SOURCE OF NATION’S ENERGY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26226, 9 August 1946, Page 6

SOURCE OF NATION’S ENERGY

Intellectuals from Provinces

By James Lansdale Hodson

(Special) LONDON, Aug. 1I supose it is because close on 20 years of living in or near to London have not changed me from being provincial at heart that causes me to feel pleasure when I observe the fight being put up for those parts of the realm that are apt to be forgotten and which intellectuals in particular are inclined to ignore. In the days of the great depression I used to argue that Cabinet ought to go on circuit like judges, meeting one week in the West Country, another in East Anglia, another in Lancashire, another in Durham, learning at firsthand how the realm was faring. Perhaps the Scottish journalist who wrote in a London newspaper recently an article headed “The Heather is on Fire ” was feeling much the same. He said that Scots of all parties were aggrieved—they felt that Scotland dockyards should be developed more, that her airfields should play a biager part in civil aviation plans, and that her great harbours should be used more by the navy in times of peace. New Roads for Tourists Last time I was in Edinburgh I heard of these complaints, of the wish that our army should do part of its training in Scotland, and that fine new roads be built to encourage tourist traffic—always in the background was the picturesque figure of a Scottish nationalist arguing for self-govern-ment. Wales has her nationalists, too. If in both countries they have eloquence and fire beyond their numbers or real strength, they serve to remind us how individual these British Isles are. We should not need reminding, since our famous men are their own reminder —for example, Field-marshals Alexander, Montgomery, Alanbrooke —of the debt we owe to Ulster. Mr James Maxton, perhaps the most loved member of the House of Commons, whom we are mourning now, was a Glasgow school teacher. Herein—in the diversity and mixture that we are —lies part of our strength, and it is well that we should have our memories jogged. We cannot afford to forget the provinces we draw our energy from. The director of one of our London art galleries told us this week that we shall never get on in England artistically until there has been a radical reform of local art galleries throughout the country, linking them with London’s, and also binding up local

art galleries with local art schools, for how can you create good artists unless there is good art for them to look on in the towns’ galleries? And recently, too, we had an eminent historian and critic assailing his fellowcritics for failing to note how much of the best creative work in literature just now springs from native regions —the whole school' of Welsh shortstory writers like Rhys Davies and Gwyn Jones. Welsh poets like Dylan Thomas and Alan Lewis, the Cumberland poet Norman Nicholson, and the Ulter poet Mr W. R. Rodgers. Regional Novelists But, indeed, one could go on for some time noting this and the riches brought to our contemporary stage by men whose work draws new inspiration from their native backgrounds— James Birdie of Scotland, J. P. Priestley of Yorkshire, and our regional novelists who in some measure carry on the traditions of the Brontes, of Thomas Hardy and Arnold Bennett, in turning to the soil which nurtured them for their characters and stories. Their doing so seems to be the most natural thing in the world, since rr.an, if he is wise, will create out of that which he knows the truest and deepest. It is artificiality to suppose that the best English thought necessarily lies in London, or that our finest artists dwell in the City. Some of them doubtless do, attracted by the prizes and opportunities, but anyhow it is oftener than not their provincial roots that sustain them. If we turn our thoughts from intellectuals, from leaders of government and banking, insurance and finance, to builders, makers, manufacturers, hewers, toilers farmers, ship-builders, fishermen and seamen—in short, to those who are the foundation of our living and prosperity, it is to the provinces we must go, naturally and inevitably. It is our men of the Tyne, the Tee, the Clyde, of Birkenhead, Barrow-in-Furness and Belfast, who are building such a large proportion of the world’s new shipping. It is the men and women of Birmingham, Coventry, Sheffield, Middlesbrough, Manchester, Swansea, Hanley, StokfronTrent and the rest who are beating all forecasts of how our exports w>mld rise in machinery, iron, steel, textiles, pottery, glass, electrical goods and paper.