'MUST WE BURN DOWN THE LOUVRE?' 'MUST we burn down the Louvre?' inquires L'Esprit Nouveau, a new French art journal with pronounced Futurist leanings and in its sixth number prints the replies of the artists of Paris. A few of them take the inquiry seriously enough to respond at length, indignantly condemning the proposal; but most of them, even the advocates of tradition, enter into the spirit of the occasion to such a degree that the last eight pages of the magazine crackle even more than a conflagration in an art museum.

M. André Lévy, at the close of a long æsthetic defense of the museum, reminds the artistic incendiaries that "The fear of the gendarme is the beginning of wisdom.'

Perhaps there is some doubt about the entire sincerity of M. D. Kakabadze, who replies to the editor, 'Burn it down? Why? A museum, like a cemetery, is a guardian of the past'; and also of M. Solé de Sojo, who writes emphatically, 'No, nothing but "La Jaconde" [Mona Lisa].'

Of course the ateliers of Paris swell the gay chorus in favor of the instant destruction of the famous museum:

'Of course, and the Lafayette Galleries too!'

'What! Has n't it been done yet, while we're talking?'

'Burn the Louvre? Why not destroy the Pyramids, too?'

'Certainly the Louvre must be burned! Not one stone must remain upon another. Let's have a glorious cremation and throw the ashes into the Seine.' ""Ought one burn the Louvre?" Be

yond a doubt. And with it all the his toric monuments.'

'You can't burn the Louvre. But let's dynamite the Grand-Palais as soon as possible.'

'I see no need of burning the Louvre, but we ought to set up a stake there and reduce all imbeciles to ashes.'

'I think it would be better to sell our national collection to pay our national debt. There is a people possessing the necessary qualifications- total lack of comprehension, together with a kind of temperament; and a sufficient purchas ing power. America- what do you think? Isn't she destined to acquire the Louvre?'

'It would be a little hasty to burn the Louvre. The antiquities as the flames licked them might murmur among themselves, "These moderns are de cidedly short on invention. We used to know all about this sort of thing.""

ALTHOUGH Only meagre reports have so far reached the United States, it seems fairly clear that Hakon Boerresen's opera Kaddara, presented a short time ago at the Royal Theatre, Copenhagen, is an unusual work of real significance and in some respects unique. The scene is laid in Greenland, Eskimo costumes are used, and the lights of the aurora borealis play over the stage dur ing the production. Arctic explorers who have seen the opera praise the fidelity of these effects.

The new opera has true musical merits as well as novelties in scenery, stag ing, and setting. The music is said to be vigorous, virile, and typically Scandin

avian. Reviewing the initial performance, the critic of the Dagens Nyheder of Copenhagen said:

'Awaited with keen anticipation, Hakon Boerresen's Greenland opera at last made its appearance at the Royal Theatre, last evening. Its success was most pronounced, for the composer here reveals the talent which, already displayed conspicuously in his The Royal Guest of last season, in the present work occupies a much larger field. It is really astonishing to witness this certainty in treatment of what may be considered Boerreson's Opus I in the dramatic-musical domain. The identical command over available means that he displayed at his debut as a symphony composer is with him now that he takes hold of the music drama.

Very properly Kaddara is called 'Sketches from the Folk Life in Greenand." In the four pictures unrolled before the spectator, joy and merrynaking, baseness, and sentimental outpourings follow each other in rapid sucession. The music accompanying the arrival of the kayaks at the boat-landing nd the "Flensing Dance" is fresh and enticing. The same may be said of the Hunting Dance," and it is not until the atter part of the third act that real disnalness sets in. After that comes the ulminating effect in the "Witch Dance" here the orchestra does magnificent ork and reaches almost incomparable eights of perfection.

"The costuming has much to do with he general effect of this opera. There even the little detail of red ribbons ed around the top of the hair of unarried women, blue ribbons for the arried, and black for widows!

"The second act takes place in the ome of the widows. Mrs. Lamprecht kes the part of a somewhat fantastic other who bemoans the fact that her aughter has not been able to announce new engagement for the long space of

a week! The young lady, who does not wonder that a sensible mother feels angry over such a trick of fate, immediately begins to employ sorcery and presto! Wiedemann as Ujarak presents himself.

