ast-end melodrama; and that the
most highly moralised section of the public can be stirred to attend
to the persecution of Congo natives or Macedonian Christians only by
the most appalling stories of massacre, outrage, and various forms of
extreme suffering.

Surely it is not because they are concerned with painful subjects that
many of the "intellectual" dramatists have failed--failed, I mean, not
only with the very ignorant public, but also with more discriminating
audiences. In some cases, which it is not my business here to specify,
they have failed because the authors have set their hearts on a
problem outside the subject of their art, and the art has suffered in
consequence; for only disinterested art has the power to move us. In
some cases they have failed because the authors have held theories
which I believe to be fatal to literature. The narrow view of what is
called Realism has been an adjunct to intellectual faddism and
propagandism, and has served to sterilise literature. The great
Realists have never been mere Realists; they have never thought that
to produce art it is sufficient merely to reproduce fact. The word
"Truth" has been introduced in the most shameless fashion. It is true
that there are men without arms and legs and noses, but to delineate
such a creature with exquisite accuracy is not to produce a faithful
rendering of life. It is true that there are drab, sordid,
expressionless lives, without happiness, without hope, without ideals.
To describe these lives in all their miserable detail may be of
infinite value for social and reforming purposes. It may be the duty
of every one of us to study these sores in the body politic for the
existence of which we are collectively responsible. It may be craven
cowardice not to open our eyes wide to these painful and hideous
facts, which cry out to be removed and prevented. And if any person
whose enthusiasm in life it is to abolish them hits upon an artistic
device for calling attention to them, he is justified by his object.
But let us nevertheless be frank about the matter. His object is the
removal of abuses. To stir emotions in a fine way is not his primary
end and aim; it is for him only a means to something else. We are not
condemning him when we say that his object is not the object of the
creative artist, who is concerned with life not in its partial
aspects, but as a whole. But he on his part has no right to complain
if he fails. The "truth" with