July 4, 1936

19

nomic case against imperialism is not as overwhelming as

his analysis ,would suggest. O n e has the feeling that Mr.
Clark has been extremely diligent in searching for
the
debitjtems on the balance sheet, but that he has not exhibited equal zeal in seeking credit entries.
H e has shownthat
in mostinstances the profits ontradecouldnothave
Between the States
equaled the cost of maintaining an empire, and that colGONE WZTH T H E WZND. By Margaret Mitchell. The
onies do not solve the population problem. H e has, howMacmlllan Company.$3.
ever, whether deliberately or not, neglected two of the
primary advantages of colony-possession-the creation of
ISS MITCHELLS heroine, Scarlett OHara, 1s introduced as a Southern belle in her teens, distinguishable
opportunities for investment and the disposalof domestic
from her fictional prototypes only by the authors unadorned
surpluses. It is very well tosay that investment in colonial
treatment of her petty maneuvermgs for power over admirers.
areas is open to capitalists regardless of citizenship, but
The daughter of a self-made Irlshman and a gentlewoman
history has shown that the pound, franc, and dollar have
from Savannah, Scarlett has the habit of wealth but lacks the
tended tofollow their respective flags. In the case of India
aristocratic
feelmg which is nourished by tradltion. Infatuated
and the British dominions the return on investments has
with Ashley Wilkes, whose interest in art makes him exotic in
undoubtedlybeen of greater importance than the profits on
a society of Georgia planters, she confesses her love with a
trade. Still more importantis the effect of capita1 exports
reckless forthrightness which does her credit, but he humiliates
on the national economy. OUKeconomic system demands
her by his preference for his ideallstic little cousin, Melanie.
a n outlet for both capital andgoods if it is to function at
Scarlett marries in pique a youth shortly hlled in action deanything like capacity, and a country mighteasily find that
fending the Confederacy, and is left with an unwanted chdd.
it paid to subsidize a colony which would take surpluses
Neither the human incidents depicted nor the authors broad
off itshands. It might also be pointed out that while
account of public eventsgripped this reader until the widowed
heroine, visiting Atlanta, found herself immured in a beAfrican and Asiaticcolonies do not provide opportunities
leaguered city and responsible for her rival, the fragile Melanie,
for large-scale immigrationthey offer highlylucrative
who, with the men at the front and medical aid unattainable,
jobs for a handful of administrators, business men, and
bears Ashleys son. Then Scarlett, exploiting her beauty, secures
engineers who tend to be drawn from the ruling classes
the
cooperation of Rhett Butler, a scamp possessed ofa forceful
of the mother country.
personality,
paradoxical wit, and a faculty for remaining pevThis raises a point which is all too frequently overIO^ grata with both Yankees and Confederates, and he arlooked. In hischapter describingthe originof the colonial
ranges her flight with Melanie and the new-born infant through
system, Mr. Clark shows very clearly that the gains and
doomed territory to Tam, the home of the OHara family.
losses of imperialism did not involve the same persons.
The OHaras are among the many victims of the havoc left by
Governments, that is, the taxpayers, took over the costs
Shermans march to the sea ; and it is when Scarlett is subseof administration, but theprofits went into private
pockets.
quently tested by hard circumstance that she emerges in her
Needless tosay, this remains the situation today. Imperialtrue character-a transformation for whlch, however, earlier
ism might be defined as a device for persuading the taxportions of the book have not adequately prepared us. None
the less, the sea change she suffers as a fictional creation is
payers of a country to assume some of the risks and costs
altogether advantageous, and as a petty Nietzschean ruthlessly
of private business beyond national boundaries. Thus for
concerned with the reestablishment of the family and her own
the average citizen a colony may be a liability, but for the
security she is thoroughly convmcing.Reconstructiondays
few it is almost invariablyprofitable. By the time that he
carry her through a second marriage of convenience to a third
reaches his conclusions Mr. Clark appears to have formarriage, this time to Butler; and her relations with him, with
gotten this fundamental observation. He speaks of the
Melanie, and the regretted Ashley are the crux of her enlovoluntary recession of the perquisites of imperialism as if
tional hfe.
governments were controlledby the many rather than the
Margaret Mitchell gives us our Civil War through Southern
few. If the masses of the people were strong enough to
eyesexclusively, and no tolerant philosophyillumines the
determine policy, we might hope fora liquidation of irncrimes of theinvaders ; she writes with the bias of passionate
perialism on the basis of reason. But for the moment thereregionallsm, but the verifiable happenings described eloquently
justlfy prejudice. Unfortunately her temperamental limitations
is little likelihood of a voluntary surrender of power exas a critic both of mass movements and personal behavlor are
cept under great pressure, as in Syria, or where colonial
such that she often gives a shallow effect. She is vigorous
imports compete directly with domestic products,as is the
enough
to imbue her work with dramatlc buoyancy, but uncase with the Philippines and Puerto Rico. T h e underlyequal
to
the subtler demand she makes on herself with- the
ing trend is very clearlyin the oppositedirection. Because
tragedy fitly conceived asthe climax of her story. The desperate
ofcontractinghomemarkets,economicnationalism
is
earthiness of the second Scarlett is memorableenough, and the
gaining favorand is rapidly closing the gatesof trade opportrait of Rhett, half a scoundrel, is likewise to Miss Mitchportunity. As long as this trendcontinues, political control
ells credit: the whole-heartednesswith whrch her imagination
over colonial areas is bound to take on increasing imporyields itself to the interpretation of these two favorites makes
tance. Instead of beingrepresentative
of anoutworn
the readers absorption in a narrative sprinkled with clichCs and
dogma,.the aggressive colonial policies of Japan and Italy verbal meptltudes a contagious growth. But the author seems
may foreshadowaperiod
of new and moredesperate
handicapped by the undigested influence of that literature of
pessimism whlch, though It is responsible for-everlastmg masimperial rivalries.

