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The Mirage KE CONNOLLY looked out on a fog-dimmed distance of the Frisco waterfront. A swan-like schooner glided from the haze between impatient ferries. A fog-horn moaned. A tramp steamer pushed its nose among small vessels like a hog rooting in a flower garden. Mike Connolly was canned.. Fired. Free! No more time-clocks, thank Christ! Free. To see the tropics in all their blaze of glory. The palms. The surf. The breezes that are as soft and smooth... * * * For years Mike Connolly had dreamed of the South Seas. Now he was free. The “Moana” steamed for Tahiti and return. Mike Connolly was in the stoke hole. Seasick. “Heave ’er up, John—do you good!” “Here, get under the ventilator!” In the open sea the ship rolled and pitched. And pitched. “Christ, what makes ’em leave an office?” “Yeah, and what brings ’em to the sea?” The ship rolled and pitched. “Es awright mate. ’E ’eaves ‘is bloody guts up, but look at ’im work!” The heat parched the skin. Like a blast from hell uncovered. Mike Connolly stooped over his wheel- barrow. He pushed the coal between two boilers. The ship rolled. A shoulder touched the boilers and flesh sizzled. Mike cursed and stopped for a mo- ment. Seasick. “C’mon kid. We gotta get steam. Keep your tail up. The first hundred years is the hardest.” * * * Eight hours off. Four hours work. Eight hours off. To sleep—a little. To wash off the coal and sweat. To eat. To scrub clothes. To heal burns. To dream of—Tahiti. Four hours work. Work—for ages. “Gotta keep steam up, kid. Let’s have some coal.” The hot coals burned the soles from his shoes. His lungs seemed to shrivel in the parching air. you!” “Sit down. Rest a minute.” The ship rolled and pitched. Like a maddened demon. Pitched. On and on— “Cheer up, old boy. Only eight more days to the islands.” Throb—throb—the engines beat like the heart of a giant. Like aching muscles. “Jim; what is Tahiti like? The natives gentle, friendly? The air soft and smooth?” “Not like an office, eh, mate? Make a man of “Yeah, it’s alright Damn good liquor the Frenchies have in Tahiti!” * on * Hand over hand Mike Connolly dragged his weary bones up the ladder. A scorching ladder. You left the skin of your hands on that ladder. Out of the stoke-hole. “Here, put this in you. My last drop.” The red liquor ran through the veins of Mike Connolly. Warmed them. “Only one more week, old man.” The air was soft now. And warm. Smooth. A school of porpoise played around the boat. Flashes of silver flying fish glistened in the sun. Some- times land in the distance. “Only one more week, old man!” Christ, how tired he felt! “Are they beautiful, Jim? Do they look like in the pictures—graceful, quiet, colorful?” “What, the women?” “No, the islands.” “Aw, hell!” kK. * * * First only a, light Daybreak is a riot in Tahiti. Alert. In- haze. Then quickly the sun appears. sistent. Like awakening youth. “Well, pike, there she is!” Ag mound that stands up gloriously from the sea and calls to the ships that-pass. Near the top, tiny thatched huts. Palms fringe the shore. Movement and gay color on the beach. The surf throws a lacy necklace around it all. “C’mon, wake up! Don’t stand there lookin’ stupid!” The muscles throbbed and ached. Ached. “Tired, old man?” Tahiti—Christ, how sore his bones felt? “You'll be awright tonight. Tahiti, boy—liquor, ’n’ women!” : The captain called from the bridge. Officers re- peated on the bow. “Aye, aye, sir.” Anchor chains rattled. Engines stopped throb- bing. The giant rests at Tahiti. * ok * The Oregan Cafe was a boiling cauldron of mo- tion. Of men who came from the sea. Sailors. Stokers. Stewards. Natives. Women. “Ere Mike, I can’t ’andle two o’ them. Take this wench on m’ right.” Mike Connolly gazed on it all in a stupor. He Twilight of the Gods HE other night I sat in. Horace Mann Auditor- ium in New York and listened to a lecture in German by Jakob Wasserman, author of “The World’s Illusion,” “The Goose Man,” and many other works that have caused a stir in the world. Herr Wasserman, a