I am no music critic, I should say that in its exalted theme and heroic rhythm it runs a close second to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." However, my point in dwelling on this hymn is not so much to emphasize the intellectual and artistic poverty of Fascism, for such criticism impresses me as beside the point-like criticizing the drabness of an army uniform-but rather to use it as an illustration of the dominant note of irresponsible exuberance among Fascist youth, which is much more vital and impressive than the politics of the party. Nor would I want the reader to confuse the sentimental imagination which I have described with the political tactics of Fascist statesmen. Rather I would emphasize the contrast between the hardheaded politicians and business men who are actually running things, and the rank and file, the "local color" of the party. Mussolini himself may be something of a puzzle, for he seems to have some political capacity in addition to his giovinezza. But on the whole he seems to realize that his chief business is to keep the youthful imagination fired by being the chief actor in the heroic drama, while the prosaic work is being done behind the scenes by his more businesslike ministers. For Mussolini, though he is no rough-rider like the elder Roosevelt or the Prince of Wales, is the first of the Italian statesmen since Julius Cæsar to be giovane in spirit. He drives his own speed-car, has a taste for sport, an amateur interest in futurism and the new art, a spontaneous enthusiasm for the heroic, and, above all, an exceptional ability by pose, gesture and speech to personify and dramatize the new spirit. At present this flaming imagination and unbounded enthusiasm is a useful and pliable weapon in the hands of more stable statesmen, but whoever plays on the imagination plays with fire, and it is by no means impossible, as has often happened in these Italian risorgimenti, that the new giovinezza may some day prove the undoing of the new politics of Italy. T TACT It Is a Warrant of Our Own Integrity JOHN ERSKINE ACT and touch come to the same thing. If you have tact, you are in touch with your world, or you have the virtue which enables you to behave wisely when others are in touch with you. It may be an art, or it may be a gift of nature, but it becomes precious as soon as you are crowded. Crowded actually, or in the spiritual sense. On a desert island, of course, most of us would be neither tactful nor the opposite; we should be alone. A rugged, tactless honesty flourishes on frontiers, in unsettled countries, in rural districts where the houses are far apart, in cities where racial or other factions are allowed to separate you from your neighbor. That society is loose indeed in which it seems admirable to blurt out our personalities, our convictions, our desires, hopes and antipathies, let the other fellow be wounded as he may. As civilization grows and the contacts multiply among us, either there is friction, which comes to hatred and war, or there is a light touch on the sensitive surface, which is tact. The rough virtues of our ancestors! We do right to honor the virtues, but we do grave injury to the ideal of civilization if we think better of the virtues for having been rough. In a wilderness the roughness can be forgiven, but in an intimate community virtue without tact is unkind. Edmund Waller toward the end of his life consulted an ancestor of mine, whose manners had been acquired in the bleak spaces of Yorkshire. "I'm cold," said the aged poet. "Even in a warm room I am chilled." "You mean you're old," said the doctor. "Your blood won't run any more. You're going to die." The praise of this sort of truthtelling is to-day an anachronism, unless we dwell in a more solitary wilderness than ordinarily we admit. Yet tact is still rare, and to many of us it seems not yet desirable, so much are we in spirit still the children of an unsettled country. "I thought it best to say frankly what I meant"; "I'm a plain person, and like to speak my mind"; "The truth never hurt anyone": these echoes of rough ancestral virtue cling to us; and in conduct with our adversary we like, as we say, to go to the mat. We scorn the light touch, and depend on the etiquette of battle. As our world fills up and the frictions multiply, we shall be forced to go easy with each other. To that extent Tact is a pragmatic virtue, a price which has to be paid for survival. But it has ideal justifications also. It may be questioned whether rough honesty is ever entirely honest, or whether a blunt statement can be absolutely true. In roughness and bluntness there may be a good deal of laziness and selfishness; there will certainly be little imagination. To knock a man down is no mean pleasure, though we are usually ashamed to gratify the impulse. But add to the impulse a moral sanction, and how we will knock him down! It is illuminating that when we are proudest of having told the truth, it is usually the bitter truth, and we have told it to some one whom at the moment we didn't like. Sweet are the uses of frankness. Of course, in such cases we are not contemplating truth at all, not that divine inevitability whose aspect is amiable; we are talking about local conditions, produced by friction. To discern the true in the temporary, we should need more imagination than most of us care to exercise; we should have to throw out of the picture all of our own motives which we know or suspect are impure; we should have to put in the circumstances which for the other man are a qualification and an excuse; we should have to remember that truth is a living thing, far more complex than logic, an infinite thing, never successfully trapped in a law -that it animates the whole of us, the unconsidering, unconscious parts of us, the passions as well as the mind. To define truth is always, perhaps, to leave some of it out. Pressed down, full and running over we must enlarge our natures before we can include it all. Meanwhile, if we are prudent, we shall handle with care those too easily injured intimacies already in our possession, in which truth may be lurking. That is, we shall be tactful. 