SAYING TOO MUCH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21130, 12 March 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

SAYING TOO MUCH.

STRONG SILENT ME.N.

BY KOTARE

The proverbs of the world abound in sage counsel on the control of the tongue One judges that, every nation has felt the danger that lies in unrestrained or unwise speech. And as man is incorrigibly didactic, and is never slow to tell other people how they should conduct their lives, there is no injunction more frequently bandied about than the one probably set going by Adam in the Garden of Kden : " He careful what you say." China has a proverb, " Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know." That special piece of wisdom so impressed Confucius that he embodied it in one of his own maxims: "If you speak a lot you are certain to say something that should not be said." The Arab felt this so strongly that he coined a proverb, "A wrong word is more dangerous than a false step." And as a further justification of this view, "The word which thou keepest behind thy lips is thy slave; tho word which thou hast said is thy master." The Russian puts it this way; "Tho less you say, the more you hear." Pythagoras taught that a man should be silent unless he was certain that what he. had to say was of more value than silence. 80 you have Polonius, the most garrulous old humbug in literature, singing the praises of silence, or at least of circumspection. (jive every man thine enr but few thy voice; Take each man's censure but reserve thy judgment. Silence Pays. That is to say, find out every other man's opinion but don't give your own. This proverbial wisdom is rarely on the highest levels of morality. The proverb seems to focus the caution of the community. If frowns on adventure, it. insists on playing safe. Its model is the successful man, the man who has made fewest, mistakes himself and has taken the best advantage of other people's mistakes. Your proverb is almost always prudent and usually pusillanimous. It is liie community's answer to the question: What pays best ? It will commend honesty because it usually pays to have a reputation for honourable dealing. Even when it commends the spirit, of adventure it is because casting bread upon the waters is often the surest, way to multiply it. And apparently this stratum of prudential morality in mankind has thrown up all over the world tho conviction that the best rewards in life are with the strong silent men. The man that talks puts himself in the power of the man that holds his tongue. " The only way to keep your secret from your enemies," says the Arab adage, " is to keep it from your friends." These proverbs may rise from the lower levels of human experience, but at least in their own ignoble way they represent accurate observation of life as it is lived. I wonder how far Uie of British imperialism has raised the stocks of the strong silent man. fhroughout the world, reserve, silence watchfulness are the recognised attributes of the British type. We do not cut the figure in world politics we did up to a few years ago. But in the days when our man a was at its highest, it' is likely (hat our material success was associated in the minds of the rest of the world with our supposed basal characteristic, our refusal to give any indication what wo were thinking, while simpler folks were placing themselves in our hands by their lack of reserve. Opposing Methods.

If that is so, then the rise of the United States to dominance in world affairs will compel a revision of some of these glib proverbial estimates. It is many years since I first heard prophecies of the conflict between American methods of diplomacy and our own. The American concealed what he was after by an incessant flow of apparently confidential talk, the Englishman by saying nothing, the American hid his meaning in the multitude of his words, by their cordiality, their seemingly frank self-revela-tion. Hie Englishman was obviously lying low and saying nothing. 1 don't know whether there is anything in it. There may bo a great deal/ As a matter of fact the English reserve is due not to cunning calculation of the most effective ways and means of getting the better of others, but to an essential shyness in the English character, a shyness emphasised through the discipline and self-control which marked for centuries the educational system of upper class England. The Scottish reserve is a more calculating thing. The instinct for if was there from the beginning no doubt, the distrust of all emotionalism and expansiveness; but the Scot as a member of a small struggling nation, too poor to maintain its sons and daughters at home, had to support himself in other lands! He was all the time on the defensive, watchful for the smallest advantage, determined under 110 circumstances to give himself away. The two combined have given the world tlie current idea of tlie British type.

Pros and Cons. Similarly the American native effusiveness lias been confirmed and intensified by tlie American schools. They more than any others in the modern world have stood for Ihe cultivation of expression. The smallest child is to lie educated not by being loaded up with ideas, but by being encouraged at every stage to express its own thoughts and feelings. And that is sound enough in theory. But, it. usually ends by making expression the chief thing. It does not matter what is said so Jong as the child is encouraged to say something. But, a mere gasbag is not a worthy goal for any educational process. Ease of expression is very often a snare! 1 cannot, think of any contemporary of mine whom in our student days we admired for his desolating fluency of speech and who has become a really powerful and interesting speaker. One' of the great defects of our own age is the readiness with which it, flows over into words. There is no chance of letting the waters bank up. As soon as there is a trickle in the reservoir it is run off. A great age must have forces in the national and individual life that have been massing behind barriers, gaining momentum through restraint".

I'ortunalely, I am not concerned to reach a decision in this matter. Shakespeare's Dame Quickly and Jane Austen's Miss Bates are the two supreme babblers in our literature, women who box the compass whenever they open their months, guided into a thousand irrelevant bypaths by some obscure operation of the association of ideas. Literature would be the poorer without, them, as life would be the poorer without their prototypes. The strong silent, man is irritating in a book and unpleasant in actual life. If I had to give my vote I believe I should plump for the talker. Much harm is doubtless caused by saying too much; but oven more by saying too little. After all, if means something t-o know where you are with people, and sincerity and frank friendliness can dignify even garrulity.