The Menace of the Idealist

The Recent Emergence into Public Life of the Imaginative Young Man

FLOYD DELL

SIXTY years ago, the politics, the business and the art of America were all in the hands of old men. The man of sound practical views, the respectable man with a beard, was the recognized custodian of government and literature and ideas. He was as sane as President McKinley, as safe as Harper's Magazine. He was seriously intent on the promotion of trade and the preservation of the decencies and he regarded the imaginative young man, with his sensitiveness and his egoism, as an irresponsible weakling, a star-gazer and a moon-calf, who should never for a moment be permitted to meddle with the business of mankind.

But with the first decade of the new century the moon-calf slipped his tether and escaped from the back-yard where he had hitherto been confined. To the music of ferocious growls from the caverns of the Chamber of Commerce and the Union League Club, the moon-calves began to run amuck through politics and business. They began to publish reviews full of strange and subversive ideas; they substituted disturbing novels for the decorous romances of the nineties and they shattered with exotic decorations the secular conventions of the stage. They had invaded every branch of human activity, from sculpture to engineering.

Yes: the moon-calf is hopelessly at large; we might as well recognize him. As an increasingly important type in American civilization, it is perhaps time that he was seriously described by some disinterested person.

The Perfect Moon-Calf

THE perfect moon-calf can be known by his appearance. He never quite conforms to the current conventions of male attire. He is cither ahead of the times or behind them— usually, in fact, a little of both. His friends apologize for him, and call it his negligence. Other people obscurely envy him, and refer to his vanity. For they, too, would like to dress differently from everybody else, but they do not dare. Only it is not courage which makes him venture to look odd—it is contempt. He really doesn't care what other people think, and so quite naturally wears whatever pleases him. But his detractors are right; there is a touch of vanity in his oddness.

If custom chances to follow his lead, he takes pains to get out of step again. If he finds himself not the only person to come to an informal dinner in a soft collar, he is not satisfied to have corrupted good manners to that extent; no, he turns up the next time in a green shirt. It is he who led the revolt against evening clothes; but if they ever are discarded by the rest of the world, he will resume them himself. He is just like that. He would never have worn sandals in the old Roman days, when it was good form to do so; no. But he is just as likely as not to wear them now, indifferent to your stare. His motto is, "Do as the Romans don't".

And it was because of people like him that Rome fell. For his contemptuous difference in appearance is only the outward sign of his contemptuous difference in thought and belief and ambition to all the rest of the world. When people don't think and believe and act alike, things are in a bad way—or else why have moralists and politicians made such an effort, from the beginning of time, to secure social uniformity?

But not everyone who thinks differently from the rest of the world can show it outwardly in his appearance. For every one who is free to dress as he pleases, there are thousands who are disguised as ordinary human beings. They can only be discovered by hearing them talk. Their opinions on politics and art give them away at once.

The Moon-Calf on Politics

THEY are contemptuously indifferent to ordinary politics. They are not in the least interested in having the world made safe for democracy. They despise democracy. Besides, they don't want the world made safe. They want it made dangerous. They have a poor opinion of the world, and the faster it goes to the devil, the better they are pleased. Nevertheless, they are not cynics. They are Utopians all. They believe in a free and happy society—in the future. That is why they rejoice every time someone throws a monkeywrench in the machinery now.

The true Moon-calf, however, is not a Bolshevik, as you might hastily and erroneously assume. Sometimes he hastily and erroneously assumes the same thing, but he finds out his mistake. The Bolsheviks, in Russia at least, are practical people, and they have been engaged for some two years in putting the Russian Moon-calves in jail. There are many of them in Russia. They don't believe in Bolshevism. They believe in a free and happy society—in the future. They agitate against the Bolshevik government; and the Bolshevik government puts them in jail, just like the capitalist government here at home. Bolshevism, after all, whatever its differences from capitalism, is still an actual fact. And the true Moon-calf is not satisfied with actual facts. He is always in revolt against the existing system, whatever it is, because it is not perfect. Nothing less than perfection—nothing less than perfect freedom and happiness— will do. No wonder he is discontented.

But it is not his fault, exactly. He can't help wanting things to be different. For he is temperamentally incapable of getting out of the world the same satisfactions that other people get out of it Still, that does not make him less difficult to get along with. What are you going to do with a person who turns up his nose when you tell him this is a free country, where everyone has the chance to. be a millionaire—or a Commissar, as the case may be. Putting him in jail is the most obvious solution. But it doesn't do much good. He comes out a hero, and is more of a nuisance than ever. For there is an undercurrent of popular hostility against any actual system, capitalist or communist. He is right; it is not perfect, this our world. There is no use arguing with him. The logic, and the facts, are all on his side. That is why the people who try to argue with him get so angry.

