Similarly, I am at times annoyed by Etheredge’s indifference to the social movements that swirl madly around us all. It is, for instance, impossible for me to watch the progress of Fascismo coolly. I feel grudging admiration for the machine, resentment at the suppression of free speech, bitterness at the cynical pretence of constitutionalism. I cannot, in other words, keep Fascismo out of my life, any more than I can keep out the problems of international relations, German indemnities and the war debts. Etheredge can. He scarcely, I believe, thinks about these things at all; certainly he does not think about them passionately. In this, I know at heart, I am wrong and he is profoundly right. For it is on my part, and would be on his, a waste of energy to puzzle and think and fume over these questions. Neither he nor I is fitted to cope with them; neither of us can have the faintest influence upon them. And, indeed, gigantic though they loom above the world to-day, they are but ephemeral phenomena. Beneath, far beneath, lies the only truth--the perplexed, troubled, struggling, human soul. Only contact with individuals can have significance, either to them or to oneself. To such relationships and to the beliefs and questions arising from them Etheredge devotes his fine unwasted strength. The influence he exerts is deep but not wide, and its necessarily narrow range is, in my saner moments, the only thing I hold against him. Here, I think, is a man of rare sympathy, insight and character. Must his influence be exerted only upon the small number of individuals whom he can personally know? Well, of course, there are his pictures, at which he works with intense and persistent energy. They must to some extent express his personality, and if the critics who call them good are in the right they will doubtless some day reach a wider circle than that of personal acquaintanceship. But, even so, comparatively few will see them, and of these only a small proportion be able to understand clearly the fine spirit they express. Another insoluble problem. But, as I meditate upon it, I have a sudden happy suspicion that here, too, I am in the wrong, still believing despite myself in widespread movements, organization and the like. Perhaps, after all, the finest and most hopeful thing about an apparently sorry world is that over its surface are sparsely strewn men and women of matured developed charm or intelligence or perception, who exert unconsciously the influence of their personality on those in immediate touch with them. Why expect or ask for more than this? And, certainly, if some of these can only attain full self-development through living in another country than their own, for their sake we can well afford to disregard the larger number of silly snobs and rose-garden idlers that such a life creates. ZENITH