H. L. MENCKEN RETURNS

After a brief voyage to Panama for health and relaxation, H. L. Meneken has returned to the editorial duties of the American Mercury. The account of his trip, as given in the New York press, indicates that, although he was always sober, he was in good humor. It is good to catch an echo of the joviality which in former days relieved his mordant style. His more recent comments on the public scene have sometimes suggested as exaggerated different which was quite absent in the gayer days of the "Smart Set." Perhaps the termination of his literary partnership with Mr. Nathan has soured the sparking wine of Mr. Mencken's mellower mood.

It has sometimes been said that as a critic Mr. Mencken has outlived his period. In a sense the statement is quite true. The destruction of the false ideals and traditions which he attacked has been nearly completed, and the work of construction goes forward without him. But there in a dreadful penalty threatening the man who acts himself up, as Mr. Mencken did, to whip the follies and hypocrisies of a nation. In the beginning he will be hated and reviled. But later, when the country outgrows its grosser features, people are likely to turn with a kind of grudging admiration, and lavish affection on the man who castigated them.

In the career of Bernard Shaw as in a magic glass, Mr. Mencken may discern his future. The Mephistophelean iconoclast who was the bane of respectable Englishmen in his youth, is today almost a national institution, like Queen Victoria. Let him pursue his course of uncompromising cynicism, and the same ironic fate awaits Mr. Mencken.