War

The NATION

20
terpieces and is a tonrc antndote for easy romanticism, is too
often misinterpreted among Anglo-Saxons as negativism.
Neitherwrltersllke
Miss Mltchell who,whenunderan
obligation to move their audiences profoundly, fall back on
the vocabulary of platitude, nor those more modish novelists
who for the individualized hero substitutemasses stdl as vague
an entity as Peer Gynts Great Boyg can grapple with thatlast
problem of a rounded art: howto make tenderness as authentic
in realism as brutality ; how to make benevolence the specific
investiture of a man and not of a fool, how courage may
be shown to glow with a warmth as physical, if not as impartially animal, as is now generated for literature by passions
more menacing. Contrast Miss Mitchell's-stammering articulatlon of high virtue with her
zestful translation of primitive impulse: Ashley Wilkesremains the wastedgenius of
filmdom rather thanof fine llterature ;and Melanie, tenuousin
ways not attrlbutable to her poor health, represents
a concession,
to rare qualities discredited for this authors art by her inabiIity
to gwe them true embodiment. If Miss Mitchell is able, later,
to master the wide slgnificances implicit in her own material,
and to convey her ideahsmas something more than a soporific,
she may yet demonstrate the mature humanity absent
in the
works of so many among us who are disillusioned in that
adolescent fashion whichfollows a first boast of understanding
and belief.
EVELYN SCOTT

