LITERATURE AND THE FOREIGNER

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 263, 2 August 1919, Page 7

LITERATURE AND THE FOREIGNER

ENGLAND KEPKESENTED ABROAD BY CHEAP NOVELS.

The effect of literature on international understanding was discussed at a conference of the English .Association held re"si/Henry Newholt said the Germans had. been for years very carefully spreading (heir influence by weans of literature of a, high order, in .Russia they had undertaken to supply a large number of the text books, and altho igh these were originally English they were translated into' a whollv German atmosphere, with the resu.lt that the iiussians got thenfacts from England and'their feeling from Germany. He had been astounded at reading a report of «. Swedish Cabinet Minister who spoke of "my two fatneriands, Gernianv and Sweden." Ho was asserting that 'Gerinai.y was his spirtual fatherland, ft thing the speaker would be sorry to hear any Englishman s«y. The Russians were great readers of our novels and were very fond of Dickens; ?o were (he Chinese, and, although it seemed strange to imagine a Chinese mandarin roaring 'with laughter over the pages of Dickens, it was a true picture. A Cabinet Minister once asked him during the war, "Shall we win a day sooner if the inhabitants of Sweden lire familiar with 'Pride and Prejudice' i" But the kindliness of English social life depicted by Jaue"Austen was helpful in its opposition to the spirit of the conquest of the world bv forge. Professor Gilbert Murray also referred to the "extraordinary skill and weight of the German propaganda by means of literature." Norway, Sweden, and Spain got an undue proportion of their literature from Germany. He had been struck by the fact that in Scandinavia all serioiis literature eainb from Germany, while we were represented by cheap novels, the music of musical comedies, and comic postcards. Germany deliberately, and not with a good motive, set out to do this, whereas we took no trouble and left tlw distribution of our literature to ordinary commercial competition. '.Nhtions would respect eac.li other more bv the mutual study of their literature than by any .other way. On ilie whole, literature was the setting down of the best thoughts of which peoplo were capable, and it was 'by these we wauted to be judged.. '