The first night of Mr. Bernard Shaw’s play, Saint Joan, at the New Theatre in London was an event of consequence not only in society circles, but in artistic circles as well. Not for many years had Mr. Shaw produced a new play in London. Since his last, the war had fallen, altering in varied ways his audience, altering no less Mr. Shaw himself. How would its effects be seen in his attitude to Saint Joan? Of course he would remain Shavian, but how? Would he approve or disapprove? At what angle would he cut across popular conceptions and show the world upside down?

The skill and artistry, the imagination and fine historical and dramatic sense of Mr. Charles Ricketts had been invoked to give due and proper setting to this Chronicle Play. Playgoers were enchanted with the result. To some the feast of colour and design, the humour and imagination shown in it, the delicacy, the effectiveness of scenery and dress, were the most impressive and haunting part of the performance. We cannot touch on these, however; we must leave their praise to those who have been happy enough to have seen them.

It is the first decisive victory of Life over Death. In the truceless war between these two—living Spirit and dead Matter—we read the whole story of Creation. Many victories had been claimed for the spirit before the Resurrection of Christ, but none that was not indecisive and incomplete: half-victories, all of them, and after each the enemy succeeded in consolidating his advantage, through the very new types which Death created and in which Life seemed to triumph. What a triumph for life it seemed when, amidst the inert mass of inorganic matter, myriads of living things began to stir and swarm—the rudimentary forms of the vegetable and the animal world ! The spirit of life had made the dead elements its own, had used them as material for types of its own creating, had pressed the mechanical into the service of the organic process. What a wealth of types, countless yet continually multiplying! How subtle, how bold, how carefully adapted were its works, from the infinitesimal zoophytes to the gigantic flora and fauna of the tropics. But Death only laughed at all this splendour: Death is a realist, not to be hoodwinked by beautiful images and symbols, not to be deterred by premonitions and presentiments. Death knows that the beauty of nature is only a glittering pall, hiding a corpse that is for ever falling into decay.

Should we enter some old-established library of size and respectability, we shall be pretty sure to notice on its topmost shelves the sixty volumes, seldom dusted and never opened, of the Universal History, a vast compilation which appeared between the years 1760 and 1790, and which, though perhaps of no critical value, contains an infinity of matter never brought together before or since. Bishop Warburton, the one-time dictator and tyrant of the world of literature, used to speak with contempt of this work as ‘miserable trash’ and ‘infamous rhapsody’ ; but Gibbon, a very much better judge, says that the excellence of a great part of it is ‘universally admired’, and that some portions of it in particular are ‘executed with erudition, taste, and judgment.’ Now by far the greater number of the volumes in this series that deal with Ancient History were written by the subject of the present sketch, one of the most extraordinary characters the eighteenth or indeed any century ever produced—George Psalmanazar.

What Psalmanazar’s real name was has never been discovered, any more than his parentage and the country and place of his birth. The name he fashioned for himself was taken from that of the Assyrian king mentioned in IV Kings xvii, 3, while the intimate friends of his later years believed him to be a Frenchman born in some part of Languedoc. He appeared in London in 1703, being then about twenty-four years old. His amazing story at once rivetted public attention.

Never in the world’s history have economic problems played such a large part in human life or had such a direct influence on human thought as at present. Economics have come to overshadow politics, to absorb into their sphere the entire social question. Even the man in the street has learnt that his personal welfare is intimately bound up with an economic system. He may be indifferent towards politics, sceptical of the value of philosophy and science, hostile towards religion, but in economic matters his interest and prejudices are keen. Hence the rise of Socialism—the success of an economic gospel and an economic interpretation of life. Hence too a new spirit of criticism towards religion, which is felt to be indifferent towards the things which are so vitally important—it is ‘the opium of the poor’ which drugs them into contentment with their lot, and indifference towards their true interests.

This excessive preoccupation with economic problems is, however, abnormal and temporary. A healthy society is no more troubled about its economic organisation than a healthy man is troubled about his digestion. The present unrest is a symptom of disease, as well as a symptom of necessary change. Modern society is traversing that critical period of its existence, which the Ancient World also went through during the century that preceded the Augustan Peace. In both cases the material resources of society have outstripped its moral control. It is the crucial moment in the life of a civilisation—a time when societies and individuals are beset by temptations to violent remedies and excessive hopes, alternating with apathy and despair.

