them must have been a desire to prove that if the Prince of Denmark had not been so reasonable all would have been well, and we should have been spared that carnival of death in the last act. It was Hamlet's capacity for thinking himself out of his instinctive preferences that made the great tragedy possible. And this same cause is behind half the tragedies of our daily lives; it is behind the tragedy of dullness. Just imagine a world that was not afraid of its prejudices, in which people followed their whims instead of their reasons. What variety we should have, what unimaginable interest in life, what undreamed-of battles! For it is not peace we want in this world, but variety of contest. We want the sword, but not the sword of steel, excellent as that is. We want swords of wit and wisdom and imagination. And we want the sword of faith matter in what cause. Good faith justifies any cause. And to get these we must never be ashamed of our prejudices. Indeed, when all is said and done, and the last argument sent to limbo, the predestined home of all arguments, prejudice will be found laughing over the intellectual ruins for prejudice is life.

To-day

A CONNEMARA DINNER

BY PAUL HENRY

no

A SEARCHING east wind blew across the barren shoulders of the mountains from a ragged, gray sky, and the mist that swathed their tops stretched tremulous fringes toward the valley. The long, curving lines of the mountains suggested the great bulging muscles, the huge brown back and flanks of a reclining monster. High up on one of the shoulders a purple scar on the brown hide lay the bog where the turf was cut and dried, and

from where it had to be carried in creels on the women's backs to the village by the white-edged sea.

A solitary turf cutter was mechanically throwing up lump after lump of the rich purple turf, his white bawneen blowing over his head as he drove his spade into the soft bog with a grunt. His ragged trousers flapped against his thin legs, which were sunk above his boots in the wet and sticky bog.

The only sounds were the sough of the winds over the brown grass, the soft fall of the turf as it fell in irregular heaps, and, now and then, the harsh, discontented cry of a raven.

For hours the little oblong blocks of soft turf had thudded regularly beside the digger, and only twice had he stopped his monotonous work — once to look up to where the mists raced past, blotting out the sky, and once toward the village far below, where spring had already flushed the sally roads with pink.

The wind shifted a little to the south. A long wisp of mist crept down the mountain and swathed the digger in its folds, deadening the sounds of the falling sods. At times, as the south wind grew stronger, the far-off grumbling thunder of the surf could be heard echoing from the banks of mist.

From one of the little whitewashed and thatched cottages in the village came a woman, red-petticoated and beshawled, who thrust into her bosom and buttoned in with big mother-o'pearl buttons a pint bottle of warm tea. Under her shawl she carried, tied up in a handkerchief, several large pieces of hot, freshly-baked soda bread. An empty creel was slung on her back. Her heavy boots made a noisy and capable c'atter on the rude flags before the door as she started up the rough track which led to the mountain past the little field surrounded by rude stone walls.

Several times she stopped in her ascent to gaze over the village to the sea, and her eyes were filled with the dreamy languorous yearning of those who look much across the restless water and live beside its white and troubled edge.

After twenty minutes' climbing she reached the plateau where the turf was being cut not far from the solitary worker, and squatted down on a mound of heather. In a minute or two, without any sign from the woman, the man suddenly turned his head sideways and saw her. Though his loy was half sunk for another turf, he did not stop to finish the cut but, leaving the spade standing upright in the bog, walked stolidly to where the woman sat. As he came toward her she unbuttoned her bodice, took the bottle from her bosom, and laid it beside the bundle done up in the handkerchief.

Without a word the man sank down on the other side of the hummock with his back to the woman, drew a wad of paper from the bottle with his teeth, and greedily gulped a few mouthfuls of the tea. Untying the knotted ends of the handkerchief he took out the lumps of bread still steaming from the pot-oven, and bit into them with his strong, white teeth. The woman sat with her two large hands, palms upward, in her lap, looking out with dull inscrutable eyes to the dim horizon.

A few minutes were sufficient for the scanty meal, and, still chewing, the man took from his waistcoat pocket a little, black, clay pipe and one match, and striking the match carefully and sharply on the bowl of the pipe puffed greedily. Getting up, he walked slowly back to the bog, and putting his pipe into his pocket began again to throw up the clumps of turf.

Hearing the sound of the spade striking against a stone, the woman seemed to awake from a dream. See

ing that the meal was over she walked to a stack of dry turf and began to fill her creel, packing the sods very carefully so that the basket would be well filled. The bottle and the handkerchief she placed on top of the turf.

