The war disintegrated the _art habit_ and in this fact lies the hope of art. Fads have lost what slight interest they possessed, the folly of imitation has been exposed. As a result of this, I like to think that we shall have a finer type of expression, a richer kind of personal quality. Every artist is his own maker, his own liberator; he it is that should be the first to criticise, destroy and reconstruct himself, he should find no mood convenient, no attitude comfortable. What the lay-writer says of him in praise or blame will not matter so much in the future; he will respect first and last only those who have found the time to share his theme, at least in mind, if not in experience, and the discerning public will free itself from the temporary influences of the confessedly untutored critic. The artist will gain its confidence by reason of his own sincerity and intelligence. It is probable, too, that in time criticism in the mode of Ruskin will utterly disappear and the Meier-Graefe type of critic will have found a fitter and true successor, someone who, when he calls himself a critic, will prove a fairly clear title to the distinction and will not have to apologize for himself or for his occupation. AFTERWORD THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING "DADA" We are indebted to Tristan Tzara and his followers for the newest and perhaps the most important doctrinary insistence as applied to art which has appeared in a long time. Dada-ism is the latest phase of modernism in painting as well as in literature, and carries with it all the passion for freedom of expression which Marinetti sponsored so loudly in his futuristic manifestoes. It adds likewise an exhilarating quality of nihilism, imbibed, as is said, directly from the author of Zarathustra. Reading a fragment of the documentary statement of Dada-ism, we find that the charm of the idea exists mainly in the fact that they wish all things levelled in the mind of man to the degree of commonplaceness which is typical of and peculiar to it.