GLIMPSES AND REFLECTIONS, by John Galsworthy.

................................................................................................

GLIMPSES AND REFLECTIONS

................................................................................................

A collection of a large number of small and large pieces of writings, addresses, letters, and so on.

................................................................................................

Shocking, when towards his final writings, post WWI, one comes across racism of a level ... unexpected, to say the least!

And then one comes across his little piece, THE NATURE OF GOD, and one marvels he didn't realise his soul and mind were so close to, so much a part of, India!

................................................................................................

CONTENTS

THE WRITING OF APPEALS

PERFORMING ANIMALS

A TALK ON PLAYING THE GAME WITH BIRDS AND ANIMALS

ANIMALS AND BIRDS: A STOCKTAKING

EXTINCTION OF WILD ANIMALS

AUTHORS AND THEIR PUBLIC

ANSWER TO TWO QUERIES

ENGLAND’S GREEN BEAUTY

BIOGRAPHICAL

ON BROADCASTING

ON BOOK PRODUCTION

BOOKS FOR THE BLIND

WAR FILMS AND THE GRIM REALITY

CINEMA. CAPTIONS

CINEMAS

GENERAL CRITICISM

CRITICISM

THE VALUE OF CRITICISM

CREATIVE CRITICISM

A CRITICISM OF “STRIFE” (1)

A CRITICISM OF “STRIFE” (2)

CRITICISM OF “SATIRES”

ON THE OBJECT OF CIVILISATION

FOUR COBWEBS FOR NEW BROOMS

MEMORANDUM OF EVIDENCE OF JOHN GALSWORTHY BEFORE THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED BY THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT TO EXAMINE INTO THE WORKING OF THE CENSORSHIP OF PLAYS

CHILDREN AND WAR

BROADCAST: THE NATIONAL CHILDREN ADOPTION ASSOCIATION

THE PROGRESS OF THE DRAMA

ON SOME DRAMAS

DOCKING OF HORSES’ TAILS

DISSATISFACTION

ON DOSTOIEVSKY

THE DISARMAMENT CONFERENCE

THE DESECRATION OF DOWNLAND

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

TO A PRESS CRITIC OF “ESCAPE”

CONDITION OF ENGLAND

FORSYTE SAGA

FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM

FAVOURITE BOOK AND PLAY

THE NATURE OF GOD

POEMS OF ADAM LINDSAY GORDON

HANDWRITING

HAUPTMANN AND GALSWORTHY

HERO WORSHIP

THE CAGING OF HAWKS

WORN-OUT HORSE TRAFFIC

HARMONY

THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM

I SHOULD LIKE TO SEE

THREE YEARS AVERAGE

PROVIDING FOR TWO YEARS AHEAD

INSTINCTIVE INDIVIDUALISM

THE GOOD SERVANT

IRELAND

IF I ONLY KNEW....

JUSTICE

LITERATURE AND PROPAGANDA

THE HOUSE OF LORDS

LIBRARY CENSORSHIP

COMMON LANGUAGE FOR WORLD PEACE

MUSIC

THE WHITE MONKEY

HORSES IN MINES

THE NAVV IN WAR

THE NOVEL

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS

THE TREATMENT OF POLITICAL PRISONERS

PRISON REFORM

AN INTERVIEW

PLAYWRITING

MESSAGE TO PLAYGOERS

PROSTITUTES

ON PLAYWRITING

THE PRESS

APPEAL FOR PLAYING FIELDS

PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

ON PIT PONIES

PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

POLITICAL ATTITUDE

REVEILLE

HARMONY — RELIGION

REMUNERATION

RESEARCH

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

SOCIALISM

SURVIVAL AFTER DEATH

CRITICISM OF “SAINT’S PROGRESS”

TWO MINUTES’ SILENCE

SEX IN FICTION

THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

THEISM AND HUMANISM

THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

THE PUBLICS TASTE IN LITERATURE

HONEST THINKING AND TRUE REPORT

LITTLE THEATRES

SOCIAL UNREST

THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE

VIVISECTION OF DOGS

ON WRITING

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE

WELFARE CENTRES

STATE OF THE WORLD

LIVERPOOL ZOO PROJECT

MR. GALSWORTHY AND ZOOS

................................................................................................

Reviews

................................................................................................

THE WRITING OF APPEALS

"As a Member of the National Committee I have seen accounts from neutrals and Belgians which have convinced me at all events to the point of backing my conviction to the tune of some hundreds of pounds. One cannot of course, see for oneself.

"I am very sorry my letter of appeal gave you the impression that I was asking for our children’s pennies. I meant by the wording of it to ask only for the children’s efforts by way of sports or entertainments, and to ask for the ‘Public’s pennies. The children in our village are giving sports, for which they will have prizes and a tea, and the money (if any) will come from the spectators."

................................................................................................

................................................

July 31, 2021 - July 31, 2021.

................................................

................................................................................................

PERFORMING ANIMALS

" ... I do not well see how any amount of inspection and the granting of licenses is going to do away with the greater part of a wretchedness that comes from forcing creatures away from a more or less natural to highly unnatural conditions of life; nor can I see how, for the purposes of granting licenses, satisfactory evidence is ever going to be obtained that training (which is and must be a quite private affair between trainer and animal) is not accompanied by cruelty.

"In a word, I would like to see the “animal show” abolished in this country. It is too ironical altogether that our “love of animals” should make us tolerate and even enjoy what our common sense, when we let it loose, tells us must in the main spell misery to the creatures we profess to love."

................................................................................................

................................................

July 31, 2021 - July 31, 2021.

................................................

................................................................................................

A TALK ON PLAYING THE GAME WITH BIRDS AND ANIMALS

Galsworthy argues against chaining dogs, zoos, caging birds, letting pets loose when people go for holidays, using furs and feathers, and other cruelties to animals.

Funny, he doesn't find meat industry cruel, only argues for instant killing out of sight of other animals.

"I haven’t time to refer to the slaughter of animals for food, or to vivisection. I can only hope you will look into these matters for yourselves and decide whether you don’t think that both need reform."

................................................................................................

................................................

July 31, 2021 - July 31, 2021.

................................................

................................................................................................

ANIMALS AND BIRDS: A STOCKTAKING

" ... To sit in a garden or to walk or ride in woods and fields, watching the movement of creatures that do not run on wheels, or listening to songs neither mechanically nor sophisticatedly produced is as water to a thirsty plant. There is, then, in my feeling about animals and birds — and probably in that of all animal lovers — a considerable dash of gratitude for refreshment quietly given. And this gratitude, of which we can make no direct expression, because those who give rise to it would not understand, finds its natural vent in our revolt at seeing them ill-treated, and in our wish that they should be free and happy."

So far, so good. But then he tries to extend the argument, and is trapped.

" ... To shoot partridges would now be to me as little agreeable as to kill the chickens that I eat. But so long as I do eat chicken and game there would be falsity in protesting against others shooting game birds. Nor can I get out of this impasse by becoming vegetarian; for vegetarianism involves a liberal destruction of life — rabbits and rats and birds — to say nothing of slugs and insects. ... "

This is the typical way meat eaters attempt justifying going on doing so while professing love of all animals - by blaming vegetarian lifestyle as equally harmful to animals, somehow, with convoluted arguments; or some such ridiculous arguments.

It's not as if farmers protect their crop from rabbits, stags or other wild creatures, by trapping or killing them, just so vegetarian human's interests are served, and their alone; whatever vegetarians eat, is eaten, of course, by meat eaters as well; and farmers are forced to protect crops for their own interest, financial and otherwise..

Here he does so immediately.

" ... I can be, however, and am, definitely against two blood sports, hare-coursing and stag-hunting; for these creatures, both destructive to crops, can be kept in bounds by shooting, yet, being edible and (in the case of stags, at least) ornamental, are not liable to complete extinction; ... "

And even more ridiculous-is following.

" ... I will not go otter-hunting and I will not go fox-hunting, for I have come to dislike the feeling of being one of a pack, and the closing in on a hunted beast. But that is a private revolt and does not in itself give me the right to protest. ... "

Ridiculous, because, after all, the animals eaten on large scale have done nothing to deserve being killed, either. But notice his getting out of it negatively.

"Since I was once a “sportsman,” I think I understand pretty well the feelings of — say — a Master of Fox or Otter hounds. He feels himself to be a sort of trustee for the traditional way of keeping down the numbers of two very destructive animals, sly, hardy and courageous, who themselves live by hunting; a way which gives a great deal of healthy open-air exercise and pleasure to a great many people, and to a great many horses and hounds; which fosters the breeding and careful treatment of those horses and hounds, who to him are the hub of animal creation and for whom he has a genuine love. He feels, too, that his fox or otter hunting promotes a kind of human fellowship of which, incidentally, he is the head; that it toughens the temper, the courage and the muscles of the “field,” and carries on what might be called the spirit of “Old England.”"

That could just as well justify antisemitism, slavery, genocides, KKK, and white slavery.

" ... He probably thinks and possibly with truth, that neither fox nor otter greatly feel the stress of being hunted until their powers begin to fail, and from that point on to the end he would say is but a few minutes. And he cannot see the force of abolishing the whole process of which he is trustee, for the sake of avoiding those few distressful minutes in the life of a creature that preys on others. ... "

Again, that could just as well justify antisemitism, slavery, genocides, KKK, and white slavery.

................................................................................................

He's clueless about science, of course.

" ... Certain results from experiments on animals, such as the cure for hydrophobia, cannot, I suppose, be denied; and, generally speaking, if it can be proved that experiments on animals under anæsthetics, followed by instant death, are essential to the preservation of human life, I see no logical case against them. But, generally speaking, can it be proved? The vivisectionists say: Yes; the anti-vivisectionists say: No. How is a layman to decide? ... "

Who ever thought it should be decided by lay persons? Might as well let children have a vote on dinner, with chocolate being alternative to vegetables and sugar to meat or bread! Does he not realise that decisions of scientific work and procedures must be left for scientists to decide?

Or would he also be okay being forced to have "faith" in flat earth, geocentric model of universe, because common layman cannot grasp heliocentric model with a spheroid globe of earth spinning and revolving, and if a pole were fixed across its centre, those at opposite ends being with their feet towards one another?

................................................................................................

" ... Well, if I were an English Mussolini, I would to-morrow by a stroke of the pen, abolish the following practices, believing that in so doing I was interpreting the real sense and feelings of the English people as a whole, and that the abolitions would be observed: ... "

So he WAS aware of rise of fascism, and of Hitler too, probably; just not enough to be horrified at them and the ideologies?

................................................................................................

Curious how things go round.

" ... Why, for instance, except that money has been invested in them, should we continue to use horses for traction purposes in towns? The practice is hard, to say the least of it, on horses, and is a real disturbance to traffic, considering the extreme length of horse-drawn vehicles and their slow unwieldiness. There might be hardship in abolishing the practice out of hand, but there could be no hardship in providing for its gradual extinction. That extinction, in fact, is long overdue, and I cannot imagine why a people so concerned about the congestion of its streets has not seen to it before now. ... "

Now, of course, use of animals for transport is almost nil in most of the first world, but use of fossil fuels is about to lead all life to extinction; and in less developed parts of the earth, traffic consists of a huge mixed variety of vehicles small and large, including using of animals. Are horses better off in West for being not used for drawing carriages? No, they're slaughtered for glue, unless used for race tracks. Is thst better than being used to draw carriages, or riding?

"I get from birds and animals increasing pleasure; I feel with them increasing kinship; and I would I could do more for them."

Most of the world, however, wouldn't care for most species if not useful. Horses in West are one example. Chinese food is another - it uses no dairy products, presumably because it wasn't understood thst cattle need protection in hot climates, and so were finished off. India on the other hand is largely vegetarian, with those who do eat meat doing so far less in quantities and frequency; but the huge reliance on dairy products, by themselves and as part of cuisine, both, keeps the health of population sustain on similar minimal diet.

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

EXTINCTION OF WILD ANIMALS

"I HAVE read Sir Albert Gray’s letter in your issue of to-day with great appreciation. The threatened extermination of the great beasts of the earth through trade and sport cries out for protest.

"I have recently become the fortunate possessor of a beautiful book called: Stalking Big Game with a Camera in Equatorial East Africa, by Marius Maxwell. It is printed by the Medici Company. Mr. Maxwell’s recorded adventures are most interesting and his photographs really noble. They show the elephant, giraffe, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and buffalo, with sundry other beasts and many birds, at close quarters in their natural surroundings. The book beats Zoos and Museums hollow. But its great use is the lead it gives to sportsmen and naturalists. This new form of stalking requires all the cunning and more than all the courage and coolness of a Selous; it brings home more pleasure and more information, and it leaves these wonderful creatures alive. Man with his foot on a dead gorilla or elephant is a dismal object in spite of the modest worth the camera reproduces on his face. ... "

Meanwhile his nation drive several species of wildlife to extinction in India, and used others ill, all the while professing themselves superior to locals at caring for animals - thus justifying to themselves shooting horses (in their ownership) dead before leaving India!

