FRIVOLOUS ALBION

Waikato Times, Volume 88, Issue 13448, 29 March 1917, Page 2

FRIVOLOUS ALBION

AS NEUTRALS SEE US. GILBERT MURRAY SPEAKS. "Professor Gilbert Murray told the Conference of Educational Associations in London that 'the central impression we produce in the neutral world is of the thins for which England is really famous to a preponderant degree—the frivolous element in life.' "The growth of this notion of the Englishman as frivolous is a curious reversal of past judgments on him by his neighbours, and its origin may be found in the circumstances of this war,'' says the Manchester Guardian. "Perfidious the Englishman has been from of old, callous too, dense, haughty, unimaginative, and in later years decadent. He is well accustomed to all these descriptions from friends across the Channel or the Atlantic. But it has needed thp greatest of all wars to earn him the title of frivolous. "Professor Murray deplores the impression, but should it be deplored? It is rooted in two facts, the first of which is neither to our credit nor our shame. It is the fact of the Channel, to which we owe it that whatever the price we pay in blood and treasure we do not, even for this war, pay in shattered towns and a wasted land. It is not strange that centuries of this immunity should help us to 'carry on' with a composure that to our neighbours may be indistinguishable from levity. ONLY SKIN DEEP. "But our new reputation is due also to that nonchalant and scoffing spirit which we affect sometimes to excess in the face of hardship, but which is no symptom of lack of earnestness or power to endure. The British Army is not calculated in its demeanour to impress the world with the earnestness of the British people. Frivolous, indeed, is a moderate description of the aspect of its rank and file. But to its actions no one suggests that the term has been applicable. "It may be true that,, as Professor Murray says, the bookstalls of Sweden are stacked with German philosophies and with English novels, tl is equally true that these same philosophies have contributed to wreck the world's peace and that it rests with the novel-readers to restore it and safeguard it. Would we have had the position reversed?" "What Germany is really entitled to be proud of," says the Nation, "is not the quality of her'scholarship, but the number of people in Germany who will read a serious book. It is there that we have to learn from her."