Chapter II: How to Write Exposition (1)

The Problem

All writing--except mere exercise and what the author intends for himself alone--is a problem in strategy. The successful author will always regard his writing as a problem of manipulation of material wisely chosen to accomplish an objective against the enemy. The enemy is the reader. He is armed with two terrible weapons, lack of interest and lack of comprehension. Sometimes one weapon is stronger than the other, but a wise author always has an eye for both. The strategic problem is, then, so to choose material, and so to order and express it, that the reader will be forced to become interested, to comprehend, to arrive, in other words, at the point in his feeling and thinking to which the author wishes to lead him. The author's objective is always an effect in the reader's mind. In so far as the author creates this effect he is successful. And the time to consider the effect, to make sure of its accomplishment, is before the pen touches the paper.

Sometimes the author makes a mistake in his planning, as did the composer Handel when he wrote the oratorio of "The Messiah." He placed the "Hallelujah Chorus" at the end of the oratorio. But when, toward the end of the second section, he saw from his place on the stage that the audience was not so enthusiastic as he had expected it to be at that point, he changed his plan, with practical shrewdness rushed to the front and shifted the famous chorus from the end of the third section to the end of the second, and had the satisfaction of seeing the audience so moved that first the King rose, and then, of course, the audience with him. The chorus has stood at the end of the second part to this day; that is the place for it--it brings about the effect that Handel desired much better there than if it were saved for the end of the oratorio. The oratorio is, in other words, a greater work than it would have been had not the author kept a keen eye for the audience, for the effect, and a willingness to change his plans whenever the gaining of the effect required a change. Just so the writer should constantly scan the horizon of the reader's mind for signs of interest and for shafts of intelligence.

The effect that the writer desires in the reader's mind may be of different natures. In Baedeker's Guide-Book the aim is largely to satisfy the understanding, to meet the reader's desire for compact information. In some of Poe's tales the effect is of horror. Patrick Henry aimed primarily to rouse to vigorous action. Shakespeare wished to shed light upon the great truths of existence, to satisfy the reader's groping curiosity, and also to thrill the reader with pity and terror or with high good humor or the unrestrained laughter of roaring delight.

In so far as the author accomplishes his purpose, in just so far he is successful. When friends complimented Cicero, telling him that he was the greatest orator, he replied somewhat as follows: "Not so, for when I give an oration in the Forum people say, 'How well he speaks!' but when Demosthenes addressed the people they rose and shouted, 'Come, let us up and fight the Macedonians!'" If Cicero was correct in his estimate, Demosthenes was the greater orator--of that there can be no doubt--for he gained his effect. President Wilson's great war messages had as one of their objects, certainly, the rousing in American hearts of a high thrill to the lofty object for which they fought, the overcoming of might with right. The remarkable success of the messages attests the author's power.

Now the author will accomplish this effect in the reader's mind only if his writing "takes hold," and it will "take hold" only if it is weighty, that is, only if it bears toward the desired end in every part and in every implication. This is as true in writings that aim at light, frivolous effects as in those that stir the deeper emotions, in writing that aims at the understanding almost alone as in that which strives not only to make clear but to infuse with deathless appeal to the heart. A treatise on the fourth dimension must bear, in every stroke, toward the complete satisfaction of the reader's intellectual curiosity; a comedy must lay down each word in the intention of liberating the silver laughter of humor; a tragedy must leave us in every implication serious, even in its introduction of comical material to heighten the tragic nature of the whole. To make every word bear in the one general direction--that is the writer's task. In no other way can he move the reader's mind and heart as he wishes to.

An author finds, however, that to gain the desired effect requires skillful manipulation on his part. He confronts a mass of refractory material, often full of contradictions, in which any potential effect seems almost as difficult to discover as the proverbial needle in the well-known haystack. For example, when a historian sits down, one hundred years hence, to the task of explaining the Great War, he will be confronted with an amazing welter of endless facts, tendencies, personal, national, and racial ambitions, enmities, competitions in trade, language, customs, indiscretions of diplomats, inscrutable moves of controlling powers, checks and counter checks, assertion and denial, accusation and assurance of innocence, bribery and plots and spy systems, amateur comment in newspaper and magazine, defenses by people who have retained their poise and other defenses by those whose faculties have been unseated by the awful strain of war--and everywhere he will find the endless array of events and detailed facts of organization of civil and military life to mold somehow into a consistent, intelligible whole. Well may he say that the task is too great for mortal man. Yet somehow the history is to be written, somehow the effect that he wishes is to be gained. Obviously the great prime task is to unify, to bring order out of chaos, to create from formless material a real edifice of thought. Exactly the same task awaits the writer of any kind of literature; in a short theme no less, the first great duty is to find some principle whereby the author can exclude the useless and include what is of value.

