The New Age, May 20 1915

My laptop's screen has died, which has in turn made it much more difficult for me to keep up with this blog: when I'm at home, I work on my dissertation. When I'm out, now, I read books instead of catching up on blogging. This is probably very good for me in many ways, but is bad for the continuity of my blog work.

The journal that suffers most, naturally, is The New Age, because I have trouble keeping up with the weekly pace. This week, though, is special: this week, I won't be reading the journal on the Modernists Journals Project I love so well. This week, I have the issue in paper. I bought it from a George Gurdjieff bookstore for thirty bucks. Originally sixpence. What price appreciation. Here Penelope and I take a look--though she may be more interested in how the paper would taste than the taste of the paper.

I imagine it would have a good texture in one's beak, though I haven't let Penelope put that to the test. The paper is thick, textured, soft, and has held up incredibly well over the past hundred years. The binding consists of two worn and rusty staples, punched in at an angle that keeps them from being exposed on the spine. It is a simple, clever design.

The most amazing thing, though, is the type. The thick textured paper has clearly been pressed quite hard during printing, as each letter exists in a little hole of itself. The type on each side of a sheet is visible through the paper, both in the shadows of ink and (more dramatically) the negative contours of the letterpress.

There's a big black thumbprint on the back of the journal--presumably left when the ink was still drying. That's just fantastic to see and feel.



Check out the fingerprint! And the raised texture of the text on the opposite side of the page.

Moving to the contents of the journal: reading a weekly for many weeks that have turned into years, I find that it does not become easier to read the entire journal. Instead, it becomes more difficult, as I skip around to my favorite authors and skip others. Having the physical copy, though, settled me down and made me pay close attention to everything that it contained.

First, "Notes of the Week" continues its hard criticism of England's response to the war. It is harshly critical of the business interests that continue to profit off of the war. Apparently, some workers negotiated a profit-sharing initiative with Lord Kitchener, which was then rescinded when the government (weakly) claimed that it had no authority to enforce such demands. The author also attacks the "Northcliffe Press" of the London Times for stoking antagonisms between the English and resident Germans, and for sacrificing humanitarian goals and national interests for selling papers.

Ivor Brown continues his series "Aspects of the Guild Idea." This passage resonated with me:
"The old Socialism brought up its machinery and bade mankind adapt itself; we must adapt our machinery to mankind. Let me take yet another instance, the disre to serve. I belive that the desire to serve the community in a useful way and in an honourable staus is as common as the desire to eat, drink, and marry a wife. The capitalist system has utterly alienated the ideas of service and of industry. The phrase "national servce" has been monopolized by our impudent conscriptionists... [it] has taken on the contagion of the thing it hides. It stinks." Brown suggests that industrial service be made available as an honorable alternative to joining the army under conscription (which hasn't begun just yet).

The sinking of the Lusitania set off riots around England, but The New Age, as represented by C.H. Norman's "Advocatus Diaboli," believes that the tragedy was largely of England's making. His debunking of propaganda is the longest article in the issue. In it he explains that England ordered its ships to fly under false neutral flags and to ram any submarines that they encounter. This meant that the Germans had to respond by attacking neutral vessels, as they warned they would before they did so. Prior to these orders, according to TNA, the Germans would allow merchant vessels to disembark into lifeboats before sinking them. The culpability for the tragedy belongs at least in part to English violations of the conventions of neutrality. He also demonstrates that England was not somehow caught unawares and unprepared for war, by pointing out that England's combined expenditures on the military equaled or exceeded that of Germany. He reminds the audience that England invented poison gas, and fired gas shells at the Boers. This is an interesting reading, but I'm even more impressed by his citations from the British rules of war that effectively prove that England is prepared to commit war crimes as official doctrine. He ends his essay thus: "[t]he ruling classes of Britain and Europe are the real criminal classes; and it is because of the criminal doctrines that they set out in their military and naval hand-books that the world is witnessing the degradation of humanity at a rate which months ago would have seemed impossible."



Quick Notes:

Dr. H.J. Poutsma writes "The South African Situation," a touchy subject because South Africa's recently-subjugated Boers have pro-German sympathies.

Beatrice Hastings continues her "Impressions of Paris," which, as usual, moves from brilliance to offensiveness with great speed.

"Readers and Writers" seems paltry by comparison. R.H.C. attacks H.G. Wells for writing Boon under pseudonym, which is rich, considering that R.H.C. is also a pseudonym.

Aldington's old "Letters from Italy" has been revived by a pseudonymous "L." who reports on a speech by D'Annunzio, calling him "more of a demigod than ever" as he speaks beautiful inspirational beatitudes to the crowds of irredentists. He's also called a "gasbag," though, so take that demigod with the appropriate dash of salt and vinegar.

There are a set of translations of the "Odes of Anacreon" by one Andre B., in English. Could this be THE Andre B., Breton? Probably not--but note that Hastings has been translating Max Jacob, and was later an advocate of automatic writing, and all of a sudden it doesn't seem too strange. [Update: The New Age's Andre B. goes on to write firsthand accounts of trench warfare. It must be another Andre B.]