THE DECAY OF CONVERSATIONAL MANNERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2722, 16 May 1906, Page 70

THE DECAY OF CONVERSATIONAL MANNERS.

With all its advantages, the telephone has the disadvantage of abolishing the ceremonious courtesies of former and more leisurely days. There has arisen a " telephone manner,"' which is brusque almost to offensiveness. We have lately read certain directions to users of the telephone, in which we are enjoined to come to the point at once. We are to say, " Hullo ! You there? Who are you? I'm So-and-So !" As far as possible the conversation should be monosyllabic. What a contrast* to the day 6 when our great-grandfathers said, " Sir, you have the advantage of me. Permit me to hand you my card." " Sir, I am honoured to make your acquaintance." " Sir, the honour is mine." Think of the fury of the telephone girl at eucn> waste of time ! It is curious to trace the gradual change of manners brought about by swifter methods of communication. The post-card! destroyed the elaborate courtesies of the letter ; and, oddly enough, it was the late Mr Gladstone, most verbose of men, who gave the post-card its vogue. One suspects that he was, as it were, taking the pledge - of- -abstention from verbosity. Anyhow, j the post-card manner was — and remains— the antithesis of courteous address. In- ' deed, it i 6 bad form to put anything on a post-card but the bare statement you desire to make. The art of letter-writing was

scotched by the post-card, and finally killed by the sixpenny telegram ! In the same way we may date the decline of the art of conversation from the introduction of the telephone. Even if you call up a duchess on the telephone there are no graceful preliminaries. It is the bare "Hullo! Who are you?" One ■would blush at the discourtesy if one could telephone a blush. Fortunately that kat present impossible. Which leads us to the oddest point about the telephone manner. For a man will say things over the wire that he would not say over a counter. It has been noted that it is much easier to ask a man for the loan of five pounds over the telephone than in the street, or even by letter or telegram. For the telephone manner is swift, sharp — and you can always pretend not to hear. In this case time is literally money; and when a man remembers that each minute of talk means an appreciable sum of money, he hurries up, cuts the cackle. . . . ! This is all the more noticeable when one wants to talk from London to Pari6, or from New York to Chicago. The New York business man telegraphs to the Chicago man to be at the other end of the wire at such an hour. When the hour comes — minutes are dollars. Do you think he wastes time on courtesies? Not he! But in one matter the telephone has brought improvement. That is in. elocution. 0 You must talk distinctly r order to get your moneys worth. And yon are out of reach of reprisals. You can say distinctly rude things most distinctly. But the other man cannot hit you. On the whole this is a demoralising situation, for the speaker escapes responsibility. When the offended man comes round with a horsewhip it is always possible to say that it was your clerk — your secretary — anyone but yourself. It is precisely that personal irresponsibility that is responsible for the decay of conversational manners. We must invent a method of telephoning (the word is a paradox) faces as well as voices.

RUSSIA AND THE REVOLUTIONISTS. None of the Original Reform Leaders at L ar ge — A Russian Cell Described — Siberian. Exile Revived — Anniversary

of Gapon's Day Marked by Silence

St. Petersburg, January 27. — After barely two months' absence I return to St. Petersburg, and find all my former friends in prison. One after another I call upon the Liberals who welcomed me so heartily before, and the house porter tells me they have gone away for a few days. We soon learn the meaning of that formula here. It means that the police have come, probably in the middle of the night, have routed out the man or the woman, seized ali papers, money, and anything else useful, and driven their victim away in the darkness to some so-called house of inquiry on suspicion of holding the same kind of views in politics as Sir Henry CampbsllBannerman or John Morley.

In the house of inquiry the suspect in ordinary times ■will be kept some four to six months, while his spirit is being broken down and evidence raked up against him. He will then be brought up for trial before a judge, without a jury, and sentenced to two years, five years. 10 years imprisonment or exile, according to the state of the judge's political opinions or digestion.

Two advantages the Russian suspect has : he may be thrown out of prison as unexpectedly as he was thrown in. and he may ask any one he pleases, not necessarily a barrister, to take up his defence. It is very seldom, however, that the defence makes the least difference in the sentence. '• I have before me a letter from a friend who is locked up in a, house of inquiry for speaking at Liberal meetings under the -Czar's manifesto of October 30, and perhaps also for feeding the children of workmen during the second strike. The suspicion of these two crimes is sufficient to show that he must be put out of the way as rapidly as a mad dog. And I was forgetting another crime. I think that, like myself, he sometimes wrote for a progressive newspaper ; for the Czar's manifesto granted freedom if the press as well as freedom of public meeting. The letter is written on three sides, and each side is marked by a broad yellow cross drawn diagonally from corner to corner to show that th-e prison authorities have lead it. Yellow is a favourite official colour here. The letter is written simply for the information of one who hitherto has escaped the common martyrdom of all who love freedom in Russia. I will translate a few sentences: My cell is five paces long by two wid^. It has a window, the bottom of which is just above the level of my eyes, so' that 1 can't look out. There is a bed, a chair, and a table, all iron and Listened with clamps to the wall. In the daytime there is light enough, and the electric light is turned on from 8 to 9 o'clock in the evening. At 6 o'clock I get up, at 6.30 o'clock a hand is thrust through the "eye" spy-hole in tho door with some black bread. At 7 o'clock another hand pours boiling water into my jug in the same way — I have to buy my own tea. At 10 o'clock I am led out through the corridor into a little court, where I am

allowed to walk round and round for 25 minutes with other politicals. But if we speak or look at each other or say "good morning," the walk is stopped, and it is my only chance of getting a breath of air.

