employment in the numerous new Russian firms or with the Germans, while the former, both doctors and lawyers, practise among the Russian colony.

Finally, there is a considerable number of Russian artists in Berlin painters, sculptors, musicians, actors, etc., etc. This is how a German newspaper alluded to them some time ago:

Fascinating is the idealism of the Russian artists, who are really not at all well off. I remember a visit to Puni (his wife is the painter Boguslavskaia, who has so rapidly become fashionable), who in an attic on the fifth floor of a backhouse in the Kleiststrasse owns a bedroom, studio, and sitting-room; how, with a delightful ability, he, through really touching hospitality, caused his poverty to be forgotten; and how he then spoke of his art, of Russian, German, European, painting, and of art matters generally, with such a fanaticism as if to-day he had no other cares. This ignoring of—or rather this utter non-acquaintance with-all the worries that threaten to blow our brains out I have found again and again among all Russian artists. They are extraordinarily active. But when work is finished, they meet with their colleagues, and, with tea and cigarettes, they debate endlessly and heatedly their ways, tendencies and goals. I have never heard the words money, foreign exchange, stock exchange, dollar, but instead bitter fights over expressionism, mechanism, eclecticism. There is a close contact with German artists, particularly with the painters and sculptors. Indeed, here a synthesis has already been reached that is of the greatest value to German painting. A few years hence the influence of Kandinsky, Archipenko (who teaches at the International Academy in Charlottenburg), Golyshev, Sternberg, Genin, Shagall, will be recognised far more clearly than nowadays, when the first spiritual founding of the Russian and German painters and plasticians has just begun.

So much for the Russian painters and sculptors in Berlin. As to the musicians, one need hardly say that they, too, are highly appreciated. A number of first-class Russian musicians live in Berlin now, and their concerts are usually artistic triumphs. The Germans also appreciate the fact that these musicians have taught them something about modern Russian music, which formerly they knew badly or not at all. Tickets for the concerts of pianists like Borovsky or Vengerova, violinists like Schmuller or Cecilia Hansen, 'cellists like Belyussov, or singers like Smirnov, are always sold out days ahead. Of course, all these musicians do not stay permanently in Berlin; they come and go, and then come again. The same applies to most Russian theatres. There have been the unforgettable visits of the Moscow Arts Theatre, which is now in the United States. The Moscow Kamerny Theatre has also visited Berlin. A group of artists of the Moscow Arts Theatre, with Germanova at its head, has given several highly successful performances. The Romantic Theatre has given some excellent ballets with Smirnova and Romanov, of the late Imperial Russian Ballet. Karsavina has also been dancing in Berlin lately. Then there is the 'Blue Bird,' a highly artistic entertainment in

the genre of Nikita Balieff's 'Chauve Souris.' And a great number of smaller Russian theatrical enterprises have also contributed to the popularity of the Russian stage in Berlin.

Even when they do not take any active part in the life of the capital, the influence of the Russians is strongly felt almost everywhere. And their very presence has awakened a great interest in Russia among the Germans. For instance, a great deal of Russian literature is now being translated into German and is widely read. In a German Letter' to the American magazine the Dial, Thomas Mann, the distinguished German author, writes, among other things:

There are no end of translations from the older and modern Russian authors, which, as can be learned from the booksellers, are characteristically in especially great demand by our public. A friend told me that on visiting André Gide in Paris recently he found the French writer buried in the large German edition of Dostoievsky's complete works, for there is no edition in French. But while France has discovered Dostoievsky in German, we have brought out Nicolai Lyesskov, a contemporary to the creator of The Brothers Karamazov, but overshadowed by him for a long time. To-day, however, he is recognised as a story-teller provided with a rare artistic power, and in expressing the soul of the Russian people quite the equal of the man who found his story, The Scaled Angel, worthy of an extensive discussion in The Journal of an Author. We are devouring Lyesskov. There is nothing in Europe to-day like his talent for story-telling. But the tradition lives on in the young generation of Russian writers, more than one member of which is now living in Germany. To my delight, I recently had the opportunity in Berlin of meeting one and another representative of this poetic offshoot, Remizov, for instance, and Count Alexei Tolstoi. They live there, refugees from the tyranny of the Reds, but homesick for 'the Little Mother Russia.' [Incidentally, this does not apply to Count Alexei Tolstoi, who is not a refugee, but works on the Soviet paper Nakanune; so Thomas Mann must have been misled by someone.] Meanwhile they might well feel at home here, since their works, in the German versions of Alexandre Eliasberg, have been received with most eager sympathy.The Dial, June 1923.

I must also mention the poet and translator Gröger, whose rendering of some modern Russian poets is wonderful.

As we see, the literature of Russia is at last coming into its own, at least in one country in Europe. It is to be sincerely hoped and desired that in this respect the example set by Germany will be followed by others. But not only do the Germans show a great interest for Russian literature: they have also begun to produce some Russian historical films, for instance A Tsar's Fate: the False Dimitri, or Peter the Great. And it is impossible to sit in a German restaurant nowadays without hearing at least something Russian played by the band, usually some well-known gipsy romance or folk song.

Such are the various aspects of the life of a city in a city, a capital within a capital.

Thus the Russians have 'captured' Berlin. What will be the consequences of this peaceful conquest, and how long can it

last ?

