MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
I OW pleasant it would be if, as a reward for almost half a century of service to the Muses, I were to be offered by Calliope a jubilee present in the shape of some new minor faculty. I am aware that my services have not been such as to merit any high distinction or any very expensive gift ; but the nine Muses might well confer together and decide to present me with something cheap but distinctive in the form of a small but new accomplishment. If and when this offer is made, I shall find it difficult to choose. In former days I should have had no hesitation in asking to be accorded the gift of playing golf, or even tennis, better than any man in Europe or the United States. My younger years were seriously darkened by my inability to throw, strike, kick or catch balls ; it would have been amusing, and so disconcerting to my more contemptuous friends, if I had suddenly appeared, followed by a train of autograph-hunters, at Wimbledon or North Berwick. I might have been tempted also, in my younger days, to ask Urania to accord me at least an average capacity for doing sums: or I might have suggested to Terpsichore that she should instruct me, when I entered a ball- room, how to avoid those gestures, at once hesitant and beseech- ing. which, although charming when performed by Brumas, appear ungainly in a young diplomatist. The passage of time has obliterated these false claims. I have no desire today to excel in sports and pastimes. I can now get other people to do my sums for me, and I should hate to dance. But I should like, above all things, to sing.
* * * * I do.not aspire, of course, to become an opera singer, or even to take part in concerts or Bach choirs. I do not want to sing in public N'ery much ; but I do very much want to sing in private. It is a matter of humiliation for me that, although many tunes are constantly running in my head, I am unable, even in the strictest privacy, to reproduce these tunes vocally in any recog- nisable form. My inability derives from the dual fact that I am tone deaf and unable to control my larynx or to prevent its clutch slipping all the time. Not only do false notes succeed each other in close conjunction, but the key slips up and down, or often suddenly sideways. I shall therefore ask Calliope, when she makes her offer, to grant me the accomplishment of private song. If she be in generous mood she may also accord me the capacity for joining without undue discordance in comnamity singing. On the rare occasions when 1 seek to sing hymns in church I become aware that my neighbours glance sideways at me with a wild surmise. " He must." they are thinking, " be doing it on purpose." I have recently abandoned all attempts to utter sounds when I sing in public. Even when I attend concerts at my old school, and am obliged to join in the final chorus of the college paean, I merely move my lips in reverent ecstasy, allowing not one note to escape past the barrier of my teeth. Inde pio corde to . . . I whisper to myself, and even my closest neighbour could not detect a single slipped key, a single errant note. But it is sad for me to be thus excluded from community singing: I should derive pleasure and encouragement from being able to sing louder than all the boys. * * * * Above all, I should wish, if Calliope be generous (since such epic matters come within her province), to be able to join whole- heartedly, deep-chestedly, in national anthems. and patriotic songs. " Rule Britannia," I admit, is not a song that has any immediate relevance, having lost much of its reality since it was afirst sung to the Cliveden set: besides, I hate the tune. But God Save the King " is a charming tune, as-all will admit. When Sir Kenneth Clark on one occasion congratulated Tos- canini on the vigour he had infused into that familiar anthem. the great conductor smiled gently and remarked, " But it is a pretty piece of music." I entirely agree. It is a matter of constant regret to me that my vocal incapacity prevents me from joining in that song with all the lustiness and feeling inspired by firm monarchical convictions, a delight in comradeship and strong patriotic emotion. " Land of Hope and Glory," again, is a song that I should love to sing were 1 not voiceless and a member of the Labour Party. The " Red Flag " is not an anthem that appeals to me, since the tune is both crude and complicated, and I find a certain over-statement in the opinions expressed. I should have no objection at all, were it not for my disability, to joining fervently in the national anthems of other countries. I am quite prepared, when at Stockholm, to sing " Ur Svenska hjertans " or " Isten ald meg a Magyart " when at Buda-Pesth. When I was a lad I could sing one whole verse of " Shoumi Maritza " as well as any Bulgarian child, and I should love to be able to join in the gay and wistful " People's Hymn " of Greece. Yet, apart from these exotic experiments, it would be an authentic pleasure to me to be able, with accuracy and a full throat, to sing the " Marseillaise." That surely is the most invigorating and cadenced of all national songs.
In an excellent German periodical, published in Frankfurt and entitled Die Gegenwart, I have this week been reading a dignified but moving article under the caption, " When shall we sing? " The Germans, as we know, possess a splendid technique for community singing, and can be thrown into almost dionystac fervour by the stamping rhythm or yearning sentiment of some of their great patriotic songs. Yet how today can they intone without painful feelings the " Heil dir im Siegeskranz " or even the " Lied der Deutschen," to say nothing of the Horst Wessel song? Dr. Adenauer, it is reported, has invited compositions for a West German anthem based upon the themes of Faith. Hope and Charity. Yet the modern German has lost his faith ; he finds it an effort to discover even the elements of hope: and charity is not an emotion that fills the unhappy hearts of Germans today. Only by some miracle, similar to that which on April 24th, 1792, inspired the young engineer officer, Rouget de Lisle, to compose the " Marseillaise," can any song be found by Westefn Germany stirring enough to stimulate " die Miidig- keit des Volkes," the sense of complete nervous exhaustion that hangs as a cloud. According to the writer of this article the Germans have even lost their desire for community singing. " Nobody," he writes, " can feel today that there come moments when he is compelled to join with his brothers in full-throated song." How, he asks, can the German people today be expected to sing when their hopes lie shattered, their faith destroyed, their capacity for love numbed, their honour deeply wounded, their country sundered, and their whole history fallen as a sacrifice? How, he exclaims, can one expect so broken a people to acquire again that sense of solidarity that finds expression in a patriotic song? One can rebuild a State, but it takes many generations to rebuild a Nation. " The spirits of evil," he writes, " the Furies of suffering arc not the gardeners to tend the delicate plant of Love." Germany pins her faith today to work, organisation and social justice. Yet are such themes " sang- bar" ? It is not, the writer concludes, a question of what songs the modern German should sing. It is a question of whether Germany will ever find it in her heart to sing again.
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There is no self-pity and little bitterness in this impressive article. It was written evidently in deep anguish of soul. It is a terrible misfortune that this great people, so gifted and so tragic, should now be assailed by the evil Furies of spiritual lassitude. It is a tragedy for any people utterly to lose their faith in others: it is an even deeper tragedy that they should lose their faith in themselves. I see no hope of defending Western civilisa- tion unless we can restore to the Germans something of their former self-respect. It is not pity, not even compassion. that they ask for: they ask only for a more intelligent understanding.
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