Power Of The Human Voice

Northern Advocate, 15 December 1939, Page 3

Power Of The H uman Voice

Whenever I hear Hitler speak I think of Dick Sheppard, writes Howard Marshall in the “Daily Mail.” No two men could have keen more dissimilar. No two men could have seen life and its meaning from such diametrically opposed angles.

One evening, though, Dick Sheppard switched on the wireless and heard by chance a German voice. ‘‘There,’ he said, “is a tremendous personality. I don't understand German. But that man’s dynamic.” The voice belonged to Hitrer. at the beginning of his career.

From that chance twiddling of the knob came an idea. Supposing, by some not impossible invention, we could pick up and rcbroadcast voices from the past. The voice of Christ, let us say, speaking the Sermon on the Mount.

What would be the -effect? A voice speaking in Aramaic, remember. We should "not understand it. And yet, don't you agree that it might shake this tortured world of ours into sanity again? No barrier of language could hide that overwhelming personality. The voice and all that lay behind it would be enough.

Voices, indeed, tell us more about our fellow-men than any other characteristic. Your voice. Hitlers voice. My voice—all of them are coloured by personality.

It is a little disconcerting to realise that we haven’t the slightest idea what our own voices sound like unless we hear them played back at us from a record. Do you know your own voice? You think you do, perhaps. But I assure you that you arc vastly mistaken. Unnerving Experience. Now and again I have to listen to seme broadcast or other in which 1 have taken part. It’s an unnerving experience. Is this sepulchral fellow. I think, really the same individual who sings in his bath in such an apparently light and cheerfuj. tenor? It is, perhaps, merciful that a trick of Nature hides our own voices from us. Do 3 r ou want to know how you greet the-world, though? Then stand close up to a pane of glass. Cup your hands over your cars and listen la your voice as it reverberates. But don’t blame me if you feel compelled to embrace the silence of a Trappist monastery forthwith. What other speaking voice from the past would you choose to hear? A game, I suggest for those who cannot sleep. Six voices from the past, let us say, not for the message they have to give us, but for the personality they would assuredly reveal. I asked my wife for her list, and she chose Queen Elizabeth. St. Francis of Assisi, St. Paul, Napoleon. Oliver Cromwell and Nurse Cavell.

Rather a highbrow list. I thought. But, perhaps I was unwise to suggest Mrs Beelon instead of Oliver Cromwell.

My own six would be Shakespeare, Thomas a’Kempis, Isaack Walton. Dr. Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, and honest, kindly Tom Cribb, champion of England a hundred years ago. Which is also a little highbrow, now I come to think of it, and doubtless discloses a lamentably narrow mind. 'What is it. anyhow, which interests us in a voice? Net a singing voice, for that is an instrument deliberately tuned. Nr,—the ordinary speaking voice, whether it bids us good morning or comes booming at us through the loud-speaker against a background cf frenzied cheers. It Shapes Our Destinies. Mere and more our destinies arc shaped by tire power of the human voice. The world, no doubt, would be a saner place without speeches of any kind. And. for that matter, without orators. For- good or ill, however, the microphone has opened the floodgates of speech and given a new force to the human voice and a new shape to oratory. The effects of broadcasting have been strange. The demagogue is stripped of his trappings. The list which hammers the table with such effect during a public oration merely causes a technical hitch in a BBC studio. Mass emotion doesn't carry the broadcast speaker on its wild tides. He must rely on his voice alone. Above all. therefore, he must be sincere.

A disembodied voice hides nothing from the listener. And broadcasting may introduce a new honesty into public speech.

What of Hitter, then? His Speeches may be effective rhetoric. , Bute they are bad broadcasting. He speaks- to a crowd and not to the individual. He neglects the microphone. it is strange that neither he nor Mussolini seems to have realised how much more widely 'effective they would be if they studied the quieter technique of broadcasting. The script of a good broadcast talk would shock the grammarian and the English stylist. It would be colloquial and loosely knit. The sentences would trail off in the casual manner of ordinary conversation. Simple and Direct. For all that, it would be simple and direct. It would make its points. And it would compare most favourably with an extract from “Hansard,” that mausolemn of , parliamentary sr c echos. Formal oratory, in fact, is dying. But personality remains. And here is anotner game. Reading character from the voice. •• ,- You will decide, perhaps, as you listen to him, that Mr Chamberlain is stubborn. In’Sir Samuel Hoare you may detect anxiety. Mr Hor-e-Belisha will show self-confidence. President Roosevelt gives us a feeling of massive strength. In Mr Eden’s voice there is pugnacity. In .Mr Churchill's imagination.