The first question to ask is--and it is also the last and the intervening question--"What am I trying to accomplish?" At first thought this question may seem the most obvious, the most elementary, and the least helpful query possible. But upon its being successfully met depends the whole success of the writing, whether of choosing or ordering or proportioning the material, or of expressing the selected ideas. For, since the chief task before the writer is to make his thoughts and his expression drive in one direction, so that the whole composition is simplified in the reader's mind, is unified and given an organic existence, even the choice of words, upon which depends so much of the tone of the composition, is largely settled by the answer to this question of what the author hopes to accomplish.

In Exposition, the explaining the relations among things and ideas, we are commonly told that we must "cover the ground," must "stick to the subject," must "include whatever is valuable and reject the rest." But such directions are insufficient. Until I have some touchstone, some applicable standard, I cannot tell whether material is valuable or not. It is as if one were brought into the presence of multifarious building material,--wood both hard and soft, cement and the other ingredients of concrete, bricks, stucco, and steel beams, and terra cotta tiles,--and then were requested to build a house, using whatever of the material might be of value, and removing the rest. The builder would be nonplussed. He cannot build, now with wood, now with stone, and again with tile; if he did, the saying would be all too true, "There's no place like home!" He can do nothing reasonable until he has been informed as to the kind of house desired, until he is given a principle of selection. Then, if he has been bidden to make a brick house, he at once knows what his object is, and can then reject whatever does not help him, in the accomplishment. In the same way, if I am asked to write five thousand words about Horticulture, I am at a loss to choose from the history of the science, or the present status, or the still unsolved problems, or the relative advancement in different countries, or the possibility of the pursuit of horticulture as a profession, or the poetic, the imaginative stimulus of working among apple blossoms, or the value to health of working in the open air. Perhaps any one of these divisions of the total subject would require five thousand words; certainly with so limited an amount of material of expression I cannot cover all; and if I choose a bit of each, the result will hopelessly confuse the reader as to the science, for I shall perforce write a series of mere _disjuncta membra_. I must, then, choose at once some guiding principle of selection that will make clear whether, for instance, the poetic appeal of the science has anything to do with my object. Then, and only then, shall I be able to write an article that will "take hold," that will bear in every part toward some definite goal, that will leave my reader with a well-organized, easily understood piece of writing. Only thus can I escape making a mere enumeration about as sensible as to add potatoes and church steeples and treasurers' reports and feather boas and card parties and library paste in the hope of making an integral whole. This guiding idea, which avoids such selections, may perhaps best be called the "controlling purpose" of the theme or article or book.

The Controlling Purpose

_What, then, is the controlling purpose? It is the answer to the question, "What am I trying to accomplish?" It is the intelligent determination on the writer's part to make the material of his writing march straight toward a definite goal which he wishes the reader to perceive. It is the actively operating point of view of the writer, the positive angle of vision that he takes toward the subject._ The controlling purpose in Lincoln's mind as he rode up to Gettysburg must have been to bring home to the civilians of the country, with a great humble thrill toward accomplishment, the fact that after the soldiers had done all they could, the civilians must reverently take up the fight for freedom and union. His address is immortal. But suppose, for a moment, that he had ascended the platform with the vague idea of "saying something about America, the war, you know, and the soldiers, and liberty,--oh, yes, Liberty, of course,--and, oh, things in general." Though he had thundered for hours his words would likely have been ineffective. Only an intense realization of the purpose in one's mind, and a consistent bending of one's efforts to gain this end, bring simplicity, weightiness, and the powerful effect in the reader's mind. From the reader's point of view, in fact, we might say that the controlling purpose is the means of making writing interesting, since nothing so holds a reader's mind as to feel that he is getting somewhere, that he is accomplishing something by his efforts. In no other way can he be made so clearly to see his progress, for only thus can he be prevented from undirected wandering.

Source of the Controlling Purpose

_a._ _The Subject itself_

When we ask how we shall find and choose the controlling purpose, we discover that it is determined by three things; the subject itself, the personality of the writer, and the character of the reader. Just how these three operate to determine the cast of the writing we shall now attempt to discover.