"Sportsmen are generally “animal lovers,” and often have a horror of the trader and the methods he adopts to secure his skins. But the sportsman has a weaker case than the trapper, and a less genuine title to the name “animal lover,” because he professes regard for the beast he slays, while the trapper does not; and he does not slay for a living while the trapper does. Only when the sportsman goes stalking with a camera, keeping his gun for self-defence in a last resort, will he earn our respect and gratitude."

"Sportsmen are generally “animal lovers,”"!!! Well, wild beast of prey are, one can be sure, just as much lovers of humanity!

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

AUTHORS AND THEIR PUBLIC

"It is a naked and uncompromising truth that to assess the real great Public’s taste is quite beyond the power of any writer; he may discover formulas to suit a certain section of the Public, and go on turning out an article to pattern; but that way lies rank mediocrity or worse.

"The real great Public, the Public of the future as well as of the present, can only be reached by a very single-minded attention to doing the best work one can, guided by one’s own conscience, and by the conscience of nobody else...."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

ANSWER TO TWO QUERIES

"As to women of the “underworld” — ... Any glib assumption of superiority is detestable, and I suppose I am always consciously or unconsciously up against it."

"My purpose in writing? I haven’t any conscious purpose except to express myself, my feelings, my temperament, my vision of what life is. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

ENGLAND’S GREEN BEAUTY

The Spectator.

November 3rd, 1928.

" ... though there were in all the world no such lovers of beauty in Nature as the beauty-loving Englishman and woman, there was perhaps no country where beauty lovers were so few. ... "

" ... The average Englishman has little love of and no pride in the English country-side. This, my unhappy conviction, is based on a variety of palpable evidence, such as the disgusting condition in which any average English crowd will leave any English country-side or open space; the outrageous liberties which the English public allows English builders to take, as a matter of course, with English landscape; the way in which English holiday makers herd together by the sea or in the country, as if terrified of the peace and beauty they are supposed to be seeking; and the general sentiment of the town child taken for a holiday into the country — that the country is all very well, but that the streets are better; and what are town children but fathers and mothers of townsmen and women?"

................................................................................................

" ... Lip-service is paid to sentiment by most politicians and public men, and at heart very likely they often feel what they say, but when it comes to the stoppage of what brings in or creates material wealth, a sort of paralysis comes over the legislative machine, and cogs get the upper hand. ... Beauty goes to the wall as easily as does humaneness, if monetary interests are threatened."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

BIOGRAPHICAL

"I was born in 1867 at Coombe, in Surrey. I was educated at Harrow 1881-1886, and New College, Oxford 1886-1889, where I took an honour (M.A.) degree in Law; I was called to the London Bar (Lincoln’s Inn) in 1890. I read in various Chambers, practised almost not at all, and disliked my profession thoroughly.

"I was travelling most of 1891-1893 in Russia, Canada, British Columbia, (incidentally New York), Australia, New Zealand, the Fiji Islands, and South Africa (since then I have made the acquaintance of Europe). ... "

................................................................................................

" ... My first novel Jocelyn, was published in 1899. Villa Rubein in 1900. A Man of Devon and other Stories in 1901. (These two books were afterwards revised and re-issued in one volume in 1909.) The Island Pharisees (written and re-written three times) was published in 1904. This book was again very heavily revised for its new edition in 1908. Between 1899-1904 I acquired some first-hand knowledge of the conditions of Capital and Labour, which served me later in the play Strife. The Man of Property was written 1903- 1905, the last part of it in Italy, and published in 1906. The Silver Box, written in a month at the beginning of 1906, was produced at the Court Theatre, London, that same year (September); it was my first play. The Country House was written in London, Devonshire, and Tyrol between March and November 1906, and published 1907. ... Joy was written December 1906 to January 1907, and produced September 1907 at the Savoy Theatre. Strife written March, April, May 1907, was not played till February 1909. The studies which form the collection known as A Commentary were written during 1907 and the Spring of 1908, and were the outcome of what a man must see if he keeps his eyes open (a rather rare habit) in London. In 1907 and 1908 too was written Fraternity, published February 1909. With the writing and publication of The Patrician in March 1911, I reach the end of an attempt to survey the spirit and limitations of the four main sections or strata of English upper-class Society — the rich man of business, the squire, the cultured, and the aristocrat.

"The play Justice, pondered over for two years, was written in five weeks, August and September 1909. ... "

"The Little Dream was written in 1909, played at Manchester April 1911, and published in Scribner’s magazine May 1911. Incidentally I am no climber but a great lover of mountains, and especially of the Tyrol."

................................................................................................

"I write for my wife. Each of my books is dedicated to her. I write for her entertainment, and I owe it to her that I became an author.

"I had only one friend who was a writer, and that was Joseph Conrad. It would never have occurred to me to write plays. It was my wife who advised me to try my hand as a playwright, and she was so persistent that at last I began to write for the theatre."

................................................................................................

"We must get back to the land, and instead of building new factories we should go in more for agriculture and intensive cultivation of the soil. That would put an end to the disagreeable position we are in now of having to import nearly all our foodstuffs from abroad. And emigration to the Colonies should be given every possible encouragement."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

ON BROADCASTING

" ... during the crisis a great contribution to the nation’s equanimity has been made by broadcasting. As a medium it is at once more effective and immediate than the Press."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

ON BOOK PRODUCTION

"IN view of present economic conditions we seem to be threatened with a standstill in the matter of book production, or alternatively, with a price which will put it out of the power of the public to buy books in anything like the old quantities. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

BOOKS FOR THE BLIND

" ... Braille books with their embossed type cost money — so much money that unless we make them practically free they are out of reach of those who most want them."

Fortunately, now there are audio books. Unfortunately, they are too expensive, especially if someone is either not upper middle class in U.S., or belongs to another country, where a dollar can feed a family of ten, at least for a day.

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

WAR FILMS AND THE GRIM REALITY

Galsworthy questions the purpose of war films and of official government aid for production of war films.

"When the war ended, and for some years after, no adults wanted to hear of war again, because they knew what it was — from beginning to end a hideous and bloody nightmare; a thing neither glorious nor sporting; one long confusion of suspense, hardship, sacrifice and horror. When it ended, relief was such that strong men wept.

"And now we have war films supported by the Governments that were at war. The American film, Convoy, the German films, Emden, When Fleet Meets Fleet, and The Official War Film; the forthcoming French film, Verdun; and our own Armageddon, Ypres, Mons, The Somme, Zeebrugge, Battles of Coronel and Falklands, produced with the assistance of the Army Council and the Admiralty."

" ... Films must pay their way; and ordinary knowledge of human nature assures us that they could not possibly pay their way in any country if they really got on the nerves of their audiences.

"Reproduction of one millionth part of the horror and misery which every day of the war brought would be enough to ensure the utter failure of any of these films. They are, therefore, in no sense educational, for they cannot tell anything even remotely like the truth. Indeed, to tell the truth about war in a film would be quite impossible."

Well, perhaps not in his day, but later on some realistic films did get not only produced but seen, appreciated and get success as well as acclaim.

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

CINEMA. CAPTIONS

"DEAR SIR, I am returning the scenario of Loyalties finally revised.

"Barring small points I have passed this version as it stood; but I have rewritten all the early “captions.” They wanted it badly.

"May I have an assurance from the — Film Co that this version as revised by me will not be departed from except for film exigencies. And further that the captions will remain as now written. If they wish to add further captions or alter any, will they please refer them to me first."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

CINEMAS

"When the film was silent I came to look on it with tolerance and once in a way with gratitude as a form of entertainment, and certainly with admiration as a means of education, but with alarm as a means of propaganda. It had a certain power when very ably and restrainedly handled of exciting aesthetic emotion. It had a very real and rather dangerous power of holding the eye even at its worst. It could sway you while you looked on, but when you came away (with the rarest exceptions) you were wholly unmoved. And this I think was partly because you were conscious of its enormous faking power; and partly because the eye was held at such a pace that the mind did not stir in concord. ... So far as I have seen “talky” films at present, they have seemed to me silent films spoiled. ... "

This came to be the attitude of snobbery adopted towards films, television and so forth, while older firms of the same - theatre, street theatre, ... - were adopted by the same snobs as more suitable for intellectuals, not realising that those earlier forms had suffered the exact same disdain and worse when they were all there was.

Mansfield Park, anyone?

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

GENERAL CRITICISM

" ... You say: “He is not above writing to order” (italics mine) “serials which will appeal to the many thousands who build up the circulation of popular American magazines.” Whether or not I am above it, I never in my life have written anything “to order.” This is in no sense a proof of virtue, it is due to my not being dependent on my pen for bread and butter. I never consider the destination of anything I write (whether novel, play or story) until after it is written. Then, as a rule, I give it to my agent who markets it. If my agent concludes any negotiation for sale of a story before he receives it, he makes it clear, first, that there may be no story to deliver, and, secondly, that it must be taken (or left) just as it is — absolutely without alteration; and no consideration of suiting any particular public ever comes into play, nor has any suggestion of that sort ever been made to me. I do not know where you get your impression from — possibly from the inexcusable habit certain magazines have of advertising that “so-and-so” is writing especially for them. In my case that would always be a false statement. I do not write especially for anybody, or for any public. ... All my work, however indifferent, has been the best, according to my own taste and judgment, that I could do at the time. ... "

" ... “And he did not spend his apprentice years at the feet of Pinero, he spent them in the commercial theatre where plays are drawn up according to box office specifications.” I never had any apprentice years, I never had anything at all to do with the theatre till in February and March 1906 I wrote The Silver Box, being at the time in a mood of revolt against the artificiality of such plays as I had seen. You imply very kindly that I am a master of stagecraft. I’m sure I don’t know whether that’s true, but if it is, I have gradually muddled out a mastery for myself. I am in no sense a student of drama, nor a great playgoer, nor a believer in learning the job of playwriting except by practice. As to “box-office specifications” — if I knew anything about them, I suppose I should not have had in London only two commercial successes out of my fifteen long plays produced there. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

CRITICISM

"July 12th, 1916.

"DEAR SIR, Thank you for your letter from which I note that you have read the letter of my article — certainly not its spirit — and consider me “an enemy of Society.” This is very mild. Last Saturday I was called “an old and cunning reptile” by a gendeman from the Victoria Docks who found another of my writings displeasing. If such ebullitions of fearless goodwill lighten your spirits in these dark days, I can but rejoice.

"To THE REV: —"

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE VALUE OF CRITICISM

" ... From one who, out of sheer love of Letters and without self-indulgence, appraises our novels, our poetry or our plays, we can take the rough with the smooth and be grateful. But authors are always restive, and rightly restive, under criticism, unless they feel it is the genuine outcome of a love and knowledge of good literature."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

CREATIVE CRITICISM

" ... The vital distinction is this: the interpretative artist is absolutely tied to the terms of the work he is interpreting; whereas the very essence of creation consists in that roving, gathering, discovering process of the mind and spirit which goes before the commencement of a work of art. This process is untrammelled by anything except the limits of the artist’s own personality. It is not an answer to say that the artist is trammelled by the limits of his experience just as much as the interpretative artist is trammelled by the terms of the work he is interpreting — for this reason: Of experience one is unconscious, one works amongst it intuitively, it has become part of oneself, it is not there in black and white, in definite line and shape, before us, as is the work with which the interpretative artist has to deal. ... Probably the best concrete instance of the two types of mind would be Leonardo da Vinci, who made in La Gioconda the finest piece of creative painting in the world and Walter Pater, who reproduced her, in the best piece of creative criticism, I think, ever written. No one could doubt, I think, that those two natures were as wide as the poles apart."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

A CRITICISM OF “STRIFE” (1)

"January 6th, 1912.

"In The New Age of January 4th, your dramatic critic quotes a sort of recommendation of my play Strife which has been issued by the Drama League of America, and makes on it the following comment. “The name of the mastermind who was guilty of this primitive effort is not disclosed. Perhaps Mr. Galsworthy was responsible for it. If so, there should be something on the Statute-book to prevent authors from endeavouring to increase their incomes by publishing their plays in headlines that improve no one — not even the six silliest persons in a community.”

"May I just say that I knew nothing whatever of the recommendation till I saw it quoted a few days ago in the Daily News. I am sorry that your dramatic critic should have thought his insinuation so probable as to have justified him in making it."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

A CRITICISM OF “STRIFE” (2)

"July 21st, 1915.

"I am sorry, but the paragraph in your issue of the 19th, about my play Strife has no relation whatever to fact. My acquaintance with the conditions of a strike was by no means as superficial as all that. The protagonist for Capital was not a Welsh Coal Owner, and moreover has been dead some years; no character was drawn from any London Welshman; nor did Mr. Granville Barker know that I was writing the play till it was put into his hands finished.

"Finally the play was not conceived as a study of industrial conditions, but as a conflict between headstrong natures and the usual tragedy and waste thereof."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

CRITICISM OF “SATIRES”

"May 15th, 1915.

"DEAR SIR, My new book The Tittle Man and other Satires — a misnomer, according to some who assert that they bite too deep to be called satires, and to others who allege that they do not bite deep enough to come within that definition — is a collection of short studies in various forms. Whether, as one critic remarks, they are “pure comedy,” or, as another contends, their “excellent and melancholy” author “requires attention from the comic spirit,” God knows. You pays your money and you takes your choice."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

ON THE OBJECT OF CIVILISATION

Beginning at a low note of common, every day reporting - this one is reporting a speech by Galsworthy - it goes up with a dig, to make one smile, and then suddenly ends with a punch in the solar plexus.

