The daily worker. [volume], August 16, 1924, Magazine Supplement, Page 5, Image 9

About The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958

Image provided by: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, Urbana, IL

                
Idealism Versus History
TWO plays—one by a Fabian, one
* by a Communist —have recently
been produced In London; each Is the
epic of the struggle of a woman and
idealist with the world, and in both
her fate is to be dutifully executed by
quite polite State officials. But the
worlds of Shaw and of Toller are dif
ferent worlds; the characters in Saint
Joan are people drawn from the world
of mediaeval history; in Masse-Mensch
‘the protagonists, except Sonia,’ Tol
ler states, ‘are not individual charac
ters’—they are symbols representing
the forces that govern the world to
day, the world of the class-struggle In
its most brutal reality. Hence Toller
has a message for the working class,
and that is perhaps why the workers
have less opportunity of seeing Masse-
Mensch than Saint Joan. Not that
serious consideration can be given to!
the rash classification of Saint Joan
as Fascist, on the grounds that Shaw
accepts a philosophy of social despair
when he seems to depict the shabbi
ness of the powers that be merely by
contrast with the glorious courage
and perfect faith of one human being,
martyred without malice in her own
age, and canonized by humbugs in the
next.
Now whether Saint Joan be or be
not Shaw’s greatest work, it certainly
iB one of the finest historical plays
ever written —in the conventional
sense that an historical play is a
dramatization of a “true story” from
the history books; and Saint Joan is
nothing more. But in it Shaw’s stage
craft has so surpassed itself, and, in
the present production at the New
Theater, he is so nobly served by the
players, that the effect overwhelms
powers of criticism. The too subtle
critic, failing to discern that the secret
of Saint Joan is not in any obscuran
tist evasions but in its Homeric sim
plicity, seeks some explanation of
Shaw’s emphasis on the lives and
fates of half-legendary personalities,
diverting attention from his play’s un
questionable historical background of
social conflict —on the one side the
feudal aristocracy and the interna
tionalist Roman Catholic Church in al
liance with a foreign invader, and on
the other side a nationalist middle
class finding its ideological expression
in incipient Protestanism and personi
fied by Joan; and so into the play
wright’s incidental irony is read a
consistency of despair which is not
likely to be supported by Shaw’s
preface in the edition about to be pub
lished by Messrs. Constable —if indeed
there is any preference, other than the
brief historical note that appears on
the program at the New Theater.
Saint Joan might well stand without
one, because its epilogue, when the
ghosts of Joan, her persecutors from
hell, and a modern priest assemble to
the Dauphin in a dream, supersedes
the need for any prefatory argument.
If critics of the Left are to justify
the mediocrity of their own under
standing—a thing which the critics of
the Right never bother to do —and to
find the intellectual food of Fascism
In Saint Joan, how is the almost help
less pessimism of Masse-Mensch to be
Oreated? Masse-Mensch is more di
rectly a drama of class-war; the bour
geois critics have not attacked it, for
they have not understood it. There
is no criterion by which a unique ex
pression of genuine revolutionary art
■—that is, art created out of conscious
experience of the working-class revo
lution —can be judged by critics tim
orous of analyzing the meaning of a
conflict which the bourgeoisie would
prefer were ignored. Happily for the
“Heartbreak House” audiences who
attended the Stage Society’s perform
ances the political significance—the
“propaganda”—of Masse-Mensch is ob
scured by its pessimissm, a pessimism
natural in the circumstances in which
it was written, during October 1919,
when the author was in solitary con
finement in a cell at the fortress of
Niederschoefeld, Bavaria, beginnings
term of five years’ imprisonment for
the part he played as President of
the Munich Soviet in March of that
year. Masse-Mensch, says Toller In
his preface, which was written two
years later than the play itself in the
form of a note to the producer of the
Volksibuhne production at Berlin, “lit
erally broke out of me and was put
on paper in two days and a half.”
Masse-Mensch consists of seven
"pictures,” three of which are called
“dream pictures,” but the whole has
the effect of a nightmare by reason of
its “expressionist” form. It is ac
cepted as the masterpiece of expres
sionism, and, since it cannot be sup
posed that during those two-and-a-half
days Toller occupied himself with ex
periments in technique, it is evident
that that was the form he found most
adequate to his inspiration.
The picture opens in a workman’s
tavern where the general strike for
the morow is being planned. The
comrade of the working masses—the
woman, Sonia, wife of a State official
i _
Street Free!
. ' • -N.
By OSKAB KANEHL.
Street free.
In big crowd red banners wave.
Tramways respectfully still stay.
Loudly calls the Internationale:
People, hear the signal.
Street free.
Street free.
We have hunger. Look, we freeze.
In hired-barracks we must decease.
To toil as slave we have no mind.
We take our right, where we it find.
Street free.
Street free.
Up to the gardens, to the palaces.
Where they puff, where they are in fatness.
Where by race-horses and automobiles
Before prolets they live safe and still.
Street free.
Street free.
Up to the prisons, up to the keeps.
Where class-fighters pay for heroic deeds.
Out with them. Give free them at once.
Else we fetch them. With violence.
Street free.
Street free.
Who isn’t for us, is against us.