The long ribbons of mist were creeping lower, and had reached the plateau where the woman stood. Looking up, she could just make out the figure of the man very dim and hazy. Far below she could see the village plainly, and the white road that crept round the shore to the next village. A little cluster of black dots slowly moving on the road beyond the village she recognized as the children coming home from school. She stooped low and, slipping the ropes over her shoulders, rose up with the creel on her back. Bowed down with the heavy load, she began the descent to the village.

A part of the mist seemed to come away with her as she stepped into the clearer air - it looked almost as if it were following her. Several times she stopped to rest, and as she peered back the mist seemed still to be creeping down after her. Near home by the little fields she stopped for the last time and stared uphill. There was nothing to be seen but the sway and eddy of the mist.

The Irish Statesman

REVOLUTIONARY MESSIANISM

BY J. H. ROSNY

THE revolutionary spirit much resembles the Messianic gospel. In both cases we are dealing with a mysticism which has for its end the sudden deliverance of the world. For the preacher of Messianism, a man or a god is to come who will deliver men from their ancient sufferings; for the revolutionist, a violent social upheaval is to establish justice and well-being on

earth. History shows us an infinite number of revolutions which, alas, have ended only in bloody hecatombs and fatal reactions. The most illustrious of revolutions, the one which most closely conformed to the creative reality, that of 1789-1793, after having devoured the life of several of its most brilliant protagonists, pitilessly put to death by their brothers, culminated in the abominable Directory, the tyranny of Napoleon and the return of the socalled legitimate kings. Whosoever would have dared to predict such results would have been swiftly sent to the guillotine. Nevertheless, all stood prepared for a new order of society; the commercial and industrial richness of the nation had for a long time centred in the hands of the third estate. It was the mysticism of it which lost all, that certainty which possessed so many unquiet spirits who believed that in their keeping lay the essential verity which was to end the sorrows of mankind.

I remember receiving, at the beginning of the Russian Revolution, a letter from an excellent Russian refugee. He wrote, "The Russian Revolution will not commit any of the errors of the French. It will benefit by the experience of centuries. It will be gentle and humane, will not spill blood and shall triumph by the force of ideas alone.'

Kerensky was then in power. Since then blood has flowed in lakes, hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children have died of hunger, millions have succumbed to privations, industry is ruined and agriculture bloodless. And so it goes.

According to the revolutionist, since. the fabric of society is the work of certain wicked elements who have conspired against justice, it is quite possible to build a new society as casually as one builds a new table or a machine.

The revolutionary type, which is often very intelligent but possesses no psychological instinct whatsoever, is so certain of possessing the truth that it cannot conceive how this truth does not dazzle all its contemporaries. The revolutionist forgets that societies are painfully put together in the dark, in the strife of conflicting interests, opposing mentalities, and changing manners and customs; he fails to take account of the egoism, the ferocity, the iniquity, the jealousy, and the cupidity that are all so human, or if he does take account of them, it is for the purpose of imposing by brutality what he cannot win by justice. The revolutionist, in short, sees only his ideas and imagines that with ideas one can seduce or master the formidable human animal. He has no sense of development; he neglects that long and painful period of growth which made the man of the stone-age caverns into the modern European. Thus the purer the revolutionist, the more dangerous is he. He is a child running about with a parcel of explosive powerful enough to destroy a city.

Let us not confound him with the provocator, the inciter. The revolutionist type may be a hero, an excellent person, as also he may take pleasure in naïve cruelty, St. Just, for example. Sometimes the inciter is such a man. More frequently, however, the inciter is only an ambitious vulgarian who sacrifices everything to his passion for mastery. I have known many revolutionists, and I have had for some of them very real sympathies, These sympathies rarely extended themselves to the inciters.

The period through which we are passing is one very favorable to revolutionary mysticism. The war has developed a profound discontent, aggravated by the dearth of products, the high cost of living, and the odious

speculations of certain profiteers. The spirit of profiteering, alas, has poisoned many merchants who till these days conducted an honest business. Nothing is more necessary than that an end should be made to this scandal. Every fresh fortune makes new converts not only to the normal revolutionary instinct, but also to savage and despotic Bolshevism, the very negation of the French spirit. Let us hope that the government will really act and chase the speculators not only from the towns but also from the villages.

