THE TOLERANT ENGLISH

Evening Star, Issue 22817, 27 November 1937, Page 3

THE TOLERANT ENGLISH

The average Englishman likes a house of his own, a bit in the Post Office, and a yard or two of garden; he also enjoy* tea, tobacco, football, a wireless set, and a seat at the pictures, writes Mr Ivor Brown, the dramatic critic, in the ‘ Manchester Guardian.’ After that come the activities and aspirations of the exceptional people, devotees of an artistic cult or zealots of an ethical, cause. These he is prepared to tolerate, provided they do not try him too far. After all, he is hot bothering with them. It is a lazy attiiJhde, but it brings with it a certain and a blessed! amount of freedom. The voice of the people is not, as a rule, a voice at all. The mass does not take the initiative,’ but when spoken to repeatedly and' loudly it does make some response. As to arts, books, plays, education, and so forth, we get no cold denial as w# get no warm encouragement. The answer is a species of permissive grant, the companion of a nod. So the enthusiasts for the good, the true, th* beautiful can go on working. Under the British type of democracy they will get little-encouragement and almost no money. But they have—which is much, in a world such as ours—the liberty to pursue a labour of love. If they are noo in clover at least they are nob—as they would be almost everywhere from the Rhine to the Pacific—in the graveyard or the gaol.