THOUGHTS ON POETRY AND POLITICS

And a Little Word About Professor Muensterberg

OLIVER WAKEFIELD

Accidental Prosody

I SUPPOSE I ought to have noticed it, but it never dawned on me that the headline writers for the newspapers were such good versifiers till I read the New York Tribune on the morning of October 19. It was the day when that newspaper, and probably many others, printed that little thing of Kipling's, which ran

Have you news of my boy Jack?

Not this tide.

When do you think that he'll be back?

Not with this wind blowing and this tide. Has any one else had word of him ?

Not this tide.

and so on. Whether the swing of Kipling's earlier ballads was in the minds of the headline writers at the moment or the time-beat of the presses impelled them to metrical expression, I do not know, but I found that the headlines on that very page ran of themselves into verses reminiscent of a great deal of the poetry that Kipling has written. The material was all there and I had but to arrange it into stanzas, supplying a connecting word here and there. To the reader of free verse explanations it is hardly necessary to say that the rhythmic curve of the above lines is an ellipse, the axis and ordinate being of course personal, whereas my tendency in the following re-arrangement of the Tribune headlines is toward the parabolic. Bearing this constantly in mind, and also the fact that I follow Kipling in his fugal treatment, while in other respects departing little from the headline texts, the lover of contemporaneous poetry will, I think, have no difficulty. Although the italics are mine, they would have been Kipling's:

HEADLINE SYMPHONY

She smoked cigarettes as she waited for death And a postcard was seven years in coming from New Jersey.

Amnesty for rebels and martial law's end; .

Free Ireland now, says Redmond.

But the bullet struck the girl at her mother's grave For the postcard was seven years in coming from New Jersey.

Did the girl of sixteen try to elope?

The Lusitania note will be silent on the point And a postcard is seven years in coining from New Jersey.

Will the people appeal to this government for aid? Not by that postcard from Jersey.

Five thousand dollars for each life lost And the Hughes odds are longer and the Wilson cash is scarce

And an Austrian princess weds the soldier she had nursed

While the postcard was seven years in coming from New Jersey.

THIS of course is not free verse, for a headline writer will instinctively follow a conventional rhythmic pattern. Being in a hurry he imitates, but had he more time he would probably achieve the more complex and subtle rhythms of the day. Indeed the more earnestly a man endeavors to write prose the more apt he is to happen on verse forms of a marvelous intricacy and charm, even falling sometimes into the measures of Mr. J. G. Fletcher, one of the latest and best of the scot-free school. Scotfree verse is, as the name implies, verse that gets away altogether. Not of course that it becomes a mere prose, as some foolish critics seem to think. Though outside the written law it is not outside all law, but proceeds by a sort of gentleman's agreement. That which is uncostitutional as poetry does not necessarily become constitutional as prose, as one may quickly see from Mr. Fletcher's lines on "The Front Door" which of late have been much quoted and admired ;

It was always the place where our farewells were taken When we travelled to the north.

I remember there was one who made some journey But did not come back.

Many years they waited for him.

At last the one who wished the most to see him Was carried out of the selfsame door in death.

Since then all of our family partings Have been at another door.

It is not likely that anyone would take such pains to escape from verse, merely to arrive at prose like that. Without the secret the words are as modem music to a savage. The secret is simply that in the first four lines the thought is spiral, whereas through the last five it proceeds in waves. With this in mind you may not be able to produce verse of this order yourself but you will certainly be able to find it. For example, I have recently chanced on lines that in their haunting complex rhythms supply almost the precise verbal equivalent of Debussy's musical conception in the first part of the Apres Midi d'un Faune:

Have you ever seen a mountain?

Then you must have seen a valley, too.

There are streams in most valleys.

Streams drain the land about them.

They provide water for large cities.

It is no reflection on the quality of Mr. Fletcher's inspiration that this delightful little movement appears, amid quite discordant matters, on a page of the Graded Speller; Book III. It is proof simply that in this larger freedom, poets unconscious and conscious will often coincide.

