The artist who lived by his art was one of the few desirable by-products of the capitalistic scheme. When that scheme suffered its recent noisy break-down and was replaced by the Initials Plan, the CWA did not fail to extend its benevolence to creative geniuses in the arts who were faced with starvation when the market for their products, like that for wheat, coal, and rubber, failed. Like the Medici, like Henry VIII, like Riche-lieu, a sovereign people undertook to subsidize bona fide creators.

One Paul Cadmus of New York took the Government shilling and turned out a painting entitled "The Fleet's In." It is alleged to show the jolly tars rolling about with harlots and booze, in the popular tradition of all good sailors on shore leave. It was judged good enough to be given a place in the cross-section of CWA art to be displayed at the Corcoran gallery in Washington.

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Unhappily, the sailors in the painting, like Mr. Cadmus, are employees of the Government, and the Navy Department has spent a lot of time and money in combatting the tradition that its ship personnel on shore leave habitually disports itself with liquor and the ladies of the yellow filet. Admiral Rodman, who qualified as an art critic by commanding the naval forces overseas in the World War, complained that the picture originated in the imagination of one who knew nothing about sailors and their habit of spending shore leave playing ping-pong in the Y.M.C.A. The Secretary of the Navy, who may have learned the rudiments of art from recruiting posters, was notified of the libel. It is not likely that the weary farm mothers of Kansas and Idaho, upon whose sons the Navy depends for its enlisted personnel, would ever see the picture, and even if they did, it would be only an expression of something that they firmly believe. But the Secretary took no chances. The picture was banned.

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The papers do not report Mr. Cadmus' reactions. If he is wise, he will return to his garret and get to work on a painting of Washington at Valley Forge. Better men than he have learned that the pensioner must choke his muse, dry his tears, and paint, write, or chisel as he is told. Erasmus, for example, and Samuel Johnson. Only a Michelangelo could take a papal salary, tell the Cardinals to stick to their breviaries, and finish St. Peter's as he damn well pleased.

The incident is important as a clue to what will happen when the depression has lasted long enough to reduce the entire national corps of creative artists to the status of Government pensioners. Lugubrlous as the prospect is, it is not without its attractions: Mr. Mencken drawing a weekly stipend for turning out D.A.R. brochures, Senor Rivera naturalized and dotting the public parks of the land with equestrian General Pershings, a qualified muralist doing over the replastered Dartmouth Library walls with an "I pledge Allegiance to My Flag" motif . . . and subsidized humorists doing what they can with it all.