THE OPEN COURT

Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

December 1915

(pages 752-763)

MISCELLANEOUS.

Two Letters from Dr. Beadnell.

(H.M.S. Shannon, Second Cruiser Squadron. c/o G.P.O.)

October 22, 1915. (At sea).

Dr. Paul Carus, La Salle, Illinois.

Dear Sir: I wrote you a brief note of acknowledgement of your kind letter to me of September 18, but I feel I should be lacking in ordinary courtesy did I not respond at greater length and touch on some of the questions your letter raises. . . .

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It is impossible to believe you really condone Germany’s manner of conducting was; on the other hand, seeing your ideal situation for taking up a calm, philosophic attitude, and your great facilities by means of your magazine, for weighing the pros and cons of, and meting out praise and blame to, either side indiscriminately, it is difficult to understand your wanton and gratuitous attack on England. Your magazine is written in English and read by English-speaking peoples; why, having committed the original mistake of diverting it from its primary object did you go on to make the unpardonable mistake of using it as a propaganda almost exclusively for one side? Why did you not, as editor, ensure that equalization of opinions expressed in it that one has a right to expect in a magazine of this type? I ask you, Dr. Carus, what will history say of your magazine in ten years time, nay, what will yourself say when you take up a back number, shall we say that for August, page 500, and read the following lines?—

“In the present crisis there are more pigmies than men. Obscene dwarfs like George V, some pot-bellied bourgeois like Poincaré, could only become heroic by virtue of some Rabelais magic-wand. Joffre and Kitchener are quiet business-like subordinates with no qualities that can seize the reins of the horses of Apollo. The Czar is a nobody.”

You will not even be able to anaesthetize your conscience by pleading that you did not write these personalities, for you and every one else will know that an editor, though not responsible for the opinions of his contributors, is responsible for the tone of their contributions. But in this case, you are in very fact actually responsible for the opinion expressed, for in the very same number you pat the author of the words on the back for his anti-English outspokenness. But let me be fair, here is what you say:

“There are a few men in England with backbone who speak out boldly and criticize their government, but they are unpopular at home, and the truth they have to tell is resented. We mention the best of them when speaking of Professor Conybeare of Oxford, the Hon. Bertrand Russell of Cambridge, J. Ramsay Macdonald; and we must not forget Mr. Aleister Crowley who has sent a circular to his friends in which he castigates English hypocrisy under the title ‘An Orgy of Cant.’ ”

From which I gather that Mr. Aleister Crowley, the author of the before-mentioned words is an Englishman. Really? I confess to astonishment. Present him, Dr. Carus, (with apologies) to the German nation. Nous n’avons pas besoin de ce gentilhomme. A man capable of comparing the German emperor to Christ, who portrays him as seemingly “omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, the very angel of God, terrible and beautiful, sent to save the Fatherland from savage foes,” compels a certain amount of furious thinking. All would agree such a one had certainly missed his vocation, the only conceivable point of disagreement would be as to whether he should be appointed Chaplain-Royal to the “All Highest” or clapped into a madhouse.

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Dr. Beadnell’s Criticism.

While the current Open Court is being made ready Dr. Beadnell’s answer reaches me, and I take the opportunity to publish it at once and make special room for it in the current number, even in preference to my own article on the same subject, written in answer to my critics. . . .

[ . . . ]

As to the passage with Dr. Beadnell quotes from the article by Mr. Crowley in the August Open Court, I confess that I would have canceled it if I had seen it in time. The writer being an Englishman, I assumed that his article would at least contain nothing offensive to English people. But I was mistaken. The royal family of England is of German descent. The late prince consort was highly respected, but I must confess that the Germans are not very proud of his descendants, yet had I been writing a criticism of them, I should have used very different language from that in the passage Mr. Beadnell quotes.

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