PUBLIC OPINION.

Hokitika Guardian, 11 August 1927, Page 3

PUBLIC OPINION.

BOOSTING ” SHAKESPEARE

It is part of the prevailing vulgarity that men should thrust themselves, or he thrust by others, into positions foe which they are obviously unfit. The same irrelevance may he noticed in literature as in politics. Not many weeks since, upon St. George’s Day, and at Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare’s own birthplace, amid the unfurling, partially successful, of many flags much Licence was burned before the shrine of the poet. And the phrase which, after the speeches had been made and forgotten, lingers in our memory is that the time had come to “boost Shakespeare.” To boost Shakespeare! No man that ever lived is in less need of boosting than Shakespeare. He had the supreme good-fortune in his lifetime to win the success he wanted and to escape the oppressive notice of the crowd. It was not for him to hear his name shouted aloud in the street, or to he followed in the streets by noisy worshippers. He did not, like some of his successors, cut antics in publicplaces that gaping onlookers might ask one another. “ Who is the mountebank?” Shakespeare, ever since his death, has gone triumphantly on his way, speaking in every language, and carrying delight into every land, and becoming the master of every stage. —- “ Blackwood's Magazine.”

A BLUNDER BUT “ The Russians richly deserved their expulsion—only a fool would argue otherwise—but diplomatic relations are the source of international sanity and health, just as the severance of relations produces hatred, terror, and violence. As long as Moscow maintained relations with London we exerted a powerful restraint upon the Soviet leaders. Already the tragic blunder of the Arcos raid stands revealed—a blunder none the less calamitous because its first effects are felt in wretched, unhappy “ Daily Express ” (London).