WAR AND LITERATURE.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 259, 5 December 1914, Page 8

WAR AND LITERATURE.

THE SOVEREIGN DISINFECTANT. Dr Edmund Gosse has a most interesting article on "War and Literature" in the "Edinburgh Review," in which he hints at what a tragedy for literature and the intellectual life war is, and he .shows some of the effects of war upon the lives of men of letters. The Sheltered Life. ! "War is the great scavenger of thought?" he writes. "It is the sovereign disinfectant, and its reel stream of blood is the Condy's Fluid that cleans out the stagnant pools and, clotted channels of the intellect. I suppose that hardly any Englishman who is capable of a renovation of the mind has failed to feel duringthe last - few weeks a certain solemn refreshment of the spirit, a humble and mournful consciousness that his ideals, his aims, his hopes during our late past years of luxury and peace have been founded on a misconception of our aims as agnation, of our right to possess a leading place in the sunlighted spaces of the world.

'' We have awakened from an opiumdream of comfort, of ease, of that miserable poltroony of 'the sheltered life.' Our wish for indulgence of every sort, our laxity of manners, our wretched sensitiveness to personal inconvenience, these are suddenly lifted before us in their true guise as the spectres of national decay; and we have risen from the lethargy of our dilettantism to lay them, before it is too late, *>y the flashing of the unsheathed sword.

" 'Slaughter is God's daughter,' a poet said a hundred 'years ago, and that strange phrase of Coleridge's, which has - been so often ridiculed by a slothful, generation, takes a new and solemn significance to ears and eyes awakened at last by the strong red glare of' reality. How It Affects Men. "But it is impossible, after recovery from the first violent- shock to our attention, -that we should be able to preserve a philosophical attitude in daily life. United as we.happilyare, purified as our large conceptions; of duty must become under, the winnowing, fan of danger, it is scarcely within the power of those of us who do not enjoy, the signal privilege, the. envied consecration, of actual fighting —it is hard for those who are spectators, however strenuously set-in heart to share the toils and sufferings of their luckier and younger brethren-—not to turn, by instinct, to the order of ideas with which we v or until now have been, each one of■ "us;<: particularlyengaged. "The artist cannot help considering how ,t% : dirration! of war- will affect the production ; and" the : appreciation of pictures, sml; statues.jandjnusie/, since, however .wide and deep the desecration of harmony go, these things must eventually, reappear above the weflteK ;; The insif of science' has to put his investigation and, his experiments on .one sidej yet the'habit of his. brain is too ingrained to enable him to forget the relations of knowledge to life, or to lose the conviction .that scientific development must proceed the moment, that the arresting violence of war is relaxed. And the lover, or student of pure literature need accuse himself of" no levity if his mind, also, strains forward with anxiety, and compares Avith bur own cataclysm the catastrophes of former times. Traffic in Books. '' The absorption of interest, concentrated on the action of the Allies and on nothing else, had the effect of closing down as immediately, although not so violently or completely, the traffic in books in London. "If we take into consideration the fact that August and September are the months during which the sale of books- in England is normally at its lowest, it may be that the decline, though rapid, was not abrupt. A country whose soil .is .hot in imminent danger must always be slower to realise its position than a country actually invaded. "Nor.has anything yet happened which should completely cut off the stream of current literature. It will be to the interest of the publishers, even at a greatly diminished profit, to keep that stream flowing as long as they can, in order to float upon it the works which they have paid for, printed, and bound, ready for the autumn season which they expected.' Of these it is reasonable to expect that a 'great many will in due course succeed in being issued, and that every attempt will be made to secure for them what, distracted attention a public exercised in other directions can possibly be induced to \< spare. It is even conceivable that a certain animation of the book-trade may ;

display'itself in the late autumn," andan appearance of vitality be evident. '• . Current Literature. "How it is to be evinced-in a world from which the publisher ? s v advertisement and the book-review have alike vanished, it is rather hard to say. But what-we must really face is the .fact that this harvest of volumes, be it what it may, will mark the end of what.is. called /current literature,' for the,remaining duration of the war. There can be no aftermath, we can aspire to no revival. The book which j does not deal; directly and crudely with the complexities of warfare and the vari- ! ous branches of strategy, from Christmas onwards, not be published at all. ... . • . "Authors, therefore, if they have not the privilege of fighting, or of otherwise taking active part in the defence of our country, will be subjected to the most painful restrictions., ; They will have to breathe, so well as they can, in a Leyden jar of neglect and oblivion. "When the nfbuntains and the heritage of Esau were laid waste by the dragons of the wilderness, we are told that those who feared the Lord spoke "often one to another. In thevcomiiig days of drought and discomwhile so much active benevolence is distributed, the authors of England will be drawn more and more to one another, and must organise, without fussiness or self-advertisement, more and more effective schemes'of mutual help. Case of Young Writers. ..,,. ' ' Young writers, in particular, will be sure to suffer, and those branches of literature Avhich are most delicate, admirable, and original will be attacked sucTr denly, and for the time being fatally. For the rubbishy romance, 'without dull page from cover to cover,' and for the popular essay made up of daisy-chains of commonplace reflection, we need, feel no. regret, The silencing of these importunate babblings will be a public benefit. "But the writer, who at the outset of what promised to be a brilliant career, was concentrating the intensity of his energies, without thought of-gain, on the production 'of- works of positive merithe deserves and he must receive from those who value the intellectual wealth of the nation all-the succour that can be. spared to him. For he also is a patriot, who dedicates his imagination to the glory j of his country." '