The mirror., 1923-06-07


test is to be made by comparing salacious
slime the Young Intellectuals would win
in walk. 0. Henry was not what may
be called finished writer and it is pos
sible that he could not sell story to one
of our best fiction magazines today. On
the other hand defy you or anyone else
to show me story in a magazine like
the Cosmopolitan or Saturday Evening
Post that appears under the name of one
of the select few. Do this and l will con-
cede that there is something besides empty
mouthings behind their bluster.
Again we will listen to the official
megaphone.
"It was quite impossible for a gentle
man to have admired Theodore Roose-
welt"
If this be the case l admit that l can
not be classed in this category. Roose-
welt hated sham, he stood firmly upon his
convictions, and he was eminently
greater man than any one of the Young
Intellectuals. Americans will continue to
honor his memory when the names of
Mencken, Waldo Frank, George Jean
Kathan and Ben Hecht are forgotten.
Roosevelt was elected president of these
United States and an average American
would not vote for Young Intellectual
if he was to run for official dog-catcher.
"Stonewal Jackson has always i'm
pressed me as great general who did
nothing"
l wonder if Mencken would make this
statement if his place of residence was
south of the Mason-Dixon line. Perhaps
not.
According to Mencken a man who la
bors is cad. In that event we are
nation of cads; indeed he says as much.
You are cad if you have ever given
honest labor in return for remuneration.
Are you willing to admit this?
The average American prefers hokum
to art. That is not quotation, but it is
the substance of the attitude of the aristo-
Gratis. Granted that you-or Like ho-
kum, is it not our privilege to derive as
much enjoyment from it as we can? Is
Mencken as able guide to American
letters as he is alleged to be? Eminent
American novelists do not esteem him
highly, which is father peculiar as we
are supposedly sycophantic by nature and
by training. Something is wrong, some
where.
I will admit that Americans are docile,
for if we were not we would not permit
Germans, Lithuanians and Russians to be-
little us. marvel that no native of this
country arises to answer the slurs of
Mencken that are couched in his grace
full stylus. should say l marvel that
many do not answer, for one, Eugene
Manlore Rhodes did take occasion to hurl
few invectives at the Young Intellec-
tuals recently, and he did it as ably as an
American cowpuncher naturally would.
The Young Intellectuals had nothing to
offer in rebuttal.
1t is your privilege to pay homage to a
little tin god or to a Young Intellectual.
If you prefer Kultur to Americanism there
is no one to take you to task. But speak
ing in my own behalf I am fed up with
hearing Americans called yokels and bar
barians and take issue with the allega-
ton that l am lout simply because l
was born in America and not in the
Fatherland that gave the world the Ho-
henzollerns, the Nictzsches and varied
and erotic literature.
I consider it compliment when am
called one hundred per cent American,
and l would not exchange places with
the most gifted Young Intellectual who
first saw his future country through the
gates of Ellis Island. If this constitutes
fanaticism make the most of it. To bor-
row phrase from another Yankee, who
must have held views similar to nv own.