SILVER AND GOLD.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 4 October 1924, Page 13

SILVER AND GOLD.

SPEECH AND DEMOCRACY. (Ry Cyrano, in the Auckland Star.) Weary of the flood of talk in a particularly “windy” session, New Zealanders may envy America the possession of a President who holds his tongue. Mr. Coolidge, so we have been informed, declines to be drawn by attacks, and his strength with the public is his reputation for taciturnity. He certainly has that reputation. There is a story of him that he summoned a man to see him, kept his visitor sitting in his presence in silence for an hour, and then thanked the other for giving him a chance to think. Yet silence and a liking for silence are not American traits. Probably there are no people in the world, certainly in the Anglo-Saxon world, more fond of the sound of the human voice. The average American will not only talk the sun down the sky in conversation, but make a speech at the slightest provocation and listen to one at any time of the day or night. To do him some justice, I gather that his average effort is better than ours. Dickens noted the national love of oratory, especially of the “spread-eagle” kind, and made such immortal fun of it that Mr. Chesterton thinks his Elijah Pogram will outlive America itself. Is American appreciation of Mr. Coolidge’s silence a sign that the old love of resounding word-spinning is weakening? The distrust of speech is old. “He that hath knowledge spareth his words,” says the Book of Proverbs. “Speech is silver; silence is gold’’ is a German proverb. “Speech is great,” said Carlyle, with unconscious irony, “but silence is greater,” which may have been one of the things that prompted Morley’s remark that Carlyle preached the gospel of silence in twenty-odd,, iplumes. Democracy offers this paradox, that it must be based upon discussion, and therefore there must he a great flow of speech for its health; yet there are many men who are instinctively and ineradicably distrustful of oratory. There is a widespread feeling that the capacity to talk goes often with an empty head and the soul of the demagogue. “Oh, he’s all talk,” is one of the commonest verdicts passed uppn public men. Or, as an Auckland lady expressed it about a voluble M.P. whom she had admired until she heard him give an election address —“he’s nothing but an empty kerosene tin.” The English, who.probably distrust oratory more than any people in the world, have given their affairs into the hands of orators—to Gladstone, for example, who, according to the gibe of his great rival, was “intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity,” but the taciturnity of some of their, favourites points to a distrust of the man of many words. The Duke of Devonshire, for example, was trusted partly because there was a conviction that he was absolutely straight and had no axe to grind, and partly because he said very little. Kitchener, howeyer, was the most striking example. Here again the feeling that he was absolutely honest arid disinterested counted for much, but there was also a disposition to contrast this man of deeds with men who, in the popular estimation, talked a great deal, but did little. Kitchener, however, is said to have suffered as Minister of War through his taciturnity. He could not argue with the lawyers of • the Cabinet.

The silent Englishman is a tradition. Mr. Kipling has exploited it. Some of you may remember his heroine “William the Conqueror,” who refused a man employed in teaching Wordsworth to Indian children out of “annotated cram-books.” She explained that she liked men who “did things.” So does Mr. Kipling, and the talkative politicians are, directly or by implication, condemned in comparison. The late Henry Seton Merriman wrote a whole shelf-full of novels with the silent English “do-er” a? the main theme. He, too, seems to have had a low opinion of men of words. The real oldfashioned Tories, of whom there are a few left, like Mr. Charles Whibley and Mr. Leo Maxse, scoff at democracy for this among other reasons. Fancy, they say, choosing your rulers by their power to speak! Certainly it is not the best of tests, but is there a better? The Whibley-Maxse school would like a silent dictator, but fortunately their countrymen would not.

The friends of democracy might carry the war into the enemy’s camp. Is the silent man always strong and able? Are there not many men who get an undeserved reputation for wisdom by looking inscrutable and saying little? The sphinx in politics, says Morley of Napoleon 111, is often a charlatan. “The most silent people,” says Hazlitt, “are generally those who think most, highly of themselves. They fancy themselves superior to everyone else; and not being sure of making good their secret pretensions, decline entering the lists altogether.” Qf the type that says little because it has little to say, Mr. Padge, in “The Diary of a Nobody,” is a choice example. “The Diary of a Nobody,” by George and Weedon Grossmith, has been ranked amongst the classics by three excellent judges — Lord Rosebery, Mr. Birrell, and Mr. Belloc. “Take, for instance,” says Mr. Belloc, “that immoderately common type, among the most common of God’s creatures, which I will call ‘the Silent Fool,’ the man who hardly ever talks, and when he does, says something so overwhelmingly silly that one remembers it all one’s life. I can recollect but one Silent Fool in modern letters, but he pomes in a book which is one of the half-dozen immortal achievements of our time, a book like a decisive battle ... a glory for us all. I

mean ‘The Diary of a Nobody.’ In that you will find the silent Mr. Padge, who says ‘That’s right’ —and nothing more.” Yet Mr. Padge had his friends, and probably there were those who thought him a profound fellow. No, it is not safe to place absolute reliance on the saying that still waters run deep.