THE SCHOOL JOURNAL POEM.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20907, 14 July 1933, Page 9

THE SCHOOL JOURNAL POEM.

TO THE EDITOU Or THE PBZ3S. Sir, —I agree very heartily with your comments on the agitation over a poem in the "School Journal" which is alleged to be disloyal in sentiment. I have read the poem and my recollection of it (for it is not worth a second reading) is that it is a very poor piece of rhyme or doggerel. Loyalists may pray Heaven that all disloyal poems may be of the same quality, in which case the public intelligence will dismiss them from mind as trumpery, jingling inanities. I think I could, from the great poets of England, whose works I presume are studied in our universities and quoted' in our schoolbooks, compile an anthology of outspoken thought on the Empire, besides which the futile

poem in the "School Journal" would appear the mildest suggestion of reproach. Some of those great _ poets have denounced the rotten injustices of our vaunted political and social systems, in scarifying language that the muck-and-water poet of the "School Journal" could not achieve. I think of Tennyson and his flaming passion of denunciation in "Locksley Hall." 1 think of "Kipling" in many passages—but it is needless to carry the list further. I wonder why these superpatriots who have worked themselves into hysterics over this particular poem did not begin with a demand to bowdlerise Tennyson and cut out his passage about "The Parliament of man, the Federation of the world." Those fussy bodies who raise storms in tea-cups should be snuffed out promptly by the scorn of the people. They are making of patriotism a piffling cant. —Yours, etc., SCOT'JS. July 13, 1933.

TO IBE IDITOE Of TUB TRISS. Sir, —In the article in "The Press" this morning about the verse of poetry from the School Journal I fancy the critic has taken the wrong outlook about it. To me it shows the new spirit of the age. "The old order changeth. It is time the ancient "tribal feeling" was broken down, and the newer feeling brought to the fore—we are all brothers in the universal family of God: and the poem was written to bring that fact closer to us. As we march on in evolution we must realise more that "our neighbour is ourselves." The old clannish spirit led to a lot of unfairness in life. It often meant, if one clan was in power, it was God help the neighbours who had not the blood tie or clan tie, as they came always last if any good positions were going. The new age teaches us about a closer tie than clan or tribe. We are going to realise it more than we think of shortly. But the "old order" will give a few struggles against the idea before the majority wins.—Yours, etc., STUDENT. July 12, 1933.