Little Magazines after the First Month of War: The Egoist, The Little Review, Poetry and Drama, and (a little) Poetry

This post will cut across several magazines. I've already written a bit about The New Age and The Masses and their reaction to the beginning of World War One. I was interested in the different perceptions of the reasons for the war that they each had. After reading the second Egoist of the month, as well as The Little Review and Poetry, I thought I would do a cross-journal posting surveying this issue.

To recap: The New Age tends towards talk of national and racial struggles, painting the war as the result of macrohistorical cultural struggle. Depending on when you caught them, this was either between the West and the East or between Civilisation and the Barbarians.

The Masses provides a socioeconomic account, blaming international trade, in particular maneuverings that deprived Germany of its share of the spoils of global imperialism, which forced the Germans to look for a military solution.

Moving forward to The Egoist and The Little Review:

"The Illusion of Anarchism" by Dora Marsden

Dora Marsden is The Egoist's spokesperson on this. I sense a calcification of her term "Archist," which was introduced as a playful opposite to anarchist some months ago: now she's using it seriously (not archly), dropping the pun to make a philosophical point. This shift in her philosophy is an important step, and an important step backwards in my view: she used to insist on defining her philosophy entirely in the negative, only as a rejoinder, response. Now she's building a self-supporting platform able to support theories on why the war has begun. Her anti-humanist and rationalist approach to politics has led her to believe that the war happened because Germany sensed an opportunity to seize wealth and power. Nothing more or less--and no judgement on her part, as she explains that Germany will ultimately be judged only on its success or failure (using George Washington as an example: he would have been a traitorous secessionist had he failed, etc.). Let me try to sketch the logical chain she constructs. Public opinion is illusory, and most people just follow it because they have weak personalities. A strong personality (Napoleon ex.) can sway public opinion, and even make people (generally greedy) act selflessly (because that is too a kind of greed). Germany's opinion-makers and industrialists had created an atmosphere of confidence that could only be fully-fulfilled by attacking an England they saw as decadent. And it is/was: but the war will wake up England and then England will be awesome and there will be great art! Here's the optimistic note she strikes:

"And the result immediately to follow, one can safely trust, will be equally in her favour: that is, the brilliant vindication of British spirit on the seas and the battlefields will speedily have a counterpart in British laboratories: in renewed and confident strength of spirit in English philosophy, literature and art (where it is needed, God wot!). Confidence, which dare look at plain fact without latent undermining fear, confidence and deeply stirred emotions are the materials which inspire a new spirit in the Arts. After the war, because of the war—the Renascence!" (343).

The next piece in The Egoist is also by Marsden, also concerning the war and the State, but I will quickly skip to the end to point out an interesting reply to correspondence in which Marsden explains how classifications work--might be useful for any work on Marsden's semiotics.

Beyond Marsden, this issue includes an article in the series "Fighting Paris" by Mdme Ciolkowska, printing her daily war diary. I think she keeps this up throughout the war, so it will be a way to live it vicariously.

Before leaving, Aldington contributes an essay on free verse, declaring its independence from vers libre. A teachable, useful, brief manifesto that slots into the contemporary discussions of prosody very nicely.

The Little Review, "Armageddon."

TLR is suitably impressed by the war opening across the Atlantic. The short editorial piece "Armageddon" makes the case that the war is foolish, and civilization is directly responsible:

"Twenty-odd million men flying at each other's throats and destroying the bitterly won triumphs of years of peace, without any good reason. We hear phrases like "balance of power," "dynastic supremacy," "the life of our country," "patriotism," "racial prejudice," "difference of religion," Each individual nation is praying to God with profound sincerity for its own success. Priests bless the arms. There is no denying the reality of all this in the consciousness of Europe. Such things do lead men to battle with the fire of conviction.

"Well, the brutal fact stands out like a giant against the sky, that if such motives can produce such a result, they are working only for their own destruction. Not a single nation, whether conqueror or victim, can come out of the struggle as strong or as great as it went in. All alike must be swept into destitution of all the things civilization has taught us to value. And this is the result of civilization ! It is a spectacle or demoniac laughter. And shall the United States stand aloof with a feeling of pitying super­ iority, thinking that, because we happen to have a president instead of a king, and inhabit a different continent, such motives are foreign to us? What folly of conceit ! As long as we cultivate the ideal of patriotism, as long as we put economic value above spiritual and human value, as long as in our borders there exist dogmatic religions, as long as we consider desirable the private ownership and exploitation of property for private profit-—whether by nations or by individuals-—we maintain those elements of civilization which have led Europe to the present crisis." (3-4)

This prescience, that America will be swept into the war in the same ideological tide as Europe, is not without an optimistic final sentence: "Nineteenth-century civilization has overwhelmingly and dramatically failed. What shall we build now?"

The Little Review, then, blames the war on ideology. The sheer stupidity of that offers an opportunity, as something new may emerge from this destruction. Alas.

I've also been reading the quarterly Poetry and Drama in a bound volume I got from the UW library: not nearly as satisfying as the .pdfs on the MJP, but a little easier on the eyes. Poetry and Drama is completely shocked by the war, more than The Little Review or any of the other journals I have read. Harold Monro's opening article explains that wartime is not a time for good writing--patriotic writing will drown out art, with a few exceptions (one in this issue is Frost's "Home Burial"). One gets a sense of depression and desperation: Monro calls for the formation of a "Literary Emergency Fund" to support people of letters who have been made unemployed by the war, for one example.