'He comes with such a rush that his kayak actually covers some twenty feet of solid ground before coming to a stop. At once the old mamma asks the visitor to make himself at home by removing his garments. In Greenland that is really done on such an occasion and during the rest of the act Wiedemann appears naked to the waist. He entirely forgets his former wife and marries the enchantress.

'In the following act Ujarak tires of his new find and his mother-in-law whose face resembles nothing so much as a piece of worn rubber used for erasing. The young woman, however, does not give up so easily and begins a séance in order to retain him with the aid of the spirits, but not even the ghost of Napoleon is able to hold him back. He goes. One may call this a transposition of Tannhauser to Greenland's shores.

'Hakon Boerresen had Kaddara ready for presentation almost four years ago, but on account of the war and the retrenchments thus made necessary at the Royal Theatre, the management of the great playhouse on the King's New Market could not present it. It was decided to let the matter rest until better times arrived. This was unpleasant for the composer, and in order to offset his disappointment somewhat he was asked to write a shorter opera which could be produced at once and at less expense.

'It was then that Boerresen got Svend Leopold to furnish him with a libretto based on a story by Henrik Pontoppidan. The result was The Royal Guest, sung for the first time on November 15, 1919. So far as the composer was concerned, then, Kaddara was his Opus 2 in music drama.'

AN ENGLISH ́SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY' Two American best-sellers of the last five years have dealt in realistic fashion with the life in small towns- The Spoon River Anthology and the more recent Main Street. Now comes an English writer, Mr. Bernard Gilbert, with Old England, a series of character sketches each a few lines in length, which he further elucidates with the title, A God's-Eye-View of a Village. The sketches are soon to appear in book form, though now running serially in The English Review. The work is presumably intended as a poem - at least the lines are of varying length and a lenient critic would be likely to call them 'free verse' and let it go at that.

Mr. Gilbert prefaces his poems with a few paragraphs by way of first aid to his readers, in which he intimates that, although Balzac failed to depict the France of his day, he himself has been able to set forth in a kind of literary instantaneous photograph, the exact state of a representative English village as it might in one moment be seen by the eye of God.

"To do this,' says Mr. Gilbert, 'I had to freeze my unit and exhibit it motionless. To show it in action would take as many novels as there are characters.'

Accordingly there is no action, and no hero, heroine, or villain, nor is one character any more important than another. Mr. Gilbert merely endows his reader with omniscience as regards the affairs of a village of 1500 souls, so that everything occurring is present to his mind at once. The 'instant' selected is a moment in one day-any day'toward the end of the German War.'

Mr. Gilbert disclaims any relation to the Spoon River Anthology which, 'though a strong and immensely striking work, is only a series of detached epitaphs,' for he explains that Mr. Masters 'made no attempt to present a

community,' - a statement which may be open to question. Mr. Gilbert drew most of his inspiration from Bunyan, Defoe, and Landor, and found little help in Mr. Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts or in Crabbe's Borough, both of which he examined while in quest of models. Having looked for predecessors and found none, he regards himself as the creator of the 'static form' in fiction.

Each of the series of character studies bears for title the name of the individual whom it pictures, and is preceded by a brief summary, much in the style of Who's Who, certainly a new model in literature. The first sketch is devoted to the Earl of Fletton. A few of the other titles will give a general idea of the character of the work:

IV. Laura Cook. (Albert's sister. Age 38. Spinster. Lives with father. Salvation Army. Liberal.)

IX. Josef Borkman. (Clock-maker. Age

X.

37. Married. Roman Catholic. Lodges with Harkers.)

Young' Lord Fitz. (Earl's second son. Age 19. Unmarried. Church of England. Conservative. Home on leave.) XIII. Jesse Munks. (Pedlar. Age 38. Bachelor. Primitive Methodist. Labor. Bob Cutts's agent for Fletton. Lodges with the Atkinses.)

XXVI. Grandfather Waddy. (Old-age pensioner. Age 92. Widower. Atheist. Labor.)

XXXIX. 'Captain' Jameson. (Salvation Army officer. Age 43. Married. Conservative. Lodges with Albert Cook.) CXXXIX. Mrs. Joseph Toynbee. Née Dring. Age 40. Primitive Methodist Labor. Fourteen children, all living.)

