the editors, by Liam O'Flaherty, by E. Powys Mathers, and others. The purpose of the new magazine is announced as follows:

'As an antidote to the modern literary poisons of painful introspection and ponderous academic dictatorships. The London Aphrodite will re-affirm beauty as a human fact, imagination as eternity; and it will cry death to the deadliest moderns. Each number will contain a critical depreciation of the sickliest zeitgeist expressions, and some antithetical creative work in prose and verse. If prevailing standards in periodical literary journalism satisfy you, please do not subscribe.'

When a periodical begins life by announcing the date of its death, there are those who will scoff. Some will say that this procedure is like publishing a book over a period of six months rather than in one printing. Others, more sophisticated, will hint that if a sufficient number of subscribers are obtained by the end of the six months' period, the periodical will, of course, continue publication; if not, then the publishers will have neatly covered their retreat.

time Sir Samuel Hoare, the British Minister for Air, was formally opening a new science wing at the Highgate School, which will be dedicated to instruction in flying as a science and an

art.

Dr. Rouse is known the world over as the originator of the direct method of teaching the classics. He, together with his collaborator, Dr. S. O. Andrew, both classical scholars of deep learning and profound love for the ancient literatures, decided that the old-fashioned, grammatical method of teaching Latin and Greek was largely responsible for the wide-spread waning of interest in the classics. Together they worked out a method of teaching which relied on conversation and reading in the lanconversation and reading in the languages themselves rather than on rote learning and translation. From the very first day, the classes are conducted wholly in Latin or Greek; in the school textbooks in Latin or Greek; in the school textbooks rules are given and explanations of grammatical points are made in the language which the pupil is studying. The effects obtained by this system were truly remarkable. Perse School boys acquired such a knowledge of the classics that they were literally able to think in the ancient languages. The fame of the method spread until demand was sufficiently large to justify the publication of the textbooks for use in other schools; these texts are now eleven in number; they are called the Lingua Latina series and are known to educators the world over.

The writer well remembers a description of one of Dr. Rouse's classes which was given him by an American scholar who visited the Perse School a few years ago. It was a class in Latin Composition; the boys averaged about fifteen years of age. Each student was provided with a copy of Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America, a work none too easy even in English. Dr. Rouse opened the book at random and called on one of his boys to render a passage into Latin. The boy immediately began and rattled off a Latin rendition so quickly that the American scholar was unable to follow it. Dr. Rouse complimented the lad, and then remarked that, although the rendering was excellent for a boy of his age, Cicero would probably have put it in such and such a way. The whole class immediately became attentive and listened to their

instructor's flowing periods with keen delight. The American left the classroom feeling that he had been dreaming. Later, on his return to America, he tried the direct method in his own classroom; he found that his own ignorance of spoken Latin was so great that it took him four to five hours a day to prepare for a forty-five minute recitation with thirteen-year-old beginners. He was obliged finally to stop on account of his health. Yet this American scholar was a man with a great reputation and solid classical learning.

That has been the chief trouble with applying Dr. Rouse's methods. They require so great a knowledge of the classics and such intimate acquaintance with classical literature that it is wellnigh impossible for even the best prepared teacher to use them. This has been realized fully as well in England as elsewhere, and it is generally feared, despite Dr. Rouse's disclaimer, that with his retirement there has definitely come to an end an amazingly brilliant experiment in classical teaching.

THE Highgate School, an institution

over three hundred and fifty years old, with a long list of distinguished alumni, especially in the learned professions, has installed a laboratory where its students may study the principles and technique of flying. For the present it is not intended to give any practical instruction which involves actual flight, but the physics, mechanics, construction, and repair of æroplanes will be taught to the students in order that those who have a special aptitude for æronautics may have a solid foundation for further study in later life. The school's equipment consists of a hangar, the latest type of Avro and Snipe æroplanes with engines and fittings complete, a 325 horse-power air-cooled Armstrong-Siddeley Jaguar engine, and a 450 horsepower water-cooled Lion Napier engine. The instruction will be in the hands of two former members of the British Air Force. This is the first secondary school in England to make an attempt to teach practical æronautics.

A somewhat similar programme, it will be recalled, has been in force at an American secondary school, namely, the Culver Military Academy, Culver, Indiana, where, however, more attention is paid to actual flying instruction than

to the theoretical aspects of the subject. With these two beginnings we may perhaps expect some day to see the principles of aviation offered as a regular part of secondary school education.

THE

SPANISH ACADEMICIANS

HE Spanish Academy has just unanimously elected a new member, Ramon Pérez de Ayala. This author is highly esteemed and at the height of his fame in Spain; although he is a relatively young man, his works fill twenty odd volumes, consisting of verse, fiction, criticism, and general essays. Yet he is practically unknown in this country. It is indeed high time that some enterprising American publisher should winnow contemporary Spanish literary production and offer us samples in translation that would redound a little more to the glory of a fine literature than the works of such men as Blasco Ibáñez, and only the more transitory efforts of a man whose best work remains untranslated, Miguel de Unamuno.