"Reporter’s Summary.

"Speaking yesterday at the opening of the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition of Modem Art, Mr. John Galsworthy said that art was the only really progressive spiritual uplift of human life."

" ... At present the arts were railed off; the public poked buns at them at the end of its umbrella, and watched their antics. There was a disposition now among leaders of labour to ask that beauty should be brought into the lives of the people. That was a good sign, for it was the first need of every country. In an age which tended more and more to make a god of blind production it was essential that the beauties of art should leap to the eye.

"Of old the best artists were employed to decorate the monasteries and churches which people then frequented.

"Why could not the best painters and sculptors to-day be asked to decorate the schools, colleges, hospitals, theatres, museums, yes, even the public houses, the clubs and the railway stations? We wanted more real beauty where we could all see it every day. If we went on blindly producing without cultivating the instinct for beauty we should go steadily downhill. And if we did not improve our conception of the dignity of human life we should head straight for another world war."

Shivers down the spine!

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

FOUR COBWEBS FOR NEW BROOMS

Galsworthy opines on laws that need reform.

"1. Breach of Promise.

"2. The Divorce Laws.

"3. Solicitation.

"4. Prosecutions for attempted Suicide."

The last one is clearly silly. The first, Galsworthy is merely outraged that women could use it in his day.

................................................................................................

" ... But women are no longer slaves; emancipated now, and the equals of men, they cannot have it both ways.

Not quite true, and society still thinks less of a woman not married, widowed or divorced, whether or not her country gives her equal legal rights. A woman jilted is still seen as an object sullied, while a man jilted is seen merely as a boy that a cat has escaped by screeching and scaring him.

"Between the devil and the deep sea — the State and the Church — the sanctity of marriage is indeed in a poor way. You draw back from a marriage which you are convinced will not be sacred, but which, according to the Church, will be too sacred to dissolve, and you are promptly cast in damages by the State."

................................................................................................

"The opposition to reform now comes almost entirely from the Church. The Church, like the State, is entitled to its belief. But the delay in reform caused by Church opposition is only accentuating the following state of mind: “If I marry and it turns out wrong, which seems not unlikely, I shall be living a disharmonic and degrading life, which can only be ended by a dishonouring process; and, if I chance to be tied to a murderer or lunatic, cannot be ended at all. The changes of this mortal life are many — why then marry? Any union is as sacred or as little sacred as a marriage contracted under such conditions. But there is still worldly convenience to be had from marriage — more respectability, less social trouble. Well! I’ll chance it, and marry! That is the growing attitude towards marriage. ... The respect for marriage declines day by day. The position is as ironical as it can be."

Funny, didn't England separate from yoke of Rome, chiefly, due to an annulment that Rome refused? Since Queen Elizabeth I founded Church of England after her father divorced several of his queens, wouldn't it be more hones if church in U.K. didn't conform to views of Rome, at least on this specific issue?

................................................................................................

" ... A public servant did a public service the other day when he dared take off his hat to a woman, make a few remarks to her, and get prosecuted for it. ... The law against solicitation for man or woman should be confined to cases where woman or man makes direct complaint to a police constable. A policeman who actually witnesses solicitation could be instructed always to ask the person solicited whether he or she complained. The practice of arresting people for speaking to other people, no matter with what object, unless complaint is made, is thoroughly dangerous. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... No one attempts suicide without intending to succeed, unless he does it hysterically for the purpose of advertisement, which he would not get if he were not prosecuted. ... Besides, a person so driven as to seriously attempt suicide has already suffered enough. Anyone with the mere rudiments of compassion and imagination must see that. And certainly, to keep it a prosecutable offence does not help, but rather lessens, our feeling that suicide is a surrender, an unworthy confession of defeat. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

MEMORANDUM OF EVIDENCE OF JOHN GALSWORTHY

BEFORE THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED

BY THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT

TO EXAMINE INTO THE WORKING OF

THE CENSORSHIP OF PLAYS

"I think that the mere idea of this Censorship often deters fastidious minds who would in reality run little or no risk from its attentions, and that it rouses in the exuberant mind a perverse desire to rim amuck at it."

"I have also to state that I have read the following plays, which have either been censured or in whose cases, verbal or written intimation has been given by the Censor that they had better not be presented for licence: The Oedipus Rex (Sophocles); The Cenci (Shelley); Monna Vanna (Maeterlinck); Ghosts (Ibsen); Maternité (Brieux); The Three Daughters of Monsieur Dupont (Brieux); Mrs. “Warren’s Profession (Shaw); Waste (Barker); The Breaking Point (Garnett); Bethlehem (Housman). I consider that all these plays are essentially moral, and some of great dramatic and artistic merit, and I do not see why any single one of them should not have been presented here.

"For this conclusion I give the following reasons: The first night audience at a play is always a picked and hardened audience. The general Public is at once informed by the Press of the nature of a play. People do not go to plays without either reading or hearing what sort of play it is; and those persons who deliberately go to theatres from prurient motives would be most disagreeably disappointed by witnessing a performance of any of these plays."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

CHILDREN AND WAR

"When a child is outraged or done to death in time of Peace the whole nation is stirred. In wartime, millions of children are outraged and done to death in manner not the same but as horrible. On them are forced slow starvation, illness, deformities, orphanage, death from disease, gas and bombs. From them is rived all fatherly control so that in many cases they become little criminals. Undernourished and stunted physically and morally they are taken from school prematurely and set to war work. The effects of war are felt by them for years after war is over — often for the rest of their lives. Fortunate are those hundreds of thousands who, but for war, would have been born and are not. The sufferings of children through wars in the past are likely to be far exceeded in wars to come, when the very pulses of the nations will be stopped by havoc wrought from the air on crowded centres of population and the wholesale destruction of docks and factories."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

BROADCAST: THE NATIONAL CHILDREN ADOPTION ASSOCIATION

"The destitute or unwanted child is a fairly pathetic thing. Many of such children are irregularly born. I think you will agree that there is nothing more offensive to good feeling than the old-fashioned habit of looking down on an irregularly born child. However strongly a person may condemn irregular unions, to suppose that the innocent offspring of them are not the equal of children born in wedlock is surely a survival from the Dark Ages."

" ... It is and always has been shamefully unjust that the innocent children of illegal unions should suffer under stigma of any kind. And this Bill might well end with the following Clause: ‘It shall be an offence punishable by fine or imprisonment for any person to inflict indignity on such a child because of the circumstances of its birth, which are hereby declared to be beyond its control.’” The Association I appeal for, helps healthy children whether regularly or irregularly born, if unwanted or destitute — that is the point; and such a work must have your whole sympathy just as it has mine. This Children Adoption Association has an office at 19 Sloane Street, London, and a hostel called Tower Cressy in Aubrey Road, Campden Hill, London. The Founder and Director is Miss Clara Andrew. Its Chairman the Dowager Duchess of Abercorn, its President H.R.H. the Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, and the most active of its Vice-Presidents is Mrs. Stanley Baldwin. It is registered as an Association not for profit."

" ... Since it started in August 1917 the Association has proved successful in 2,200 adoptions. It secures adoption not only in Britain, but in Canada, South Africa and Australia. A very important point to my way of thinking: “Most of the children for adoption are under the age of twelve months, but adopters have them for a month at least before they sign any agreement form. Almost invariably the child wins the heart of the adopter; very few children come back. Many adopters return for a second, a third, a fourth child.” Adoption is promoted only as a last resort, in preference to institutional life for the child; and the Association never attempts to take a child from its natural mother if she is able and willing to look after it."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE PROGRESS OF THE DRAMA

" ... English drama from the beginning of the last century up to the last few years, has been almost entirely in the hands of the actor. It has been written for the actor; and Drama written for the actor is sterile from its very conception. Until therefore the actor could be raised from the dead into that life of interpretation which should have been his from the beginning, there was no room on the English stage for anything but histrionics, divorced from life, from ideas, and from all real feeling. ... development (only just beginning) of the English drama. That development will continue along the lines of interpretation and not of histrionics. Stars will fall from the firmament into the waters of truth; drown if they are dross, resurge if they are gold, endowed with a finer lustre. The knell of strutting has sounded. Thanks to the advent of writers who are sufficiently out of touch with theatrical life, and sufficiently in touch with real life and real literature; thanks too to the rise of repertory or semi-repertory theatres, many actors and actresses have already risen from the dead to ornament their calling. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

ON SOME DRAMAS

" ... Each of the plays The Silver Box, Strife, Justice and The Pigeon of course, incarnates a main idea—”The S.B.” that “one law for the rich another for the poor,” is true, but not because Society wills it so, rather, in spite of Society’s good intentions, through the mere mechanical wide-branching power of money. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

DOCKING OF HORSES’ TAILS

" ... How far indeed are we removed from savages, when we can blindly follow a custom so thoughtless and tormenting, so stupid and ugly, as this?"

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

DISSATISFACTION

"“One is always dissatisfied the day after the production of a play, no matter what its reception (in this case not a bad one). The Thing has gone out for better or worse — generally worse, and there is an end of illusion; an end to one’s own vision, and frequently a taste of ashes in the mouth, and a sense that one has not succeeded in conveying to more than a handful the sense and heart of the matter.”"

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

ON DOSTOIEVSKY

"August z6th, 1932.

"DEAR SIR,

"I will answer your questions in order and as best I may:

"1. If I were still reading Dostoievsky I have no doubt that I should find him an interesting (and in some sort irritating) writer.

"2. I doubt whether he is a universal influence for the novelist. In morals and philosophy he was a dissolvent. Against dissolution there is always reaction.

"3. On the whole he is not so great a man as Tolstoy, either as an artist or as a thinker.

"4. He was very unbalanced, but his insight was deep and his fecundity remarkable. I think he will live."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE DISARMAMENT CONFERENCE

"Most people who think at all have recognised by now that European wars of the future, if there be such, will be fought from the air.

"They will consist of unpreventable attempts to wipe out with explosives and gas the crowded centres of population, docks, and factories; these attempts will probably be unheralded, and will almost certainly be successful.

"Armies and navies will be paralysed by lack of supply, and perhaps not even used — the nerve centres on which they rely having been destroyed. If we consider what England will be without London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol, Sheffield; France without Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles; Germany without Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, and the Essen district; Italy without Rome, Milan, Turin, Naples, Venice, Florence; and what civilisation will be like with these countries in utter rags, we have some idea of the aftermath of a new great war."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 01, 2021 - August 01, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE DESECRATION OF DOWNLAND

" ... If a portion of the Downs can be appropriated to the purposes of a sporting speculation, there is no reason why any of England’s beauty should be sacred, and we may put up the shutters and declare its Green Mansion to let."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

"A GOOD grounding in the literature of one’s native tongue is the most enjoyable and the most useful part of education. Not because our literature is superior to other literatures, but because in reading one’s own language the mind and the imagination are freer; and take in a store of general nourishment excluded by the concentration necessary for mastering any foreign language. He who speaks his own language musically, writes it well, and knows its masterpieces, is educated."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

TO A PRESS CRITIC OF “ESCAPE”

It's a startling experience, reading this piece, about supposedly a play by the author, titled "Escape". Startling, because it all seems half familiar, but not quite; one goes back to the index, looks at the list of plays, and it isnt there!

Why is it half familiar?

................................................................................................

" ... You suggested that I was stretching probability unfairly in order to create sympathy for Matt, because I didn’t let the trippers offer him tea. Forgive me, but trippers of that kind, who have by the way finished their tea, would never dream of offering a strolling fisherman with a “sniffy way of talking” — in other words a gentleman — refreshment. Why should they? It never entered my head that they would; and one can’t reject unscrupulously what doesn’t come into one’s head. This is England and we don’t intrude ourselves on strangers, especially when we have no indication that they are hungry or thirsty — for all the trippers knew, he might just have had his tea. And, forgive me again, but I cannot see that their not offering him tea could have any effect whatever on his chances of being captured. ... "

" ... I suggest that a man who has escaped from Germany, and who escapes from Dartmoor is not one who takes things lying down; and that there is no perversion whatever of human nature in the scene as described and acted. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

CONDITION OF ENGLAND

"THE world has changed so much that in so far as England is concerned, conditions are almost the reverse of what they were 50 years ago. England, like many other countries, is more or less standing on her head. You must remember that you always have to give England time. She realises things slowly; and as becomes the oldest stable state politically speaking, she moves with great deliberation. She has never begun to realise the extent to which conditions have changed. I think it will take her ten to fifteen years to find her footing in these new waters. But she will find it all right. Our climate has not changed, neither has our temperament."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

FORSYTE SAGA

"The MS. lacks The Man of Property for to my great regret now I destroyed that MS. (with other early MSS.) in changing houses in 1913. It was in an awful state, and I was ashamed of its untidiness, and also unconscious then, that I was destroying what had apparently (or rather would have) great monetary value."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

FREE WILL AND DETERMINISM

"The fallacy of the old notion that Free Will and Determinism are antagonistic lies simply in the failure to perceive that — however certain it was from the beginning that a man shall act in such a way — it is never known by that man in what way he is going to act until after he has acted. There is absolutely no deadening to the springs of individual action in a philosophic Determinism, which perceives that simple truth of individual free will before the event — Individual free will in accordance with an implanted — often failing — but ever renewing instinct for creation and perfection."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

FAVOURITE BOOK AND PLAY

" ... And there you’re in a difficulty, because you probably haven’t read any of my books or plays."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE NATURE OF GOD

"DEAR MADAM, I am sorry that I have the bad habit of not enquiring too closely into the nature of God — a word which stands, for me, for the only way we have of expressing the ultimate and very wonderful Mystery of why we are all here. Surely to no sane person, pressed back to his last defences of definition can it stand for anything else?

