e same disgust that makes us
yearn for wooden dolls to make abstract movements in order that we may
release art from its infliction of the big "A", to take away from art
its pricelessness and make of it a new and engaging diversion,
pastime, even dissipation if you will; for all real expression is a
phase of dissipation in itself: To release art from the disease of
little theatre-ism, and from the mandibles of the octopus-like
worshipper that eats everything, in the line of spurious estheticism
within range, disgorging it without intelligence or comprehension upon
the consciousness of the not at all stupid public, with a so obviously
pernicious effect.

"Dada is a fundamentally religious attitude, analogous to that of the
scientist with his eyeglass glued to the microscope." Dada is
irritated by those who write "Art, Beauty, Truth", with capital
letters, and who make of them entities superior to man. "Dada scoffs
at capital letters, atrociously." "Dada ruining the authority of
constraints, tends to set free the natural play of our activities."
"Dada therefore leads to amoralism and to the most spontaneous and
consequently the least logical lyricism. This lyricism is expressed in
a thousand ways of life." "Dada scrapes from us the thick layers of
filth deposited on us by the last few centuries." "Dada destroys, and
stops at that. Let Dada help us to make a complete clearance, then
each of us rebuild a modern house with central heating, and everything
to the drain, Dadas of 1920."

Remembering always that Dada means hobby-horse, you have at last the
invitation to make merry for once in our new and unprecedented
experience over the subject of ART with its now reduced front letter.
It is the newest and most admirable reclaimer of art in that it offers
at last a release for the expression of natural sensibilities. We can
ride away to the radiant region of "Joie de Vivre", and find that
life and art are one and the same thing, resembling each other so
closely in reality, that it is never a question of whether it shall or
must be set down on paper or canvas, or given any greater degree of
expression than we give to a morning walk or a pleasant bath, or an
ordinary rest in the sunlight.

Art is then a matter of how one is to take life now, and not by any
means a matter of how the Greeks or the Egyptians or any other race
has shown it to be for their own needs and satisfaction. If art was
necessary to them, it is unnecessary