22 OCTOBER 1932, Page 6

The Swedish protests against The Green Pastures are incomprehensible. In

the United States the play is in its third year, and quite likely, I should judge, to maintain its popularity for ten years more in the -land which contains the fiercest anti-Negro feeling ever known. I saw The Green Pastures in New York. As - to its merits, I will only say that its success would have been much- less if Mr. Harrison, the Negro school. master who plays the central character with the finest simplicity and dignity, were not in the cast. The point, however, is that the play is the most attractive picture of Negro scriptural folklore ; and our own Censor might have purchased some years' immunity from attack by licensing it without demur. It may be, of course, that the Swedish Nazis (for it is only a small clique that has made the trouble) is worried, like Lord Cromer, not by the racial, but by the religious aspect of the play. But I doubt whether the play would really be appreciated in Europe, where the Negro background, of which you are always conscious in America, is lacking. * *