piness, and Omar (or Fitzgerald) did have the wrong
attitude towards happiness. He and those he has influenced do not see
that if we are to be truly gay, we must believe that there is some
eternal gaiety in the nature of things. We cannot enjoy thoroughly even
a pas-de-quatre at a subscription dance unless we believe that the
stars are dancing to the same tune. No one can be really hilarious but
the serious man. "Wine," says the Scripture, "maketh glad the heart of
man," but only of the man who has a heart. The thing called high
spirits is possible only to the spiritual. Ultimately a man cannot
rejoice in anything except the nature of things. Ultimately a man can
enjoy nothing except religion. Once in the world's history men did
believe that the stars were dancing to the tune of their temples, and
they danced as men have never danced since. With this old pagan
eudaemonism the sage of the Rubaiyat has quite as little to do as he
has with any Christian variety. He is no more a Bacchanal than he is a
saint. Dionysus and his church was grounded on a serious joie-de-vivre
like that of Walt Whitman. Dionysus made wine, not a medicine, but a
sacrament. Jesus Christ also made wine, not a medicine, but a
sacrament. But Omar makes it, not a sacrament, but a medicine. He
feasts because life is not joyful; he revels because he is not glad.
"Drink," he says, "for you know not whence you come nor why. Drink, for
you know not when you go nor where. Drink, because the stars are cruel
and the world as idle as a humming-top. Drink, because there is nothing
worth trusting, nothing worth fighting for. Drink, because all things
are lapsed in a base equality and an evil peace." So he stands
offering us the cup in his hand. And at the high altar of Christianity
stands another figure, in whose hand also is the cup of the vine.
"Drink" he says "for the whole world is as red as this wine, with the
crimson of the love and wrath of God. Drink, for the trumpets are
blowing for battle and this is the stirrup-cup. Drink, for this my
blood of the new testament that is shed for you. Drink, for I know of
whence you come and why. Drink, for I know of when you go and where."

VIII. The Mildness of the Yellow Press

There is a great deal of protest made from one quarter or another
nowadays against the influence of that new journalism which is
associated with the names of Sir Alfred Harmsworth and Mr. Pearson. But
almost everybody who attacks