In spite of the author's disclaimer, the work is strongly reminiscent of Spoon River. The method and the subject matter are identical, and the sordid atmosphere which permeates both books is very similar, though in Old England it has almost no relief. There

were at least a few fine fellows in the graves at Spoon River, but Fletton Village is not so fortunate. In Mr. Gilbert's eyes, it is populated exclusively by fools and rogues.

THE SPECTATOR' AND MR. GEORGE ADE

MORE in sorrow than in anger - and perhaps a little bit in mirth - the London Spectator has reviewed Mr. George Ade's Home-Made Fables. The article is headed 'The English Language,' though the reason for the title is by no means obvious, since the anonymous reviewer makes it quite clear that what Mr. Ade writes is, if not Greek, at least American to him. But he consoles himself with the reflection that 'New words and phrases generally begin their career with a kind of apologetic giggle; they are used for comic effects and in inverted commas for a long time before we will allow them to have any grave import, and perhaps this is particularly true of American folk ways of speech.'

Presently, however, when this illfated reviewer essays himself to employ these devious American folk ways of speech, they quite overpower him.

He comments on the following remarkable sentence from Mr. Ade's pen: "For several hours out of every twentyfour he would have the right Fin wrapped around Nymphs who were flossy beyond Compare,' and grows positively lyric in his enthusiasm. Nothing will do but he himself must employ so piquant an idiom.

'A peach of a sentence!' he cries* ""Flossy Nymph" is admirable.'

In the end he becomes apprehensive, and the concluding paragraph finds Mr. Ade's linguistic feats condemned: 'Horrible jargon! Perhaps fastidious readers will complain.'

Not this one! The review was better than the Fables.

THE CAMBRIDGE 'PAVEMENT CLUB'

WITH the laudable purpose of lending 'verisimilitude to the rapidly disappearing illusion that university life is a life of leisure,' undergraduates at Cambridge University have organized the 'Pavement Club.' The Club meets at noon every Saturday, if the weather is fair, upon any centrally situated pavement, where the members sit in quiet conversation, perhaps reading newspapers aloud, playing marbles, doing a little knitting, or whiling away the hours by similar expedients which present themselves readily enough to the fertile undergraduate brain.

So great was the rush to join the first meeting of the Club, held on King's Parade, Cambridge, that the 'premises' of the Club had to be extended from the pavement to the road, and traffic diverted to another street. In the midst of the organization ceremonies, the Senior Proctor, the chief disciplinary officer of the University, appeared on the scene. No whit abashed, the members of the Club retained their seats on the pavement and, being still in need of a chief executive, elected the amazed official as their President!

[From the Russian]

BY ETHEL DESBOROUGH

[Dublin Review]

WINTER is near, the golden leaves Lie on the ground in wind-swept

sheaves,

The scarlet berries light us still As you and I go down the hill:

Go down the hill, while stars grow bright,

And hand-in-hand we meet the night:
Tears in my eyes you cannot see,
But let my silence speak for me.

THE RABBITS

BY ROBERT A. F. NICHOLL

[The London Mercury]

CREEPING down with careful tread
Lest I crackled the leaves dead
Or snapped the crisp twigs scattered
And made my presence known;
In a field that had grown hay
I came upon them there, and they,
Hearing not me, cropped away
Where aftergrass had grown.
Stealthily I cocked my gun,
Whistled loud to make them run,
Fired twice, and made one
Roll and tumble over!

When the sound had sunk in air
All were gone, the field was bare,
Save my dead one lying there -
One had lost a lover! . . .
One that in her cave below,
Stiff ears listening, eyes aglow,
Trembling, waited me to go,
My steps to pass along.
Till their thunder ebbed away,
Crouching, terrified she lay;
Till light died, and in the gray
Broke a bird's song.

AROUND the circus of my mind
The glittering thought-ponies go.
The great Ring-master cracks his whip
And puts them through their show.

BY H. T. V. BURTON

[The University Magazine] THREE steps behind the castle wall The grass grows green to the river's brim.

One moment late he stepped aside; So that's the way that dead men

He stood so straight when he swore I lied,

Sable and scarlet, slim and trim; And now there's the world for me - to hide And the clasp of the wet green grass