EUROPE'S CULTURAL TRADITION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 789, 3 September 1954, Page 12

EUROPE'S CULTURAL TRADITION

THE EUROPEAN INHERITANCE, edited by Sir Ernest Barker, Sir George Clark and Professor Paul Vaucher; Oxford University Press, Geoffrey Cumberlege, English price 3 volumes £5/5/-, separate volumes 42/-.

(Reviewed by

F. L. W.

Wood

HESE remarkable volumes will prove of considerable value, though not, one suspects, in the precise direction orig- : / planned. A sound and balanced analysis of the European inheritance was a project conceived in discussions among the Ministers of Education of Governments-in-Exile active in London during the war. The notion was to have something to present to newly-freed peopl@s conveying the core of. the inheritance for which the United Nations conceived themselves to be fighting. The editors hope that these volumes have achieved this purpose and that they will be widely tread among senior school boys and junior University students both in England and abroad. One can echo the hope, and yet feel that there are two serious obstacles in the way. The first is price. To one ignorant of the economics of the book trade, five guineas sterling sounds a solid price for most students, and even for most libraries which serve the needs of

students. The second obstacle relates to the character of the book. The main text at times presents a brilliant synthesis of recent thinking, and. the writing is sometimes mature, witty and allusive. There is, however, a fair charge of straight super- textbook material stuffed with facts, and competing with standard textbooks rather than introducing new lines of thought or sources of information. The work accordingly tends to fall between two stools. It is neither an interpretative essay, nor an adequate factual summary. It nevertheless succeeds in presenting a vivid picture of European cultural tradition. This is primarily through wise choice of contributors. Ten very eminent men, steeped in that tradition, have collaborated in the plan, and each of them stands out clearly both in his scholarly technique, and in his personality and cast of mind. Here, then, we have ten "good Europeans" in action, living, as well as talking about, their inheritance. Some of these men, moreover, are quite inadequately known to English readers. The great Belgian medievalist, Ganshof, for example, has been little translated: he gives here a summary of the middle ages which is admirable except at points where he has remembered too vividly his obligation to give some coverage to an impos-

sibly wide ‘field. Little of Daniel Mornet’s brilliant work has _ been translated. He is a master of the arts of synthesis and vulgarisation in which French scholarship traditionally excels. His section in Volume II is a characteristically pungent. survey of 18th Century culture. Paul Vaucher is_ better known. He has served in London as well as Paris. Here he writes with solid competence on 18th Century politics. Professor Dodd gives an account of the emergence in Israel of a "genuinely ethical religion," and the formation of early Christianity which is fascinating in its economy of words and its balance of judgment. Sir George Clark, when he. breaks from chronology, throws light into some corners of the early modern period which are shunned by (continued on next page)

‘the normal textbook. One recalls, for example, an excellent little section on the Baroque. These essays naturally stand in contrast to those in the third and most controversial volume, covering’ the period from 1815 onwards. For the 19th Century the editors played safe. Geoffrey Bruun, from the vantage point of North America, shows the characteristic merits and defects of the big American textbook. He writes with equal ease on Texas and India, Hungary and Canada, art and mechanics and imaginafive. literature. Nothing escapes the even flow of calm, confindent comment. The period since 1914, however, has been dealt with by Professor Vermeil, a Frenchman who _ has specialised, perhaps with some repugnance, in German history. He very understandably eschews the notion of a factual chronicle. and surveys his material from: several contrasting viewpoints, Which results in some confusion, a good deal of illuminating comment, and a somewhat ‘unbalanced overall impression. This is, no doubt, largely a matter of opinion; but personally I feel dissatisfied with an essay on this period which includes an account of the 1914 catastrophe based solely on an analysis of German faults (where were the rest of us?), and which, indeed, seems to see recent history essentially as a tale of German vitality with the rest of the world hanging on as best it could. Sir Ernest Barker closes the whole work with urbane charm and fluency, as he emphasises in leisurely fashion a few illuminating general ideas. e varied, at times attractive, and at times stodgy secondary text is admirably reinforced by small collections of documents. The extracts are short, but often chosen with imagination, and succeed in carrying into the printed page some of the illumination of firsthand experience. Only Professor Childe is denied the use of documents. His sources are cave drawings and the fragmentary remnants left by primitive man. To the outsider it is fascinating to see such an expert in action and to realise what knowledge he can derive about the way of life of a cave or forest dweller from minute pieces of flint, a discarded bone or the fragment of a utensil. The illustrations of the three volumes are good, though some of them deserve fuller explanation. The maps are tied too close to the conventional. The

volumes as a whole are well produced and if read with discretion will provide admirable material for the interested reader, at almost any level.