COMMUNITY SINGING

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 95, 19 October 1931, Page 6

COMMUNITY SINGING

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—lf Professor: P. W. Robertson is correctly reported in your: issue of this evening, he has certainly rendered a disservice to.the Workers' Educational Association, the organisation on whose behalf he and Dr. Sutherland made their cultural representations' to .the PostmasterGeneral. It is not good policy_to insult the community upon which one is dependent for his Hying,: yet it would be difficult to conceive of a more insulting slap in the face than the Professor saw fit to administer to the many thousands of intelligent men and women who throughout the winter months have found cheerful enjoyment in the weekly community'sings. On Tuesday evening last the main Town Hall was crowded to its utmost capacity, between two and three thousand'people were unable to gain admission, and on a low estimate not less than fifty thousand people of all ages and all classes all. over the Dominion were listening in and joining in the singing. These are the people whose mental age seemed to the learned Professor Robertson to be about ten or eleven! How different the attitude of Mr. Coates! That gentleman had a message of grave importance to deliver to; the Dominion, yet he courteously prefaced his broadcast with an expression of; regret foj: having1 to break in on the community singing, and concluded by heartily expressing the hope that all would enjoy to .the lutmost the remainder of that evening"? sing.' ' ' ■ ■'•■'' '• ;. ■ Radio listeners would do well to ponder the utterances of these' two learned young men, for'it would appear from the overtures to the Minister that if they were to be given their way culture with a large "C" and a professorial accent; will dominate the air, presumably to the rigorous curtailment ■of all such, forms of broadcast entertainment as may be deemed,, to be fit only for those of the mental.age of ten or eleven. As to the policy which Dr. Sutherland and Professor Robertson sought to urge upon.the Minister, it Must have been as apparent to Mr. Hamilton, as it is to anyone who will give the matter a littl* serious consideration, that they were urging that the luxury of a champagne dinner should be provided out of a ginger-beer revenue, and that they were utterly lacking in an intelligent understanding of the tremendous difference in the circumstances which make possible the unstinted expenditure in which the 8.8.C. is able to indulge, and those which make the exercise of prudent economy absolutely essential to the maintenance of an efficient broadcasting service in this Dominion. • It may also have occurred to the Minister that these fervent advocates of broadcast culture were even more fervently concerned with 'the prospect of- converting the broadcasting service into a fount of revenue for the apostles of the W.Ei'A. who are evidently willing and anxious to give the community all the culture it can swallow iat so much per dose, andvif this culture is to express itself in insults to men and women who are giving of their time find talents on behalf o£ the poor and distressed, then heaven preserve us from it.—l am, etc.,

ERNEST PALLISER, Chairman Community Singing Committee. 17th October.