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THE INTERNATIONAL

351

DECEMBER

INTERNATIONAL

1917

The cover for this month is unfortunately missing.

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The

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THE INTERNATIONAL

This page is unfortunately missing.

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THE INTERNATIONAL

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THE INTERNATIONAL

Forecast for the Month of January.

CONTENTS FOR DECEMBER.

It is fitting that the new year should usher in a newer,

brighter and greater International. The International

is always ahead of time. Instead of being a magazine

of the past it is a magazine of the future. The Simon

Iff stories symbolize the quality of thought and ex-

pression which sets the International so uniquely apart

from its contemporaries. Just as Simon Iff is far in

advance of the modern detective, so the International

takes its place in the vanguard of the new literature,

the new freedom.

The January Simon Iff story is not in fact a story at

all. It is a slice of that mysterious life in which terrible

crimes are committed for reasons which lie deep in

the subconsciousness of their perpetrators. Do you

remember the first time that you read Edgar Allan

Poe’s stories? Do you remember the thrill and the shock

and the horror produced by Poe’s tales? You will have

that same feeling after finishing the January Simon

Iff tale.

We promised you “The Heart of Holy Russia” for

December, but you will like it all the more in January.

For it will help you to understand the Bolsheviki, the

Maximalists, the Grand Dukes, Kerensky. In short,

you will gain an understanding of that palpitating life

which lies behind the dramatic movements now rend-

ing Russia. Do you know that St. Basil and Ivan

Veliky, which helped to make Moscow the greatest of

all the wonders of the world, have just been destroyed?

Geomancy is a science enabling those who under-

stand its secrets to divine the future, to understand the

past. It will answer any questions. One man became a

millionaire after mastering this simple yet fascinating

science.

A new story by Mark Wells has even stirred our

printer. “You’ve got to hand it to him,” said this untu-

tored toiler after reading Mr. Wells’ masterpiece. The

story explains how a dainty little woman ruled a sav-

age king without paying the usual price, and imposed

on him the civilization of her conquered race.

“At the Feet of Our Lady of Darkness” reveals the

soul of a Franco-Egyptian girl well known in London

and Paris.

The Master Therion speaks confidentially to his dis-

We Stand Above ........................... Aleister Crowley 354

The Scrutinies of Simon Iff. No. 4. The Conduct of

John Briggs ................................... Edward Kelly 355

NQO ............................................... Charles Beadle 361

Concerning Death .................................. Baphomet 365

Pax Hominibus Bonae Voluntatis ................... A. C. 366

The Box of Counters ................. Hans Heinz Ewers 368

A Septennial ................................. Aleister Crowley 376

Inspired Bureaucracy ...... George Sylvester Viereck 377

Art and Clairvoyance ............................... J. Turner 379

Barnard’s Lincoln Unvisited .................................... 379

A Riddle ....................................... Aleister Crowley 379

The Plaint of Eve ............ George Sylvester Viereck 380

Auguste Rodin ......................................................... 381

Music for the Month ........................... “Haut Boy” 381

Drama As She Is Played .......................................... 382

The Gate of Knowledge ................................... 383-384

The International Forum .................................. 383-384

War Poetry ............................................................... 384

Portrait of a Jackal .......... George Sylvester Viereck 384

Published Monthly by the International Monthly, Inc.

1123 Broadway, New York City. Telephone, Farragut 9777. Cable address, Viereck,

New York.

President, George Sylvester Viereck; Vice-President, Joseph Bernard Rethy; Trea-

surer, K. Bombard; Secretary, Curt H. Reisenger.

Terms of Subscription, including postage, in the United States and Mexico: $1.50

per year; $0.80 for six month. Subscription to all foreign countries within the postal

union, $1.85 per year. Single copies, 15 cents.

Newsdealers and Agents throughout the country supplied by the American News

Company or any of its branches.

Entered at the Post Office at New York as second class matter.

Manuscripts, addressed to the Editor, if accompanied by return postage and found

unavailable, will be returned. The Editor, however, accepts no responsibility for unso-

licited contributions.

ciples throughout the world. In the “Message” and

the “Law of Liberty” he gives utterance to an im-

mensely important matter, important to you, too.

Besides these magnificent contributions there are

many other delightful articles, poems and stories. You

will like them all.

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THE INTERNATIONAL

WE STAND ABOVE.

ourselves.

