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The Hevlew of Reviews. 



l'hoto.2 



MR. JOHX MASKFIEJ.D. 



lUcpp.: 



stacles, which stand in the path of peace in the 

 shane of the masterful ambitions of Count Torgrim, 

 who is represented as dreaming by night and by 

 day of the conquest of Britain. " The War God." 

 is as full of matter as a haggis is full of meat, 

 f'.ach spectator finds ih it something that appeals 

 to liis sympathies or that offends his prejudices. It 

 will be interesting to see what reception it will have 

 from a popular audience. 



MR. I(tH.\ M.VSEFIELD. 



Another piiet, dramatist, piilitician, essayist, and 

 woman suffragist is Mr. John Masefield. a young man 

 who is now generally recognised as one of our com- 

 ing men of letters. Mr. Masefield's poem describing 

 the conversion of a village hooligan was the literary 

 (e.iture of the November numlier of the " Englisli 

 Meview." It was probably tlie highest point of ex- 

 pression his realistic genius has yet attained. 



Mr. Masefield was born a little more than thirty 

 years ago in an English village in the West country, 

 near Ledbury. After a few years' schooling he 

 went to sea in the merchant .service, for he lias felt 

 the call of the sea, which he descrilied in one of 

 "le latest of his poems. After lounding Cape Horn 

 lid exi)eriencing life in the seas of both hemi- 



spheres, Mr. Masefield decided to return to the 

 land. He spent a few years in America farming. 

 Then he returned to London, found a situation in 

 the City, which kept him in bread and butter 

 while he utilised his leisure in cultivating the Muses. 

 He began with verse which gained recognition from 

 good judges as being full of promise. Then he 

 went on to playwriting — village tragedy and tragedy 

 of a more amliitious order — and, like all others who 

 must write to live, he took to writing essays and 

 reviews for the daily and weekly press. 



As his poems show, Mr. Ma.sefield is no mere 

 poetaster. He is a man with a message, a soul on 

 fire which flames into utterance. He is no di/et- 

 tante, finical and fastidious. He feels, he thinks, 

 he speaks. His sympathies are as w'ide as human- 

 itv. and he has the courage to speak out. Of w-hich 

 thie most notable instance is afforded us this month 

 by the preface which he has contributed to the Eng- 

 lish reprint oif Mr. Reginald W. Kauffman's heart- 

 rending book, "Daughters of Tshmael " (Swift and 

 Co., 6s.). Kauft man's book is a storv of the career 

 of an American girl who has been trapped into 

 prostitution in New York. Mr. Masefield, in his 

 preface to this outspoken book, justifies the dis- 

 tinctive American act. "Where freemen without 

 idealism." savs Mr. Masefield, " are living in en- 

 forced celibacy and wherever free women without 

 idealism are living in enforced starvation, there 

 prostitution is inevitable.'' 



It is no good being mealy-mouthed, saying " How 

 terrible I" Prostitution is a regular business, em- 

 ploving many human beings ; it is the business of 

 supplying sexual gratification for payments made. 

 It can only be cured by instilling into the minds of 

 bovs a .sense of per.sonal honour and a knowledge of 

 the degradation which prostitution brings ujjon the 

 woman. Something also might be done if school- 

 mistres.ses, the wives of clergymen, and all women 

 fmijUiving servants would point out the methods 

 used by the ponce and the soiiteiicKr to the girls or 

 the women in their care or w^ithin the range of their 

 influence. Mr. Masefield briefly de.scrilies some of 

 the methods of the ^^■|lite Slave trader. He say.s 

 the market price of an English girl delivered at a 

 Continental brothel \aries from ;^i5 to j£,2o, ac- 

 cording to their innocence andlieauty. Once 

 trapped they are practically slaves for a very short 

 life — five years is surely too long an average if,- as 

 he suggests, they may have to receive twenty-five 

 men per diem. " Things of this sort," says Mr. 

 Masefield, " like all things harshly affecting human 

 life, ought to l-)e known by the men who make use 

 of them and by the women who suffer from them." 

 From which some notion may be gathered as to the 

 manner of man Mr. Masefield is. He has the root 

 of the matter within him, and it will bear still bet- 

 ter fruit in the years tn come than the go<_id fruit 

 already gathered. 



