The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 1929. LAMENTS FOR THE ACE.

Evening Star, Issue 20149, 13 April 1929, Page 12

The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 1929. LAMENTS FOR THE ACE.

The Conference- of tlio National Council of Education, which is being held in Canada, is not viewing its opportunities in. any narrow spitit. Papers have been read on a wide variety of subjects. Something less than an original rolo has been assumed by Sir Archibald Strong, professor of English at Adelaide Ulincisity, in devoting his address to a condemnation of the spiritual and liteiary shortcomings of the age. “ Life to-day,” ho stated, “is dazzled by gold and by material things.” The conclusion would be that it is a bad age for the poet, for all who believe that man is, or is intended to be, a noble animal requiring something more for Ins satisfaction than that he should be fed and clothed as agreeably as possible and hurried ceaselessly from place to place and amused, it is an old complaint that we li\o in a restless, a material, and a superficial age. Sir Archibald Strong, however, does not resign himself to his lamentation as one that is without hope. While condemning the faults of the time, he is convinced that “to hold that such a condition is permanent is as wrong as to deny the presence of such a burden. Hie Adelaide professor's strong desire, is for a literary revival, and “ the whole history of the past ” gives him faith to believe that it will come. The greatest tragedy of literature, as he sees it, is the divorce of the poetic drama from the theatre. .And he thinks that that may he amended by the establishment of national theatres. The address thus briefly outlined does not conic strangely from Sir Archibald Strong. He is a poet of grace and distinction, whose Huso has shown no fondness for unconventional paths, an addiction, to which might cause her to bo .esteemed more generally in the present day. As the president of the Adelaide Repertory Theatre, ho has ■ shown before his interest in the'drama. Rut the ago may not .be so void of regard lor the higher things of life and success in the pursuing of them as he secs it. The lamentation which he makes lias been that of more serious souls in most ages. AVe have "W ordsworth, in 1802, deploring that England—the England of Pitt and Canning and Coleridge and Clarkson and 'Wilberforce—had become a “ stagnant fen.’ And again in the same year we arc told what countless censors besides Sir Archibald Strong have been telling us to-day :

Our life is only drest For show; mean hanclywork ol craftsman, cook, Or groom. We must run glittering like a brook 1 n the open sim.shinf', or v<’C arc The wealthiest man among ns is the best. . . No grandeur now in Mature or in boo.c Del mills us. Rapine, avarice, expense, This o is idolatrv; and these we adore. Plain living and high thinking arc no more. The homely beauty of the good old cause Js gone; our peace, our Icannl innocence, ■ And pure religion breathing household laws. Of grandeur in books, of great works of art of all kinds, winning delight and reverence, there was to be no lack attei these words were written, but in the midst of the output, not. so long .afterwards, we find Matthew Arnold uttciuig the same complaints. His contemporaries arc arraigned as Light halt-believers of our casual creeds Who never deeply felt nor clearly willed ; Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds; Whoso vague resolves never, have been fulfilled; • • Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day.

The. “ hall-believers ” «ntl ialterers whom he condemned included, to naine ; no others. 474 ministers, out of a total of 1.203. in Scotland who resigned their churches, incomes, and homos foi religious conviction at the time of the Disruption. “To the Bioral attitude of the free Church,” Mr Gladstone said a quarter of a century later, “scarcely any word weaker or lower than that of majesty is, according to the spirit of liistoi ioal criticism, justly applicable.” “The times were not sb bad,” it has been said, “as Arnold thought them to be, nor was their restless movement really evil. Ihe turmoil was not caused by want of ideas, but by new ideas surging into the sleepy elements of the time, ft was not the seething ol decay and dissolulion; it was the healing upwards into force of new creative powers.

Whether or not that may be Ihe case with our own age, not much is likely to bo gained by too constant upbraiding of it. The censors might do better if, once in a while, they did something to encourage it by seeking to discovei where its record has not been without promise. Jt lias attempted at least to do iijorc for the attainment of a, peaceful world than any time which has preceded it. The poets have been always better than their ago. An acted drama has not been the form in which itrigiish literary genius has most naturally expressed itself since the novel took its place, but the sight of queues waiting for doors to open two hours before a performance of Shakespeare, in the second week of such performances, does not argue any indifference to the best in that domain, it was not n> confirmation of Sir Archibald Strong's indictment of materialism that the conlcreuce, after hearing his address turned to discuss the subject of sheep raising for Canadians. Alan does not live by bread alone, but he requires bread first, .