I N normal times art and literature take care of themselves. Wisdom is justified of her children. Before we have been dead three

hundred years somebody is almost sure to notice it. The great mass of people is a homogeneous mass of brainless idiocy. Men

are dumb animals, and women only quack. In times of peace the hack journalists are as inconspicuous as they are insignificant; but

when war breaks out the hysteria natural to weak minds becomes vocal, and everybody wants to “do his bit” on one side or the

other, by squealing when much the best thing to do would be to bury himself.

T HESE little minds have no conception of the great ideas which distinguish man from mannikin. They imagine that Rodin was

a Frenchman, and Wagner a German. They do not understand that these persons were not men, but Gods. They do not

understand that the creations of such men are in the nature of that image of the great Goddess Diana which came down from

heaven for us men and for our salvation. They do not understand that Rheims is as sacred as Cologne; that the Kremlin should have

been protected from the maniacs, who are trying to translate Bernard Shaw into action, as Jerusalem (if there be anything of

artistic value therein) from the British. As a matter of fact, I believe there is nothing but a lot of faked historical monuments

camouflaged by the wily Syrian for the exploitation of American tourists of the Chautauqua brand. If this be so, Allenby, go to it!

B UT as for us, we stand above. I do not know whether Bulgaria is at war with England; but if so, it is evidently the duty to God

and man of every Bulgarian to knock the block off General Haig. At the same time, if that Bulgarian does not respect Kings

College Chapel, or uses my first edition of Adonais for pipe lights, I will knock his block off if I can catch the Bulgar at it. We are

warring for Democracy, but also for civilization, apparently owing to our inherent love of paradox. We have here a war within a

war. We have not only to fight the foe without, and the foe within, but also the foe that is the worst of all, the overzealous friend.

We feel rather as the President feels about the Vigilantes. If well-meaning asses were only mules how useful they might be in

batteries! We are out to break the political will of another group of nations, and our worst foes are those of our own people who are

giving the show away. We go to war to defend the rights of the little nations, and we imprison Irishmen who can not forget that their

mothers were raped by British soldiers. We are particularly strong on Belgium, and her representative complains that there is to be

no seat for Belgium on the Allied war council. The Germans go to war for Kultur, yet they cannot find an expedient for contracting

out of the shelling of cathedrals. And if these things are done in the green tree of the people in power, what shall be done in the dry

tree, and withered sticks of the mediocre. We have our attention taken away from the business of fighting by the miserable grunts

of these self-advertising pigs, who are only guinea-pigs in so far as they can always be counted on to sell their souls for a guinea.

It is not only useless and stupid to refuse the benefits of those who at the very lowest estimate were our friends, but the absolute

destruction of the whole principle of civilization.

A RT is long and political life is short. If we are enraged with the Germans for shelling St. Mark’s, which they have not yet

done, we ought certainly to declare war upon the French because of what Napoleon really did do to St. Mark’s a hundred

years ago. In order to carry out this program still more effectively, we can destroy the statues of Lafayette, and burn our Shakespeares

on the ground that the English burnt the Capitol at Washington. It is only the pettiest minds that perceive national qualities in

works of art. At most, national schools form a convenient classification. If the Dutch, as at times has seemed likely, decide that the

German cause is that of liberty, civilization, and progress, and determine to fight on their side, will some patriot immediately

discover that Rembrandt did not know how to paint? Would it not be better to make up our minds about it now? Will Mr. Roosevelt

decide to change his name to something less compromising? And shall we destroy the institution of marriage because the inhab-

itants of the Old Kent Road speak of their wives as “my old Dutch”? Shall we turn the feminine of duke into Americaness, to be

quite safe, and rather true, anyhow?

I CANNOT say how deeply I feel about this matter. The insensate screams of the mob threaten to deafen even those few ears

which were attuned to the still small voice of wisdom. The danger is enormous. Even defeat would be preferable to a universal

iconoclasm. It is not a new story. Again and again the most priceless treasures of antiquity, to say nothing of the structure of the

civilizations whence they sprung, have been destroyed utterly and irremediably in the most miserable religious and political

quarrels. Was not the library of Alexandria worth more to mankind than the whole Roman Empire? Were not the stained glass

windows of the churches of more importance than the entire struggle between Protestant and Catholic? The people who do not

understand this are Huns.

