By Joyce Kilmer.
(1886-1918)

EVEN the most prejudiced opponent of the moving pictures will admit that they are becoming more intellectually respectable. Crude farce and melodrama are being replaced by versions of classic plays and novels; literature is elevating the motion picture. And Mr. Rex Beach believes that the motion picture is benefiting literature.

      This author of widely read novels had been talking to me about the departments of literature — the novel, the short story, and the rest — and among them he named the moving picture. I asked him if he believed that moving pictures were dangerous for novelists, leading them to fill their books with action, with a view to the profits of cinematographic reproduction. He said:

      "Well, authors are human beings, of course. They like to make money and to have their work reach as large an audience as possible. I suppose that the great majority of them keep their eyes on the screen, because they know how profitable the moving picture is and because they want their work seen by more people than would read their novels."

      "Do you think that this harms their work?" I asked.

      "It might if the novelists overdid it," he answered. "It would harm their work if they became nothing but scenario writers. But so far the result has been good.

      "The tendency of the moving picture has been to make authors visualize more clearly than ever before their characters and scenes that they are writing about. Their work has become more realistic. I do not mean realistic in the sense in which this word is used of some French writers; I do not mean erotic or morbid. I mean actual, convincing, clearly visualized.

Rex Beach

      "Literature has elevated the moving picture, keeping it out, to a great extent, of melodrama and slap-stick comedy. And in return, the moving picture has done a service to fiction, making the authors give more attention to exact visualization."

      "Has American fiction been lacking in visualization?" I asked.

      "No," said Mr. Beach. "American novelists visualize more clearly today than they did four or five years ago, before the moving picture had become so important, but they always were strong in visualization. This sort of realism is America's chief contribution to fiction."

      "Then you believe that there is a distinctively American literature?" I asked.

      "You do not agree with the critic who said that American literature was 'a condition of English literature'?"

      "I do not agree with him," Mr. Beach replied. " American writers use the English language, so I suppose that what they write belongs to English literature. But there is a distinctively American literature; Americans talk in their own manner, think in their own manner, and handle business propositions in their own manner, and naturally they write in their own manner. American literature is different from other kinds of literature just as American business methods are different from those of Europe.

      "Fiction written in America must necessarily be tinged with American thought and American action. I have no patience with people who say that America has no literature. They say that nothing we are writing today will live. Well, what if that is true? It's true not only of literature but of everything else.

      "Our roads won't last forever; they're built in a hurry to be used in a hurry. But they're better roads to drive and motor over than those old Roman roads of Europe. Our office buildings won't last as long as the Pyramids, but they're better for business purposes.

      "Personally, I've never been enthusiastic over things that have no virtues but age and ugliness. I'd rather have a good strong serviceable piece of Grand Rapids furniture than any ramshackle, moth-eaten antique."

      "But don't you think," I asked, "that the permanence of a book's appeal is a proof of its greatness?"

      "I don't see how we can tell anything definite about the permanence of the appeal of books written in our time. And I don't mean by literature writings that necessarily endure through the ages. I believe that literature is the expression of the mind, the sentiment, the intellectual attitude of the people who live at the time it is written. I admit that our literature is ephemeral — like everything else about us — but I believe that it is good."

      Mr. Rex Beach was not pacing his floor nervously; he was crossing the room with the practical intention of procuring a cigarette. Nevertheless his firm tread lent emphasis to his remarks.

      "There is a sort of literary snobbery," he said, " noticeable among people who condemn contemporaneous literature just because it is contemporaneous. The strongest proof that there is something good in the literature of the day is that it reaches a great audience. There must be something in it or people wouldn't read it.

      "The people are the final judges; it is to them that authors must appeal. Take any big question of public importance — after it has been discussed by politicians and newspapers, it is the people who at last decide it.

      "A man may have devoted his life to some tremendous achievement, and have left it as a monument to his fame. But it is to public opinion that we must look for the verdict on the value of his life's work.

      "Take Carnegie, for example; when he dies, you bet people will nave his number! His ideas are a tremendous menace, and the people who believe as he does about peace will find themselves generally execrated one of these days.

