"True glory has abandoned poetry for science, philosophy, acrobatics, philanthropy, sociology, etc. ...Poets are good for nothing more nowadays than to receive money which they do not earn, since they scarcely ever work and most of them (except for the minstrels) have no talent and no excuse whatsoever. As to those who have some gifts, they are even more obnoxious, for if they receive nothing they make more noise than a regiment and din our ears with their being persecuted. None of these people have any _raison d'être._ The prizes which are awarded them are stolen from workers, inventors, scientists, philosophers, acrobats, philanthropists, sociologists, and so forth. The poets must disappear. Lycurgus would have banished them from the Republic, we too must banish them. Otherwise, the poets, lazy fiefs, will become our princes and while doing nothing, live off our work, oppressing us, and mocking us. In short, we must rid ourselves immediately of the poets' tyranny. "If the republics and the kings, if the nations do not take care, the race of poets, too privileged, will increase in such proportions and so rapidly that in a short time no one will want to work, invent, teach, do dangerous feats, heal the sick and improve the lot of unfortunate men." An enormous stir greeted this article. It was telegraphed or telephoned everywhere, all the newspapers reproduced it. A few literary journals followed their quotations from Tograth's article with mocking reflections as to the scientist; there were doubts as to his mental state. They laughed at the terror which he manifested over the lyric laurel. However, the journals of commerce and information made great ado about his warnings. They even said that the article in _La Voix_ was a work of genius. The article by Horace Tograth had been a singular pretext, admirably fitted to fan the blaze of hatred for poetry. It made its appeal through the traditional sense of the supernatural, whose memory lies in all well born men, and to the instinct for preservation which all beings feel. That was why nearly all Tograth's readers were thunderstruck, aghast, and wanted to lose no occasion to obliterate poets, who, because of the great numbers of prizes they received, were the subjects of the jealousy of all classes of the population. The majority of the newspapers advocated that the government take measures leading to the prohibition of all poetry prizes. In the evening, in a later edition of _La Voix_, the agricultural chemist, Horace Tograth, published a new article, which, like the other, telephoned or telegraphed everywhere, carried popular emotion to a climax in the press, among the public and the governments. The scientist concluded as follows: