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reproach of "cynicism" or any other that may be tossed in their direction. To them, the old judicial criticism simply cannot be made to apply. Let the critic don the robes of a judge, and he will heat no evidence. But this criticism is rapidly passing, if it is not already a thing of the past, even though we do hear M. Henri Massis calling for a return to the ermine, and for the restitution of "reason" and the "level head."^[1] The newer type of critic, like M. Berge, is not a judge but a confidant; he is one who looks beneath the wilful cynical veneer and discovers a "purity," in the form of a fundamental intellectual honesty. He knows that, with the young, tendency is more important than accomplishment, what they mean to do or would like to do than what they may be doing or may have done.^[2] Not only that, he is willing to permit the young to lay down their own laws; and one of those laws, according to Massimo Bontempelli, leader of the Italian Novecentisti, or Twentieth Century Group, is that there is no law in judging artistic results; each work of art, like each individual, is to be judged in itself; in which is to be seen an aftermath of Croce.^[3]

There could be no better plea for understanding than that made by a before-the-War leader of the young, one who died in hospital the day before the Armistice was signed, Guillaume Apollinaire:

Soyez indulgents quand vous nous comparezA ceux qui jurent la perfection de l'ordre.Nous qui quêtons partout l'aventure,Nous ne sommes pas vos ennemis.Nous voulons vous donner de vastes et d'étranges domainesOù le mystere en fleur s'offre à qui veut le cueillir.

1. Preface to Où va la Critique? Maurice Rouzaud, 1929.
2. The modern stress is on tendency. In painting, compare Andre Lhote's remark, to the effect that "not good painting so much as tendency interests me." Compare, also, the "placement par tendance," or hanging of exhibibitions in accordance with tendencies represented, that is practiced by the new Surindépendant group.
3. The influence of Croce has been both profound and widely diffused. Among his countrymen, a generation has been affected by the Filosofia dello spirito (1908-09). True, there is now a reaction on the part of the giovani against Croce, and the assertion is to be heard that the latter has nothing to say to the young writers of today. Nevertheless, his influence lasts, and is to be found so far from home as Russia; compare Alexei Tolstoy's Response to the Resolution of the R. C. P. (Russian section, following): "It is impossible to discuss the methods of art, for the reason that each new work of art is the method."