Warnings or Prophecies?

What would you say if I told you that two well respected American military commanders gave grave warnings against the buildup of military forces in America? What if I explained that both of these men went on to become President of the United States? And what if I then told you that these two men were George Washington and Dwight D. Eisenhower? Would you believe what they had to say? Two of our greatest generals and most beloved presidents warned this nation of the potential dangers to the Union should we allow the military to become too powerful in this country. Interestingly, both warnings came in the form of a farewell address to the nation as they left the office of president. These warnings have consistently been ignored over the past fifty years with the result being a constant state of armed conflict across the globe to protect American "interests".

Fortunately, it appears that someone actually listened to Ike when he insisted, "Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together". Eugene Jarecki's recent documentary, Why We Fight, explores some of the reasons why America has been involved in so many conflicts over the past fifty to sixty years. Jarecki's narrative begins with Eisenhower's farewell address in which he stated that "unwarranted influence…by the military-industrial complex" could "endanger our liberties or democratic processes". The full weight of this prophesy has only recently been realized with such legislation as the Patriot Act, and congress's resolution giving the president unprecedented authority to wage war at his discretion. Jarecki's narrative becomes powerful as he intertwines Eisenhower's words with C-SPAN footage of congress's resolution. The cause and effect can clearly be seen.

Key differences exist, however, between Eisenhower's address, Washington's address and Jarecki's documentary. Washington was the most extreme of the three, warning the people quite sternly of the dangers of even holding a standing national army. He studied the many armed conflicts that continued to spring up in Europe over the previous two thousand years. Drawing from this knowledge of military history and his own experiences in both the French-Indian War and American Revolution, Washington beseeches the people to "avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty". Eisenhower acknowledged the necessity of a strong military establishment to both deter future threat and protect from imminent dangers in a modern world. Jarecki's narrative only shows the extreme lengths to which the military-industrial complex will go to subvert democracy and generate a continuing state of war.

Jarecki edits out some of the more compelling arguments Eisenhower makes for balance in the military, focusing his attention almost exclusively on Ike's warning against the overreaching buildup of military forces. While this selective quoting favors Jarecki's documentary of the consequences of military excess and collusion with government and industry, it does disservice to both Eisenhower and Jarecki's argument. Susan King, writing for the Los Angeles Times, interviewed Jarecki for her article "Warnings of War". She writes, "[Jarecki] says he's passing Eisenhower's warnings on to Americans 'so they can take stock and be vigilant to the dangers to our democracy implicit in the military-industrial complex and more broadly in the kind of imperial direction that this country is heading'". What he conveniently glazes over is Eisenhower's firm belief that a strong military would be necessary to protect America in a modern world. It may be that Jarecki feels the argument for a strong military has been made time and time again in our culture over the past fifty years and does not need to be rehashed. However, the absence of these parts of Eisenhower's speech from the documentary tended to give the entire film an anti-military, anti-industry slant. Clearly, Eisenhower was not either of these.

I found some of the economic comments and Eisenhower's warnings against the federalization of scholarly activities compelling. One powerful line from Ike's address in particular finds itself dropped on Jarecki's editing room floor: "We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations". Jarecki portrays another of Eisenhower's speeches that puts in very finite terms the cost of modern warfare:

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine fully equipped hospitals. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

Bruce Kauffmann finds the same resonant message of balance in Eisenhower's address in his recent article "'Ike' got it right in farewell address; He knew how the U.S. military fit in the world". Published in the Telegraph – Herald, Kauffmann points out, "A careful reading of this address reveals that Eisenhower's remarks were actually quite balanced". He further explains, "What really concerned Eisenhower was that America was entering uncharted territory with respect to the size of the military and its influence on national life and its cost". The material cost of war has only increased since 1961.

I find it extremely fascinating that two of the clearest military critics were two of its most esteemed and famous generals. We have ignored, as a society, two of our greatest military minds, two of America's greatest heroes, and we pay the price daily in American blood, world respect, and economic stability. Perhaps Eugene Jarecki provides us with no solutions to this apparent problem in foreign policy because no clear solutions readily present themselves.

