Nordau says of a well-known critic and apostle of Ibsen-whether justly or unjustly, I am not now concerned to decide that he has "made the systematic moral poisoning of youth his life-task." "He preached the gospel of passion to the young, and with a zeal and persistence truly diabolical, confused all their ideas by giving the most attractive and the loftiest names to things contemptible and vile Had he openly

glorified the triumph of impulse over reason, he would have been spurned by the best of his hearers. But he said: 'To surrender to one's senses is to show character. The man of strong will despises discipline and duty and follows his humour' . . Now, under the names, freedom, moral autonomy and so forth, wildness and licence easily gain admission into the best circles, and unscrupulous courses from which people would turn away if they recognized them as such, become highly alluring to half-taught minds under the guise of modernity."

The impeachment, whether true or false with regard to the propagandist of whom it was written, may be applied word for word to those writers of our own who, with reference to the vital question which has been our theme to-night, are making the "systematic moral poisoning of youth" their life-task. Let us have done with temporizing, with evasions, with half-hearted tributes to motives sincere if mistaken, with praising power, when we should be stamping out

a pest. Let thought be free; let thinkers be out-spoken; let social problems of every kind be threshed out in the press, above all in fiction! But let us see to it that the best literary traditions of our land are preserved untainted by compromise with the unclean thing, with what from a scientific point of view, is nothing but atavism, and from an ethical one-corruption.

And believe me, it will fare ill with art, as with character, if we evade this duty, if we are found lacking in courage as the battle waxes hot, and courage becomes the virtue pre-eminently needed. For, as I hinted at the outset, you cannot, in the long run separate character and creation, and art is bound to languish when the moral fibre in individuals or in nations becomes permanently relaxed.

I shall never forget the profound solemnity with which the foremost poet and representative literary figure of the later Victorian era, said to me one day, pausing as we strolled on the terrace of his beautiful Surrey home: "They talk of Art for Art's sake. There is something higher than Art for Art's sake-Art for Man's sake!"

It is, I believe, only in proportion as we are capable of receiving that saying that we shall, individually or nationally, excel in art, and bring to perfection those shapes, those tones, those ideas of beauty which always, at their best, uplift, as well as interest, purify as well as fascinate mankind.

The Disparagement of Women

in Literature

"The time has fully come when the actions of women are not to be judged or commented upon as the actions of a sex. That is to say, the actions of women are human actions, and not necessarily perpetually feminine."

Mrs Meynell.