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Show CALL ON BRAINS FOR SUPPORT "Regimented" Propaganda la Modern Idea. EwtaldisLed Order Bolstered by Intellectual. No conscientious student of let-tors let-tors lias lieen Inclined to take too seriously the alarm that lias been fell over the future of literature In Russia's proletarian state. After all, It was only a natural part of the revolution rev-olution that the intellectuals should have heen 'regimented" for propaganda propa-ganda purposes. History shows that It Is the part of the Intellectuals during stability to support the established order and when that order becomes Insupportable Insupport-able to express. In varying ways, the Intellectual ferment that precedes nil fundamental shifts In political lower. low-er. Thus the writers In Kussia long Hgo became revolutionary propagandists. propagan-dists. And when the revolution came they extolled the new regime more blalantly, but not less effectively, than the writers In a cm pi I n list ic stale bend their art toward support of the homely virtues whence capitalism cap-italism draws Its strength. Writers know this. Somerset Maugham, in the preface to "Kast and West," takes pains to Inform his renders that the editor of the mngti-zlne mngti-zlne where his stories mostly appeared ap-peared never told him what to write or what noL- to write. If It were not at lenst suspected that writers are "regimented" under whatever political system, such declarations of Independence would be superfluous. superflu-ous. I'.ut there are degrees of regimentation, regi-mentation, as of everything else. During a revolution the subtle concealment con-cealment of propaganda under a layer of art disappears and the skilled writer becomes as unscrupulous unscrupu-lous as any hack publicity agent. That Is what happened In Russia, when, In the phrase of Max Eastman, East-man, the artists were put in uniform. The Russian revolution is now an accomplished fact. The need for obvious ob-vious propaganda lessens. The die-hards die-hards may still believe that there is an unlimited distinction between true proletarian writers and bourgeois Intellectuals. In-tellectuals. But Karl Rndek, one of Communism's most powerful thinkers, think-ers, realizes that undiluted propaganda propa-ganda may eventually defeat its own ends. At a congress of all-Soviet writers in Moscow, Radek said that the bars must bo let down and that the old theory of "he who Is not with us Is against us" would no longer rule In the arts. And so it may soon be that the writers of Russia will lay aside their uniforms and the Russian artists in mufti will find new means for expression. expres-sion. Out of the chaos of revolution may appear the needed security which Is the basis of all art. At the same time It may be well to speculate specu-late on the theory that the reason why literature has so lagged In the 800 years of America is because of Its "regimentation" under such banners ban-ners as Puritanism and Materialism. The growing determination of our writers to work under different standards and to talk openly of the place of propaganda in art is as significant sig-nificant as Radek's movement in the opposite direction. Washington Post. |