Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1921-09-01
Mr.. BECK'S DARK VISIONS
OF A WORLD OFF ITS HEAD
A Clever American Initiates the Anclents
by Declaiming That All Good
Ia In the Past

ls In the Past
TYP TO the moment of our going to press
~ James NJ. Beck had revealed no dispo-
sition to quit his job in the Department of
Justice and pack his things and buy ticket
for another faraway world wherein there
would be no greedy capitalists. no discon-
sOlate proletarinns, no free thinkers, no free
verse, no cubst pictures, no young ladies
with bobbed hair and no young men con-
temptuous of authority. But after a read
ing of the address which Mr.. Beck delivered
yesterday before the American Bar Associa-
ton Mt Cincinnati one cannot but wonder
how he has managed thus far to endure the
company into which he is thrown upon this
msfortunate planet.
Mr.. Beck is always earnest. And he has
gifts. He is so eloquent with words that
he can charm and interest folk who would
die in their tracks rather than agree with
him about anything. Nowadays he appears
to be reading the wrong books or viewing
his world in n defective light. Nothing,
cries he, is as it ought to be. Mutterings of
revolution trouble his ears-cries of dis
satisfaction! Has so experienced n man
yet to learn that these sounds express and
mean nothing more than the desire for prog
ress and bcttcrmcnt that is constant in
men $ minds? Doesn't he know-hasn't he
been able to learn in Washington-that what
Americans of all sorts seek is not revolu-
ton. but better order in their own affairs?
There is no enduring respect for au-
thority anywhere, says Mr.. Beck despair
ingly. That is not true. There is respect
for authority, and it is linked with de-
termination to establish the sort of authority
that will be worthy Of respect. That is
what all the noise is about. The spectacle
of Russia is peculiarly distressing to this
newest critic of civilization Russia is. for
him. cause Of despair, a cause of dark
forpboding. Yet TO any one gifted with
little patience and a little philosophy the
Russia of today, sad and deplorable as its
circumstances are, promises far more than
the Russia of the Czars-the Russia which
appears to have been wholly tolcrable to
Mr.. Beck. From bOshevism there can be
recovery. at least. From the system which
it displaced nothing but catastrophe could
be expected, for it was destructive system,
and yet it was self perpetuating.
One need not quarrel with Mr.. Beck
One need only recommend to him the com
fort of sober second thoughts. In very
forceful and picturesque language he in
formed the Bar Association that all beauty
and symmetry are vanishing out of painting
and literature before the onslaught of un-
disciplined and uninformed spirits Well
we'll. 1t would be good to know what
books solicitor in the Department Of Justice
reads in his idle hours and what exhibitions
Of the plastic arts he is accustomed to at
tend Does he greve for the passing of
the Victorian painters in England and the
eclipse of the Bouguereaus in France! If
he does he will grieve alone. DO the con-
tented compacency of Mr.. Howells and the
ineffable smugness of Mrs. Ward seem to
him like qualities of literature without which
the world cannot survive: There has been
something of q revolution in literature and
in painting
Windy platitudes carry no poet very far
nowadays The writer's who believed that
writing was business at which you could
do nothing but arrange sentences in pretty
patterns had their day, and 1t Is over. In
stead of them we have the magnificent sym
bolsm of Conrad, the stately humanism of
Kuut Hamsun and his school, the clear and
noble criticism of mon like Bryce, which
sweeps the world like a clean wind out of
the morning The world is filled with good
writing - writing that is concerned with
life's actualities. Upon the general current
of American and English literature the free
verse that irks Mr.. Beck's soul is scattered
foam. Yet it is direct 1t has meaning as
we'll as sound.
Has honor gone out of business, out of
politics and out of men, as Mr.. Beck would
have the Bar Association believe: Who,
looking around the country, will feel that
il has? The shysters and the profltcers
are always about, but they are not new
and they are growing fewer. Crooks do
not survive. What appears to have
mlscd Mr.. Beck is the plain and frank
movement of insurgence among the young
of the land. Youth is making dis
turbance everywhere-in literature, in the
arts, in the schools. in public life. But
what has youth been through? Can
solicitor in the Department of Justice so
soon forget the strains from which youth is
rcactiug. the horror Of the experiences in
fictcd upon it by the elders of the world,
the ruin that was made deliberately of its
faith and its brightest illusions?
Youth will be boisterous and inquisitive
and irreverCnt for long time to come.
1t will be suspicious and challenging. 1t
will write astonishing books and paint as
tonishing pictures and devise astonishing
verse expressive in one way or another of
its mpatirnce with old accepted things by
which it was led blindy into trap. But
youth is not all the world. Mr.. Beck seems
TO believe that it is. And there are times
when il seems that the future would be
safer if he were right in that assumption.
Since the time when men first learned to
write and make speeches philosophers have
formally mourned the past and talked Of
the decline of virtue and the goodness and
glory Of older times Mr., Beck is at least
in distinguished company.