Architecture and Democracy | Page 8

the horoscope of all artists! The skilled hand of the musician is put to
coarser uses; the eye that learned its lessons from the sunset must learn

the trick of making invisible warships and great guns. Let the architect
serve the war-god likewise, in any capacity that offers, confident that
this troubling of the waters will bring about a new precipitation; that
once the war is over, men will turn from those "old, unhappy, far-off
things" to pastures beautiful and new.
In whatever way the war may complicate the architect's personal
problem, it should simplify and clarify his attitude toward his art. With
no matter what seriousness and sincerity he may have undertaken his
personal search for truth and beauty, he will come to question, as never
before, both its direction and its results. He is bound to perceive, if he
does not perceive already, that the war's arrestment of architecture (in
all but its most utilitarian and ephemeral phases) is no great loss to the
world for the reason that our architecture was uninspired, unoriginal,
done without joy, without reverence, without conviction: a thing which
any wind of a new spirit was bound to make appear foolish to a
generation with sight rendered clairvoyant through its dedication to
great and regenerative ends.
He will come to perceive that between the Civil War and the crusade
that is now upon us, we were under the evil spell of materialism. Now
materialism is the very negation of democracy, which is a government
by the demos, or over-soul; it is equally the negation of joy, the
negation of reverence, and it is without conviction because it cannot
believe even in itself. Reflecting thus, he can scarcely fail to realize that
materialism, everywhere entrenched, was entrenched strongest in the
camps of the rich---not the idle rich, for materialism is so terrible a
taskmaster that it makes its votaries its slaves. These slaves, in turn,
made a slave of the artist, a minister to their pride and pretence. His art
thus lacked that "sad sincerity" which alone might have saved it in a
crisis. When the storm broke militant democracy turned to the engineer,
who produced buildings at record speed, by the mile, with only such
architectural assistance as could be first and easiest fished up from the
dragnet of the draft.
In one direction only does there appear to be open water. Toward the
general housing problem the architectural profession has been spurred
into activity by reason of the war, and to its credit be it said, it is now
thoroughly aroused. The American Institute of Architects sent a
commissioner to England to study housing in its latest manifestations,

and some of the ablest and most influential members of that
organization have placed their services at the disposal of the
government. Moreover, there is a manifest disposition, on the part of
architects everywhere, to help in this matter all they can. The danger
dwells in the possibility that their advice will not be heeded, their
services not be fully utilized, but through chicanery, ignorance, or
inanition, we will relapse into the tentative, "expensively provisional"
methods which have governed the housing of workers hitherto. Even so,
architects will doubtless recapture, and more than recapture, their
imperiled prestige, but under what changed conditions, and with what
an altered attitude toward their art and their craft!
They will find that they must unlearn certain things the schools had
taught them: preoccupation with the relative merits of Gothic and
Classic--tweedledum and tweedledee. Furthermore, they must learn
certain neglected lessons from the engineer, lessons that they will be
able immeasurably to better, for although the engineer is a very
monster of competence and efficiency within his limits, these are
sharply marked, and to any detailed knowledge of that "beautiful
necessity" which determines spatial rhythm and counterpoint he is a
stranger. The ideal relation between architect and engineer is that of a
happily wedded pair--strength married to beauty; in the period just
passed or passing they have been as disgruntled divorcés.
[Illustration: PLATE VI. PLAN OF THE RED CROSS COMMUNITY
CLUB HOUSE, CAMP SHERMAN, OHIO]
The author has in mind one child of such a happy union brought about
by the war; the building is the Red Cross Community Club House at
Camp Sherman, which, in the pursuit of his destiny, and for the
furtherance of his education, he inhabited for two memorable weeks.
He learned there more lessons than a few, and encountered more
tangled skeins of destiny than he is ever likely to unravel. The matter
has so direct a bearing, both on the subject of architecture and of
democracy, that it is worth discussing at some length.
This club house stands, surrounded by its tributary dormitories, on a
government reservation, immediately adjacent to the camp itself, the
whole