TOPICS OF THE DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21156, 4 July 1940, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY

Casualties of War “Must we regard the arts as belonging to the golden hours of history and as necessarily casualties in wartime?” This was the question put to Dr. John Masefield, the Poet Laureate, by Clair Price, a New York Times interviewer. In reply Dr. Masefield said : “The love of beauty is too deeply rooted. Books, music, the theatre, pictorial art—people demand these things. The arts are bound to suffer loss and retardation in wartime, but not because of any failing in the demand for beauty. People can’t pay for the war and buy paintings, too. People are taken away from their accustomed surroundings, and their access to the arts is interrupted. Or they are confined to their homes by the black-out and their contact with the arts is restricted to reading and to such music and drama as the wireless gives them. I think the black-out has already increased the habit of reading, despite the fact that many of our evacuated population are away from their own libraries or from the public libraries and bookshops at which they normally replenish their reading. ’’