THE TANK
even the slightest “evidence” for “survival.” The result is that they all accept
such rubbish as that given above (which is part of the official record), and seri-
ously claim that it affords them proof of survival—of Immortality! Heigh, Ho!
This is a sad world, my children, but never sadder than when we see otherwise
good intellects going to the Dogs in this fashion.
Hoveson Y. Knorr.
Tue Vittace. By Ernest Poort. The Macmillan Co. Price, $1.50.
Tuere is a dreadful wrapper by Boardman Robinson, but he probably needed
the money. It is quite the right wrapper too. Ernest Poole has driven the tank
of ignorance and vulgarity across the steppes of Russia. Mr. Poole is not very
deep, and he is exceptionally stagnant, with a thick green slime of New England
prejudice on his surface. Even for a journalist he is appalling. Think of using
words like “destructed”! It deserves what he calls “le peine de mort.” His
method is to accumulate details, none of which he understands. There is no hint
of vision. There is no understanding of Russia. There is nothing but interviews
with uninteresting people, whose consciousness does not in any way represent
them, or, as we used to say in days of less complicated speech, who do not know
what they are talking about. Has he no shame to blot the ’scutcheon of the
Pooles—the other scissors-knights of Savile Row?
The book is interesting enough to any one who knows Russia even slightly, if
only because there is a laugh on every page. Some old poet, I forget his name,
remarked:
“Some minds improve by travel, others rather
Resemble copper wire or brass,
Which gets the narrower by going farther.”
The days of the innocent God-help-me tourist seem to be done. The tourist of
to-day has been bullied by the Y. M. C. A., in intervals between grafts, into moral
responsibility and Christian earnestness, and all that sort of thing. A man can
hardly go from New York to Philadelphia without writing a serious biography
of George Fox. The poop-stick has given place to the prig. I have no hope what-
ever for the future of humanity.
8.0. S.
Tue Curtpren’s Homer. By Paprarc Corum. The Macmillan Co. Price,
$2.00.
One of the points of art is adaptation of the means to the end. If the children
of America are nurtured on the world’s greatest story, it will be very nice for
everybody in thirty years or so. It seems hopeless to get the present generation
to understand that unless they read Greek, they are savages, who, if they are not
cannibals, are simply so because they have no skill in cookery.
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