THE NEW AGE

London, England

11 February 1915

(page 405)

READERS AND WRITERS.

And how justified some of us have been in our speculations of the last few years! In the case particularly of our own contemporaries I do not see cause now to retract a word the New Age has written—words that appeared, at first, as merely offensive. Compare, for instance, Mr. Austin Harrison’s treacherous conduct to his friend Dr. Oscar Levy, with his own article, criticised in these columns some years ago, entitled “We Come Down to a Shilling.” Of that article we said that the writer was capable of any vulgarity. To-day the evidence is before our eyes. Look, too, at what has been said of Mr. Austin Harrison's protégés, Mr. Frank Harris and Mr. Aleister Crowley. While they were being boomed by the “English Review” as great writers The New Age consistently warned the public against them as untrustworthy charlatans. Well, where are they to-day? What are your friends, Mr. Austin Harrison, now doing with the reputation you assisted them to make? I repeat that we have not been surprised by the actions of any or our modern publicists; nor ought our readers to have been. Coming events cast their shadows before them in the style in which men write. The criticism of style is, therefore, the forecast of events.