"Since I do not believe, and do not see how anyone can, that the Universe ever had a beginning or will ever have an end, your question as to the making of things is hardly intelligible to me. The idea of a God limited to our idea of ‘the good man’ expressed to the power of x is to me the purest darkness."

................................................................................................

Shocking, when towards his final writings, post WWI, one comes across racism of a level ... unexpected, to say the least!

And then one comes across his little piece, THE NATURE OF GOD, and one marvels he didn't realise his soul and mind were so close to, so much a part of, India!

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

POEMS OF ADAM LINDSAY GORDON

"The few lines that Mr. Paramor quotes in The Country House have always seemed to me hard to beat as a summary of what keeps most of us going under the wear and tear of life. The beauty of those lines consists in the fact that they emotionalize and inspire, without any of the flummery and trimmings which most poets and preachers would have added."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

HANDWRITING

"When I look at any considerable screed from my pen it always seems to me as if I had half a dozen handwritings; and yet I suppose no one but myself would see any difference between them."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

HAUPTMANN AND GALSWORTHY

" ... I have never had the good fortune to read a word of Gerhart Hauptmann’s works, and that the only two plays of his that I have seen are Die Versunkene Glocke (in German, which I unfortunately cannot understand when spoken on the stage), and a version of Hannele, both of which, I imagine, your reviewer will agree are very far removed from my method. Of Die Weber I do not even know the plot, except that it is about a strike."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

HERO WORSHIP

"My ideas about hero worship are rather incoherent. I am not very good at it, and yet I do feel that natures which have no capacity for it are dry goods.

"It is one of those cases I fear where distance lends enchantment. A dead hero is worth a good many live ones — he has become the incarnation of qualities: it is this in him that, I think, one worships.

"Hero worship for the living (as in your case with Miss R — ) is much more the magnetic attraction of personality, the effect of charm, than it is what I should call hero worship proper."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE CAGING OF HAWKS

"DEAR SIR, I read in yesterday’s Standard that a hawk had flown into your house at Tiverton in pursuit of a sparrow, and been captured. Unless you are truly charitable you will certainly set me down as a meddler and probably a crank for venturing to write to you on the subject. In all probability you have already freed the hawk, and this letter is a waste of your time, but if you have not and should by any chance have the intention of trying to tame the creature I beg you most earnestly to reflect on what captivity means to a hawk or any of the large soaring birds. To keep such a bird caged is to keep on one’s premises a piece of solid permanent suffering.

"Travelling in California last spring I had occasion to stay at an hotel where they always had a caged hawk for the edification of the guests. It was — they said — a new one practically every year, for the birds soon moped themselves to death. Watching the eagles and hawks in our Zoo, where, of course, they have a maximum of freedom and company as compared with private caging, I have often thought what living tragedies they looked. One thinks of a hawk as a cruel bird, not as a creature that deserves compassionate treatment. He is not however cruel, no more so than a sparrow or a robin that darts on a worm as the hawk darts on little birds. He is merely getting his living instinctively in the only way open to him."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

WORN-OUT HORSE TRAFFIC

"SIR, On May 21st I was present with some thousands of other people at an Albert Hall Meeting to protest against the continuance of the worn-out horse traffic, ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

HARMONY

" ... I feel that the pointing out of disharmony is at least as much the business of the artist, especially the novelist and play-right, as attempts, which almost always fail, to provide cut and dried harmonies.

"The Vision of harmony is the theme of poetry, rather than of those more searching, critical, and disturbing mediums the novel and the play."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM

" ... I get to hate more and more the whole industrial system. What is it but a huge process of manufacturing wants? Man should have few wants. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM

"A living wage is guaranteed, a vast number of articles are thereby rendered unproducible in competition with foreign goods; to remedy this either there is an instant diminution of employment or a protective tariff is necessary, thence a general heightening of the rate of living, thence a deduction throughout of the capital available for enterprise, thence a general diminution of the demand for labour, besides incidentally bringing the living wage back to where it was below the living wage level. And so in each province of economics."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

I SHOULD LIKE TO SEE

"I should like to see all school-children taught, throughout their school life, that no paper or rubbish of any kind should be left about in streets or country places. This is indeed a case where ‘a little child could lead them’; for, apparently no one else, not even the King, can! ... "

"I should like to see all school-children definitely taught to be kind to animals and birds. ... "

" ... I should like to see English architects devote themselves to English architecture, which, dying prematurely in the early years of the nineteenth century, is now due to rise again in terms of its best self.

"I should like to see the processes by which coal smoke is ultimately to be abolished, hurried on with, and a law then passed to prohibit coal smoke altogether in factory and home. ... "

................................................................................................

"I should like to see Art more closely related to reality, by liberal employment of artists to decorate public buildings, railway stations, shops, hotels, hospitals, theatres, and factories; ... "

................................................................................................

"I should like to see the death penalty commuted in all cases where murder was not committed in cold blood.

................................................................................................

"I should like to see much more serious attempts made to get children to pronounce their vowels correctly."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THREE YEARS AVERAGE

"SIR, In November, 1916, I wrote a short letter to The Times deprecating the three years average system, since income-tax had become so heavy. ... "

" ... Just as income-tax is deducted from dividends on stocks, so shall we professional men learn to reserve or ear-mark the necessary portion of our earnings as we go along, to meet the taxes on them. We shall cut our coats according to our cloth, and not leave the income-tax (and super-tax) on the year 1925 to be paid out of the income of 1926. The present system encourages us to go it blind and hope for what rarely turns out the best. In every way it is a thoroughly vicious system, and its longevity as amazing as that of the octogenarian witness who had never been to bed sober. I am happy to see that the London Chamber of Commerce has joined in appealing against it."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

PROVIDING FOR TWO YEARS AHEAD

"The abolition of the three years’ period was a great boon, but surtax is still assessed not on this year’s but on last year’s return, and this is an abiding and vicious incubus. It may not fall so hardly on businesses, but it is paralysing to a professional man who cannot tell from year to year what his next year’s income is going to be. ... "

" ... By all means put by to meet the current year’s liabilities, but to put by against not only the current year’s but the next year’s liabilities (as one must now) is to clog the wheels of industry and of social improvement. ... "

"A single graduated income-tax, assessed on the last completed year’s income, is the only wise and fair way of levying, and I cannot imagine why it is not adopted, unless on the principle: “Oh! He’s a surtax-payer; tease the rich brute. ... ”

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

INSTINCTIVE INDIVIDUALISM

" ... instinctive individualism, and vital instinct, the value of life to ourselves, the subconscious sense that we are as valuable to life as life is to us, which keeps us going."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE GOOD SERVANT

"Statesmen who used this imagination would have averted the coal strike or at least by earlier action have prevented the after-strike unemployment and distress in the coalfields, which are now engaging belated attention. No statesmen, using their imaginations, would hesitate to tackle the slums, emigration, and Empire settlement on a large scale."

"The House of Commons has succumbed to the idea that it is elected to follow, not to lead. It has abjured the function of foresight. ... The two things that mattered beyond all in this country after the war, were — to continue the revival of Agriculture, and to maintain a force in the Air equal to that of the strongest Power. Both were sacrificed to custom and to vested interests — the one because a town population cannot see the importance of Agriculture, and the other because to ordinary short sight the Army and Navy still seemed more important than the Air Service. The one thing that mattered in 1925 when the coal strike loomed before us was to reorganise the coal industry completely. Imagination failed and the nettle was not grasped."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

IRELAND

"I hope Shaw will tell you all that the only possible way of dealing with Ireland now is to make an agreement with America to stop arms or recruits going into Ireland for either side; and, having done that, and removed all the army from North and South that we can conveniently lay hands on, to remove also all our soldiers, sailors and such police as will not take service under Irish authorities, and say to the Irish (North and South): Now, settle your affairs; we wish you well, and we’re sorry we’ve made such a mess of it hitherto. Whatever they then did would not be so bad as what we shall otherwise be let in for, and the damage we shall do ourselves in the eyes of the world — especially the American world. The substance of the future lies in our hearty co-operation and friendship with America — the rest is shadow. But I suppose we shall grasp the shadow and miss the substance."

................................................................................................

"DEAR MADAM, How charming a letter of request! If I could tell myself or anyone could tell me what my political convictions are now or have been in the past I should be the better able to sign a letter saying I would vote against them in the matter of Ireland."

"I would sign a letter saying that I would vote against any Government which initiated or tolerated reprisals involving the property or lives of innocent people. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

IF I ONLY KNEW....

"THE Editor of The Triad has kindly asked me to write a short article on how to set about being a writer. If I only knew! My friend Arnold Bennett is the source to which he should have gone.

"I suspect that my own experiences are of little or no use to would-be writers, but such as they are they shall be at the disposal of those who read The Triad."

................................................................................................

" ... If one has been brought up at an English Public School and University, is addicted to sport and travel, has a small independent income, and is a briefless barrister, one will not take Literature seriously, but one may like to please her of whom one is fond. I began. In two years I wrote nine tales. They had every fault. Kiplingesque, crudely expressed, extravagant in theme, deficient in feeling, devoid of philosophy, with the exception of one or two perhaps, they had no temperament. I put them together and sent them, at the recommendation of my one literary friend, Conrad, to a certain publisher. With praiseworthy caution he would only publish them if I paid, and he sent me an estimate. I thought it a pity to waste either time or them, and accepted it. They were published. In the meantime I had begun to write a novel, and to be conscious of what are called “a feeling for character” and a “sense of atmosphere.” It was, however, a bad novel; it was not what is called “written.” The technique limped; the characters had stringhalt; and the clothing sentences were redundant or deficient. It was accepted by another publisher on what is known as deferred royalties — so deferred, in fact, that nothing came my way.

"I had now been writing four years, and had spent about a hundred pounds on it. About that time I began to read the Russian Turgenev (in English), and the Frenchman de Maupassant in French. They were the first writers who gave me, at once real æsthetic excitement, and an insight into proportion of theme and economy of words. Stimulated by them I began a second novel, Villa Rubein. It was more genuine, more atmospheric, better balanced, but still it was not “written.” The form in which it now survives underwent two thorough revisions some seven years later. It was published on the same sort of terms — again I got nothing; and I proceeded to write the four long-short stories which are now bound up with Villa Rubein. From the writing of these I got more excitement and satisfaction than hitherto; they were nearer being “written” than anything I had yet done, but they too had to be severely dressed down before they were re-issued with Villa Rubein, some years later. ... "

................................................................................................

"In 1906 therefore, before The Man of Property had appeared, I had been writing nearly eleven years without making a penny or any name to speak of. The Man of Property had taken me nearly three years, but it was “written.” My name was made, my literary independence assured, and my income steadily swollen."

................................................................................................

"The first moral is that some writers at least are not born.

"The second moral is that such writers need either an independent income, or another job while they are learning to “write.”

"The third moral is that he who is determined to “write” and has the grit to see the job through, can “get there” in time.

"The fourth moral is that the writer who steadily goes his own way, never writes to fulfil the demands of public, publisher, or editor, is the writer who comes off best in the end.

"The fifth moral is that to begin too young is a mistake. Live first, write afterwards. I had seen unself-consciously a good deal of life before I began to write, but even at twenty-eight I began too young. The spiritually stressful years of my life came between then and 1904. That is why The Island Pharisees and The Man of Property had in crescendo so much more depth in them than the earlier books.

"The sixth moral is that a would-be writer can probably get much inspiration and help from one or two masters, but in general, little good and more harm from the rest. Each would-be writer will feel inspired according to his temperament, will derive instruction according to his needs, from some old or living master akin to him in spirit. And as his wings grow stronger under that inspiration he will shake off any tendency to imitation.

"I think that exhausts the morals of my experience."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

JUSTICE

"I should prefer not to discuss the artistic aspects of my play. It can be seen and read, condemned or applauded.

"All I want to say is, that in it I do not attack any department of the administration of Justice.

"I yield to no one in my admiration of the fine qualities of our Judges. I believe that all Prison officials, as a body, are animated with a high sense of duty and conscientiousness. I regard the Police with respect. I am convinced that the Public of this country is on the whole the most humane in the Western world."

Indeed, "Public of this country is on the whole the most humane in the Western world."" Might be true, as long as the recipients were restricted to the Western world, strictly! Or the "on the whole" was noticed as strictly true.

................................................................................................

"DEAR Mrs. C, So many thanks for your charming letter. What nice news of Thomas Hardy. But he will be doing a rare thing indeed if he can make adequate dramatic versions of his novels. It is an art I don’t understand, and indeed rather distrust. Still he may succeed."

