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THE GUN TEAM

BY KENNETH M'CRACKEN

[Edinburgh University Supplement, Scottish Chapbook]

LOUD o'er the city's murmur, 'midst the busy throng at noon,
I heard a clattering jingle, like an old familiar tune.
I turned, and shining glossy, steel a-glitter in the sun,
I saw a team of hairies and an eighteen-pounder gun.

I felt my pulses bounding, and my blood ran fast and free,
As down the breeze the hot horse-scent came in a wave to me.
And oh! my heart was longing for the gunner life again;
Those poplar-shaded horse-lines, on the poppy-sprinkled plain.

And oh! but I was wishing then to hear the trumpets blare
That crashing music 'stables,' and at 'feed' to see the air
Thick with the dust from standing hoofs, while tossing heads six score,
Shrill neighing, fiercely echoed back faint sounds of distant war.

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They rattled past — a moment (as I saw the gun glides gleam)
Before me flame-kissed muzzles leapt; with shriek, and dying scream,
As eastwards sped the shrapnel, and a sudden shattering roar
I gazed at city streets once more.

Of shell-bursts in my ears

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A PICTURE OF EVENING

BY ALBERT C. FROST

[Poetry (Birmingham)]

RUMBLING goes a wagon, with a sweet load of clover,
Jolting up the shoulder, and tilted 'gainst the sky;
Pearl-gray's the sunset and the hard day's over,
Quiet is the valley as the cart creaks by.

Dusky are the pine trees with a gray mist stealing.
Softly in the brushwood the breezes linger nigh.
Half-heard and mellow are the church bells pealing,
Far across the valley where the night winds sigh.

Down between the tree trunks, in the half-light and shadow,
Faintly shine the lamps where the hidden houses lie;
Dark gray and hazy, near the dim, dark meadow,
With a quiet peaceful plodding, the cart creaks by.

THE MIRTHFUL MONOSYLLABLE

THE 'new poetry' has its critics in the British Isles just as it has in the United States. The latest is Mr. R. A. Knox, whose book, Memories of the Future, 1915-1972, purports to be by one Lady Porstock. The book is based on the theory so sagely propounded by Alice in Wonderland: 'It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward.' Mr. Knox's memory is one of the superior kind that works both ways, and, by 'remembering' some of the things that the next fifty years are to behold, he contrives to be sufficiently amusing.

One of the things to which he particularly objects is the overfrequent introduction into poetry of the monosyllable that has always been so popular in the theatre. He quotes the Index of First Lines in a prospective anthology of 'Edwardian Poetry, 1960-1965'

a title which presupposes the accession to the throne of the present British Crown Prince. This is the section of the Index presented to our wondering gaze:

Damned in these mucky estuaries of hell
Damn her! Where did she get those saffron eyes
Damn him!

Damn him! What the

Damn it all, I've swabbed these beetle-squashers Damn kindness! damn faith! damn humanity! Damn silly? Yet if this damned silliness

A reviewer in the conservative Saturday Review remarks feelingly that this is 'excellent fooling, but for those who recall "Blast," scarcely amounting to parody!' This observation has a painful element of truth about it. Radical poets of the Sitwell tribe are quite capable of any of these lines, which they might regard, however, as conceding too much to tradition.

'BOOK PRICES CURRENT' IN FRANCE

LONDON'S complaints over the inroads made on British stores of rare books by wealthy American collectors will perhaps be silenced for a little while by the record price that has just been paid in Paris for a copy of a book by a living author. M. Anatole France is the writer to whom this dubious compliment has been paid. A special copy of his La Rôtisserie de la Reine Pédauque has just sold for 25,000 francs, which even at present exchange represents a round sum in Yankee dollars, especially when paid for a modern writer. The book, however, is so elaborate a specimen of the printers' and binders' arts that its price partly explains itself. The copy that has just changed hands is one of two printed on Whatman paper, and contains twenty-five original water-colors by Leroux and a double set of artists' proofs. It is in two folio volumes, and formed a part of the Freund-Deschamps Library which has been sold at auction.

Two other books brought high prices, one a copy of Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book, which had been valued at 5000 francs but actually brought 9350. This book, published in Paris three years ago, contains a series of artists' proofs. A copy of Théophile Gautier's Morte Amoureuse, which was published in 1904 with water-color drawings by Pierre Laurens, sold for 5000 francs.

THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE UNKNOWN PLAYWRIGHT

LONG and loud have been the wails of those who aspire to write plays, a classification which includes a fair proportion of the human race. They have complained of managerial prejudice, of readers' stupidity, of popular

lack of appreciation, and a great many other things, but at last a balm is to be applied to their wounds. Not in America, however. It is only the French aspirants who will receive much encouragement.

A number of distinguished dramatists, headed by Tristan Bernard, have arranged for a jury drawn from the ranks of the Society of Authors who will read plays submitted by unknown writers and select four each year as the most suitable for production. There is nothing to match the sang-froid of the gallant Frenchmen. These fearless authors proclaim their willingness to read any plays submitted.' It is a task at which the stoutest heart might fail.

Seventeen Paris theatres have promised their support. Each of the seventeen will produce a play selected by the committee of judges at least once in four years. The mathematics involved seem a little askew, but then, no dramatist ever was good at figures except the famous business man of Stratford who made such a good thing out of the Globe and the Blackfriars. The only element that has not been provided for so far is the French public and perhaps the critics, who do not always consent to follow humbly in the train even of the Society of Authors.

THE MENACE OF THE HISTORICAL HANDBOOK

A REVIEWER Whose identity is concealed behind the initials 'F. B.' indulges, in the columns of the New Statesman, in some strictures on the historical handbooks that have become a fad since Mr. Wells led the way with his best seller. The title of his article is 'More Potted History'- which was certainly not intended to soothe the author's feelings. It is easy to understand the feelings of the professional

historical students in the presence of works whose scope necessarily precludes detail and is not likely to favor complete accuracy, which is everywhere desirable.

At any rate, the short histories have given this writer an excellent opportunity to get rid of some venom which has obviously been long a-brewing. This is what he says:

Short histories of the world are becoming a menace. A new genre has been discovered and a flood of books is the result. Nor is it difficult to see why this should be the case. To write the history of England from 1685-1688 needs years of research, considerable intellectual effort and mental discipline. But to write the history of the world is a very different matter. All that is needed is some half-digested theory, round which can be woven a few carefully assorted facts and any number of hazy prejudices. Thus history becomes a 'criticism,' an interpretation' by a 'subtle,' 'sympathetic,' or 'inquiring' mind.

The authors of this particular book betray in their title the nature of their prejudices: for them a twentieth-century slumchild or a twentieth-century public-school boy is the heir of all the ages, born into a world which has in some esoteric manner been getting better and better every day in every way. Not for them is the painful possibility that history may be, after all, but a succession of events, some good, some bad, a catalogue of incidents, which it may sometimes be possible to diagnose, but upon none of which is it wise to construct a general philosophy.

CLOUDS IN CAPTIVITY

THE first English demonstration of the Schwabe-Hasait system of stagelighting in England took place soon after the installation of the new equipment at St. Martin's Theatre. The new invention marks a step forward toward complete illusion. It is conceivable that the expressionistic school may eventually turn it to their interpretive

uses, but at present it is a system of illusion carried to the nth degree.

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The trouble with the old stage skies was that they looked like what they painted canvas and usually pretty badly painted canvas at that. The new system abandons the plaster of the Kuppelhorizont in favor of the 'artificial horizon.' This is especially prepared white cloth filling up the whole rear of the stage and drawn along a rail by electric power. Upon this screen lamps throw solid color, so that the sky background can be varied from one time to another, from the blue of the. night, with stars shining through it,

through a whole gradation from dawn to noonday.

Still more, clouds can be projected on this mimic sky, and these clouds move not merely sideways but also upward. To quote Mr. Edward Shanks, assistant-editor of the London Mercury, who is also a well-known dramatic critic, they look exactly like clouds, and drift across the sky with precisely their aimless and majestic motion. The inventors have taken care to photograph clouds of every sort, so that cumulus, tumulus, and cirrus follow one another in meteorological procession across the stage.

However, this extremely interesting adjunct to the battery at the disposal of the stage realist has one or two grave defects. The clouds look exactly like real ones and move exactly like real ones, it is true, but unlike real ones they never change their shape. Moreover, the inventors have not yet provided a sufficient assortment, so that before the whole scene can be played through the successive clouds become unpleasantly familiar. As Mr. Shanks remarks: 'One cannot think that it would be conducive to concentration on the play for persons in the audience involuntarily to exclaim, "Hullo, here's Thomas the Tumulus again!"