The election of Pérez de Ayala, whose writing is extremely modern and unorthodox in style, is in the tradition of liberalism and impartiality which has of late years characterized the elections of the Spanish Academy. An Academy of Letters is usually considered a dryas-dust collection of philologists and archæologists who meet together in a vain effort to keep their native language from showing the least sign of growth and who are devoted to the preservation of all old-fashioned ideologies. Such is not the Spanish Academy. It has, of course, its share of scholars whose primary interest is not creative, but it has also a goodly company of men who have in common only the merit of writing well. That in a predominantly Catholic country Pérez Galdós, with his two novels of religious questioning,

Gloria and La Familia de León Roch, and Juan Valera, with his gentle scepticism, should have been made academicians is a tribute to the large-mindedness of the Academy. The election of Pérez de Ayala adds to its glory and confirms its reputation for liberalism.

MR. GORDON CRAIG'S EXHIBITION

T is a paradoxical fact that although

I England has several playwrights of

true distinction, her theatre grows worse and worse. Her scenic designers are all either lapped in the bosom of a kindly and sentimental naturalism, or are tearing their hair in wildly archæological or modernistic antics which fail both artistically and financially. Gordon Craig is the great exception, though he has met with astonishingly little success

in his native country. Not since his production of The Vikings a good many seasons ago has any of his work achieved practical realization on the London stage, and yet his influence has spread over Europe from the Volga to the Seine, until now there is no book published on the theatre which does not contain some reproduction of his designs.

The only possible explanation of England's neglect of such an artist is a peculiar lack of appreciation. Craig is the founder of all the modern nonrealistic schools of theatre design; his work has a simplicity, a theatrical quality, a justness of design and color which would easily have put England in the lead of Europe had only the English theatre public been a trifle less set in its ways. Instead of this, Craig had to go abroad to gain the recognition he so richly deserved. It was Germany, Denmark, and Russia which allowed him to apply his art to the practical stage and to prove its worth; it is these countries which have reaped the benefit, for they are now the leaders in European stagecraft.

At last, however, London has accorded some recognition to Gordon Craig's genius. There has been an exhibition of his sketches at the St. George's Galleries and, later, at the Architectural Association. Not only rough drawings are exhibited, but actual stage models made for the State Theatre at Copenhagen. But any mere exhibition is a poor reward for so great an artist; it is high time some London manager were willing to risk a few pounds and to give the only first-rate designer modern England has produced a chance to carry his ideas into practice in his own country.

THE 'NEW' RUSSIAN OPERA

THERE is perhaps no nation which

takes its art with so much gusto as Russia; there is certainly none quite so solemn about its Art as Germany. When Emanuel Kaplan, the director of the Leningrad Operatic Studio, reached Salzburg with his troupe to prepare for competition in the famous operatic festival, he immediately issued a pronunciamento calculated to bring tears of wrath to any good German eyes. 'Ours,' he announced, 'is the antithesis of the Wagnerian ideal.'

What he meant by this is not altogether clear. Apparently the most startling innovations of his company are two: he has increased the number of characters in Mozart's Bastien und Bastienne from three to sixteen and he has his operas produced in front of an iron curtain which makes the voices of

his singers resound better and more clearly. One suspects that the results of the latter innovation may be somewhat tinny. At all events the first performance in the new style in Leningrad precipitated a free-for-all fight among the auditors, which lasted, at least verbally, for several weeks.

Apparently Kaplan has 'discovered' the musical drama, as distinguished from the dramatic music of Wagner. One is obliged to confess that this 'discovery' is not very startling. It was surely made in Vienna by Mozart, and even before Mozart in France. It did not require Bolshevism to suggest that pleasing opera could be produced with a little more attention to good acting and a little less to a large orchestra. It may be that Kaplan has really developed a new form of opera; no one can tell, for, with true good management, his rehearsals at Salzburg all take place behind locked doors. But it will be indeed surprising if, after two hundred years of experimentation, all of it rather fruitless, the perfect form should emerge, the opera in which neither the music shall be lost in the acting nor the acting swamped by the music. Time will tell. Salzburg audiences are highly critical and cultivated; when the festival is over, we shall be able to decide whether Kaplan has really done something or whether he has merely been carried away by the idea of having made a 'discovery.'

THE PRICE OF A VAN GOGH

TO-DAY

O-DAY a canvas from the brush of Vincent Van Gogh sells at a price somewhere in the thousands of francs, if not thousands of dollars. It was not always so. When Van Gogh was in Arles, painting feverishly in the crystal-clear sunlight of Provence, many were the letters he wrote to his brother Theodore in Paris asking money, and much was the credit he begged from his little Paris artdealer, Père Tanguy, for oils and brushes. A new anecdote told by a Parisian who closely followed the work of the curious. Dutch-French impressionist illustrates the point.

