POOR TASTE

Evening Star, Issue 20780, 30 April 1931, Page 17

POOR TASTE

> ENGLAND'S VULGARITY HEAD MASTER'S ATTACK Dr Cyril Aliugton, the head master of Eton, pas elaborated his objection to those attempting to draw distinctions between tlio virtues and vices of different classes of people in England (says tho London ‘Daily Telegraph ’). lie was delivering his presidential address to the Eton, though, and Windsor Workers’ Educational Association at Eton College, and reminded his hearers that a little time ago ho was addressing a girls’ school, and said that English people as a whole were very much like one another, and that no greater harm could bo done to the country than letting it be supposed that one so-called class in the country had one particular vice or a monopoly of one particular virtue which the others did not possess. There were lazy people in every class of society; and it was discreditable when any man (,lid not want to do his share of daily work, whether he was a duke or a dustman.

There were lazy dukes and there were lazy dustmen —he did not know which was worse. Ho. did not think, as a whole, that dukes were lazier than dustmen. To suggest that one class in the country got drunk was ridiculous. The idea that one class had one vice and specialised in it' was bsurd. Education, said Dr Alington, existed to prevent people, as far as it could, from being vulgar, stupid, or ignorant. Some were in need of one lesson more than another because some had capacities for vulgarity. He did not think that English taste was as good as the taste of many other nations. Their houses were exceedingly ugly. . r . ... Dr Alington, who is a Lincolnshire man, said he went to Holland and compared Dutch l ouses with those in a Lincolnshire village. Ho found that a Lincolnshire village was a very ugly thing, though ho did not know who was responsible. In Lincolnshire one never saw a cottage worth looking at, but in Holland one found that something had happened. In saying that they were all liable to vulgarity ho meant something, more than merely being rude. He meant that tlidir taste was not what it should bo. They might know what we admired. but their taste might be mistaken, and often was. Tastes in furniture changed. The things their grandmothers thought beautiful they did not think beautiful. No ono had any good word for Victorian furniture) and it did not fetch prices, but yet people once admired it. Ono of the functioni of education was to train tastes and to see the good there is in almost everything. Ho did not think education could Ivelp much if they wore really stupid, but it could at least teach them to hold their tongues. Ignorance was obviously a thing they could remedy. They wanted their tastes trained for their own happiness and in order to do their duty to society. An educated person was going to be a happier person all through life, and ho would not be a bore.

There was no sphere in a citizen’s duty in which he did not want more education. On one occasion, remarked Alington, he safti, “ There are too' many stupid people in the country.” The next day he received an anonymous postcard worded, '‘There are too many stupid people in the country, and you are undoubtedly one of them.” It was no doubt true, but whether it was worth a stamp he did not know. The postcard was intended to give pain, but it gave him more pleasure than ho had had for a long time. lii so far as they were stupid they were dangers to society. With the present political problems before them they could not afford to bo stupid.