GREAT DOG OF WEIMAR
Sut,—In his efforts to flog the absurdities of spiritualism, Mr. Graham Greene himself falls into absurdities of more dangerous application. Arnold, contrasting the "tone of the city, of the centre," with the provincial tone, remarked that the former, "not excluding the use of banter, never disjoins banter itself from politeness, from felicity." Certainly it can only be an offence to those who know the range and quality of Goethe's genius to hear him implicitly compared with the - dog of some stupid woman: felicitous it assuredly is not, or funny. But what is of more general importance than Mr. Greene's conception of criticism is the ill-informed attitude towards the German language and its literature which he exemplifies. He asserts that German abounds in "guttural words" and dismisses the whole German language with a contemptuous remark. I am not sure exactly what a guttural word is, but the guttural sound which occurs in German (in common with that pleasant dialect Scots English), the ch preceded by a back vowel, is not displeasing to the ear when correctly pro- nounced. What is widely and mistakenly thought " guttural " is the German practice of dividing syllables by •a distinct stop or hiatus. Thus, instead of slurring words vaguely into one another, and saying " anapple," the well-spoken German says quite clearly and dis- tinctly "em Apfel," completing the n before commencing the a. To the southern Englishman, who prefers not to use his mouth for articulation, this may be an offence, but it is quite acceptable to those who care for clear pronunciation. Neither need the constructions of German syntax be heavy, although nineteenth-century German prose, like its Victorian English counterpart, tended to prolixity.
This is not a mere philological pedantry. The English mind still conceives the typical German as ponderous, stupid, senti- mental, short-sighted and fat. It we had understood that the modern German, for good or evil, is a different type, we might not have so disastrously underrated the offensive initiative of the German army. We shall not win this war if we sit hack and smile with amused superiority at the legendary figure of a slow-witted, beer- swilling enemy, when in fact we are up against something which has consistently outwitted us and held the initiative, with the slenderest resources by sheer quick-wittedness, for nearly ten years (since, indeed, long before we awoke to the fact that we were at war with • it). Nor, what is equally important, shall we ever reconstruct the world on tolerable lines after this war if we mock at the great con- tribution of the German mind to civilisation, and rebuff those many Germans who think as we do and desire to co-operate against the evil that seeks to destroy all civilisation.
To descend to another plane, I do not know at what removes Mr. Greene has his knowledge of Dachshunde, but it is no better than one can expect from a man who calls Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe "the conversations with Eckermann " (why not talk of "Johnson's Boswell "?). I can assure him, from an acquaintance dating back to the day some fifteen years ago when one of them bit me during a walking-tom in the Rhine valley, that they are grace- ful, sprightly, self-willed, suspicious of strangers, disobedient, but never sentimental. If Mr. Greene has allowed theosophy to pre- judice him against these animals, he will find an antidote for that (as for most other ills) in Goethe:
Dem Hunde, wenn er gut gezogen, Wird selbst em weiser Mann gewogen, which I may very roughly translate: A dog, when adequately trained, Need be by no wise man disdained.
—Yours very truly, G. H. GaErroN.
34 Cedar Drive, Hatch End, Middlesex.
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