I commend Mr. Jarecki for attempting to follow the legacy of George Washington and Dwight D. Eisenhower and educate the citizens who must make informed choices and act upon them if we are to back away from this precipice of self-destruction we are currently rushing headlong toward. I fear his work may be too little, too late. When will the price of war become too high even for Americans to bear? Unfortunately, the defense industry now dominates our economy and industrial base. Weapons are one of the few remaining hard goods America still manufactures domestically. A reduction in defense spending now will almost assuredly lead to recession, perhaps even full-blown depression. And if it does, we deserve it. We failed to listen to the voices of reason in our own country. Economic decline may be the only way this country will awake from its war-induced stupor and recognize how far we have strayed, as a culture, from the values of our founding fathers.

Are we even asking the right questions?

Raymond Kurzweil, inventor of the Kurzweil electric piano and renowned thinker, believes that, with the aide of genetic engineering and nanorobotics, man might achieve immortality in his own lifetime. Simultaneously bounding with possibilities for good and evil, genetic technology raises some critical socio-ethical questions over who should control both the knowledge and application of a technology that promises, according to Kurzweil, to usher in the next phase of human evolution on earth. Perhaps another question needs to be answered first: should mankind even be allowed to possess this technology?

Some of the greatest technological advancements in human history have been used as instruments of oppression, war, and death. Some modern examples include nuclear, demolition, and biochemical technologies. One of the earliest genetic researchers was Dr. Josef Mengele, the now-infamous Nazi physician at the Auschwitz death camp. Where will we draw the line with regards to acceptable application of genetic and cloning technology? Will the rewards of using the technology outweigh the costs? Scientists may cure diseases and severe injury with this technology, but it may also be used by less noble minds as a twenty-first century ethnic cleansing. Instead of killing the ethnic minorities, their genetic diversity will be removed, quietly, from all future generations of children. After fifty years, ethnic cleansing is completed forever.

These questions must be answered before any particular argument for or against cloning and genetic technology moves me to its cause. I fear these questions may require more time to answer than the development of the actual technologies. If that happens, any decisions we may come to as a people could already be too late.

I yell at the refs

The air has grown grisp, the skies are drifting toward gloom, turkey day is around the corner and that all means...FOOTBALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh it's here, baby. Oh yes, it's truly, truly football season now. The BCS is simultaneously shaping up, and from what I can tell, there's a lot of people who are ready to just ship it out. I'm one of them. I've always been an advocate of a NCAA Football Tournament. College football needs a playoff to decide a true national champion. The conferences have all come up in play over the past ten years, the Pac-10, ACC, and Big-12 being most notable. There's just too many great teams out there these days to let a bunch of computers, some coaches, and the media crown a national champion. Times have changed, so needs the NCAA. They've done a tremendous marketing job with the men's college basketball tournament, March Madness, the Final Four, and so on. Great job, now time to turn your eye toward a football tournament.

Security or SECURE(minor)ITY?

What price would you pay for security? Is it more just to punish the innocent for the sake of the guilty or free the guilty for the sake of the innocent? Mankind has asked these questions since he first collected in social units. One of the oldest stories in the Bible shows Abraham literally haggling with God to spare the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah if but ten righteous people lived in the population. All societies struggle to find the best answer for these questions.

Michelle Malkin seems particularly interested in tackling these and similar questions in her new book In Defense of Internment, an investigation into World War II internment camps in America. I am very pleased to see the mainstream media posing questions about the balance between civil liberty and national security. We both desire to live in a country that is free and safe. Even more pleasing is her decision to investigate the American internment camps during World War II, a topic too rarely examined in the American consciousness. I sincerely hope that her book, and the facts that she presents, will spark a debate in the public forum on how and why we detain people during wartime.

I concede that the government was attempting to protect both their military assets and civilians on the west coast during this time. There were numerous attacks on the U.S. and Canadian homeland during the months after Pearl Harbor and leading up to the internment of Japanese and Europeans. The government feared imminent invasion of North American by the Japanese during 1942. However, I believe justice and personal liberty are among the most important and cherished values of our society. The Declaration of Independence states that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." I also agree with Benjamin Franklin when he asserted, "that it is better [one hundred] guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer."