short, semi-rotund man, with a beautiful dark oriental face, spoke softly in a voice full of campassion and sadness. It was all as gentle as a lullaby and I had to mentally prod myself several times to follow the flow of his ideas, . . Herr Wasserman spoke on “Humanitaet,” Humanity. What the world needs, he said, is humanity. And humanity is indestructible, it will yet prevail. Revolutions, discoveries, social up- heavals—these are mere incidents. Humanity is the important thing. And the religion of humanity is Christianity. : Christianity. If it took man ages and ages to develop into the biological being that he is, why should it not take his soul ages and ages to become that pure Christian afflatus that it ought to be? Christianity is just beginning. “The God that we “must postulate in order that the world should not fall to pieces, demands and possesses patience.” Humanity. Christianity. The voice of Herr Wasserman was very beautiful, very sad. * * ” Never before had the inadequacy, the pitiful helplessness of bourgeois idealism been so starkly thrust upon me. This is a child, I said. oF * * Concerning Jakob Wasserman’s merits as a novelist I have nothing to say. But besides being a novelist, it must be remembered that Wasserman is supposed to be one of the intellectual leaders of Europe. And in Europe’s present crisis, in this hour when after her four years’ agony, she is on the verge of being betrayed again by the hired pup>ets of the master classes, what shining word, what word of fearless denunciation and scorn does one of her intellectual pathfinders bring us? © Humanity. Christianity. . Once more the beery German sentimentality. Once more the soggy phrases that one thought the war had shot full of holes. The old threadbare bunk in modern dress, + * * * Wasserman is a mystic. “Behold, I bring you a great pillar of fire— . Humanity—to light your way by night.” Are naar iemre ree But the pillar of fire is only bits of scenery left over from the Last Great Exodus, the last grandi- ose trumpet-blare of the bourgeois saviors, the babbling idealists, the eternal children of the mind. * * * I know that not all have proved as fatuous and ineffectual as Wasserman. But take the best of them: Rolland. Rolland foresaw the war and hurled his flaming denunciation against it. And Rolland remained unshaken throughout the war and suffered for it. But Rolland has been moti- vated all along by a pacifistic humanitarianism that has much in common with Wasserman’s neo- Christianism. ; And Werfel. Franz Werfel, who on the eve of the World War wrote his poems, “Revolutions- Aufruf,” (“Call to Revolution”) and “Die Worte- macher des Krieges,” (“The Phrasemakers of the War”), would probably smile at Wasserman’s naive faith. But after denouncing the master classes, neither Rolland nor Werfel has taken the logical step in definite alignment with the working class struggle. This step has been taken by Ernst Toller, the German dramatist and poet, by Imre Balint, the Hungarian novelist, and by a few others. But most of the great leaders remain stuck in the mud of pre-war idealism. And those who remain aloof and withhold their aid, no matter how sym- pathetic they may be, become in a sense the abettors of the decaying capitalist system that they denounce, : * * * ‘ England. Bernard Shaw, a “teacup revolution- ist,” a droll, quixotic fellow, a doting sage. Ber- trand Russell, turned professional popularizer, and very very careful about Soviet Russia. Havelock Ellis, a summarizer, an anthologist of ideas and a great scientist, remains isolated. He opposed the war, but he opposed it largely because it was ugly, esthetically unbeautiful, not because it was crim- France. It’s hard to tell “what's ‘happening in Groups and grouplets and sub-divisions ad infinitum, gaudy “isms,” seeking chiefly mental aphrodisiacs. The free revolutionary spirits of France have rallied around Henry Barbusse and Georges Duhamel in the Clarte movement. In Spain Miguel de Unamuno has become the leader of a new nationalist cultural movement. Unamuno, though