WHAT HOMER SAYS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLIII, Issue XLIII, 8 April 1909, Page 1

WHAT HOMER SAYS.

Bryce, quoting Homer, describes admirably the seed-germ of such a movement fn the words — "And thus anyone was saying as lie looked at his neighbour." If that was true in Homer's day much more true is it now, when the daiiy press feeds tho mass of the people with news, comments, and suggestions twice at least every day. Whether it bc a million people in a city, or fifty million people in a nation, they are all, about the same time, leading the same news and discussiug the same questions. As men meet each other in their travelling or their business, during the meals or in their gonial hours, the millions of minds within one natural circuit are all bent in much the same diraction. This increase in the solidarity of the people must give a greater volume and a fiercer flame to the public mind when it is once aroused. True, it does not explain the arousal of that mind, but it certainly must accelerate the action of tho people when their tumultuousness i6 gathering into a wave. Then in tho press or by some speaker a suggestion is made which acts like a. park in a powder-magazine. Who strikes the spark or how it comes seems to be almost immaterial. It is a suggestion which fires all imaginations, appeals to all minds, and unites all wills in one resolve. The conjurer throws up an armful of separate rings into the air, and then links them in a second into a continuous chain. So the thousands of separate and individual minds are thridded by the suggestion of the idea into one united will and hope and desire. But before the spark can fire the magazine, there must have been a magazine lying there, ready, ex|jjsed, waiting, one might almost say. And the true secret of the movement lies rather in the magazine than in the spark. There must be, lying down there in the depths of the many minds, a- kind of unexpressed community of desire. They all are tending in one direction in an instinctive and inarticulate kind of way. Then the spark comes. It flashes from one to another. All find that they are united in one great outburst of popular feeling.