I note that America--a country with no
comparable separate tradition of literature--has customarily
chosen men distinguished by the grace of letters for ambassadors
to the Court of St James--Motley, Lowell, Hay, Page, in our time:
and has for her President a man of letters--and a Professor at
that!--whereas, even in these critical days, Great Britain,
having a most noble cause and at least half-a-hundred writers and
speakers capable of presenting it with dignity and so clearly
that no neutral nation could mistake its logic, has by preference
entrusted it to stunt journalists and film-artistes. If in these
later days you have lacked a voice to interpret you in the great
accent of a Chatham, the cause lies in past indifference to that
literary tradition which is by no means the least among the
glories of our birth and state.
VIII
Masterpieces, then, will serve us as prophylactics of taste, even
from childhood; and will help us, further, to interpret the
common mind of civilisation.
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