Some months after Van Gogh's death, this gentleman entered Père Tanguy's shop and inquired the price of one of 'le pauvre Vincent's' brilliant still-lifes.

'Forty-two francs,' said the old dealer quickly, after glancing in a ledger.

'How do you make it just forty-two?' questioned the purchaser.

'I'll tell you,' said Père Tanguy. 'When Vincent died, he owed me exactly fortytwo francs. Pay me; you have the picture, and Vincent no longer owes me a sou.'

T

EUROPE VERSUS AMERICA

HE United States has used the Monroe Doctrine to suit her needs,' says André Suarès, French writer of the advanced group, in La Revue des Vivants (Paris), a highly nationalistic publication of recent foundation whose object is to speak for 'the generations who went through the war and must organize the peace.' He continues: 'The United States refuses to allow Europe any part in her affairs, of which she means to be the sole judge. She avoids leagues of nations of any kind. She declines to entertain any idea of an international authority or an international court. Therefore, the time has come to set up an opposing principle which shall legitimately prevent America from taking any part, however small, in the affairs of Europe, of Africa, or of Asia.

As Others See Us

America. It is childish to deny that there are barbarians to-day. It may be because civilization has wronged them; but the fact remains that cannibal negroes, the communistic, animal-like tribes of the equatorial forests, the peoples who lack geometry, physics, and written laws, are barbarians.

'North America, at first glance, seems at the antipodes from all barbarism. Nevertheless, she is the hope and the model of all barbarians; for without American engineers, American business men, and American machines, the peoples of Asia would be forever powerless against Europe. There is no doubt that

United States would make many victims of their visitors. They are the most romantic people on the planet. They are interested in personalities, and they make a story out of every distinguished visitor. There are few who came to the States with such abundant materials for journalistic story-making as President Cosgrave, and few indeed of the many races which are being fused together in that vast country have retained so many memories of the country from which they came as the Irish. That may be because the language which they spoke in the new world was that which their children spoke, a fact which

enabled them to keep in contact with Ireland. The children of German, Swede, Polish, or Italian immigrants but rarely speak the language of their parents. They cannot so easily keep up race traditions. But the children of the Irish who were born in the States could at all times follow what was happening in Ireland. They are not less good American citizens because they remember the ancestral island. They have come to great power in the new world. The fathers of those who lived on the Westseaboard, whose wills were toughened by centuries of struggle in a land of rocks and bogs, handed on to their children that will forged amid rocks and bogs, and it made these a great power. They are almost becoming world masters. They helped to make the reception of our President a memorable one, but the romantic American populace would have given him a reception almost as great on his own record if there had been only a million rather than fifteen or twenty millions of Irish descent in the States.'

'Already American enterprises constitute a great menace to the peoples of Latin America; the Monroe Doctrine controls them and is their law; it is as if they were already regarded as future colonies. The nations of Europe are invited to sell the islands of the Antilles to the United States. The Americans have seized Panama and would like to seize Mexico. Any criminal act against another country can be justified in their opinion and in the opinion of their Senate by oil or some other similar filthy business. If they can get a preacher and a couple of bishops to help, they make a work of piety out of their crime. Arizona oil leads to Mexican oil; Mexican oil leads to Asiatic oil, whether in a still independent China or in the more or less Russian or Persian countries of the Caucasus. From the oil wells of Baku it is but a step to Rumania and Poland. Why not also to France, to Spain, to Scotland, so long as there is oil to be found at Riom, or at Dundee?'

6

the United States means to refuse Europe the right to intervene in the affairs of the New World, no matter what her claim; nor is there any doubt that American foreign policy, the standard bearer of American finance and business, means also to extend American power over all the countries of the Pacific, over China, and even over Asia. The basis and immediate purpose of the European Idea arises from Europe's duty to forbid the Old World to the American spirit and to American political principles.'

AN IRISH PRESIDENT IN OUR MIDST ITH

ern

In another place, purpose of the principle which is to be set up in opposition to America. This principle, the 'European Idea,' he says, 'consists in defending the reality that is Europe against all that is not European in spirit, in feeling, or in tradition, against the barbarians, against Asia, against the black and yellow races certainly, but, first of all, against North

lished in Dublin. It is an account of the adventures of President Cosgrave of the Irish Free State during his visit to the land of the free and the home of the brave, which leads the Irish Statesman (edited by the poet, ÆE) to the following disquisition on the United States:

'The hospitality is gigantic, and, if kindness could kill, the citizens of the

Democratic daily). 'One might as well imagine sky-scrapers on the banks of the Grand Canal, subways in the Catacombs of Rome! Dreaming means, among other things, wasting time; and in this terrifying Cosmopolis, where the hour glass runs to the click of dollars, dreaming is an impossible pleasure, more costly than the biggest solitaire in a