"Thank you, yes, I am writing — a novel. But when — if ever — it is finished I promise myself a holiday — the first for five years. A writer never gets a holiday — at least not one of my temperament; and soon I shall have forgotten how. I don’t want to get quite like the cabhorse in the Pickwick Papers."

"When one sits in a Court and watches, one wonders how on earth in those few minutes of a trial even an inkling can be gained by a Judge of the roots of the crime he judges; especially when by constant repetition all the feelers and nerves (by which a man alone can really seize on what is going on in other men) are necessarily blunted, when the very nature of his whole business, under the fearful pressure of time and of the strain that is on him, tends to force everything into grooves, categories, precedents. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

LITERATURE AND PROPAGANDA

This is worthy of notice especially in this era.

Galsworthy was invited on June 13, 1919, by some who he addresses as Messieurs before continuing in English, to join “Clarté”, and he responds in June 1919.

" ... That I am intensely a believer in writers “throwing themselves into the battle of ideas with their reason free from all prejudices, and with all their pity” I trust that the whole of my work shows.

"But there are certain wide considerations which make me doubtful of the wisdom of a deliberate banding together of writers, especially of creative writers, for deliberate propaganda purposes. I would draw your attention to the fact that the great influence which creative writers undoubtedly wield rests on two main factors: First, their untrammelled creative power, and the human attraction inherent in it; secondly, the faith which the Public — unconsciously, if you will — has in their independence. The moment they band themselves and give themselves a label they lose all the more subtle and far-reaching part of their influence. And however much they may declare themselves “free of all party” and above all prejudice, they cannot escape being “classed” by the average mind, and must at once encounter an opposition which did not formerly exist to the influence of their imaginings. I will take an illustration from your list of names. The influence of Anatole France, Romain Rolland, Henri Barbusse, Matilde Serao, H. G. Wells, and Israel Zangwill, if known by the public to have banded themselves together for a definite crusade, will be in sum less than the influence of those six writers each independently fighting the good fight in their creative work. At least, from my knowledge of human nature, this is my very decided conviction.

"I would next draw your attention to the fact that so far from “the thing of beauty” being useless in these days, it is things of beauty — real deep spiritual beauty — which must of necessity be born in the utmost freedom without direct propagandic impulse — which alone can give new life and spring to a most machine-driven, press-ridden, and in many ways hateful age.

"Next I would say this: The writer who has real creative power, and real subtle influence (for the influence of the manifesto is really little-worth) is naturally lonely; he works more freely, and with greater force in conditions of spiritual solitude than in an environment of joined-hands. He flourishes, as it were, on a sense of being alone. Opposition, originality, arrogance if you will, are part of his make-up."

................................................................................................

"I would say a word on the danger of focussing so much free spirit and good will in a definite organ which, however wide in its views, is bound to be labelled “Socialist” or “Bolshevist” or some stupid name by the average mind, and therefore will be read only by an audience of the converted. The mere fact that its contributors have big literary names, will not widen its circulation among those who really need to read it. I am afraid that experience shows that free spirit and generous feeling forced into a single public channel becomes combative and ceases to be infective. But we cannot bludgeon the public into feeling with us, we can but inoculate them without their suspecting the process.

"The last sentence of your memorandum shows I think quite clearly the danger that “Clarté” (and its adherents) will soon be labelled, and become as it were a “party” organ: “Il est indispensable que nous ayons avec nous toute l’élite intellectuelle du gauche!”"

" ... And I humbly hope that, if not a definite member of your society (for the reasons I have given) I shall be able to give a helping hand to the ideals you strive for, and to write with pity and tolerance and freedom from prejudice, and even to paint things truthfully as I see them."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE HOUSE OF LORDS

" ... Of course if the Veto Bill be pure tactics, and the official intention be living and firm to create a new Second Chamber equal between the parties, my objections all fall to the ground. But I haven’t gathered from the speeches in the Lords and the country that there is any intention of doing this; and neither Morley nor Churchill with whom I have talked seem to entertain the idea at heart. ... "

" ... For the hereditary House of Lords I have less than a word to say."

" ... If I were (which God will take care I am not) in Parliament, I should have to espouse those measures which seemed the shortest cuts to proportion and justice, but on meeting my opponent in the Lobby I should never be able to refrain from seeing that he represented the realities of existence every bit as much as I did — though his face were the reverse of the medal."

" ... Don’t write and say: Trust Asquith, though I admit that it’s the best practical answer that can be made. But we know — don’t we? — how the political utterance repeated and repeated in the end comes to wag the party dog. It’s human nature not to go back on your uttered words. Some day I’ll come down and talk, if you won’t come up."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

LIBRARY CENSORSHIP

Very similar arguments and debates today about films, internet content, even art, except - forces are greater with those selling questionable content, simply due to far greater financial gains involved.

But then, tobacco too was a similar battle, until a couple of decades ago, with banners of rights of individual choice invoked in favour of those selling death; that pornography, terrorism et al endangers lives, chiefly of women and children, is now forced under the rug by those selling it, just as in case of guns, liquor, or two decades ago, smoke.

Galsworthy lived when fascism was rising. Now, labels are false.

................................................................................................

"SIR, There seems on the face of it no reason why the libraries should not deal exactly as they like with the books that we authors write, and it is idle to abuse them for acting according to their lights; but there seems to be every reason for us authors to consider whether we who supply the goods are prepared inertly to watch a secret tribunal of middlemen, however well-intentioned, assessing without check the moral value of our wares."

" ... Honest writers are, must be, the best critics of decency in literature, since they judge it, not only from without as citizens, but from within as artists, feeling what is essential and what is not. To the library censors indecency in literature is a question of harm to themselves and their daughters: to us it is that indeed, but it is also the profanation of an ideal, a tarnishing of art, a dirty huckstering business. ... Whether any masterpiece has yet been stigmatised or semi-strangled is beside the point. At any moment it may be, for if this secret censorship, or discretion as the libraries prefer to call it, be left to flourish without check, it must assuredly grow with every year more high-handed and less respectful towards originality. But it is not, in fact, so much a question of the harm done to books that do appear, especially when they are by well-known authors, as of the strangling at birth of books by young authors that publishers decline, and will increasingly decline, to publish, for fear of the ban; and still more, far more, of the strangling in authors, day by day as they write, of the due expression of their thought from the same fear."

" ... The great public would not care one rap, would even applaud, if Resurrection, Tom Jones, Ghosts, Madame Bovary, Jude the Obscure, and many another masterpiece were to-morrow to be banned for ever. The great public of to-day and the libraries that do but represent the great public cannot (I say it with due respect for their zeal and good intentions) be trusted to tell a hawk from a handsaw, and if something is not done there will not be a dog’s chance in this country for any outspoken work of art in five or ten years’ time.

"But what can be done? Let us recognise that nothing can be done to interfere with the discretion of the libraries to send out what books they choose to those subscribers who put them into the fiduciary position of selectors of their literature. Nothing whatever can be fairly said against the free use of this discretion; it is a purely private matter between the libraries and their customers, between a trustee and a cestui-que trust. Nothing can even be asked till the matter has passed from this fiduciary stage to being simply a question of the free display, or not, of books to the public gaze in the libraries and the bookshops that belong to them — that is to say, most of the bookshops in the kingdom. At present if a book is put into Class C it is altogether banned, in other words, not stocked or procured at all; if put into Class B it is stocked, but not sent out on the library’s own initiative, and not freely displayed or fairly put forward in libraries or the shops that belong to them, as are the unbanned books that form Class A. This is the really serious point of the whole question. ... "

"The suggestion is this: Let there be a vote taken of authors (preferably through the machinery of the Authors’ Society) and a small committee annually elected from among us, to deal specially with this question. Let the libraries consent, whenever they have decided to ban a book, to submit the fate of that work to this committee (except in so far as their fiduciary relations with their customers are concerned — since these, as I have said, can obviously not be touched). ... "

"If some such corrective be not adopted by authors as a more or less coherent body and accepted by libraries, recognising the integrity of writers in this country as a whole, there will remain, so far as I can see, nothing for it ultimately but the establishment by authors and publishers of joint libraries of their own. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

COMMON LANGUAGE FOR WORLD PEACE

"“I am waiting for a word in favour of that peace-promoter, the adoption in common of a second language.

"“The most beneficent task, which the League of Nations could perform would be the conjuring of an arrangement to this end. The ideal course is an adoption, by agreement, of a single second language to be taught in all countries. And I regret profoundly that there seems little likelihood of any such consummation."

If only he could hear what French and German speakers think of English speakers!

" ... we should love our mother tongue as we love our country, and try to express ourselves with vigour, dignity and grace.”"

Applies equally to every other language, especially those with rich literature, and every other country, especially those with a rich culture and a treasure of ancient tradition of knowledge.

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

MUSIC

"GOOD music is one of the few signs of civilisation that can’t be quarrelled with."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE WHITE MONKEY

"August 30th, 1924.

" ... This is a novel which is being now serialised, and will not be published till October 20th about."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

HORSES IN MINES

Galsworthy writes, spurred by an accident in a mine during the strike; his views have been covered before, at least once.

................................................................................................

................................................

August 02, 2021 - August 02, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE NAVV IN WAR

" ... The Navy may defend ships in the far seas, or even to within a hundred miles or so, but if those ships can’t discharge their cargoes, all that defence goes for nothing from the point of view of feeding the population of this island."

" ... The Navy and the Air Force are not of course antagonistic except in so far as the old sea power doctrine hypnotises the English into thinking that it can by itself save and feed them."

" ... A propos of Land Policy, I don’t think we can be entirely self supporting; but we might well be three quarters instead of not quite half; which would make all the difference in the world to our national position, and to our safety in case of another Great War.

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE NOVEL

"The Highway. Summer, 1924.

"If you ask a novelist what is a good novel, the only answer he can truly make is: “My own novel on the day that I finish it.” And if you ask him what is a bad novel, he will reply: “That same novel a fortnight later.” It is, in fact, no good asking a novelist such a question. You can ask him whether this or that named novel is good, and expect some sort of rational reply, generally in the negative if the author is alive. Just as horses run in all shapes, so do novels. ... "

"The beauty of the novel lies in its infinite variety, its elasticity, and its breadth. This is why, on the one hand, so many bad novels are written for every one that is good; and on the other hand, why it is never likely to be superseded as the main form of imaginative literature."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS

The Observer. September 9th, 1917.

"While quite out of sympathy with the ideas and attitude of Conscientious Objectors, I can but repeat my conviction that the spirit of the Conscription Act is being contravened in deference to an outburst of natural hate. If it is going to become our habit thus to indulge gusts of feeling, however natural, God help us all in the rancorous and bitter future that is coming!"

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE TREATMENT OF POLITICAL PRISONERS

This piece is undated, and specific names left out.

"SIR, From time to time, at not too rare intervals, the reading Citizens of all Countries are startled and horrified by accounts of the ill-treatment of political prisoners in this, that or the other Country. And it has seemed to one who wishes to think well of every Country that it may be of possible service to draw attention to an aspect of this matter which appears to have eluded the vigilance of Governments.

"Nothing in the whole world more alienates the sympathy of foreigners from a given Country than knowledge that it is guilty of inhumanity in the treatment of its political (or religious) prisoners. As soon as such inhumanity becomes known the attempts of the given Country by way of diplomacy or propaganda to popularize itself or its régime are automatically and completely stultified. It is, I think, an admitted truth that nothing was more potent in damaging and retarding the growth and importance of the Roman Catholic Church than the horrors of the Inquisition. The example could be multiplied indefinitely. Cruelty has a way of recoiling on the Body that inflicts it. And any Government which thinks it can ill-treat political or religious prisoners and at the same time popularize its Country and régime is grievously and manifestly in error. Nor will the plea by a Government of ignorance of such ill-treatment avail the Country it governs, any more than the plea by directors of a hospital, that they were ignorant of malpractices therein will prevent the public from boycotting that hospital."

"To appeal to humanity is nowadays, it seems, an unctuous futility, but appeal to Common Sense and self-interest has still a certain potency; and I would repeat that nothing in the world is so blighting to a Country’s interests and reputation as the knowledge that it ill-treats its political or religious prisoners.

Was this about India? About Bhagat Singh?

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

PRISON REFORM

"The Daily Mail. July 25th, 1910.

"There is no word so fitted to the scheme of Prison Reform which the Home Office has just put before the country as common sense. And since common sense is rather rare, the country will be grateful.

"It has been neither sensible nor decent that youthful offenders should be made familiar with prison except in the very last resort.

"It has been ridiculous that persons fined should be put in prison before a reasonable time has been given for the payment of the fine."

"The official defence of separate confinement has had three main pleas, (i) That before it existed prisoners would ask for it. But this is going back to the dark age when there was no classification in prisons nor science of any sort except that of manufacturing the criminal. (2) That they prefer it. Which is true, indeed, of a small proportion of convicts — generally educated men, the class of prisoner naturally best understood and sympathised with and best able to express their feelings, so that their opinions have acquired an exaggerated importance as against those of the great majority of convicts, who, uneducated, have less resource in themselves against solitude, less power of voicing their sufferings, and far less dread of encountering their fellow-prisoners. (3) That it is a deterrent. But how is it possible that a period of separate confinement always coming at the beginning of a long term of imprisonment, during which the monotony and general conditions of prison life obliterate all sharp sensation of any sort, can be deterrent? And even if there remain a lurking deterrence it is purchased at the far too high cost of the deterioration of mental fibre which long periods of seclusion work in nine men of ten. ... "

" ... The habitual offender is commonly a man of strong individuality, which is forced by prison life under the surface into a dangerous, secret channel of its own; and those who laugh at what may help to break up that sullen desperation have simply not appreciated the fact that this very thing is one of the chief causes of recidivism."

