OURSELVES AND OUR BOOKS.

Observer, Volume XL, Issue 9, 1 November 1919, Page 19

OURSELVES AND OUR BOOKS.

(By F. E. BAUME.)

1 HEARD a learned professor say the other day in tones of the greatest relief: "At length Aye have recovered from the eratic blataiioies, platitudes, and hysterical shriekings of war literature!" I suppose ho meant that we were trying to scare off the multifarious war scribblers who have written reams of verse, theology, and have tried to give a true though often useless account of life in front lino trench and elsewhere, and the wrongs of air force cadets. Thank heavens, the time has passed for such books. They did an enormous amount of good during the war—to read them now would remind one of tho wanderings of Savaronola. It is time to settle doAvn to the consideration of writings that have had an influence on the nation, that have lived solidly, and have tended to increase the mental efficiency of the nation. Poets may be omitted from each category. War has served as a rhyming medium for poet and poetaster, for writer and inky hack. Rupert Brooke, Oxenham, Galsworthy can be left out of the massed ranks of scribblers. For, all said and done, poetry is only the inspiration of aesthetics arid dry-as-dust students incapable of other exercise, mental or physical. Therefore the commoner folk, with little artistic taste, and general lack of interest in the abstract, must be content Avith prose—books and plays. Now, what great books have come to us from the Avar? "Sonia?" Le Queiix's phantasies of Doyle-ian detective instinct? The war has figuratively killed the mentalities of the greatest Avriters. It has made Patrick Makgill, whose Avar book, "Brown Brethren," is aAvful. Kipling preaches well-fed platitudes; H. G. "Wells has curbed his monstrous imagination, and no more speaks of Avars between the worlds. Instead, he is stung by the theological wasp, and produces to a long-suffering world, such terrifying screeds as "God the Invisible Kingand "Mr. Britling." And we are the sufferers. Recently I took a most wrong and reprehensible delight in asking several people their impressions of Wells' theology. "Marvellous 1" "Superb!" "Great!" —some of the replies. Yet knowing the people, I cheerfully worked it out that about one in three could understand a line. That, of course, is the whole trouble. It's only what must be expected when platitude pays! And it is the same in our dramas and books. Cheerful spinsters of uncertain age will shudder at the name "Ibsen." "Ghosts" is filthy, "Hedda Gablcr" immoral. Yet they will, some of them, revel in the iconoclastic mummeries of George Bernard Shaw. And then, to cap all, they are jeered at by Shaw himself! Women delight in penny novelettes of doubtful plot and cleanliness.

There is no betwixt and between in our modern book world. The majority of us Avill develop hysterica] ecsta'cy over a theological absurdity, or we Avill cry over a cheap novel. Savants, who are really useless individuals, will perhaps glean still more Avisdom from the theology and the balderdash. We will take Avrong meanings and make speeches on agnostic agony!

Literature has developed a softening of the brain. Its moral tone is bad; its moral works too far up in the sky. The food handed to our mental palates is reeking, decayed. The new must eventually arise from the old—"the simple from the complex," says Emerson. Let us cease pouring and sAveating over a malicious prose-play diatribe by Brioux on some loathsome subject. Let us not attempt to digest the capons of such chefs as Strindberg and Maxim Gorky until we can appreciate the home cooking of Ibsen, and the simple dishes of Cailyle. There should be sonic ban on literary parasites, and seekers. You knoAV them. They read a criticism by William Archer or Hunoker, and immediately discourse to their friends on the subject, and pose as litterateurs, while they are. not worthy of the term "dilettante." Tf literature is not remedied soon . . . but Heaven help us if it isn't! We must calmly await a new- Maeterlinck who bus given up spiritualism, and a Bernard Shaiv ivho has fallen off his circus wagon.