His opinions about women reveal him even more clearly. He has an immense respect for women; and he shows it by offering them what he himself most desires—perfect freedom. He is gloriously frank in demanding the right to follow any romantic impulse; and he is quite unconscious of the outrage to all our civilized decencies implicit in his offering this same complete freedom in return to the lady of his preference. But he is sincere. He does not want an enforced or unwilling faithfulness from his beloved:

"Free be she, fancy free!

Nor thou detain her garment's hem."

Poets have often said things like that. But he puts poetry into practice—even when it hurts. He wants his beloved to leave him if her heart hears another call. In fact, he escorts her to the door. It does not occur to him that her heart may be hearing that call for the purpose of finding out how much he wants her to stay. It does not occur to him that what she really wants is to be chastised and locked indoors. He does not believe in the Cave-man theories about woman. He would despise his beloved if he suspected that she was up to those oldfashioned Cave-woman tricks. The idea that she could be jealously wanting some proof that he loved her, would be too degrading to his ideal of civilized modem womanhood for him to entertain. No, he treats her magnificently— and cruelly—as his equal.

The cynic may point out that offering a woman perfect freedom is simply a polite way oi refusing to give her all the things she really wants. Perfect freedom, indeed! What does it mean? Freedom from the security and support and trust of an old-fashioned honest-togoodness marriage! Perhaps. But if this gift is nothing, why do women reach for it so eagerly? Who are the scoundrels who break up happy homes in contemporary fiction and melodrama? Are they men who can offer greater security, ampler support, more assurance of a comfortable future?

And in real life, why do so many young women decline the respectable offers of rising young business men, for the adventurous insecurity, the perilous self-determination, the moment-to-moment existence offered by some young vagabond? It is preposterous, but it seems they would not exchange the magnificent uncertainties of their lot for all the stability that a tame husband can offer—if we may credit a modern girl poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, who seems to speak for them in these scornful lines:

"Mig, her man's as good as cheese,

And honest as a briar,

Sue tells her love what he's thinking of,— But my dear lad's a liar!

"Joan is paired with a putterer

That bastes and tastes and salts,

And Agatha's Arth' is a hug-the-hearth,— But my true love is false!"

Now what is the use of offering Rolls-Royces to girls who feel like that? And what, further, is the use of being an enterprising, industrious? efficient, sober, trustworthy, sensible, regular man, if the most interesting girls in town are going to be copped off by fellows whose qualification is that no one ever knows what they are going to do next?

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Concerning art, the Moon-calf's views are clear, and irritating. If it sells for real money, it isn't art. If people like it, it isn't art. If an ordinary person can understand it, it isn't art. And there is no use arguing with him about it because he will make you feel your inferiority and commence to suspect your own tastes. There is a logical presumption in favour of the man who says that .almost everything is wrong. The more one knows about things, the wronger they seem. Only it is unpleasant to have one's innocent human enthusiasm trampled upon that way.

It is plain enough that the Mooncalf is an intensely disagreeable person —to ordinary men. I have not fully accounted for the favour with which he is regarded by women. I can't account for it. Maybe psycho-analysis could explain. But I appeal to the Muses of History, Poetry, and Gossip, to sustain me in my assertion that it is a fact. And what is worse, it is becoming a larger and more tremendous fact every minute.

And the most outrageous thing of all is the way this ruthless creature is always being pictured in fiction and poetry—as the weak and pitiful victim of our cruel realistic civilization. The reason for that is obvious. He writes the fiction and the poetry. He even writes the articles about himself in the magazines. And you never know whether to believe him or not—for "my dear lad's a liar!" Though he can quite well afford to tell the whole damnable truth about himself, for it is so preposterous that nobody will believe it anyway. They won't put him in jail; they will just smile.

Meanwhile the Moon-calf will flourish more and more egregiously, and assist by his contagious discontent his unanswerable Utopian criticism, and his enormous uselessness, in the downfall of our already precarious world-system. And the future will belong to him—unless, as I suspect may happen, the practical-minded Bolsheviks shoot all of him they can find, the day after the revolution which he has helped to bring about.