I have read with astonishment and pleasure the letter by Paul Nocquet pleading for the sculptor’s art in America. It is no exaggeration to say that a large part of the sculpture in this country is produced under false pretenses. Much of it is from the studios of celebrities, the labor, the thought and even the basic ideas of poor devils who are paid so much a day. That the abuses Mr. Nocquet speaks of exist, there is abundance of proof. A glamor has been thrown about sculpture here that is not deserved. For a century the bulk of us have ambled along timidly, following a single lead, sniffing the trail, only to assure our questioning souls that we were on the beaten path. We fear a new lead. We placard our homes with safe, old sentiments. We permit no passion, no action, nothing to disturb the even tenor of a puritanism that has hardly warmth enough or blood enough to produce great sculpture and that rarely ventures beyond the meaningless nudes that disgrace our museums. If this were not so, Mr. Nocquet would have no complaint. If character and individuality were even tolerated in American sculpture, our production by proxy would cease in a fortnight. Let the people have what they feel the need of. There is something deep in the souls of all of us which seeks the real thing. Then our ideals, our lives and our passions will be expressed in our art. When that is done each man will express himself, and a new value will be placed on every work of art. Such outspoken criticism inevitably brought from the caves all the winds of controversy. They merged in a tempest in 1908 when the sculptor wrote in _The Craftsman_: With the passing of Saint-Gaudens the standard of good work was taken from us.... Not _great_ work, for he was not a great artist like Rimmer, Rodin, or Meunier, nor was he a great poet. Nor was he a great technician like Falguière or a dozen other Frenchmen. But he had a quality that persisted to the end and wrought, with few exceptions, something beautiful, often noble, something that left the whole world better because it was made. He gave us Farragut (in Madison Square) and one or two other great statues. Then he dropped to the architect’s standard, the lay figure, and there he remained. Curiously his Farragut contains figures in the base that appear to have been made years after the figure of the Admiral, so quickly does he seem to have lost his youthful spontaneity.