6
PARTISAN REVIEW
know about the true relations obtaining between capitalism, fascism,
and war. Hence Mr. Mumford and his friends cannot assail fascism
for what it is but must picture it as some vast and mysterious irra–
tional, or as the dreadful aberration of a particular national men–
tality. This has become all the more necessary now, as the New
Deal government-of which the anti-fascist jitterbugs are enthu–
siastic partisans-is scuttling its domestic program of mild social
reforms and rapidly moving into the war zone. Mter all,
if
people
understood that fascism is no less than the latent barbarism of our
declining social system coming into the open, as in fact the
normal
state of this system when in order to save itself it must do away
with all democratic institutions, why-then it might be rather dif–
ficult to persuade them of the ideal value of fighting a new war to
save what we saved last time and look at it!
T. S. ELIOT'S
LAST WORDS
We are glad to see that, twenty-eight years after
T. S. Eliot's graduation from Harvard,
The
Harvard Advocate
has honored him with a
special number. We are sorry to learn that
The Criterion,
the dis·
tinguished review which Eliot has edited since 1922, is ceasing pub–
lication as of January, 1939. We are aware of no special significance
in this conjunction of events; and although the current
Advocate
reads in part like a well-written obituary, and Eliot himself, in his
"Last Words" in the
Criterion,
.is more than ever the Old Roman
pronouncing his own funeral oration, it is plainly not the occasion
for definitive farewells. Eliot is still living, he is still productive, his
play,
The Family Reunion,
is at present on the press, and everyone is
waiting for it.
What is of interest, however, is the set of reasons advanced by
Eliot for discontinuing
The Criterion
at this time. "During the
autumn," he tells us, "... the prospect of war had involved me
in
hurried plans for suspending publication; and in the subsequent
detente
I became convinced that my enthusiasm for continuing the
editorial work did not exist." Yet only in an immediate sense may
The Criterion
be regarded as a casualty of the September crisis.
"A feeling of staleness," "a depression of spirits" had been gathering
head in the editor for a considerable time. And as he reviews the
magazine's past,
in
"Last Words", we discover why; for the history
of the magazine is the history of Eliot himself in his capacity as an
intellectual leader. Founded four years after the Armistice,
The
Criterion
propOsed to continue the tradition of the great pre-war re·
