A SCHOLAR POET’S VIEW OF CERMANY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIII, Issue 1389, 22 November 1918, Page 3

A SCHOLAR POET’S VIEW OF CERMANY.

(Uv Lieut, K. N- Colville, formerly ■assistant Professor ol English Litera* turn in Queen’s University, Caum a.) ]’Tolessor .1, S. Phillimorc, ol Glasgow University, has just publisheda volume of poems, written (tunny Urn last fifteen years or so. From the I not o| the last four years we may, as was inevitable, loam something ol Ins view of Germany, , 1 At Professor Phillimorc s school the German tongue was taught to the nest classical scholars, not lor the sake ol any merit in its own culture, but to enable these future professors of Greek to read the painstaking German commentators on the Greek or Latin texts. This practice would not commend itsell y, the Modern Language Association, hut it- serves admirably to put in its due place Germany s much vaunted ■‘Kuitur.” As Nietzsche, rudely told his fellow-countryman, true multure m a native growth; Gorman Kuitur \m $ and is a methodical and labonous pio ccss of borrowing (or 'stealing) from other countries something new and pe:sonal, which alone makes plagiarism worth while. And so. for the young countrymen of Shakespeare and Milton, the highest honour to which the. G iinan language could attain was to j ancillary to the culture of a bit . Greek city state that was based up.m sea power and commerce, and, misapplying Us strength, went down before the brute militarism of Sparta. But so iiulefatigal.lv have the Unmans delved in the field ol classical philology, and such monuments have [hey erected in paper, that it needed an ‘acute and broad minded Grecian not to he a little blinded by the glamou. of their self-declared reputation, and to realise that Poison’s famous epigram is as true, of Wilamowitz-Noellenchu f and Ids fellows to-day as it was of J orson s contemporaries.

“The Germans at Greek Are sadly to seek. Not one in five score But ninety-nine more: Except only Hermann —Ami Hermann’s a German. Professor Phillimore’s .judgment on Germany is most clearly expressed in his moving elegy <m wo Fisher, Latinist ami cMcketm who wont down with the Invincible m the .rrcal Jutland light. Many, sajs t e poet, went to fight for England wit. out knowing the true nature of then enemy, without realising how holy was the cause, for which they fought. No. so his dead friend. Ho knew the Humans and their brutish ideals. “Dut who so nicely as Charles the -,narrel He 'saw the many million hoofs, well The'Vilsks' longßvlicltcd, break the fences through , , .. And run ta spoil the. towns of those "ho build I i ;ii In word or stone, who reason, who dm Bv ne’er so strange reliefs, divinely w.lUd T j ie guard that Home entrusted them to mount . Over the tiered garden and the mystic fount.’’ Admirablv here does the poet insist on the complete imlikenets liet * c " n Germany, direct heir ol the oi l bai - bnriun enemies ol Borne and the pc'.iplea who desire their r,vibration Horn Rome. and. whether of Italian (.alia or British stock, were mum eluldrcn of that ancient mother ot law and Lu inanity. Germany’s affectation ol flasaica! learning did not deceive, him. “Ho «aw the self-adoring brute bedecked (So master’s needs equip the drunken ape) Mock civil wise, to dupe the imcncumspcc Till the day came for German souls, o escape , From feigning human, and— at large-- icChrLUor the old German God whose law is rape, . ' ... Ruin, oppression, murder, poison, sim , • To whom both Turk and Hyu their kmdml morals pledge. Professor Phillimore’s classical tramin., U revealed in the precision ot h»s diction, his exact knowledge, ol I c meaning of Avoids oiteii lending most graceful point to Ins linos, there is nothing dry-as-dnst about hj •• muse. The . passionate anger and he poignant emotion are there, out pressed in a form that rtrmigtuens by compression and sharpens !;y aecnra e phrasing. Love of nature and an a - sorbing interest m the actinias ot man are alike relleeied. and lew poets oqual talent and emotion hau c\eifist'd so wide or so profitable a rostvam over their lluency. , Space admit.-, ol nn i v ono more quotation, and a sonnet gSrT "The, bold ot the. Vmnist* 1914.” shall be chosen if only to emphasise the fact that m England t ( ,-dav all things count only as pait ol the varied life of a nation at war. “Surolv this field shall never more forgot How, three times over, all the ncighbomhood , \inong the halted sixty-pounders blood Staring, ami heard three August eve. af.ct With trampling teams. Vo saw the bivouac The S wagSO"s ranged. Men here along tins wood , ~ , | Slept, and said here at dawn Good-bye For good , To green south-country sides. lay thou thv debt Of memory, little field, to the English bones. That wear a winding-sheet, of Hamlcis Hedgin' Garden. Walk, ami Well, remember them! , . ... Woodland of Engli.Ji oaks whose rolliu,, tones . \vc like « surf when big sou westers pH' For over sound the gunners’ requi-m.