The first thing for the writer to do is to look at the subject itself and learn what it is, really understand it. He must know its exact nature before he can be allowed to proceed with the development. Now this often requires much honesty, for it is necessary to put aside prejudice and bias of all kinds and to look at the subject just as it is, with a passionate desire to learn its exact nature. For example, if you are to write about the value of a college education, and you are an idealist, you may be tempted to overlook the fact that such a training does actually help a man to earn more money than he otherwise would. You may think that such a consideration is beneath your dignity. But you must put aside your prejudice for the time being and must look the fact honestly in the face. And, if you are a hard-headed, practical person, you must nevertheless admit that a college education is broadening, chastening, in its influence. In either case you will not stop until you have looked at all possible sides of the subject. You will amass such facts, then, as that a college education is broadening, that it increases earning capacity, that it puts a person in touch with the world, that it makes him more able to be a useful citizen. Other facts also will occur to you, but let us suppose that these are the most important. If you carefully examine them you will perhaps come to the conclusion that a college education is valuable in that it helps a person to realize his best possibilities in every way, as a citizen, a friend, a personality. Or, if you are to write about the aeroplane, you will discover that it is heavier than air, that it is propelled by motor-power, that it attains certain speeds, that it has definite lifting power, that it is self-stabilizing to a remarkable degree, that it is made of certain kinds of material, of certain weight, and that it has one, or two, or even three planes. In addition you will note the qualities of efficiency, of triumphing over winds, of beautiful poise, and smoothness of execution. In both these cases you have been seeking the core of your subject, the real meaning of it, its essence. You must, before you begin to write a word, be able to say what all the noticed facts amount to, to say, "All told, this subject, this machine, or whatever it is, means so-and-so." Perhaps of the aeroplane you would say, "This machine stands for wonderful potential efficiency, not yet completely understood." In the same way we say of people and things, "He is a bore," or "a tyrant," or, "That is a great social menace," or some other such comment. In each case we have tagged the person or thing with what we think it is at its heart, with its total significance. And not until we have done this are we at all ready to begin writing.

_b._ _The Writer's Attitude_

The second influence in determining the controlling purpose is the reaction of the writer to the subject. In the following estimate of Lord Morley, the great English statesman, you will notice that, though the treatment seems to be, at first, purely objective, quite impersonal, the author cannot keep himself out: he enters with the fifth word, "thrilling," in which he shows where he stands himself in regard to truth, and he appears more at length in the last two clauses of the selection, where he definitely set the approval of his own heart upon Lord Morley's attitude. The third influence, that of the reader, appears also, for when you consider that the article was written for Englishmen to read, you see the molding for the national temper, different of necessity from that which would have been made for Frenchmen, for example. The author relies upon a knowledge of Morley among his readers, and upon a certain definite attitude among them toward the truth.

You will catch that thrilling note in the oratory of Lord
Morley at all times, for he touches politics with a certain
spiritual emotion that makes it less a business or a game than a
religion. He lifts it out of the street on to the high lands where
the view is wide and the air pure and where the voices heard are
the voices that do not bewilder or betray. He is the conscience of
the political world--the barometer of our corporate soul. Tap him
and you will see whether we are at "foul" or "fair." He has often
been on the losing side: sometimes perhaps on the wrong side: never
on the side of wrong. He is

True as a dial to the sun,
Although it be not shined upon.

There is about him a sense of the splendid austerity of
truth--cold but exhilarating. It is not merely that he does not
lie. There are some other politicians of whom that may be said. It
is that he does not trifle with truth. It is sacred and inviolate.
He would not admit with Erasmus that "there are seasons when we
must even conceal truth," still less with Fouché that "les paroles
sont faites pour cacher nos pensées."[2] His regard for the truth
is expressed in the motto to the essay "On Compromise": "It makes
all the difference in the world whether we put truth in the first
place or in the second." This inflexible veracity is the rarest
and the most precious virtue in politics. It made him, if not, as
Trevelyan says of Macaulay, "the worst popular candidate since
Coriolanus," at least a severe test of a constituency's attachment.
It is Lord Morley's contribution to the common stock. Truth and
Justice--these are the fixed stars by which he steers his barque,
and even the Prayer Book places Religion and Piety after them, for
indeed they are the true foundation of religion and piety.[3]

[2] Words were made to conceal our thoughts.

[3] A. G. Gardiner: _Prophets, Priests, and Kings_. By permission of
the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York City.

The second consideration, then, is, "What does this subject mean to me?" Of course there are subjects in which this question is of slight importance: in writing a treatise on mathematics, for instance, one might be quite indifferent to any personal reaction, though in even such a piece of writing there might appear a thrill at the neat marshaling of forces for the inevitable waiting answer to the problem. In general, however, this question is of great importance. Stevenson goes so far as even to say that the author's attitude is more important than the facts themselves. Certainly a writer cannot tell what is the truth for himself unless he expresses his ideas in the light of his own personality. Suppose that in the case of the aeroplane, though you believe the central fact as we expressed it above, you are primarily appealed to by the fact that the motor is of the utmost importance, and that at present it is not so highly developed as it should be for perfect flying. You are, in other words, impressed with the problem that confronts engineers of making the motor more efficient. Your controlling purpose would now be modified, then, and would perhaps read, "The aeroplane is a machine of wonderful potential efficiency not yet completely understood, _especially as regards the driving power_." In the same way you would modify the purpose of the treatment of college education and might say, "A college education is valuable in that it helps a person to realize his best possibilities in every way, but _especially as an heir of all the wisdom of the ages gone_."

