Evening star., 1938-01-23
Here for Exhibition.

DR. LAsKER, in town for an ex-
hibition at the Jewish Commu-
nifty Center last night, naturally sup
posed he was to be interviewed about
chess.
Il am chiefly concerned" he said,
with raising the social level Of the
creative master, the man who actually
has created some new thought in
chess. and the man who naturally is
frowned upon by the bureaucracy Of
the game
But to DR.. Lasker chess is a world
in miniature. There are the mass of
the people and the masters. There are
two kinds of masters-those who play
an excellent game according to the ac-
cepted formulae and those who do
things that can't be fitted into for
mulae. For the first kind of master
DR.. Lasker has little regard. The Sec
ond kind he regards as the salt of the
earth and its potential savior if he
is given a little encouragement and
not kicked into the gutter to die.
This master" may be a chess
player. He may be poet, a musician,
painter. He may be mathemati-
clan or a philosopher. He may be a
prize fighter or a race horse. He has
a creative impulse, psycholoeically in
explicable, that rises above the
shackles of formulae and finds its out
let along the line Of least resistance
to its development. Broadly speaking,
it doesn't make much difference
whether this outlet Is ping-pong or
pugilism or poetry. The masters"
are all brothers under the skin and
they are race set apart. They have
the creative faculty, the ability and
the urge to be different.
Menace to Bureaucracy.
NOV, DR.. Lasker says, it is a mis-
take to accept the popular opin-
ion that the umcreative masses perse-
cute or ignore such men. Almost in
variably they are with them. But
the man with the creative faculty is
always a menace to the position of the
bureaucracy" which has an uncanny
faculty for getting into power every
wherein government, in literary criti-
c1sm, In music, in horse racing. And
SO the bureaucracy" always tries to
put the clamps on him, to kick him
into the gutter if it can.
Sometimes 1t doesn't. For example,
DR.. Lasker pointed out, princes pat
ronized Raphael-not because men in
high position were the only ones capa-
BILE OF appreciating Raphael, but be-
cause. In this particular case, the
princes followed blindly the lead Of
those capable Of judging art.
But such cases are rare.
Especially today" DR.. Lasker said
"the world is not governed by men
who want genius to prosper. And so
the world is somewhat more miserable
than is necessary"
Now all this, coming from DR..
Lasker, is not just the rambling of q
theoretical philosopher. It is the ma
ture reflection Of a man of the world.
For the last 10 years Dr.. 1Asker has
been writing book expounding this
cult Of the master in the world of
sports. He has reduced 1t all to some
thing practical, with some actual
mathematical demonstrations. upon
which men actually can bet their
money. He has defined and described
the types taking part in ane associat-
ed with sports of all sorts-the crgan-
lied, the pedant. the dilettant and
above and beyond all-the master.
Cites Book by Butler.
EVEN race horse, he says, can be
a master, displaying in its own
field the same creative faculty as the
chess player or the poet or Napoleon.
The whole line of this philosophy, he
said, starts from an almost forgotten
book, Life and Habit" by the Eng
lishman Samuel Butler, who managed