Cackle

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 182, 29 April 1933, Page 16

Cackle

'g”n If EKE is nothing more infectious than cackle. We, who are among I the most silent and repressed of the animals, incapable of getting 1 rid of our repressions iu solitary song as the birds do, jump at every opportunity of communal chatter on any debatable subject whatever, writes “Y.Y.” in a whimsical dissertation in "The New Statesman." Mr. Lloyd George owes his eminence in politics partly to the fact that, as long ago as tlie time of the Boer War. he provided his fellow-countrymen with the excitement of chatter. To chatter is to feel alive, and again, during (he campaign against the House of Lords. Mr. Lloyd George made a whole nation feel more alive than before by using a few epithets that everybody condemned and everybody was able to talk about. Even to-day. when lie is us lonely as an involuntary Achilles in Ids tent, he can become temporarily as popular as a talkie-star merely by threatening to publish some Cabinet secrets. It is because scenes in the House of Commons make such excellent occasions for chatter that everybody loves them while sincerely professing to be disgusted by them" No words can be too strong to condemn the Member who tried to run away with the Mace. but. at least, he roused to a certain liveliness millions of men and women whom a debate on India would merely have sent to sleep. Are not the vanished Irish Members still spoken of with affectionate regret by the older Parliamentarians, even by those who once denounced them

with enpurpled visages. And they are remembered affectionately, not because of their political wisdom but because of their exceptional capacity for making scenes that led to voluble schoolboy excitement throughout the land. When the great hand-to-baiid. or rather hand-to-uose, tight took place during the Home Kule Bill debates every decent man bung his head for shame, feeling that the House of Commons was eternally disgraced. But how. as lie hung his head, his heart beat with unholy joy at the prospect of the cackle that was sure to follow I If the Home Huie question had been debated on lines of pure reason, how few Members would ever have sat through a debate! Let -omeone shout ".Judas'" at Mr. Chamberlain, however, and joy was in every breast as every tongue was loosed and men felt themselves part of a drama if only as makers of inarticulate noises in the crowd. Il is always noticeable that, as scenes decrease, the hold of Parliament on the affections of the public decreases. The scenes may be in the large manner of a duel between Gladstone and Disraeli or in the small mantle'' of a giant who is carried out kicking; but in any ease there must be a relief from lhe stagnant .atmosphere of pure reason. And it is the same with cricket awith polities. Unman beings are easily bored, even by games. They want something to talk about, and a game in which everybody docs the expected thing, never faking-a risk, and aiming at correctness and security, gives them little to talk about.