PASSING NOTES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24254, 23 March 1940, Page 6

PASSING NOTES

As the Deputy Prime Minister said in Auckland last Wednesday, “ One of the most amazing things to attempt to justify is the Russian attack on Finland.” Much more might Mr Fraser have said, and with less adjectival restraint. For “ amazing ” is far from adequate to characterise the second attack on Finland by propaganda that supplemented the first attack by arms. Rarely have we seen a stranger feat of mental gymnastics. Were Sir Arthur Sullivan alive to-day he would not need a Gilbert to provide a libretto for one of those rollicking topsyturvy, melodious delights that have enlivened the stage of recent generations. Already Mr Chamberlain’s revelations in the House of Commons of the aid requested by stricken Finland, and promised and given, have come as a godsend to some quarters as proofs of the perfidy' of Finnish intrigues. For, as early as January last, Marshal Mannerheim was in direct communication with the “ capitalistic ” democracies asking for the despatch of 50,000 troops to slaughter Russian soldiers. In black and white were here shown the warmongering designs of Finnish imperialists. Russia was fighting with her back to the wall. At any moment during the past three or four years the Mannerheim Line might have risen from its base, heaved itself on Leningrad, swept on to Moscow like a steam-roller, and upset the Kremlin into the Moskwa. The danger had to be “ prevented.” But let no villainous tongue of foreign propaganda call this war a “ preventive war ” —that lowfest and most condemnable device of imperalistic war lords —fit only for Oriental barbarians like the Japanese who fought to “ prevent ” a rising China. How could the Finnish war have been a “ preventive war ” when —as Pravda editorials and Molptoff himself repeatedly stated —there was no Finnish war at all

The condemnation of Finland as the guilty aggressor, and the laudation of Russia as the righteous victim is not merely “ amazing,” as the Deputy Prime Minister puts it. It is more than that. It is one of the most remarkable and symbolic phenomena of our times, a psychologicosocial problem that urgently demands a solution from the social psychologist. The solution would throw a world of light on a mass of other phenomena that have long bewildered and puzzled. A' physio-logico-psychological explanation that meets the case is the mystery known as the “flatness of view.” As is well known, the eyes of an infant at first see everything as a flat surface. No conception has he yet of depth or distance or perspective. When he waves his arms about, as if addressing a meeting, he is merely groping to touch objects that seem close at hand, but aren’t. Only by a period of experience, and by the co-operation and mutual correction of his two eyes, does the infant work towards a three-dimensional sight. This, of course, is a matter of mere physical vision. Not so early in life does the mental vision abandon its two-dimensional, flat-surface view of things. Only by long experience, by repeated trial and error, does a mind with flatness of vision acquire a sense of depth and perspective. Some men lose this flatness of vision early, some late, some never. And a man suffering from flatness of mental vision never knows he has it. Hence his perfect sincerity. Herein lies, in concentrated form, the whole question of the value of “ experience ” —a question that transcends all education, defies all teaching, and is now the paramount problem of the age.

The purely optical side of this interesting phenomenon of “ flatness of view ” is explained at length in a popular medico-legal novel by a widely-read author. Two witnesses in a murder trial depose, to have actually viewed the killing through two small holes in the wall. Such corroborated evidence of what four eyes actually saw appeared to leave the unhappy prisoner in the dock without a foot on which to stand. But the scientific Counsel for the Defence proved that what the witnesses saw was merely a flat movingpicture purposely arranged to mislead. Said Counsel for the Defence to the jury: You may object that these men would have seen the difference between a picture and a real room. Perhaps they would, even in that dim light—if they had looked at the scene with both eyes. But each . man was looking with oftly one eye, through a small hole. Now, it requires the use of both eyes to distinguish between a solid object and a flat picture. To a one-eyed man there is no difference —which is probably the reason why oneeyed artists are such accurate draughtsmen. They see the world around them as a flat picture, just

as they draw it. In all this there is a deadly significance. All around us there are “ flat-minded ” men viewing the world through a small hole —or, which is the same thing—through one eye. And some of them are in key positions. It is “ flatness ” of mind that distinguishes one public man from another, or one politician from another. And no power on earth can distinguish between them. Sometimes loquacity is a distinguishing mark, for the “monoculous ” man has generally the most to say, and is generally the man who “ speaks his mind.”

