ENGLAND’S SERENITY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 May 1939, Page 9

ENGLAND’S SERENITY

CONTINENTAL ACTOR-MANAGERS There was a time when England was little affected by the views,' and still less by the words, of others: she went her way serene in the possession of her stable soul, writes Lord Gorell in the “Cornhill Magazine.”. That time has passed —it may be, only for a while: all through the chequered story of the recent past, her ear has been unusually lent to the orations of the Continent, and in the process she has been besought by her advisers and mentors to "keep calm.” Does she ever do anything else? Mark Twain in one of his humorous articles describes how a tyro edited an agricultural paper, and among other paragraphs inserted one telling those whose clams were excitable to play music to them: it was a saddened, yet friendly, critic who informed him that the injunction was superfluous. The English never have been clams and are not now; but this they have in common with that bivalve —they do not need either music or adjurations to impress upon them the virtues of serenity; theii* failing is the converse —they (sometimes) need a big sharp pin to galvanise them into activity. That, let it be hoped, ’ they have had now in sufficiency —and so an end to .these anxious ear-strainings to our Continental actor-managers.