human labor have long been felt by most European countries and attempts have been made to remedy them. France in particular has learned by bitter experience how terrible the lowlands suffer when the mountains lose their forest cover, and has now proved by practical demonstrations that the losses produced by forest destruction can be repaired only by reforestation. ing about 425,000 acres of land, 58 per cent. of which belonged to the government, 25 per cent. to communities and 17 per cent. to private individuals. France has now a far-reaching plan for bringing under control about 3,000 torrential streams in the Alps, Pyrenees, Ardennes, Cevennes and the central plateaus, at a cost of $40,000,000. Of this 35 per cent., or $14,000,000, is for reforestation alone. In Austria, attention was attracted to reforestation of watersheds as a means of regulating stream flow by the great floods in the Tyrol and Kärnton. Austrian foresters enumerate over 500 torrents in the Tyrol, whose basins need reforesting, and on 100 streams the work has already begun. Similar work is being extensively carried on elsewhere among the Austrian mountains. In Italy the pressing need of reforesting land in the Apennines and the southern slopes of the Alps has long been urged upon the government by the people on account of the immense destruction wrought annually by the Po, which is now three times as destructive to land as it was in the past century. As a result of numerous petitions, a bill was passed in 1882, whereby waste land amounting to nearly a million acres was to be gradually reforested, involving an initial cost of $8.40 per acre beside current expenses. During the French revolution of 1789 extensive clearings were made in the forests of the Provençal Alps. The French Government early recognized the danger which bare areas threatened to property and industry, and emphasized the importance of reforestation. In 1842 the classical investigations by Surell made it evident that forest clearing was responsible for most of the damage caused by mountain torrents, and that in reforestation lay the remedy. Laws were enacted in 1860 and 1864 which recognized that reforestation, to improve streamflow, to restore the soil, and to regulate torrents was of public utility, and therefore that it was the duty of the government. Two methods were adopted to carry out the work. Government assistance for reforestation voluntarily undertaken by communities or private individuals; and compulsory reforestation by means of temporary dispossession, whereby the option was left with the owner of recovering his lands, either by reimbursement of cost or by surrendering one-half the area to the government. The work was entrusted to the French Forest Service, and from 1861 to 1877, inclusive, an area of 233,590 acres of mountain land was put into forest or grass at a cost, including certain incidental expenses, of $2,900,000. At the close of the last century the fund appropriated by the French Government for protective afforestation. amounted to $12,500,000 in round numbers, of which $4,900,000 went toward purchase of land and $7,600,000 was spent in improvement of streams and reforestation of their drainage basins. The work resulted in bringing under control a number of torrential streams and in reforest-exposed slopes and near the timber line, The great efforts of nearly all the states of Europe to counteract the effects of indiscriminate forest clearing, efforts which involve an outlay of scores of millions of dollars, show how important the mountain forests are. They should be regarded as a sort of capital, whose function in the national economy is far higher than the income which the timber may yield. Forests at high altitudes, at the sources of navigable streams, on shifting sands, on banks of large rivers, and on steep, exposed slopes are recognized in most of the European countries as "protective forests," and are managed with the prime object of preventing washing and erosion of soil. Thus at high altitudes or steep, clear cutting as a rule is forbidden and timber must always be cut either in narrow strips or by gradual thinning. Severe governmental regulations controlling the management of protective forests on private lands are common in Europe. There can be little doubt that similar action will be forced upon us in the United States by the results of destroying our mountain forests. WHY A CLASSIC IS A CLASSIC1 Arnold Bennett (1867- ) is a business man of letters. His keen eyes run over the literary public, appraise their wants, and fill them. Consequently he writes popular philosophical essays (How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day) and popular fiction (The Pretty Lady), as well as fiction of genuine literary power, such as the Clayhanger trilogy and the Old Wives' Tale, which so largely influenced contemporary novelists. But, despite his ability to give the public what it wants, Mr. Bennett tells us in The Truth About an Author that he has never written down to the public taste in any work of any length, and he has always held Beauty before him as his object. "Why a Classic Is a Classic" (1909), from Literary Taste, How to Form It, a series of essays on literature, shows Mr. Bennett at his best in freeing a time-worn subject from cant phrases and wearisome formality. THE large majority of our fellowcitizens care as much about literature as they care about aëroplanes or the programme of the Legislature. They do not ignore it; they are not quite indifferent to it. But their interest in it is faint and perfunctory; or, if their interest happens to be violent, it is spasmodic. Ask the two hundred thousand persons whose enthusiasm made the vogue of a popular novel ten years ago what they think of that novel now, and you will gather that they have utterly forgotten it, and that they would no more dream of reading it again than of reading Bishop Stubb's Select Charters. Probably if