THE BIG PARADE

Hokitika Guardian, 29 October 1927, Page 4

THE BIG PARADE

(From the “SATURDAY REVIEW.” London.)

We Intel hoped that the wave of selldepreciation which some time ago reached its high water mark as a silly season topic in the Press and expressed itself in talk about England being “done” had gone the way of all rubbish ; apparently we were wrong. That talk and ceaseless propaganda of other nations less given than ourselves to modesty have evidently hail their effect, and there is frequently noticeable in the utterances of members of the public an implication that nowadays England and the English are good.for nothing. Last week when Miss Betty Xuthall won a creditable victory over Mrs Mallory, the American, at Wimbledon, a writer in one of the daily papers delivered himself ol the billowing ecstatic paean ; ■“ -Miss Betty Xutlmll’s victory over Mrs Mallory is, to my mind, one of those occasions on which we should Ring up our hats and yell our loudest. She is young. She is English.” The hysterical tone of this pronouncement, the invitation to yell, the italics and the rest are indicative of more than a lack of control ; they are indicative of a lack ol confidence. We may no longer take an English victory in the traditional English way; if an English woman chances to win a sporting contest to-day it is suggested that the event is so extraordinary and startling that it merits our behaving like lunatics.

Or take another instance. V lien a woman aviator was asked the other day bv a Press representative her opinion of the project of the Englishman, ( antain Courtney to fly to Xew York and hack, she replied, “ Isn’t it a splendid thing to think that we still have people in England ready to embark on such a hazardous adventure I' ” I hat is not a splendid thing to think ; it is a disgraceful and shameful tiling to think. Why should anyone suppose that we have not such men in England in their thousands? "Still”? What has happened to make anyone imagine they are fewer than before?

We' are going to believe the’American legend in spite of ourselves. We are getting an American mania. A contributor examines the fallacy that in the emulation of American methods can lie found the solution of our industrial problems. We have apparently even begun to think that. Recently Lord Haig, in a speech which was not tactful but was certainly true, remind

ed the country of what it seems to have forgotten, and that is the stupendous part it played in winning the war. Our own trumpets are mute, and the world, which is deceived by the sound and lurv of the Big Parade, is gradually coming to believe that the war was won on the other side of the Atlantic. That is good neither for our self-re-spect nor for the respect in which the world holds us.

The extraordinary thing about this process of deliberate national propaganda is the coin plat eney with which the English allow it without protest or counter-demonstration. The virtue o modesty can be carried to a point where it becomes a vice. To keep a contemptuous silence may he a sign oi strength, so long as the silence is really contemptuous. But it, as seems probable, the silence is becoming one of unwarranted humility, then it is a danger to our national moral.