................................................................................................

"March 31st, 1910. My DEAR MADAM,

"Thank you for your letter. As to the proposal of a demonstration in favour of Prison Reform at the Duke of York’s Theatre, I feel certain that it will be impracticable. Apart from other reasons, it would — to tell you the truth — be introducing a principle which I personally should much regret to see introduced: The principle of directly mingling political and social matters with dramatic art. ... "

"The moment such a demonstration took place in a theatre, where a play such as mine — a presentation of life, and its significance — was being performed, a great blow would be struck at the influence of drama as an impartial revealer. An enormous amount of quiet (and perhaps noisy) opposition to all drama, except such as was mere frivolity, would be aroused.

"I am touched by the keenness of your feeling, but, I repeat, it would never do to hold such a demonstration. The theatre is not and ought never to be the place for social and political demonstrations no matter on what subject. What you would gain in emotional effect you would lose in a dozen other ways."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

AN INTERVIEW

"Great Thoughts. December 4th, 1913.

"“The great thing needful in the discussion of such a subject as the present is to divest oneself of all sentimentality and to regard punishment from both the scientific and the strictly common-sense point of view; to hold the balance between the intellectually feeble person who would abolish all punishment and the equally impossible idiot who sentences a man to six weeks’ hard labour for sleeping under a hedge. I maintain that punishment should hold in it the elements of deterrency, reformation, and good, healthy, righteous vengeance. ... "

"Mr. Galsworthy, as will be shown, goes much farther in the direction of humanitarianism than I should do. What is required is, in my opinion, not that punishment should be abolished, as the humanitarian sentimentalist urges, but that it should be more equally adjusted so as to fit the crime for which it is administered.

"I asked Mr. Galsworthy, first of all, his opinion on our present penal system."

" ... Very much has been accomplished in America, especially by Governor West, who has adopted the system of trusting to the men’s honour. Very likely such a system would not be suited for our crowded districts, but in Oregon or Nevada it is completely successful. He puts all his men on their honour not to escape when they go out to work, and they don’t. His influence is his personality. ..."

"“But surely you agree that the agents of the white slave traffic should be subjected to the lash?” I asked."

" ... The contention of the flogging party is based on the belief that the knowledge that this power can and will be exercised in the case of this particular offence will so deter offenders that in the end flogging will not be necessary. And as far as that goes, I was only this afternoon talking to a man in the thick of criminal matters, who had just had a conversation with a convict on this very subject, and the convict had frankly said, ‘I have met many of these bullies, and they don’t care a straw for prison and go back to the same life the very day they are released.’ “Well, that fact has to be faced, for doubtless it is perfectly true, and the consequences of this particular exploitation of women by these men are so frightful that I can’t bring myself to feel we are wrong to try this experiment. I think we ought, but I do think it wants very careful handling and very careful watching by the Press and the Public and the Legislature.” ... "

" ... The element of deterrence is almost synonymous with that of revenge, since it implies a degree of severity, but the State must be cold and impartial, with no tinge of personal animus. Revenge belongs to the injured person, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean anything to me. It is a purely individual feeling; and it is very dangerous to foster in the minds of servants of the Law the notion that they may give way to their feelings. ... "

Topic of the interview changed hence to bringing up children, social changes, and so on.

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

PLAYWRITING

Galsworthy responds to a query from someone regarding his plays.

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

MESSAGE TO PLAYGOERS

"HAVING supper one night some years ago in the Restaurant of our leading hotel I looked at the other side of the room and saw Allan Monkhouse whom I knew sitting with two ladies and a gentleman. I scribbled a note and sent it over by a waiter: “I can’t see from here but if it is Mr. Galsworthy ask him to send me a message for the Conference of Playgoers’ Club meeting at Bristol to-morrow which I am attending.”

"It was the eve of the production of one of Mr. Galsworthy’s less well-known plays The Mob. I saw them with their heads together and I soon received the following missive:

"“Seek Joy; avoid Strife; do Justice; and give a wide berth to The Mob.”

"The message was warmly welcomed on the morrow when I read it to, amongst others, the late Henry Arthur Jones, our chief guest, and Mr. J. T. Grein, our President, happily still with us."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

PROSTITUTES

"December 7th, 1906.

"DEAR SIR, I have received your circular. I would willingly become a subscriber to any such object were the law on this subject altered, and the treatment of these unfortunate women brought into correspondence with humanity and common sense.

"They are, with few exceptions, compelled to the life of vice by the appetites of men, they are kept in a life of vice by the appetites of men, and for men to apply to them the present rough, summary, and inadequate police court treatment, is repugnant to instincts of fair play and reason.

"Until therefore the law devises some special machinery more suitable, more effectual, and more merciful for dealing with these women I do not feel that I can subscribe to any movements that will bring the rigours of the law as it stands into greater force against them.

"I venture to think that your Council might endeavour to obtain an alteration in the law, in accordance more or less with the following suggestions:

"1. That on being arrested, women of this class should be taken not to police stations but to ‘homes’ of which there should be one in every police district.

"2. That their cases should be heard by the Magistrate the first thing on his arrival at the Court in the presence of the Press, and anyone personally interested, but with the General Public excluded.

"1. That if the charge is made out, instead of being fined (which is futile) or imprisoned (which is barbarous) they be sent to the Home attached to the District in which the charge is heard, for a period of not less than three weeks, nor more than three months; well treated, well fed, and given every opportunity of learning some honest work."

"I submit that it is the brutality of the present treatment that deters policemen from putting the law into force, for every manly mind must be haunted by the unfairness and hypocrisy of punishing in the other sex that which their own sex has brought about. I venture to think that a large silent body of the public holds this view; and I should be glad if you will kindly draw your Council’s attention to this letter."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

ON PLAYWRITING

"THE two hardest things to do are to write a real play, and to carve a real duck. ‘Use a club and avoid the joints’ may suit the latter, but the real play needs more sensitive handling."

"For any other views I have on the subject, see a paper called: ‘Some platitudes concerning Drama,’ in The Inn of Tranquillity; and a paper called ‘The new spirit in the Drama,’ in A Sheaf, Vol. II, not yet published.

"I ought to say that — according to a well-known American critic — though ‘a great playwright,’ I have ‘no sense of the theatre.’

"The idea behind my play The Roof is surely plain as the proverbial pikestaff: Simply that the human being comes out strong under pressure; that the human soul needs trial to show itself at its best. Old as the hills, of course, but worth fresh illustration, I should have thought, at any time.

"The form of the play, simultaneous incidents, as used in The Roof is, I think, new. It was adopted as the best, perhaps the only means, of showing a number of human beings intimately in their normal state before bringing them together under the pressure of a common danger.

"Before this play was criticised, twenty thousand members of the general public saw it in one week at the Golder’s Green Hippodrome with apparent enthusiasm, and since it has been criticised, or, I should prefer to say, attacked by certain pens, all available testimony seems to show that such members of the public as have had the courage to go in spite of adverse criticism, have enjoyed it."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE PRESS

"The Leicester Mercury. January 31st, 1924.

If there be a more important trusteeship than that vested in the modern journal, I have yet to hear of it. A Journal, as it seems to me, has the paramount duty of keeping its NEWS untinctured by proprietorial or editorial opinion. If the modern reader, who so often reads nothing else, cannot rely on the absolute truth of the news he reads, he has no foundation for the formation of that individual judgment which is the rock basis of a sound democracy. It follows that all newspaper proprietors and editors who allow personal prejudice to colour NEWS, either by way of perversion or suppression, are guilty of a breach of trust. The colour and opinions of a journal should be confined strictly to its editorial and contributional columns. This is such a platitude that, like most platitudes, it runs the risk of being richly neglected."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

APPEAL FOR PLAYING FIELDS

"SIR, The Duke of York’s appeal for a cool million to provide playing fields for all who haven’t got them is what schoolboys call ‘a great scheme.’"

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE

Galsworthy is again astounding, in setting down his thought in reply to a letter asking for his philosophy of life.

"Philosophically, all I can perceive about life is this: There are two Principles — the Principle of Unity and the Principle of Variety — at work in an universe that never had a beginning and will never have an end."

But he fails to quite comprehend what he's realised, or fails to comes to terms with the fact of having gone far beyond the faith imposed in growing years, and attempts to reconcile his realisation with the church teaching, by bringing in the holy ghost and co.!

"I think most modern unrest and despair come from the gradual discovery (speeded up of late) that there are no definite rewards or hopes to be had out of the future. All teaching and philosophy have dwelt on the future — and the future has gone phut. ... "

Whether he fails to realise it, or to admit it, is unclear; but tacitly being as much of an empire man as he was, and therefore racist, often not very subtle, he failed to admit that it wasn't about faith, but Perception, and the culture England was trying to smash to smithereens for sake of looting and enslaving it, had the treasure of knowledge that Europe had lost chances of finding, centuries ago when roman empire transformation into church took place.

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

ON PIT PONIES

"IF it be said in answer to this letter that it is no more desirable for human beings than for animals to have to spend their lives underground and that what men can put up with, animals well may — I reply: Men have at all events some choice in the matter, and they do spend half the week at least on the surface. Further, they will surely not contend that the fact of having, themselves, to suffer from the unnatural conditions of their lives, constitutes a reason for causing animals any unnecessary suffering. Such a contention would be against both reason and generosity. My plea from first to last is not against necessary, but against unnecessary suffering, which we all desire to see reduced to its irreducible minimum."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE

"The Times. February, 1914."

Galsworthy writes to Times urging British parliament to do something about

"Sweating of women workers. Insufficient feeding of children.

"Employment of boys on work that to all intents ruins their chances in after-life — as mean a thing as can well be done.

"Foul housing of those who have as much right as you and I to the first decencies of life.

"Consignment of paupers (that is of those without money or friends) to lunatic asylums on the certificate of one doctor, the certificate of two doctors being essential in the case of a person who has money or friends.

"Export of horses worn-out in work for Englishmen — save the mark! Export that for a few pieces of blood-money delivers up old and faithful servants to wretchedness.

"Mutilation of horses by docking, so that they suffer, offend the eye, and are defenceless against the attacks of flies that would drive men, so treated, crazy.

"Caging of wild things, especially wild song-birds, by those who themselves think liberty the breath of life, the jewel above price.

"Slaughter for food of millions of creatures every year by obsolete methods that none but the interested defend.

"Importation of the plumes of ruthlessly slain wild birds, mothers with young in the nest, to decorate our gentlewomen."

He goes further to say

"One and all they are removable, and many of them by small expenditure of Parliamentary time, public money, and expert care. Almost any one of them is productive of more suffering to innocent and helpless creatures, human or not, and probably of more secret harm to our spiritual life, more damage to human nature, than, for example, the admission or rejection of Tariff Reform, the Disestablishment or preservation of the Welsh Church, I would almost say than the granting or non-granting of Home Rule — questions that sop up ad infinitum the energies, the interest, the time of those we elect and pay to manage our business.

In mentioning "granting or non-granting of Home Rule" - presumably to India - and citing it as unimportant, however, he's exposing the racism that's consequence of empire mindset.

"And I say it is rotten that, for mere want of Parliamentary interest and time, we cannot have manifest and stinking sores such as these treated and banished once for all from the nation’s body.""

He's aware of the absurdity, but defends it.

"It is I, of course, who will be mocked at for lack of the sense of proportion and humour in daring to compare the Home Rule Bill with the caging of wild song birds. But if the tale of hours spent on the former since the last new thing was said on both sides be set against the tale of hours not yet spent on the latter, the mocker will yet be mocked."

And he fails to see that denying Home Rule with inadequate arguments was due to Brits being unwilling to stop looting India, while it's defenders coukdnt say anything more!

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

"In fine, I think civilisation not yet ripe for so sweeping a change. There is some semblance of dignity in taking life for life by a swift act. There is none in slowly squeezing the life of the murderer away.

"But with all my heart I do advocate the abolition of hanging and the guillotine. Let the murderer have the chance of putting a cup of laudanum to his own lips; and, if he will not, let him be sent from amongst us without an act of butchery degrading to our best instincts."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

POLITICAL ATTITUDE

"MY DEAR MADAM, Thank you for your charming letter. I am politically a free lance, and must remain so. That carries with it the penalty of not presuming to patronise or lecture those gathered together in any camp."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

REVEILLE

"July, 1918.

"DEAR MR. S., I am sending you for review a copy of Reveille the Government’s Quarterly, devoted to disabled sailors and soldiers (once called Recalled to Life and now renamed and reconstituted) of which I’m now editor. It’s published on August 8th. ... The Government publishes Reveille, and neither editors nor contributors are paid. It’s pure National Work, and I know you will feel that it’s very necessary."