Innocent Americans, Japanese, and Europeans suffered during their relocation to American internment camps in World War II. Many lost property that was never fully recovered, if recovered at all. I want to live in a safe America just like Michelle Malkin, and I do agree that the government has a responsibility to protect its people, both from external and internal threat. I am also certain, though, that we can find alternative methods of protecting ourselves that do not require the government to suspend the rights that so many brave men and women have fought and died to secure for over two hundred years.

One

I find it interesting at times how our decisions in life, especially in the areas of language and identity, can have very different effects within our social groups. The language I use puts one group at ease and divides me against another. I suppose there will never be a time when a person can be at perfect peace and harmony with all they come in contact with. I think it is for this reason I rather despise political correctness. Honestly, is there really any sense in attempting to avoid conflict and offense? At some point, everyone makes decisions that define their own identity and that, in turn, creates acceptance within some social groups and conflict within others.

A perfect example of this dynamic tension can be found in the film version of Bryce Courtenay’s The Power of One. Peekay’s ability to speak all the major languages of South Africa creates a greater respect and acceptance among the Africans while simultaneously creating mistrust and dividing him against the Afrikaners. Despite his attempts to walk the tightrope of social acceptance between both cultures, neither the Afrikaners nor the Africans allow him neutrality. In the end, he is forced to make difficult decisions and choose which culture he will stand with and be counted among.

At the beginning of the film, Peekay is taught that he is English by his mother. This identity, not one of his own making but one given him by blood, quickly creates problems for Peekay as he enters an Afrikaner school. Tormented by his peers because of his ethnicity, Peekay does not succumb to self hatred and guilt but rises above to create for himself a new identity. With the help of Dabula Manzi, a Zulu medicine man, Peekay begins to identify himself as a part of nature, outside the confines of blood and ethnicity. This perspective of seeing himself as more than merely English but recognizing himself as a force of the planet helps him transcend the racial and ethnic boundaries so many of the other characters find themselves entrapped within. This identity that transcends blood and race creates a man who finds common ground amongst many. It allows Peekay to move easily between all races and ethnicities.

This self perception finds reinforcement when Peekay leaves the Afrikaner school and begins living with Doc. Doc teaches Peekay to look to nature and the Earth for all his answers, aiding this growing universalist realization of man as a part of nature, entirely outside of tribe, color, and language. While in prison, this universalist identity begins to take true form. With the help of Geel Piet, Peekay helps the African pisoners transcend their own tribes and work together. He ends the tensions between the tribes and they work in harmony and peace for a common purpose. In the process, Peekay becomes the Rainmaker to the tribes, a mythical envoy sent by the gods to provide rain and life for all the people. It is a title that transcends tribe. Peekay’s identity as a force of nature confirmed. Never again does he allow race or tribe to dictate his actions, limit his choices. But these decisions always have consequences.

Peekay’s freedom from the confines of ethnic identity acts as a catalyst for other characters in the film. This catalyst nearly always creates conflict, however, as the people around him are awakened to the possibility of identity outside of ethnicity. For Maria, Peekay is a force of personal revelation. She realizes her own understanding of reality to be quite lacking and chooses to explore this newfound knowledge at the expense of her relationship with her own family and eventually her own life. For Duma, this freedom becomes the seed of hope he will plant within his people to help them transcend their own condition. Peekay’s freedom inspires Hoppie to act boldly in defiance of the government and culture, even going so far as to display mixed race boxers together openly on the doors of his gym, an action that gets him imprisoned and his gym burned.

Whenever a person chooses an identity independent of social normality, that person forces all those who come into contact with them to make choices about their own identity. These choices tend to have one of two outcomes, either to free that person from their own self perceptions or to push that person further into their own existing self identity. Either way, this almost inevitably creates conflict both internally to that person and externally within the social groups to which that person belongs. Liberation, in all its forms, seldom comes without conflict.

