Life — March 13, 1913 — page 9: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MEXICO the President. We guess that cabinet will make a pretty good team. A*®? secing that it is such a green team we wish they might all be brought over to see the Futurists pic- ture show in the armory on Twenty- sixth street, here in New York. It is a great show, a little shy in the matter of art, but a wonderful exposition of politics. Here we see compendiously the temper of the times, the prevailing revolt from technique and the whole apparatus of modern life, and the in- sistent demand for expression without I:nowing how and without caring what. And it is marvelous how this Fu- turist nostrum goes; how serious stu- dents, practitioners and professors of art profoundly regard and lose their hearts to pictures that cave dwellers might have drawn in red chalk on the walls of their abode, and sculptures that belong in museums, but not of art. Here is amply disclosed the pas- sion for liberty and the contempt for human experience. One stops and listens to hear the strains of “ Onward, Christian Soldiers,” and the rever- berating clamors of a Bull Moose con- vention. Of course there is something in it, and though it is not art, it may be a kind of new birth that will lead to art. The world needs from time to time to be born again, and has to be, and the sign of the coming birth is this disposition to chuck all the existing apparatus of life out of doors. Look at it all over the world! China, Turkey, Mexico, Japan, Russia, Spain, England, Ibsenized Scandinavia, Chris- tian Science, femininism, woman suf- frage, socialism, syndicalism, the ref- erendum, the initiative and all the re- calls! Bring your cabinet over, Dr. Wilson, and let them assimilate the lessons of 521 this improving show. Let them see how strong the impulse is, and what monstrous results it may lead to, and what sensible and cultivated people look on and applaud and say, “Oh, isn't it fine!” Let them take in the les- son that men cannot live by apparatus, but are bound to revolt from it from time to time, and the further lesson that without technique there is no art, nor liberty without order, nor business without industrial machinery, nor pros- perity without security. Let them learn that in business and politics, as well as in art, the new birth must be spiritual; not a mere smashing of ap- paratus, and abandonment of tech- nique, but just so much loosening up of institutions as will let in the new life to vitalize and vivify them, so that the soul of man my find expression. Men will not stay cramped forever, whether by church, or king, or tariff, or trust, or lawyer, or doctor, or finan- cier. When the apparatus will not give, it smashes, for the new life must have vent. But to ease it up is far better, saves time and tears and recon- struction, for apparatus there must be, else knowledge stagnates, learning hides, and grass grows in the streets. Mr. Wilson is no Matisse. He knows technique and knows its value; and about our governmental apparatus nobody knows more or seems better qualified to stand over its readjust- ment to life. Dr. Watterson’s Prescription HE Louisville Courier-Journal— Marse Henry, we suppose—cries in leaded type to abrogate the Monroe Doctrine and call in the powers to set- tle the affairs of Mexico in joint ac- count. The powers, including Japan, Colo- nel? And then partition, uncontrolled immigration and more mixtures of the unmixable? The ills we know are trying, but is there not a somewhat too various con- plexity about these we know not of? Against the Subway Contracts EHOLD Gould and Hearst in coalition to defend the people of New York! Wonderful! Blifil and Black George! But which is which! comicbooks.com