NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19808, 1 December 1927, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

RACES IN THE UNITED STATES. The reactions of the various streams of immigration upon the history of the United States have been examined by Mr. Lothrop Stoddard in a recently-published book. He says that the American colonists at the time of the revolution, except for.small groups of Dutch and Germans, were English, and though the type in the north differed greatly from that in the south, the population were united in a community of fundamental ideals and habits of mind. They began their resistance to the mother country to secure what they considered the natufal rights of Englishmen. There has never since been the same respect for evolutionary progress and ordered liberty in the United States as" in England. To some extent the abstract principles of the French revolution took the place of British instincts. However, national devolpment, material and spiritual, till the Civil War was healthy and vigorous, and what migration there was reinforced the AngloSaxon character of the people of the United States. The Civil War Mr. Stoddard regards as the crowning disaster in Amei'ican history. It was a disaster with many aspects: 300,000 men were killed on each sides, mostly volunteers, the flower of the people. The Southern aristocracy, the most, vigorous and masterful stock that America has ever produced, perished. The whole country after the war plunged into an orgy of materialism. Its intellectual, moral and political standards went to pieces. In 1847 the tide of Celtic Irish immigration began, but until IP£O migration was from the northern European peoples, which, Mr. Stoddard regards as belonging to the fundamental strain, and possessing the common ideals of the American people. Then on an ever-growing scale the influx of the really alieji peoples from Southern Europe and South-Western Asia began, and this continued, with the partial interruption of the war, till it was checked by the Johnson Migration Restriction Act of 1924. The fight is still to be waged., however, for sentimentalists still maintain ' that the United States is the natural refuge for the oppressed, certain business interests need cheap labour, and representatives of the "alien" peoples now in the United States are bitterly hostile to the new law, which Mr. Stoddard regards as a great turning point in American history

ENDURING LITERATURE. The difficulty of separating literature from journalism was emphasised by Mr. A. E. W. Mason, in addressing a gathering of journalists tn London. ,He said that much of what finally appeared in book form had already passed through the columns of daily or weekly journals. There was really no dividing line between the two at the present time, and he doubted if there ever was a dividing line. Addison, Steele, Swift and other great writers all wrote to periodicals before their writings came within the covers of a book. There was supposed to be a certain permanence in real literature, but who was to lay down the law about permanency? The idol of one generation was the derelict of the next, and might be the idol of the third generation. It was interesting to speculate whether the man scribbling pamphlets, histories, and stories of pirates and criminals, and dropping in between books like "Robinson Crusoe" and "The Plague of London," realised that he was going to live among the immortals. It was pretty certain, however, that Defoe did not care. Mr. Mason said he did not believe for a moment that those old sailormen who went from Falmouth, Penzance and Plymouth knew when they were writing up their logs' on the Spanish Main that they were going to bo acclaimed hundreds of years afterwards as masters of the English language. He doubted if the man writing in the wmgs of the theatre, sometimes plays of his own, sometimes touching up plays by other people to keep the Globe Theatre going, knew, or very much cared, that three or four conturies afterwards he would be acclaimed as the very wonder of English literature. All they could say was that, so long as men were driven to work in the effort. to clothe with the beauty of the English language their ideas, their notions, arid their emotions, so long literature would .be alive and would bo honoured*