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chists, and other persons whose hearts are not in precisely the right place. It is not hard to see which side is the stronger. But the weaker side would gladly forego a complete victory, being too busy with other pastimes to bother—cud-chewing, conversation, and dyspeptic dreams. All they care about is that a few scuppers should be accidentally left open, through which those who sincerely desire leisure might slip modestly out of sight. The mobilization must not be so efficient as not to overlook somebody now and then.
This is not a plea for privilege; but for something easier to supply: a little inefficiency. Perhaps this ancient perquisite of humanity will some day prove its salvation.
The Devil may have all the good tunes but he no longer has a monopoly of press-agents. He who was despised and rejected of men—particularly men of action—is already the priceless servant of both sides and may be master yet. There was a time, a better time, when the man who wrote was considered harmless enough. Not to-day. At any moment the obscure rhymes of a very second-rate poet may be read in the Senate as evidence and, no doubt, the theories of Professor Einstein, had they been advertised during the war, would have been put down as most insidious bits of "enemy propaganda" by both sides, since he is a Swiss and the logical (censorial) outcome of his ideas must be the denial of absolute justice. It is no longer safe to be a novelist, although it is very profitable to be one, and the detached thinker, if one is left, is in danger of being summoned as a witness on the merits of prohibition or industrial democracy. It is rather amusing to find that the practical men are the ones who are nearest to panic at the sight of a book-store, while the literary philosophers are going in for direct action. In any case letters are looking up; they have come to the level of journalism and are nearly on an equality with strike-breaking. Still it is hard to consider John Addington Symonds or Robert Browning as the hired press-agent of Italy, or Turgenev as the secret mediator in the Franco-Russian agreement. The Muses are having their revenge, at last, and as usual the ironic Muse of Comedy is preparing for the last laugh.
Last month in our paragraphs on the financial side of art we suggested a method of speculation for persons who were willing to wait twenty or thirty years for their returns. There are persons, how-