There was a time when I used to be a vegetarian, and earnestly ate nut rissoles and marmite sausages. In those days, if I looked at a dish of lamb cutlets, I was haunted by the spectral bleatings of woolly innocents being led to the slaughter; a mutton chop was to me a menace; and if I saw a bottle of Bovril I sighed with genuine sympathy, ‘Alas, my poor brother!’ For were not the animals our ‘younger brothers’? Were they not even as we ourselves—climbing the ladder of evolution to higher and better things? What right had we to cut off their innocent lives before their destined hour had struck?

Then by the hand of destiny I was brought in contact with the Super-Vegetarians. The Super-Vegetarians are a sect of Hindus, usually known as the Jains. It so happened that my work in India threw me into intimate contact with these interesting people. I found them not only interesting, but exceedingly kind and hospitable, and in many other ways unusually charming and refined. In fact their code of ethics with regard to the animal world was too refined for me altogether. I became aware that I was only a beginner in these matters, a despairing amateur in the presence of professionals; I was not even an ‘also ran.’ In the presence of such high and austere consistency I gave up the competition; and, realising the direction in which my ideals were leading, fell back —not without relief—on the flesh-pots of Egypt.

By solemn decree of nature the parents of a child control its future. According to the laws of civilisation they are at liberty to mould its soul. Not the least privilege is that of conferring the name with which it confronts its fellows, and which—should it offend the bearer arrived at the age of reason—cannot easily be doffed. Godparents, at Baptism, were formerly left to choose the neophyte’s name; but this courtesy has fallen into disuse, and almost everywhere the parents themselves designate their choice. Thus an infant is early bound, or safeguarded, as the case may be, not only by the blood inherited from his forbears, but by their fancy in Christian names as well as by the obligation of their surname. Too often the ‘Christian’ name is pagan; obsolete and disreputable gods and goddesses enjoying a condemnable vogue. But if Diana and Sylvia are mistakes, the names sought in vegetation, such as Ivy, Violet, Myrtle, etc., are likewise unbecoming when borne by Christians. Such names of flowers and plants are of Semitic provenance, and there is no excuse for overlooking, in their favour, the glorious roll with which the Church provides us.

Whether the surname be a fetter or an asset, the Christian name should be as far as possible in accordance with it, lest the child be from infancy torn in two, subjected to different currents, bewildered between adverse elements. Race, calling, heredity must be taken into account in bestowing names, for nobody should be made incongruous before he can speak. To hear of Marmaduke Murphy gives us a start.

It has been said that ‘Great is advertisement with little men,’ and this is verified in other fields besides that of commerce. The ‘best seller’ is almost invariably trumpeted as a masterpiece of ‘modern thought,’ and small indeed is the number of readers who pause to reflect that ‘modern,’ ‘modernity’ and ‘progress’ are only relative terms. Those of us who are not yet old remember the days when Tennyson was deemed modern. Now he is ‘out-of-date,’ ‘antiquated’ for those who cultivate modernity. In the thirteenth century Gothic architecture was modern, in the sixteenth, Renaissance. And yet the delusion of a machine-ridden world persists that what is proclaimed as truth in the twentieth century must be truer and better than what was proclaimed as such in the nineteenth or any previous century, because more modern. Those who are bemused with the wonder and novelty of eugenics would be mightily astonished if they should come to study such authors, say, as St. Augustine.

Robert Keable is, in a sense, a literary enigma. Prior to the publication of Simon called Peter, which definitely established him as a leading novelist, his claims to literary achievement amounted only to a small collection of missionary tales, of a combined Anglo-Catholic and spiritualistic flavour, in the more or less obscure pages of The Treasury. The reverential and almost priestly touch which pervades these stories is entirely absent from the novels which have brought him fame. And therein lies the enigma.

In the preface to his latest novel, Recompence, which is a sequel to Simon called Peter, Mr. Keable refers somewhat bitterly to the reception given to his first work by the religious press, although, he says, ‘it was written sincerely and simply as ever pen was set to paper.’ That may be,—but the assumption that he was a Catholic convert, made by his critics in the Anglican press, though untrue, was not unwarranted. Catholic critics, too, felt that his reverence and respect for their dogmas and practices savoured of impertinence, placed side by side with views of immorality all the more interesting in that they were unconventional. The secular press, without probing beneath the surface, welcomed the book as a piece of stark realism, an exposure of the degradation of moral values due to the war.