LIVING GIANTS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 125, 29 May 1928, Page 9

LIVING GIANTS

STILL SOME GREAT MEN REPLIES TO PRIMATE HIGH AVERAGE LEVEL ■ (From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 6th March. The lamentation of tho Archbishop of Canterbury that there are no great men / to-day has ..aroused a certain amount of discussion, well-known people expressing their opinions through the columns of tho "Daily Chronicle." Most of _ the replies aro a vigorous defence of the present age, not so much for its possession of "outstanding personalities as for the general higher standard all round compared with the more leisured and spacious days of the Victorians. ! . ; Thus 'Sir A. Yapp (head of the V.M.C.A.): "The real test of greatness is work accomplished and nobility of character. In neither respect do. I think there is less of it to-day .than during the Victorian era. Especially does this apply in the realm of social service. To mention but one name, that of Baden-Powell. Think of the enormous work ho has accomplished for this and succeeding' generations through the Boy Scout movement, an<s there are many others living to-day to whom, by reason of their self-sacri-ficing devotion and vision, each in bis ,or her own sphere, equality of real greatness can bo no more denied." Sir Arbuthnot Lane: "I don't agree ■with the Archbishop. It may be true about the Church, but not of other walks of life. We have wonderful men to-day. People always want to praise the past at the expense of the present, but wo have just as great men to-day as, in Victorian times. The stimulus to progress is so great, nowadays that there ia a much vaster number of intellectual men than in the past; so many, in fact, that we fail to regard it as a phenomenon as they did in the past. "All the men who used to lead lazy, useless lives-—fox-hunting, drinking all clay, and doing other stupid things— have now got to worlif. Idle men are not worth keeping. They have to justify their existence. The intellectual portion of the nation is devoting itself more and more to business, and fortunately so. As for the medical profession, there are just as good men to-day as ever there were, and, indeed, better." DWARFED BY BIG SUBJECTS. Canon Woodward, of Westminster Abbey: "Tho problems of the day are so much more enormous and world-wide that they dwarf even the biggest men. I believe we have got as big men as ever in. the Church of England, but they do not seem so big because the problems are so enormous. There are men like the Archbishop himself. I think he would have stood out as a great administrator at any period of tho Church's history. In the realm of thought and intellect men like the Bean of St. Paul's, Bishop HensleyHenson, and Bishop Gore stand out as .great men, but they do not seem as great to-day because they are dealing with such big things 'that they are dwarfed by them." -, ' Sir if. Forbes-Eobertsoii: "I think it is a fact that the average acting is far higher to:day than it was when I went on the stage in 1874, but it so happens that at the present moment there are not any outstanding fijfures like Phelps, Macready, Irving, and Miss Terry. Nowadays there are no actor-mana-gers, so that the theatres dp not have a personal cache 'as they had in the days of Irving, Hare, and Bancroft.' That is a very great drawback. All these people were pioneers. The people knew when they went to Mr. Hare's theatre the kind of play theywould see, or to Irving's, and so on. Nowadays it is all a mix-up, with one Monday one class of entertainment and the next something else. There is no stability. The strong personalities do not stand out to-day." Miss Lilian Baylis (the famous lessee and manageress of the Old Vie): '/How can one say that there are no great men and women- on the stage to-day when you have such people as Sybil Thorndiko and Lewis Casson, Sir Gerald dv Maurier, Matheson Lang, Balliol Holloway—a perfect character. actor—and Ernest Milton, to mention but a few names? We cannot compare tho standard of acting to-day with that of 50 or 60 years ago, because few of us know what it was like. What kind of acting was it? We do not know. All we do know is that there are many splendid actors to-day, men whom one can surely call great." IDOL OF THE PICTUEES. Thus another contributor to tho controversy: "Sir, —Has any man in the past achieved the greatness of Charlie Chaplin? Here you have a man who has made happy enormous numbers of people in every part of the world. His personality and his talents are • such that they can. hold enthralled men, women, and children, making them forget problems and sorrows, and bringing joy into their lives, if only for a brief time. , "Many may consider the greatest man in the past to have been Napoleon, /Ho was great, but not so great as Charlie Chaplin, for while the one had gifts that enabled him to make wars and conquer nations, the other has gifts Which give him the power to. bring happiness into-millions of lives." Sir F. Dicksee, president of the Eoyal Academy: "Very likely the Bishop is right. In most activities the average is much higher to-day, but the individual is not so distinguished. Speaking of art, there is certainly not so much variety as in Victorian days. In that age you had Watts, Millais, Leighton, Burno Jones, Whistler, and others—so many different individual expressions. We have not that variety to-day." - "One of the Mass" voices the opinions of a great many people: "Do we want great men and dominating personalities? Except in science, medicine, and the arts, the fewer wo have the better. All things, including greatness, are comparative, and the lack of great men must obviously mean that the level of the mass is so high that it cannot be dominated to any noticeable degree. In the golden age all men will be so splendid that there will be no great ones. And can we say whefher we have great .men or not? Surely posterity will be a better judge. \ The prophet seldom has honour in hia own time. We are always apt to invest the past with a glamour that often warps our judgment."