Many years ago I was talking with a captain of industry, prominent in New York political life. I spoke of the corruption of the judges, and he contradicted me with a smile. “Our judges are not bought; they are selected.” And exactly so it has been with our recognized and successful artists; they have been men who looked up to the ruling classes by instinct, and served their masters gladly and freely. If they did not do so, they paid the penalty by a life of conflict and exile; if they happened to be poor and friendless, they do not even receive the gratitude of posterity, because their dream-children died unborn, and were buried, along with their parents, in graves unknown. “Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest.” It will be our task to study the great art periods one after another, taking the leading artists and showing what they were, what they believed, how they got their livings, and what they did for those who paid them. We shall find that everywhere they were members of their group, sharing the interests and the prejudices, the hates and fears, the jealousies and loves and admirations of that group. We shall find them subject to all the social stresses and strains of the time, and fighting ardently the battles of their class. For life is never a static thing, it is always changing, always subjecting its victims to new dangers, forcing them to new efforts. Either the ruling class is threatened by the attacks of outside enemies, or else there is a new class arising inside the community. In times of internal order and prosperity, there come luxury and idleness, the degeneration of the tribe; there come all sorts of novelties startling the elders--modernists sapping the old time creeds, and flappers adopting the vices of men. Such evils must be corrected; such enemies of the tribe must be put down; and in the course of these labors, what chance is there that the ruling classes will fail to make use of their most powerful weapon, that of art? There is simply no chance whatever. Ogi will be called on by his masters; or else he will act of his own impulse--he will lead the crusade, singing the praises of the old time ways, “idealizing” the ancestral heroes, the holy saints and the founding fathers, and pouring ridicule upon the bobbed heads of the flappers. The critics will leap to Ogi’s support, hailing him as the Lord’s own anointed, a creator of masterpieces, dignified, serene, secure in immortality. This is art, the critics will aver, this is real, genuine, authentic art; while out there in the wilderness somewhere howls a lone gray rebellious wolf, attacking and seeking to devour everything that is beautiful and sacred in life--and the howling of this wolf is not art, it is vile and cheap propaganda.