It would be futile to try to make any prophecies. But, as far as one can foretell, I think that the foundations of a future Germano-Russian alliance are being laid in Berlin. The Germans are most eager that this should be so. That is why they give the Russians various facilities and put up with certain of their faults. That is why, realising that Bolshevism in Russia will not last eternally, they are endeavouring to win the sympathies of the anti-Bolshevik Russians as well. While, on the one hand, dealing with the Bolsheviks and officially recognising the Soviet Government, the Germans are endeavouring to promote a political and economic rapprochement with groups of the emigrés. As to the cultural entente, one can almost say it has taken place already. Misery and ill-treatment always tend to bring people together. For a long time now the Russians (whether Bolsheviks or émigrés) and the Germans have been the pariahs of the world. Thus the trend of events is powerfully driving the two countries towards each other. But there is another possibility. There is just one thing that all the Russian émigrés have in common, wherever they live, whatever their station in life, and whatever their political credo: uncertainty. None of them knows what is going to happen next. Supposing the Germans suddenly change their attitude, and their anti-foreign feeling grows to such an extent that they decide to get rid of all the Russian intruders. Or, as is not altogether unlikely, supposing Germany collapses politically and economically this winter, and has some sort of Bolshevism. What would happen to the Russian population of Germany? Once again they would have to flee. But whither, whither?

GEORGE SOLOVEYTCHIK.

VOL. XCIV-No. 560

T T

THE CINEMA

THE critic who attempts to improve the standard of any popular form of amusement or art is usually regarded with suspicion as a pedant or a 'kill-joy.' The people has always claimed the right of being its own arbiter in such matters, and, while the enlightened scolded, gladiatorial shows and bull-fights have flourished because they were the expression of something that the people really wanted. But the position of the cinematograph in modern life is hardly analogous. Although it, too, is the outcome of popular tastes and prejudices, it also dictates unconsciously a standard of conduct, and expresses an ideal of art. Not only does it say : 'This is how people think and live,' but it also adds-as the lawcourts are beginning to discover-' This is how people should live and think.' Its reforms, then, mean something more than the unwarranted meddling with the amusement of unsophisticated millions, and its right use may well be of permanent value to civilisation.

So far no one can claim that the ingenious dodge by which series of successive photographs are projected on a screen to give the illusion of continuous motion is in itself an important landmark in the history of human evolution. Up to the time of writing the cinematograph can hardly be claimed as a worthy monument even of the age we live in. A few things of minor importance can be said in its favour: it has proved of some use to a few scientific experts in the course of their investigations; 'slow motion' pictures have already helped to instruct suburban players of lawn tennis to improve their strokes; and, incidentally, millions of people have nightly satisfied their craving for amusement and their unconscious longing for some form of vicarious æsthetic expression by going to the pictures.' What may be fairly said of the pictures themselves? The case against them has often been put, and may be stated somewhat as follows. Tremendous only in their fatuity, they have not even the negative virtue of most fatuous things in being harmless, if we are to believe the testimony of our law-courts. The army of mimes called into being cannot be said, candidly, to deserve anyone's respect; and a new horror has been added to civilisation by the

creation of the 'cinema star '-that creature with all the parade of a Spanish matador, rivalling him in his salary without even running an equivalent risk. The stereotyped conception of life and art usually conveyed is often vicious and almost always undignified, thanks to the crude attempt to symbolise deep spiritual emotions by means of their accidental accompaniments of gestures and facial contortions. All this, and much more that has been left unsaid, is too well known to thoughtful people to need any special emphasis or proof.

The curious thing is that, in spite of everything, there has been an uneasy suspicion growing of late years that there is something in the idea of the ' film' after all. This has shown itself in various ways. Some of our best daily newspapers, impressed, no doubt, by the enormous circulation commanded by a popular film, have attempted to take the better-class pictures seriously by reviewing them and developing canons of criticism on Crocean lines. A few years ago a small coterie at Oxford (and, no doubt, at Chelsea too) professed to discover in the cinematographic art an æsthetic importance hidden from the Philistine. Most ominous of all, there has been a ponderous creaking of machinery in official circles: the film, it seems, is an educative instrument of undiscovered value. The child mind, we are threatened, is to have its apperception enlarged by immediately intuitive methods; and what could be better adapted for this purpose than the film? Old-fashioned people would be tempted to answer: 'A blackboard and a twopenny cane.' But that is by the way, and as the whole question is under examination, there is no need to criticise it here in detail.

The scope of this article is wider, for it attempts to show that, in spite of its shortcomings at the moment, a far higher function can be claimed for the film than to teach novices the mystery of a forearm drive, or to show a Prime Minister in the act of lighting his morning cigarette, or even to enlarge the apperceptions of school-children. It has, in fact, introduced a new element of permanent importance to civilisation: it has provided a new expression and a new art whose possibilities have not yet been explored. Far from being, at its highest, a useful educational instrument, there may be latent in it a new form of æsthetic expression so vital and important that children of the future will have to be taught appreciation of the great film productions as they are now taught appreciation of Shakespeare.

This belief in the future of the film lays no claim to startling originality, nor does it demand adherence to any modern impressionistic theory of art; in fact, the principles on which it is based are derived from no less orthodox a work than Lessing's Laocoon. Such a statement not only lends to our theory all the respect