ABSENT INTELLECTUALS SIR,—In your issue of April 19th Mr. Nicolson
makes some very acute comments on the departure of Auden, Isherwood, Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley to the U.S.A. In the course of these remarks he says : "Mr. Stephen Spender remains ; yet I fear that the siren calls which reach him from America may induce even that great bird to wing silently away."
May I reassure Mr. Nicolson? This great bird has every intention of remaining where he is put, and of helping, to the best of his ability, and until he is called up, Mr. Cyril Connolly with the editing of Horizon.
A good many remarks have been made about the voluntary exile of Auden and Isherwood. I think that most of this criticism misses the point, because the arguments which apply to political actions do not apply to artists. Considered as a political gesture, Gauguin's renunciation of Western civilisation and departure for the South Seas was impractical and irre- sponsible. Everyone would find it absurd if Monsieur Blum, for example, did it. However, in the history of painting it had enough significance to be justified. Similarly, if Auden and Isherwood say that they have left Europe because "our civili- sation is done for" so that "our culture must emigrate," they are being silly, because culture is not something that you can pack up in a bag and take away when a continent is at war. What does matter, however, is their writing. And if they succeed in writing better in America than they have done here they will be justified, in spite of the very sensible objections raised by Mr. Nicolson.
Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard are in a different boat, as they are to some extent political thinkers, claiming to have practical social programmes for saving the world. Mr. Huxley wrote an ambitious book claiming that bad means always pro- duce equally bad ends, so that if violence is countered with violence, even in a defensive war, you will create in yourself the very evil which you are fighting against when it comes from the outside. He said that this was a matter of observa- tion and not just a theory. It surprised me that during the Spanish War, when the opportunity was offered, no pacifist observers were sent on both sides to check up on the theory of how ends were affecting means. No one would expect Mr. Huxley and Mr. Heard to stand between the Siegfried and Maginot lines, as he seemed to suggest was practical in part of his book, but a good many of their followers must be dis- appointed that they are not here observing conditions and sympathising passively with other pacifists.
Meanwhile Mr. Gerald Heard is learning about Yoga in Hollywood, and he has written a book outlining the steps by which a new form of society can be made to save civilisation from the dangers which surround it. This is a poetic book, based on false analogies between psychology and physiology, but nevertheless., the arguments are moving and interesting. As Mr. Nicolson observes, Mr. Heard is a man of saintly character, and when his disciples unwrap his bulky books, the manuscripts of which have been safely convoyed across the Atlantic, they must feel such admiration tinged with misgiving as the earliest Christians might have felt, supposing Christ had retired to a pleasant suburb of Rome, dictated the Gospels to a chosen disciple, and then mailed them back to Jerusalem. However, this method might have had some advantages. There would have been no need to argue about the accuracy of the texts, Christianity would have had an amiable air of detach- ment and remoteness, so that probably there would have been
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