NATIONAL CHARACTER

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 32, 1 November 1933, Page 9

NATIONAL CHARACTER

British Individuality and Co-operation

MR. BALDWIN’S ANALYSIS

Mr. Stanley Baldwin in a broadcast address in London last month introduced a series of talks on “National Character” that will be given each Monday in the national programme until Christmas. He said that be thought it was a good thing at a time like this to take stock, as it were, of our national characteristics, of . any possible changes that were affecting those characteristics, where it was that we derived what we called our national character and bow it was affecting us in the troubled times before us. We ought never to forget in England that, over a’period as long as from the Reformation to the present day, we were an integral part of the great Roman Empire, and therefore an integral part of that great European Imperial Confederation. It was a question as to what mark, if any, was left on this country by that invasion. Hbe found it hard to believe that a people could have lived in this country for 400 years and not have left a mark that, consciously or unconsciously, would be felt for generations afterward. The name England of course came from the great invasion that followed the break-up of that Empire—the invasion of the Saxons. They should uot run away with the idea that the Saxons came from Dresden, because they did not. They came from the coast—the Friesian coast, and ha<J the sea in their blood, at a time more likely perhaps to be called the “dark ages” than any period in English history since the time of Christ. If anyone had been able at that time to fly over Europe in an aeroplane be-would have beeu able to see all that was happening over Europe, but over these Islands he would have been shrouded in mist. Little was really known of that settlement, its beginnings, or its growth, but we did know the characteristics of that race, and how its better characteristics had become part of our own. They were self-reliant, bold, intensely loyal to the chief, although there was no country to which they could be nationally patriotic. But they took the keenest local interest in the settlement and in the tribal treatment. We did not know what it was that sent a whole people’out from that coast to this country. They might have been pushed across the seas to these islands to get away from the Mongolian invasion, which they hated above everything. Vikings and Normans. The most remarkable Jnvasioh of all was the Scandinavian. No cue would ever know what it was’that drove the Scandinavians from their fiords and sent them across the Atlantic, across the Black Sea, to Venice, Athens, and Constantinople, where the Vikings were equally known. They came here and they stayed, and-with them, came a love of adventure that cropped up again and again, from time to time, and which he hoped would be with us as long as we were a nation. It broke out in’th? days of Elizabeth, and a’so in those of the Stuarts, and he could not help thinking our people had it in their very bones. Without it the Pilgrim Fathers would never have survived their first, winter. Did we realise .what this courage was? For them the world was full of potential dangers and perils that did not. exist; for us. But they faced them and they won through. It was not long after tljat there came the last, and in many ways the most important, invasion; that, which had the greatest-in-fluence —the Normans —one of the greatest races that ever lived on this earth. It was a great mistake to think of the Normans as Frenchmen. They were really first or second cousins of the Vikings.

They were, Mr. Baldwin continued, a nation of warriors, but tjiey were much more. They were a nation which had acquired in the century, or the century and a half, during which they lived in France, a certain amount of learning, a knowledge of architecture and building, a knowledge of law, and a knowledge of government. They brought to this country a sense of unity, a sense of nationality, and an ordered government. For a century or more it was a toss-up whether England became a province of a great French kingdom or whether she became a kingdom of her own. She became a kingdom of her own. and within q century and a half or two centures of the Normau invasion the English nation for the first time was welded into one more or less homogeneous whole.

The Village Community.

You must nevbr forget that during all the Middle Ages, and, indeed, throughout the later years—and. to a certain extent, many of our troubles to-day are due to the same cause national boundaries in Europe were fluid. Our boundary was the sea. It was a fixed boundary, and a boundary which none could cross when once there was a united nation able to guard that sea frontier. It is owing to that primarily and principally that we were able to develop in this country our own peculiar civilisation and our own freedom in a security that was. alien at that, time to almost every other nation in the world. I should like at this point to remind you, if yon do not remember them, of some words that were written by a very distinguished historian and Master of Balliol. Mr. A. L. Smith wrote: "Nowhere was the village community so real and enduring a thing as it was in England for at least 12 centuries .of its history. In every parish men met almost daily in humble but very real self-government to be judged by their fellows or lined by them or punished as bad characters, to settle the ploughing: times and harvest. times, the harrowing ami the grazing rules. For the whole period of those 12 centuries that discipline went with the peculiar English capacity for self-government. The development of the voluntary system in our many institutions, our aptitude tor colonisation, our politics, our coinmer cial enterprise, our Colonia] Empire, are all due to the spirit of co-operation, the spirit of fairplav and give-aud take, the habit of working for a common purpose, which tomnered the bard and grim individuality of tlie national character.”

Cheerful Grumblers.

I want you to notice particularly those words—the grim individuality and the spirit of co-operation. The English character is largely made up sf these contrasts Take a small thing. No people grumble more than we (Jo. I do myself every day. But though I grumble 1 do not worry mid 1 keep cheerful. That is so with all English people. As a nation we grumble, b-• we never worry, and Hie more dlflicul' times are Hie more cheerful we become. Indifferent we may be In many ways to what is going on in the world outside, but that indifference Is shed

in times of difficulty. We are always serene in times of difficulty. We are not a military nation, but we are great fighters, as we ought to be from the stock of which I have told you. We have staying power; we are not rattled. I remember being very amused, and pleased also, by a writer in “The Times” who said that my spiritual home was in the last flitch. If that be so. I share that ditch with most of my fellow countrymen. Above all the English people have a glorious sense of humour rather than wit. Humour comes from the heart. Wit comes from the brain. We cau laugh at ourselves. Do you remember what Ruskin said? "The English laugh is the clearest and truest in a metal that can be minted, and indeed only heaven can know what the country owes to it.” Laughter is one of the best things that God has given to us. and with hearty laughter neither malice nor indecency can exist. Of all men who have shown us what that laughter can mean none was like Dickens, every one of whose characters is English to the core. If I might mention for a moment a living author. I think the truest Englishmen are found in Mr. Priestley’s novels. Love of Home. Kindliness, sympathy with the underdog, love of home—are not all these charaet'Cristles of the ordinary Englishman that you and I know? He is a strong individualist in this, that be does not want to mould himself into any common mould, to be like everybody else. He likes to develop liis own individuality. And yet he can combine for service. Some of the best, things in this country have originated among- our own common people without any help from Governments—friendly society work, our trade unions, our hospitals, and our education before the State took it in hand. Then the Englishman has a profound respect for law and order. This is part of his tradition of self-government. Ordered liberty—not disordered liberty. nor. what invariably follows it, tyranny —but ordered liberty, at this moment one of the rarest things in this topsy-turvy world. If these things l*e true, if these few characteristics which I have so briefly mentioned be. in fact, characteristic of our people. I say that such qualities were never more needed in the world. Let us hold on to what we ure. Let us not try to be like anybody else. ... . We can respect the fine qualities of oilier countries, but let us keep to our own With our pertinacity, with our love of ordered freedom, with our re«peet for law, with our respect for the individual, and our talent for combining in service: indeed, in our strength and in our weakness. I believe from my heart that our people arc fitted to pass through whatever trials > •» lw* before us. and to emerge, if they are true to their own best traditions, a greater people in the future than they have been iu the past.