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Arturo Alessandri is the first Socialist to be elected to a presidency in South America; at least, he was elected on a Socialist platform. His policies are about the same as those of Conservative Majority Socialists in Germany. His purpose is to avoid an otherwise inevitable social revolution by timely and radical welfare legislation, which will speed up the evolutionary processes toward a condition of society more equitable for the lower classes. In this connection he is seeking a peaceful settlement between capital and labor.

There is some doubt as to the success of such a plan. The oligarchy, the Church, and the great capitalists, did their utmost to prevent Alessandri's election. The result was that he won by a single vote in the electoral college, although an overwhelming majority of the people were in his favor. His opponents followed the same manœuvres in the congressional election. The great mine-owners shipped their laborers from the northern districts to the south, and from the southern districts to the north, in order to vote them at the polls.

Many people consider the new executive a demagogue, who has used radicalism as a stepping-stone to the presidency, but who has no independent convictions, and veers with every wind. I have conversed with Arturo Alessandri on many occasions, both when he was a candidate and since he has been president, and I must say that he has seemed the same person in all instances. He has acted and spoken as president precisely as he acted and spoke when he was a candidate for the presidency; and one cannot escape

the impression that he is a man of his word.

Naturally, conditions may be too much for him. The accomplishment of his social programme may prove more difficult than he honestly believes. However, even were Alessandri to prove false to his professions, the ideals and objects he has championed cannot be suppressed. Upon the success of Alessandri's experiments depends untold weal or woe for South America. If the new president succeeds in carrying out his programme, - particularly the alienation of the great estates, from which he will not waver even at the threat of a revolution,-the effect upon the neighboring republics, particularly Argentina, will be overwhelming. Alessandri and Irigoyen are to-day the two greatest figures in the South American political and economic world.

Another force driving in the same direction is the student body, which overwhelmingly champions advanced social, international, and pacifist ideals. This is particularly true in Chile. Furthermore, in spite of the restrictions on immigration, new ideas are constantly coming in from Europe. In fact the course events take in South America will be largely influenced by their course abroad. The Southern Continent has not developed an independent intellectual life: it imports its ideas from the Old World. In the same way that the French Revolution precipitated the agitation for South American independence, so a victorious social revolution would quickly spread to the other side of the Atlantic. To put it in other words, South America's fate is not disconnected with that of Russia.

ON NOT SEEING SWINBURNE

BY DARRELL FIGGIS

From The London Mercury, July
(LITERARY MONTHLY)

BEYOND all question, to see a great man is a great experience. If the emotion at the time be not quite so thrilling as was expected, if there are shades, fallings-off, discrepancies, disappointments in the fine expected thrill, the recollection in tranquillity will atone. Especially will it atone if, as sometimes happens, the tranquil recollection is to fall off the point of the pen in the dark and shapely glow of public record. Hushed and muted accents will round off the great experience. Misshapen things will be patted into place, will be caught and throttled by awed periods.

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But not to see the great man what of that? That there are a hundred ways of saying how one did see him, a hundred books will show; but not among them all do I know of one book to analyze the wry experience of not seeing him. Above all, to be brought to the house of the altar of praise, to the very temple of thank-offering; to have attuned one's self to the fine expected thrill, the mind abashed and timid, the lips repeating the deft and casual quotation (ah, how divinely in its place, for the quickly noting, grateful glance that shall never, never be forgotten while life shall last!), and to miss it all. Has this ever been told?

So I thought, as Max Beerbohm's book fell in my lap. I had been reading how he met Swinburne. It is the virtue of genius to make rare and perfect the common experience, as well as to make the rare and perfect experience common; and here all the attendants of

VOL. 310-NO. 4025

our common experience were consummately rendered. He came on the day appointed, as one whose feet half linger.' So did I. He laid his hand irresolutely against the gate of the bleak, trim, front garden; he withdrew it; he went away; he noted all the aspects of common modern life outside in the suburban street, to make seem more wonderful the wonder of the 'Hounds of Spring on Winter's Traces' inside. To be sure he did. So did I, later in time than he, but not less faithfully. His symptoms were identical with mine, mine with his. Our ailment was the same. But I came out whole and sound, though there are proofs in his essay that he was not very deeply afflicted. And But to continue.

To him came Watts-Dunton from the next room, when at last the entry had been bravely made and the dark hall encountered, with women with lips like seashells glooming at one from wondrously framed pictures on the dim, dowdy, faded, scrolled wall-paper. He came, chump and chubby, his voice suddenly ceasing its booming in that next room. Clearly a man whose stage technique had not altered twenty years after, for he did the same with me.

