can reasonably pretend that mere form transforms a subject into poetry passes my understanding. How anyone, moreover, can suggest in cold print that such form is helping to make an absolutely new start in poetry is a point best left to the decision of mental experts. Still, on reflection, one finds it is all part of the modern “game” of confusing content with form. One must be grateful to the Imagists for one thing. For some time there has been a movement among poets of a certain school to shift the interest from poetry to themselves considered as deputies. The errors of the Imagists, who, apparently, are mistaken in their conception of poetry and the business of poetry, enables one to shift the interest from these poets to poetry itself. One can say to them, “We are not interested in you, but in poetry. To tell us that you are deputy receivers and recorders, to describe your aims and methods, to take us to museums and to invite us to study the fossilized remains of ancient literatures, is not to help us to enjoy your verse.” Poets do not get any nearer to poetry by setting up new rulers and standards. Poetry does not take us farther afield into speculating on form and technique, but farther from them. Poetry tends to shift the interest from the poet to itself, from the solid instrument of transmission to the world in solution. Indeed it tends to obliterate the poet in the physical sense. As I said it converts him into poetry. Now the reason why Imagism fails as poetry is precisely because it shifts the interest from the world in solution to a group of too, too solid poets. My conclusion is obvious. Before the Imagists can claim that they are making an absolutely new start in poetry, they must learn to obliterate their corporeal natures. The moment they do so obliterate themselves, that moment one can safely say “Now we are coming to poetry.” I intended to show that one cannot write free-verse unless one is a free poet. I must return to the subject. The New Idol GEORGE BURMAN FOSTER An old philosopher—Aristotle, of course—called man a political being. By this he meant that man was naturally endowed for society, and, further, that society could find its full fruition only in the state. To the old Greek, this political vocation of man seemed great and sublime. Only _one_ will ruled in the state. This one will synthesized all the individual wills, no matter how powerful and diverse they were. And this one will made all the distributive wills strong, and demonstrated its superiority to the totality of all such wills. The one will wills more than it can do, on that account becomes a statesman, that is, widens out his will to a state-will. Thus, the one will wins a new and wider sphere for its abilities and activities.