HUMOUR AND ACCIDENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19147, 15 April 1924, Page 11

HUMOUR AND ACCIDENT

LAUGHTER ANALYSED There is no record of the first laugh, but Air •Robert Lynd, writing in the Quarterly, has no doubt that it was caused by someone’s tripping over a stone, or falling into a river, or meeting with some similar trouble. Laughter caused in such ways is the most universal of all kinds ot laughter. Cervantes invites it and again in “Don Quixote.” Sterne calls for it in “Tristram Shandy,” Fielding revels in it in “Joseph Andrews,” and Dickens in the “Pickwick Papers.” All through comic literature we find our and villians alike being cudgelled and tossed in blankets and flung in horse ponds. They are attacked by dogs, have their teeth knocked out. ami are subjected to every kind of violence short of murder. AI ode m men aro often shocked to find that they have been laughing at buffets and bashings administered to the lovable, if misguided, Don Quixote; but Mr Lynd fancies that men will still he laughing at the Don’s disasters a thousand years hence. In the mnke-believo world of literature wo can laugh at disasters that in real life would horrify us, just as in retrospect we can laugh at accidents to ourselves that at the time of their occurrence caused us nothing but terror and pain. Literature puts us in the mood of retrospect, and our position towards a great deal of physical pain that is dealt out. so lavishly in comedy may be explained bv the fact that we’ regard it as belonging not to the present but to the past. Tho illusion of literature ii. never a complete illusion. Even- when it transports us into another world we know in our secret imaginations that it is a world in which things have not quite the same significance ns in tho world that we at present inhabit. If it were, not so, who could bear to read a tragedy? Our sensibilities in literature arc somewhat different from our sensibilities in life. On tho whole, then, we need not feel 100 sensitive to charges of cruelty in our laughter at pain and accident in comic literature. There may te a spice ot cruelty in our amusement, as in our amusement at a me inter of Parliament who sits down on bis hat, but it is an innocent cruelty, not an efficient cruelty, and that is all that ■matters. Comedy maps out our certain fields of human life—our fears, our embarrassments, our misfortunes, our hypocrisies, our rascaliles—and makes them squares in a new and delightful game.

“THE STATE AND ITS SERVANTS." TO THB BDITOBL Sir, —Your leading article today and Mr -Howard Elliott’s letter on the same subject yesterday, synchronising as they do with the failure of negotiations between the railway

servants and the Government, exhibit a. tone and convey suggestions ao hostile to the State employees generally that they cannot ho allowed to pass without criticism. Both by yourself and by Mr Howard Elliott the suggestion is conveyed that the public services are not altogether necessary services, but something in the nature ot luxuries, that there are far too many public servants, and that public expenditure on these services is something for which no adequate return is received. Mr Howard Elliott, in fact, uses the term "State dependents’’ as though the State employees were somewhat akin to pensionens. If these statements were true, what an indictment ot the present Government they would constitute after its 12 years in office. lu 1921 the Government set up ils Uniformity Committee, from which there was no appeal. It applied the axe of retrenchment, reduced the salaries of the rank and file and professed to cut down public expenditure generally to the irreducible minimum. The present unrest m the ranks of the long suffering lower paid employees indicates that the committee was entirely successful in that quarter at least. The public services supply needs created by the enormous development of the machinery of prodnetion dnring the last 100 years.. They are the natural and indispensable adjuncts of modem society. The life of the community could not possibly bo carried on without them, and their importance and the numbers employed in them must inevitably increase with the development of the country, even though such a prospect be displeasing to Mr Howard Elliott. The patience with whicn the men and women who supply these services have submitted to the exactions and restrictions of the Government has been eo great as to amount almost to a weakness. It will be unwise to try that patience to the limit* of human endurance. The public servants are rclused the political rights of ordinary citizens. Their indefeasible right to link up industrially with other workers has been denied. They are fobbed off with Appeal Boards and Promotion Boards on which the Government retains the power of control, but the decisions of which they have been led to believ© they have some voice. Thus gagged and bound hand and foot, they are ultimately driven to the reluctant conclusion that th© Government will listen to no argument unless there is a display of force behind itUnder these circumstances to characterise their long-deferred resistance as an attempt to "take the community by the throat’’ is an absurd extravagance. Mr Elliott refers to the powerful organisation of the public servants. As a matter of fact it has hitherto been weak, because it was

based upon a false assumption,—upon the naive belief that the State was or coUid be an impartial body detached from all sectional interests. The actions of the Reform Government have done much to dissipate tin® illusion during the past few years. The State employees have seen their standard ot living repeatedly reduced on the one hand, while on the other hand they have seen the money so saved applied to large remissions ot taxation to the well-to-do ana the wealthy. They have seen their mild protests and their carefully considered and moderate claims totally disregarded or,treated with contempt, until they vaguely realise the painful truth that the State, of which they are the servants, is not the impartial body of tueir dreams, but the political expression of powerful economic interests entirely opposed to their own. —I am, etc., „ Punoam, April 12. A. B. RowellTO THB RDITOIL Sm, — Your leader of Saturday, under the above heading, contains the following;—"A. strike on the part of State employees constitutes a direct challenge of the authority of the State itself.” In your iseue of thm

