An Age of Extremes

Evening Star, Issue 23451, 16 December 1939, Page 3

An Age of Extremes

When, in strictest privacy, I resort to that consolation of the middle-aged and count my blessings, pharasaically rejoicing that I am not as other men, the list of those people from whom i am thankful to be different is invariably headed by “ the famous.” nothing can be more boring, more exacting, more crippling than to be forced to live m the public eye. The infinitesimal compensation of knowing oneself remarkable and possibly envied by the uninitiated cannot for a moment weigh in the balance against , all the tiresome and embarrassing things one is asked—nay, expected—to do. . I thanked my stars for my own insignificance even more heartily than usual when I attended the inevitable breaking-up ceremonies the other week. Never do I feel a more profound pity for those who are described as “ public characters ” than when, year after year, I listen to them endeavouring to find something new and original to say to those serried ranks of boys and girls and those vigilant rows of parents. What can they say that has not been said for the last 50 years? What message can they offer that has not been offered—and rejected—a hundred times before? And it is not even as if anybody was very anxious to listen to them. The teachers, beneath their air of attentive respect,_ are anxiously hoping that everything will go off smoothly; .the.children are gazing with vacuous and well-disciplined eyes past the anxious and conscientious speaker, down a long and delightful vista of holidays; the parents are covertly eyeing the prize table and hoping that the extraordinary merits of their own offspring are going to be suitably, if belatedly, acknowledged this year. The speaker of the day? Oh, yes; very inspiring, of course, but diem t you think him just a little longwinded? And yet, knowing all this—for has ho not been a pupil himself, even if he has escaped the harsher fates of becoming a teacher or a parent?—the distinguished visitor hammers patiently on. Naturally this year his task has been a trifle easier than usual, for one subject—and one only—has inevitably held the centre of the stage and of his discourse. The war; what else was there to talk about? And, incidentally, how little that is new there has been to say. I went to three prize-givings in one week, and I heard precisely the same sentiments delivered at two of them. The third? Well, the third was rather a surprise. \ The speaker was a soldier, and therefore one was justified in being quite certain beforehand that he was going to utter the same profound truths—or everlasting platitudes—about war as the other two. I folded my, hands, hoped that Elizabeth ■would behave with due decorum, and allowed my mind to become an amiable vacuum—a process that becomes distressingly easy as these weeks slip by. But I was jerked back again with a shock of surprise. This man was not saying the correct things. He had taken as his text—for you have a text on these occasiohs, however well you disguise the pill—those words which were so popular with the Greeks:

Written by MARY SCOTT, for the ' Evening Star."

“ Nothing too much,” and he had quoted Aristotle as remarking that virtue is “a mean state in the sense that it aims at hitting the mean.” Still quoting, he pointed out that, just as good health can be destroyed by an excess of either food or drink, so can such virtues as temperance, courage, patriotism he injured by either too much or too little of the quality, “ Don’t run away, or you’re a coward; but don’t say you’re afraid of nothing. That’ll only prove you a fool. Don’t indulge in too much pleasure or you 11 be a useless person, but don’t shun all pleasure or you’ll be a bore.” This was 'excellent. Moderation —- and in wartime. The speaker had all my attention now and my hands were , itching to applaud. He turned the subject aptly, to schools, telling his entirely interested audience that in Victorian times parents and teachers had believed in a rigid and iron discipline. The result was that those who had suffered, under the system hated discipline for the rest of their lives; perhaps that was why the pendulum had swung, back and an excessive liberty had been allowed in many schools—- “ but not, of course, in this one ” with n charming _ bow at the embarrassed staff. This complete liberty, again, was a mistake; later in life those men and women who had never known discipline in youth had learnt to regret it. ■ Parallels were endless; I could suggest many myself, for not long ago I had read of a child mysteriously ill. After many doctors had shaken their heads over the case it was discovered that the boy—child of modern and high-brow parents—was actually suffering from an excess of vitamins. Again, only last week a friend complained to me that she had always thought sunbathing so good for you—and she had been ill for a week as a result of too much indulgence ■in this health cure. As for politics—burning and dangerous question at the moment—who could not offer examples where an excess of liberty had done almost as much damage as the lack of it? Moderation in all things. That was just what the speaker was saying at the moment, and what more opportune at a time when we are one and all in danger of rushing wildly to extremes? But only, some people will say, by allowing excesses of patriotism and enthusiasm can a nation bear the prolonged agony of a war such as this. Well, this soldier didn’t think so. He pointed out—but tolerantly, not savagely—that it was because Hitlerism rejected all liberty and believed_ in the cruellest of disciplines that it was about to compass its own destruction. In Russia the same argument had gained ground under the specious excuse that it was an emergency doctrine. “We in the British Empire must learn to be content with the halfway house of moderation.” _ As important, then, the spirit of “ Nothing too little ” as of “Nothing too much.” Aristotle had said so; glancing at his watch, the soldier smiled and said the same. He had not exceeded his time by 30 seconds, and he had given us all a sane idea at this zero hour.