But again, colonizing racism of his empire mindset comes forth in an unnecessary slight in the reference to India.

"And I did seem to notice in America that there was a good deal of space and not much time, and that without too great danger of becoming Yogis people might perhaps sit down a little longer in front of things than they seemed to do."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

HARMONY — RELIGION

"What juts out too far from the point of Harmony, of Balance, ceases to exist."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

REMUNERATION

"June 3rd.

"DEAR MR. B., I think the enclosed has been sent in error. I did not wish for any remuneration for my two articles on “The Labour Unrest.” I prefer never to take payment for writing letters or articles on matters of public interest. Will you therefore kindly cancel the cheque, which I return."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

RESEARCH

There's a grain of logic, much muddled thinking, and huge quantity of arrogance here, when he equates novelists with scientists.

"Dec. 3rd, 1929."

" ... I hope you will forgive me for claiming that the pursuit of knowledge is not confined to scientists; it is even practised by such as novelists who seek knowledge of the human mind. Some novelists believe (I fancy) that they may do anything, however below the belt, which will give them knowledge. I do not agree with them. Some journalists believe that they may violate every decency for the sake of knowledge. Again I do not agree with them. Coming to science itself: Chemists — under the plea “at all costs we must find out everything” are developing poison gas to such an extent that if — which God forbid, but man will probably not — there come another war, the human race, or that part of it involved, will cease to (dis)grace the earth. My point is that this “Pursuit of Knowledge” has been advanced by certain interested sections of mankind, till it has become for them an inviolable fetish instead of what it really is: a rule of conduct serviceable to life as a whole. ... "

Really, Galsworthy, to put quotation marks around “Pursuit of Knowledge” as if it were a trashy phrase elevated only for fashion! Where would he be if his novels had to by in form of stone tablets?

" ... You yourself are admitting that, when you say that “no experiments ought to be done at all that involve needless or severe suffering.” I feel that there is no more dangerous fetish now being worshipped than this “knowledge at all costs” doctrine. In every branch of life there must be rules suitable to human nature at its then state of development, to keep conduct within bounds. ... "

Would he feel that way, if someone he loved needed surgical procedure to save life, and he had to sign away all his objections to scientific experiments before the surgery could commence? Or worse, if he were required to sign refusing benefits of all scientific developments and experiments to his loved once, in perpetuity ?

" ... But for this I see no reason whatever why a novelist should not seduce a girl of fifteen or torture his mother-in-law that he may have increased knowledge of the human soul to give the world (except that fortunately he would be quodded for it). Some vivisectors would not hesitate to inflict the most horrible tortures in the name of their fetish, if the law did not forbid it; and even under such prohibition as there is one cannot but feel that a good deal of lingering suffering is inflicted; and I am quite certain that the number of experiments permitted is indefensibly great."

And he's writing all this, knowing he couldn't possibly comprehend Einstein's work!

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

" ... It is this superiority which dogs religious forms, this placing before the ordinary man forms which we ourselves do not at heart believe in, that revolts me. And further, I am sure that the ordinary man does not really want these forms, these symbols. It is a profound and very wide mistake to think he does. He wants the ginger-bread without the gilt. He wants his own most decent and fine instinct to be glorified, made glamorous, and he will only get this from watching and being infected by the ideals of chivalry and humanity practically exemplified in the lives around him. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

SOCIALISM

"January 24th, 1910.

"DEAR SIR, By what process of reasoning or right you call me a Socialist I do not know. As a matter of fact I am not one. ... "

"As to the House of Lords, I have no feeling against them for rejecting the Budget. I merely think that it is bad for the country that there should be a second Chamber which is composed, for the very great majority, of men, who are bound by their interests, upbringing, and convictions always to be on the side of the Conservative party. I do not blame them for following their convictions, I merely state what I regard as an unfair and harmful state of things. ... "

"I fear that our ideas on such subjects will never tally, and so with all good feeling, I will ask you to be so kind as not to continue this correspondence, which will only vex us both."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

SURVIVAL AFTER DEATH

" ... This power of mopping up all subconscious knowledge and having a sort of free access to the subconscious store of the world, and the power of reproducing it more or less coherently, may be — as it seems to me — the mediumistic gift; that, and that only."

How does Galsworthy plan to prove the part consisting of the last two words, without a faith that no other possibilities existed?

"Knowing you, I should say yours was one of the most striking instances I ever read, but I don’t think it disposes of that possible explanation."

Yes, that "I don’t think it disposes of that possible explanation." attitude is used mostly one way by most of a non-scientist bent, often enough even if they technically and professionally work in science - because it's far easier to flow with fashion of the time, even in thinking, than to be vigorous about scientific standards applied to one's thinking at all times.

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

CRITICISM OF “SAINT’S PROGRESS”

"I very seldom (practically never) use an incident out of real life, just as it was, in my books, because if one does, for some reason known I expect to critics, it always appears untrue. The incident you allude to, however, happened, exactly as described, to my wife. It was she, not Noel, who took the poor charwoman in to the swell chemists in Regent Street with half a dozen swell women there, and a sympathetic young chemist almost ashamed of his sympathy, because of the looks on the faces of his clients, and this in 1916. ... But that is just it with human nature and society in all generations — our own as much as others — first impressions and quick natural repugnances guide conduct because too often there isn’t time to recover from them. I think if you were to use your eyes and nose and feelers generally, as novelists have to do, you would discover that under superficial difference human nature changes hardly at all, wars or no wars, revolutions or no revolutions, age in age out; and that the great majority of the well-washed (angels always excepted) revolt from the unwashed."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

TWO MINUTES’ SILENCE

"I HAVE never seen so swift a “fall” as this year. One night of frost and the leaves turned gold; one tearing gale and half of them were scattered. Now they lie in drifts on the grass and the elms are bare. Armistice Day comes when it should; it commemorates a “fall” even swifter and more complete. The life of man is three score years and ten; in four short years fell the flower of a generation."

" ... Nine million others fell because they too served the faith within them. And they fell because the world went mad. It had indulged the thought of madness so long, that madness came as fruit comes from blossom; so madness will come again if the thought of it be indulged.

"Not in the same way will it come; not with the long drawn-out death of young men. It will come swiftly, indiscriminately, falling as a murrain from the sky on all alike; on men, on women, children and the sick; on every form of culture and everything that we with long labour have made beautiful. Under it will die religion and art, comfort and security."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

SEX IN FICTION

" ... It is, I am beginning to understand, desperately difficult for men to realise that in women a general capacity for love and sensual pleasure may go hand in hand with a violent repulsion to the touch of one particular man. There is a tendency apparently in all men to take such aversions on the part of women almost to heart — almost personally — it is the thick-skinned conceit of the male animal, I suppose, that accounts for this. ... "

"I am by no means deficient in appreciation of sense — tout au contraire as the Frenchman said when asked if he had lunched on the Channel boat. But appreciation of sense, and toleration of sense satisfied on one side at the expense of another are not quite the same thing; ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

"WHO is the most tragic figure in World-history?

"“The Unknown Soldier,” in his millions from all time. Because he has no say in his own fate."

How does anyone prove That? Who is to decide that just because someone is an average person in status, that person has no say in one's fate, and is forced by those stationed above, ordering the said fate?

For that matter, who did control their own fate between 1913 and 1920? Nicholas and Alexandra?

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

SOLITARY CONFINEMENT

Galsworthy on one of his top concerns, dealt with more than once in his essays and so forth.

"AN OPEN LETTER TO THE HOME SECRETARY

"The Nation. May 8th, 1909."

"Now, Sir, in regard to the object of solitary confinement we have surely no need to go behind the finding of your Committee:

"“It would appear that the main object of the separate” (closed cell) “confinement had come to be deterrence.... In effect this is the purpose which it must be regarded as now designed to serve.”

"In regard to its nature we have, as surely, no need of other description than its supporter’s, the late Sir Edmund Du Cane’s: “An artificial state of existence absolutely opposed to that which Nature points out as the condition of mental, moral, and physical health.”

"The questions arising, then, are two:

"(a) — Is this practice of solitary confinement, in fact, deterrent?

"(b) — Has a civilised nation the right to retain offenders for months in a state of existence absolutely opposed to mental, moral, and physical health, even for the purpose of deterrence?"

He goes into it at length, as usual.

" ... With regard to those who either in penal servitude or in hard labour sentences, have already undergone solitary confinement, it is to be noted that mere severity of punishment has never been proved to be a factor of deterrence. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THEISM AND HUMANISM

"It may interest you to hear, crudely set forth, what a very different type of mind from that of the theologian and philosopher, makes of what is at best an inscrutable mystery."

"In short, God is within us, within the trees, the birds, and inanimate matter — within everything. And there is no God outside us."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

" ... I point out that whereas you, from my writing, have formed some (probably erroneous) opinion that you wish to communicate with me in correspondence I have no means of deciding whether I wish to communicate with you. ... that there is no such thing as absolute truth; ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE PUBLICS TASTE IN LITERATURE

"I THINK that the state — whatever it may be — of the public’s literary appetite has no connection whatever with the production of imaginative literature of high quality. The imaginative writer who counts is a man with a heart, a soul, and a brain, and is never created by the demand for him. I do not, therefore, think that it matters what the public taste for the moment may be."

So much for his support of women's suffrage! He's wiped out of existence all writers not male, of his time and before, by restricting himself to "The imaginative writer who counts is a man ", "demand for him", and at the very least women writers are as invisible to his mind as those of Arab ruled world are to males in general. Jane Austen, Bronte sisters, George Eliot, George Sand, .... Agatha Christie! That's just in Europe, too!

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

HONEST THINKING AND TRUE REPORT

"Words are actions in an age when words reach, as they do now, millions of minds which have no means of testing them. False words, and reckless words, are treacheries. It takes all sorts to make a world, and the honest thought of every temperament is welcome, if spoken and written with sobriety, in no mean mood. But in manipulated news and argument, or in sentimental riot, lies the most deadly danger to mankind."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

LITTLE THEATRES

Galsworthy really thought well of himself, categorizing his self as a playwright with Shaw and Strindberg!

"November 14th, 1927.

"I HAVE always wished ‘Little Theatres’ well. And this is natural because, take them all round, they are good to what I may call the ‘illegitimate’ dramatist, such as Shaw, Strindberg, and myself — dramatists who have broken with tradition, and taken liberties with the Box Office. Besides, there is a kind of gallantry about ‘Little Theatres’ — they rush in where the angels fear to tread. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

SOCIAL UNREST

" ... You will not find, I think, in the whole of my writings one single sneer or carp at true sympathy, love, or tolerance. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE

" ... War is (for England) a hateful expedient to avoid an even more hateful end. A very commonplace view, you see."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 03, 2021 - August 03, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

VIVISECTION OF DOGS

Galsworthy responding to a letter about vivisection.

"I have no hostility to science — none. On the contrary. There comes however a balancing point where the spirit must be considered, and it is quite obvious, I think, that those investigators who are wedded to the vivisection of dogs have either not sufficient belief in the value of their discoveries or not sufficient love of mankind to undergo any personal sacrifice for the sake of their convictions. And if they have not, I deny their right to sacrifice our comrade the dog. Considering that one experiment on the living human body would be worth five hundred on the bodies of dogs, we may fairly assume no extravagant faith, or no extravagant love, on vivisectors’ part.

"Yes, my dog was — he is dead now — a prime factor in my life. In talking of ‘good faith’ I notice that you merely deny my contention, that when faith exists (as it exists in the dog) faith ought to be kept on the part of man, who has deliberately implanted that faith in his partner.

"Yes, I would consider that the lemur should be subjected to vivisection sooner than the dog — between lemur and man there is no faith, no love. There is no faith, no love between any other animal and man, save possibly the horse — to some extent; and the elephant, both of which are fortunately too expensive."

It all sounds natural, logical, except this - there is only verbal difference of expression here, between what Galsworthy says regarding canines, and anyone describing how India feels about cattle.

To label West's emotional attachments to their pets - canine, feline - or animals regularly used - horses, mules, etc. - as natural, faithful, and so on, while branding an agricultural ancient culture in tropical lands as superstitious or unimportant or worse, is merely racism steeped in ignorance.

................................................................................................

And the following applies equally to any injury caused to cattle for benefit to humans, including slaughter for food.

" ... And admitting my contention that the dog has earned for himself a consideration from man analogous in kind to that which man has for his own species it would follow that if we approve of cutting up and inoculating the dog, not for his individual benefit, but for our benefit and for that of his fellow dogs, we must also approve of cutting up and inoculating our children and ourselves, not for our individual benefit, but for the benefit of the race, especially having regard to the immeasurably more direct results which science would secure from vivisections and inoculations on the human body. ... "

As does this -

"My plea being simply that men cannot make friends of dogs and then treat them as if that relationship did not exist, I am not concerned to discuss the disputed question of whether or no benefit does arise from experiments on dogs; ... "

He's described the relationship with dogs in detail, but most of the West (and others not of India) quite ignore the relationship born of humanity's regular dependence on dairy food consumption after stopping breastfeeding of babyhood; this ignoring is not from ignorance, but deliberate pushing it aside, both from craziness of ingratitude to another species, and a vicious subconscious following Macaulay policy of breaking down the spirit of India, so as to benefit by her demise.

