And such is the Art of your contributors and such the definition of Art that even the blank pages of your paper imply. [This is so beautiful an expression of the typical confusions about Art that I scarcely know where to begin to answer it. In the first place, you say that the life of war is an artificial life—a Philistine world. Then why talk about wanting Art in such a world? Art and Philistinism have never mixed. In the second place, why did you need to go to war to learn to live directly, to think clearly, to act and have no doubts? The artist never has life secure in his hands; he always has an imperative desire in his heart; and he is always “seeing death, very clear and huge, straddling the way,” always “thinking of the final extinction,” always “losing many friends, meeting fear in twenty shapes, and feeling the fresh unshattered joy of living.” If going to war did these things to you, then you simply confess that it took war to “quicken” you: but the artist is born “quickened.” And now that you wish to react against something, after the quickening, you complain that Art will not receive your reaction. Why on earth do you insist on going to Art for all those things you want? If you want blood and lust, go on fighting. If you want meat, eat meat: don’t try to eat Art. Who ever imagined that Art administers to men’s desires? When Bernhardt acts for the French soldiers, are they “too full of lusts for such an Art” or does she change her immortal Art to meet their desires for “women, horses and dogs, and wine”? You say that Art for you is _no longer_ a means for the evocation of emotion. Remember that the evocation of emotion has _never_ been a test of Art, any more than Art has been “a magic net cast over all the nude and undesirable body of life” or “a spell to dissipate reality.” Life serves life; Art doesn’t do that. Art will never be part of _your_ will: it is the artist’s will. Your philosophy and lust can be served by the claims of philosophy and lust. What you call your Art-need will be served by Art; but only when you have fulfilled your part of the bargain: since you are not a creator your will must go toward appreciation—or, first, toward the capacity for appreciation.—_M. C. A._] Growing Pains _Stephan Böchlin, Denver_: I did enjoy the Greek sketches by Richard Aldington. Some of them are very beautiful: the first, fourth, and sixteenth especially so. I am glad that a few of our writers are beginning to see the capacities of what Baudelaire calls “poetic prose.” And there is one article, _Paderewski and Tagore_, which gave me much pleasure. It is an excellent study in contrasts. A score or so of such impressions would be well worth publishing in a more permanent form.