Illinois Cavalry; young Vanderbilt joined the ammunition train as a private soldier. There was a time when the rich youth sought to outshine all the dandies, since Alcibiades went out to supper with golden grasshoppers in his hair. This folly can never quite regain its tinsel glory. The mermaid feast, the hectic play at Palm Beach tables-all the staggers and lapse of moneyed license-these belong to America's isolated past, when young Hotspur made a torch of his purse to light his narrow round-Las de toucher toujours mon horizon du doigt. The American youth of 1918 has the world for a field. CHAPTER XIV THINKING PINK AS A NATIONAL OUTLOOK "I call a new testimony-yea, one better than all scripture, more discussed than all doctrine, more public than all publications. . Stand forth, O Soul!"-(TERTULLIAN). ... WHEN Henry James returned to New York after years of absence he had much to learn about his native land, its joyous growth and clamorous aims. "Perhaps you'll write us the Great American Novel," was the hope of a friend, who guided the weaver of words through the noisy maze. But the artist demurred. "I'm afraid I can't," he said, "for I don't know the American world of business." Now my survey of a pink and practical outlook must go back to a time when the anima mundi of these people was not duty or sacrifice, but mainly Success, and that of rather a barren kind which left the winner unfulfilled. To compare the present American aspect with that of pre-war days is like setting the Britain of 1918 beside the England of Ascot Week in 1913, when our "week-end habit of mind" was a German taunt. America as well as Russia has known the throes of revolution. The uprooting of tradition, the adventure overseas and its reaction upon life at home-these are already reflected in American life and letters. The Great American Novel, it is felt, may after all be written in blood, like Draco's law. And haply by some exiled Ovid, like young Norman Prince who died for France, or Alan Seeger, the poet-soldier, whose reverie called up Love and pillowed ease: "But I've a rendezvous with Death It is the voice of America's new-found soul, a nobler note than that of the petty trader who "couldn't pass a bank without raising his hat and walking on his toes." This waggish worship of the money-shrine has been appreciably chilled. Dollars are become as dirt to be swept in billions into the maw of war. Therefore a sober journal like the Sun can now say, "We are reading seriously." The reviewer glanced at "this Season's books," and sighed as one who knew them by heart. How could the public swallow the old stuff in this new day? But it was not the old stuff; there was here less of the milk for babes and more strong meat, such as belongeth to them that are of full age. Books of broader vision lay on the critic's table. Something of Mazzini's flame in '63"Nationality is an end, a collective mission from Above." Writers were harking back to the fervour that lifted the North in '65 when the security of the Union had been assured by the sword. And men pointed to France, quoting the Parnassians of Fort Vaux and Douaumont: "Notre race toujours a su reverdir!" Over American literature a change had come, as it had over industry itself. There were now merchant fleets to build, and U-boat destroyers; aeroplanes in thousands, sea and land harness for millions of men. The steel plants of Pittsburg were turned from the ways of peace. So were the motor-shops of Michigan, the rubber-shops of Ohio, lumber-camps of the North-West; the farms and ranches, the stock-yards, oilfields and mines. The wholesale jeweller was busy with periscopes, the sash-chain man making cartridge-clips; and from underwear factories came bandages in ribbons that would reach to the moon. Machine-gun aid was expected of the corset people. Cash-register plants and makers of infants' food were also in the killing or curing line. Thirty thousand firms had asked for a share in the Big Job, and Uncle Sam was doling out "practice orders" of an educational kind. Thus a threshing-machine man got a contract for a hundred six-inch shells, and with it Government guidance in the necessary jigs and tools and gauges. There was room for every citizen in Democracy's war-for the Wyoming cowboy as well as for commercial lords who were on the Washington pay-roll at one dollar a year. It was this upheaval which accounted for the new books on our reviewer's table. Of course there were pamphlets on physical condition. "In this world-crisis," said the dope-and-diet ad. of a health-culture course, "you must be a national asset, and not a liability." Even the fiction promised, by title or puff, to illumine matters-that swayed the new American thought. There was still pink reading, of course, but its pride of place was gone. The novels were less exuberant; minor poets had more flints than flowers in their little triolet offerings. Strangest of all, here was naval and military sciencea work on Trench Warfare, for instance, by Major James A. Moss, U. S. A. This author was concerned with obstacles and ditches, mining and countermining; bayonetfighting, the use of grenades, and bombs and liquid fire. At the same time there were a few works that reflected peace-time interests wholly given to war. The cottage spinster still gabbled from her cabbage-patch with a background of hollyhocks and hens. The small-town parson told of business methods in the local church. He took space in the paper to advertise his spiritual wares. There were bulletin boards at the cross-roads, and Barnum parades to boost the Sunday School-that problem of a stormy day when Christ ethics were decried with Nietzschean ferocity. There are Western yarns in the Season's list-"fine, big novels of simple sweetness and virile strength," with corresponding heroes on the coloured wrappers, and pri vate guidance from the publisher to the reviewer. Here is "a ten-strike in fiction, a miracle of mental cleanness, and that rarest of all achievements-a really pure lovestory, mined from the grand old moral bed-rock." Of one novel we are told that "not a man in it wears a collar." It is a tale of gold-seeking, with the Arizona desert for a scene. Life on the ranch and range has always been a big seller; simplicity makes a strong appeal to the sophisticated of this land. Fanatics of the speed-up are allured by languor under the giant tree-ferns of Hawaii, where the heart's thirst is satisfied by the hand's thrift, and unwedded lovers eat frugally of taro and dried fish. It is a standing marvel to the New Yorker what a dollar can do in these cradled nests. He pays a dime for each egg in the restaurant caviare; three children at private schools run him into nine thousand dollars a year. I But the best seller of all is the Wholesome in fiction. know a man who sold seven million copies by virtue of a God-given secret which was defined by his Chicago publisher in a special brochure of boosting. In this pamphlet, ministers of religion pay generous homage to this maze of letters. Had they not preached from the Big Seller's text? So great a man was in more than one sense a handful for his publisher. That lucky tradesman journeyed 2500 miles into the waste with his contract. For genius held that the heart of the great reading public could only be touched from a hermit hut in the sage and sand far away from all distraction. The source and fount of big sales was duly pictured in the booklet; it was a dinky abode, eighteen by thirty-five, thatched with arrow-weed and furnished with Socratic severity. Here prose epies for the million were turned out. Here the Big Seller played upon America's soul-"soft and low," as Chicago tells us, "like a magnificent organ is played." Pre-war America had no great love for heavy reading; |