Fritz Kreisler the Man.

Above all art is manliness. Fritz Kreisler, the violinist, is subordinate to Fritz Kreisler, the man. And the artist who decides to surrender voluntarily contracts that would net him $100,000, because war conditions have made it hard for the parties contracting with him to fulfill their part of the bargains made, the artist who determines to live quietly in this country till war ends and to play only for charity and without compensation, compels at least a measure of admiration.

The Eagle realizes, as most thinking Americans realize, that there was no moral obliquity and no anti-Americanism in the fighting Kreisler did at the front against the Czar's troops in the early days of the great war. He was an Austrian subject. He did his duty as he saw it. And if Americans had not much use for Franz Josef, they did not feel their sympathies going out very strongly to the Emperor Nicholas.

Nevertheless, it is a condition and not a theory that confronts Kreisler today; there is a stirring of mass sentiment against even art that is Teutonic in origin, and managers who have contracted with the Austrian would stand to lose heavily if he were to hold to his rights. We are not yet at war with Austria. His claims would be hard to contest in our courts. He chooses to cut the Gordian Knot and ask all managers to release him.

Releases will come with grateful enthusiasm. Kreisler has taken a dignified, a worthy position. In days of peace that we hope are to come. America may prove to him her appreciation of his manliness in an emergency. Brooklyn Daily Eagle.