New-York tribune., 1922-11-26

i 4hets iS nc spirit lett In Che people
They had lost all hope, and they simply
live on from day TO day, caring not q
damn about anything. The poverty
misery and sGualor are unbelievable.
| Literary workers in Vienna, Munich and
Berlin haven't had any money for years
60 buy anything 80 work with or to keep
abreast Of the literature in their field
Holland and Denmark are glutted with
| money, but prices have gone up so that
| only tourists and profiteers can afford
to buy anything except the bare neces-
| stiles of living. Norway is terrible
| country, and once you look at 1t you
begin 80 understand the bleak, dreary,
bitter outlook on life OF a man Ike
ibsen, an irritable old man running q
small apothccary's shop, who was tilted
IN his youth by woman who married a
! town councillor and became a multi
| para, and who thereafter hated families
and any one officially connected with
municipalities, The cliffs and rocks of
J the country are so barren of earth that
when any one dies they have to row
sometimes for miles to find soil deem
enough TO bury the body. Christiania
has one street, like the main street of
! our small Western towns, and IL is
bleaker and drearier than most Of
them. Nationalism Is the curse of Nor
! way, rs it Is the curse Of all Europe.
! Every little canton wants its individual
| language or dialect. A man like Knut
Hamsun in order TO get an audience has
to invent a 5argon of his own in order
/ to be read, because the Norwegians re-
fuse to read anything written in the
convenient Dano-Norwegian. It Is a
comfort TO get back to America, where
one can breathe more freely. where
| there 10 some hope left and where one
can get decent place to eat and slsep."
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20
! I.unched with Edmund Wilson Ir.
and DR., Henry Seidel Candy. and we
| talked about university life, T. s. Eliot.
Conrad Aiken and Amy Lowell. DR..
Candy and Wilson were agreed that
conditions in university life after ont
has. gained 3 full professorship tend to
make men complacent and unprogres-
sive, because it gives them security of
position and authority; but Or. Candy,
who has had experience, denies that
college professors are as bad as Menck-
en- paints them. The tendency, he says,
is for man who has attained his full
professorship to shirk his Job; ne gives
the same lectures year after year; he
becomes exclusively and selfshly in
terested. particularly If he is teaching
a special branch of science, in his own
subject, and does not teach il as fac
tor in general culture. There are, how
ever, especially in the English and Ian
guage departments Of universities, men
who keep abreast of the times and
know what is going on in the world
and who stimulate lively interest in
literature in their students. y
to dinner party given by Lee Meader,
the. architect, in honor OF Miss Edna
Richmond's birthday. Among the guests
| recall were: George Luks, Bob Chan
ler, Prince Paleologue, Signor del Papa,
Maurice Lafarge, Egbert Whithorne.
Norman Trevor, Robert Warwick, John
StapletOn COwley- Brown, Isabel Pater-
son and Audrey Maple.
TUESDAY. NOVEMBER 2l
While ] was st lunch to-day with
Willy McDermott, the Cleveland dra-
matte critic, Carl Van Vechten gave me
a copy of the Globe" wherein n. p.
Dawson denied that she had ever
iunched with me. am sorry if l of
Tended l had no wish to do SO, My
mentioning our having had lunch to-
gether last week was merely wish
fultlliment on my part, for / have long
wanted to meet her; but haven't had
that pleasure, / must confess. And
let me on my part deny her fiattering
assumption that I invent the whole
Day Book and actually see no one.
That would be an ideal way, ! suspect,
to do the thing; but, except for this one
instance, l have had to exercise only
memory. With my wife TO-
night to see ".The World We Live In"
the only play have seen this year
which I should like to have written
1t is mean and sardonic and bitter and
more than little morbid, but it shook
up number of my little completeness.
As Charley Macarthur said after the
show, II the play were taken very
seriously every one in the audience
would go home and cut his throat, but
the catharsis of such play Is,
! think, healthy one. Charley,
Hazel and / went around to the Hun
garians' in Second Avenue to listen to
the music and have bite to eat, and
! thought how wonderful it would be If
! were as splendid and as exalted as
feel when | hear fine music.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER %
Lunched with John Cournos, author
of Babel" and he told me of Maurice
Hewlett's prophecy in "Wiltshire Es-
says" that capital would In time de-
| sert England and with 1t would go the
! skilled workers and laborers and mid.
| dsemen who are dependent upon capi-
| tai, leaving the country again entirely
In the hands OF farmers, sheep-raisers
ard fishermen. II think Hewlett is
/ right" said Cournos. "The British
Empire is breaking up. All Europe Is
done for; the people are in a hope
lessly despairing condition. The Eng
! lish are the last to show it because
! they are SO stolid and Unconditional, but
! even they are now losing their grip.
| | tried to give some sense of what is
| happening in Europe in the last pages
of Babel Hewlett says that when
capital and its dependents leave Eng
land, the artists will stay because they
will be either TOO indifferent or too law
TO leave, and that it will be a good
thing for them, for they will have to
create simple and Fundamentally sig-
nifieant things for an unsophisticated
and primitive audience" Went
up stairs to chat with Don MARQUIS this
afternoon and realized the penalties of
being rich, for so general is the report
OF the great financial success OF "The
Old Soak" that bond salesnen, realtors
and insurance agents poster the life out
of the poor fellow from morning to
night. Don says that at sixty he will
either be rich or beggar, and If he
Is rich he Will own yacht, whereon he
WIN write sonnets and cork them up
IN bottles and il editors want them
they will have to fish for 'em.
My wife and saw six Characters in
Selrch of an At,Fho,t3