The Evening Star SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1927. A DEARTH OF GREATNESS?

Evening Star, Issue 19664, 17 September 1927, Page 6

The Evening Star SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1927. A DEARTH OF GREATNESS?

Dr Nicholas Murray Butler, who is the president of Columbia University and an inveterate American controversialist, has just made a statement in London which should humble us if it is to be accepted as true. For tho first time in 2,000 years, ho declared, the world is without a single groat man. While he recognises all tho triumphs of science and invention in the present ago, he finds not a single genius iu the whole world, and “ no really great poet or philosopher who dwarfs his follow-man.” The world, he believes, is “suffering from an intellectual famine.” It is a chastening conclusion for us, the “heirs of all tho ages,” the “roof and crown of things.” , Have wo reached so far above tho “ monstrous eft,” in the course of millions of ages, only to.lie withering now at the top? Yot tho suggestion is not a new one. Wc hoard it often iu the stern days of the war. Dr Butler repeats tho reproach that was made at that time, “ Never before has the world been convulsed by a great war without some great man emerging from the struggle.” In the dark days we looked for him to emerge as a leader of armies, a new Ciesar, Marlborough, or Napoleon, who should turn doubts and dismays to glorious victory by the magic of his genius, and tho prevailing impression was that ho did not appear. Perhaps wo were too little appreciative of Marshal Foch. It was a crashing crescendo that ho played, for the confusion of the German armies, in the last days of tho struggle, and it was not his fault that ho had no chance to play it Before. Religious prejudices, international prejudices, and misgivings of a commander who was supposed to.have used over-many eggs in a first small omelette combined To

keep him well in the background till his supreme qualities could be no longer dispensed with. Yet the man who, in the first Battle of the Marne, which . really saved Franco and freedom, is said to have reported to his generalissimo: “ My centre is giving) my left wing is in retreat; the situation is excellent; I am attacking,” and who did attack, successfully, might have been credited then with at least some of the attributes of genius. Foch

himself has said that when his reminhtoncos (to ho published after his death) appear ho hopes they will upset the prevailing opinions that that saving hattlo was won by anyone except Marshal Joffre.' So that another great man who will not speak for himself may have been too much ignored. Dr Butler’s complaint is .most comprehensive. Wo can think of great men who have been hardly geniuses, and of geniuses so ill-balanced, perhaps, that they are not readily thought of as groat men. The American professor would deny either type of supremacy to the world of to-day. ft is for a “really great poet, philosopher, or genius of some sort ” that he seeks, and ho fails to find him in any country. It may be that,, judged by the , standard of the giants of the past, ho does not exist. But how many of those giants would Dr Butler accept? The test which he presumably uses is not easy to apply. It is admitted that war in these days is too vast a thing, too various and too complex, to give individual genius the chance to display itself that it had in former times. For another reason it may be more obscured, even discouraged, in statesmanship. It is not the man, divinely gifted or otherwise, who is allowed to rule nowadays in democratic countries, but men. And as the supremely gifted man has always been the exception to his kind, it may bo a safer system which puts its trust in tho “common sense of most,” and strives to raise their standard. Dr Butler admits a doubt about his own conclusion when ho says it may bo possible that the general intelligence and level of knowledge have risen so high in these times that tho great no longer appear great. In the licrco publicity that obtains nowadays, moreover, we know more of their weaknesses than was known before. There is the least chance for myths to gather round them. Nor have the great men of the past always had their supreme qualities generally recognised in their lifetime. A\c look buck on Ctosar as one of tho towering figures of tho whole world’s history. It was easier for his contemporaries who disliked him to see chiefly tho ambition for self-advancement, the bald head by which his vanity was grieved, tho epileptic fits, the-deafness. We include Lincoln instantly in the ranks of greatness. This is how a “ best-seller ” <of his lifetime wrote of him: I felt it my dooty to visit M asliinton. Tho misarablc condishon the Dimocrisy find themselves into sinse tho elecslien makes it nessary that suthin be did, and therefore I determined to see wat cood bo elfectul by a persncl intervew with tho Presdent. _ , Intordoosin xnyscil, I opened upon him delikitly, thus; “Linkin,” sez 1, “ ez a Dimocrat, a free-born Dimocrat, who is prepard to die with neetnis and dispatch, and on short notis, fer the inalienable rite uv free speech—knoin also that you cr a gorilier, a teendish ape, a thirster after bind, I speek.” And the interview ends: “Linkin!

Gorilla! Ape! I hev dun.” Are the men of to-day, without any exception, so small i Most people would accept Mr Thomas Hardy as a groat writer. Hr Robertson Nicoll, who delighted in drawing the line between talent and genius, did not hesitate to put Barrio and Kipling on the higher side of it, where a place would quite certainly be claimed also by Mr Bernard Shaw. They may all be but small geniuses in a world 'Outlook. Great writers would appear to be few. Great philosophers it is more difficult to judge. With regard to statesmen, Dr Butler will do well to keep out of Italy. Mussolini may bo remembered as a great reactionary. There seems room for regarding Lenin as a great man judged by any standard, greatness not being synonymous with beneficence. It would bo a hard test that would exclude from the category Hr Masaryk, who, in his seventy-eighth year, has just been re-elected President of Czechoslovakia, the nation which, against almost impossible odds, ho worked all his life to establish; or Paderewski; or Hr Na usen, first explorer and then the chief saviour ol hundreds of thousands from famine. We can imagine how, in a past ago, Lord Balfour might have been almost deified for his establishment of a national homo for the Jews. If the line is to be too sharply drawn doubts must be felt of Hr Butler’s assumption that there has never boon a time, during 2,000 years up till now, when men could not have been found who would pass it. If the genius of inventors counts for anything that of men like Thomas A. Edison, the Wright brothers, and Marconi surely gives them fair claim to rank with the Watts and Stephensons of the past. But the measurement which Hr Butler would apply to greatness is not practicable. No age can feel sure in estimating its contemporaries, or even its immediate predecessors. Our young men, a few years ago, were scornful of the Victorian period; now we can think almost as well of it as the Victorians themselves did. Yet it was one of their poets who said: Great men, when they are with us, are no more Than common clay; ’tis distance makes them stars.

That is the truest word on the whole question.