FOR GOOD AND ILL

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 18, 22 January 1937, Page 5

FOR GOOD AND ILL

WIRELESS FARE

HILAIRE BELLOCS VIEWvS

That nevv factor in our civilisation, the wireless, has one main ill attaching to it. and one main good. The main ill is the increase of mechanical uniformity; the main good is the novel enlargement of that on which the human mind feeds, instruction and entertainment. All the major consequences of the innovation attach to these two roots, writes Hilaire Belloc in the London "Radio Times."

A succession of new instruments, going back to the appearance of the printing press nearly 500 years ago, have made more and more for a mechanical uniformity in such social life as was subject to their influence. Now complete uniformity, excellent as a means for organising men to a particular end, is in itself destructive of life; and when it is mechanical, actually hostile to life. Life is organic diversity in unity. When unity is mechanical in quality and universal in application, it kills the diversity and thereby kills life. This danger from uniformity is not greatly enhanced by State monopoly, for such is the nature of our modern large-scale instruments that they tend to exclude competition in any case, and fall under the power of great units of capital. If you have not State monopoly in wireless then you have wireless at the service of wealth. Uniformity then must be accepted as a necessary evil attaching to use of wireless in any form.

The least of the evils attaching to uniformity is the decay of zest through the absence of contrast. _ What the worst of its evils may be it would be difficult to discover. Among the worst is the absence of reaction to stimulus, of which an example in point is the popular remark: "The worst of the wireless is you cannot answer back." Widespread simultaneous diffusion, among millions, of the same fact or the samp opinion excludes not only opposing fact and opposing opinion, but the modifying fact and the modifying opinion. Uniformity is the enemy of life and therefore also necessarily the enemy of growth, whether the growth of evil or the growth of good. Any method of thought—a philosophy, a religion—grows, like everything else, from a seed: and the seed is commonly the mind of one man convincing, at first, a few. Each Of those few convinces another few and the general effect enlarges in geometrical progression. All mechanical, simultaneous, and universal methods are in direct contradiction with this fundamental process, lacking which society grows sterile.

There is a loss of vitality when the book replaces the living word, another greater loss when the urban newspaper replaces the book, and another, still greater, when universally diffused wireless replaces the Press.

So much for the main evil and danger. The advantages are more obvious. They are, as was just said, the very wide diffusion of human mental food: knowledge and recreation. As in a great many modern things, there is a risk of underestimating the good about them, through following the judgment of too small a number; through following the judgment of the comparatively well-to-do and the comparatively leisured. Men and women without experience of the grievous limitations under which the mass of their fellowbeings suffer can with diflftculty appreciate a new widespread popular benefit. Reason may tell them that the benefit is there, but only experience can render that conclusion vivid. Now wireless has this very great civic good attached to it that it brings recreation and instruction on facts, to vast numbers: one may say to, potentially, every household in the State. It is so cheap that it is at almost everybody's disposal. The drawback here is that the instruction cannot be the most useful kind of instruction, for much the most useful kind of instruction is instruction in ultimate truth: sound philosophy. Instruction by wireless will hardly be more than, an instruction on facts, and a mass of disconnected fact is of little value to the mind. One might say that instruction of this kind always tends more to be entertainment than instruction. That for two reasons; first, that people will hardly of their own free will submit to a process they find dull—and the elements of instruction are nearly always dull; second, that the instruction chosen is particular rather than gen-! eral. Instruction of this kind is by snippets, and commonly quite detached snippets. With entertainment it is otherwise. Entertainment of humour, of mere narrative, and, most of all, entertainment of music has a general effect: it is received as a whole and affects the mind in its entirety. Well chosen, it is necessarily to the good. Indeed the most evident good attached to wireless is the diffusion of music. So that the music be varied and the selectors mindful of popular taste—which it is their business to meet, not to educate—there is here a new and vastly increased opportunity for adding to the few joys of human life; but again, the music must be well chosen. With that phrase "well chosen" appears the chief peril of the new method. It attaches not .only to instruction or entertainment but to the whole function of wireless. If the programme of wireless as a whole be I ill chosen it will do harm in proportion to its universality. A corrupt or lying Press is a great evil. A corrupt or lying wireless propaganda would be a far greater one, and there being, as has been said, no check or reaction available, the whole nation is at the mercy of the choice exercised by those who diffuse information or opinion. It is here as with every other political thing. Where the authority is trusted and trustworthy its action, however extended, is beneficial; it is correspondingly maleficent when, even though trusted, it is not trustworthy. There are certain minor perils and disadvantages attached to the new instrument which, though they be minor, should not be neglected. One of these is the exaggerated value it gives to a particular form of diction. Of two men, the one who would deservedly have the most effect upon an audience present before him and listening to him in person may have the least effect over the wireless. A corresponding disadvantage of the wireless is that it kills oratory. Oratory depends upon presence. It is a function of personality. If oratory, which has played so very great a part in the life of mankind, be destroyed or weakened, society will suffer. It is a minor advantage (minor, because of its nature it is only rarely exercised) that the wireless caij give immediate warning to a whole nation, and immediate urgent news. Connected with this is the advantage of search through the wireless. We have a firstrate example of this in the discovery of things and persons lost, and in the communication which can be established between those-who are in urgent need of it. There is one last minor disadvantage which ought to be mentioned, for though not everyone will agree that it is a disadvantage, I think it will be discovered to be such by those who think the matter out. I mean the destruction of local idioms and accents: and the word "local"' here must be extended to mean not only the manner of specch particular to particular dis-

tricts. but also to particular classes, and occupations. The loss of local accent and manner in speech and of local vocabulary will causc, if it extends. as it appears to be extending, through wireless, a grievous loss to society. There is a savour and quality about these things which cannot be replaced.