Why—why, in the name of all that is lovely, must people howl at any expression of belief in possibilities of a new art? The moving-picture is Shakespearean, Hugoesque, Zolaesque, in its method. We see through it not only Antony and Cleopatra, but the two great hungry struggling groups that each impersonates. We see not only the typical coal-miner and his typical sorrows; we see the mass of his comrades under the same oppression, the same evil conditions. We see better, because more swiftly, than Hugo could paint it with his wonderful vocabulary, Notre Dame de Paris, the symbol, the social motif which embodies in a unity all that the story tries to show of the beauty, the horror, the fate, and the aspirations of the pre-Renaissance, an ever-present condition behind the actors. Are such possibilities to be shoved aside and denied a place among the arts where pageantry is admitted? Is the fact that thousands of bad, atrociously bad, films are turned out to discredit the few well-constructed, symbolic film-plays? Look at our abominable American poster-makers. Does this discredit Mr Blum, whose praises we hear sung? There is one really vital criticism in Mr Zwaska’s hectic article. That is, upon Lindsay’s “too ruthless a theory” of no music in the movie theater. From the first we shied at that. We are surprised at the author of poems to be read aloud. Another of our admirable countrymen, who qualifies not only as a sociologist, but as a philosopher and a poet, has his say on the subject quite incidentally. I speak of Max Eastman, who, in his _Enjoyment of Poetry_, says, “I have yet to find one in which the reality of the pictures is not enhanced with the beating of an old piano. Nobody notices the piano, nobody remembers what the piano plays, or how badly, but there it is, always keeping up a metre.” The audiences’ “voluntary mind is on the canvas but the music slips all the deeper into their beings, and it makes them live the pictures.” I can well believe Mr Zwaska’s account of the after-midnight picture show. Granted that most picture-show music is terrible, that the electric piano is agonizing, that it is deeply shocking to hear the _Miserere_ when sweet Mary Pickford is acting the Un Bel Di Vedremo scene in Butterfly, the music is far less dreadful than silence, and we talk through it all the same. I do not know a possible remedy, but it is worth the thought of every person interested or disgusted. This is merely one of Vachel Lindsay’s acknowledged “paw paws.” So here we are at the end of our wrath. And here’s a cheer and a hearty greeting for Lindsay, who is scaling the Pike’s Peak of idealism. And here’s congratulations to Mr Zwaska for directing a few more telescopes at him. _FOR THE BRAHMINS._ _A Poet, Chicago_: I am sick of hearing Chicago audiences go into raptures over Brahms. Here is my impression of him as I listened to the last concert of the Chicago Symphony: _Symphony No. 4, E Minor, Opus 98_.