Such ideas were in the air of Europe: there was Marinetti, in Italy: Cézanne had nearly brought his stupendous work to a close; and a group of painters, Picasso, Duchamps, Picabia, Braque, Dérain (the Cubists), launched their work upon a frightened world. The abstract investigations of the Cubists appealed to him powerfully. Apollinaire became their ringleader. His book, "The Cubist Painters," is an authoritative apology for this movement. But not content with this, he conceived little movements of his own, invented names for them, wrote up programs, and precipitated bad painters into careers. It was not all buffoonery. He may have placed silly, vacuous individuals at the head of the reviews he organized, "_Les Soirées de Paris_", _Nord Sud_ (named after the new subway); but some of the best modern writing of the time, by Max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy, André Salmon, Paul Valéry, Apollinaire himself, and some extremely youthful poets who are now Dadaists, were included in them. His great charm in conversation, his uproarious wit, his complete shamelessness, made him idol of all who were drawn to him. _Alcools_, his first collection of poems, appeared in 1913. It was the escape of a personality from the "eternal recurrence." The Symbolists had sought a kind of exalted, objective state; this false mysticism was accompanied by an attitude of fatigue, and preciose resignation. Even the language, in their hands had become crystallized, or static. Apollinaire's attitude was the complete reverse. A wonderfully happy man, his verse was lustier and sturdier. He had learned much from the reawakened interest in the "primitive" Italian painters. There was no false shading in his work. Every line was as direct as in a child's drawing. No one could use clichés or write of the most common diurnal experiences as freshly as he. His verse had also a certain heroic character, an air of prophecy. It has always been the good fortune of France that Paris draws gifted strangers from other lands, who bring real gold to her. Apollinaire, a weird mixture of what Slavic and Latin strains, laid rough hands on the language. His aberrations are superb. He could never resist the foreigner's impulse toward _jeux des mots_; and none are quicker than the French themselves to accept and enjoy the new puns and double-entendres. For the French have gone farther, their language has been more pawed over and revivified through foreign usage than ours. Apollinaire's exoticisms were not bizarre; they had the air of being conceived in conversation. In the summer of 1914, Apollinaire was in Deauville, surrounded by a cosmopolitan horde of Poles, Germans, Hungarians, Czechs and Russians when the Great War began. He embraced the superb irony of these events with the utmost ardour; his attitude was precisely that which Pascal epitomizes: "_Why do you wish to kill brother?" "Do I not live on the other side of the river?_"