In the 1948 edition of Suike there appeared an excellent review and criticism of some of E. M. Forster's longer work by Mr. Gordon Orr. However, despite its fine sensitivity and its thoroughly sympathetic approach I believe Forster is done an injustice, in a certain degree. Forster is first credited with a profound uncertainty: "regarding with profound suspicion divinely inspired absolute laws." Later Mr. Orr extends this argument by pointing to Forster's "fundamental error" in invoking the spiritual principle and then referring it for its ultimate sanction not to God, to the supernatural . . . but to nature." While I readily agree with Mr. Orr that there is a strange and unsatisfying Hellenist worship of nature throughout Forster's writing, in Stephen Wonham, in old Mrs. Wilcox and Mrs. Moore, who "had been far back and sat with the Gods in the fields of Elysium": all this would not have made his novels any the more convincing if the characters had sought more orthodox channels to salvation, and had undergone in the last chapter, a sorting out, and final declaration of faith in the Deist supernatural solution.

Uncertainty

I do not believe that there is a "profound uncertainty" in Forster's writings: I have conceded the mystical element which stems from his love of Greek traditions but the definiteness of his faith in tolerance, good temper and sympathy are sufficient counter-balance to his lack of "absolute divinely inspired moral laws. It is at this point that I should like to leave Mr. Orr's argument and quote Forster on Christianity:

"I cannot believe that Christianity will ever cope with the present world-or they will argue that its failure proceeds from the wickedness of man and really proves its ultimate success."

These people, says Forster. "have faith with a large F. My faith has a very small one and I only intrude it because these are strenuous days, and one likes to say what one thinks while speech is comparatively free: it may not be free much longer."

Progressive

At this point you renew your objection by saying that good temper, tolerance and sympathy are not enough to supplant a formidable creed such as Deism in one of its many supernatural forms, as a philosophy on which to write a serious story of human relationships. I would reply that really this is pretentiousness. Forster accepts as Mr. Orr's quotation showed) that belief in the supernatural is needful for the soul "beyond the stars" but is insufficient for life here and now. The thoroughly progressive liberalism which Forster himself believes in is a practical business and to me at any rate an entirely creditable notion to justify the situations, beliefs and actions of his characters.

Liberal?

How far are we able to properly designate Forster a liberal? By no means can we identify him with the traditional liberal economic outlook and the social horizons which are its counterpart. He says (before 1939). "If my own world smashes, Communism is what I would like to see take its place, but I shall not bless it till I die." Again he says, "there is an alternative.' Fascism, leading only to the blackness which is its chosen symbol. Into smartness and wide mess, and I think that such influence as it retains in modern society is due to the money behind it, rather than to its spiritual appeal. It was a spiritual force once, but the indwelling spirit will have to be restated if it is to calm the waters again: and probably restated in a non-Christian form. Naturally a lot of people and who are Rood and intelligent people will disagree here; they will deny that Christianity has failed, yapping out of orders, and self-righteous brutality, into social as well as international war. It means change without hope . . . our immediate duty is to stop it." In another place he says that perhaps if he was a younger and stronger man he might be a Communist, for although he sees it doing many evil things he believes it intends good.

In any appraisal of Forster the easiest error in which to fall is to forget that, although there is a clear line of development in his work, he was a mature and competent writer in Edwardian times. This fact is central and though perhaps an old fashioned strain in his work is discernible; in occasional passages of really too moving spiritual experience (as in the description of southern England in Howard's end Ch. 19) and in too conventional a portrayal of Italy); the verdict is that he has succeeded as the greatest humanist of our time.