The relative importance of this second consideration depends on whether the subject is much or little affected by personal interpretation. In the personal essay, as written by Lamb, for example, we may care more for the man than for the facts, or more for the facts as seen by the man than for the mere facts alone. In questions of society, of morality, of taste, in which the answer is not absolute in any case, in all matters that affect the well-being of humanity and in which there is a shifting standard, the attitude of the writer is important. The writer who wishes to have a voice of authority must cling to the fact as to a priceless jewel, but he must also remember that if, for example, he is writing on Feminism, or Socialism, or Church Attendance, or The Short Ballot, or The New Poetry, or The Value of Social Clubs in the Country, or any such subject, we, the readers, eagerly wait on his words as being primarily an expression of his personal reaction to the matter. And the final value of the treatment will depend on whether the personality is well-poised, largely sympathetic, able to take an elastic view of the subject and to bring it home to the reader as a piece of warmly felt and honestly stated conviction. In exposition, as well as in argument, we must ask the witness,--that is, the writer,--whether he is prejudiced or not. Especially must we do this when we happen to be the author ourselves. Violent condemnation of Capital by a man who has become embittered by mistreatment at the hands of employers must be taken with somewhat of caution, just as sweeping arraignment of Socialism by an arrogant capitalist must be eyed askance.

It might not be amiss to remark here that the writer in a college class who declares that he has no reaction to his subject, that he is quite indifferent to it, should do one of two things, either choose a new subject, or drop from college and go to work at some vitalizing effort with other people which will bring home realities to him in such a way that he cannot fail to react.

In the following brief incident it is interesting to note how the author shows his own personality. Another would have thought of the problem of dietetics involved, or of the absence of coffee or "parritch" or the rasher of bacon, or of the austerity of the meal. To Gissing[4] the incident was significant as showing a national characteristic both admirable and amusing.

[4] George Gissing: _The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft_, "Summer,"
XXI. By permission of the publishers, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York
City.

At an inn in the north I once heard three men talking at their
breakfast on the question of diet. They agreed that most people ate
too much meat, and one of them went so far as to declare that,
for his part, he rather preferred vegetables and fruit. "Why," he
said, "will you believe me that I sometimes make a breakfast of
apples?" This announcement was received in silence; evidently the
two listeners didn't quite know what to think of it. Thereupon the
speaker, in rather a blustering tone, cried out, "Yes, I can make a
very good breakfast on _two or three pounds of apples_."

Wasn't it amusing? And wasn't it characteristic? This honest Briton had gone too far in frankness. 'T is all very well to like vegetables and fruit up to a certain point; but to breakfast on apples! His companions' silence proved that they were just a little ashamed of him; his confession savoured of poverty or meanness; to right himself in their opinion, nothing better occurred to the man than to protest that he ate apples, yes, but not merely one or two; he ate them largely, _by the pound_! I laughed at the fellow, but I thoroughly understood him; so would every Englishman; for at the root of our being is a hatred of parsimony. This manifests itself in all manner of ludicrous or contemptible forms, but no less is it the source of our finest qualities. An Englishman desires, above all, to live largely; on that account he not only dreads but hates and despises poverty. His virtues are those of the free-handed and warm-hearted opulent man; his weaknesses come of the sense of inferiority (intensely painful and humiliating) which attaches in his mind to one who cannot spend and give; his vices, for the most part, originate in loss of self-respect due to loss of secure position.

_c._ _The Reader_

The third consideration is, "Who is my reader, and what are his characteristics?" The counter-question, "What difference does it make who my reader is?" can be summarily answered with the statement that it makes a great deal of difference. As soon as you note what a large part temperament plays in the forming of opinions in politics and religion and social questions, and remember that no two people ever react to any truth in exactly the same way--that what seems to one sensible person monstrous will appear to another equally sensible person as highly virtuous--you will see that in all writing, where either the understanding or the emotions are involved, this question assumes importance. If we believe the theory with which we set out, that all writing is done to accomplish an object, that is, a certain effect in the reader's mind, and then remember that different readers take different trails to the same objective, and that some must be even coaxed back from one trail into another, we shall see that it is vital that the reader do not select the wrong way, and, like a futile dog, "bark up the wrong tree." A hasty glance at current magazines will at once show how operative this consideration is in practical writing: _The Atlantic Monthly_ uses a different set of subjects and a different style of expression from that of _The Scientific American_ or _The Black Cat_ or _The Parisienne_. The editors, in other words, are remembering who their readers are and are trying to meet them with gifts, not with weapons of offense. After all, the reader is always the destination of all writing; the place where the effect will be made is the reader's mind.

