GOOD MANNERS ENDURE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 67, 30 December 1946, Page 7

GOOD MANNERS ENDURE

EXILE RETURNING TO ENGLAND TOLERANT TEMPER OF PEOPLE The exile, returning to England (who has, perhaps, heard from others who have preceded him home some scarifying stories) finds to his delight that railway porters and those formidable folk behind hotel reception desks, can still be friendly and helpful and welcoming, says The Evening News of London in an editorial article. He finds that the smokeroom waiter in his club remembers him, that taxi drivers cheerfully give change, that strangers in trains talk amiably. He meets again that endless flow of unforced, friendly good manners which is Britain’s oldest, and perhaps best, contribution to western civilisation.

Britain survives, with uncommon

tenacity, largely because of the tolerant and civilised temper of the majority of its inhabitants.

Had we been neurotic and writable, we should have long since gone under. But our survival is not the result of unfeeling stoicism or lack of imagination. The good manners of ordinary people in Britain are founded on exactly the opposite qualities. The British possess a very rare and much-tried quality of appreciating the other person’s point of view.

Arrogant self-assertion has led, again and again in history, to disaster. The British tendency to say, “After you, old man,” to believe that there is a good -deal to be said for the other man’s viewpoint, is nearly always dismissed as weakness or perfidity. Yet it has proved so often to be moral strength and certainty. When the British abandon courtesy—in private life as in international affairs—then will be the time for the vultures to gather. Until then, let us be glad that the ancient manners endure and are practised.