Day 10: Life is a Tree

Ever notice how life is a lot like a tree? It grounds itself deep in the earth, supported by the work of countless roots that can never be easily seen without digging up the entire tree. Like our families and those who influence us, support us and sustain us. Those who have come before us who unknowingly shaped our consciousness by their countless decisions passed down in the genetic code to help make us who we are and who we will become.

The trunk leaves the ground solid and strong and yearns for the sky, seeking the closest path to the light. Few branches leave the trunk low to the ground, much as in our childhood our choices were limited yet we had no care. The only thing that dominates our thoughts as children is reaching upward, reaching for the sky and the light and all that is to come, all we cannot perceive yet sense just beyond the horizon of our being.

As we enter into adulthood, we reach the first branches of our life and they are mighty ones with many additional branches in each direction. Their choices take us in many directions but the light is still somewhat obscured by the higher branches. We begin to catch glimpses of the sky and sun and we race ever more quickly toward the edges, the outskirts of our being, testing the strength of our trunk and the limits of our existence.

We enter middle age and find our branches growing shorter and fewer, yet the choices seem much more clear. We feel so much nearer the sky now and we can begin to make out the form of the sun quite well. We can look down at the ground and realize how high we've risen and it can be frightening at moments, especially as the wind begins to sway our trunk, grown now somewhat thinner. We begin to perceive the dangers we never believe on the lower branches. Still, the heights call and we must continue toward the light.

Toward the top of the tree, branches are very short and few, like our choices. But at those heights, the sky comes fully into view and the sun graces us with abundant life. The wind sways us, sometimes wildly, but we have such a marvelous view of all that is around us. We can see the entirety of our life stretching out below us and recognize the results of those many decisions. The climb can be weary, though, and we must content ourselves in ourselves recognizing it's far too difficult to climb back down the tree. Much easier to jump into the heavens.

Yet at every point, we are still that tree. Just something I was thinking about today.

Day 9: George MacDonald

I pulled out some of my old George MacDonald books today and was once again struck with his insight and brilliance. It's no wonder C.S. Lewis referred to him as his "master", a mentor he only once met. MacDonald influenced an entire generation of writers and certainly has had a phenomenal influence on me. I decided to post here for you his introductory essay, "The Fantastic Imagination". This essay on the nature of art and imagination and the fairytale has been like a plumbline for me in many of my writings. I hope it inspires you as it has always inspired me. Bless!

The Fantastic Imagination

by George MacDonald

Introduction from The Light Princess and other Fairy Tales, also reprinted in a Dish of Orts.

That we have in English no word corresponding to the German Märchen, drives us to use the word Fairytale, regardless of the fact that the tale may have nothing to do with any sort of fairy. The old use of the word Fairy, by Spenser at least, might, however, well be adduced, were justification or excuse necessary where need must.

Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine: that is a fairytale; then read this and that as well, and you will see what is a fairytale. Were I further begged to describe the fairytale, or define what it is, I would make answer, that I should as soon think of describing the abstract human face, or stating what must go to constitute a human being. A fairytale is just a fairytale, as a face is just a face; and of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful.

Many a man, however, who would not attempt to define a man, might venture to say something as to what a man ought to be: even so much I will not in this place venture with regard to the fairytale, for my long past work in that kind might but poorly instance or illustrate my now more matured judgment. I will but say some things helpful to the reading, in right-minded fashion, of such fairytales as I would wish to write, or care to read.

Some thinkers would feel sorely hampered if at liberty to use no forms but such as existed in nature, or to invent nothing save in accordance with the laws of the world of the senses; but it must not therefore be imagined that they desire escape from the region of law. Nothing lawless can show the least reason why it should exist, or could at best have more than an appearance of life.

The natural world has its laws, and no man must interfere with them in the way of presentment any more than in the way of use; but they themselves may suggest laws of other kinds, and man may, if he pleases, invent a little world of his own, with its own laws; for there is that in him which delights in calling up new forms--which is the nearest, perhaps, he can come to creation. When such forms are new embodiments of old truths, we call them products of the Imagination; when they are mere inventions, however lovely, I should call them the work of the Fancy: in either case, Law has been diligently at work.