To apply this third consideration to our two subjects, the value of a college education and the aeroplane, let us see how the treatment should differ according to the differing readers. If, in the treatment of the first subject, we are presenting our statements to a body of educators, even though the facts of college education remain unmoved, and though our personal leaning toward the supreme value in dowering the student with the wisdom of the past is unchanged, we shall yet see that these educators have already thought as we have about the matter, that merely to repeat to them will be futile and wearying; and we shall, if we are wise, change the point of attack and develop the value as enabling the student _to apply to practical problems the wisdom of the past_. Or, if the readers are to be politicians whom we wish to enlist in sympathy with larger endowments, we shall perhaps treat the subject as being _increased political insight and sympathy with all people_. In the treatment of the aeroplane, if we are presenting our words to engineers, we shall probably analyze the present lack of proper engine power and try to suggest means of correction. And we shall make our presentation in language that has not been stripped of its technicalities but has been allowed to stand in engineering terms. But if we address a body of benevolent women who are trying to organize an "Airmen's Relief Fund," and who look upon the machine with horror as a potential destroyer of life, we shall simply show that _accidents may be caused through faulty engines which may often result in loss of life_. The original controlling purpose will now appear, "The value of a college education lies in its offering the best chance for personal development through showing to the student his heirship to all the wisdom of the ages past, especially as this is applied to present-day problems," or, "The aeroplane is a machine of great potential efficiency not yet completely understood, especially as regards the driving power, through which lack of understanding grave accidents may occur."

Now if we scan these two statements carefully, I believe that we shall be persuaded of their inadequacy. To explain to the benevolent women who are interested in saving lives the fact that we do not yet fully understand the aeroplane, is like attempting to persuade a man from the path of an oncoming thunderous locomotive by telling him of the lack of laws to regulate public safety. In other words, we have forgotten that a wedge makes the easiest entrance, and we have attacked on far too broad a front, have failed to whittle away the chips that are of no value to the reader. Perhaps we need a complete restatement of the controlling purpose, occasioned by the nature of the reader. We may say that the value of a college education is in enabling a student to be of service to the state by applying the wisdom of the past, or that the aeroplane, partly through our ignorance of it, is causing terrible accidents. These purposes are far different from those with which we started out. All are perfectly true; these are better adapted to our particular readers, are more useful in helping to accomplish our selected aim. The gist of the matter is this: wisdom in writing demands that we discover the special loophole through which our readers regard the subject and then bring our material within the view from that loophole, bearing in mind always the training and the prejudices of the reader, and conforming material to suit the special needs.

One large reason why college themes are liable to dullness is the fact that few students write for any one in particular. They merely put down colorless facts which do not stir a reader in the slightest. They forget that facts exist, really, only as they relate to people, individual people, and that they must be clothed attractively, as is virtue for a child's consumption, or the reader will have none of them. Even the patient writer of themes should regard a specially chosen reader as at the same time his best friend and his potentially worst enemy: friend in the sense of recipient of literary gifts, and enemy in the sense of possible foiler of all the author's good intentions. As enemy the reader must be conquered, must be made to read and understand; as friend he is to be sympathetically met and smiled upon. And if there be no reader determined by the circumstances, the writer should choose some well-known friend and adapt his material to that friend, or should select any ordinarily intelligent being and use the widest appeal that he can.

_d._ _Relative Value of Sources_

Now the relative value of these three sources of the controlling purpose is variable. In an article for the encyclopædia the writer's reaction should be subordinated, since the reader comes to the encyclopædia for facts and not for opinion. Likewise the reader, in such an article, will be of minor importance, for the article is addressed to general ordinary intelligence that desires a straightforward statement. But as we have seen, an article on Feminism must with the greatest care watch the reader and the writer--the reader because the subject rouses both assent and opposition; the writer because the subject is of the kind that depend largely on opinion. So a theme on the problem of the hired man, or Tennyson's attitude toward science, or the reasons for attending one university rather than another, or the value of mechanical stokers, or the application of Mendel's Law to human beings will vary its purpose according to the varying importance of the three sources. Only one great caution needs to be made. Never falsify or mistreat the facts: they are the supreme thing. It is for this fault that the newspapers are most blameable: they consider their readers and their own points of view, but all too often they treat the facts cavalierly. A high reverence for the truth, and an unflinching determination to tell it are prime essentials.

The Controlling Purpose and the Emotional Reaction

So far we have been concerned with the problem of placing the _facts_ before the reader, of appealing to his intelligence. But writing consists of vastly more than that alone. After the understanding, sometimes before, must be considered the emotions. We have the facts, we know what we think of them, and we are reasonably sure of the reader's attitude. Now we must discover how to set the reader's emotions afire in so far as we desire such an effect. In listening to a great tragedy we perceive the cold analysis of a great truth of life; but that is not all: far out beyond the bounds of understanding our emotions are profoundly stirred and we _feel_ pity and terror. So in the account of a tremendous battle, of a fire, of anything that touches human life at all nearly and with power, our emotions are called into play. Now different pieces of writing, just like different subjects, call for different degrees of emotional reaction. Drama always rouses us, lyric poems depend upon their emotional quality, the informal essay has much emotional appeal, fiction of any sort stirs our feelings, and the more powerful the writing is, the more sure the appeal.

