GREECE AND RUSSIA

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21324, 17 November 1934, Page 14

GREECE AND RUSSIA

Long before the Roman Empire split in half politically, it was divided culturally into two very distinct realms. In the west, the Romans had overcome the savage tribes of Spain, France, and Britain, and by a natural process imposed on them their own laws and language and all the spirit of their civilisation; in the east, they had subdued without serious difficulty every state that bordered the Mediterranean, but had themselves come under the sway of a civilisation more mature and elegant than their own. In the west, the spirit of Rome triumphed over her fall, so that to a modern Englishman or Frenchman or German, the deeds and thoughts of his own half-civilised ancestors seem more strange and outlandish than those oi a Roman who lived twice as long ago. But in the east it was the spirit of Greece that triumphed; and when the Eastern empire fell, it fell at the hands of the Moslems, a nation as haughty in its culture as in war, whicft swept aside all traces of Greek civilisation and contemptuously granted a life of slavery to those nations, such as the Armenian, which clung to the religion of the Greeks. Greece in Russia But before Constantinople fell, she had given the germ of civilisation to one great modern nation. Greek priests had journeyed into Russia and had converted the Russians to the orthodox faith. With them they had carried the Greek alphabet, so that in the Russian alphabet of to-day the old Greek letters may easily be recognised. And just as the Roman tradition has saturated the whole history of our civilisation, so in the life of Russia we may trace, without too much fancy, the spirit of Greece. To anyone who acquires a smattering of the Russian language, it is in their lyric poetry that the Greek influence first appears. My form-master, Mr E. P. Coleridge, used to say that a boy can love Homer, but not Vergil, but that a man. learns to love Vergil too; and, by the way. I have always doubted somewhat whether Tennyson really loved Roman Vergil since his day began.. The distinction is a profound one. The spirit of Greek poetry is always that of a child, curious and eager, sometimes happy and sometimes sad, but always simple and direct. Compared with him, the Roman is a grown man, doubting, weighing evidence, ready to meet criticism, more fond of ornament, perhaps more profound, certainly less joyful. The best Russian lyrics reproduce the spontaneity, the artless art, of the best Greek lyrics. Like the Greek, they translate badly into English. Our language is too robust for. them and makes them seem insipid, but when you have read some, even stammering through them with notes and a dictionary, you feel for a while that our verse is prosaic as a text-book or fluffy as cotton-wool; and whether your feet are planted on the earth or your head is raised among the clouds, you wonder by what strange alchemy of air or food these people from the other end of Europe are able to do both at once. Rome in England In politics, the difference is as clearly marked. In Western Europe, we are like the middle-aged Roman of Horace . . . "Fecisse cavet quod mox mutasse laboret" ... he is careful not to do what he may soon toil to change. We keep to the ways of our fathers as long as we can, and when we can keep to them no longer, we think deep and long and then patch them with as little new material as possible, so that our ways are never quite new, always showing signs of stress here and there, but always and above all, on the whole, comfortable. When the Romans drove out their kings, they preserved all that they safely could of them in their consuls and dictators. When Augustus became

A Political Analogy (sriCULLT WBITTM JOB ISX MISS.) [By W.E.M.]

Emperor, he based his power solely on his tenure of certain republican magistracies; and it was not till the Romans had t>een for generations accustomed to the fact of monarchy that Diocletian ventured to introduce its outward tokens. Perhaps most significant of all is the fact that the only thorough overhaul which the republican constitution ever received was the work of an ultraconservative, and lasted only a few years. Our constitutional history is similar. Britain is still governed, as she was centuries ago, by a King, a House of Lords, and a House of Commons; there has been no violent constitutional break; and yet our government has changed as widely as it well could. It is like the axe of Robert Bruce; it was had two new handles and three new heads, but it is still Robert Bruce c axe. The Leap — Greek history is very different. The Greeks at times had a mania for - overthrowing the past and starting with a clean sheet. The philosopher Plato went to Syracuse and tried to give existence to his ideal state. He failed; but very many Greek cities on coming to a political deadlock, appointed a leading citizen of their own or another state as lawgiver with full power to annul, recast, or make any law as lie saw fit; in other cities the same result was attained by a violent and bloody revolution. In Russia, as in Greece, the spirit of compromise was lacking. The tragedy of their history advanced step by step to the knot where an autocracv could only be ended by the catastrophe of revolution. And then, typical of the Greek spirit, they threw away all the past and leapt boldly into the future. Trusting wholly to unproved theory, careless or rather unconscious of all the doubts which our two-way minds would have felt, they sailed out to find a newer world than Columbus dreamed of. Such a leap, such a voyage, may be madness: but it is madness on the heroic scale, a madness to marvel at; and all the hysterical praise and condemnation that we have lavished on it for 17 years is evidence of the astonishment we feel. — And the Lesson And what is the moral? For it is difficult to speak of Russia without introducing a moral, although communism is a ticklish subject nowadays. First, it is evident that government control of and participation in business has grown steadily during the last hundred years; and of that road the logical end is socialism. It is hard to see how we can go back; at least we know that.Ho nation has ever yet succeeded 'in bringing the past to life again. On the other hand we know that our whole mental outlook and history prevent our leaping into the dark. As we have always done, we shall feel our way and advance only as we find firm ground beneath our feet. And where in all history can we find a better chart to guide us than in modern Russia? Just as the Roman studied the political philosophy of the Greeks, and then borrowed a point here, rejected a point there, and so built an empire that lasted a thousand years and has never wholly died, so we can study Russia, adopt what is good there, and reject what is bad. Unfortunately, almost all that we hear about Russia is propaganda, for or against communism; and that is not likely to help us. But somewhere in modern Russian literature there-must be philosophical accounts of how the machine works, where it strains and where it runs smoothly; and perhaps the greatest service our press could do would be to hunt/iip such passages and translate and publish them, to give us who vote the knowledge to vote wisely. When first the Roman spirit met the Greek, they t produced the Roman empire. In the dark ages they separated, and met again to make the renaissance. Each time, the Greek thought and the Roman built; and if they can meet again we shall come, perhaps, to the millennium.