Says Harold Nicolson in the Spectator—extracted in Thursday’s Otago Daily Times: There is that phrase “ highbrow,” by which the indolent seek to escape the effort of appreciating difficult things. The defenders of this infantile phrase contend that it applies only to certain forms of pedantry, and does not apply to the more serious attainments of human genius. This is not true. Many thousands of young men and women have found in this phrase an excuse for ignoring those attainments, and for relapsing without the slightest qualm of intellectual conscience into the effortless enjoyment of unimportant things, 1 do not mean by this that average people should pretend to enjoy works of art, literature, or music which are beyond their understanding. All I contend is that the unscrupulous use of this phrase tends to diminish respect for the higher levels of human . thought and imagination

Which casts explanatory light on some dark places and intensifies the obscurity of others. The habit of elevating the eyes, and, of course, with them the eyebrows, too, will gradually give a man—as well as make him —a highbrow. Good Latin, though not of the best, would call him “ supercilious ” —that is, raised as to the “ cilia.” And highbrowishness includes all the thoughts and feelings which this facial grimace accompanies Yet the man who makes play at me with his depressor muscles —that is, looks down at me along his nose, with lowered eyes and eyebrows—must surely be a lowbrow. Incidentally, we may note the different acceptations which the word “ snob ” has assumed in England and in New Zealand. In England a “snob” is he who behaves

with servility before his social superiors. He is a tuft-hunter, with eyes turned upwards—and with eyebrows high. Thackeray pillories him in his “ Book of Snobs.” In New Zealand, however, the glance of the snob is mostly from above downwards. Is he a lowbrow or a highbrow? No New Zealand Thackeray has yet discussed him.

More on the “ Oxford accent.” A writer in the Spectator complains of the misuse of this “ facile and meaningless phrase.” He says: Were this expression only used to deride a particular intonation expressive of social superiority, were it confined to the Dundreary drawl, then I should welcome it as calculated to drive from our language a particularly offensive affectation. But the point is that it is not so confined. It is applied to the educated accent as such. The 8.8. C. announcers, for instance, seem to me to speak excellent standard English, nor do I detect in their soothing inflections the slightest desire either to humiliate or to pose. Yet the very fact that they pronounce our language in an educated manner arouses feelings of disquiet (disguised as merriment) among those who do not possess the accent. The Scots. I

am glad to feel, suffer from no such

inhibitions. It is only the halfeducated English who become an-

noyed. With this may be collated a recent statement by the chairman of a British picture organisation: “ The objections of the dominions to the exaggerated Oxford accent have been met by the elimination of ’ hawhaw ’ speakers.” What really is the Oxford accent? No Englishman will agree with the description given by Dr Vizitelly, an American lexicographer of English birth—his name notwithstanding: The people of Oxford have stead-

ily debased the coinage of English speech with emasculated voices and idiosyncrasies. They cannot ask you to dinner: they ask you to “ dinnah.” They do not come to a “ lecteur they come to a “ lectchah.” They believe in “ cultchah.” Instead of saying “Oh no,” they say “Oo noo ” or “Aw naw,” or even "Ow now.” While butter remains “ buttah ” and plates are “ plytes ” in the land of my birth I prefer the land of purer speech—the land of my adoption

The Spectator writer is undoubtedly more correct than the Anglo-American lexicographer. The phrase “ Oxford accent ” is widely used by people who know little about it. An hour or two spent in an Oxford students’ club would reveal the fact that the Oxford accent is not one, but many; that it has itself no standard; that it is a kaleidoscope of varying accents, interspersed with individual exaggerations of varying degrees of heinousness. Also that the Oxford don ignores it, and has probably grown out of it. Two elements of the more extreme type of this Oxford accent strikes the ear as with hammer strokes. One is the striving of some Oxford students, with varying success, to produce a pure and undefiled “ah” for a final “er.” The other is the “ mixed ” pronunciation of the vowel of “ oh.” Phoneticians sometimes transcribe it “ oeuy,” or something of the sort. More ordinary mortals may get it by taking the “ eu ” of the French “ feu ” and adding “ oo ” to it, the while protruding the lips as if to—well, as you see on the emotion pictures on certain occasions. Both elements are stock figures of fun on the English comic stage when the inane young nobleman or the farcical curate does his turn. But the Oxford accent, stripped of its exaggerations, as well as the higher level of English speech as a whole, has the priceless merit of clear articulation and lip-mobility. Says another American writer:

The British utterance has a richer tonality; a greater tenseness and terseness, a wider spread of pitch and speed than the American. . . . It has an orchestrated effect. I have heard New Zealand described as “ the land where English is spoken with closed lips.” Nay, more. . I have heard of North Island parents who complain that their sons, sent to Dunedin for their University education, return almost as mumbling inarticulates. Said one such parent. “ I can’t hear a damn word he says. It must be the climate.

A new variation of an old story The dictator was anxious to find out what the common citizen thought of him. . He knew his chief advisers probably deceived him. so he ordered a young officer whom he could trust to go out and talk to everyone and find out what was thought. After much evasiveness on the part of those to whom he spoke ihe officer found a man in a cafe who seemed inclined to trust him. “Tell me.” asked the officer “ what you really think of our leader.” After much furtive lookine round to see he was not observed, the man leaned over and said in a low voice. 41 Well, one has to be careful, but between you and me I rather like him.” Civis.