Not the least interesting and amusing feature of the lively article from which the above extracts are taken is its own denunciation of the cubists _en bloc_. [Illustration: WEREFKIN The Country Road] [Illustration: BECHTEJEFF Fight of the Amazons] It resolutely assails the more orthodox critics for what they say about all the moderns _it likes_ and then it echoes their language in its own condemnation of a body of men who are striving earnestly in their way to do things. * * * * * _“Oh! tolerance, oh! progress!_ _Oh! twentieth century!”_ * * * * * One has only to group the conflicting opinions of great painters and critics to see how much depends upon the point of view and the personal equation. To say certain pictures are worthless is a matter of individual taste and judgment; they may be worthless to me and not to you, just as clothes one man likes another would refuse to wear. But to say a school or a movement, irrespective of particular works, is a worthless movement involves not one’s taste but one’s philosophy of life; it involves the proposition that a movement in art that challenges the attention of the art-world _is so devoid of force of any kind_ that it is unworthy attention--an obvious contradiction. Cubism has produced a lot of inane, uninteresting, and ugly pictures, pictures hopelessly bad in both line and color, but it has also produced pictures that are fine in line and color; but whether a particular picture is good or bad is of no importance whatsoever in comparison with the larger and more vital question: _What is the relation of Cubism to the art of today and tomorrow?_ * * * * * When the _Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts_ was founded in 1890 in a spirit of revolt against the old Salon _Société des Artistes Français_--which dates its expositions from 1673--the schism was complete and the movement was denounced as revolutionary. The art world was divided into two bitterly hostile camps. The two Salons seemed absolutely irreconcilable. Now they exhibit side by side in practically the same building. The visitor can stand in the main gallery of the one and gaze into the galleries of the other. The only distinctions are separate catalogues and an extra charge of a franc or two if you wish to pass from the one to the other. * * * * * Passing from the old Salon to the newer, one still has--to a slight degree--the feeling of passing from older and more conservative pictures to a newer, lighter, and somewhat more modern collection. And there is a difference but it is so slight that casual visitors do not notice it. In fact nine out of ten who visit the two Salons would think they were in but one exhibition, selected and arranged by the same committee, were it not for the additional fee and the two catalogues.