EUROPEAN SOCIETY.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 896, 16 August 1910, Page 8

EUROPEAN SOCIETY.

"i A GERMAN VIEW. Herr Gleichen-Russwurm has.just published in Stuttgart a book .which surveyo European society. In England he notices a decadence of social life. He says;— "Life, ia the nineteenth century as a whole tended towards brutality. Consequently ,it fostered ennui,-for brutality has no imagination,.and is therefore tedious. When wit and-"geniality,'for 'smart' young people, are supposed to consist in smashing dishes. aud glasses aud . in bombarding each, other with tho remains of the dinner, then indeed .the culture of their class is-'stripped of a charm which even passion and dissipation had spared. What a contrast/between breeding such as this and. for example, the delicate Japanese tea-ceremonies, the knowledge of which has been spreading among us! A certain..deliberate .barbarism appears to belong to an.age of snobbery. "In recent years this intentional barbarism is particularly noticeable in habits of speech. The English language, so rich in its potentialities, is visibly growing poorer. French, is abandoning its delicate precision; and German is adopting foreign expressions without reason or understanding. Not only is the conversation of the drawing-room threatened; by this barbarism of speech, but also the living literature of the day, since the language of literature has to separate itself more and more from tho language of daily life. In North Germany the harsh tones of the drill-ground in w'hich conversation is carried on gives to ' that conversation a stiff unamiti' bility; the South, German, manner of speech is indeed genial,, but has so-'much of the'languago of the populace in its phraseology that the- treatment of an exalted' theme is made difficult and the temper in which the deeper things of life can be. spoken of is destroyed at the outset." , . ■ - * . .

"But Hcrr GleicheD-Russwurm,"-, says "The Times" roviewer, ''has hopes for the. future, and .he bases them on. his perception of the' entrance of a new principle or ideal into social life. This new principle he defines as the idea of comradeship.- This, ho : thinks, is what the society of the. future is 'dimly, often crudety and blunderingly, feeling after."