PORRIDGE AND PURITANISM

Evening Star, Issue 19797, 22 February 1928, Page 14

PORRIDGE AND PURITANISM

STANDS SCOTLAND WHERE IT DID? [By Donald Carswell, in ‘ John o’ Loudon’s Weekly.’] Of course we know what Shakespeare meant by the question. It is one of the many proofs that he was not of an age, but for all time. The context in which the words occur is simple and moving. A Scottish gentleman, finding conditions at home insupportable, has taken up residence in England, and when he meets a compatriot newly arrived irom the North he naturally asks if Scotland is as bad as ever. But it is a Scottish convention to ignore the'context and take.Macduff’s gloomy inquiry in quite the opposite sense. As one of the pieces of patriotic small change that are handed about on all Caledonian occasions. it means “ Is Scotland maintaining its ancient and admitted supremacy in intellect, piety, sagacity, valor, Empire building, and other worldly activities too numerous to mention?” A suitable reply is expected. UNCON VENT lON A L SCOTS.

Recently, however, two unconventional Scots have been indelicate enough to take a different view. They arc as discomforting as Ross was to Macduff. Alas, poor country! Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot

Be called om mother, but our grave. And the worst of it is that, every Scotsman who lakes the (rouble to bo honest with himself will tiud his heart echoing the sad rejoinder—

0 relation Too nice, and yet 100 true!

Li saying so 1 do not mean that he will agree with everything that the two critics. Air Thomson and Mr Grieve, allege. That would be impossible, for they are at odds with each other on everything save the one point—that tho present state of Scotland is deplorable and going from bad to worse. Mr Thomson has no hopes about it; Scotland is doomed. Mr Grieve is teeming with hopes, but they are such wild ones that, for my own part, I find Air Thomson’s despair far less depressing. LIVING ON A REPUTATION.

Being the pessimist, Mr Thomson has the clearer head, the livelier pen, the cheerier temperament, and the greater sense of humor. (Such is the paradox of pessimism; the Dean of St. Paul’s is the shining example.) He tells us what is perfectly true, that in the matter of reputation Scotland has for many years Jived upon a capital never very large, which is now exhausted and in the” process of becoming an unsecured overdraft. , . Air Thomson docs not go into \i' history of the matter, but as far as one can judge the legend of tho conquering Scot depends mainly on the very remarkable otllorcscence of genius in North Britain in tho opening of the nineteenth century. To enumerate names would bo tedious. It is enough that within the space of a generation a poor, small, and hitherto backward country should have produced men like Scott, Jeffrey, James Walt, and Patrick Alillcr. (Yon may never have heard of Patrick Alillcr, 'but ho was the undoubted lather of steam navigation, though he seldom gets credit for it.) When literature and invention declined, as they very rapidly did, the national reputation was maintained by the aptitude of men of Scottish name and race for politics. Scotland began to make a regular business of producing English Prime Ministers Aberdeen, Gladstone, Balfour, Campbell-Bannerman, Bonar Law, APDonald. There was a time, too, in tho last quarter of the nineteenth century when a great Scottish municipality seemed to be on tho high road to solving all the terrible problems of urban local government. But nothing came of it. Glasgow slums still enjoy their had eminence. HORRIBLE SLUMS. As soon as wc come to slums wc seem to be getting to tho root of tho matter. The arrival of industrialism converted Scotland from a poor country into a comparatively wealthy one. The industrial revolution was a dirty business everywhere, but in Scotland it achieved a record in slummiucss and general filth. They had character and intelligence, but they had little experience of the world at large, and their standard of life was still comparatively low. Here wc have the real tragedy of Scotland. It has never been able to bring its culture up to tho level of its capacity. Hence a state of bewilderment, of which the chief manifestations are tho perennial endeavor to he more English than the English, tho new Scottish Nationalist movement,, and Sir Harry Lander. There is not much to choose between them. PORRIDGE AND PURITANISAI. It is this naive bewilderment that has led the Scots into all their well-known absurdities. They have been from time to time impressed by the ability of members of their race to get on in the world—not necessarily in Scotland, but in quite a lot of foreign parts. Being a modest but patriotic race, they have put it down, not to character, but to national institutions. As compared with England, we (1 speak as a Scot) are rather weak in institutions, but we do have P.orridgc and Puritanism. So to Porridge and Puritanism our worldly success has religiously been imputed. We do not pause to think that Porridge has never given ns anything but n high tuberculosis death rate, and Puritanism Ims diligently co-opcratcd with “ P.ropnlt.y " to close the loveliest country in Europe to tho foreign holidaymaker.

The desolation of the. Highlands—-a scandal such as no other people in Europe would tolerate, for a day—is the best satire on the quality of Scottish patriotism. When Mr Thomson says that “ half Scotland is slum poisoned, and the taint of the slum is m the nation’s blood ” he does not exaggerate. The vital statistics tell an irrefragable talc. England’s general death rate is about 11.7 per 1,000; Scotland’s is 14.2. In England infantile mortality is 75 per 1,000; in Scotland it verges on 100—That is to say, out of every ten Scottish babies born one dies before it is a year old. The immediate explanation of these figures, is perfectly simple. There is a definite relation between mortality rates and house room. 'Die proportion of one-roomed houses in Scotland is enormous. Post-war conditions have nothing to do with it. It has always been so. Why ? Mr Thomson’s suggestion that it is duo to an inherent incapacity of the Scots to manage their affairs is too airy. The Scots ,with all their faults, are not a stupid people. f have my own explanation, which 1 give for what it is worth. Down to the end of the seventeenth century Scotland was a miserably poor and backward country—so miserable and so poor that no Scotsman nowadays would believe it even it his ancestors were to rise from the grave to tell him Thanks mainly to the union wiu. England, the eighteenth century was a period of cultural advance, and the Scots are fully entitled to be proud of the way in which they made up for centuries- of lost time. Rut at the end of the century, just as they were nearly, but not quite, ready for'it, came the shock of the industrial revolution.

It was just a little too much for them-

“ LANG-NEBHIT WORDS.”

These things and many more ore common ground between Mr Thomson and Mr .Grieve, hut Mr Grieve has his peculiar enthusiasms to keep his heart up. As 1 have said, his romantic history and romantic political philosophy do not appeal to me, but ho is so amiable and earnest that much can be for-

f given. What I cannot so readily forgive is his way of wrapping them up in a Scotch mist of lang-nebbit words. Mr Grieve’s diagnosis is simple. Scotland has been all wrong since the Reformation, when the Anglicising proI cess began. He suggests, therefore, that we should get hack to the humane atmosphere of Catholicism—a point to which he attaches so much importance that he can view with complacency the invasion of the Irish proletarian hordes that thrills Mr Thomson (a sad Hibernophobe) with a cold fury. Politically we must resume at least our pre-Union independence. For our literary ideals wo are to forget Burns (not such a bad idea), and go hack to Dunbar. Why so devout a Nationalist as Mr Grieve should have pitched upon Dunbar as his idol 1 cannot imagine, for Dunbar was a deplorable vehicle of Anglicism. He was the first and most eloquent panegyrist of London. No, Mr Grieve’s double dose of medievalism is no cure for .'a country whose chief trouble is that it is still suffering from too much medievalism. Scotland wants less, not more, backward looking. ft wants more, not fewer, contacts with the world at large. It wants to think less of its virtues and more of its defects from the highest cultural standards. It needs to cultivate not a narrow nationalism, hut a. broadminded national self-respect which will use the past not as object of worship, hut as a quarry of experience for the hitter hard work that, is the present and will be the future