I suppose the hardest lesson we all have to learn in life is that we can’t have things both ways. If we want to have beauty, that which appeals not merely to the stomach and the epidermis (which is the function of the greater part of industrialism), but to what lies deeper within the human organism, the heart and the brain, we must have conditions which permit and even foster the production of beauty. The artist, unfortunately, no less than the rest of mankind, must eat to live. Now, if we insist that we will pay the artist only for what fascinates the popular uneducated instincts, he will either produce beauty, remain unpaid and starve; or he will give us shoddy, and fare sumptuously every day. My experience tells me this: An artist who is by accident of independent means can, if he has talent, give the Public what he, the artist, wants, and sooner or later the public will take whatever he gives it, at his own valuation. But very few artists, _who have no independent means_, have enough character to hold out until they can sit on the Public’s head and pull the Public’s beard, to use the old Sikh saying. How many times have I not heard over here――and it’s very much the same over there――that a man must produce this or that kind of work or else of course he can’t live. My advice――at all events to young artists and writers――is: ‘Sooner than do that and have someone sitting on _your_ head and pulling your beard all the time, go out of business――there are other means of making a living, besides faked or degraded art. Become a dentist and revenge yourself on the Public’s teeth――even editors and picture dealers go to the dentist!’ The artist has got to make a stand against being exploited, and he has got, also, to live the kind of life which will give him a chance to see clearly, to feel truly, and to express beautifully. He, too, is a trustee for the future of mankind. Money has one inestimable value――it guarantees independence, the power of going your own way and giving out the best that’s in you. But, generally speaking, we don’t stop there in our desire for money; and I would say that any artist who doesn’t stop there is not ‘playing the game,’ neither towards himself nor towards mankind; he is not standing up for the faith that is in him, and the future of civilisation.