The Conservative (Lovecraft)/July 1915/In a Major Key
In a Major Key.
It was lately the good fortune of The Conservative to receive from The Blue Pencil Club a pamphlet entitled "In a Minor Key", whose phenomenal excellence furnishes emphatic evidence that the old National still retains some members who would have done it credit even in its palmiest days. But great as may be the literary merit of the publication, its astonishing radicalism of thought cannot but arouse an overwhelming chorus of opposition from the saner elements in amateur journalism.
Charles D. Isaacson, the animating essence of the publication, is a character of remarkable quality. Descended from the race that produced a Mendelssohn, he is himself a musician of no ordinary talent, whilst as a man of literature he is worthy of comparison with his co-religionists Moses Mendez and Isaac D'Israeli, but the very spirituality which gives elevation to the Semitic mind, partially unfits it for the consideration of tastes and trends in Aryan thought and writings, hence it is not surprising that he is a radical of the extremest sort.
From an ordinary man, the acclamation of degraded Walt Whitman as the "Greatest American Thinker" would come as an insult to the American mind, yet with Mr. Isaacson one may but respectfully dissent. Penetrating and forgetting the unspeakable grossness and wildness of the erratic bard, our author seizes on the one spark of truth within, and magnifies it till it becomes for him the whole Whitman. The Conservative, in speaking for the sounder faction of American taste, is impelled to give here his own lines on Whitman, written several years ago as part of an essay on the modern poets:
Behold great Whitman, whose licentious line
Delights the rake, and warms the souls of swine.
Whose fever'd fancy shuns the measur'd pace,
And copies Ovid's filth without his grace.
In his rough brain a genius might have grown,
Had he not sought to play the brute alone;
But void of shame, he let his wit run wild,
And liv'd and wrote as Adam's bestial child.
Averse to culture, strange to humankind,
He never knew the pleasures of the mind.
Scorning the pure, the delicate, the clean,
His joys were sordid, and his morals mean.
Through his gross thoughts a native vigour ran,
From which he deem'd himself the perfect man:
But want of decency his rank decreas'd,
And sunk him to the level of the beast.
Would that his Muse had dy'd before her birth,
Nor spread such foul corruption o'er the earth.
Mr. Isaacson's views on racial prejudice, as outlined in his "Minor Key", are too subjective to be impartial. He has perhaps resented the more or less open aversion to the children of Israel which has ever pervaded Christendom, yet a man of his perspicuity should be able to distinguish this illiberal feeling, a religious and social animosity of one white race toward another white and equally intellectual race, from the natural and scientifically just sentiment which keeps the African black from contaminating the Caucasian population of the United States. The negro is fundamentally the biological inferior of all White and even Mongolian races, and the Northern people must occasionally be reminded of the danger which they incur in admitting him too freely to the privileges of society and government.
Mr. Isaacson's protest is directed specifically against a widely advertised motion picture, "The Birth of a Nation", which is said to furnish a remarkable insight into the methods of the Ku-Klux-Klan, that noble but much maligned band of Southerners who saved half of our country from destruction at the close of the Civil War. The Conservative has not yet witnessed the picture in question, but he has soon both in literary and dramatic form "The Clansman", that stirring, though crude and melodramatic story by Rev. Thomas Dixon, Jr., on which "The Birth of a Nation" is based, and has likewise made a close historical study of the Ku-Klux-Klan, finding as a result of his research nothing but Honour, Chivalry, and Patriotism in the activities of the Invisible Empire. The Klan merely did for the people what the law refused to do, removing the ballot from unfit hands and restoring to the victims of political vindictiveness their natural rights. The alleged lawbreaking of the Klan was committed only by irresponsible miscreants, who, after the dissolution of the Order by its Grand Wizard, Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, used its weird masks and terrifying costumes to veil their unorganised villainies.
Race prejudice is a gift of Nature, intended to preserve in purity the various divisions of mankind which the ages have evolved. In comparing this essential instinct of man with political, religious, and national prejudices, Mr. Isaacson commits a serious error of logic.
The Conservative dislikes strong language, but he feels that he is not exceeding the bounds of propriety in asserting that the publication of the article entitled "The Greater Courage" is a crime which in a native American of Aryan blood would be deserving of severe legal punishment. This appeal to the people to refuse military service when summoned to their flag is an outrageous attack on the lofty principles of patriotism which have turned this country from a savage wilderness to a mighty band of states; a slur on the honour of our countrymen, who from the time of King Philip's War to the present have been willing to sacrifice their lives for the preservation of their families, their nation, and their institutions. Mr. Isaacson, however, must be excused for his words, since some of his phrases show quite clearly that he is only following the common anarchial fallacy, believing that wars are forced upon the masses by tyrannical rulers. This belief, extremely popular a few months ago, has received a rude blow through the acts of the Italian people in forcing their reluctant government to join the Allies. The socialistic delusion becomes ridiculous when its precepts are thus boldly reversed by facts. Bryan is out of the way at last, and in spite of Mr. Isaacson and his hyphenated fellow-pacificists, the real American people, the descendants of Virginian and New England Christian Protestant colonists, will remain ever faithful to the Stars and Stripes, even though forced to meet enemies at home as well as abroad.