T HIS paper is not primarily political. So far as it is so, it is and will be loyal; but it will resent the thesis that in order to be loyal

one must be insane. “Battle, murder, and sudden death” is excellent sport, and it is extremely necessary at this moment. The

excretory system of nature, pestilence, has been constipated by the misguided efforts of medicine and hygiene. We had to get rid

of the surplus population, and we chose our own foolish way instead of Nature’s wise way. So not a word against war! But the

treasures of art, of literature, of music, must this time be preserved for humanity; and we are determined to resist to the death any

attack upon those treasures. We are — for the moment — fighting the Germans; but Faust and Siegfried and Zarathustra, the

achievement of Kant in philosophy and of Helmholtz in physics, must be put “out of bounds.” We stand above.

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I T is a somewhat invidious task; but we suppose that some one has got to do it, and it seems as if that some one had to be

THE INTERNATIONAL

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THE INTERNATIONAL

EDITOR

GEORGE SYLVESTER VIERECK

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

JOSEPH BERNARD RETHY

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

ALEISTER CROWLEY

VOL. XI. NO. 12.

DECEMBER, 1917

PRICE 15 CENTS

THE SCRUTINIES OF SIMON IFF.

By EDWARD KELLY.

No. 4. — The Conduct of John Briggs.

Simon Iff bounded into the Hemlock Club. He was by all

odds the oldest member of the club; but to-day he had the

elasticity of a boy, and he was so radiant that some people

would have sworn that they actually saw flashes of light about

his head. He bounded up the great stairway of the club two

steps at a time.

The porters relaxed their solemnity, for the man’s exalta-

tion was contagious. “So Simple Simon’s back from one of ’is

Great Magical Retirements again. I wonder wot in ’Eving’s

name ’e does.” “I wisht I knew,” replied the other. “The old

boy’s ninety, if ’e’s a dy.”

In the lunch-room the atmosphere was certainly in need of

all the exhilaration it could find. There were only a dozen

men present, and they were talking in whispers. The eldest of

them, Sir Herbert Holborne (’Anging ’Olborne of the criminal

classes) was neither speaking nor eating, though his lunch lay

before him. He was drinking whiskey-and-soda in a steady

business-like way, as a man does who has an important task to

accomplish.

Simon Iff greeted them with a single comprehensive wave

of the hand. “What’s the news, dear man?” he asked his neigh-

bor. “Are you all rehearsing a play of Wedekind’s? Oh, a steak

and a bottle of Nuits,” he added to the waiter. “The old Nuits,

the best Nuits, for I must give praise to Our Lady of the Starry

Heavens!”

“You do not appear to require the stimulus of alcohol in any

marked degree,” observed Holborne, in his driest manner.

“Stimulus!” cried Iff; “I don’t take wine to stimulate. It is

because I am stimulated, or rather, fortified, that I drink wine.

You must always drink what is in tune with your own soul.

That’s the Harmony of Diet! It is stupid and criminal to try to

alter your soul by drugs. Let the soul be free, and use what

suits it. Homeopathic treatment! So give me green tea when I

am exquisite and æsthetic like a Ming Vase; coffee when I am

high-strung and vigilant as an Arab; chocolate when I am feel-

ing cosy and feminine; brandy when I am martial and passion-

ate; and wine — oh, wine at all times! — but wine especially

when I am bubbling over with spiritual ecstasy. Thus, my dear

Holborne, I fulfil the apostolic injunction, ‘Whatsoever ye do,

whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God!’ Every

meal is a sacrament to me. That’s the simplicity of life! That’s

why they call me Simple Simon!”

The outburst brought his fellow-clubmen out of their apa-

thy. One of them remarked that, while agreeing with the the-

sis, and admiring the force and beauty of its expression, it was

unseasonable. He wished to tone down the exuberance of the

old mystic, for the sake of the general feeling.

“Why, what is wrong?” said Iff more sedately. “Not that

anything is ever really wrong; it’s all illusion. But you evi-

dently think there’s a great deal amiss; and” — he looked round

the table — “Sir Herbert seems to be at the bottom of it.”

“I will ask you to spare me,” spoke the judge; “this morning

I was compelled to perform the most painful duty of my ca-

reer. Tell him, Stanford!”

“Why, where have you been?” said James Stanford, a long

lean lantern-jawed individual who filled the Chair of History

at Oxford University.

“Oh, I’ve been everywhere and nowhere,” replied Simon.

“But I suppose a historian would take the view — an utterly

false and absurd view, by the way — that I have been sitting

in my oratory at Abertarff, meditating, for the last two months.

I have heard nothing of the world. Are we at war with the

Republic of Andorra?”

Stanford leaned forward across the table, while the rest kept

silent.

“You remember Briggs?”

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