There would have been a little of this contempt to spare for that elder generation of American magazines, founded by mediocrities with good intentions, continued by mediocrities without any intentions, and now “flourishing” under the command and empery of the relicts, private-secretaries and ex-typists of the second regime. Had _Poetry_ been in any sense my “instrument” I should years ago have pointed out certain defects of the elder American writers. Had _Poetry_ been my instrument I should never have permitted the deletion of certain fine English words from poems where they rang well and soundly. Neither would I have felt it necessary tacitly to comply with the superstition that the Christian Religion is indispensable, or that it has always existed, or that its existence is ubiquitous, or irrevocable and eternal. I don’t mind the Christian Religion, but I can not blind myself to the fact that Confucius was extremely intelligent. Organized religions have nearly always done more harm than good, and they have always constituted a danger. At any rate, respect to one or another of them has nothing to do with good letters. If any human activity is sacred it is the formulation of thought in clear speech for the use of humanity; any falsification or evasion is evil. The codes of propriety are all local, parochial, transient; a consideration of them, other than as subject matter, has no place in the arts. I can say these things quite distinctly and without in the least detracting from my praise of the spirited manner in which Miss Monroe has conducted her paper. She is faced with the practical problem of circulating a magazine in a certain peculiar milieu, which thing being so I have nothing but praise for the way she has done it. But that magazine does not express my convictions. Attacks on it, grounded in such belief, and undertaken in the magnanimous hope of depriving me of part of my sustenance, can not be expected to have more than a temporary success and that among ill-informed people. _Blast_, founded chiefly in the interest of the visual arts, is of necessity suspended. With Gaudier-Brzeska dead on the field of battle, with Mr. William Roberts, Mr. Wadsworth, Mr. Etchells, and Mr. Wyndham Lewis all occupied in various branches of the service, there is no new vorticist painting to write about. Such manuscript as Mr. Lewis has left with me, and such things as he is able to write in the brief leisure allowed an artillery officer, will appear in these pages. It is quite impossible that _Blast_ should again appear until Mr. Lewis is free to give his full energy to it.