At first thought most expository writing might be considered to make slight appeal, if any, to emotions. That is not necessarily true; the more effective the exposition, the more real is usually the call to feeling. Often this call is subtle, usually it is subordinate to the appeal to the understanding, but in most effective expository writing it will be found. In an explanation of the Panama Canal certainly there would be roused the reader's admiration and wonder at the magnitude of the operation. The mere analysis of the facts in a criminal trial often settles the case, so great is the emotional appeal. In didactic writing the call to emotion is less strong, though such a writer as Jonathan Edwards could explain the writhing of man like a spider before the Almighty in a profoundly moving way. In axiomatic mathematical propositions we find perhaps the least strong appeal: that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles might seem to be divorced from all excitement. But in most exposition when emotional appeal is overlooked the writing suffers.

In an account of the American Civil War, for example, the writer might set out to show that the conflict was the culmination of the struggle between yeoman and cavalier begun long since in England. But the war meant more than that. The author will then see the emotional significance of the fight and will add to his purpose the intention to thrill the reader at the magnificent exhibition, on both sides, of devotion to an idea. So Emerson, in his essay on "Fate" in _The Conduct of Life_, fills the reader with gloom for page after page, detailing how thoroughly the individual is bound down by conditions of birth, sex, breeding, wealth--and then in two wonderful sentences he turns the whole course of thought and emotion by saying, "Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free," and the reader is stirred as with a trumpet call to renewed courage, which, to use Emerson's words, "neither brandy, nor nectar, nor sulphuric ether, nor hell-fire, nor ichor, nor poetry, nor genius" can overcome. And the historian Greene, in his well-known account of Queen Elizabeth, states his controlling purpose in the words, "Elizabeth was at once the daughter of Henry and of Anne Boleyn." But these words are not the whole of his purpose; he intends, besides the intellectual grasping of the Queen's character, an intense admiration and wonder at the resourcefulness, the shrewd judgment, and a reaction of amusement to the strange outbreaks of unwomanly freaks or of feminine wiles.

The controlling purpose, then, is almost always of a dual nature; it aims at both the understanding and the emotions. Whenever there is any real possibility of making it thus double the writer should so express it to himself.

In the following magazine article such a double purpose obviously exists. First of all there are the facts of the marching of American troops through London. These facts are unchangeable. Baldly stated, the significance of the fact is that the New World is coming to the help of the Old World against the monster of unrestrained militarism. To a person who regards life coldly, as the mere interplay of calculable forces, one whose emotions are not concerned, this would be a sufficient statement of the whole truth, of the total significance. But such writing would miss the chance of power, would be forever less valuable than it ought to be, for a great warming of the heart answers those footfalls in London streets. In other words, just as we have seen that there are two kinds of exposition--mere noting of facts and interpreting of facts--so we now see that interpretation can be either lifeless, or moving, charged with power. It is the old difference between the drama and a sermon: the play thrills and the sermon convinces. Either may add the other quality--a fine drama or a well-made sermon does. In this account of American soldiers in London the truth is made clear, but far more than that it is made alive, pulsating with emotion of national pride, of racial solidarity, of high moral purpose. In so far as the writer succeeds in stirring us, in just so far he is more likely to make the truth take hold upon us and bind us firmly in its grasp. It is the writing that both convinces and moves us that is lasting, that is really powerful.

"SOLEMN-LOOKING BLOKES"[5]

[5] Stacy Aumonier, in _The Century Magazine_, December, 1917. By
courtesy of the publisher, The Century Company, New York City.

At midday on August 15 I stood on the pavement in Cockspur
Street and watched the first contingent of American troops pass
through London.

I had been attracted thither by the lure of a public "show,"
by the blare of a band, and by a subconscious desire to pay tribute
in my small way to a great people. It was a good day for London,
intermittently bright, with great scurrying masses of cumuli
overhead, and a characteristic threat of rain, which fortunately
held off. Cockspur Street, as you know, is a turning off Trafalgar
Square, and I chose it because the crowd was less dense there than
in the square itself. By getting behind a group of shortish people
and by standing on tiptoe I caught a fleeting view of the faces of
nearly every one of the passing soldiers.

London is schooled to shows of this kind. The people gather
and wait patiently on the line of route. And then some genial
policemen appear and mother the people back into some sort of line,
an action performed with little fuss or trouble. Then mounted
police appear, headed by some fat official in a cockade hat and
with many ribbons on his chest. And some one in the crowd calls out:

"Hullo, Percy! Mind you don't fall off yer 'orse!"

Then the hearers laugh and begin to be on good terms with
themselves, for they know that the "show" is coming. Then follows
the inevitable band, and we begin to cheer.

