L E T T E R S A N D T H E A R T S

ENTRETI EN IN PARI S
By E. M. FORSTER
From the Spectator, London
I N JUNE about thirty men of letters,
some of them eminent, met in Paris for a
four days' entretien or conversation. They
were convened under the League of Na-
tions, which has always acknowledged the
existence of culture and has created a
Committee for Intellectual Cooperation.
This committee has had little publicity,
and doubtless does not seek it, and the
vast majority of writers in Europe are un-
aware of its existence. It is dignified and
official, though not retrograde. On the
present occasion the chairman was the dis-
tinguished French academician and poet,
M. Paul Valery, Professor Gilbert Murray
presiding when M. Valery was absent.
The subject under discussion was the
Immediate Future of Lettersa suffi-
ciently agitating subject, but if anyone
had peeped in from the balcony or from
behind the superb eighteenth-century
tapestries, he would have witnessed an
exemplary calm. The matter concerned all
the delegates personally, but not a pince-
nez fell, not one little gilt chair was over-
turned, and if the presidential bell did
sound, it was to check a too flattering
reference to itself.
The subject was divided into three sec-
tions: the future of the writer, the future of
the reader, and the development of new
means of expression. The first section oc-
cupied the delegates most. How is the
creative artist to make a living, now that
the age of the rich patron has passed
away ? And (still more urgent) how is he to
maintain his moral integrity in face of the
increasing claims of the State? The writer
differs from other citizens in that he has a
double duty: he must, besides promoting
the general welfare, express his own per-
sonality, and this often leads him into
opposition with the powers that be. It is
not a plain straightforward opposition be-
tween art, a good thing, and government,
an evil thing. It is rather an opposition
between two cosmogonies, the sponta-
neous and the administrative, each with its
rival conception of civilization; and at the
present moment the administrative is
winning. There have of course been strong
administrations in the past, but they have
sometimes gone to sleep. The modern
State never sleeps; thanks to an improved
technique, it watches eternally, and exer-
cises constant supervision over all its
children.
The writer has to reckon with this, and
it will determine his moral and perhaps
his material position in the immediate
future. Shall he give in to the State, and
confine his art to being laudatory and
decorative ? Or shall he stand out for self-
expression, and for civilization as he under-
stands civilization? The latter course has
the great tradition of European literature
behind it, but if he ventures on it, he will
encounter obstacles which his prede-
cessors did not know, and which will prob-
ably increase. The heritage of Dante,
Milton and Goethe is not at the present
moment an easy one.
The delegates realized this. Most of
them were afraid of the State; there was
some very plain speaking on the curse of
totalitarianism, and Mr. Charles Morgan,
though unable to be present at the meet-
ings, sent a trenchant resume of the
danger of State subsidy. But the com-
mittee was in an anomalous position: the
League of Nations, not Internationalism,
was its host, and some of its members were
actually State delegates. So they could not
denounce the State effectively any more
than a servant who does not want to be
sacked can denounce his employer. There
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