Highlights from this issue include:
Romney claims that the thing about modern armies is that they are good at having conclusive battles: "Almost as soon it becomes apparent that one side or the other is about to win, and Fortune, no longer fickle, seldom gives the under dog a chance to recover himself" (781). Hindsight makes his constant bloody-mindedness ridiculous. See also his descriptions of how airship combat might change all this. Very steampunk.
M. B. Oxon. contributes an interesting review of Jessie Weston's book The Quest of the Holy Grail, which from his description seems to be a version of the Waste Land-inspiring (or was it?) From Ritual to Romance (on page 790). Oxon's mystical critique of the book claims that Weston doesn't go back far enough, as the source for the grail legends is probably older than vegetation rituals. He's wink-wink nudge-nudging toward the fantastic. Anyway, I think Eliot would have been intrigued by the general goal of the review, which is to claim that materialism hasn't taken over at all.
There are, of course, lots of other things in the issue, but I'm going to finish this post with a few letters to the editor.
First, there's a clutch of the sort that praise The New Age and make it sound powerful, always written in the same New Age-y tone, almost as if Orage wrote all of them. The letter from repetition of his suggestion that the "National Guild" articles be bound as a book (made by Orage, who I think wrote the articles, while under pseudonym) by one "W.L." is suspect, especially as the letter does not refer to the earlier article at all. Hmm.
J.M. Kennedy and TNA continue their feud, with Kennedy asking for an apology before he will respond (and getting one, albeit a backhanded one).
Anti-feminism galore in the letter by Pallister Barkas, another pseudonym, naturally. Sorry I'm in conspiracy theory mode.
All for now...
Showing posts with label Romney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Romney. Show all posts
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Friday, October 25, 2013
The New Age, October 16 1913
Here's what's in this issue:
My favorite piece is (I think) a one-off by one Guglielmo Ferraro, entitled "Quantity and Quality." It is about the current tensions rising between Germany and France over France's decision to require "made in X" labels on all imported goods. Here's a sample: "Modern industry has succeeded in multiplying the production of commodities... From the point of view of quantity... we have performed prodigies. But from the point of view of quality, modern industry threatens to make the world one colossal mystery. It so mingles and confuses models with imitations that very soon nobody will be able to tell one from the other." Globalization of commodity production has overwhelmed quality to the point that people have confidence in empty labels: "The blind confidence in certain labels, with which people are reproached, only shows their need of a standard of value by which to judge the quality of things" (721). "Hence it comes that quality is judged by price instead of price by quality. In American journals one already finds advertisements which recommend their goods because they are the most costly." I can vouch for that--look at the car advertisements in a 1913 Scribner's and there are some that use their extra-high cost as a selling point. Ferraro's main point is that quality counts, even if it is invisible, even if it doesn't appear in balance-of-trade calculations. Still true?
Pound wraps up "An Approach to Paris" in this issue, welcome if only so that Beatrice Hastings can stop her mean-spirited lampoons of them (I hope) and get to writing mean-spirited things about something else. EP ends writing about Rimbaud, Paul Fort, and Henri-Martin Barzun, who apparently wrote poems for simultaneous voices (Velvet Underground "Murder Mystery" style). Paul Fort I've encountered in a strange series of translations in a later issue of Poetry, worth a look. I think he's going to come up a lot, judging by the number of hits I got when searching for the poems I'd already read. Weird thing: the translator is John Strong Newberry, but apparently not the paleontologist. A son?
Further notes:
There's been an angry writer named Grant Hervey occasionally contributing about a "young Australia" movement that he represents. He's threatened England with Australian diplomatic independence, not contributing to the Navy, etc. In the "Foreign Affairs" column, S. Verdad replies with this prophetic tidbit (after much hemming and hawing in many directions): "How would they [Hervey and co.] deal with a German-Japanese alliance? That event is at least as likely as the Young Australia movement coming to power" (718). Likely indeed, though not for a while yet...
Romney explains that a grassroots guerilla campaign could paralyze a modern state, and advocates everyone arming themselves if they want to be taken seriously (emulating the Ulster militias).
There's an article about the tyranny of time-clocks at places of employment, including horror at "clock" becoming a verb (clock in, clock out).
A.E.'s "Open Letter to Dublin Employers" is a masterpiece of the genre, calling out the bastards for locking out the workers and threatening them with general rebellion. Phew.
A letter to the editor under "The Plaugue of Advertisements" goes after billboards. "The Dog in Civilization" has a man protesting the population (I swear I accidentally typed "pupulation" just a second ago) density of barking dogs in the city.
That's all for now...
My favorite piece is (I think) a one-off by one Guglielmo Ferraro, entitled "Quantity and Quality." It is about the current tensions rising between Germany and France over France's decision to require "made in X" labels on all imported goods. Here's a sample: "Modern industry has succeeded in multiplying the production of commodities... From the point of view of quantity... we have performed prodigies. But from the point of view of quality, modern industry threatens to make the world one colossal mystery. It so mingles and confuses models with imitations that very soon nobody will be able to tell one from the other." Globalization of commodity production has overwhelmed quality to the point that people have confidence in empty labels: "The blind confidence in certain labels, with which people are reproached, only shows their need of a standard of value by which to judge the quality of things" (721). "Hence it comes that quality is judged by price instead of price by quality. In American journals one already finds advertisements which recommend their goods because they are the most costly." I can vouch for that--look at the car advertisements in a 1913 Scribner's and there are some that use their extra-high cost as a selling point. Ferraro's main point is that quality counts, even if it is invisible, even if it doesn't appear in balance-of-trade calculations. Still true?
