The New Age, May 7 1914

This issue of The New Age begins with an account of the Colorado Coalfield War, which I'd never heard of. The editors of TNA use it as an example of how even a seemingly-sincere antitrust president like Wilson is confronted with an actual strike, he will bow to business immediately and send in the National Guard. They describe the conflict is described as a civil war that exceeds the Mexican civil war in scope. This leads to a call for a Labour Trust to combat the Oil Trust: powerful unions that aren't afraid of violence. Where does this lead, logically? For TNA, it means that women must be excluded from the workforce: "The whole women's movement is in our opinion a movement of cheap labour initiated by the decline in men's wages and stimulated by capitalists who play upon the modern notions of liberty for the purpose of persuading women into industry" (2). It doesn't not sound like the argument against "right to work" laws, in that granting a right to work is often granting a right to exploit. The editors emphasize this further in arguing against state support of motherhood, claiming that it is just a scam to raise willing laborers (3).

The gem of the issue, though, is the translation of Marinetti's manifesto, "Geometric and Mechanical Splendour in Words at Liberty," translated by one Arundel del Re (16). Marinetti elaborates on the "Manifesto on the Wireless Imagination and Words at Liberty" published in Poetry and Drama, explaining more of the details of the system. I think the beginning of the manifesto is pretty familiar Marinetti: insight gained by watching a dreadnought in action=poetic inspiration. One paragraph, though, I want to highlight because I see in it an application of words-in-freedom, though in a modified, prosified (?) form:

"These  have  for  their  essential  elements : power  under control, speed, intense light, happy precision of well-oiled cogs,  the  conciseness of effort,  the molecular  cohesion of metals in the infinity of speeds, the simultaneous concurrence of diverse  rhythms, the  sum of independent and convergent initiatives in one victorious direction." (16)

Later in the essay, Marinetti claims that words-in-freedom will become "AUTOILLUSTRATIONS," and I think he snuck this poetic paragraph into the essay as an example: it is both about the dreadnought and about the poetic, it is the very "sum of independent initiatives" described by itself. Of course it's not really words-in-freedom: Marinetti's definitions make w-i-f seem more like drama than visual poetry. Unconstrained typography serves facial expression and gesture: "the natural lack of proportion between typographical types which reproduce the grimaces of the face and the sculputural chiselling power of gestures" (17). Even more strikingly, adjectives are invited back to the party, though banished to atmospheric brackets (stage directions?). It actually is reminding me of Vachel Lindsay in Poetry. 

Naturally, The New Age being what it is, they print his manifesto but do take a moment in "Current Cant" to ridicule it (5). Also of interest in "CC" is the almost prufrockian popular song about going to the cinema quoted there.

Also related to Marinetti's manifesto: Arthur Penty, an advocate for a return to medieval craft-based economy, responds to critics by directly claiming that mechanical productions are ugly "as sin" (10).

An unsigned article titled "Unedited Opinions" continues the recent spate of Socratic dialogs with one on the flaws of Bergson. Summary: Bergson praises intuition without knowing what it is: his intuition is only impulse. Actual intuition is "above" impulse, and can only be reached through intellect. "The best" people are developing their intellects to the point that they will reach intuition, but at the price of appearing inactive (intellect is a depressing, decadent, "we are all Hamlets more or less"). Beyond this, though, is pure intuition, to be reached in what might be a kind of prophecy of deconstruction: "Why, when the reason is so perfect that as subtle and argument can be invoked for as against anything, the result in reason is a paradox. Thereafter the reason, having finished its work, is satisfied. And the intuition then emerges into consciousness" (12). Of course it isn't that: TNA is still hoping for a true spiritual revelation under all its gritty guild-socialist front, as the recent discussions of reincarnation indicate.

In "Readers and Writers," R.H.C. complains that TNA continues to lose money, that a circulation of as low as 2000 would secure the journal, while 3000 would allow them to start saving for retirement. As this is impossible, they will instead "we shall indulge ourselves when the time comes in distinguished hara-kiri" (14).

Because moments when people stand up for the Jews are few and far between in these journals, so far only occurring in The New Age, I'll point out S. Verdad's attack on Cecil Chesterton for "Jew-baiting" in his attempts to reconcile England with the Church.

That's all for now...