Nevertheless there is a hopeful seriousness of interest developing in what is being done this side the sea, a rediscovery of native art of the sort that is occurring in all countries. The artist is being taught by means of war that there is no longer a conventional center of art, that the time-worn fetish of Paris as a necessity in his development has been dispensed with; and this is fortunate for the artist and for art in general. It is having its pronounced effect upon the creative powers of the individual in all countries, almost obliging him to create his own impulse upon his own soil; it is making the artist see that if he is really to create he must create irrespective of all that exists as convention in the mind. How will this affect the artist? He will learn first of all to be concerned with himself, and what he puts forth of personality and of personal research will receive its character from his strict adherence to this principle, whether he proceeds by means of prevailing theories or by departure from them. The public will thus have no choice but to rely upon what he produces seriously as coming clearly from himself, from his own desire and labor. He will realize that it is not a trick, not a habit, not a trade--this modernity--and that with fashions it has nothing to do; that it is explicitly a part of our modern urge toward expression quite as much as the art of Corot and Millet were of Barbizon, as the art of Titian, Giorgione and Michelangelo were of Italy; that he and his time bear the strictest relationship to one another and that through this relationship he can best build up his own original power. Unable to depend therefore upon the confessedly untutored lay writer or even the better class essayist to tell him his place, he will establish himself, and his place will be determined in the regime of his day by precisely those qualities which he contributes to it. He will not rely too insistently upon idiosyncrasy; the failure of this we have already seen, in the post-impressionists. The truth is that painters must sooner or later learn to express themselves in terms of pure language, they must learn that creation is the thing most expected of them, and, if possible, invention as well. Oddity in execution or idea is of the least importance. Artists have a more respectable service to perform than this dilettantist notion of beauty implies. Since the utter annihilation of sentimentality, of legend, of what we call poetry has taken place, a richer substance for expression has come to us by means of which the artist may express a larger, newer variety of matter, more relevant to our special need, our modernity.