Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1914-12-22
THE ARTS

realm apart. 1t was with shock of sur
prise that we read OF our inspired painters
and musicians going out to battle, writer's
and philosophers welding their pens in de-
fense Of the sword, and saw the world OF art
shaken to its foundations
Effects OF the war upon literature, says
the Bookman, O) are most strkngly con-
spicuous I'm the foreign magazines and reviews,
or rather IN their dearth. July 25 and August
] represent the latest numbers OF practically
all the well-known French. Belgian and Ger
man reviews. Here and there some rare and
crippled survivor has somehow struggled along,
like the wounded in a battlefield La Revue has
managed by Herculean efforts to get out one
number; FIVE articles out OF seven being writ
ten by one intrepid editor, who explains In a
foreword. that since the rest OF the staff are
all on che firing line the reader must be in
duigent. The veteran Revue des Deux Mondes,
shrunk to barely half It's volume, lives UP TO it's
traditional standards but the universal theme
Is war.
The present shrunken bulk OF the Revue
des DeuN Mondes suggests the casual question,
whether II ever suffered similar curtallment
glance over the shelves of the complete set
with its hundred portly volumes answers the
question-one sees-four slim, detected looking
volumes, bearing date which premonltion tells
us even before We look-1S70 1t seems worth
while to Gull just one brief paragraph (from
the volume Of 1S70)
LET us cease TO feel so proud of our mod
ern civilization; let us cease to talk in our
schools of the barbarsm of Arabs, who burn
libraries. Barbarian has entered into our very
midst"
And the Bookman comments:
Does not the above have a distinctly con-
temporary and up-to-date tone? 1t makes one
feel the futily OF all that is now being written,
since the subject was adequately and eX-
haustively treated a years ago.
One of Arts Milestones
The effects of war fall first on the fighters.
young men crippled brides widowed. children
orphaned. But burden of this war, to
which all the world falls heir, and Witch we
must hand on to succeeding generations, is
the loss of Rheims Cathedral
Precious as a storehouse of beauty, as a
symbol of the aspiration and endeavor Of
many generations of men and women, as
milestone in the development of the science
and art of architecture, its loss is nourned
with n grief almost personal by lovers Of
beauty, by the intimates of the world of art
Richard Harding Davis, who in the
cathedral even while it was being shelled
writes (O
The Cathedral had been one of the most
magnificent examples OF early Gothic archi-
lecture. Ferguson called II perhaps the most
beautiful structure produced in the Middle
Ages 1t was structure noble in It's proper
tions, beautiful in Its exquisite detail. We
found the structure still standing, still noble
but the beauty destroyed. 1t was like the
carved statue of saint from which some one
in drunken frenzy. with mallet and chisel
had chopped away the features The west ia
cade held $50 statues they were figures of the
Virgin, saints confessors martyrs, apostles,
angels They were all mutilated, Clipped, bat
tered, dismembered. We picked our way among
the broken arms hands, wings halos of statues
that for hundreds of years, to the glory of God
had faced the elements; our feet trod upon bits
of glass more beautiful than Jewels. What the
shells had failed to batter down, the heat OF
tile fire started by the shells, had destroyed.
With your hands you could crumble statue
into powder
The Tired Business Man
Perhaps It was that catchword about tho
tired business man which started the reac-
tion, but strong swing there certainly is In
many of the magazines toward popularizlng
dramatic criticism, and being as iconoclastic
as they please about it. Not so many years
ago, Life was practically the only publica-
tion that dared be saucy toward the glass
windows of the box offce. Today, several
magazines run regular theatrical depart
ments and articles on dramatic tendencies
and the foreign theatre are frequent. The
art Of acting alone receives more than half
Of all the space allotted to the arts in the
current magazines. The quality OF the com
ments varies with the policy of the magazine
and the ability of the writer. The Cosmopoli-
tan's tone may be inferred from its descrlp-
tion of moving picture favorite; t3)
pretty and appropriate pose is that OF an
Indian maiden I'm the forest solltudes Ram
bling among the flowers her face demure be-
meath a rustic sunshade, or taking a siesta
in the midst OF a POPPY held Ruth Roland
seems to get quite away from her professional
self. and appears as what she is ouoyant
breezy wholesome daughter OF the Western
Serras
McClures gives first place in its January
number to a frank analysis of The Sweetest
Drama" C4), by Villa Sibert Gather, In which
she criticises many OF the current plays, In
terpreting their tendencies, She comments:
Among many OF our older theatres there
ig a preference for the safe machine-made play,
which can always be counted upon to work
into certain dramatic situations according 10
rule From the younger public however, there
Is swelling demand for plays with strong
element Of contemporaneousness.
Walter Pritchard Eaton dissects the devices
and articles Of the drama as pitilessly as
though he were writing with scalpel in
stead OF a pen. 90 He calls attention to the
usefulness of telephones and French maids
and English buffers in getting plots across
with a minimum delay 20 the action. He
sums it up with dash OF philosophy:
Did you ever stop 10 think why there is so
often a deep dark villain IN the dFama2 He Is
there because something has got 10 happen 70
your hero. or your heroine, or you'n have no
drama, az least according 70 orthodox ideas.
Mr. shaw won't agree. Now In this world,
most of Us are our own villains. our struggles
are with ourselves, and our misfOrtunes result
more from ouslzah failures. or our weaknesses.
or our doctors bills or the price of coal, than
from the dark pottings Of an enemy But I'M
the drama. these things are very hard % get
across. because they are more or less spiritual
or Al least Invisible III is. however. compare
lively easy 70 set over q contest between two
-.-.rak. and aanuffalv sean rarsonoIffIaa