erudite
old buffers as Milton, Spenser, and Gray? Above all, because it has been
said that the intellect has nothing to do with art, it is assumed by the
mob of ladies and gentlemen, who if they wrote not with ease could not
write at all, that there is no such thing as the artistic problem. And
it is, I believe, chiefly because all genuine artists are beginning to
feel more and more acutely the need of a severe and exacting problem,
and because everyone who cares seriously for art feels the need of
severe critical standards, that, with a sigh of relief, people are
timidly murmuring to each other "Plus de Jazz!"

And, indeed, there are autumnal indications: the gay _papier-mache_
pagoda is beginning to lose its colours: visibly it is wilting. When,
a few days after the conversation I have recorded, it was rumoured in
Paris that the admired Prokofieff, composer of _Chout_, had said that
he detested ragtime, the consternation into which were thrown some
fashionable bars and _salons_ was as painful to behold as must have been
that into which were thrown parlours and vicarage gardens when Professor
Huxley began pouring cold water on Noah's Ark. We hurried away to the
Southern Syncopated Orchestra, only to find it sadly fallen off. But had
it really changed so much as we? And, more and more, immense musical and
literary activity notwithstanding, people are looking to the painters,
with their high seriousness, professionalism, conscience, reverence, and
vitality as the sole exponents and saviours of "le grand art." Not for
nothing is Derain the most admired of Frenchmen by the young _elite_;
for Derain is humorous without being _gavroche_, respects the tradition
yet is subservient to no school, and believes that all the highest human
faculties are not more than sufficient to the production of the smallest
work of art.

What the pick of the new generation in France, and in England too, I
fancy, is beginning to feel is that art, though it need never be solemn,
must always be serious; that it is a matter of profound emotion and of
intense and passionate thought; and that these things are rarely found
in dancing-palaces and hotel lounges. Even to understand art a man must
make a great intellectual effort. One thing is not as good as another;
so artists and amateurs must learn to choose. No easy matter that:
discrimination of this sort being something altogether different
from telling a Manhattan from a Martini. To select as an a