STAMP OF GREATNESS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 5047, 3 November 1926, Page 1

STAMP OF GREATNESS.

THE NOT-QUITES AND

STANDARD OF TO-DAY.

Tilers are ten thousand novels published every year, I am told. How many Austens and Thackerays and Trollopes pass undetected in that crowd ? Some of “the best sellers” I And it impossible to read, while Often I cctae across a novel by an unknown or third-rate (in the publisher’s estimation) whiter which is to my taste as good fts the best of the last century, the Augustan age of fiction,” writes “A.A.8.” in the Evening Standard. Take politics, the noblest .arena for the testing of brains and character. Is it not true that while there are plenty of brilliant, eloquent, wise patriots, in both Houses of Parliament, and in all parties, the best aye not quite great men ? Everybody respects .and many admire Mr Baldwin. But do his /friends and admirers, claim for him the title of a great man, in the sense that Canning and Disraeli and Gladstone were great ? Lord Birkenhead and Mil Churchill excite the daily wonder of the spectators by their feats on the political trapeze : they ‘wear without co-rival’ all the honours, of ths Parliamentary field. But how many competent judges would dispute the assertion that they were- not quite great men ? Is not Lord Oxford the king of the Not-Quites, with Mr Lloyd George attendant as the great Might-Have-Been ? Take the greatest war of all time, when whole nations took the fie,ld in the place of small professional armies. There were five armies under the British command, each one as big as the army commanded at Waterloo by Wellington. Yet who can name a really great soldier, I mean of the Marlboro'ugh - Wellington - Bonaparte class, thrown up by this Armageddon ? The Battle o>f Jutland! is the subject of angry dispute to this' hour. But no one contends that it was_ a Trafalgar. Is there a Kemble, a Kean, a S'iddons, or an Irving on the stage ? No ; but the general level of acting is raised. Quite so ;we live amongst the Not-Quites and the Just-Nots'.- I know there havei been brave men after as well as before Agamejnnon ; that you must stand far off if you want to see the height and .shape of the mountain, and all that. H<Av are great men to be created by an age which, pours millions into the pockets of face-contor-tionists and prize-fighters; which think a Rugby back a greater man than a Cabinet Minister or a, judgs; which crams the street from Charing Cross to the Ritz th catch a glimpse of Chaplin or Fairbanks ; and which turns its. back with cold contempt upon the rest, the artistic and intellectual remnant ?