fine sensibility, and fine humour. They loved life; they loved their
fellow man; they loved all the beautiful, brave things of earth. When
you know them you can picture them scaling high mountains and singing
from the summits, or boating on fine rivers in the sunlight, or walking
about in the dawn, to the music of Creation, evolving the philosophy of
revolutions and building beautiful worlds. You get no hint of this from
the absurd propagandist play, yet this is what the heart of man craves.
When he does not get it, he cannot explain what he wants; but he knows
what he does not want, and he goes away and keeps his distance. The play
has missed fire, and the playwright and his hero are ridiculous. Let us
understand one thing: if we want to make men dutiful we must make them
joyous.


IV


It is because we must talk of grave things that we must preserve our
gaiety; otherwise we could not preserve our balance. By some freak of
nature, the average man strikes attitudes as readily as the average boy
whistles. We know how the _poseur_ works mischief to every cause, and we
can see the _poseur_ on every side. In politics, he has made the
platform contemptible, which is a danger to the nation, needing the
right use of platform; in literature--well, we all know bourgeois, but
who has done justice to the artist who gets on a platform to talk about
the bourgeois?--in religion, the _poseur_ is more likely to make
agnostics than all the Rationalist Press; and the agnostic _poseur_ in
turn is very funny. Now all these are an affliction, a collection of
absurdities of which we must cure the nation. If we cannot cure the
nation of absurdity we cannot set her free. Let it be our rule to