There are features of his romances that cannot be adequately praised; there are features that cannot be sufficiently condemned. A poem that contains no particular thought may excite our profoundest admiration, just as does a _papier-mâché_ triumphal arch or monument; but a romance or novel depicts some phase or aspect of life, reveals man's aspirations or accomplishments, his behaviors and reactions under certain conditions, reflects his nobilities, depicts his frailties, and extols his ambitions and what he would like to do, experience, or accomplish. In a general way, it is expected that it shall be tuned to an ethical pitch that will not give offense to the man of average Christian or pagan morality, or outrage universally accepted and acceptable convention. The most successful horticulturist in the world would find no market for his roses, even though they were more exquisite than those of all other florists, should he impregnate them with a scent obtained from the Mustelidæ. This is what D'Annunzio did. It would be very difficult to find a religion, a form of government, a code of ethics, a type of beauty, a map of life, a canon of morals, a custom, habit, or a convention that something could not be said in praise of it. Bolshevism has its attractive facet, even though the present-day proponents of it have got it so deeply submerged in the mire of ambition and power, and so defaced with lust for revenge that it cannot be recognized. There is scarcely any form of those various indulgences and commissions which are labelled "vice" that have not some commendable and praiseworthy feature, but there is one aberration of human conduct that has never had a champion in the open. It is incest, and Gabriele D'Annunzio is its champion. Concealed or openly, it goes through his writings with the same constancy that streams flow through plains that go out from glacier mountains. In the English translations of his romances elaborate descriptions of other forms of perversion of the genesic instinct have been largely expurgated, but it is impossible to purge them entirely of the incest theme, for in many of his writings it is beyond the verbal description. It is the atmosphere of the book. Take, for instance, the novel "L'Innocente." On the face of it, it is the narration of the conduct of a man who, having wedded a superior woman of great intellectual charm and bodily attractions, yields to the temptations of the life of dissipation in which he had distinguished himself previous to an ideal matrimony and a contented paternity. He realizes that his digressions are scandalous, and that their frequent deliberate repetitions justify his wife in living apart from him, though her love, being beyond control, still continues. They agree to live with each other as brother and sister. The moment he succeeds in placing her in his soul as his sister an irresistible impulse seizes him to have carnal possession of her, and the burden of the book is a description of