Shantih, Shantih, Shantih

Practically everyone in Britain has had his say on the British bid to enter the Common Market, but not until now did anyone get around to polling the poets and playwrights. Sounding like his own Elder Statesman, T. S. Eliot told the monthly Encounter: "I have always been in favor of close cultural relations with Europe. For this reason my personal bias is in favor of Britain's entering. And I have not been impressed by the emotional appeals of some of those who maintain that to take this course would be betrayal of our obligations to the Commonwealth."

Among the anti-Europeans proved to be Angry Youngish Playwright John Osborne, 32. Looking back in anger from the south of France last year, Osborne had proclaimed his antipathies in a "letter of hate for you, my countrymen." Its message: "Damn you, England." But damn it, blood is thicker than water, and he has had a change of heart, possibly because of overexposure to what he calls "the forward-looking common supermarket jargon and high-minded greed." Said Osborne: "I, for one, am sick to death of all its ugly chromium pretense and am proud to settle for a modest, shabby, poor-but-proud LITTLE ENGLAND any day."

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