A Poet Points The Way

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 234, 1 July 1939, Page 1 (Supplement)

A Poet Points The Way

, X AMES RUSSELL LOWELL, once American Ambassador to Britain, I 4 T\ but better known as publicist and poet of last century, has rise? < I from the dead,” writes “F.G.S.” in the “Birmingham lost. In I 1845, when his country was in the throes of a great .struggle lor </ freedom, he wrote his poem, ’The Present Crisis,’ two lines of which alone have achieved permanence in the popular mind. Who has not heard them Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide In the strife of Truth with Falsehood for the good or evil side “In several quarters attention is being directed to the whole ol this forgotten poem as containing a message for our ‘present crisis.’ “Lowell laid down the inviolable principle :— Amid the market’s din Lest the ominous stern whisper From the Delphic cave within— i They enslave their children’s children Who make compromise with sin. For him it was Truth versus Falsehood, good versus evil. It was either black or white; there were no shades. . Truth was on the scaffold, Urong was robed‘on,the throne.’ The roles must be absolutely reversed. Ao co Pr °™When sharply defined a nation’s duty is clear The teeth must be set, the brow made hard. If there is but one way of achieving v tory, that way mus't be’taken. To hesitate is at once to accept cowardice and t 0 -WW are very rarely so sharply defined as that. With the good there ffi mSxed some evil, and with the evil some good. It is the old dilemma of the wheat and the tares. The good must not be plucked up, what^ ar ha J pens to the tares, whose fate, sooner or later, is certainly assured. The que

tlon of compromise inevitably arises, and from this the moral problem Cmel ‘soday no nation is entirely good or entirely evil. The best-of nations have their shameful episodes, and the worst their times of real greatness When irritations arise between nations the tendency is for each to select he worst adventures of the other and magnify them to the obscuring of all els “The kettle re-engages in the ancient game of calling the pot black. Tha is as unjust as it is stupid. Yet it is the game which is a *“ game it is. The kettles combine against the pots, and the rms deafening. . "There the imagery breaks down, for it is not imaginary pots and kettles that are at war. but mon, made in the likeness of God, who drive themsehes to think in terms.of slaughter, and see in blood and destruction the end of their quarrels. •‘Compromise! The very word is hateful to many Murk Hutchinson’s famous novel of yesterday, waxes saicas co c . is accepting a little of what you know to be wrong, to get a lift eof v J imagine to be right.’ What, however, do we mean by comjom . Th L , lish dictionary traces several meaning® of the word. In Mlddl « “ b “" a the equivalent of agreement by arbitration. Today, however poHt cal a . tors are rejected. Each nation arbitrates for itselt. Bo the Ha.ue tion and the League of Nations are badly under the weather. “In the present crisis the issue is not. as some imagine, I the’ sl^ e ° democracy versus the other krases. It goes far deeper. At the b^ t 0“ “ moral question. Each side has a‘case.’ Rights and wrongs are mx‘ • all speak of‘defending’ themselves. If the rights . and w.iong. can brought out into clear light for all to see and judge, the pat 1 appear clearer. ’ ,V