Pound wraps up "An Approach to Paris" in this issue, welcome if only so that Beatrice Hastings can stop her mean-spirited lampoons of them (I hope) and get to writing mean-spirited things about something else. EP ends writing about Rimbaud, Paul Fort, and Henri-Martin Barzun, who apparently wrote poems for simultaneous voices (Velvet Underground "Murder Mystery" style). Paul Fort I've encountered in a strange series of translations in a later issue of Poetry, worth a look. I think he's going to come up a lot, judging by the number of hits I got when searching for the poems I'd already read. Weird thing: the translator is John Strong Newberry, but apparently not the paleontologist. A son?
Further notes:
There's been an angry writer named Grant Hervey occasionally contributing about a "young Australia" movement that he represents. He's threatened England with Australian diplomatic independence, not contributing to the Navy, etc. In the "Foreign Affairs" column, S. Verdad replies with this prophetic tidbit (after much hemming and hawing in many directions): "How would they [Hervey and co.] deal with a German-Japanese alliance? That event is at least as likely as the Young Australia movement coming to power" (718). Likely indeed, though not for a while yet...
Romney explains that a grassroots guerilla campaign could paralyze a modern state, and advocates everyone arming themselves if they want to be taken seriously (emulating the Ulster militias).
There's an article about the tyranny of time-clocks at places of employment, including horror at "clock" becoming a verb (clock in, clock out).
A.E.'s "Open Letter to Dublin Employers" is a masterpiece of the genre, calling out the bastards for locking out the workers and threatening them with general rebellion. Phew.
A letter to the editor under "The Plaugue of Advertisements" goes after billboards. "The Dog in Civilization" has a man protesting the population (I swear I accidentally typed "pupulation" just a second ago) density of barking dogs in the city.
That's all for now...
Sunday, December 30, 2012
The New Age December 12 1912
It's been a while, I can't really explain why. But I've been reading along, even if I haven't been writing, so I'll do a whirlwind set of posts today to make up for the gap.
First, The New Age Dec. 12th.
Romney's "Military Notes" are growing more disturbing, as when he declares that "tactical finesse" is "a positive danger" when soldiers should "simply go straight forward at their mark." Hello Somme. More on this next post, in which he takes this idea farther.
"The New Servitude" has a very familiar feel, claiming that business is unfairly speeding up the level of production without raising wages. This all funnels into advocating guild socialism, of course.
"More Hygienic Jinks," the column that satirizes public health issues, has a great depiction of the eugenics movement as a confused and intentionally confusing mass of pretensions.
John Masefield is brutally attacked in "Present Day Criticism." Might relate that to the dueling reviews of Masefield that will come up in Poetry at some point...
As has often happened in The New Age, the real gems are in the letters to the editor. R. B. Kerr responds to Pound's earlier claim that America doesn't have any geniuses by agreeing! Blames American lack of leisure. I wish I could blame the same for my late posts.
Really the most startling debate in the magazine is the struggle over the "White Slave Bill." Bewildering--it seems like the Archbishop of Canterbury and company are trying to bring back flogging as a punishment for pimps and johns. They have a groundswell of more moderate support from people who want to end sex trafficking in England. But Beatrice Hastings is dead against it. My picture of Hastings continues to develop: in this issue, a woman writes to her with an example of a time she met a prostitute who was being held against her will (and who the police did not protect). Hastings reiterates her earlier position that women cannot be forcibly made into prostitutes, then doubles down by attacking equal suffrage! I want to discuss this with an expert... maybe I'll try to find a book.
Onward.
First, The New Age Dec. 12th.
Romney's "Military Notes" are growing more disturbing, as when he declares that "tactical finesse" is "a positive danger" when soldiers should "simply go straight forward at their mark." Hello Somme. More on this next post, in which he takes this idea farther.
"The New Servitude" has a very familiar feel, claiming that business is unfairly speeding up the level of production without raising wages. This all funnels into advocating guild socialism, of course.
"More Hygienic Jinks," the column that satirizes public health issues, has a great depiction of the eugenics movement as a confused and intentionally confusing mass of pretensions.
John Masefield is brutally attacked in "Present Day Criticism." Might relate that to the dueling reviews of Masefield that will come up in Poetry at some point...
As has often happened in The New Age, the real gems are in the letters to the editor. R. B. Kerr responds to Pound's earlier claim that America doesn't have any geniuses by agreeing! Blames American lack of leisure. I wish I could blame the same for my late posts.
Really the most startling debate in the magazine is the struggle over the "White Slave Bill." Bewildering--it seems like the Archbishop of Canterbury and company are trying to bring back flogging as a punishment for pimps and johns. They have a groundswell of more moderate support from people who want to end sex trafficking in England. But Beatrice Hastings is dead against it. My picture of Hastings continues to develop: in this issue, a woman writes to her with an example of a time she met a prostitute who was being held against her will (and who the police did not protect). Hastings reiterates her earlier position that women cannot be forcibly made into prostitutes, then doubles down by attacking equal suffrage! I want to discuss this with an expert... maybe I'll try to find a book.
Onward.
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