GREAT ENGLISHMEN

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18659, 30 August 1930, Page 14

GREAT ENGLISHMEN

A FOREIGNER’S VIEW. Some months ago we were informed by cable that a book containing a study of Lord Kitchener had had to be withdrawn from circulation until a libellous statement contained in it should be deleted. The statement was to the effect that Lloyd George had deliberately sent Kitchener to his death in order to remove an embarrassing drag on the War Cabinet, and the book was “Personalities and Powers,” by the Swedish writer Dr Knut Hagberg, which is now published in translation by the Bodley Head. The studies, which include, besides Kitchener, Melbourne, Disraeli, Balfour, Cecil Rhodes, John Stuart Mill and others, show a keen perception of the springs of character. It should be noted that the study of Disraeli appeared in Sweden before the publication of Andre Maurois’ book on the same subject, and it is interesting to observe the fundamental similarity of the authors 5 judgments. Dr Hagberg takes the view that the real “tragedy of Kitchener” was not in his swift death in the engulfing waters of the North Sea. but in his incapacity to adapt himself to the conditions and requirements of modern warfare, coupled with a pathetically dogged determination not to shirk what he conceived to be his duty. “Kitchener, with all his limitations, was not a little man.” says the author. “The legend of Kitchener has a kernel of reality; its object was predestined to tragedy and was, in his avidity and barrenness, fitted for the desert rather than for the contented idyll of the clover-fields.”

“A Brilliant Apparition.’* An equally penetrating study of Lord Balfour reveals him as a singularly cold and aloof personality. “He never displayed any very warm feeling or, indeed any feelings at all.” Adroit and tactful as a leader, “nevertheless there was something lacking—namely interest . . . Ironical, satirical, cool, he was a brilliant apparition in Parliament, but it w r as clear he had not the making of a popular leader. When the Boer War broke out he felt himself alien to the violent patriotic delirium. He was without doubt a patriot at heart, but Chamberlain’s ideas as to the English people’s divine right to possess the earth, had no attraction for the cool-blooded aristocrat. It went against the grain to mix up God in the political game. This was in good taste, but such fine distinctions win no hearts among the populace.”

Mr Pickwick’s Inclusion. At the first glance it seems strange to find Mr Pickwick included among these studies of flesh-and-blood personalities, but it is clear that Dr. Hagberg regards him as no less alive than his creator. Others may say that Dickens changed Pickwick from the ludicrous and silly old man of the opening chapters into one of the most enchanting figures in literature—a perfect gentleman and an impressive character. But may the process not have been reversed? Perhaps Mr Pickwick’s greatest achievement was just this—that he met the young Dickens, a little bitter and satirical, whose purpose of jesting and derision, and in the course of a couple of months, he had transformed him into a great writer, whose satire became an epic, a modern Odyssey.” Altogether “Personalities and Powers,” is an attractive book, both in matter and manner. Once more a tribute must be paid to the excellence of modern translations, which remove the idiomatic barriers between a writer and his admirers in foreign countries. “Personalities and Powers,” by Knut Hagbery. (The Bodley Head).