His world once invented, the highest law that comes next into play is, that there shall be harmony between the laws by which the new world has begun to exist; and in the process of his creation, the inventor must hold by those laws. The moment he forgets one of them, he makes the story, by its own postulates, incredible. To be able to live a moment in an imagined world, we must see the laws of its existence obeyed. Those broken, we fall out of it. The imagination in us, whose exercise is essential to the most temporary submission to the imagination of another, immediately, with the disappearance of Law, ceases to act. Suppose the gracious creatures of some childlike region of Fairyland talking either cockney or Gascon! Would not the tale, however lovelily begun, sink once to the level of the Burlesque--of all forms of literature the least worthy? A man's inventions may be stupid or clever, but if he does not hold by the laws of them, or if he makes one law jar with another, he contradicts himself as an inventor, he is no artist. He does not rightly consort his instruments, or he tunes them in different keys. The mind of man is the product of live Law; it thinks by law, it dwells in the midst of law, it gathers from law its growth; with law, therefore, can it alone work to any result. Inharmonious, unconsorting ideas will come to a man, but if he try to use one of such, his work will grow dull, and he will drop it from mere lack of interest. Law is the soil in which alone beauty will grow; beauty is the only stuff in which Truth can be clothed; and you may, if you will, call Imagination the tailor that cuts her garments to fit her, and Fancy his journeyman that puts the pieces of them together, or perhaps at most embroiders their button-holes. Obeying law, the maker works like his creator; not obeying law, he is such a fool as heaps a pile of stones and calls it a church.

In the moral world it is different: there a man may clothe in new forms, and for this employ his imagination freely, but he must invent nothing. He may not, for any purpose, turn its laws upside down. He must not meddle with the relations of live souls. The laws of the spirit of man must hold, alike in this world and in any world he may invent. It were no offence to suppose a world in which everything repelled instead of attracted the things around it; it would be wicked to write a tale representing a man it called good as always doing bad things, or a man it called bad as always doing good things: the notion itself is absolutely lawless. In physical things a man may invent; in moral things he must obey--and take their laws with him into his invented world as well.

"You write as if a fairytale were a thing of importance: must it have meaning?"

It cannot help having some meaning; if it have proportion and harmony it has vitality, and vitality is truth. The beauty may be plainer in it than the truth, but without the truth the beauty could not be, and the fairytale would give no delight. Everyone, however, who feels the story, will read its meaning after his own nature and development: one man will read one meaning in it, another will read another.

"If so, how am I to assure myself that I am not reading my own meaning into it, but yours out of it?"

Why should you be so assured? It may be better that you should read your meaning into it. That may be a higher operation of your intellect than the mere reading of mine out of it: your meaning may be superior to mine.

"Suppose my child ask me what the fairytale means, what am I to say?"

If you do not know what it means, what is easier than to say so? If you do see a meaning in it, there it is for you to give him. A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you. If, again, you do not know a horse when you see it, the name written under it will not serve you much. At all events, the business of the painter is not to teach zoology.

But indeed your children are not likely to trouble you about the meaning. They find what they are capable of finding, and more would be too much. For my part, I do not write for children, but for the childlike, whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.

A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it not an allegory. He must be an artist indeed who can, in any mode, produce a strict allegory that is not a weariness to the spirit. An allegory must be Mastery or Moorditch.

A fairytale, like a butterfly or a bee, helps itself on all sides, sips every wholesome flower, and spoils not one. The true fairytale is, to my mind, very like the sonata. We all know that a sonata means something; and where there is the faculty of talking with suitable vagueness, and choosing metaphor sufficiently loose, mind may approach mind, in the interpretation of a sonata, with the result of a more or less contenting consciousness of sympathy. But if two or three men sat down to write each what the sonata meant to him, what approximation to definite idea would be the result? Little enough--and that little more than needful. We should find it had roused related, if not identical, feelings, but probably not one common thought. Has the sonata therefore failed? Had it undertaken to convey, or ought it to be expected to impart anything defined, anything notionally recognisable?

"But words are not music; words at least are meant and fitted to carry a precise meaning!"

