ON SPEAKING ONE’S MIND

Evening Star, Issue 22975, 4 June 1938, Page 3

ON SPEAKING ONE’S MIND

Don’t tell me that this is a hackneyed subject. It was not just yesterday that the seasons and politics emerged from their pristine cellophane; yet autumn and the injustice of taxation continue to burn so fiercely in, men’s veins that they still impel pens to paper: and if new variations can be played on the old themes of falling le»if and the indiscriminate ever-gaping maw of the exchequer, it is. surely permissible to protest once, more against those selfappointed scourges of society whose jaws are so uncontrolled that they must speak out, and whose complacency is so unbounded that they cannot give tongue without accounting it to themselves for righteousness. Yea, and proclaiming it from the housetops, too. The mind-speakers become more vociferous as the sun retreats northwards and the days shorten. Or perhaps it is that .their words, like the breath of draught horses, linger appreciably on frosty air. Especially in winter is it their custom to moisten their thin lips, open their hard mouths, and let out their loud voices, preferably in their own houses, where they have inveigled us by music or by fatal offers of flowers/ to publish their utterly irrelevant opinions of our dearest friends. We have not courted their opinions, we have neatly diverted the conversation on several occasions, but mindspeakers, fruit of the union between brazen trumpets and Puritans, feel that we ought to know.

If these loud-speakers told us about ourselves we should not object so strenuously. Though disconcerting, it would be rather, enjoyable if an acquaintance suddenly choked over the tea cup and spluttered out that the guest in the act of passing him a pikelet vas bloody, luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, sudden, malicious, and smacking of every sin that has a name. And that, he ought to know. But the only occasions on which men indulge in even the palest replicas of direct vituperation in the Elizabethan manner are during highly' stylised election campaigns'. Speaking one’s mind has no permanent effect, since it is understood that on the morrow the vituperators shake hands and exchange congratulations on, the clean., gentlemanly contest. ,’ • .

Certainly the followers, of Dr Buchman tell us directly about our : selves, but the uncharitable thoughts that they have harboured are usually disappointing and sadly lacking in bravura. Yet the Buchmanites may be answerable for thia season’s crop of people determined to speak their minds to us about our friends, i Why, in the' name of all gleaming coppers and blue-hags, should coming clean he such a messy process? They do things better in the commercial world, whose advertisers' show trim young matrons tripping off to- 1 shop while spotless linen flutters on the line.' But sin the, social world coming clean would appear to ■he - inseparable from washing dirty linen in public. Tlje. most practised of those who glory in speaking their minds have not managed to be debonair.

Written by PANACHE for the *Evening Star *

Whatever defects in our friends have moved the loud-speakers to unburden themselves, whatever proprieties they have flouted, whichever commandments they are known to have broken, are confidently expected to break, Glare eagerly hoped to be about to break, they yet manage,'in defiance of those laws that confine reward to the just alone, to preserve inviolate some quality or 'charm that is forever denied to those that pride. themselves on speaking their minds. It is this charm that the blatant and the scrubbed raw-clean find so hard to forgive in the mi When we remember this charm and contrast it with the plainness and aggressiveness of the loud-speakers, the latter look so pathetic that it becomes impossible to fight them. The only thing to do is to retreat; leaving , them, victors ‘on their own barren field, in contemplation of that virtue which is. its own reward.-

it is significant that to speak one’s mind has become synonymous with criticism so unfavourable as to be detraction. No one who admires would think of describing the expression of his pleasure and appreciation as speaking his mind. But the detractors believe that they have a mission, or possibly a Mission; and, since the •kindest use a knife, they pursue it with .the ruthlessness .of a surgeon. Not that the disinterestedness of a surgeon is. evident, for their harping on their own operations tends to be pathological with their continual examination of what they said to him and what it was their duty to tell her. What theyVdo not suspect is that' they are speaking not minds, but prejudices. People with minds are _riot satisfied with spilling a little poison over . those that have been coerced into their parlours.: They prefer to shut themselves away from intruders . and write pamphlets or satirical •. epistles dr withering curses in rhyme. But to people, with mere prejudices these would be dull diversions, since the particular is so'- much more scandalous and salacious than the general, and the seven deadly sins themselves take oh a certain dignity when embedded in allegory. When Blake was infuriated with a certain engraver whom he suspected of unprofessional conduct he did not hem in that engraver’s chief crony in a corner of his •club where he could overwhelm him with a detailed story. Instead, Blake compressed . his rage into an epigram. A petty sneaking knave I knew— • O! Mr* Cromek, how do ye do? There isn’t enough matter in the vapourings of those given to speaking their minds to fill out even a phrase. Admittedly, some outlet is desirable for ■ ohr pet aversions. What is wrong with Disraeli’s practice ,of writing the ihmes of -enemies on’Sslips of paper 'and hiding. them in' drawers ? Or with the medieval fashion of making wax figures to,melt over flame? Nothing, except that they are secret practices, and the exhibitionist in the loudspeaker demands an audience.