I shall remember while the light lives yet, And in the night-time I shall not forget. Hitherto our experiences are the same. It was this identity that caused the book to fall in my lap and sent me away dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. But now comes change; abruptly—in

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two splashes of color. The 'eternally crumpled frock-coat' was still crumpled. Though twenty years is not eternity, in the matter of frock-coats it is a good installment; and the coat was still crumpled. The shaggy moustache still hid the small round chin, from within which moustache wisdom issued as from a sententious walrus. But the eyebrows and bright little brown eyes- no, I know nothing of them; I saw nothing of them.

The first thing I saw was a green shade over the eyes, like the shade of a billiard-lamp. A number of little round holes were punctured within the rim of that shade. They held my mind, these holes; they mystified me to know why they were, what purpose they served. If light were required there, why not have made the shade shorter? But the shade was not to be shorter, for the edge was bound in brass. Eyes and nose were developed in that shade. Where the shade finished, the shaggy moustache began. An absurd fancy entered my mind, to stoop and look up beneath that shade; but these are the absurdities that, fortunately, one never does.

The next thing I saw was a book he held in his hand and placed on a stand beside the chair on which he sat. The book was blue. I knew the book. It was for me. I had heard of such things before from others who had― alas, more successfully than I! - passed through the experience I now undertook. I did not look at the book and pretended not to see it, for the little brown eyes, being behind that shade, made me feel as if they were in every place. But I knew that it was entitled Selections from Swinburne's Poems, and that it bore on the fly-leaf the signature of Theodore Watts-Dunton, with the tail of the capital T hooked to the right.

Swinburne! And this was Swinburne's guardian, his sentinel to the world. Wonderful! I heard a flutter of feet

across the room above. Swinburne's feet! How light they were; just as one had expected them to sound, from all one had heard of their eager, ceaseless fluttering. The housemaid who had let one within this faded antique world of memories would have made the whole roof to shake; and this gentle quiver across, and the gentle quiver back again, was a poetic movement. How near one was to him! And after a time of probation with this chump and chubby sentinel in the green shade, one would have his Selections for reward, and be ushered by the selector into the Authentic Presence. Ah, how frail are our expectations!

A round hand was laid on my arm. I was persuaded, with firm authority, to draw a high-backed chair and sit beside Watts-Dunton. To that I put down part of my misfortunes. To sit on a high, straight-backed chair, above a much older man seated beside one in a low, comfortable, capacious chair, must, I conceive, always be an impossible position. The comfort is not divided. The height is not leveled, but is even thrust at ungainly odds. The ages are - what Time made them. Everything is askew, so that one starts wrong. But when, added to all this, one looks down from an uncomfortable altitude, and looks, not into little brown twinkling eyes, but upon a green shade punctured with round holes near the rim and bound with brass then I am sure it is impossible to avert mishap. Young misgiving quickened within me. The blue volume of Selections at WattsDunton's right hand seemed strangely oddly irrelevant. The flutter of feet upstairs

remote

He had begun to speak. He was, he told me, deeply interested in the young writers. He was always a man who had kept abreast of the times. He had always been so unlike Mr. Swinburne, who lived in his own world. Modes

came in and modes went out, but eternal song remained. Did I know the work of So-and-so?

I did, of course; and forbore assertion further. So-and-so had passed this ordeal successfully, that I knew. I hoped he did not keep sufficiently abreast of the times to read what I had said of So-and-so in the B——.

-

I am glad he did not, for he had a genuine gift of song, Watts-Dunton thought. But no fundamental brainwork. That, it seemed to him, was the fault of the times. I knew, of course, of Dante Gabriel Rossetti?

I gasped, and barely assented in time. He was a great fellow, a great fellow. It was he who had required the fundamental brainwork. So necessary. He had, of course, known Gabriel quite well, had been his dearest friend.

