Page:The Dial (Volume 76).djvu/140



ORE than once I must have revealed in these pages hints of my never fully detailed scheme for American dominance in the arts; and now I wish to drop another. The complete plan need not be divulged since to insist upon it to the last comma would smack of arbitrariness and as a matter of fact I modify my campaign to suit arising emergencies with the more ease since it is secret. Could I come out into the open—that is to say, were I king of these United States or monarch even of an income of a million a year—but that is the least I could do it on—I know that I could guarantee an atmosphere in this country that would produce artists within ten years. The lamented Guillaume II of Germany had that one virtue at least, that he was artist enough himself to see how necessary atmosphere is, and when the time comes to write dispassionately of him it will be allowed that he was practical in that direction. His artists were coming along by leaps and bounds just before the war and had not that accident happened he might have been known as the Lorenzo of his time. As it is he will be just plain Guillaume II; but as far as I know he is the only one of the recent or present rulers to have taken thought upon the subject.

Of course I am not fatuous enough to suppose that what we now call "a drive" can instantly produce geniuses in our midst. Of course I believe, as you do, that genius is the top-most apple on the apple tree in a good apple year; or in other words, is the child of circumstance. Without the circumstance we could not have had a Lincoln. Looking back the chain of events that leads to him seems inevitable. All greatness of that kind is inevitable or at least out of the ken of human beings however they may itch. In the civil war times, there were trifling persons, not unlike our student of Sarajevo, to strike the matches that illuminated all the potentialities we had for greatness. It's merely that I'm another of those persons with an itch. I don't throw bombs, but I'm for ever striking matches. And you must admit the times are ripe. We have the gold, you know and why shouldn't we have glory?

After this rather lurid preamble it may be a relief to know that