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(TRANSLATION OF AN ODE BY HORACE; BOOK III. ODE 15)
BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER

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THE SENIOR WRANGLER

DELIQUESCENT SOCIALISM

I ADMIT that freedom of thought includes the freedom of not thinking; that it includes the inalienable rights of absent-mindedness, complete irrelevance, forgetfulness, divagation, ambiguity, and confusion, all of which are essential to the mind's pursuit of happiness, especially in the happy hunting-grounds of political discourse. I am not one of those inhuman folk who would pin a Socialist to his premises; but I do think our present-day Socialists are far too careless in what they say of brotherly love. It is possible, says one of them, for men to live like brothers, each working for the good of all, and he sees signs that we are now approaching that blessed consummation. But human nature once perfected, any social system would work well, and brotherly love would shine as brightly through a trust, or a pool, or a poker-game, or one's own personal and private capitalistic peanut-stand, as through the very best of brand-new Utopian world devices.

Why bother with Socialism if the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand? Why socialize further the prince of a biscuit factory who has already risen to the conception of his private business as a sort of consecrated social job? To expropriate him, and shut him up in a phalanstère, and pay him in labor checks, and exact of him his due share of chamberwork, garbage-collecting, iron-puddling, and tailoring, is altogether superfluous, if he is an all-round, fully developed, social proto-martyr at the start.

That is the trouble with this latter-day breed of spineless, lukewarm, and propitiatory Socialists. They let the life-blood out of their thoughts, and their arguments die of weak concessions. Give us back the good old two-seed-in-the-word supralapsarian Marxist if there is to be a debate of the matter. He gave the enemy something to think about and the faithful something to do. He did not wait for "eternal justice" or assume a brotherly love. He assumed that the employer never had any, and never could have any, except through Socialism. "A vampire sucking the blood of the workingman"- that was the way he spoke of him. And a good, rousing sentiment it was, and made people feel that they should be up and doing something, if it were only pounding the table and letting the beard grow long.

Professor Simkhovitch in his new and admirable book on Marxism has shown how one after another the Socialist leaders have abandoned their faith. And a social movement "can no more keep alive without faith than faith can keep alive without miracles." The overwhelming majority of Socialists to-day are, he says, tending to be mere reformers. They even say that "industries expropriated in a revolution would prove to be empty shells," and though they remain members of the Socialist parties and repeat the same old "melodramatic phrases," they have long since explained Socialism away. It seems to be in the very nature of a Socialist, as soon as he has found and settled on his premises, to long for escape. For fifty years Socialists have never seemed so much at home as when living outside their definitions. I suppose it is not right at the present time to try to limit the term Socialism to any particular way of thinking, though it may still imply some peculiar activity of feeling whether with or without thought. Find the greatest common factor of a Socialist Church Leaguer, Laborite, Reformist, Guesdist, Marxist, Neo-Marxist, Social Democratic Federationist, North German Orthodox, South German Heterodox, Biological Sociologist, Sociological Biologist, Syndicalist, Shavian, Fabian, Hervéist, an H. G. Wells, and a Eugene V. Debs, and I doubt very much if it will turn out to be a principle. I doubt if it will be anything more definable than a sort of mental glow.

The "economic interpretation of history" has gone by the board, and so has the Marxian theory of value, and so has the "revolution," and so has the "class war,” and there is little to be hoped from the Socialism of the future, for if we may believe Professor Simkhovitch, Socialists will become even tamer than they now are, though it is hard to conceive how that is possible. I have known the completest of fogies, even a leading citizen of the city of New York, to confess in a coquettish way and in a sort of stage-whisper, that he is, after all, a bit of a Socialist himself.

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BANQUET OF THE INTERNATIONAL EUGENICAL SOCIETY.-AT THE SPEAKER'S TABLE

IN

AN ABJECT APOLOGY TO COLONEL WATTERSON

N the November CENTURY, in Lighter Vein, there appeared a squib upon what we took to be some recent editorials by Colonel Henry Watterson.

The editorials in question were, it now appears, not from Colonel Watterson's pen, so that a humble, though tardy, apology is certainly in order. We tender it cheerfully to our old and trusted friend.

One of our baser insinuations was to the effect that Marse Henry's English style tended at times to be a trifle catachrestic. It was this charge, we suspect, that prompted the colonel to write us an outraged but good-natured letter from France, a portion of which we are making bold to print. He says: "Gentlemen:

"What 'catachrestic' may mean or im

ply, I confess myself at a loss to knowperhaps nothing worse than many loose accusations to which a lifetime of conflict, more or less rough-and-tumble, has somewhat hardened my sensibilities."

I even

"I never minded 'horse-thief.' in time grew used to the card-playing pictures and the mint-julep jokes. They were the penalties fixed upon the atrocious crime of being a Kentuckian. But, to be charged with the corrupt use of my oracular tongue-with fouling the limpid depths of the well of English undefileddoes stick in my gizzard. I appeal to your sense of justice. Do me the favor to massacre the culprit; give him a first-class funeral, and, after sending the bills to me,bid him rise from the dead and sin no more! "Sincerely, HENRY WATTERSON."

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Protect Yourself

See that this trade-mark is on every package of cocoa and chocolate that you buy.

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The immense popularity enjoyed by BAKER'S COCOA and CHOCOLATE preparations, recognized as the standards for purity and excellence, have tempted unscrupulous dealers and manufacturers to attempt to trade upon the name "Baker" and to substitute goods of inferior quality when ours are called for. Consumers should insist upon getting the genuine goods with the trade-mark of the chocolate girl on the package.

A handsomely illustrated booklet of Choice
Recipes will be sent free upon request.

WALTER BAKER & CO. Limited

Established 1780

DORCHESTER, MASS.

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