Another school-fellow of Verhaeren, Charles Van Lerberghe, can scarcely, I believe, be called a Catholic poet, although, like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose disciple he was, his verse is filled with Catholic symbolism. In a country like Belgium, in which nearly all the education is Catholic, and in which nearly every poet is, at any rate nominally, a Catholic, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between writers who have a genuinely devotional spirit, and those who merely like to play with mysticism. There are, for example, the amazing poems of Max Elskamp. He writes simple and charming poems about the Blessed Virgin and the Christ Child, and seems, indeed, to have the hardy faith of his Flemish ancestors. But the simplicity of his poems is not always convincing; the reader remembers that the late William Sharpe wrote, as “Fiona MacLeod,” poems that seemed to flame with all the piety of the Gael. And William Sharpe was, as he took care to let the world know, a “pagan.” The feeling that Elskamp’s interest in religion is chiefly literary is strengthened when we learn from Mr. Bithell that most of the sacred names in his poems have a symbolic meaning, that the Blessed Virgin means merely “the pure woman,” and the Christ Child simply “the delicious infancy.” Intellectual caprices like this seldom accompany genuine devotional feeling. But at any rate there is nothing to disgust or pain the reader in Elskamp’s verse; whether or not he believes in the sacred personages of whom he writes, he does not treat them irreverently. His Catholicism, however, is not so convincing as is that of Thomas Braun and Georges Ramaekers. It is good to find that in Belgium, a country the literature of which must inevitably reflect from time to time the strange fashions of Germany and France, there has been preserved through the years the poetry of Catholic tradition. Belgian poetry must become more and more spiritual; the poets have seen and felt things mighty and terrible, and they can no longer concern themselves with erotic fancies and the nuances of their own emotions. In days to come, historians of literature will perhaps see that on the thought of Belgium as on the thought of all Europe, this war has had a clarifying and strengthening effect. Good still comes from evil, sweetness from force, and honeycomb out of the lion’s carcass. Belgium may say, in the words of one of the truest poets of our time: Sweet Sorrow, play a grateful part, Break me the marble of my heart And of its fragments pave a street Where, to my bliss, myself may meet One hastening with piercèd feet. LETTERS _To Charles Willis Thompson_ THE NEW YORK TIMES. November 1, 1914. Dear Charlie-- Can you lend me $1.00? I wish to go to New Brunswick, N. J. Help me to gratify this strange whim!