The United Amateur/July 1925/Editorial
Editorial
The amateur inactivity of 1924–’5, in which the United has played so lamentably great a part, forms a striking warning of the oblivion which will shortly overtake us unless something drastic and energetic is done. Lack of funds has made impossible the systematic issuance of this official organ—and lack of public spirit has prevented any spontaneous protest or attempt to remedy the condition. Illness of the President and of the Secretary-Treasurer has retarded executive work in two vital departments—but only sheer indifference has stalled the replacement machinery which should have risen to the occasion in each case. What can we say, indeed, when a whole annual election is omitted, and an entire official board suffered to groan under its lightly taken burdens a second year?
In this matter the present editor is doubtless as much to blame as anybody else. It is true that a multiplicity of outside duties have drained his head, hand and schedule of nearly all available time and energy; but it is also time that when a member finds his duties unfeasible he ought to retire and make way for younger blood. Such the editor now purposes to do, as he sends forth his concluding word of a barren and discouraging period. Efforts are already under way for a briskly conducted campaign of revival by certain of the newer amateurs; and our readers are urged to heed diligently and conscientiously any circular appeals for activity which may in the near future arrive under not very familiar signatures. A mall election is in the air, for which genuinely effective candidates have been sought with the greatest and most unbiased assiduity. By the time these lines are read a new and determined official board of young leaders may be seated in power—and it will henceforward be our part, as privates in the ranks, to sustain them with every needed act of loyalty and co-operation. The intense labour entailed in actively managing and administering an amateur press association can be understood only by one who has been through it. There is planning, financing, letter-writing, and adjusting beyond all belief; so much, in truth, that old-timers are forced to drop out willingly or unwillingly when external matters begin to demand a prime share of their energy. If, then, our leaders in their heyday are willing to serve the cause with this extreme of devotion; the very leant we can do is to play faithfully our easier parts as cogs in the mechanism which their cerebral muscle-power must keep in motion. ***** Consolidation is again abroad on men’s tongues, and this time with much better excuses than formerly; since the current inactivity of all existing amateur associations would surely suggest a tightening up through the assemblage of any remaining real workers under one administrative system. Mr. C. W. Smith, of The Tryout, has been foremost in advancing this plan, and his editorial observations are uniformly marked by the soundest sense. Consolidation, while undoubtedly impairing the special features which each association possessed in the palmy days, is the logical course for a divided amateurdom which must confess itself moribund. With a chance for independent survival and retention of its particular characteristics, any association would be well justified in objecting to the design; but when the choice is between extinction and merging, one’s point of view in necessarily changed. Such a choice, indeed, leaves the special qualities as little possibility of endurance on the non-merging side as on the merging side—and since one cannot have them in any case, why not save what one can from the wreck?
At the same time, haste in this or any other serious step would a profound mistake. For the present our only task is to restore our own society to something like coherence, consciousness, and articulateness, that it may take stock of itself and decide what it can most profitably do. It may be that the new board, by crusading far afield for youthful, energetic, and superior membership, will be able to inaugurate a new era of active writing, criticism, stimulation, and discussion in the traditional United manner; in which case it would of course again become ridiculous to consider amalgamation with other bodies of less definite and constructive policies. But the question is debatable. Let us keep it in mind as we work steadily toward the rebuilding of the United we used to know. If we can have that United again, well and good. If not, it is at least better to have some sort of amateur journalism than none at all.
—H. P. Lovecraft.