      "It may seem to you that this has nothing to do with literature. But it has a good deal to do with it. I know that many things have been said about the effect on literature of the war. But I want to say that the war will have, I hope, one admirable effect on American writers-it will make them stir up the American conscience to a sense of the necessity for national defensive preparation. The writers must educate the people in world politics and show them the necessity for defensive action. Americans have a sort of mental inertia in regard to public questions, and the writers must overcome this inertia.

      "The writers must stir up the politicians and the people. There's been a whole lot of mush written about peace. There always will be war. We can't reform the world.

      "The pacifists say that it is useless to arm because war cannot be prevented by armaments. The obvious answer to that is that neither can the failure to arm prevent war. And the verdict after the war will be better if we are prepared for it. The writers must call our attention to the folly of leaving ourselves open to attack.

      "It's hard to reach the conscience of the American people on any big issue. We are too independent, too indifferent, too ready to slump back. That's one of the penalties of democracy, I suppose; the national sense of patriotism becomes atrophied. It needs some whaling big jolt to wake it up. Every American writer can help to do this.

      "The trouble is that we have too many men with feminine minds, too many of these delicate fellows with handkerchiefs up their sleeves. I can't imagine any women with ideas more feminine than those of Bryan — could any woman evolve anything more feminine than his peace-at-any-price idea?"

      Mr. Beach smiled. "I suppose I should not be talking about world politics," he said. "There are so many men who, have specialized in that subject and are therefore competent to talk about it. I am only a specialist in writing."

      "Do you think," I asked, "that writers should be specialists in writing? Some people believe that the best fiction, for example, is produced by men who do some other work for a living."

      "I certainly believe that a writer should devote himself to writing," said Mr. Beach. "This is an age of specialization, and literature is no exception to the general rule. Literature is like everything else; you must specialize in it to be successful."

      "This has not always been the case. has it?" I asked. "Has literature been produced by people who made writing only an avocation?"

      "Surely," said Mr. Beach. "It is only within the last few years that writers have been able to write for a living and make enough to keep the fringe off their cuffs."

      I asked what had caused this change.

      "It has been caused chiefly by the magazines. The modern magazines have done two important things for fiction — they have brought it within everyone's reach. and they have increased the prices paid to the authors, thus enabling them to make a living by devoting themselves exclusively to writing.

      "But it has been said," I ventured, "that a writer, no matter how talented he may be, cannot make a comfortable living out of writing fiction unless he is most extraordinarily gifted with ideas, and that therefore a writer takes a tremendous risk if he throws himself upon literature for support."

      "How is a writer going to get ideas for stories," asked Mr. Beach in turn, "unless he uses ideas? The more ideas a man uses, the more ideas will come to him.

      "The imaginative quality in a man is like any other quality; the more it is functioned, the better it is functioned. If you fail to use any organ of your body, nature will in time let that organ go out of commission.

      "It is just the same with imagination as with any organ of the body. If a writer waits for ideas to come to him, and ceases to exercise his imagination, his imagination will become atrophied. But if he uses his imagination, it will grow stronger and ideas will come to him with increasing frequency."

      Mr. Beach is an enthusiastic advocate of the moving picture. In the course of his discussion of it he advanced an interesting theory as to the next stage of its development.

      "The next use of the moving picture," he said, "will be the editorial use. We have had the moving picture used as a comic device, as a device to spread news, and as an interpreter of fiction. But as yet no one has endeavored to use it as a means to mold public opinion in great vital issues of the day.

      "Of course, it has been used educationally, and as part of various propaganda schemes. But it will be used in connection with great political problems. It will become the most powerful of all influences for directing public opinion in politics and in everything else.

      "It will play a mighty part in the thought of the country and of the world.

      "I have seen men and women coming from a great moving-picture show almost hysterical with emotion. I have heard them shout and stamp and whistle at what they saw flashed before them on a white sheet as they never did in any theatre.

      "What a strong argument 'The Birth of a Nation' presents! Now, suppose that same art and that same equipment were used to present arguments about some political issue of our own time, instead of one of our fathers' time. What a force that would be!"