“THE ENGLISH MAKE ME WILD’

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 48, 26 February 1938, Page 12

“THE ENGLISH MAKE ME WILD’

An American Broadcaster Tells Us With a Disarming Charm Just What He Really Thinks Of England and Englishmen

makes me wild about the English is that

they don’t make me wild, said “An American,” in a recent 8.8. C. broadcast address. It is somehow a reflection on my judgment that they don’t. The trouble is. I like the English. I know I ought to be horrified by their hyprocrisy, angered by their stupidity, and annoyed by their misuse of the American language—but I’m not. Let me say now to the great British public: “My friends, I forgive you all.” . I can even forgive you for being dirty. I don’t mean dirty .in your minds. On the whole, the English are not dirty in their minds. Isn’t their motto “Honi soit qui mal y pense?” I mean Just plain dirty. Sloppy. It’s well known that In England you have to get a maid from Austria or at least from Scotland if you want a clean and well-ordered house. In offices, I find, English people file most things on the floor. And soupstained tablecloths and dirty silverware are the rule in eating places up and down the land. Just the other day a waitress bringing me my morning coffee spilled some of it into the saucer and over the saucer on to the tablecloth and me. “Wait! Wait!” I said. “It’s dripping!” And she said: “Does it matter?”

There, in three words, you have the English philosophy; “Does it matter?” And that’s where the English have us. Because, if you take a long view, it simply doesn’t—nine times out of ten. And that’s what I find so disarming, so appealing, so satisfying about the English; their Sense of Proportion. They don’t blow their motor horns in protest against a fifteen-minute traffic block. They wait patiently. They know their time isn’t all that valuable. What If they do miss the first act of the play? It will be very much like the first act of a lot of plays, for nowadays in London the plays are all the same old thing, anyhow, except those that come over from New York. And they don’t tear their hair and wring their hands over unrequited love, either. Ask any Englishman who has been turned down by the girl he loves and he’ll tell you there are plenty of good fish in the sea. I’ve never quite understood what that means, but apparently, if you have enough sense of proportion, a grilled herring is as good as a girl any day. And they don’t scream and yell, and refuse to pay, when the income tax gets so high that they are literally working three months out of every year for the Government. After all, in a f?w years they’ll be dead and beyond the reach of the tax collectors. The income tax may mean they cannot keep their motor-car, but they can keep their sense of proportion and ride around on that. They’re so right in all this, the Er. What does it matter whether railway trains or 8.8. C. programmes start on time or end on time? A few minutes one way or the other will make very little difference in a hundred years. One person here or there may be driven insane by the agonising intervals on the 8.8. C., with or without the benefit of bells, but there are no doubt others who perfer it when silence is broadcast.

In America, of course, the broadcast programmes start and end on the dot, but the Amer icans are mad anyway, and besides they have to please their listeners over there or else no advertiser would pay for the privilege of broadcasting. Here, in England, what does it matter? • And speaking of the 8.8. C., there is that charming man who announces the news. You know, the one who clicks his teeth and i;urns the page and says: “There will be snow.” Hu’s axactly what I mean, and that’s why I admire him so. He has a sense of proportion out of all proportion. He gives the news as if it hacin’t happened at all. Which is exactly right, because there is rarely enough real news to fill half-an-hour, and he knows it. If war broke out in Europe, I’m sure he’d say: “The second news. War has been declared and mobilisation orders have been issued. . . . Cricket. . . .” But the 8.8. C. isn’t the only place where the English sense of proportion has come into full flower. There’s the cinema, too. (Or should I say “the cinematograph,”) When the cinema came along, the English said: “This is too easy. You turn a thingummy—a camera—on to a stage play, and„you have a film, haven’t you,” They didn’t take much trouble over it. They secretly hoped that the fad would die out soon. ;md even if it didn’t, no matter. As for realising that film technique is a very different thing from stage technique and working night and day to do it really well —they were much too well-balanced for any insane American nonse~*e like that. Of course, now, some years later, they are facing the fact that films are different from the stage and they are turning out really good things like “The Ghost Goes West” and “Storm in a Teacup.” But how right they were not to take the whole thing too seriously. There are so many things in the world more important tha i a good film. But don’t misunderstand me: I don’t mean that anything in the world is very importan t—if you have a sense of proportion. If only th e rest of the world realised that, the English would be so much better understood, poor things. You may have heard that the English have the reputation abroad of being slow to accept new ideas. That is because they know that most ideas are not really new, anyway. Accordingly, they are quite rightly suspicious of any idea. If it’s a good one, why hasn’t it long since become accepted in England? Take the idea of refrigeration. In 1925, if I said to an English friend: “Why don’t you have an ice-box?” the answer was always the same: “But one doesn’t need one, does one? One keeps one’s food in the meat safe doesn’t one?” If to-day I say to the same friend: “I see you have an ice-box,” I get this answer: “But one must have a frij., musn’t one? One couldn’t keep the food fresh otherwise, could one?” Now that sort of thing is very bewildering to foreign visitors. They don’t immediately see how right the English are to be suspicious at first and then to accept an idea so whole-

heartedly. It makes them call the English slow. What’s more, it makes them say the English have no sense of humour. Surely, they say, a person ought to realise it when he makes a complete change-over like that, and laugh at himself for doing it. And no matter what I say in defence of the English, these critics will persist in their point of view. Sometimes I almost think they are right.

Sometimes I fall back on saying that it may be easy for them to laugh at the English, but that’s because every nation laughs at the things it cannot understand. The last time I tried that one, another American said: “Except the English. They sneer.” Well, that’s true, you know. That’s very true. A greater nation of sneer6rs never walked the earth than the English. They sneer at foreign fashions (and they take them up a couple of years later). They sneer at every dictionary except the Oxford, although that otherwise excellent work actually begins every word in the language with a capital letter. They sneer at Americans for thinking only of business—it’s so bad for British trade. They sneer at Australians for talking like Londoners—and at Frenchmen for talking like Frenchmen. They sneer at Italy for her imperialism, because the British Brand is They sneer at German censorship, and then won’t let me say half the things I’d like to say. Yes, indeed, when it comes to sneering, the English can out-sneer anybody anywhere. But it’s O.K. with me. There’s nothing I like better than a good wholesome sneer. Besides, the English have got to have some defence against outside cr .Icism. There are some things you cannot laugh off—like Intervention in Non-Spain—and then what can you do but sneer?

Of course, it’s partly shyness that makes the English sneer. They’re awfully shy and unsure of themselves, the English, and who has a better right to be than “Know thyself,’ said the Greeks. But for all his classical education, that’s one bit of Greek the Englishman couldn’t swallow. He runs from self-analysis as from a plague. It seems indecent to him, and sacrilegious, to try to know himself, to examine his own motives, to get to the bottom of his prejudices and his fears. Poor chap, under the searching eye of the foreigner he is very ill at ease. Suppose the other fellow should see him as he is? That’s an awful thought when you don’t know what you are yourself. It might not be a pretty sight at all. For my part, my sympathies are all with the Englishman. Let him sneer, I say. It’s a lot better than bursting into tears, as any other child would do. Besides, if he is able to sneer, he can listen to a talk like this without batting an eyelid. Thanks to his admirable sense of proportion, he can lean back and suck at his pipe in that awful, maddening, smug and complacent English way and say: “The English make him wild, indeed. Why, the man’s wild already—wild and woolly. He must be, musn’t he? After all, he’s an American.” And so far as he is concerned, that settles it.