The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-03-07
By ISadOra Duncan.

ny IoUNOfu u AAItCuHs
 The WeIlknoWn American Dancer and ldealist Y AM going to an island in the Greek Archi-
 pelago to live on bread and onions ana = worship beauty.
 Because my own country doesn't want me l am renouncing America forever It has shown me it doesn't want me by allowing me to lose my fortune here, because 1t does not know art. This season have lost s40O0o. The last time l paid visit to my own country had to bor- row my passage money back.
 In Europe the Government fosters my art by giving me aid In this country l would be permitted to become bankrupt so far as aid from the rich and powerful is concerned.
 Those who have the power to foster art in this country do not do so, because they are not intelligent Intelligence and taste for the beautiful are the same Our Government does not have it, nor do the persons of great wealth in the United States.
 So on March I and my children are going back to Greece. There are blue skies and olive groves. We will go every day to the Pantheon. We will enjoy the beauties of the view from the Acropolis. We can live cheaply and hap oily there, instead of expensively and sorrow fully here. will found colony of artists. It will be peace colony and will be a mild liv- ing protest against the horrors of war For artists are the light and leaven of the world. We will all dress as did the ancient Greeks. and do as they did. l had dreamed of doing this for New York.
 It is the fault of the Government and the rich that you have no art here It is not the fault of the masses. One day I took my chil- dren to the Peoples Theatre the East Side. The children danced and Schubert's last sym phony, the unfinished one, was played. The great audience sat there and listened sound lessly to the end, the tears streaming down their pale faces. Though they were hungry, they understood! And enjoyed! Art appeals to the feelings! The masses restrain their emo- tons. In the "classes" the emotions are atrophied by the chase for gold
 l look at that wall along the Hudson, the homes of your millionaires l call it a wall Of dissertation To me 1t is the symbol of the city, the poseur among cities, claiming what it has not
 I brought these beautiful maidens over here. Some of them have had for ten years. Beau tiful little German maids, some of them and l would not leave them behind, for in the streets of Paris, if they had been overheard to speak German, they would not be safe. 1 bring them all in the first cabin. Not, as my friends advise, in the second cabin, because want them to see and have the best. And what happens in my own nhospitable coun try? They are detained at Ellis Island for eight days! Horribly un-Greek Ellis Island! What blow to their sense of beauty What an awakening from their dreams of Americal And then I lost s40000!
 l gave exhibitions of their dancing at tho Metropolitan Opera House. I had to pay one thousand dollars night. l must pay twelve hundred dollars a night for the music! And eight hundred dollars for the printing! had some striking posters announcing the Dony- sion, and l was unable to have them printedi They say they are not-decent! So art is re- warded. It is the history of great art that its apostles suffered. Beethoven was a very poor man. Schubert was very poor man. Both were bitterly unhappy. I should not repine for myself, but mourn for my country and the hepelessness of it's future in art!
 You have children, yet you do not appreciate the health and wonder of their beauty Release your children! Release them by letting them dance from the time they are six years old Not until this Is done will you realize the pos abilities of womanhood.
 Oh, she is coming, the dancer of the future! The free spirit who will inhabit the body of new women. More glorious than any woman that yet has been More beautiful than tho Egyptian, than the Greek, than the earl, Italian, than all women of past centuries
 the highest intelligence
 in the freest body!