morning this statement of principle is extended and emphasised. This statement of position is open to criticism. There is a definite separation of function between the office of governing and the work of carrying on industrial activities. The functions of government are to legislate and to administer its laws, and to maintain the community in the exercise of civic freedom and in its protection from violation of Statute laws. Apart from these conditions the wellbeing or even the continued existence of an orderly

community could not be maintained; and it is because of the essential nature of its functions, not because it represents the State, that Imperial authority is vested in the Government. The lino of demarkation is very plain, and if the Government travels outside its basic constitutional limits and makes common cause with ths subject citizens by engaging in activities which are the rightful function of any, and in which the fundamental basis of Imperial authority does not reside, it by so doing deprives itself, to this extent and in this sphere, of that Imperial authority which appertains to it in its essential function of governing.

On tho occasion of tho dissolution of the board set np to adjust tho dispute, the railway employees made their position perfectly clean, and their position is unassailable. For except under stress of special circumstances —which do not appear in this case—it is no part of the business of an employee to discuss ways and means with the management; but it is the inalienable privilege of every member of the community to contend for and maintain hia or her economic right. The operation of tho principle of justice, however, does not end at this point. The railway service has gathered into its association general community interests of farreaching extent, and this has. been accomplished on the basis of good faith on the part of the employees that they will majn- . tain duo regard to this trust, for on this their economic right is based. A stoppage of Ibis service would be of so grave a public concern that it could be justified only after every avenue of reconciliation has been explored. Further, in the event of such an extreme measure being deemed necessary, justice to tho community demands that the time and circumstances shall not savour of vicious war on the public,—which is not a! potential party todhe dispute,—but obeli be carried out in such manner as shall inflict a minimum of damage individually and generally. In conclusion, it may b© safely assumed that the side which conducts its case with tho greater measure of forbearance and regard for the principles of lionour and justice will gain tho moral support of tho public, which, whatever temporary advantage may be gained by cither side, will be tho ultimate determining factor.—l am, etc., D. B. P.

REASONABLE OR UNREASONABLE? TO the editok. Sib,— Why this unrest in the Government cervices? The strikes of Post and Telegraph and Railway employees, which are apparently threatened, can only have the effect of penalising the great body of the public and creating bad feeling towards those who are so fur unmindful of their obligations as servants of the State as to attempt to stay

the wheels of industry, and bring the whole country to a standstill, simply because claims, reasonable or unreasonable* (I do not propose to say which), which they press upon the Government are not conceded at the point of the bayonet. What does this claim on the nart of the State servants that they must be paid wages having the 1914 purchasing power mean? Simply and solely that they—and they alone—must be relieved of their share of the burden the war has entailed upon the whole community. In 1914 the public expenditure, apart from loan moneys, was (as I see by the Year Book) £11,825,864. In 1923 it was £26,263,760. Excluding the interest paid on the Public Debt (£2,887,981 in 1914, and?ft£8,899,957 in 1923), the cost of running the State services rose from £8,937,883 in 1914 to £17,363,803, and of that increase it may be reasonably assumed that at least three millions (probably more) have gone in increased wages and salary

payments to State employees. Dunns’ tlio war, arid again in 1920, the Government made substantial increases—the first averaging £45 and the second £6O per annum—at an actual cost of £4,500,000 in the payments thus made, and that additional cost was passed on to the public, the taxpayers having to find the money, and to accept increased rates in faros, freights, postages, telegrams, and telephone charges, etc., to provide the increased revenue required for the purpose, and all this, I need hardly say, helped to send up the cost of living. In addition the Government has provided some £5,000,000 during the last ion years by way of subsidy to the several public service superannuation funds. What other section of the public is similarly subsidised? When the Government found it necessary to review the position, and introduced the Public Expenditure Adjustment Bill in 1922, providing for the bonus “cuts,” as part of the economy scheme, the public experienced a certain amount of relief, but the State employees appear to have persistently refused to admit that the State had any right to economise at their expense. We have been hearing a good deal of late concerning the alleged starvation wags and inadequate payments made to the employees of the State, but from a fairly intimate acquaintance with the men and women in other walks of life, I am satisfied tho former are on “a better wicket” than the average worker discharging similar duties in non-official life. The proceedings before the Hailway Wages Board have made it apparent that to concede the claims made by the A.S.R.S. on behalf of its members and to cover tho similar increases which would necessarily have to be paid in all other branches of tho service, would involve additional payments by the State aggregating over two and a-quarter millions. Where is the money to come from? Why, the publio must find it of course. And that means good-bye to all prospect of reducing taxation; rather will tho Taxation Office have to get busy and apply the taxation ecrew in quarters at present untouched, for the people must pay. —I am, etc., Pao Bono Publico. Wellington, April 11.