Mr. Shanks, however, does not view the new invention with unalloyed approval, for, as he says:

I see, in fact, the clouds gathering on the Artificial Horizon for storms which will be unprecedented in our theatre and which may conceivably drown the drama before they have done. For the backcloth, like the rest of the scenery, according to whatever method it may be planned, is there only to satisfy the eye of the spectator, to create a sufficient delusion in him, and it should not attempt to do any more. Are we greatly inconvenienced by those old stationary clouds? I think not. Are we likely to be inconvenienced by these new

movable clouds? I think it quite likely that we may be.

The defects I have mentioned stand out and can hardly help catching the eyes of the spectators and, to some extent, irritating them. The spectacular excellences of the device may very well do the same. It is the old argument about elaborate scenery; but, I submit, the most elaborate scenery Tree and his compeers knew how to devise could not compare in distracting power with scenery that moves of its own motion. We may find a minor evil - I observed signs of it after last week's demonstration — in a general movement of dramatists to write plays with storms in them. But the more serious danger is that, in any play with a storm in it, the storm is very likely to escape from the picture and play the actors off the stage. There are, indeed, actors with whom this would be no great misfortune; but, on the whole, I think this danger raging the stage ought to be regarded with mistrust.

And further a storm is presumably not introduced into any play without some definite idea of dramatic effect: it will, therefore, bear a certain amount of emphasis. But in any scene placed out of doors the chances are that clouds will be moving peaceably overhead without any such capacity for bearing emphasis, but with an equal power for drawing away the minds of the audience. I do not say that the new method will invariably be misused in this manner: I do say that the temptation thus to misuse it will be very strong.

MONEY AND RESEARCH

'NEMO,' who writes several columns of comment critical and otherwise on the events of the day in the London Outlook, supports a recent plea put forth by Sir Ronald Ross for better payment of scientific workers.

'Nemo,' however, as usual has some thoughts of his own on the subject:

Sir Ronald Ross is obviously right in his plea for more adequate rewards for scientific discovery, and I wish him all success in his campaign. But I am very doubtful, for several reasons, whether he will make the necessary converts.

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In the first place, the benefactor of science is a rare bird — the average jam- or pickle-maker will leave a legacy to a hospital or his local church, but he has no more use for science than the French Revolutionaries or the Russian Bolsheviki. In the second place, when money is left for research it breeds a crowd of little men who discover little facts on little salaries; it catches the pot-hunter, the degree-maniac, the writer of textbooks, and the superior clerk who plays for safety, but it never lands the big fish, and the little fishes do not want it to else the tank might get uncomfortably crowded. In the third place, the State will not bother it trusts to luck. And if pushed, it would cynically instance the case of Sir Ronald Ross the discoverer against the argument of Sir Ronald Ross the advocate of justice. Sir Ronald Ross has, I suppose, saved more lives than any man living, and on a per capita grant of a penny each life he would be a wealthy man. But I believe his reward came in the shape of praise, not pudding. And Whitehall expects the next man to do the same. Probably he will.

TWO NEW POETRY MAGAZINES

Two poetry magazines, little known in America and not very well known in their own country, are represented on A Page of Verse this week. Poetry, though identical in name, has no rela

tion to Miss Harriet Monroe's little Chicago magazine which has so long led the van in the United States.

The Scottish Chapbook, likewise, has no connection with another poetry magazine published by another Monro

Mr. Harold Monro's Chapbook, a product of the Poetry Bookshop, London. The Scottish Chapbook is published in Edinburgh, and the influence of the University there is writ large across its pages. It almost makes one think that Scottish poetry would have been a good deal better if Allan Ramsay and Robert Burns had never written. A genius can write poems in dialect — but when the genius is dead and gone, lesser men arise who perpetrate stanzas like

Muckle men wi' tousled beards,
I grat at as a bairn

'Il scramble frae the croodit clay
Wi' feck o' swearin'.

An' glower at God an' a' his gang O' angels i' the lift

- Thae trashy bleezin' French-like folk Wha gar'd them shift!

Fain the weemun-folk 'll seek
To mak' them haud their row

- Fegs, God's no blate gin he stirs up The men o' Crowdieknowe!

which are not likely to displace the laurels now resting on Bobbie Burns's brow.

A section of the magazine is devoted to 'Edinburgh University Verse, 1922– 23,' in which five young men are allowed to have their say, very much in the manner of undergraduates the world over. Mr. Kenneth M'Cracken is the best of the lot. In his 'The Gun Team,' which we reprint, he does at least capture a mood and contrive a rhythm to fit it.

'A Picture of Evening' is a prize poem in Poetry's half-yearly competition for schools. The author is a fifteenyear-old boy, a student in the Carlisle Grammar School.

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