The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. SATURDAY, MARCH 2; 1929. THE POLITICAL LOUD-SPEAKER.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 52, 2 March 1929, Page 8

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

SATURDAY, MARCH 2; 1929. THE POLITICAL LOUD-SPEAKER.

For the eaitte that lacki aiiUtdiioe, For the wrong tfat tieedi ¥eiiitiHU% JW the future in the distance, And the good that we cam do.

Mass production is to be applied to the field of political oratory in the next election campaign in Britain. Speeches will be produced in the mass and mechanised by wireless loud-speakers. Films and talkie-fiima will also be used in an effort to reach every voter in the kingdom. As the total number of electors will be about 28,000/)00, this hew effort is keeping the organisers of each political party busy. Mr. in his speech in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on Wednesday last, used the latest broadcasting device, by means of which he was heard in nine other halls in various towns in Laheashire and Cheshire. This mechanisation of oratory may Well change the whole aft and teehhiqiie of political speech-making. The art of oratory is the art of persuasion. It has been said that a good speech ought to read badly. By this is meant that there is an essential difference between speaking and writing. A reader can go baek over What he has read if he is not quite clear as to the author's meaning. A listener has no sneh opportunity. A public speaker must drive his point home, even at the rifck of repetition, and he must make his meaning perfectly clear from the very first. It is necessary for him to get in sympathy with his audience and to watch closely for any sign of his hearers becoming inattentive. All public | speakers know how much the success of a 1 speech depends on the audiehcfe itself. Appreciative, attentive listeners help a speaker more than they know. 11l all true orators there seems to be some sympathetic faculty Which puts them in touch with their fttidience and enables them to gain inspiration. The beat speakers do hot devote miifeh tihie to elaborate preparation. They read up as much as they can about their subject, biid then trust t6 thG inspiration of the moment for the speech itself. No reproduction- of a speech in priht can ever have the effect produced by the living voide and the speaker himself. A great deal depends on personality and gesture. Persohftl bearing and that element of persuasiveness that comes from the man himself ean neve* be entirely reproduced by machines. John Bright's famous speech on the Crimean War owed much of its appeal to the personality of the speaker and his mastery over all tbe Arts of oratory. No mechanical reproduction cohld possibly have carried anything like the same appeal. It is said that whfefi he came to the words, "The angel of death is abroad in the land; you can almost hear the beating of his wings," the whole House was mbved. Brit if the House had been g'azing at a loud-speaker, and the beating of the wings had been imitated by static and the peculiar "grr" one 66 frequently gets from the wirelessj the emotion might have changed to laughter;

Broadcasting also is likely to have an effect on the speakers. It is impossible to be quite the same when you know that you* speech is being reproduced in many other places by the microphone, or even when a loud-speaker is employed. A minister who had been asked by an old lady whb Was very deaf to say a prayer said afterwards that he found it exceedirigly difficult to pray down an ear trumpet with any feeling of devotion. The "Saturday Review" suggests that it will be less easy to sway audiefcces by a voice coming out of the ether, and it may actually become necessary to Convince them. The actual content of the argument will becoitie more important than the manner in which it is put. This may tefid to alter the whole art of oratory. A speaker may become eloquent when he sees nothing but a mass of eager faces in front of him, but he could rieVe? be really inspired if, instead of human f&ce&, he saw only the ugly grin of the microphone. Mechanical reproduction of the human voice and mass production of political speeches will add new terrors to life, the unfortunate elector will have bawled at him from street corners and opgn windows the political programmes of all the parties. Fortunately in his owii home he will be able to switch oft the loud-speaker or the head-phones. Elections in Britain will become more like the Presidential elections id the United States, and it may be simply a step from the microphone and the loud-speaker to the circus of American politics. We may yet see the day when a mechanically reproduced Secretary of State for Wat Will deliver a mechanical speech in a mechanical voice about a mechanised army through A talking machine.