La Dépêche de Toulouse

THE PASSING OF ERNST HAECKEL

BY A FORMER PUPIL

FOR many years Haeckel's name has been one of the most familiar of red rags, and we cannot wonder. An aggressive and somewhat superficial critic of Christianity, the exponent of a modernized form of a very antique philosophy (hylozoic monism) the difficulties of which he never seemed to realize, and a ruthless scoffer at possibilities that thoughts do but tenderly touch,' the biologist of Jena was no favorite with the idealistically minded. And did he not crown his misdeeds by subscribing to the infamous manifesto issued by ninety-three Ger man professors in October, 1914? As we have neither any bias toward materialistic philosophy nor any desire to whiten the sepulchres of Huns, we are the more at liberty to pay decorous tribute to one who was not only great, but singularly lovable. Haeckel was at his zenith when we went to Jena in the early 'eighties; he was just 'flitting' from his old quarters adjoining the Botanical Garden to the new Institute at the other end of the town on the slope overlooking the Saale and the

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shady walk called 'Paradies'; and he allowed us to help him in packing and in carrying some particularly valuable treasures from one building to another. His enthusiasm for beautiful things was unusually strong even for a naturalist, and we did not wonder when he told us that his early ambition was to become a painter. The beauty of his draughtsmanship is conspicuous in his zoological monographs, and we have never ceased to envy his blackboard sketches, which it seemed so wasteful to wipe out. A few times before the session began, when we had to subside into our fit and proper place as student, Haeckel took us of an evening to one or other of his favorite viewpoints on the quaint hills round the town, and would expatiate on the beauty of the scenery. He was very handsome at that time, and his love of Nature was passionate. Theoretically, materialistic perhaps; practically, certainly not; and even in regard to his theory it. must be remembered that everything animate and inanimate was to Haeckel 'ensouled.' His lectures at that time were perfervid, very rapid, scintillating-we always thought of a mountain stream; and he had an ingenious way of gradually replacing the diagrams on the wall so that from day to day as the story of evolution was continued the pageant kept pace with it. He was, no doubt, an impetuous evolutionist, too sure about his genealogical trees, too sure that the formulation which he had reached in his General Morphology in 1866 was complete; but he certainly made his students feel the reality and the grandeur of the great process of becoming. We were young and fanciful in those days, but we used to think sometimes that there was in that classroom the sound of a great and strong wind. We had heard great teachers lecture about evolution, but now we felt what evo

lution meant. And that was one of Haeckel's great services to his age, both in his lectures and in his Natural History of Creation and other popular works.

One day we spoke to the old janitor about the professor's popularity, and were rather startled when he said grimly: 'Yes, but I have seen him stoned down that street there.' For are we not apt to forget, when the evolution idea has become part of our intellectual furniture, that it had to be championed and fought for, and that Haeckel was one of the protagonists. At a time when Darwin's doctrine was young and unpopular, Haeckel saw the truth of it and stood for it with all his strength. It is said, we know not with how much truth, that at one great assembly of naturalists before 1866 the audience rose up and left Haeckel to expound his 'Darwinismus' to an emptied room. In thinking of Haeckel's aggressiveness we are apt to forget his courage. His philosophical outlook may have been all wrong, and we suspect that it was a very thin philosophy from first to last, and his attitude to men and movements on the side of the angels may have been regrettable and mischievous, but we should bear in mind how much Haeckel cared. He was no 'light half-believer in a casual creed'; he was a passionate monist. We remember attending a Luther Fest that year, and, in our pride for our teacher, thinking Haeckel's the speech of the evening; and what was there in common between Luther and Haeckel but a passion for veracity as it seemed to each, and a passion to expose shams and superstitions, no matter who might be hurt in the process? At that time Haeckel was working very hard on one of his Challenger reports, but we think he never once omitted his daily visit to the corner of the laboratory in which we were working, and we

hear still his friendly 'Nun, wie geht's.' As a stunt we were then translating into German Patrick Geddes's Encyclopædia Britannica article 'Morphology,' and we shall never forget Haeckel's good-natured but twinkling complicity in that egregious performance. The announcement of his death in the papers the other day set us thinking about him again, and in spite of all a tragic all the old affection came back and a new riddle with it. Anti-Christian and anti-idealist, too impetuous even in his science to be an altogether safe guide, Haeckel did a great work in his day and generation in making the evolution idea current intellectual coin and in championing freedom of mind and of speech. It was characteristic of the man to hold a class of Practical Zoology on Sunday forenoons, and we fancy that he often 'dared himself' to be nonconformist. There was a passionate convincedness about him that made him unnecessarily aggressive, but if any man was better than his creed it was Haeckel. He was a wholesome man, loving the beautiful, worshiping Nature (Natura sive Deus, to him), with Goethe for Bible, and very genial and unselfishly helpful to his fellow men. A good hater, of course, but a man to love, and although the new riddle is how he could sign that manifesto and express himself as he did about our country, in which he was no stranger, we could not keep silence when we heard that he was dead.

The New Statesman

THE EMIGRANTS

BY A. ST. JOHN ADCOCK

I NOTICED them waiting for the train, as I loitered on the platform, waiting for it too. She sat at the end of the seat: a plain, pleasant-featured