able. He holds to the claim of a creative society, against the acquisitive, against the merely constructive. Those of us who despair of curing our society cling a little more fiercely and at times perhaps pedantically to the fine arts, sure at least of their purity, and convinced that if we can keep them alive the creative process will not wholly atrophy. Those with greater courage imagine again a happier social structure in the classico-mathematical Renaissance of which Havelock Ellis speaks, a society in which there are many arts and all are universally practised.
In such a society the poet would still be a phenomenon, but he would no longer be portentous. For us he is something almost out of nature, as he is certainly out of the materialistic civilization of our time. That is what makes the Nobel Prize, especially when it goes to a poet, so striking, for it seems a tribute to the poet wrung from every power hostile to poetry. It seems to testify that even in the minds of men concerned with everything uncreative, the existence of a few great artists is of a significance equal, at least, to that of the noblest workers in applied science. It has been said of Mr Yeats that he has the apparatus of enchantment; those who have for a moment been touched by his spell can best bear witness to the potency with which he uses it. Yet it is not for his magic alone that Mr Yeats merits the honour he has received. It is because he has held unyieldingly to the dignity and the sacredness of his calling, because he is one of the small number of our con- temporaries who have been great in creation.
For Mr Brooks the appearance of a poet, the recognition of a poet by society, must be all encouragement, as indications that the ideal society is not yet outlawed by the death of the creative instinct. In that sense every artist works in his interest and he in theirs.
With this issue The Dial begins its fifth year. It would be superfluous to review or to justify the difficult years we have passed. It is, simply, in our association with events like those we have discussed above that our justification, and our satisfaction, must ultimately rest.
