LETTERS
Goodbye to Summer Douglas Matthews, N. C. Fretwell, Agnes H. Hicks The Breath of Life John Dobbing Epilogue Ian McIntyre Advertising and People Miss Nora S. Howe, D. A. Paterson Saggestio Falsi The Bishop of Grimsby Firearms Michael 1/y vyan Napoleon Brandy R. L Tallow, W. B. Schofield Wilde MS Dr. Critchley Probate. Divorce and Admiralty R. A. Cline GOODBYE TO SUMMER Sit,—Surely no one believes material prosperity is to be equated with happiness, and to think it causes unhappiness seems naive. I read Mr. Desmond Fennell's article on Sweden with interest. Many of his observations are sharp and just (he evokes the dreary melancholy of the al- och matkaleer with terrible exactness), but how disappointing to find yet one more attempt by an English visitor at a comprehensive judgment on the spiritual and human values of the whole nation. The chorus of con- demnation has become a phenomenon in itself, and usually seems to be pitched in the wrong key. 1 often wonder where the puritanism really lies? Perhaps in our disapproval of the Swedes seeking their pleasures, not humourlessly, but with frank deliberation.
I do not doubt Mr. Fennell found dissatisfactions. What seems less than fair is the selective emphasis he gives to support his views. How significant is it that, in this country, we can buy liquor only in premises granted a licence by a local magistrate; that professional football is forbidden on Sundays; that we choose to queue for the cinema; hang some of our criminals; and cloud sex with dirty jokes? There Is much of this kind of loaded comment in Mr. Fennell's article, enough to produce a most uncharit- able picture.
The Swedes are not, admittedly, notable for spontaneous exuberance. Neither are the Scots, but I should hesitate in either case to attribute tempera- mental characteristics to the conditions of public welfare. The growing image of the Swedes as gloomy isolationists nursing their death-wish between bouts of drunken promiscuity is unrecognisable to me. A courteous people,,they are their own severest critics, and I owe it to my many cheerful and good- natured Swedish friends to challenge this summary.
Sweden is not only the most prosperous country in the world: she must also be the most self-con- scious. Nowhere, I believe, do social and individual weaknesses receive so much scrutiny from within; and it is understandable that foreigners gain an impression of serious failings in the whole system from the publicity given to particular problems. Drunkenness, delinquency, illegitimacy, suicide: can these be taken as evidence of a breakdown in social ideals, and does their incidence in Sweden compare badly with this country? Certainly not, but there the searchlight seems particularly bright and busy, and there is a touching faith in the power to find answers, in which we are too often disinclined to believe. (We shall copy them, perhaps, twenty-five years after they are proved effective.) No country in the world seems to suffer more from the preconceptions' of its visitors than Sweden. We cannot go impartially: we all know what we are going to find when we get there. I am sorry that the effect of a year's stay so little changed Mr. Fennell's earlier, casual impressions, but only consolidated them. He makes one revealing confession: that the most beautiful modern work of art he saw in Sweden was the Forest Cemetery at Stockholm. Well, de gustibus non disputandum, but do I detect in this the seed of tendentiousness? (And, incidentally, did he not respond at all to the assertive vitality of M illcsgarden ?) One further question nags at me, and it concerns the generation of a popular belief. In the introduc- tory panel to the article, I read that 'Casual visitors to Sweden usually carry away an . . . impression: of a people who . . . seek sad solace in sexual promiscuity.' Let us suppose such promiscuity, does not its practice remain strictly private? So whence this impression? As Pal Joey told us, it takes two to tango.
9 Fair/ax Court, NW6
DOUGLAS MAITHEWS
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