................................................................................................

Again, following applies to cattle, with substitution of slaughter for vivisection.

"After all, we have not only bodies but spirits, and when our minds have once become alive to ethical doubt on a question such as this — (there are 870,000 signatures to a Petition for the total exemption of dogs from vivisection) — when we are no longer sure that we have the right so to treat our dog comrades, there has fallen a shadow on the human conscience that will surely grow, until, by adjustment of our actions to our ethical sense, it has been remedied."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 04, 2021 - August 04, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

ON WRITING

Galsworthy responds to letters from various people, about his writing.

................................................................................................

" ... I do not even believe that a man can select from out of, as it were, his temperament, the particular forces driving him to write. He writes with his whole nature, made up of a thousand currents and cross-currents of feeling, philosophy, and aspiration. He writes to express, to body forth a kind of mirrored reflection of this very complex thing, himself. I do not know that I have ever even analysed myself in this respect, and I think it would be bad for me to begin now. There is something destructive in a cut-and-dried examination of the creative process; that bird is shy enough at all times, and might cease suddenly to lay any eggs if it were subjected to too much scrutiny.

"Then again you ask me: ‘Does the modern novelist exercise any appreciable influence on national evolution?’ I have no doubt that he exercises a vast influence, but I have a doubt whether that influence is appreciable. I mean that nothing perhaps is more intricate and subtle, and less capturable for the purpose of weighing in the scales, than the shafts of thought and feeling which go out into the minds of the readers of fiction. It is as if a man, passing down a street, were to try and gather in his hands all the reflections and feelings he has gained from what he has seen, felt, heard, and smelt, during that passage. The reader of fiction passes down the streets of imaginary life — who knows what he gathers, and what he lets go by? The novel is the most pliant and far-reaching medium of communication between minds (that is, it can be), just because it does not preach, but supplies pictures and evidence from which each reader may take that food which best suits his growth. It is the great fertilizer, the quiet fertilizer of people’s imagination. You cannot appreciate and weigh the influence it has, except in the case of novels frankly propagandist, which, paradoxical as it may seem, have (in my opinion) the least real influence. To alter a line of action is nothing like so important as to alter or enlarge a point of view over life, a mood of living. Such enlargement is only attained by those temperamental expressions which we know as works of art, and not as treatises in fiction-form. The purpose of all art is revelation and delight, and that particular form of art, the novel, supplies revelation in, I think, the most secret, thorough, and subtle form — revelation browsed upon, brooded over, soaked up into the fibre of the mind and conscience. ... "

................................................................................................

" .. I think my first advice to you would be: Don’t be in a hurry to get into print. Unless a man has lived and felt and experienced and generally found out what life means, he has nothing to say that’s worth hearing. Writers generally begin too young, and very few who begin very young come to anything.

"It’s not a question of learning to write, it’s a question of having a real philosophy and something to say worth saying."

" ... Learn French well and read Prosper Merimée and Maupassant (say three years hence); their economy of words and clearness is wonderful. Read Anatole France also three years hence. Read the Russian Turgenev (Constance Garnett’s translation, Wm. Heinemann), not for his style, because it suffers in translation, but for the way he sees human life, and constructs his stories. Read Walter Pater and Stevenson, but beware of their tendency to preciosity. Read Dickens, and Samuel Butler. Practise writing verse; it helps towards a good prose style. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... The essence of a scientific discovery, as of a psychological discovery, is the expression of it; the mustering and shaping of the evidence to the conviction of the reader. Express, there - fore, and be great! If the world won’t be convinced to-day it doesn’t follow that it won’t be convinced in plenty of time for you to be buried in Westminster Abbey. There are no short cuts to greatness anyway; and I don’t see how any man can express another man’s idea. Even a scientific thought must be apparelled by the thinker.

"As to the idea itself — it may be all you say — I am no scientist; but neither I nor anyone else can even begin to express an opinion of any value until you have supplied us with the concrete body of it."
................................................................................................

" ... My method is purely negative — because I personally so hate to have a thing rammed down my throat. I so hate to put any compulsion, and so fundamentally believe in people doing things of their own accord — and therefore I am rarely, if ever, credited with the desire to diffuse peace and good will, and mutual tolerance and understanding, by which alone is there any salvation for society; all the same, if you read me in the light of this, you will see that I am always showing up the evil of the reverse — the only way open to one of my temperament. I cannot preach the direct lesson — moreover I think no artist should."

................................................................................................

"DEAR MRS. D., I began reading your friend’s manuscript last night: and I have corrected the first chapter, as an object lesson in style. From this the authoress will get various hints, if she cares to compare as she goes along. By the time I had finished that chapter I discovered the identity of the chief character, and I don’t feel that I can go on reading the MS. after what you have told me, having a slight acquaintanceship with the original. So I’m returning it, unread except for the prologue and first chapter. Your friend has this to consider: Does she wish to become an artist, or does she merely wish to ventilate her case? I am only interested if the first is her wish. If that be the case, she should, by altering locality, nickname, appearance, etc., disguise the individual. She should also look on him not as an individual but as a type. ... I can hardly judge from what I have read whether she has real talent but I think it possible."

................................................................................................

" ... I make a maximum use of what few things I do observe, or rather of what few things get through my eyes into my feelings; and I try to reject all observation that does not bear on character and theme. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... To get rid of the commonplace without employing the extravagant or violent is to achieve ‘quality’ — the commonplace and the extravagant are both easy — that and that alone is why they always lack quality, which simply means the eschewing of the path of least resistance. ... "

................................................................................................

"I read the story you sent. I should call it felicitous and false. For the purpose of what you want to know it is probably lucky that it is that way rather than the opposite. You have (for your age) a considerable glibness, cleanness in the use of words — good! Only this is in itself for you a great danger, because you will never do what you want to do, until you write with your feelings, testing every word for truth to yourself and to life. And the rush of words which is evidently natural to you tends to make you spin out, what you have not felt and tested for truth. I recommend you to read the Russians, especially Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Tchekov ... and de Maupassant’s novel Pierre et Jean, in the French with its preface. ... The chief failing of the American mind, I think, is a love for short cuts. There are no short cuts to Art. It is all sheer hard work of the brain, but above all of the spirit. You cannot make what is worth reading out of what was not worth feeling or seeing. Don’t be in a hurry to write — write because you must. ... "

"Again, don’t despair, but go at it quietly, resolutely, and burn what you’re not satisfied with — and don’t let your facility, and all that it means, ruin your sincerity. And the best of good fortune to you."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 04, 2021 - August 04, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE

"The militants have placed the whole movement in a position of stalemate, and there I’m afraid it will remain.

"They affect to despise Churchill’s speech; but Churchill’s speech to anyone sufficiently impartial to see coolly, exactly sums up the psychology of the situation. You are not going to convert this nation of rude sober-headed men of property — for they all, potentially, own women — into Don Quixotes or even into fair-minded men, by throwing bits of iron at their leaders. It will be worse when the Conservatives come in. ... Force is only of use when it is real force, when it gives the impression that behind it there is a latent incalculable driving power that will, if it be not assuaged, suddenly come into being and carry everything away. The latent incalculable driving force in this Woman’s question, is the great haunting idea of Justice unfulfilled — slow and sure. ... They were driven to militancy because the Press would not report them. The Press is to be captured by the movement apart from militancy, now."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 04, 2021 - August 04, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

WELFARE CENTRES

"The mere male novelist who takes pen to write on infants awaits the polished comment: “He knows nothing of the subject — rubbish, pure rubbish!” One must run that risk."

" ... I have wondered sometimes if it is worth while to save the babies, seeing the conditions they often have to face as grown men and women. But that, after all, would be to throw up the sponge, which is not the part of a Briton. ... "

" ... Each year in this country about 100,000 babies die before they have come into the world; and out of the 800,000 born, about 90,000 die. Many mothers become permanently damaged in health by evil birth conditions. Many children grow up mentally or physically defective. One in four of the children in our elementary schools are not in a condition to benefit properly by their schooling. ... "

" ... I would remind readers that there is no great country where effort is half so much needed as here; we are nearly twice as town and slum ridden as any other people; have grown to be further from Nature and more feckless about food; we have damper air to breathe, and less sun to disinfect us. ... "

................................................................................................

"You who wear jewels, with few exceptions, are or will be mothers — you ought to know. To help your own children you would strip yourselves. But the test is the giving for children not one’s own. Beneath all flaws, fatuities, and failings, this, I solemnly believe, is the country of the great-hearted. I believe that the women of our race, before all women, have a sense of others. They will not fail the test.

"Into the twilight of the world are launched each year these myriads of tiny ships. Under a sky of cloud and stars they grope out to the great waters and the great winds — little sloops of life, on whose voyaging the future hangs. They go forth blind, feeling their way. Mothers, and you who will be mothers, and you who have missed motherhood, give them their chance, bless them with a gem — light their lanterns with your jewels!"

................................................................................................

................................................

August 04, 2021 - August 04, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

STATE OF THE WORLD

It's undated, and completely unclear when this was written.

"NEWSPAPERS and films coat the world with a very delusive surface. Judge from this surface and you’d think the world was deteriorating.

"Underneath this surface I believe the world is improving. There is quicker apprehension, wider comprehension, more sense of other people, and a more humane attitude to life than there has ever yet been. But then I am well known to be a pessimist."

Before WWI, perhaps there were reasons to believe this; it might have been so for a few years shortly after, too.

But after 1929? With fascism rising in central Europe, and Italy?

................................................................................................

................................................

August 04, 2021 - August 04, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

LIVERPOOL ZOO PROJECT

"Liverpool Post and Mercury. July 1929.

"PROPOSALS to establish a zoo in Liverpool, which have from time to time been the subject of much controversy, are criticised by Mr. John Galsworthy, the novelist and playwright, in a letter to the Daily Post.

"There have been two recent moves for a zoo. In 1926 a committee was formed at a Town Hall meeting, but their plans fell through when the Council refused to grant a site on the Otterspool estate.

"Last year Mr. H. E. Rogers, the Liverpool naturalist and animal importer announced his intention of establishing a zoo at Mossley Hill to house 500 species of animals."

................................................................................................

" ... And following on the actual capture and the miseries of getting the animal or bird to the zoo, is the lifelong confinement of creatures to whom liberty means as much as it does to men. Indeed, I would say more, because man has mind, and adaptability which mind gives."

................................................................................................

................................................

August 04, 2021 - August 04, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

MR. GALSWORTHY AND ZOOS

"“It is true that the beast if left in freedom, will have the rough and tumble of life to encounter, and may die of it; so may and do any of us who are left to the free competition of life’s turmoil; but is there any one of us — even Mr. Rogers — who can lay his hand on his heart and say that he would rather be nicely looked after in prison? If Mr. Rogers answers: ‘You are not an animal and cannot know whether captivity that galls a man galls an animal,’ I reply, ‘Neither, sir, are you an animal and cannot know that it does not.’ But anyone who owns a dog or cat knows that a shut door is its pet abomination. Shut up your dog or cat for even a few days, if you have the heart to do so, in a small space, and then watch it when it is let loose. You will have no further doubt as to whether an animal sets store by freedom. And dogs and cats have lost half the roaming instinct of wild creatures.

"“That zoos mean a half-dead state to many beasts and birds is, I repeat, just the common sense of the matter. Of course, there are zoos and zoos, and the zoo that Mr. Rogers is interested in may be a very advanced specimen, but the principle of the zoo is only the principle of the travelling animal menagerie (or wild beast show), and of the caged wild bird, stabilised, canonised, and, of course, vastly improved on. ... "

" ... Further, I remain convinced from my own feelings in my unthinking youth and from the popularity of zoos with children — who are not remarkable for clamouring to be educated — that the real force behind the existence of zoos and menageries is the spectacular amusement that they afford and not their educational value.

"“Mr. Rogers says that zoos are in existence everywhere and therefore holy; so was slavery once in existence everywhere and regarded as a divine institution. And that brings me to this: I understand (though I detest) the attitude of mind: ‘These are only beasts and birds, and we men are entitled to imprison and exploit them for our instruction or amusement without considering whether they like it or not,’ but honestly I cannot understand the attitude: ‘I love the living creatures of the world, and because of my interest in them I may treat them as I should hate to be treated myself.’ It comes to this. People do not, or will not, realise that liberty is as vital to the happiness of most beasts and birds as it is to ourselves."

" ... He is mistaken in thinking I should object to the destruction for protective purposes of destructive animals. I have no such objection. My objection is to their imprisonment not for our protection, but for our instruction or amusement. If we are to condemn animals or birds to suffering because Nature has made them get their living by preying on other creatures, what should we not do with ourselves, who get our living in precisely the same way? ... "

................................................................................................

................................................

August 04, 2021 - August 04, 2021

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

July 31, 2021 - August 04, 2021.

GLIMPSES AND REFLECTIONS,

by John Galsworthy.

Hardcover

Published January 1st 1937

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00284TZPC

................................................

................................................................................................

Reviews - Books I Read - DRJG

Tuesday, August 3, 2021

GLIMPSES AND REFLECTIONS, by John Galsworthy.

Light Explodes Across Heavens

Blog Archive

Serene, Reflecting

Contributors

Followers

My Shelfari Bookshelf