22 Selfishness may be present even in the confession of sin. I mean, of course, when we confess to some innocent friend or companion who from that moment must bear our burden for us. Confession ought to result in a clearer sense of our faults and of our responsibility for them, but for that reason we hardly have the right to confess to everybody. In an age of unmitigated blabbing this may seem poor doctrine, but so long as kind hearts can be wounded, the unmitigated blabbing is selfish. We may come from it relieved, and we may even feel proud of our frankness, but the victim of our confidence will have taken on one more problem, often with no opportunity to solve it. Margaret Deland illustrated the beauty of unselfish tact in her story, "Good for the Soul," a story of confession, if you please, but indicating how far and to whom a confession could be made. The woman who had married a good man and was happy in her home, suffered pangs of conscience for something in her past which he did not know, and which he was too simple and trusting to suspect. She went to Dr. Lavender to ask whether she ought to tell her husband, and the wise pastor forbade her to do so. This profound story is hardly of our times. But you may say that such an account of tact as is given here, is a slight upon truth-telling, an encouragement to falsehood. Are we to get on in life by concealing our real feelings, and bending to every wind? The worldling, you may say, can afford to cultivate this sort of tact, but the man who values the integrity of his soul more than convenience or comfort must be true to himself. We can't build a philosophy of life on petty fibs. it is a symptom of unwarranted congestion, which we'd like to cure. We don't think it out so explicitly, but our feelings take some such course. We'd rather avoid society than learn how to behave in it. For this reason many a person whose opportunities for social practice have been infrequent, permits himself to malign those who have acquired the art. They seem to him insincere; they live by etiquette; they are shallow; he, thank God, will be his plain self. But solitude is a great nurse of conceit. What right have we to wish that the universe were less crowded than it is? With such an infinite number of contacts surroundingus, waiting to be made, how obtuse we must be before solitude will seem possible! If it seems desirable, then it must be the heaviness or the inflexibility of our touch which has converted contacts into irritations. This has always been the argument against tact, and the excuse for not having it. But tact is not based on fibs; what we have been discussing is the selfishness of a literal statement of all the truth we know, or a relentless bearing down on the facts. If by accident I step on your foot and express a hope that you aren't hurt, will you say "Yes, I am, or "Not at all"? In either event I know you are hurt, but from one answer I get a heavier sense of my clumsiness, and from the other I learn that you generously wish not to emphasize the incident. Tact does not obscure the truth, though it may refrain from uttering it. The Marquis of Hartington, as Lowell liked to tell, visited in the North during the Civil War, and considered it proper to advertise his sympathy with the South. At a reception in New York, Lowell says, he wore a "the violet's head secession badge. Must truth-telling Hath shaken with my breath upon be so discourteous? Later his rugged honesty prompted him to call on Lincoln himself, at the White House. Lincoln, not wishing to recognize the affront, persisted in misunderstanding his name, and received him cordially, addressing him as "Mr. Partington." This was tact. 2 Even though we admit that a man may be at once truthful and tactful, some of us still look askance at the virtue. It is serviceable in a crowded world, but we don't wish to be crowded. If tact is necessary, then We begin to see this virtue in its proper values when we recognize the spiritual advantages of a crowded world. "I never pluck the rose," said Landor, the bank And not reproach'd me; the eversacred cup Of the pure lily hath between my hands Felt safe." Here is a sort of image of an intelligent love of life. The ugly and unpleasant things we can very well avoid, but the beautiful things we should wish to make our own, to be near them, to establish, as we say, as many contacts as possible with what delights and inspires our soul, These good things in life are far more numerous than we at first suppose. A soul, as it grows, becomes more sensitive to the exquisite possibilities in common adventures, even in the duties and obligations which crowd our days. The disagreeable things, once they are penetrated with intelligent understanding, often turn out to be lovely, and the lovely things multiply themselves like the loaves under the blessing of our sympathy. But a love of life which is merely rough and honest is too liable to seize the things which should be only admired. We pull up our happiness by the roots, and leave some wound or irritation for ourselves or for those around us. The ideal is to miss nothing in life -that assumes a crowded existence; and also to leave life unwounded after we have passed by—which implies a light touch, or almost no touch at all. 22 What has here been said of tact may imply that it is chiefly useful in a negative sense as a protection against mishap or grief. For most of us the word carries this meaning. One reason, perhaps, why we are not more enthusiastic over the tactful man is that he seems to us to be avoiding life rather than facing it squarely. There are indeed plenty of men and women who use their tact for this purpose. We ought to recognize that the active soul, impatient to live richly and thoroughly, will also have need of tact. Indeed, the virtue is chiefly necessary and develops itself in its richest aspects in those people who live most strenuously. The continuous impact of the world about us may be irritating to those who move slowly, or no more than wriggle a bit in their environment. Faster moving bodies cure the irritations by developing a callous surface of their own. The active life often degenerates into vigor of this sort, the result of which is great movement and little advantage from the constant change. The thick skin disguises the difference of one environment from another, and the traveling soul might just as well have stayed at home. To lead a really active life one must remain sensitive, even increase the sensitiveness to new impressions. The touch must be all the lighter and all the more flexible. Experiences that pass us so quickly must be caught by a sensitive eye, and felt by fingers as strong and as yielding as a surgeon's. What we are to hold forever out of so much that is passing we must grasp as firmly, yet as gently, as we would a frightened bird. Against this ideal of a crowded life you may argue that saints and philosophers and poets have loved solitude. But those of us who are neither saint nor philospher nor poet may perhaps misunderstand what solitude in this sense is. To be so much alone that life does not touch us is spiritual death. To be in such contact with life that we miss none of its best appeals is to have achieved the solitude of the saint, the philosopher, and the poet. This is not a paradox, but an obvious experience. If we train ourselves to touch life lightly, to miss none of its contacts, and yet to injure neither it nor ourselves, we increase inevitably the excitements of our inner life. Every contact involves effort of the imagination, and sympathy and un |