THE CATFISH OF PROVIDENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 125, 28 May 1932, Page 8

THE CATFISH OF PROVIDENCE.

HENRY NEVINSON'S ANALOGY.

(By NELLE M. SCANLAiN.)

The Old World is celebrating the centenary of Goethe. It may not mean much in Now Zealand. There may be some even who will ask, "What year did he win the Derby?" No doubt their present concern is more with, the price of produce. Germany, old and young, pre-war and post-war, reveres Goethe as its supreme product. London, too, has its Goethe Society, where old ladies, still bitter about the war, meet to ponder the wisdom and revel in this delight of literature. In the first week in April tho P.E.N. Club, with John Galsworthy, its president, in the chair, had as its guest of honour Count Bernstorff, representing the German Ambassador. It was a Goethe centenary dinner.

It fell to that veteran writer, H. N. Nevinson, whose new "Life of Goethe" has just been published, to deal exhaustively with more serious aspects of the great man. Mr. Nevinson claimed that Goethe's Mephistopheles in "Faust" was a character that ranked almost with Hamlet. In hie wise, wandering way Mr. Nevinson made fche point by means of an amusing analogy.

He recounted how, when he was with the trawling fleet in tho North Sea, he discovered that many of the trawlers had false bottoms. The decking could be lifted to disclose a large tank filled with salt water, into which the nets were emptied. This was the means used to keep the fish fresh until they reached Billingsgate, often a matter of days. But the singular thing was that when the tanks were opened at Billingsgate the fish usually were limp and flabby, and brought low prices. One day a sailor tried an experiment, and put a couple of catfish in with the cod and the rest of them. When the catch arrived in port the fish were discovered in perfect condition, fresh and firm and vigorous. The catfish had not given them a minute's peace the whole time, and had kept them in absolutely opensea condition. Mr. Nevinson referred to a phrase in "Faust," where the Creator seems to explain why he created Mephistopheles. Human beings are naturally torpid and inclined to sleepiness, and would soon develop fatty degeneration of the soul if they were left in peace. Mr. Nevinson's conclusion was that tho Creator made the devil, for the same purpose as the sailor put the catfish among tin cod—to keep us worried and prodded ■and active, but in good condition. "But when I look around tho world." he concluded, "at Shanghai, at India, at the Danubian Conference, a>t the trouble in Ireland . . . at Bernard Shaw ... at the £ ... at the income tax ... at the newspaper broadsheets clamouring, 'Rector in full,' may we not wonder if Divine Providence in Its wisdom is not overdoing the catfish business a little?"