Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-02-25
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES f. TRACEWELL.

Nine hundred and ninety-nine readers
out Of every thousand will come away
| from Lincoln, the Man" by Edgar Lee
Masters, with an exalted regard for the
martyred President
This Will be pretty tough on Mr.
| Masters, of course, because he wrote
with exactly the opposite intention
Yet we do not see how the result can
be avoided.
This is our opinion after finishing the
| 500 pages of this interesting work. No
| matter what one may think Of t. we do
| not see how any one can help calling 1t
| interesting.
/ It takes a certain amount of moral
courage, surely, tn attempt to prove that
| the great ma torlty of mankind is wrong
about anything especially about opin-
ions of greatness
Not only had Mr. Masters, a poet by
nature, to fight this mass opinion, now
crystallized, as he admits, beyond hope
oil change. but undoubtedly he had TO
overcome first his own ideas.
Surely he might write one Of the most
interesting magazine articles imaginable
showing just how he came to do this
book, after having penned the laudatory
bit about Ann Rutledge in The Spoon
River Anthology"
It is probably true that no one i'm
mediately after the Civil War dared to
write such a book as is here encom-
passed He would have been put in
jail
Lincoln, the Man" is a book which
seems to incarnate the spirit of some
old fierce State-righter who has never
given up the ship, and who never will
give it up.
As such, it is splendid. and must
remain OF perpetual interest to those
who value the right of a writer to say
what ne pleaseS in the way he pleases.
x X X
Mr.. Masters has succeeded in making
Abraham Lincoln, in this book, the
underdog, and, as such, Lincoln will
immediately receive the sympathy of
those nine hundred and ninety-nine
readers out of every thousand who
read it.
Honest Abe" energies from this
biography as magnificent underdog
indeed. II any one reading here has
dlf1lcuty in imagining Lincoln as an
underdog let him read this book h.
lind out how it can be done.
MI. Masters Is 50 Intrigued by his idea
OF putting Lincoln TO rights III all OF
our minds that he has made The great
mistake III all men with singlr-traC
minds.
lie has overdone it. Scarcely once in
The whole 500 pages has he a word Of
praise Tor MS subject. Nothing that
Lincoln was, OF did. or said, II seems,
was worth much.
Where he was not entirely in the
wrong, according ~ Mr. Masters. he
merely CHANGED 70 ut the right tra1l.
II 1t could be called the right road
Mostly Lr. Masters thinks that no road
Lincoln took was the right one
Rather sorly ne. admits that the
MAJ could turn out a fairly pretty
PROSE poem, as ne calls Lne Gettysburg
address ard the Second I1aug1-al
5u5 ne, TIE oiograpaer, sees aot::.sL..:.g
Particularly frs Il tfatIi CT ac.yt..:..l..:g
e-sa that -@-co.I. &c o. sad or was.
NJ. Masters admits that nothing Re
or any ems else car write viii do much
70 change tbs mass opinion Of Lincoln.
He merely wants TO point out. for the
good of his own soul, and the souls of
such readers as may read him fairly,
that Lincoln, the man, was not the
same as the colossus that sits in bronze
in the magnificent temple on the Po-
tomac, or who resides in the hearts
and minds of the great mass of the
American people.
It Is curious to reflect that he might
have succeeded in making maybe FIVE
hundred out Of every thousand readers