Life — April 29, 1915 — page 28: what you’re looking at

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

JUST MILK 760 The Great and Only MONG those celebrities whose writings nobody ever reads, but of whom everybody talks knowingly, is there any greater name than that of Nietzsche? This gentleman fought, bled and died in some European philological warehouse. He was president or vice- president, we forget which, of a lunatic asylum. He wrote a book called “Thus Spake Jerusalem "—where family came from—or something like that, and we believe that when he was trying to cross the Alps in a battleship designed by a man named Georg Brandes, he committed hara- kiri because the captain made him eat a ham sandwich in the dog watch. It doesn’t. make any difference whether you are right or wrong in your facts about him, “Everything goes” with our old philosophical side partner Nietzsche. If a Harvard pro- fessor has a new theory of pedantics which he wants to “put over”, for a raise in his salary, he utters the mystic name of Nietzsche, and all the high- brows are immediately prostrate. Nietzsche brought on the w; He invented earthquakes; he paved the way for the Bergson cult, about which one or two New York society women (who haven't caught up) are still (- SHAKE ] MILICPUNCH ie Ue) || cal raving; he is responsible for the gyroscope, shoot the shoots, Mary Pickford, Lloyd George and the superman. Yet, in spite of all the free advertising the superman has received, that gentleman doesn't seem to get on. When you see a superman rising over the horizon, the chances are that he will board you later and brace you for the loan of a fiver. No su- perman, so far as we are aware, has ever earned more than eight dollars a week nor ever kept his job beyond the second week, Not for a moment do we deprecate Nietzsche. We haven't read anything of his, and we never mean to, as long as Parkhurst and Hubbard are writing for the Journal. But we thoroughly helieve in him. Anybody who can give an entirely new direction to American feminine thought, whatever is, can bring on a war, add to the lities of so many publishers, the intellectual standard of lunatic asylums, is no small potatoes. He merits our profound respect. He has all of our captains of industry beaten to a frazzle. BUTTERMILK THE MILKY way A FIXED POST A Compliment to Mr. Lane THERE has been no general protest so far against the action (last month) of the University of California in making Franklin K. Lane an LL.D. What with the rush of the Fair and the din of the war, nobody has found time to complain. But maybe it is just as well. Let Mr. Lane have the LL.D. Every Cabinet officer ought to have one, and Mr. Lane is a Cabinet officer. He has advertised so little that most people don’t know it. He has put’ forward no liquor views and has made only a few speeches, Indeed, he hasn't done much except look after the affairs of his own department. That is some- thing, for he is Secretary of the In- terior, and really has a good deal on his hands, including a government railroad in Alaska, Mr. came from California. That is one odd thing about him. The other is that he seems to be rated as the most efficient and satisfactory of all the President's official family. Per- haps it is a toss-up between him and Mr. Houston which is the most valuable man in the Cabinet, though Mr. Gar- rison also is very generally credited with doing his work well, and there is little against Mr. Gregor, Mr. Bryan, Mr. McAdoo, Mr. Daniels, Mr. Burleson and Mr. James Wilson are the Cabinet targets, and they all get due attention. Lane SNS Y enough, it is the small- bore people who make the biggest bores.