18 NOVEMBER 1932, Page 6

If the Nobel Prize for Literature had had to be

awarded by a British instead- of a Swedish jury I imagine Mr. Galsworthy would have got it all the -same. I can think Of no living 'English writer who 'could rightly have been preferred. ' But the vogue of the Forsyte Saga, and the later novels, is -greater on the Continent than it is here. For the cultured German or Pole or Frenchman contem- porary England is 'England seen in terrxis of Soames Forsyte and June and Bosinney and the rest of that already classic circle. I once tried to explain to a Berlin luncheon 'party that after all old Jolyon and 'his brothers stood only for one limited section of English pre-War society, and Michael and Fleur for as limited a section of post-War, but I know I carried no conviction. Galsworthy's England was the only England that mattered. " * *