It is very seldom indeed that they carry the exact meaning of any user of them! And if they can be so used as to convey definite meaning, it does not follow that they ought never to carry anything else. Words are live things that may be variously employed to various ends. They can convey a scientific fact, or throw a shadow of her child's dream on the heart of a mother. They are things to put together like the pieces of dissected map, or to arrange like the notes on a stave. Is the music in them to go for nothing? It can hardly help the definiteness of a meaning: is it therefore to be disregarded? They have length, and breadth, and outline: have they nothing to do with depth? Have they only to describe, never to impress? Has nothing any claim to their use but definite? The cause of a child's tears may be altogether undefinable: has the mother therefore no antidote for his vague misery? That may be strong in colour which has no evident outline. A fairtytale, a sonata, a gathering storm, a limitless night, seizes you and sweeps you away: do you begin at once to wrestle with it and ask whence its power over you, whither it is carrying you? The law of each is in the mind of its composer; that law makes one man feel this way, another man feel that way. To one the sonata is a world of odour and beauty, to another of soothing only and sweetness. To one, the cloudy rendezvous is a wild dance, with a terror at its heart; to another, a majestic march of heavenly hosts, with Truth in their centre pointing their course, but as yet restraining her voice. The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.

I will go farther.--The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is--not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself. The best Nature does for us is to work in us such moods in which thoughts of high import arise. Does any aspect of Nature wake but one thought? Does she ever suggest only one definite thing? Does she make any two men in the same place at the same moment think the same thing? Is she therefore a failure, because she is not definite? Is it nothing that she rouses the something deeper than the understanding--the power that underlies thoughts? Does she not set feeling, and so thinking at work? Would it be better that she did this after one fashion and not after many fashions? Nature is mood-engendering, thought-provoking: such ought the sonata, such ought the fairytale to be.

"But a man may then imagine in your work what he pleases, what you never meant!"

Not what he pleases, but what he can. If he be not a true man, he will draw evil out of the best; we need not mind how he treats any work of art! If he be a true man, he will imagine true things; what matter whether I meant them or not? They are there none the less that I cannot claim putting them there! One difference between God's work and man's is, that, while God's work cannot mean more than he meant, man's must mean more than he meant. For in everything that God has made, there is a layer upon layer of ascending significance; also he expresses the same thought in higher and higher kinds of that thought: it is God's things, his embodied thoughts, which alone a man has to use, modified and adapted to his own purposes, for the expression of his thoughts; therefore he cannot help his words and figures falling into such combinations in the mind of another as he had himself not foreseen, so many are the thoughts allied to every other thought, so many are the relations involved in every figure, so many the facts hinted in every symbol. A man may well himself discover truth in what he wrote; for he was dealing all the time things that came from thoughts beyond his own.

"But surely you would explain your idea to one who asked you?"

I say again, if I cannot draw a horse, I will not write THIS IS A HORSE under what I foolishly meant for one. Any key to a work of imagination would be nearly, if not quite, as absurd. The tale is there not to hide, but to show: if it show nothing at your window, do not open your door to it; leave it out in the cold. To ask me to explain, is to say, "Roses! Boil them, or we won't have them!" My tales may not be roses but I will not boil them.

So long as I think my dog can bark, I will not sit up to bark for him.

If a writer's aim be logical conviction, he must spare no logical pains, not merely to be understood, but to escape being misunderstood; where his object is to move by suggestion, to cause to imagine, then let him assail the soul of his reader as the wind assails an aeolian harp. If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it. Let fairytale of mine go for a firefly that now flashes, now is dark, but may flash again. Caught in a hand which does not love its kind, it will turn to an insignificant ugly thing, that can neither flash nor fly.

The best way with music, I imagine, is not to bring the forces of our intellect to bear upon it, but to be still and let it work on that part of us for whose sake it exists. We spoil countless precious things by intellectual greed. He who will be a man, and will not be a child, must--he cannot help himself--become a little man, that is, a dwarf. He will, however need no consolation, for he is sure to think himself a very large creature indeed.

If any strain of my "broken music" make a child's eyes flash, or his mother's grow for a moment dim, my labour will not have been in vain.

THE END