INDEPENDENT MINDS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 718, 17 April 1953, Page 15

INDEPENDENT MINDS

ERBERT ASQUITH, _ Britain’s Prime Minister at the beginning of the First World War, was a great statesman who also possessed great personal qualities. He was a man with unusual powers of eloquence and an effortless command of the language, but it was above all his sincerity and honesty in dealing with others which commanded the respect and esteem of all who knew him. The BBC recently broadcast an appreciation of Asquith on the occasion of the centenary of his birth, and this programme, called H. H. Asquith, will

be heard from 2YC at 10.0 p.m. on Wednesday, April 22. The speaker is Lord Samuel, and few could be better qualified to give an appreciation of Asquith, since he speaks from an association with him of more than 20 years seven of them as a member of Cabinets of which Asquith was head. Another man of independent mind. Samuel Butler, author of Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh, is the subject of a talk by E. M. Forster, who recorded it for the BBC from his room at King’s College, Cambridge. Mr. Forster discusses Butler’s influence both on his own work as an author, and on the literary and social life of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, and reviews his achievements as scientist, painter musician, and aesthetic interpreter. "Butler’s main legacy," says Mr. Forster, "was that he upheld .. . the human spirit, and for this. . . let us thank him." Butler’s qualities of independence of mind, good taste and tolerance remain as much a legacy today as some of his material possessions, which are housed in two collections, one in St. John’s College, Cambridge, and the other in Williams College, Massachusetts. Mr. Forster’s talk was specially recorded for the BBC’s Transcription Service, and is a shortened version of one he originally broadcast on the Third Programme. It will be heard from 4YC at 9.30 p.m. on. Thursday, April 23. Both talks will be rebroadcast later from other stations.