ETERNAL EUROPE
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Where the News Ends Eternal Europe By William Henry Chamberlin AMID THE PHYSICAL, moral and cultural wreckage left by two frightful wars, ' amid the petty bickering which is obstructing...
...Europe's great heritage is called to mind by the anniversaries of two of the greatest builders of the temple of European civilization: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Frederic Chopin...
...BUT THERE IS AN ETERNAL EUROPE that outlives wars, violent revolutions and totalitarian tyrannies—a Europe embodied in the works of creative geniuses like Goethe and Chopin...
...but "Shall the atornjtelong to the people...
...And Chopin would see that, as in his own time, many of the freest spirits of his country are in exile, or remain in Poland crushed and silenced...
...It is the appeal of the musical note, not of the printed word...
...Some men are ffcat for what they create and some for what they are...
...But German chauvinism was utterly alien to the calm, serene, Olympian spirit of Goethe...
...the tragedy of a poet in Torquato Tasso...
...Sentimental,, in the best sense of the word, he certainly is...
...The question in the current furor over David Lilienthal is not "Is the atom escaping to Rus•i...
...Since that state unhorsed another undistinguished Republican senator last fall, Mr...
...and he was a capable administrator in the little principality of which Weimar was the capital...
...His Faust is among the few great epics...
...what we shall hsv* that day could wall bo formed world democratic socialism...
...The writer who earned 120.000 while serving time for forgery was apprehended again for the same literary activity...
...It is two hundred years since Goethe was born in Frankfurt, the medieval capital of the Holy Roman Empire, which is emerging out of its contemporary ruins as one of the main centers of Western Germany...
...Editorial— The Atomic Debate THE CURRENT TO-DO about the Atomic Energy Commission, believe it or not, has very little to do with military security, even though most of the noise is about a seventh of an ounce of uranium that got lost...
...The law frowns upon one's forging ahead by7 making a name for himself...
...Goethe and Chopin would not be happy were they to revisit Europe in this year when their memory is being honored...
...some call him "arrogant," while most of us regard him as one of our more able and independent public servants...
...They have no right to judge others by themselves...
...A deadline is one way of avoiding a creeping paralysis...
...they sound like calls to arms, and no doubt some of them were conceived in this spirit...
...The range of his literary ^ achievement was tremendous...
...This is the great common heritage of European civilization in literature, music and the arts, in religion, ethics and philosophy, which may some day enable Europeans to forget their feuds and create a new Europe—a free and peaceful Europe able to withstand communist intrigue from within and the threat of communist force from without...
...But what an appeal it is...
...The personality of Mr.Lilienthal seems to have attracted the most attention...
...His last words, More Light, were the epitaph of a tile thai wis ana of the glories of German and European culture...
...Merrls CImmim...
...If and when the record of the Army's administration of atom research is made public, we dare say that oneseventh of an ounce will look infinitesimal...
...Hickenlooper evidently feels his hopes for re-election depend upon making as many headlines as possible...
...but soft and effeminate, never...
...Goethe was also fascinated by scientific research...
...BOTH MEN REPRESENTED A HAPPY fusion of the national with the universal...
...The test of his opponent, Senator Hickenlooper, will come in Iowa in 1950...
...Goethe's roots were in Germany, Chopin's in Poland...
...the classical in Iphigenia in Tauris...
...But the German poet and the Polish composer are known, loved and admired throughout the civilized world...
...the romantic movement is reflected in Werther and Goet^ t'on Berlichingen...
...One of the most moving impressions I brought back from the shattered cities of Germany in 1946 was the frequency with which one heard the finest piano music—a Beethoven Sonata or a Chopin Ballade—coming out of what looked like heaps of rubble...
...A century ago Chopin was buried in Paris to the sound of his own Funeral March, accompanied to his grave by some of the most distinguished figures in France and in Poland who then, as now, existed in exile and lived in hope...
...Chopin is sometimes brushed off by supercilious addicts of modern musical chaos as an old-fashioned, sentimental, effeminate, soft composer...
...If th* Army has the atom, however, and current military protocol prevails, the highest bidders of "free onterprlso" take ovor...
...Pen Points rThe UN ordered the newest and most expensive elevators for its 39-story Secretariat building...
...In the community of Europe's cultural heritage lies the best hope that we shall some day see a free and united Europe, in which there will be a place for Warsaw and Prague, Lvov and Wilno, Riga and Tallin, as well as for London and Paris, Berlin and Cologne, Florence and Antwerp...
...People were still somehow carrying on civilized life...
...Many years ago in Moscow I heard the great dramatic actor Katchalov de- , claim the magnificent doting lines of Egmont,.,' one of the most stirring odes to liberty ever written...
...Who can say whether perhaps a few seeds -of freedom were sown behind the iron curtain...
...The audience listened with close, fascinated attention...
...Considering the sorry slate of world affairs, it seems determined to get a lift at any cost...
...Many of his poems have been set to appropriate accompaniment by such masters as Schubert, Schumann and Brahms...
...He became a magnet for intellectual pilgrims from Germany and from, foreign countries and he helped give Weimar the character of a German Athens...
...One cannot measure accurately the influence of such a genius...
...No one has written for the piano as Chopin has, before or since...
...e * CHOPUfi APPEAL IS NARROWER pethaps than Goethe's...
...Goethe achieved both types of distinction...
...our ologopolisl economy moves on* big step nearer monopoly, and imperialist rivalries hit a new high in fronsy...
...Those who want atomic energy In the hands of the military are not thinking primarily of atomic bombs, but of who will direct peacetime uses of th* atom...
...But under the spell of war dangers, few have sensed the reason for that clamor...
...For sure as the sun rlsos ovary morning, some* day this century atomic energy will replace coal, oil and electricity and will power the industrlos of our wholo glob...
...Where the News Ends Eternal Europe By William Henry Chamberlin AMID THE PHYSICAL, moral and cultural wreckage left by two frightful wars, ' amid the petty bickering which is obstructing Europe's revival, there remains a star of hope, unchanging and indestructible...
...He would find the Weimar he loved, and which he helped t> make one of the genuine centers of European culture, under the heel of eastern totalitarian barbarism...
...Much has been made of the clamor to return the administration of the atom to the military...
...He will survive this investigation, we feel sure...
...His great Etudes and Polonaises are heroic, in spirit and stature...
...If atomic energy is still in civilian hinds, and the recommendations of the Ac&aaon-Lllionthal report and the Baruch plan are carried out...
...There is the tragedy of a patriot in Egmont...
...His life and art are suffused with the spirit of classical Greece, which he knew and loved so well...
...Hoboes now living on the UN site are unfair in asserting that the world organization will not work...
...no composer came so close to perfection in everything he created...
...The Western powers are wise in soaking to end negotiations with the Soviet by s certain data if no nrogr*ss Is indicated...
...No one has understood the poetic use of the German language better than Goethe...
...In reading Goethe, one often feels howvery much poorer modern culture is because of the declining knowledge of Greek and Latin among educated people...
...Germans and Europeans generally must be finding in the winged words of Goethe —now profound in wisdom, now glowing with passion—consoling assurance that the future belongs to freedom, not to tyranny, to civilization, not to barbarism...
...Goethe would be shocked at many evidences of brutality and irrationality rampant there...
...The Hickenlooper-Lilienthal fracas involves trivial issues of personalities and deep conflicts of farreaching significance, but about the last thing it involves is military security...
...Poles and Europeans generally doubtless recognize a similar symbolism in Chopin's immortal music...
Vol. 32 • June 1949 • No. 23
