Eveing Post. SATURDAY, MAY 13, 1933. THE BURNING OF BOOKS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 111, 13 May 1933, Page 10

Eyeing Post. SATURDAY, MAY 13, 1933. THE BURNING OF BOOKS

The contrast between what is taking place in Germany and what Hcrr Rosenberg, the German Government's envoy to England, has to .say about it is "reported to have excited intense feeling and to have increased the hostility which it. was the object of his mission to remove. The Germans, who through their President were glorying two months ago in having recaptured the spirit of old Prussia, are restoring the judgment which the civilised world formed of them when Prussia led them to war in 1914. Typical of that judgment is such a pronouncement as this:— 1 -The Germans- refuse to recognise tlio intellectual and moral grounds of humanity and- seem deliberately to bo cutting themselves-oft from civilisation."; ,- ' Yet these-words arc-not taken from 'any British or American paper of August or September, 1914. They are cabled from London today as having been addressed by Professor J. B. S. Haldane to the Londdh University Union in support of a resolution protesting against the persecutions in Germany. Herr Rosenberg's assurance'that only five Jews had been beaten was completely ignored. Now, as then, Germany is being cruelly misunderstood. The true inwardness of German frightfulness in Belgium in 1914 was declared as follows by Professor Rheinhold Seeberg, who then occupied the Chair of Theology in the University of Berlin:— . , Wo do not hate our enemies. No, wo obey the Divine, command to Jove them. When we kill them, when we inflict untold suffering on them, when we burn their homes tnd overrun their territories, we are performing ft labour of love. Divine love is bestowed upon humanity, but men" suffer for their own salvation. Parents love their children but whip them. Teachers love their pupils but punish them. Germany loves other, nations and chastises them for their own good. Germany is subduing the forces of arrogance, greed, covetousneas, and malice, which have driven other nations to their ruin. The German armies are overcoming the hosts of organised evil. One of the unpleasant necessities forced upon the German armies in pursuance of their labour of love by the perverse obstinacy of •' the Belgians was the sacking of the city of Louvain. As the blindness of this misguided people to the excellence of their motives was obviously wilful, the job had—merely in selfdefence, as the official explanation made perfectly clear—-to be thoroughly done. The Germans entered Louvain August 19, 1914, said the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" in the first of its post-War Supplement. The city was systematically sacked and in large part destroyed by fire between August 25 *nd September 2. About one-third of the city perished, including-the famous University Library with its treasures, the Church of St. Pierre, and the markets. About 300 civilians, many of whom were shot, lost their lives. • By Article 247 of the Peace Treaty Germany undertook to furnish to the University of Louvain : " manuscripts, incunabula, printed books, maps, and objects of collection corresponding in number and Value to those destroyed in the burning by Germany of the Library of Lpuyain. To what extent, if any, these reparations in kind have been carried out we are unable to say, but American generosity has provided the University with a new library, and many donors have combined to put more than 600,000 volumes into it, the John Rylands Library of Manchester with about 50,000 books being the most notable contributor. As the Germans' love for the Jews has now taken the same form as their love for the people of. Louvain took in 1914, the question arises whether the latest victims of this devastating passion will ever receive a similar compensation, and when. Anything like an exact estimate of, what the, Jews have lost, and what literature, science; and culture have lost through the official bonfires which should make May 11 a redletter day in the annals of national lunacy, is impossible on the information at present available. The only figures supplied are those of Berlin and Munich, and these figures cover MarxisS, pacifist, and other "un-German" books, in- addition to those, of the Jews. The Berlin aggregate of 20,000 is proportionately far exceeded by Munich's 15,000, for the populations are 4,014,000 and 681,000 respectively. On the Munich scale the total for the nation would be well past the million mark, and even on the more modest scale of Berlin—where, however, there may well have been more bonfires than one—the respectable total of 300,000 would have been reached. The attitude of the crowd in the Opera Square was probably typical. A vast assembly, we are told, witnessed the proceedings unemotionally. The demonstration was practically confined to Nazis. As room might possibly have been found in the fire for any demon-

strator against the Nazis, it' was wiser to look on in silence. The only cabled sample of the patriotic oratory with which the occasion was adorned was well worthy of the honour. ■Tho' Nazi revolution,' ;said thoi Bavarian Minister 'of Education, would fit Germany more than ever to' load the world. The cra99 infatuation again recalls the Germany of the War. Professor Haldane's sentence already quoted is a sufficient answer. The reference in our Berlin message to "the biggest bonfire of books since the Middle Ages" is doubtless correct, yet the implication that there were bigger ones in those days may be a libel on our forefathers. In the narrower sense of the term the Middle Ages closed about fifty years before the invention of print* ing; in< the broader sense they survived Jt by a similar period. Were books plentiful enough' in those days to be burnt by . the 20,000, except, perhaps, in war? It was at any rate not. racial or religious persecution but war that was the deadliest enemy of books in medieval EuropeAlmighty Author and Lover of peace, wrote Kichard do Bury in 1345, scatter the nations that delight in war, which is above all plagues injurious to books. For wars being without the control of reason mnko a wild assault on everything they como across, and, lacking the check of reason, they push on without discretion or distinction :to destroy the vossols of reason. The most terrible calamity of the kind mentioned by this prince of booklovers was the burning of the great library of the Ptolemies with its 700,000 volumes after the capture of Alexandria by the Saracens in A.D. 641. A scholar named Philoponus had pleaded for the library- which was of no use to the conquerors. Amrou, says Gibbon', was inclined to gratify the wish of the grammarian, but his rigid* integrity refused to alienate tho minutest object without tho consent of the Caliph; and the well-known answer of Omar was inspired by the ignorance of a fanatic. "If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless and need not be preserved; if they disagree, thoy are pernicious and ought to bo destroyed." The sentence was executed with blind obedience; the volumes of paper, or parchment were distributed to the four thousand baths of tho city; and such was their incredible multitude that six months were barely sufficient for the consumption of this precious fuel; Since the Dynasties of Abulpharagius have been given to the world in a Latin version, tho tal» has been repeatedly transcribed; and every scholar, with pious indignation, has deplored the irreparable, shipwreck of the learning, the arts, and the genius, of antiquity.'', - The tale which had been "repeatedly transcribed" had surely never been better told than by Gibbon in this passage, but after working up our sympathies by his moving narrative he hastens to assure us that they are not needed. He is "strongly tempted to deny both the fact and the consequences," and his scepticism is shared by subsequent authorities. The world would be happier today if another Gibbon could arise to convince us that the hideous warfare of the Nazis against "the vessels of reason" may also be dismissed as a myth.