aesthetic and ethical values, tends
to become a preacher of sonorous nothings, and the actual
moralist-propagandist finds his way into art well greased. No other
people in Christendom produces so vast a crop of tin-horn haruspices. We
have so many Orison Swett Mardens, Martin Tuppers, Edwin Markhams,
Gerald Stanley Lees, Dr. Frank Cranes and Dr. Sylvanus Stalls that their
output is enough to supply the whole planet. We see, too, constantly,
how thin is the barrier separating the chief Anglo-Saxon novelists and
playwrights from the pasture of the platitudinarian. Jones and Pinero
both made their first strikes, not as the artists they undoubtedly are,
but as pinchbeck moralists, moaning over the sad fact that girls are
seduced. Shaw, a highly dexterous dramaturgist, smothers his dramaturgy
in a pifflish iconoclasm that is no more than a disguise for Puritanism.
Bennett and Wells, competent novelists, turn easily from the novel to
the volume of shoddy philosophizing. Kipling, with "Kim" behind him,
becomes a vociferous leader-writer of the _Daily Mail_ school, whooping
a pothouse patriotism, hurling hysterical objurgations at the foe. Even
W. L. George, potentially a novelist of sound consideration, drops his
craft for the jehad of the suffragettes. Doyle, Barrie, Caine, Locke,
Barker, Mrs. Ward, Beresford, Hewlett, Watson, Quiller-Couch--one and
all, high and low, they are tempted by the public demand for sophistry,
the ready market for pills. A Henry Bordeaux, in France, is an
exception; in England he is the rule. The endless thirst to be soothed
with cocksure asseverations, the great mob yearning to be dosed and
comforted, is the undoing, over there, of three imaginative talents out
of five.

And, in America, of nearly five out of five. Winston Churchill may serve
as an example. He is a literary workman of very decent skill; the native
critics speak of him with invariable respect; his standing within the
craft was shown when he was unanimously chosen first president of the
Authors' League of America. Examine his books in order. They proceed
steadily from studies of human character and destiny, the proper
business of the novelist, to mere outpourings of social and economic
panaceas, the proper business of leader writers, chautauquas
rabble-rousers and hedge politicians. "The Celebrity" and "Richard
Carvel," within their limits, are works of art; "The Inside of the Cup"
is no more than a compendium of paralogy, as silly