It is very easy and natural for a London crowd to cheer. I
have heard Kaiser William II cheered in the streets of London!
We always cheer our guests, and we love a band and a "show"
almost as much as our republican friends across the channel. I
have seen royal funerals and weddings, processions in honor of
visiting presidents and kings, the return of victorious generals,
processions of Canadian, Australian, Indian, French and Italian
troops and bands. I wouldn't miss these things for worlds. They
give color to our social life and accent to our everyday emotions.
It is, moreover, peculiarly interesting to observe national traits
on a march: the French, with their exuberant élan, throwing kisses
to the women as they pass; our own Tommies, who have surprised the
world with their gayety, and keep up a constant ragging intercourse
with the crowd and cannot cease from singing; the Indians, who
pass like a splendidly carved frieze; the Canadians, who move
with a free and independent swing and grin in a friendly way; the
Scotch, who carry it off better than any one. But I had never seen
American troops, and I was anxious to see how they behaved. I said
to myself, "The American is volatile and impressionable, like a
child." I had met Americans who within an hour's acquaintance
had told me their life-story, given me their views on religion,
politics, and art, and invited me to go out to Iowa or Wisconsin or
California, and spend the summer with them. Moreover, the American
is above all things emotional and--may I say it?--sentimental. It
would therefore be extremely interesting to see how he came through
this ordeal.

The first band passed, and the people were waving flags and
handkerchiefs from the windows. We could hear the cheers go up from
the great throng in the square. And there at last, sure enough, was
Old Glory, with its silken tassels floating in the London breeze,
carried by a solemn giant, with another on either side.

And then they came, marching in fours, with their rifles at
the slope, the vanguard of Uncle Sam's army. And we in Cockspur
Street raised a mighty cheer. They were solemn, bronzed men, loose
of limb, hard, and strong, with a curious set expression of purpose
about them.

_Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp._

And they looked neither to the right nor the left; nor did
they look up or smile or apparently take any notice of the cheers
we raised. We strained forward to see their faces, and we cried out
to them our welcome.

_Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp._

They were not all tall; some were short and wiry. Some of the
officers were rather elderly and wore horn spectacles. But they did
not look at us or raise a smile of response. They held themselves
very erect, but their eyes were cast down or fixed upon the back
of the man in front of them. There came an interval, and another
band, and then Old Glory once more, and we cheered the flag even
more than the men. Fully a thousand men passed in this solemn
procession, not one of them smiling or looking up. It became almost
disconcerting. It was a thing we were not used to. A fellow-cockney
near me murmured:

"They're solemn-looking blokes, ain't they?"

_Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp._

The band blared forth once more, a drum-and-fife corps with
a vibrant thrill behind it. We strained forward more eagerly to
see the faces of our friends from the New World. We loved it best
when the sound of the band had died away and the only music was
the steady throb of those friendly boots upon our London streets.
And still they did not smile. I had a brief moment of some vague
apprehension, as though something could not be quite right. Some
such wave, I think, was passing through the crowd. What did it mean?

_Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp._

The cheers died away for a few moments in an exhausted
diminuendo. Among those people, racked by three years of strain and
suffering, there probably was not one who had not lost some one
dear to them. Even the best nerves have their limit of endurance.
Suddenly the ready voice of a woman from the pavement called out:

"God bless you, Sammy!"

And then we cheered again in a different key, and I noticed
a boy in the ranks throw back his head and look up. On his face
was the expression we see only on the faces of those who know the
finer sensibilities--a fierce, exultant joy that is very near akin
to tears. And gradually I became aware that on the faces of these
grim men was written an emotion almost too deep for expression.

As they passed it was easy to detect their ethnological
heritage. There was the Anglo-Saxon type, perhaps predominant; the
Celt; the Slav; the Latin; and in many cases definitely the Teuton:
and yet there was not one of them that had not something else, who
was not preëminently a good "United States man." It was as though
upon the anvil of the New World all the troubles of the Old, after
being passed through a white-hot furnace, had been forged into
something clear and splendid. And they were hurrying on to get this
accomplished. For once and all the matter must be settled.

_Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp._

There was a slight congestion, and the body of men near me
halted and marked time. A diminutive officer with a pointed beard
was walking alone. A woman in the crowd leaned forward and waved an
American flag in his face. He saluted, made some kindly remark, and
then passed on.

_Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp._

The world must be made safe for democracy.

And I thought inevitably of the story of the Titan myth, of
Prometheus, the first real democrat, who held out against the gods
because they despised humanity. And they nailed him to a rock, and
cut off his eyelids, and a vulture fed upon his entrails.

But Prometheus held on, his line of reasoning being:

"After Uranus came Cronus. After Cronus came Zeus. After Zeus
will come other gods."

It is the finest epic in human life, and all the great
teachers and reformers who came after told the same story--Christ,
Vishnu, Confucius, Mohammed, Luther, Shakespeare. The fundamental
basis of their teaching was love and faith in humanity. And
whenever humanity is threatened, the fires which Prometheus stole
from the gods will burn more brightly in the heart of man, and they
will come from all quarters of the world.

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible, swift sword.

