CULTURE IN SWEDEN
SIR,—I am told that a report in Svenska Dagbladet of my article in last week's issue .of The Spectator has given offence to many people, and has provoked a number of reproaches in the correspondence columns of that admirable newspaper. I have not seen the report myself, so I am not quite sure of the exact nature of my offence, but I gather it has something to do with my final paragraph. If in this I managed to convey the impres- sion that Sweden has nothing at all to offer in the arts, I am sorry. My friends in Stockholm know I am anxious to arrange a London showing for some of the younger Swedish painters if it is at all possible. The two points which I attempted to make are certainly not applicable to Sweden alone. The first, that she has been most successful (I confess I am thinking of painting especially) when she has found her starting point beyond her own boundaries and has been sustained by a European, rather than a national, tradition, could equally be applied to Great Britain for the greater part of the last century and until very recently. The second point, which I posed as a query, was that a rising standard of living during the next century will surely tend to direct attention more and more to the applied and industrial arts, and may well remove many of the psychological stresses that have helped to produce great art in the past. But that too is a problem that faces, not Sweden alone, but the whole of Western civilisation. If my unknown correspondents in Stock- holm feel that I am doing them an injustice, may I urge them at their end to press for the removal of the trade barriers which still prohibit any free exchange of painting between our countries ?—Yours, &c., 39 Thurloe Square, South Kensington, S.W.7. M. H. MIDDLETON.
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