if not painfully exphcit, Mr. Murry is vague and

more in-

clined to justlfy an obscure motive than to let us see for OUKselves whatever he has =done. Where Rousseau sustains a
narrative and is often vivid and concise, Mr. Murry is fragmentary, covering what appears to be a lapse of memory with
a surplus of words: and always between the reader and the
event that Mr. Murry is trying to recall there floats the tenuous substancewhich is Mr. Murrys principal concern-his
soul. On themere evidence of thisAutobiography I believe that no psychiatrist, however expert, however -wary,
could determine how much of what is written here is literally
true or false, howmuch is wish-fulfilment or trueconfession. I raise this doubt because a few of the more specific
passages in this testimony are subtle contradictions of equally
specific passages in H. S . Edes Savage Messiah and D. H.
Lawrences letters. Since Mr. Murrysnarrative is Impeded
by hazy reference interlardedwith Bergsonian commentary
on soul and instinct, lifeandloveand
letters, my greatest
pity for the mans misfortunes is related to his inability to
tell a convincing story.
Despitethe vagaries whichattended thewriting of Mr.
Murrys autobiography, the book has its unique, if somewliat
perverse, fascination as a record of literary life in war-tlme
London. The moral sickness of its characters, as it reflects
the ambitions of middle-class professional life, seems to correspondwith the very corruption that I. A. Richardsdescribes when he speaks of the destructive element. Mr.
Murrys early admiration of Frank Harris is illustrative of .
Art
that corruption, the pitiful quarrel with Gaudier-Brzeska, in
whlchMr.Murry
becomes righteous inhisdenial that the
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF J O H N M I D D L E T O N MU R R Y:
artist
should
be
paid
forhis
drawings, is anotherexample
BETWEEN T W O WORLDS. Jullan Messner. $3.
of the same kind. Katherine Mansfields isolation, taking its
D. H . L A W R E N C E : A PERSONAL RECORD. By E. T.
refugebehind the barriers of self-pityand petty-bourgeois
Withan Introduction by J. MiddletonMurry.Knight
snobbery, seems even further evidence t h a t a false set of
Publications. $2.
ethical values closely circumscribed andalmost
smothered
IS shown, one
HEN D. H Lawrence wrote, I always saymy motto the frultlon of a minor talent. After all this
does not wonderthat D. H. Lawrence Immersed himself
is Art for my sake, * he set down what seemed to be
within and then grew restless of such company, for the moral
the perfect doctrme for those dlvlne amateurs of his own
sickness of the Murry-Lawrence circle was of the world that
generation. In his earller work John Middleton Murry pracwas tainted with myself.
tlced this doctrine so assiduously that he became the favored
As nota few of Lawrences biographers testify, his life
scapegoat of the classicists, for in readmg himthey had but to
was a serles of escapes from places and emotional entanglepoint to warn, and the disastrous results were all too plain. It
ments, from relatives, friends, lovers, and even casual literary
may be said that Mr. Murrys autoblography is a contlnuation
assoaates. In the wake of broken relationships many tributes
of his books on God and Jesus, Keats and Shakespeare, his
to his memory have been written, and not the least of these
Son of Woman and his Memories of D . H. Lawrence;
is E. T.s personal record of his early manhood. E. T. was the
the troubled voice is heard throughout them all; itis the same
man speakmgIf-his earlyrriticlsmxthe-confession-of-the soul - ---Miriam-of -Sons-and- Eovers,Y-.the .person.~to..whom.~e_m-_
sisted, It will fall to you to write my epitaph." And here
at large among the
masterpleces (which Isuspect It I S ) , certalnly
it is, a slender book, recalling the atmosphere of The Wild
his present book is a confession of the soul at large among the
Common andotherpoems
of thatperiod as wellas-of
artists. To Mr. Murry, Gaudier-Brzeska, D. H. Lawrence, and
TheWhite Peacock. Curiously enough,the book almost
his own wife, Katherine Mansfield, were difficult people ; and
the fact thath e too was difficult, as well as they, may be counted - transcends Its biographlcal Importance, for its actual value
lies In acarefulstudy
of adolescent love. Itsnarratwedisas one of his prlmary motives for writing hls autobiography.
closes how Lawrence and E. T. were lovers and then slowly
Mr. Murry, a poor boy, climbing by scholarships to Christs
outgrew eachother-and
the simplepresentation
of the
HospitalandOxford,
vislbly increased his sense of s o c d
story possesses very nearly e v e q merit that John1 Middleton
insemrlty on the way upward,untllatlast
he landed in a
Murrys elaborate confesslon lacks. E. T. has the abillty to
dark space between two worlds. It is apitiable hlstory
select those slgnificant episodes that reveal her heros charof maladjustmentthat Mr. Murry recltes to us again;and
acter, an ability by which we are made willing to accept her
again it IS evident that it was wrltten to salvage the remains
Lawrence in preference to Mr. Murrys. In her recollectton
of a pale shadow that Mr. Murry calls his soul.
of a literary dinner at the home of Violet Hunt one plainly
Mr. Murrys Engllsh reviewers have generously compared
sees how Lawrence outgrew hls provincial origins. His dishis latest book with the confessions of Rousseau, forgettmg
trust of Hueffer(FordMadorFord)
was characteristic of
as they did so the reasons why the first memorable aut&
that
growth;
whCreas
E.
T.,
growing
more
firmly rooted in
biography of modern times is as much alive today as in the
Nottinghamshiresoil,
was to remain in awe of literary
hour in whlch it was composed. Where Rousseau is concrete,

for My Sake