There is no quarter, no mercy, to the enemies of humanity.
There is no longer a war; it is a crusade. And as I stood on the
flags of Cockspur Street, I think I understood the silence of those
grim men. They seemed to epitomize not merely a nation, not merely
a flag, but the unbreakable sanctity of human rights and human
life. And I knew that whatever might happen, whatever the powers
of darkness might devise, whatever cunning schemes or diabolical
plans, or whatever temporary successes they might attain, they
would ultimately go down into the dust before "the fateful
lightning." "After Zeus will come other gods."

_Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp._

Nothing could live and endure against that steady and
irresistible progression. And we know how you can do things,
America. We have seen your workshops, your factories, and your
engines of peace. And we have seen those young men of yours at the
Olympic Games, with their loose, supple limbs, their square, strong
faces. When the Spartans, lightly clad, but girt for war, ran
across the hills to Athens and, finding the Persian hosts defeated,
laughed, and congratulated the Athenians, and ran back again--since
those days there never were such runners, such athletes, as these
boys of yours from Yale and Harvard, Princeton and Cornell.

And so on that day, if we cheered the flag more than we
cheered the men, it was because the flag was the symbol of the
men's hearts, which were too charged with the fires of Prometheus
to trust themselves expression.

At least that is how it appeared to me on that forenoon in
Cockspur Street, and I know that later in the day, when I met a
casual friend, and he addressed me with the usual formula of the
day:

"Any news?"

I was able to say:

"Yes, the best news in the world."

And when he replied:

"What news?"

I could say with all sincerity:

"I have seen a portent. The world is safe for democracy."

Proper Use of the Controlling Purpose

Despite whatever of good has been said here about the controlling purpose, there may lurk the suspicion that it is, after all, dangerous, that perhaps it gives to a piece of writing a tendency toward bias, partial interpretation, even unfairness, and that it makes toward incompleteness. In the first place, in answering this charge, we must remember that facts _as related to people_ are eternally subject to different interpretations according to shifting significance, which is determined largely by the individual to whom the facts are related. In the second place we have to remind ourselves that seldom does a writer try to say all that can be said about his subject. Much is always either implied or left to another piece of writing. And finally, even when an author attempts perfect completeness and objectivity, he usually addresses his work to some one in particular, even though the "some one" is as vague as the general reading public; and that some one has a particular attitude that must be borne in mind.

In "Solemn-Looking Blokes" not everything about the subject is said. From one point of view the tramp of American feet in London streets signified that the United States had emerged from its traditional aloofness and had joined the main current of the world; from another, that a tremendous military preparation was going on in America, the first fruits of which were those solemn ringing steps; from another, that however Europe had professed to despise American power, she was now willing, eager, to accept American aid; from another, that the old enmity between England and America has been forgotten in the common bond of like ideals and racial traditions. Each of these possible meanings--and there are more not listed here--is implied in the treatment actually given to the subject. No one of them is really developed. Instead, we have flowering before us the idea that the world is to be made safe for democracy. No one would presume to declare that the total possibilities of the subject are here met and explained; yet no one can rightly say that the chosen treatment is unfair. Considering the facts, the author, and the people who would read the article, and their emotional connection with the facts, we see that the author chose the purpose that seemed most useful--to make American hearts warm to the fact that their country was helping to make the world safer for all men everywhere. In other words, facts are useful only in so far as they accomplish some definite end, which, in writing, is to make the reader see the truth as the author thinks that he should try to make the reader see it.

Now, of course, if the writer makes an unfair analysis, if he blindly or willfully falsifies in seeing or expressing his subject, his writing is not only useless but actually vicious. The analysis must be correct. Every subject has its center of truth, which can be discovered by patient clear thinking; if the thinking be either unclear or impatient, the interpretation will be false. If the author of "Solemn-Looking Blokes" has made an incorrect estimate, his writing is futile. There is no more challenging quest than the search for the real truth at the core of a chosen subject. Perhaps the very difficulty of attaining success is what has stayed many minds in floundering, timid, fogginess.

As to the charge that infusion of emotional quality into the writing produces bias, first of all it must be said that if the subject contains no emotion, none should be attempted in the writing. In a report, for example, of the relative value of different woods for shingles, an author will hardly try to infuse emotion, for the reader wishes to learn, quickly and easily, just what kind of wood is the best. But most subjects are not thus aloof; even the report about shingles becomes of vast significance to the owner of extensive timber lands which are suddenly found to be of high value. All subjects which concern the prosperity and happiness of humanity are charged with emotion; the nearer to the great facts of life, such as birth, marriage, death, food, shelter, love, hatred, the keener the emotion. Who shall write of problems of heredity and leave us unstirred? Who shall treat of our vast irrigation projects, which turn the deserts into fair gardens and give food to millions of people, without firing the imagination? The writer's task is to look so clearly at his subject that he discovers its true value to both brain and heart.