Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 26 July 1938, Page 4

Timely Topics

Says Mr A. E. Evans, in an address on “Education" : “When we see how, in other lands, the minds of the I young 'are crammed EVIL IMPACTS and clogged with UPON YOUTH, what fanaticism pre-scitbc-s — illiberal, despotic, dogma, arrogant assertion of their own superiority above all others, the malignant fostering of hatred of others, the deliberate cultivation of mob hysteria to blind the eyes so that they may not see, but blindly worship only the idols set up for them on high—surely we are impelled to act to safeguard our own youth against the day that may be in store for them. Upon our use of our opportunity to train the rising generation to an alertness in reaction to all the forces that are conspiring to defeat truth—in our own land as well 'as in others, agencies controlled in most subtle ways to serve the ends of diplomacy and big business—upon success in this matter depends our very continuance 'as a free people. For unless the sinister power of this unholy alliance be revealed 'and broken, democracy itself will come crashing to the ground in the ruin that inevitably awaits the totalitarian States.” ® K ® 8 Soviet Russia has adopted Lord [Byron, 'and during the one hundred [and fiftieth anniversary of his birth [ there were great [ RUSSIANS ADOPT celebrations all | BYRON. over the Union, says the. ”News Chronicle.” Organised with the finesse and thoroughness typical of Soviet economic or political propaganda campaigns, the celebrations were carried into remote , villages and hamlets, where, only two decades ago, most of the illiterate peasants, and even their “kulak” masters, h'ad never even seen a printed book. Recently, thousands of paid lecturers and unpaid “social workers” were sent out from the towns to workers’ and peasants’ clubhouses in outlying regions where “literary evenings” were arranged to spread the fame of England’s “rebel poet.” In Leningrad the Institute of Literature lof the Academy of Sciences held a special session to commemorate Byron’s memory. Papers on his life and work were read before large audiences of Russia’s literary elite. Professor Zhirmundsky spoke ,on “Byron and Our Times”; Professor “Byron and Our Times”; Rksahov Special sessions were held by leading universities of the country and by the powerful Union of Soviet Writers. Soviet literary critics have made it eminently clear that the official “approval” of Byron is based chiefly on his rebellious life find his great influence upon Russia’s poets, Pushkin and Lermontov. Particular stress is being laid on Byron’s fiery m'aiden speech in the House of Lords in defence of the weavers of Nottingham, his participation in the conspiracies of the Italian Carbonari, and his death in Greece while aiding that country in its struggle for independence from Turkey. There is quite a boom in Byron’s works. In all, some 300,000 volumes of Byron’s poetry have been published during the two decades of the Soviet regime as compared with only 3000 during the twenty years before 1917.