a crushing defeat. Hayes's New York appointments were approved by a majority of the senate composed of the Hayes republicans and a number of democrats, whose chief purpose, however, was to drive deeper the wedge dividing the republican party. At any rate, the victory served to advance good government. It lessened the power of the republican machine, lowered the prestige of Senator Conkling, and went a long way in making the people believe that the republican party was capable of throwing off the worst features of "Grantism." No one thing in Hayes's administration was more useful in purifying the political atmosphere.

Statesmen sometimes commend themselves to us by their wisdom and sometimes by their integrity. Sometimes they are distinguished for strength of mind that enables them to understand the complex situation before them, and sometimes it is strength of character that enables them to attack and carry the fortifications of bad government. In Hayes's attitude toward the four problems just mentioned it was character rather than mind that served him and the country. It did not require great mental ability to see that self-government should be restored in the South, that the finances should be placed on a sound basis, that civil service reform should be established, and that the overweening power of selfish party leaders should be reduced. Any intelligent man could see the wisdom of all these policies. What was needed was the courage to attack and the steadiness to carry through in the face of party opposition. That courage and steadiness Hayes had in an unusual degree. During his fight with Conkling, which lasted for a year and a half, no member of the group with whom he advised was less excited than he. Patiently and without visible concern for the result he set his standard high and insisted that it should be met by those who had the responsibility of meeting it. He was not an imaginative man. Plain and sincere he grasped duty in a friendly manner, as though it was the only thing to do. It was this trait that gave him a touch of kinship with the average good citizen and made his course popular with the men who made up the strength of public opinion.

Perhaps the most notable new plan that Hayes made in

the course of his administration turned out a failure. It was his attempt to build up a new party composed of the best men of the North and the best of the South. Early in his administration he had the support of a group of Southern members of congress, led by Hill and Gordon, of Georgia, whom he thought he could bring into his own following, combining them with the more liberal-minded republicans and using them to break down the influence of Conkling, Blaine, and Butler. It was a dream that Andrew Johnson had entertained in 1865, when it failed because it encountered the solid rock of party prejudice. Likewise, neither Hayes's Southern friends nor his Northern supporters were willing to cut themselves loose from the parties to which they owed their elections. It was in the hope that he would promote this kind of a movement that Hayes named Key, formerly a Southern democrat, postmaster-general. The appointment was indifferent in itself, and so great was the protest of the republicans against having to see a democrat to get their friends made postmasters that Key was soon forced to turn over the appointments in his department to an assistant postmaster-general who was a regular republican.

Hayes was at bottom a party man. Before 1876 he gave ample indication of this fact. He resisted the liberal republican movement in 1870-1872, and his speeches on the stump in Ohio at this period contained nothing that could have caused alarm to the friends of Grant. While not a rabid waver of the red shirt, he nevertheless kept that garment in plain view, using it discreetly in his own campaigning. Although he was known for a civil service reformer on principle, he did not openly attack his party associates when they defied it. In the campaign of 1876 he knew that government officials were being assessed in behalf of his election and contented himself with a mild protest to the secretary of the republican campaign committee. To the chairman, Zachariah Chandler, who had such mattters in hand, he seems to have sent no protest (Williams, I, 482). In fact, nothing in Hayes's career before his nomination indicated that he would prove a reformer of the party that supported him. While not accepted as an extremely "practical" politician, he was con

sidered a man who could be trusted for the promotion of party harmony, a sound and sane republican in whom were no flaws.

As his administration drew near its close this trait of Hayes's character came into prominence. His victory over Conkling early in 1879 was his last notable step toward the purification of the party. He had already raised factions in the ranks, but from that time he seems to have been willing to allow the division to subside. Probably this course was partly due to the influence of men like John Sherman and William Evarts, who as members of his cabinet had supported all he had done in the first and second years of the administration. He knew that he was only an incident in the leadership of the party. He would pass away with the inauguration of the next president. It was not for him to disrupt its ranks permanently by insisting on reforms which the "Stalwarts" were sure to oppose. Against such a course Sherman, who was to remain a permanent factor in the struggle, was sure to protest. Hayes, therefore, was content to allow the achievements of his presidency to stand for what they were worth. While he did not retreat from any position he had taken, he did not carry forward the fight into other fields. Rutherford B. Hayes was a good man to hold what had been gained, but not an aggressive man in the face of great obstacles.

It should be said, also, that in the second half of his presidency the centre of interest in political life shifted from the contest within the republican party to the contest between the democrats and the republicans in view of the coming presidential election. The minority party was seeking to lay the foundation of their campaign of 1880 by raising an investigation of the election of 1876 and by trying to change the federal election laws. Their opponents replied with whatever charges they could bring. In the bitterness of the battle that was now joined, the issues that made the first half of the administration most conspicuous retreated into the background.

Hayes seems to have welcomed the opportunity to escape public notice. He loved the quiet of private life. No man was happier in the domestic circle. Thus, while the leaders of the party called their respective followers together for the preliminary jockeying of 1880, he looked forward eagerly to

his coming release from political turmoils. To fight for position was not his nature. He resigned himself to the obscurity of the ex-presidency with as little regret as if he had enjoyed the full measure of political honor, a two-term occupancy of the presidential office. The men of the hour, Conkling, Blaine, Sherman, and lesser leaders, went on with the never ending strife, content that he might slip quietly away from the scenes for which he had little liking; and the country soon came to consider his brief period of power a small incident in the history of the times. It is only in the light of historical perspective that we are able to see in what respect it marked the enactment of four important events in our political progress, events which took their form because he was a man of simple character and persistent courage.

Creation or Criticism?

Herbert L. CREEK

University of Illinois

The more radical of the American poets are conducting a violent offensive against the prevailing Puritanic, Mid-Victorian taste of readers of books and magazines. It can scarcely be denied that they have broken through the defenses of prudes and college professors, of magazine editors and publishers of books, and old-fashioned people generally. Many of us have been taken prisoner, and, already forgetful of a past when one might dip into Tennyson without incurring the derision of one's friends, are reading a free-verse poem daily without protest or repining. Even if unable to recognize an Imagist when we see or hear one, we read what is given us and do not complain if we are not able to understand or criticize, since the possession of a critical faculty on the part of an ordinary reader is strictly verboten by our new masters. Of course, the struggle is not ended; a few scattered, unintelligent persons maintain a ragged defense of the older poetry; but a really organized resistance is apparently of the past.

Although I freely admit that I am one of the captives, that I read and enjoy much free verse, and that I should never think of deciding for myself what is good or what is bad, I find that my masters are making an unexpected demand upon me: I am to surrender not only my taste but my intelligence as well. The new poets are giving us our poetry—well and good. But they are also giving us our theories, our definitions, of poetry. They tell us that poetry must never be that; that its business is precisely this and no other; that the Wordsworths and Arnolds, once deemed wise, who said some things about poetry which we were inclined to believe, were only old fogies after all. Now I should like to protest mildly against this assumption on the part of a few contemporaries that they have a corner on poetical Kultur. To begin, let me return to the old question, What is the function of poetry?

Two answers appear constantly in the criticism and discussions of critical theory of recent years. For some, true poetry is criticism-as Matthew Arnold said, it is "a criticism of life."