COMMENTS
FRENCH NUMBER. No foreign editor of any kind or
standing on or off our staff is responsible for the contents of this
issue. I am happy to make up a number which is a comprehen
sive review, of the work itself, of the most energetic most un
trammelled group of young men working in France today. They
do not belong to any formal group . . . but they all amuse
themselves doing very good work. In a future issue I shall ex
tend the list to Joseph Delteil, Drieu la Rochelle, Marcel Ar-
land, etc. We will be accused of booming the Dadaists . . .
why not? (except that these men are not Dada). We have
printed more isms than any other ten journals and have never
caught one. Our pages are open to isms, ists, ites ... we have
been after the work, not the name . . . our drooling critics, in
true American fashion, become sea-sick over a name ... we
are enjoying ourselves.
We advise our readers to save this issue of the Little Review
for future reference ... in years to come one of these young
men (at the age of Anatole France) may be given a prize, or
may be printed in the “Dial.” Don’t find yourself in the posi
tion of the man who cried out when “Waste Land” appeared
. . . “If I could only get hold of some old copies of the Little
Review I could show these people who this Eliot is.”
MENCKEN’S FAREWELL. Someone—everyone is always
e £gi n g me on t0 write about something that I don’t want to write
about. Hundreds of subjects are suggested, some of them might
be amusing but I am usually finished with them before I am
urged to “go after them” in the Little Review. I am not excited,
to any pitch, either by achievement or defeat—every one seems
to be made of defeat, more or less ... it is not entertaining to
find it out or point it out. Regard my “going after” Dr. Frank
Crane!: a man who admits that he has been scared into optimism
. . . more scares more optimism.