Indecisive

SAYS a staunchly Wilson newspaper, "There has been something almost of revival glow in the cries 'God bless you,' " as the President passed by. I have not searched my Hughes paper, but if there have not been just as good or better revival glows in the God bless you's of Mr. Hughes, the Republican publicity headquarters have been seriously remiss.

The Seat of Professor Muensterberg IT is not true that Professor Muensterberg stands in the light of Harvard University. On the contrary, Harvard University sometimes fairly blazes in his. A portion of the fierce light that beats from time to time on Professor Muensterberg beats also on his academic habitat, and in that manner the knowledge of this worthy Cambridge institution is brought to many people who would not otherwise have heard of it. To-day there are turn-vereins in St. Louis which are perfectly aware of Harvard, and, but for Professor Muensterburg this might never have occurred. When, after a speech by Mr. Hughes, a dozen or so of German Lutheran pastors rush into each other's arms and sing Fin muenster Berg, etc., some one is sure to remind them that it is a Harvard song. When one thinks of Carlyle one sometimes thinks of Ecclefechan, which of itself would seldom come to mind, and there is no reason why a like advantage should not redound to Harvard. If Harvard were' to remove itself from the neighborhood of Professor Muensterberg into a quarter less familiar to the world, it would sacrifice this golden opportunity. Of course when the affairs of Professor Muensterberg are presented by himself to the public they appear in the order of their importance. One naturally thinks first and longest of Professor Muensterberg, second of the Kaiser, and only in the third place of Harvard, but, as publicity goes, this is a good deal.

With Prejudice

INTERNATIONAL phobes and philes are, of course, an unreasonable class of persons, from the detached philosopher's standpoint, and any one can argue prettily about indicting a nation and all that. All the same, there are some prejudices that keep a nation healthy and alert, just as there are some unreasonable social certainties that make a person good to live with. It would be a bad sign, just now, if Americans individually were coolly footing up all the good things that can be said of Germans.

Presidential Fractions

"Are you a Boche?" said the little girl; for the Emperor had spoken to her before in French. "You speak French very well, but I thought you were English."

"I am half English," said the Emperor.

"That's funny," said the little girl. "You must be very careful, for both sides will try to shoot you." —"The Emperor and the Little Girl," by Bernard Shaw.

NOT only does the half of Mr. Wilson's character that is expected to uphold the national honor against Germany, no matter what happens, have no difficulty in getting on pleasantly with the other half (which, as is well known, always throws the country's honor away, lest something might happen to the country), but the friends of the one half are on terms of the most cordial political intimacy with the friends of the other. It seems rather complicated, both from the political and from the psychological point of view. The Hughes situation is just as baffling. Not only is there no perceptible friction in Mr. Hughes between his sturdy Root-Roosevelt character and his enthusiastic German-American submarine temperament; but he is loved alike by an American pro-Ally and the crew of a Boche U-boat. Blest by the peacefullest of bodies because he has bent double so often, Mr. Wilson is equally blest by quite warlike organizations because he will henceforth never bend at all, while if you look hard you will see, standing hand in hand for Mr. Hughes, the gentleman whose relatives were extinguished a little while ago on the high seas and the gentleman who helped to blow them up. Not a rift as yet in the elastic political bosom of either presidential candidate; or any sign of discomposure in his following. As a political attitude it seems to work quite well. Proverbs are apt to break down after a few trials, but they go all to pieces on a presidential candidate. A presidential candidate, divided against himself, does not fall; blowing hot and cold is the way to blow; playing fast and loose is the way to play, and you ought never to tell the truth and shame the devil, but to tell it in such a way that the devil and all,—Atlantic and Pacific coasts and the peaceful farmers of the Middle West,—will vote for it. "Candidates and Kaisers would seem equally funny to any reasonable little girl. One half of a presidential candidate does not know how or why the other half of him lives. Perhaps he is trying to be like society.