TELLING THE TRUTH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21118, 27 February 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

TELLING THE TRUTH.

BY BART SUTHERLAND,

"NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH."

I once jotted down a few ideas on truth, and sent them to a ladies' paper. They were not printed, but sent back with a kindly note: " An excellent essay on a subject of interest to few!" This priceless commentary on human nature cut mo to the heart, for I have ever been a doughty battler for immaculate clarity of thought; but, unsubdued, I assert my ideas once more, in the hope that the men of the community, at least, may find themselves able to look this shining-dazzling lady in the face. I treat not of truth in its philosophical sense, for in that region she is veiled to the most brilliant minds; but in the nearer aspect—in the realm of ideas, and our relations to other men, when she calls on us to cast away the learnt-by-rote conventions of our race.

Some time ago Mr. Bernard Shaw told an already Shaw-shocked world that his father had been a miserable drunkard, and most of us ranged ourselves in indignation on the side of the eminent Baptist minister who, in his reprimand, fell back on the old tag: " De mortuis nihil nisi bonum." Tags really should be suspect, the delusive battle-cries of the orthodox in their age-old war with the original mind of the prophet. After all, looking at facts fairly, may not the great dramatist be right? "If a story is to be told about my family," he says, " I prefer to tell it myself rather than leave it for a gentleman who might be out to tell lies." But apart from the question of biography the confession has an impersonal aspect, of interest to the student of mankind: it is for one thing a blasting retort to the eugenist who holds that the offspring of the bibulous are often mental defectives, and then there comes the speculation that the thought in that keen brain of his son's, and the hatred of imposture, may have been awakened, and set in daring career, because of this spectacle of domestic misery and failure. Call lor Courage. The simple courage of it! How many of us would broadcast the fact that our ancestry is not stainless ? The smirk of so-called honest pride o'erspreads our visage can we say our father is a knight, but a drunkard —no! It would take a cubit from our stature. Mr. Shaw i 3 not the only original thinker who has begged us to face and express the truth. Samuel Butler (from whom G.B.S. admits ho has cribbed ideas) says in " The Way of All Flesh": " If people would dare to speak to one another unreservedly, there would be a good deal less sorrow in the world a hundred years hence." All King Lear's tragedy was caused through his listening to the self-seeking Goneril and Regan, and in ignoring Cordelia, the true. Hardy, in that sonorous and misleading ending to " Tess." lays the blame of all the poor girl's troubles on the v.-anton gods. But it must appear to the clearminded that it was Tess' lack of forthrightness that led to her undoing; a weakness of character inherited perhaps from her improvident parents. One cannot help thinking that if she had boldly asked Angel Clare if he had read her letter of confession—pushed under his door on the eve of their marriage—instead of meekly accepting the fact that it was hidden under the carpet, much of her suffering and .that tragic- -ending--would have been avoided. Trivial Occasions.

The pity of it is that most of our lies are such mean, paltry, obvious tilings—about such contemptible subjects. We indulge in no great Sydney Carton deception. There are the lies of social necessity: "One would never manage, my dear, if one told the whole truth. One doesn't want to hurt people—white lies, you know!" Don't think I am one of those brutal persons who pride themselves on cruel frankness, on telling other poor mortals just what one thinks of their conduct of life. We all tread a nvizv path, and our task is to guide—not wound; but the plain truth is that many of these white lies are told so that our personal convenience be not disturbed.

I hope I shall not cause offence by making this case out for the ladies: Mrs. Brown rings up to say that someone is taking her out for a drive; she will be near us; will it be convenient for her to drop in for a chat? " Oh," you gush over the 'phone, " I'd be delighted, hut I've promised to go out to golf with Mrs. Smith. So sony, dear." And you put in the day at home with the blinds down, doing what yon intended doing all the time: making play frocks for little Peggy with the sewing machine moved to a hack room. In short, you spend more time in the ways of deception than if you had received the lady, made her a cup of fen, and sent her away happy. But . . .

TVlrs. Brown is nob quite to your taste: slio lias six children, no timo for games, dresses dowdily, and lias (to your refined mind) a plebeian habit of weeping over minor family tragedy. What she does not tell you is that sho is in a state of nervous depression through lack of amusement, and that the thought of talking to vou was brightening her day. In all my reading the story which haunts and accuses me most is one from a newspaper: a convict in one of the great prisons at honip—Dartmoor, I think—used to pretend to himself and the staff that lie had heaps of friends; he even went to the length of writing letters to them; but the Governor found out that these friends were imaginary, through the letters being returned. When the convict died there was one solitary wreath on the coffin: from tlie prison staff —and one knows that he would have imagined a positive bower from admiring friends. The next time you try to "put off" someone you don't want, remember him, and remember Hugo's words: "Be merciful, for all aro lighting a hard struggle." Snobbery. Then there aro the lies begotten by snobbery. llow many of us live beyond our incomes, and make ourselves vilely unhappy in the effort to appear something that we are not? Simplicity and truth are very peaceful companions. Bernard Shaw records that, oven when a young boy, bo could sec how foolish it was for his father to imagine himself superior to the Dublin tradesmen who served him. Mr. Shaw, senior, was the younger son of many younger sons of the landed gentry; one of those who, haying no property, because of the law of primogeniture, take to the professions. The tradesmen could entertain vice-royalty, and own palatial Residences at tho seaside, whilst tho Shavvs had only a cottage, but Shaw pere was smugly satisfied with the term " gentleman." It does not say much for human nature that wo have to bo put on oath, under penalty, in courts of justice. " Tho truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!" does the law reiterate for tho tuition of our tortuous minds. And yet wo thrash our children for telling what aro euphemistically called " fibs." A shrewd female relation of the Emperor Napoleon predicted of him that lie would one day rule, the world, for ho told so many lies as a child. King, indeed, ho was—of all tho liars. I myself, dear reader, am superior and astonishingly honest, although I belong to tho sex which takes 110 interest in the present subject. Even about, my ago now: I give it to everyone, arithmetically correct to the last digit. But I am out to tell the whole truth: T fondly imagine that I don't look it, and I like my friends to give a surprised cry, and say " My dear, you don't look twenty!'* Tho moment I think T look my age. I'll take off ten years without a blush. Ah, me!