a philosophical neo-Christian By WALT CARMON could not think. Every spot in his body ached. Bones, museles, burns; his body throbbed like the ship that still rolled under his feet. “Here, cutie, what’ll you have?” Crash of glasses. Song. Din of laughter and full chested speech. A glass was placed in Mike’s hand. “Snap out of it, boy, you’re in Tahiti!” The raw liquor ran through his bones and muscles and burns. Warmed them. Christ, it was good! “Fill ’er up Frenchy.” Another glass. And another. “Only beer, sweetie? No whiskey? hell!” : White teeth flash in a smiling, oval, brown face. White flowers in smooth black hair. Skin as soft and warm. What ¢’ * * * The “Moana” was ready to sail for San Francisco, Steam was up. Anchor chains rattled. ' “Here, Jim, give me a hand with this fool.” The engine began to throb again. Slowly. “He never drew a sober breath in Tahiti.” The effgine throbbed faster and faster. “That damn wench had him f’r three days.” “Jesus, look at the flowers she put in his hair. Looks like one o’ the natives.” The “Moana” passed the reef and into the open sea. The ship began to roll and pitch. “C’mon kid, wake up! Here drink this,” The ship rolled and pitched—_ Mike Connolly wakened slowly. Every bone still ached. Burns throbbed, like the engine. Hands swollen. Inflamed. “C’mon snap out of it. you’re back in Frisco.” Frisco? : “Man, you sure was pie-eyed. Here, drink this. Pick you up.” Two weeks? Frisco? “But Tahiti—Jim. You don’t mean—” Mike Connolly stumbled to the deck. Christ, how his bones ached. The lights of Tahiti blinked in the distance. Suddenly he recalled bits of a strange world. A small hut. A grass mat. A smiling brown face. White teeth. Skin as soft and smooth— “Feel better now, old man?” Mike Connolly looked at his swollen hands. He stared for a moment at the lights growing smaller in the distance. ridden laughter. Two more weeks and By A. B. MAGIL mystic, is important as an inspirational force and because of his uncompromising opposition to both the old monarchists and the present dictatorship. And everywhere they are turning hopefully to Russia, the child giant of preternatural wisdom and strength. Among Europe’s jabbering old men and hysterical old women Russia is shaking off the sleep of a thousand years, and is conquering each day, not with phrases, tears and canned wistfulness, but with plain, hard, prosaic deeds. * * * And America? ‘The land of the free and home of the etc.? Before the war. Everything was lovely. Utopia was only a short way up the road. Capital was understanding labor so well and labor was under- standing capital so well and everything was jake. Pacifism. Votes for Women, Reformism. Anti- Trust Busting. Socialism. Uplift. Anti-Saloon League. Ethical Culture. Elbert Hubbard. Theo- dore Roosevelt. Woodrow Wilson. LaFollette. Henry Ford. Taylor System. Pan-Americanism. Brotherhood of Man. Social Service. Slumming. The Poor Working-Clawss. Came the WAR. * * * And what of the dream of Randolph Bourne and his fellows? That too has been shot to pieces, With lavender socialism in one hand and the austere torch of learning in the other, these mis- sionaries wanted to go forth and sow the seeds of a new beauty and culture. But they were content to sow them within the capitalist state, not realiz- ing that only a fake, exploited beauty and culture, the monopoly of a select few, could spring from such arid soil. The interest of these intellectuals in the working class was largely romantic and wistful. The smell of a strike would have sent them scurrying like rabbits into their particular intellectual holes. Van Wyck Brooks, who-talked ae ieiy about ™% — of the thinkers and workers,” never lifted a finger to bring abou such a coalition. i: or ’ Read the gooey, plush-lined prose of Waldo Frank and rub your eyes to make sure this is not a medieval monk. ; And look what happened to Lewisohn. After the insurgent, lyrical protest of “Upstream,” look at the complete collapse of “Israel,” a Zionist blurb, Leaders of thought? Bolonie! Then he laughed a hard, curse- .