Recently I was told
the following story, and I have every reason to believe that it is true.
Among the German prisoners captured in France there are a certain
number of Russians. Some time back two were captured who did not speak Russian or any
other language that was known either to their captors or their fellow prisoners. They
could, in fact, only converse with one another. A professor of Slavonic languages, brought
down from Oxford, could make nothing of what they were saying. Then it happened that a
sergeant who had served on the frontiers of India overheard them talking and recognized
their language, which he was able to speak a little. It was Tibetan! After some
questioning, he managed to get their story out of them.
Some years earlier they had strayed over the frontier into the
Soviet Union and had been conscripted into a labour battalion, afterwards being sent to
western Russia when the war with Germany broke out. They were taken prisoner by the
Germans and sent to North Africa; later they were sent to France, then exchanged into a
fighting unit when the Second Front opened, and taken prisoner by the British. All this
time they had been able to speak to nobody but one another, and had no notion of what was
happening or who was fighting whom.
It would round the story off neatly if they were now conscripted
into the British army and sent to fight the Japanese, ending up somewhere in Central Asia,
quite close to their native village, but still very much puzzled as to what it is all
about.
An Indian journalist sends me a cutting of an interview he had with Bernard Shaw. Shaw says one or
two sensible things and does state that the Congress leaders ought not
to have been arrested, but on the whole it is a disgusting exhibition. Here are some
samples:
Q: Supposing you were a National Leader of India, how would
you have dealt with the British? What would have been your methods to achieve Indian
independence?
A: Please do not suppose a situation that can never
happen. The achievement of Indian independence is not my business.
Q: What do you think is the most effective way of getting the
British out of India? What should the Indian people do?
A: Make them superfluous by doing their work better. Or
assimilate them by cross-fertilization. British babies do not thrive in India.
What kind of answers are those to give to people who are
labouring under a huge and justified grievance? Shaw also refuses to send birthday
greetings to Gandhi, on
the ground that this is a practice he never follows, and advises the Indian people not to
bother if Britain repudiates the huge credit balance which India has piled up in this
country during the war. I wonder what impression this interview would give to some young
Indian student who has been a couple of years in jail and has dimly heard of Bernard Shaw
as one of Britains leading progressive thinkers? Is it surprising if
even very level-headed Indians are liable to a recurrent suspicion that all
Englishmen are the same?
Sir Osbert Sitwells
little book and my remarks on it, brought in an unusually large amount of correspondence,
and some of the points that were raised seem to need further comment.
One correspondent solved the whole problem by asserting that
society can get along perfectly well without artists. It can also get along without
scientists, engineers, doctors, bricklayers or road-menders for the time being. It
can even get along without sowing next years harvest, provided it is understood that
everyone is going to starve to death in about twelve months time.
This notion, which is fairly widespread and has been encouraged
by people who should know better, simply restates the problem in a new form. What the
artist does is not immediately and obviously necessary in the same way as what the milkman
or the coal miner does. Except in the ideal society which has not yet arrived, or in very
chaotic and prosperous ages like the one that is just ending, this means in practice that
the artist must have some kind of patron a ruling class, the Church, the State, or
a political party. And the question Which is best? normally means Which
interferes least?
Several correspondents pointed out that one solution is for the
artist to have an alternative means of livelihood. It is quite feasible, says
Mr P. Philips Price, to write and devote oneself to Socialism whilst accepting
the patronage of the B.B.C., M.O.I., Rank or C.E.M.A. . . . the only way out is
some minor form of prostitution, part time. The difficulty here is that the practice
of writing or any other art takes up a lot of time and energy. Moreover, the kind of job
that a writer gets in war-time, if he is not in the Forces (or even if he is for
there is always P.R.), usually has something to do with propaganda. But this is
itself a kind of writing. To compose a propaganda pamphlet or a radio feature needs just
as much work as to write something you believe in, with the difference that the finished
product is worthless. I could give a whole list of writers of promise or performance who
are now being squeezed dry like oranges in some official job or other. It is true that in
most cases it is voluntary. They want the war to be won, and they know that everyone must
sacrifice something. But still the result is the same. They will come out of the war with
nothing to show for their labours and with not even the stored-up experience that the
soldier gets in return for his physical suffering.
If a writer is to have an alternative profession, it is much
better that it should have nothing to do with writing. A particularly successful holder of
two jobs was Trollope,
who produced two thousand words between seven and nine oclock every morning before
leaving for his work at the Post Office. But Trollope was an exceptional man, and as he
also hunted three days a week and was usually playing whist till midnight, I suspect that
he did not overwork himself in his official duties.
Other correspondents pointed out that in a genuinely Socialist
society the distinction between the artist and the ordinary man would vanish. Very likely,
but then no such society yet exists. Others rightly claimed that State patronage is a
better guarantee against starvation than private patronage, but seemed to me too ready to
disregard the censorship that this implies. The usual line was that it is better for the
artist to be a responsible member of a community than an anarchic individualist. The
issue, however, is not between irresponsible self- expression and discipline;
it is between truth and lies.
Artists dont so much object to aesthetic discipline.
Architects will design theatres or churches equally readily, writers will switch from the
three-volume novel to the one-volume, or from the play to the film, according to the
demand. But the point is that this is a political age. A writer inevitably writes
and less directly this applies to all the arts about contemporary events, and his
impulse is to tell what he believes to be the truth. But no government, no big
organization, will pay for the truth. To take a crude example: can you imagine the British
Government commissioning E. M.
Forster to write A Passage to India? He could only write it because he was
not dependent on State aid. Multiply that instance by a million, and you see the
danger that is involved not, indeed, in a centralized economy as such, but in our
going forward into a collectivist age without remembering that the price of liberty is
eternal vigilance.