According to differences of taste and temperament, different persons will answer this question differently. Since I am not entering here on any formal argument, but am merely recording my own individual views, I should, speaking for myself, answer this question in the affirmative. I may, indeed, confess that the mere artist in literature--the person for whom literature, as such, is the main interest in life--is a person for whom secretly I have always felt some contempt, even though, for myself personally, this magical triviality has been one of life's chief seductions. The content and significance of such a feeling are presented in concrete form by such institutions as authors' or writers' clubs. In London and in other capitals so many of these have been established, and continue to flourish, that they obviously perform certain useful and welcome functions; but my own criticism would be that to call them clubs for "authors" or "writers" is a misnomer which fails to particularize the real basis of membership. In the modern world, no doubt, all writers, merely as writers, have certain interests in common. They have, in the first place, to get their works published, and the business of publication is a very complex process, which has necessarily a legal and financial side. Questions are inevitably involved of financial loss or gain, and even writers who are indifferent to profit, and are ready to bear a loss, will desire to be treated fairly. They may be ready to bear a loss, but not a loss which is inequitable, and if any gain should ensue, they will desire an equitable share of it. In connection with such matters, authors' clubs may perform many useful offices for their members. In so far, however, as their functions are limited to offices such as these the proper name for them would be not clubs, but agencies. On the other hand, in the modern world authorship to a great extent is a systematic writing for journals. It has to be performed, in respect both of time and other conditions, in accordance with strict arrangements between the writers themselves and the officials by whom, whether as editors or owners, these journals are managed. For this reason persons who practice journalism--daily journalism in particular--will probably be persons more or less similar in their habits, and clubs for admission to which the main qualification consists in the fact of authorship may provide them with special conveniences which they one and all desire. But for persons whose literary pursuits are carried on in isolation, and who aim at expressing by authorship no thoughts or no sentiments but their own, it seems to me that a club for authors or writers as such represents a conception as wrong as would that of a club for speakers as such or for politicians as such. What bond of union would there be between a Tory and a ferocious Democrat if they neither of them put pen to paper--if they were not authors at all? They would keep, so far as