they did read it again they would not enjoy it not because the said novel is a whit worse now than it was ten years ago; not because their taste has improved-but because they have not had sufficient practice to be able to rely on their taste as a means of permanent pleasure. They simply don't know from one day to the next what will please them. In the face of this one may ask: Why does the great and universal fame of classical authors continue? The answer 1From Literary Taste, How to Form It by Arnold Bennett. George H. Doran Company, Publishers. Reprinted by permission. is that the fame of classical authors is entirely independent of the majority. Do you suppose that if the fame of Shakespeare depended on the man in the street it would survive a fortnight? The fame of classical authors is originally made, and it is maintained, by a passionate few. Even when a first-class author has enjoyed immense success during his lifetime, the majority have never appreciated him so sincerely as they have appreciated second-rate men. He has always been reinforced by the ardor of the passionate few. And in the case of an author who has emerged into glory after his death, the happy sequel has been due solely to the obstinate perseverance of the few. They could not leave him alone; they would not. They kept on savoring him, and talking about him, and buying him, and they generally behaved with such eager zeal, and they were so authoritative and sure of themselves, that at last the majority grew accustomed to the sound of his name and placidly agreed to the proposition that he was a genius; the majority really did not care very much either way. And it is by the passionate few that the renown of genius is kept alive from one generation to another. These few are always at work. They are always rediscovering genius. Their curiosity and enthusiasm are exhaustless, so that there is little chance of genius being ignored. And, moreover, they are always working either for or against the verdicts of the majority. The majority can make a reputation, but it is too careless to maintain it. If, by accident, the passionate few agree with the majority in a particular instance, they will frequently remind the majority that such and such a reputation has been made, and the majority will idly concur: "Ah, yes. By the way, we must not forget that such and such a reputation exists." Without that persistent memory-jogging the reputation would quickly fall into the oblivion which is death. The passionate few only have their way by reason of the fact that they are genuinely interested in literature, that literature matters to them. They conquer by their obstinacy alone, by their eternal repetition of the same statements. Do you suppose they could prove to the man in the street that Shakespeare was a great artist? The said man would not even understand the terms they employed. But when he is told ten thousand times, and generation after generation, that Shakespeare was a great artist, the said man believes-not by reason, but by faith. And he, too, repeats that Shakespeare was a great artist, and he buys the complete works of Shakespeare and puts them on his shelves, and he goes to see the marvelous stage-effects which accompany King Lear or Hamlet, and comes back religiously convinced that Shakespeare was a great artist. All because the passionate few could not keep their admiration of Shakespeare to themselves. This is not cynicism; but truth. And it is important that those who wish to form their literary taste should grasp it. What causes the passionate few to make such a fuss about literature? There can be only one reply. They find a keen and lasting pleasure in literature. They enjoy literature as some men enjoy beer. The recurrence of this pleasure naturally keeps their interest in literature very much alive. They are for ever making new researches, for ever practising on themselves. They learn to understand themselves. They learn to know what they want. Their taste becomes surer and surer as their experience lengthens. They do not enjoy to-day what will seem tedious to them to-morrow. When they find a book tedious, no amount of popular clatter will persuade them that it is pleasurable; and when they find it pleasurable no chill silence of the street-crowds will affect their conviction that the book is good and permanent. They have faith in themselves. What are the qualities in a book which give keen and lasting pleasure to the passionate few? This is a question so difficult that it has never yet been completely answered. You may talk lightly about truth, insight, knowledge, wisdom, humor, and beauty. But these comfortable words do not really carry you very far, for each of them has to be defined, especially the first and last. is all very well for Keats in his airy manner to assert that beauty is truth, truth beauty, and that that is all he knows or needs to know. I, for one, need to know a lot more. And I never shall know. Nobody, not even Hazlitt nor Sainte-Beuve, has ever finally explained why he thought a book beautiful. I take the first fine lines that come to hand The woods of Arcady are dead, And over is their antique joy It and I say that those lines are beautiful because they give me pleasure. But why? No answer! I only know that the passionate few will broadly agree with me in deriving this mysterious pleasure from these lines. I am only convinced that the liveliness of our pleasure in those and many other lines by the same author will ultimately cause the majority to believe, by faith, that W. B. Yeats is a genius. The one reassuring aspect of the literary affair is that the passionate few are passionate about the same things. A continuance of interest does, in actual practice, lead ultimately to the same judgments. There is only the difference in width of interest. Some of the passionate few lack catholicity, or, rather, the whole of their interest is confined to one narrow