Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[graphic]

From Stereograph, Copyright 1907, by Underwood & Underwood, New York.

YOUNG PEOPLE'S MEETING, TUESDAY AFTERNOON, APRIL 16th

DR. MAXWELL:

You will all join in singing the Song of Peace, led by the children's chorus.

SONG OF PEACE...M. K. SCHERMERHORN....A. S. Sullivan

[blocks in formation]

A great Congress has met, a great Congress is now in session in this city, under the presidency of our honored townsman, Mr. Andrew Carnegie. The purpose of this Congress is one of the noblest purposes to which men may devote their thoughts and their energies. It is no less than to devise ways and means by which war and the horrors and desolation of war may disappear from the face of the earth. Those who are managing this great and noble work have judged rightly, that if peace is in the end to triumph over war it must be chiefly through the instrumentality of those who are now in the schools, and their successors, who will soon be called upon to take up their tasks in the world's work. Therefore they have asked you to come here and listen to addresses from eminent men and women and to

carry back to your schools the message which has been delivered, or will be delivered this afternoon.

Before calling upon any of the speakers, I desire to read to you a very brief letter, which was put in my hands just as I was coming upon the platform. It is from a gentleman who I had fondly hoped would be able to come here to speak to you:

"Dear Dr. Maxwell: I have just had handed to me yours of the 12th of April, and nothing would give me more pleasure, but, alas, I am to be at the dedication of the Engineers' Building, of which I am donor, at 3 o'clock, which renders it impossible for me to have the pleasure of speaking to the children; I am very sorry. Very truly yours,

"ANDREW CARNEGIE."

The first speaker of the afternoon will speak to you on the subject of the Peace Movement and the Arts. Professor Bailey, who will make this address, has devoted his life to art and art instruction. I have the pleasure and honor of introducing to you Professor Bailey.

The Peace Movement and the Arts

PROFESSOR HENRY TURNER BAILEY.

In the realm of the arts man has suffered incalculable and irreparable losses through war. The paths of great military heroes like Sargon, Cambyses, Scipio, Mummius, Titus, Alaric, Attila, Omar, Dandolo, Alva, have always been marked by the destruction of temples, the burning of palaces, the looting of cities, and the annihilation of priceless treasures, precious works of art impossible to reproduce by any means whatever. The beheaded granite Kings of Egypt, the broken horsemen of the Parthenon, the mutilated saints of the shrines of England, cry out forever, like the souls beneath the altar in John's vision, "How long, O Lord, holy and true?" When shall the ravages of war be stayed? "The insatiate tooth of time" alone did not rob us of "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome"; time did not strip Achaea to adorn Italy, nor plunder Italy to enrich barbarian Gaul, nor burn the Alexandrian library. War did these things. War has reduced the history of art to the history of fragments and wrecks. War has swallowed up all

but a handful of the wonderful works of the artists and craftsmen of a thousand generations, and left us poor indeed.

Lamenting this wholesale destruction, one must not forget that periods of war have often been followed by periods of constructive activity in the arts. The reasons for this are evident. Human nature abhors a vacuum. The people who survive the war must go on living. Desolated cities must be repaired; ruined temples must be restored; lost treasures must be replaced. And in the country of the conqueror there must be triumphal arches, new palaces, new theatres, to celebrate the triumph; medals must be struck, stones must be set up in honor of local heroes.

But what is the quality of such forced art, art produced under the poverty and bitterness of defeat, or upon the order of the victor? Americans need not re-read the history of art to find an answer to this question. All they need to do is to examine the architecture and sculpture produced in the southern part of their own country from 1865 to 1890, and the architecture and sculpture in the form of memorial halls and soldiers' monuments produced in the northern part of their country by the men of that generation. On the one hand they will discover works of necessity only, feeble in design and unadorned; on the other works of supererogation, crude in structure and ugly in decoration, works which even the second generation blushes to call art. "Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature," said Emerson, "nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up beneath the feet of brave and earnest men in the field and roadside,

in the shop and mill."

[ocr errors]

The incompatibility of war and the arts is symbolized in every decorative representation of Peace ever painted. Under Peace the plough and the spade are plied; the distaff and the shuttle, the needle and the pencil are taken in hand; the potter is at his wheel, the carpenter at his bench, the smith at his forge, the draftsman at his table, the artist at his easel; the mother sings at her work; the children make music in the twilight. The insight of the artist has never failed to make such interpretation of Peace. Artists perceive the truth beneath all its wrappings.

If a war at times has galvanized the arts into semblance of life, Peace has ever breathed into them the very spirit of life itself. Artists have an instinctive dread of war, and the crafts

men in all ages have fought only under compulsion. The high tides in artistic production, in the age of Pericles, in the age of Augustus, in the period of the high Renaissance, were times of comparative peace. The Elizabethan era in England which gave Shakespeare to the world, and the Victorian era which produced Tennyson and Browning were times when the national mind felt free,-confident of its power to maintain an armed Peace. The last forty years in America, during which the nation has made such strides in wealth and efficiency, and has developed such a consciousness of national existence and potency, have been years of Peace.

But these periods of Peace, and of great activity in the arts, appear in the arts, appear in history like the fitful gleams of intelligence in a mind for the most part crazed with greed and hate. The world has yet to see what the arts may become under perpetual Peace.

Peace fosters the prosperity of the common people. This means an ever-increasing demand for clothing, houses, furniture, carpets, draperies, pottery, silverware, wall-papers, pictures, ornaments, books, musical instruments and equipage of every sort.

Peace fosters the growth of commerce. This means an everincreasing demand for a perfected machinery for business; printing presses, typewriters, mail systems, telegraphs, telephones, cash carriers, automobiles, railroads, ships, business blocks, subways and the thousand and one labor-saving devices which may be invented, to say nothing of the machinery required by the manufacturers.

Peace fosters the growth of intelligence. This means an ever-increasing demand for tasteful homes, clean cities, accessible parks, good schools, public lecture halls, libraries, gymnasia and baths, museums, picture galleries and noble civic buildings. It means ever better pictures, finer music, more inspiring literature, greater beauty of design in every manufactured object, in short, a perfected environment.

Peace fosters the growth of love. This means an everincreasing demand for works of art which shall perpetuate the memory of worthy men and women, portraits, tablets, monuments, fountains, statues, halls, chapels and other materials; and an ever-increasing demand for places of worship, temples where every beauty of proportion, structure, texture, color and symbol

« AnteriorContinuar »