WANTED, A MINISTER OF PLEASURE.

Northern Advocate, 27 August 1919, Page 4

WANTED, A MINISTER OF PLEASURE.

STATE ENTERTAINMENTS FOR ALL.

By GUY THORNE

(Glasgow Weekly Herald.)

Everyone is very busy reforming the world and remoulding life. This is the time to do it—while the metal is hot—and, as I se e it, one of our greatest needs is the deliberate, skilful organisation of pleasure. For pleasure is a necessity in human life, as necessary as beef and blankets, and up to" the present we have realised this fact less than any other nation in Europe. By "pleasure" I do not mean "culture" or the type of pleasure which takes a certain education to enjoy. I use the word in its broad sense. I mean the enjoyment which the ordinary man and woman—just ordinary prick-me-and-I-shall bleed' pjeople—would naturally choose. Pleasure, in short, as an end in itself and not as a means of what prigs call self-improvement. At the present moment there is not nearly enough pleasure to go round. The supply ought to be doubled and trebled and made available for everyone; and there is no reason whatever to prevent this being done. I am not so stupid as to imagine that pleasure can be manufactured hot from the oven, like a Bathbun. But the materials for universal and regular pleasure can be provided by the State. There will be no difficulty about the appetite ! Now to do this on lines which I shall sketch presently, there is only one way. It is centralisation. We must have a Minister of Pleasure with wide-reaching authority. DISPENSER OF JOY. Dr. Johnson—and he knew what he was talking about—once said: "To b e able to furnish pleasure that is harmless, pleasure that is pure and unalloyed, is as great a power as man can possess." I want to see some man in Britain given that power, and with it sufficient money to carry out and control a comprehensive scheme for making life a thousand times more pleasant than it is to-day. He must be a Minister of equal status with a Home Secretary as a Minister of Health. His work , unhampered by any other considerations, must be that of a dispenser of joy, and he should, above all, have the type, of mind which understands that the price of a thing like pleasure has no relation—dear or cheap—to its value. Who is to pay? That is the first question that will be asked, and I think there can be no doubt as to the answer. The people who must pay, in the first instance, for setting up the necessary machinery are the people who have all the pleasure they need already. They will put up a tough fight, of course. Monopolists always do; and the monopolists of pleasure are the greediest and most selfish of all. They are drugged with pleasure, and an exclusive diet of pleasure makes a man as hard, hollow, and bitter as a dried lemon. It is worse than cocaine. But these people must come to heel in the days approaching, and they must learn to share. In this world everyone has his personal idea of pleasure, and it would be a fatal mistake to dictate th e lines of his enjoyment to any man. That is where so many worthy folk have failed in the past. It is quite useless, and supremely, impertinent to tell a man whose joy in life is pig-eon-flying that he ought to prefer looking at pictures. To sneer at another, who finds more natural and healthy pleasure in a thoroughly good dinner than in a thoroughly good book, is to sneer at the Creator who gave us the delicate apparatus of taste and digestion. PLEASURES IN DEMAND. j But there are, all the. same, very I many pleasures which experience has proved everyone can share, and these should be available for everyone, and not the privilege of a few. Youth will be served: let us take the pleasures of youth first. Dancing should be within the reach of every boy and girl in the country. At present the dancing saloon is practically non-existent. Subscription dances are few and far between, and quite beyond the means of the masses,. Our Minister of Pleasure will change all that. There ought to be a dance hall in every town or large village. This should be built and equipped by Government, and the use of it should be free. A standard pattern of playerpiano would provide the music—the Government Mark IV. pianola—and lif e would become an entirely different thing to countless thousands of young men and women. It is an extraordinary, a wicked fact that after their day's work is done most of th e boys and girls of this country have literally no place in which tc meet but the streets. Private enterprise has done something, but ii should not b e necessary for anyone to belong to this or that church 01 social organisation—to be definite!} labelled—before light, warmth, she! ter, and social intercourse become! possible. Dancing is one of the sanest ant completesf pleasures in existence. If I were adviser to the Ministe: of Pleasure I would get him to or ganise the Government Motor Lib rary without a moment's delay. 1 fleet of motor vans would visit ever; town and the remotest countr; places with all the new books, am : the subscription should be purel; i nominal. Everyone should have ex

With all the free libraries in town, books are still an unprocurable luxury to the great mass of men and women. They ought to be delivered with the frequency of bread. One of the earliest tasks of the new Ministry would be to reform the public-house. That, of course, is an old cry, but all attempts in that direction seem to have been failures. And why Simply because wellmeaning people have endeavoured to transform the publichouse into something else. Now no one need visit a public-house unless he wants to. Yet it is perfectly obvious that the majority of people do want to. Therefore, as the public-house is a legitimate source of pleasure, the Minister of Pleasure will not try to turn it into a restaurant, a debating society, or a club. Instead of that he will insist upon a high standard of comfort. There must be chairs fit to sit upon pictures worth looking at, some really considered attempt at transforming the dingy and squalid holes of the present day into places wher e it is a pleasure to be.\ Why should the poor man who likes his pint of beer be forced to consume it in a sort of pigstye? Everyone knows th e extraordinary influence of environment, and I am persuaded that a reform on these lines would have far-reaching effects. DRAMA AND MUSIC. Within th c space of a single article it is an impossible task to do more than touch the fringe of the possibilities of a Pleasure Ministry with large powers. Imagination reels at the prospect. Why, for instance, should there be no regular travelling theatres, which should be substantial portable buildings and erected for a six weeks' stock season? What chance has the average theatre-goer of seeing firstclass plays to-day? . Practically none. The sordid and commercial spirit that runs th e stage has a rooted conviction that nothing but gaudy nonsense has the least chance of success. I am certain they are mistaken. I have seen- the huge Theatre Royal at Portsmouth packed to the limit by sailors of the fleet to witness "Hamlet." No actors ever had a mor c enthusiastic audience. Again, why should music be such a luxury as it is? There is no reason why a first-class Government band should not visit every town and village once a fortnight, playing music that the people want, and can understand. A Ministe r of Pleasure would make it one of his first tasks to force local authorities throughout the country to provide large, free open spaces for the playing of games and the necessary materials of the games. The days when lots of worthy fools would have seen something almost sacrilegious in the housemaid playing tennis are gone for ever. Indeed, all forms of sport ought to be within the reach of the very poorest. Free swimming baths and gymnasia should spring up on all sides. Each reader of this article has his or her own notion of pleasure, and none of these should remain an unrealisable dream any longer. . I have said nothing beyond the bounds of possibility. It lies with all of us to change the vision into fact, and the first step is to appoint a Ministe r of Pleasure.

It's quite true, as philosophers say, That "Where there's a will there's a way." 'Tis the secret of business success, And it comes to our aid in distress, When illness or danger assails, Or when we've hard times to endure, Firm will in our trouble avails. Lik c Woods' Great Peppermint Cure.