Perhaps the most telling article, though, is "French Chronicle" by F.S. Flint. He meditates, sitting at the English Channel, on the dangers being faced by his French poet-friends. One, Charles Peguy, has already been killed. Flint is furious at the Germans, angry at being rejected for military service, wishing England had conscription. He, too, though, is hopeful that France will defeat the barbarous Germans and that literature will emerge from the war stronger than it was at the outset.

Poetry's September issue doesn't mention the war, but it includes an essay by Joyce Kilmer on Gerard Manley Hopkins, who he "gets." This is cool but sad, because Kilmer will be killed in the war. Also features a plea for funds to support the magazine. Sorry to be so lazy about Poetry, but perhaps my readers will understand.

To overgeneralize horribly, here's a quick and silly and probably useless summary of the journals' opinions on the war and its causes:

The New Age: civilization vs. barbarians (categories permeable).
The Masses: traders vs. traders, with the rest of us caught in a web of lies.
The Egoist: vigorous German people vs. almost-awakened soon-to-be vigorous English people.
The Little Review: the war is the outcome of a bankrupt system of civilization.
Poetry and Drama: this is no time for literature.
Poetry: please donate money to Poetry magazine!

The Masses, September 1914

My friends know that I consider The Masses a respite from the acid of the English little magazines that I have been reading. Its international socialist platform supports many ideas/ideals that have become more general since then. This issue responds to several arguments being advanced in The New Age (among others), and I think it provides an important counterweight to the talk of races and nations found in other places referenced in my last post.

From the tophat-wearing bomb-flinging mad-naked capitalist on the cover, The Masses' attitude to the war is pretty immediately apparent. The two main articles on the subject are Max Eastman's War for War's Sake and an anonymous piece titled The Traders' War. The first debunks the racist arguments, while the second analyzes the economic reasons that Germany declared war (further refuting the mythological causes). 

The journal holds out the hope that this war will end in a better world. 

An antidote? Anodyne, at least. 

About Face: The New Age and Russia on the Eve of War

First post in a while--I'm hoping to add targeted essays to my usual program of surveying single issues of the little magazines. This post is about the representation of Germany and Russia in The New Age, in particular how quickly it changed. Between August 13 and August 20th, A. R. Orage and S. Verdad moved from indicting Germany's foolishness in distracting the West from its struggle with Russia to calling all Germans irredeemable barbarians. The Russians, however, are redrawn as an ancient and mystical culture. Observe:

August 13th, 1914 (two weeks after war was declared):

Orage 337:

For  another  thing,  the German navy  was  not merely a dangerous  luxury  for  Germany herself,  but  its  creation involved the  weakening of the defence of Western against Eastern Europe. Against what Power is it necessary for Western civilised Europe, and  England  in  particular,  to  be  armed if not Russia?  But  against  Russia  the-British  Navy  was sufficient  in itself to equip  navally the whole  combination of Western Europe. In the discharge of the mere daily duty of our Empire we were compelled to maintain a Navy that could, always  be depended  upon by civilisation to equal  Russia’s possible navy. No need therefore  existed to supplement  it by a fresh  Navy or  to  tax  Western Europe  with  the  cost of multiplying  ships  already  sufficient. By insisting upon  building a navy  Germany  has, in fact, not only squandered her own money which might well have been  spent to better  purpose  against  our common Russian enemy, but she has compelled her Western colleagues to  squander  much of theirs  as well.

Russia is the real danger--the vision is a combined front of "civilisation" against their barbarism. The British Navy is the European Navy, or would be, if not for Germany's blunder. Germany is again

S. Verdad, 339:

"Now let us see where we stand. Ever since the Turkish Revolution of 1908 it was a race between the
Teutonic Powers, Germany and Austria, and, on the other side, the Slav Power, Russia, as to which should reach the Aegean first. (S. Verdad, August 13, 339).

S. Verdad represents the conflict as a racial war (though he uses "race" in its other sense here)--in phrases premonitive of Hitler, nations are more important than states. Verdad accuses Germany of an "incalculable" error in starting the war, but places the motivation for the war firmly in the East.


August 20, 1914.

But, by August 20, the tone of each writer has changed. Orage excoriates the barbarism of the Germans, while rallying the English people to the war:

"The working classes of England have realised, as quickly as any other class, that the present war is a
struggle, for national existence, reluctantly undertaken and forced upon us, if we may adapt an anthropological expression, by a few survivals. The Kaiser is an anachronism; he belongs to the pre-Christian era." (Orage 362)

Etc. etc. Examples of how awful the Germans are abound. This makes me think of Wyndham Lewis' Tarr more than anything else--and Tarr will be published during the war.

S. Verdad works on a similar theme, but takes time to boost Russians as a category vs. Germans as a category:

Mr. G. K. Chesterton, I think, who has only recently referred to the Russians as natural mystics. The description is felicitous. The dreamy Slav has a longer, nobler, and more powerful culture at the back of him than the Teuton; and, spiritually, he is far superior. (S. Verdad 365)

After this, he explains that Russia may be a longer-term threat. However:

In the immediate present, however, Germany, and Germany alone, is the enemy.  Compared with ourselves the Germans are, frankly, barbarous people; worthy descendants of their forerunner, Arminius, who, when serving in the Roman army, betrayed his general and helped the Teutons to cut his former comrades in arms to pieces in the Teutoberger Wald." (S. Verdad 365). Comparisons to the Huns follow.


In these passages and the articles I extracted them from, I noticed how deeply World War One was seen as a macrohistorical struggle between races. This journal, supposedly devoted to economics, moves into racialist discourse very quickly. Rallying the people to fight the Germans seems antithetical to their socialist and class-based long term goals (which they admit), but their nationalist bent takes over at this point. Nationalist socialists with racially conditioned worldviews--a dangerous combination.