Who blocks our way, we will him rush.
Vanish and die, bankrupted bourgeoisie.
March up, proletarian army.
Street free.
—Translation, Paul Acel.
—is all strength: 'WfWUVRMP
I am ready.
With every breath power grows In me.
How I have longed and waited tor
this hour.
When heart’s blood turns to words
And words to action!
If I tomorrow sound the trumpet oi
Judgment
And if my conscience surges thru the
hall—
It is not I who shall proclaim the
strike;
Mankind is calling "Strike!” and Na
ture “Strike!"
My knowledge is so strong. The
masses
In resurrection, freed
From worthy snares woven by well
fed gentlemen,
Shall grow to be
The armies of humanity;
And with a mighty gesture
Raise up the invisible citadel of
peace. . . .
Who bears the flag, the Red Flag,
Flag of beginnings?
Workman. You. They follow you.
Such is the individual at the sum
mit of her strength, and yet, even so,
only strong enough to overcome the
ties of her own social class, personi
fied by her husband when he comes
to dissuade her from damaging his
! reputation, “the more that you will
; harm the Statfe as well as my career.”
i The urge you feel to help sooiety
> Can find an outlet in our circle.
! For instance,
i You could found homes for illegiti
mate children.
That is a reasonable field of action,
A Witness to the gentle nature which
you scorn.
Even your so-called comrade-workmen
i Despises unmarried mothers.
! In the next picture, the Stock Ex
change, bankers are bidding for
shares in a profitable investment, Na
- tional Convalescent Home, Ltd.
! _We call it
Convalescent Home
For strengthening the will to vic
tory!
In fact it is
State-managed brothel.
The curtain falls on a grotesque
i fox-trot danced by the bankers to
i raise money for charity.
In the third picture, the Masses,
MR. GANDHI’S SWAN SONG
(Contined from Page 4)
ant Schools, titles and mill-made
oth, would be forced to resign from
ie All-India Congress Committee,
his resolution, if carried, would auto
latically exclude the Swarajists from
>ower, and restore the leadership of
he Congress to the orthodox Non
o-operators.
The All-India Congress Committee
net at Ahmedabad— Mr. Gandhi’s
>wn province and seat of authority—
>n June 27, and continued its deliber
ations for three days. Mr. Gandhi
submitted his famous “self-denying
ordinance,” despite the heated opposi
tion of the Swarajists, and even that
of some of his own followers, who
vainly sought to reach a compromise
beforehand. It was a dramatic mo
ment; Mahatma Gandhi, the idol of
the Indian people, stood at bay, de
fied by the opposition within the con
gress ranks. It fell to the lot of the
Pundit Moti Lai Nehu to state the
case for the Swarajists:
“We decline to make a fetish of the
spinning wheel, or to subscribe to the
doctrine that only thru that wheel
can we obtain Swaraj. Discipline is
desirable, but it is not discipline for
the majority to expel the minority.
We are unable to forget our man-
5
By Arthur E. E. Reade
“from eternity imprisoned in the
abyss of towering towns,” are crying,
"Down with the factories! Down
with the machines!” The woman calls
the strike, and then the Nameless One
comes out of the Masses and calls for
arms:
The Woman. Hear me!
I will not have fresh murder.
The Nameless. Be silent, comrade.
What do you know?
I grant you feed our need,
But have you stood ten hours to
gether in a mine,
Your homeless children herded in
a hovel?
Ten hours in mines, evenings in
hovels.
This, day by day, the fate of
masses.
You are not Masses!
I am Masses!
Masses are fate.
The Masses in the Hall.
Are fate . . .
The Woman only consider,
Masses are helpless,
Masses are weak.
The Nameless. How blind you are!
Masses are master!
Masses are might!
The Masses in the Hall.
Are might!
The Woman. My feelings urge me
darkly—
But yet my conscience cries out;
. No!
Jhe Nameless. Be silent, comrade,
For the Cause!
The individual, his feelings and
conscience,
What do they count?
The Masses count.
Consider this
One single bloody battle; then
Forever peace.
The Woman. You—are—the Masses!
You —are —right!
But when the battle is joined,
Sonia tries to stop it, and the Masses
are crying, “Treason!” “Intelligent
sia!” “Let her be shot!” She is only
saved from the workmen by the sol
diery capturing the hall and all within
being taken prisoner.
The husband comes to the con
demned cell to congratulate her that
she is at any rate guiltless of murder.
“Guiltlessly guilty,” she replies.
The Husband. I warned you of the
Masses.
Who stirs the Masses, stirs up
Hell.
The Woman. Hell? Who created
Hell-
Conceived the tortures of your
golden mills
Which grind, grind out your profit,
day by day?
(Continued on Page 6)
hood and our self-respect, and to
that we are willing to submit to Mr.
Gandhi’s orders. The congress is a*
much ours as our opponents, and we
will return with a greater majority to
sweep away those who stand for this
resolution.”
With these words, Pundit Nehru
and Deshbandhu Das left the hall
taking with them fifty-five Swarajists.
One hundred and ten persons re
mained; when the resolution was put
to vote, it was carried by 67 for and
37 against, with six abstentions. This
apparent victory of the Gandhists is
merely apparent; had the Swarajists
remained in the hall, the resolution
would have been defeated by about
twenty votes.
As a result of this vote, Mr. Gan
dhi recognized defeat. After hurried
consultation with his followers, he
agreed to drop his resolution on com
pulsory spinning and the five fold boy
cotts, making it only advisory in na
ture, and with these and other con
cessions, the Swarajists were per
suaded to rejoin the session. Thus,
the defeat of orthodox Gandhism is
complete and final; the Swarajists
have won the day and Mr. Gandhi, as
leader of the Indian National strug
gle, has sung his swan-song.