From my height I looked down into the depth of his chair. But, no, the green shade revealed no humor. The row of little punctured holes winked at me indeed, but without mirth. The brass rim was dull. I, too, like Max Beerbohm, was wafted by casual mention into illustrious presences; but the twenty years had wrought a change, for this distinguished critic, abreast of my times, assumed that I was not abreast of his. Had I heard of Dante Gabriel Rossetti! And nothing to be seen but a green shade above and a shaggy moustache below. The voice boomed on

His dearest friend and a great fellow. The other fault was as bad. Of it Mr. Meredith was the exemplar. Meredith, too, was a great fellow, and probably the greatest mind of his time. The greatest mind, mark me, not the richest temperament. Oh, yes, a perverse fellow; a very perverse fellow! Mind was not enough. Now there was Browning

He knew Browning quite well. He said this as if I would be extremely surprised to hear of it. He knew all these men quite well. There were giants in

those days, he quaintly implied; but as plainly implied no further criticism of the times he was now abreast of. Now Browning was clever; he was a learned fellow; but he had no mind.

Misgiving grew old and died. Hostility was born in its stead. Not to the distinguished critic, Watts-Dunton, oh, dear, no! but to the green shade. I had just finished reading The Ring and the Book. When a person finishes reading a poem of that length, pursuing it to the ultimate end faithfully and surviving the accomplishment, the pride, the virtue of the act are transferred to the writer of the poem. I have observed this, and it is a certain sign. The critics who contemn long poems are those who have not managed to read them. The critics who praise long poems are those who have read them, always. The exceptions are naught. The rule is infallible, and has nothing to do with the merit of the poem. What we say to others is what we have first said to ourselves. And no man or woman will permit himself to say to himself that duty or inclination made such an ass of him as to cause him to read to the bitter end a long and worthless poem. Pride is involved. Self-love is involved. One's respect before one's fellows is involved. Everything is involved to assert that the labor was worth while, and therefore that the poem was good, very good

perhaps one of the world's supreme achievements. I say this in extenuation, as I had read every word of The Ring and the Book, English, Latin, and Italian; and I had consequently entered into confederacy with Browning. To hear it said, therefore, that Browning had no mind was as if I had heard that I myself had no mind; and the idlest dolt will not hear such a thing in meekness, obscuring green shades notwithstanding. What marvel then that hostility was pricked in me as I listened? No, Browning had no mind. A clever

fellow, but no mind. He had the queerest notions, so out of date. He was a Christian and believed in Creation. God was like a big carpenter, who fitted out Creation like a Noah's Ark, two and two of every kind, and sent it out, all the parts complete, floating on the waters. Like a carpenter, with hammer and chisel, making the world like a Noah's Ark, all nicely dovetailed and knocked together, with its animals, two and two of every kind. Such a silly notion! So out of date, too. Evolution had disproved all that. Jewish myths. Now, in the Theory of Evolution it was proved that life had evolved from Amœba and he gave me a brief account of the theory, while I, in my exultant youth, heard with amazement a voice droning from fifty years before, when the paper had last been hung on these walls. I was wafted among other august presences, in frock-coats and with serious evolutionary brows. There was a musty smell in the air. Time was cheating me, was playing a trick on

me.

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For himself he had always kept abreast of the times; but Browning disputed these truths. He was out of touch with Science. Science had But I found my voice, and lost my poet, and lost his book of Selections, with the inscription, 'From Theodore Watts-Dunton,' all ready to be solemnly placed in my hand.

I was sure, I said, Browning did not believe anything of the sort. At least, I hope I did not say it quite like that; but I fear I did. Had I been able to see

the bright little brown eyes, I might not have; but to the holes of the green shade I am sure I did.

There was a hushed and awkward silence. But I did not care. Not many people in these decadent days read a great poem like The Ring and the Book to the finish, Latin and all. Then I heard him speak again. He knew Browning quite well, and he was a clever fellow, a learned fellow, but he did not keep abreast of the times. But, I urged firmly, daringly, like one who took on the nineteenth century in its sleek and dowdy pride, to say that Browning had no mind—

We began, slowly, to speak of the times he was now abreast of; but it was a hollow performance. The end was foreseen. The blue book would never be mine. The fluttering poet would never be seen. The temple gates would never be opened. We spoke or rath

er he spoke, for I had already said too much; and his slow, low speech thrust me out into the dark hall, told me Mr. Swinburne would be too tired to see me, for he always wrote in the afternoon, and pushed me slowly, firmly, kindly, surely out of the hall-door; and then fell on, for me, an eternal silence.

So once again I laid my hand against the gate of the bleak, trim, front garden 'No. 2, The Pines.' I had missed everything. Well, what of it? I said wrathfully. What was the Selection but a bad selection? And what was the poet but an old peacock, tended and shut away by an obsolete keeper? The world looked to the future, not to the past.

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