LITERARY RECIPROCITY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3098, 30 July 1913, Page 79

LITERARY RECIPROCITY.

By Jessie Mackay

It is not the fashion of our tints to deal iu clan terms or provincial phrases. We speak as we think, in large, swelling, confidential periods and international climaxes which convey the cosmopolitan idea, even if they only mean that bumptious reflex of it which we have grown to call the Imperial idea. Certain of these swelling words we have made into fetishes, ententes, zollvereins, and what not, the number of which is yearly, almost monthly, Increasing. One of these is reciprocity. With twentiethcentury rapidity we are beginning, in semihumorous phrase, to “reciprocate" on many lines other than those of cold commerce. We are haltingly ashamed of our old ways of distributing brotherly sentiment from the cannon’s mouth, and adjusting frontiers roughly with a rope’s end: we are seeking the common viewpoint on other lines, and sending other deputies than the -oldierman to ascertain it. Two noble phases of this new interchange have specially commended themselves during the last few years. The inter-communion of Labour in such rapprochements as the mission of Mr Ramsay MacDonald and his followers to Germany the other year makes for human solidarity and righteousness. Tin's meeting of English and German workmen has been a practical challenge to the designing armament—Kings, the venal press, and the young fire-eaters of the Fatherland. The second embassy of peace is that of the teachers who, in thin little groups, are beginning to move from one centre of the Empire to another. Then there are the allied groups of scholars who. Him the sons of the old Celtic chieftains, go to be intellectually “ fostered ’’ abroad. The bonds of art, indeed, have always drawn the world ch eer, even in the iron days of Dante, when the cultured youth of Europe came to the common shrine of Italy, where the ghost of the great classic age still lingered amid the clash of sword and spear that prevailed on every side without. The well-meant, though at present abortive, attempt lately chronicled to exchange whole classes of French and English children of an order below these opulent young people already studying at Vevey, Brussels, or Dresden, is a sign of the times. This seeking of Labour and scholasticism to bridge the gulf of distance, prejudice, and ignorance is indeed a. fore-gleam of the Golden Year. There are two classes, broadly speaking, that never get anything out of war —women and Labour. For them there are no commissions, food markets, batons, pensions, or peacock-feathers—nothing but Die naked horror and ghastly aftermath of war. We may spare our nightmares of the yellow peril and turn them into nightmares of the fettered women of the world. The yellow peril at home iu Peking or Tokio has every reason to be afraid, because the just voice of woman is stifled in Europe: the white peril at home in London or Berlin may well be afraid, because the just voice of woman is stifled iu Asia. It is not a coincidence either that the downfall of the Young Turks followed the recloistering of their half-emancipated and nobly patriotic women, and that the' seemingly imminent downfall of the present Chinese Government, if not the whole Republic, has been prefaced by the beheading of a number of women who took a leading part in throwing down the corrupt Manchu dynasty. But there' is another form of reciprocity that has not struck the utilitarian mind of modern civilisation, and which would yet, as it might seem, work wonders in tlie reconcilement of misunderstood politics and jealous peoples. Who lias proposed an interchange of journalists as well as of teachers? What Government has proposed to send out its novelists to bring back the report on which tire diplomat has equivocated and the soidior lias blundered? Where is the Cecil Rhodes farsighted enough to found the, poet’s travelling scholarship? The query raises a smile, and yet in the rusted international do’or of jealous separation it has been the oiled feather of literature that has made the key turn at last. A hundred years ago there was not much more love between Highlands and Lowlands, and England and Scotland, as to-day there is between .Japan and California. But Walter Scott, the Great Reconciler, melted away the wall of suspicion and remembered offences, and brought about a kindlier relation and a clearer vision. When the bitterness of Bunker's Hill and the rankled memory of Washington looted and burned were i-.lill acute. Washington Irving and. later. Emerson led the way in that Eastward trek which has since attracted the finest spirits iu the literary ranks of America to critical, yet friendly, converse with Britain. To-day the tables are turned, ft is the writers of the Old World who are thronging to pay their homage to the vigour, the munifi cento. the originality of the West. Dickens struck a discordant note 60 years ago; but that note in not echoed by the younger litterateurs that eiowd across the Allant.-, to set the seal of Western appreciation on their green European laurels. Rtidyurd Kipling did ~..t long remain in Vei mont. it is true; but he has seen none the clearer since Ids return to the trodden way.- of_ Ear. pe. The younger set have talon their “tvi.iidm jaiicr" in the West with increasing unction and frequency. Alfred Noyes. v.d>o should have hem the new Lanre.it.* of England, had Saxon mor;t_ and English genius’ any value in politicians’ regard, has just made a triumphal procession into Xew York. William Watson’s stay there vviis cloiulc'd by adverse circumstance, not bv initial disfavour with the people of the West. Richard Le Halhenne Jiao spent 10 years of happy work there, and, himself a child of the lighter fantasy of the elaborate OKI V\ oriel school, is an adorer of the rough, masterful genius of American life, as it forces its way l : ko a torrent through the conventions and precedents of the turbid past. Turning

to the masters again, what- has endeared America more to England than the spell of Mark Twain with his Berserker laugh and his knight-errant’s heart? Yet, when all is said and done, the poet’s travelling scholarship and the novelist’s consular appointment are only dreams. Theirs is a power and a reconciling charm that bind the nations to each other with strong cords • but it is a spell that cannot be bought or sold like a wizard’s love-potion. Pegasus brooks no harness, even of gold.