PEACE AND THE ARTS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3030, 10 April 1912, Page 88

PEACE AND THE ARTS.

By Jessie Mackay.

Ha.s the cause of universal peace most to tear or to hope for from the arts? That-s is the question that is dealt with by Professor F. J. Mather, jun., of Princeton University, in a recent contribution to the literature of the American Association for International Conciliation. On the faoe of it, the first answer would be that peace is not only desired, but demanded by every friend of art, which for its development requires leisure, assurance Of subsistence, and refined environment — all the things, in fact, which are destroyed by war. Yet a moment's reflection will show that the peace proposition requires a certain amount of elaboration in this connection. If wars have not been declared precisely on these grounds, the treasures of art have ere now added greatly Vo the inducements to loot a conquered country. The Christian Powers can hardly look Confucian China in the face after* the spoiling of Peking in 19C0, and Napoleon found time to carry ofi_ loads of artistic wealth from Italy and Spain. Moreover, there has been often among artists a morbid resurrection of the emotion which caused Ne-ro to raise the death fires of Rome as a background to himself singing the song of flaming Troy. It has not always been the fever of journalism on canvas that hau sent some modern artists to glean the ghastly aftermath of war, though some have been understood to seek these tragic scenes for the purpose of impressing tiie horrors of a battlefield on an unimaginative world. Granting this true, we must view such men as Verestchagin, the Russian painter who perished in the blowing-up of Makaroff's Slagship, with something ot the admiration we accord to St. Telernachus. One needs but to read "Maud"' to now how even such a sane genius as Tennyson's could welcome war as an ordained means of breaking up the sordid crust of sloth and Mammonism that had gathered over the old heroic heart of England. There is a divinity in the mind of man which cries out for its heritage of light, co'our, motion, and excitement, and this psyctlic force is one that has been overlooked by many a zealous reformer. >

But when all is said and d>onj it must be confessed, argues Professor Mather, that art has, on the whole, made for peace in the past, and is likely to form an appreciable factor in promoting universal peace in the future. In laying down this proposition lie takes carefully into account the re-birbh of art which is happily evident now, after that lamentable stupour into which it drifted in the earlier half of the nineteenth century. That century saw the founding of great new national maiseums in Europe and America, and the rapid recent creation of individual wealth has at least this in its favour, that it has tended to a more or less intelligent diffusion and encouragement of those beautiful arts which languished during the Napoleonic wars, and subsequent political unrest. Professor Mather has only tentative commendation for the modern Maecenas of Wall street, but sees in his ambition to lank in that capacity a hopeful sign that the artist-artisan, who has been driven out of existence by war debts and modern commercialism," may return and exercise that cementing and uplifting influence which he exerted on society in the Middle Ages. He descries, in the fulness of time arT Olyimpian develcpment of the trade un/on idea amid the brothers of the brush and the chisel, the engravers and the carvers, which will operate towards a better international understanding than the unilluminated every-day workers have hitherto secured. There has always been a cosmopolitan esprit de corps in art that defied the bounds of local jealousy or narrow self-interest. He instances a recent assiduous campaign among American artists to have sculptures, paintings, and kindred works admitted free of duty in their country. If art can move the wheels of tariff reform, why may it not hope to move the world's cannon out of firing range in time to come? The camaraderie of the salon and the studio has always been a wider thing and a firmer thing than the common ground claimed either by diplomacy or the purely commercial industries. To the Philistine, Paris is a city of flagrant sins and unapproachable millinery; to the artist, Paris is home. Hasty travel and sunerncial first-hand impressions indelibly deepen the prejudices of the flying critic; but the common artist heritage unlocks the heart of a country to the sympathetic sojourner as few other keys can be found to do. Italy proved this while she still remained the Mecca of all who wrought in beauty. So permeated was her life and ideals with the love and pride of artcraft that her glorified artisans exerted a pressure on feudal conditions that no other mediaeval workers were privileged to exert on that rough time. War was frequent indeed, but neither so frequent nor so ferocious as in countries where crafts were ruder and of less esteem. Nor was religious persecution ever so fierce there as in Spain or Northern Europe—another beneficent result of artistic supremacy. Professor Mather concludes with an eloquent presentment of the necessity for art and the artistic ideal in everyday life. If art were an ameliorating force and a treasured impulse even during the reign •if war, much more does humanity require its impulse when the excitement, the pageantry, the lurid poetry attendant noon war shall no longer stir the emotions of the world. An earth at peace but devoid of the stimulus of art —a spurious Golden Age when men should creep forth on plain vocations out of comfortable and hygienic, but unlovely, homes, in a land where no pillared capital reared ite head, and no song of fatherland stirred the echoes of hill and glen—such a time of social paralysis can only be summed as Chesterton's satiric pen has done in " The Napoleon of Notting Hill." And from sucli way " the Master of all good craftsman " in mercy deliver us t