Page:The Dial (Volume 75).djvu/652

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
556
RANDOLPH BOURNE

dolph Bourne during the war-time, was never caught by him and held in the shape of a formal statement of the democratic ideal. He died six weeks after the armistice; and throughout the greater part of the bitter months he was midmost, and not above the battle. It was only after The Seven Arts perished that Bourne, cut off from every channel of publicity, gave up his attempt to bring influence to bear on current events; and, going to work in the field of theory, made his deadly wonderful analysis of the State. Hence, most of his fighting was done on the practical level. The articles contributed by him to The Seven Arts were, for the most part, defences of what remained of the democratic machinery thrown up at single points of the fray. They were attempts made to save what remained of the democratic attitude through sharp pitiless analyses of the situation created by the failure of the intellectuals and of the administration to control the ruin-bringing war-technique. Through these brilliant sardonic pictures, Bourne was trying to call to their colours the forces which had once made for democracy; to rouse the intellectuals from the herd-attitudes into which they had collapsed; to try and re-channel the interest of the country into a national educational service from which the herd's need of a military victory had debouched it. The War and the Intellectuals was a call for mind; rejection of the pragmatist intellectuals with whom Bourne had previously been associated, for their failure to create a programme for America; demand for intellectuals, who could hold the authorities to a war, "gallantly played, with insistent care for democratic values at home, and unequivocal alliance with democratic elements abroad for a peace that shall promise more than a mere union of benevolent imperialisms." Twilight of Idols formulated Bourne's reasons for discarding pragmatism and all philosophy of intelligent control which does not begin with values and ideals—in time of stress permitting values to be subordinated to pure technique. Below the Battle was the description of the spiritual state of a friend of Bourne's, a young violinist drafted for military service. Through the texture, there runs, it is true, like the red thread through the rope-work of the British fleet, the glorification of the allure of "fresh and true ideas, free speculation, artistic vigour, cultural styles, intelligence suffused by feeling and feeling given fibre and outline by intelligence"; lodestars which draw the individual onward to completion. It is true that