channel; they have none left over. These men help specially to vitalize the reputations of the narrower geniuses, such as Crashaw. But their active predilections never contradict the general verdict of the passionate few; rather they reinforce it. A classic is a work which gives pleasure to the minority which is intensely and permanently interested in literature. It lives on because the minority, eager to renew the sensation of pleasure, is eternally curious and is therefore engaged in an eternal process of rediscovery. A classic does not survive for any ethical reason. It does not survive because it conforms to certain canons, or because neglect would not kill it. It survives because it is a source of pleasure, and because the pas sionate few can no more neglect it than a bee can neglect a flower. The passionate few do not read "the right things" because they are right. That is to put the cart before the horse. "The right things" are the right things solely because the passionate few like reading them. Hence-and I now arrive at my pointthe one primary essential to literary taste is a hot interest in literature. If you have that, all the rest will come. It matters nothing that at present you fail to find pleasure in certain classics. The driving impulse of your interest will force you to acquire experience, and experience will teach you the use of the means of pleasure. You do not know the secret ways of yourself: that is all. A continuance of interest must inevitably bring you to the keenest joys. But, of course, experience may be acquired judiciously or injudiciously, just as Putney may be reached via Walham Green or via St. Petersburg. HOW THE PROMISE HAS BEEN REALIZED1 HERBERT CROLY Herbert Croly (1869- ) has been an editor of the New Republic since 1914. In that capacity he has to a great extent determined the attitude of that magazine toward public questions, and is largely responsible for its fearless frankness. Mr. Croly tells us, in the World's Work for June, 1910, that The Promise of American Life (1909) was the result of a growing conviction, first suggested by Judge Robert Grant's novel Unleavened Bread, that it was deplorable that "American patriotic formulas could be used to discourage competent and specialized individual effort." To remedy the evils of a "chaotic mixture of alien and shifting elements" in our social and political structures he urges a constructive relation between nationality and democracy. ALL the conditions of American life have tended to encourage an easy, generous, and irresponsible optimism. As compared to Europeans, Americans have been very much favored by circumstances. Had it not been for the Atlantic Ocean and the virgin wilderness, the United States would never have been the Land of Promise. The European Powers have been obliged from the very conditions of their existence to be more circumspect 1 From The Promise of American Life by Herbert Croly. Published by The Macmillan Company. Reprinted by permission. and less confident of the future. They are always by way of fighting for their national security and integrity. With possible or actual enemies on their several frontiers, and with their land fully occupied by their own population, they need above all to be strong, to be cautious, to be united, and to be opportune in their policy and behavior. The case of France shows the danger of neglecting the sources of internal strength, while at the same time philandering with ideas and projects of human amelioration. Bismarck and Cavour seized the opportunity of making extremely useful for Germany "What, then, is an American, this new man?" asks the Pennsylvania farmer. He is either a European or the descendant of a European; hence the strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and prosperity will one day cause great changes in the world. Here the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the progress of his labor; this labor is founded on the basis of self-interest; can it want a stronger allurement? Wives and children, who before in vain demanded a morsel of bread, now fat and frolicsome, gladly help their father to clear those fields, whence exuberant crops are to arise to feed them all; without any part being claimed either by a despotic prince, a rich abbot, or a mighty lord. . The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas and form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and useless labor, he has passed to toils of a very different nature rewarded by ample subsistence. This is an American. and Italy the irrelevant and vacillating No more explicit expression has ever been given to the way in which the Land of Promise was first conceived by its children than in the "Letters of an American Farmer." This book was written by a French Immigrant, Hector St. John de Crèvecœur before the Revolution, and is informed by an intense consciousness of the difference between conditions in the Old and in the New World. Although the foregoing is one of the first, it is also one of the most explicit descriptions of the fundamental American; and it deserves to be analyzed with some care. According to this French convert the American is a man, or the descendant of a man, who has emigrated from Europe chiefly because he expects to be better able in the New World to en the fruits of his own labor. The conception implies, consequently, an Old World, in which the ordinary man cannot become independent and prosperous, and, on the other hand, a New World in which economic opportunities are much more abundant and accessible. America has been peopled by Europeans primarily because they expected in that country to make more money more easily. To the European immigrant-that is, to the aliens who have been converted into Americans by the advantage of American life-the Promise of America has consisted largely in the opportunity which it offered of economic independence and prosperity. Whatever else the better |