At 11 o'clock a bell rings and the "eye" is opened for letters or orders for purchases that I want to send out. But I am only allowed to order things four times a week, and of course only as long as my money lasts. At the same time, a hand pours in boiling water again for tea. From 11.30 to 12 o'clock is dinner time, and I get a biggish basin of watery bailey soup or pea soup or a. thin fluid with scraps of meat and cabbage floating in it. There is rather a good prison library, especially strong in political econony. But it is very hard to get the books I want, and the pages are defaced by the jailers, who always think the dots and hyphens are signals from the prisoners to each' other. In the afternoon, especially when it gets dark, I lie on my bed or walk up and down the cell till at 8 o'clock, as I said, the electric light is turned on for an hour. About 6 o'clock I get the boiling water and soup again. Sometimes letters reach me, but they are kept till they are old. Sometimes I am allowed a visit of three minutes' conversation through the "eye" in the

The treatment is not worse — it is perhaps rather better — than the peculiarly brutalising treatment of prisoners in England. But i* must be remembered that this friend of mine has never been accused, has never been tried, and is only suspected of a crime which all the leading men in England, from the Premier down, have committed within the last three weeks, amid the applause of our nation.

This particular prisoner is, as I said, in a house of inquiry, but the number of arrests has been so enormous since the Moscow rising that the suspects are now thrust into the ordinary prisons straightaway, or into ary hole where they can be kept tied up. Just across the frozen river from the Winter Palace of the Czars and the fine picture gallery in the Hermitage glitters the long-drawn brazen spire which marks the old fortress of St. Peter-Paul — the citadel and grave of Peter the Great.

Encased in hideous marble slabs, and surrounded by hideous emblems of death' and glory, there lie the bodies of all the melancholy tyrants, from Peter downward. But close by, along the Neva, so low that some of the cells are under the river level, runs the dungeon which is the true martyr's memorial of Russia — the place that will •some day be honoured like the graves of the saints. For it is consecrated by the blood and suffering " hundreds of men and women who have fought for freedom, though they fought in vain.

This is the place where, again, the foremost champions of freedom are now cooped up ; and Khrustaleff is there, the man of genius who organised the general strike and was. chairman of the workmen's committee when I described its sittings some two months ago. He will be known to all Ruraian history as the man who forced the Government to defend itself by that lying manifesto with which it has betrayed the people. L?ss than a mile farther up the river, on the same ?:de of the river, stands the large modern prison called the Cross (Krestv), whether from its shape or its Christian purpose I don't know. That also is crammed with "politicals."' Ii fact, it is the same story in all the prisons of Russia, as I saw in Moscow, Kief, and Odessa.

Somehow- room has to be made for 20.000 Liberals in the jails — that is the lowest estimate I have heard — and we cannot wond-er that a bankrupt fiovernment is only too de-iiffhted when it can kill off its prisoners by batches of 35 together, a-s in Moscow, or 45 together, as happened this we?k at Fellin in Eithonia. The dead ar<> so cheap in their subterranean cells! As you know by this time, a decree has just been published converting the dungeon of Schlusselburg into a mint. It is thought the few old prisoners still loft in that Buss-in Untile beside Ladoga Lake are now being removed.

Mystery still hangs over that horrible fortress, and another mys-tery will suo<ecd, for. except to those who hold tl'P orthodox faith about the inexhaustib'e ingots of the Russian Treasury, it is a mystcy where th" wealth is to come from that is to be coiirxl at that mint.

Tho conversion of a bloody fmtrpss into an empty coin chest makes no difference The reaction tramples along its -nay, and under it ths coun'rv lies paralysed. In the first and only number of >ne of th-e many papers that "have been there is a cartoon of the Government rs a hid-oous vampire gloiting over the body of a yountj girl. "I think I have got h-er cuiet at last," says the moii'^r with satisfaction, but still a littlo dnbiouslv.

That cartoon exactly exnre.'ses +he present situation. We saw it last Monday, the anniversary of Gapon's Day. Tho commemoration was celebrated in absolute s-ilence. The original leaders of the reform movement are- all in prison or shot. Their successors on tho union of unions i^ued an appeal calling upon the workmen

to keep the only by quitting the factories, staying at home and drawing down the blinds.

This was done by nearly all the workmen throughout the city, in spite of a counter order from the masters threatening with dismissal any one who stayed away from work. The few mills that continued open were put under strong military .guard. The steam and electric trains carried soldiers with fixed bayonets. Whenever the police saw blinds drawn down or other signs of mourning, they entered with their revolvers.

The apprehensions of the Government were proved by the countless patrols that paraded the streets and the bodies of troops hidden in the courtyards. Was the tortured body of freedom really quiet at last? The vampire was anxious and dubious. But apparently the vorng girl was dead ; certainly she was still.

A stillness like death lay over the streets, especially in the work people's quarters at night, where as a rule the pavements are crowded with men and women going home or shopping. Nearly all day and far into the night I was in those hushed and empty street".

It was intensely cold. Women -were washing clothes in holes tiey had cut through the deep ice upon the river. Men were letting down bag nets for fish. Otherwise, except in those few guarded mills, there was hardly a sign of life. No disturbance, no attempt at demonstration.

Perhaps the Governors congratulated each- other that order was restored and freedom quiet at last. They did not know that freedom's very silence was a sign that the fire of Jife still glimmer**!.

Only two things above the surface have been of interest this week. One is the terrified bloodthirstiness of that little body of unhappy men called, the Council of Ministers, who go down to Tsarskoe-Selo by a guarded tiain nearly every day to discuss how best they can stifle the hopes of liberty and retain for themselves and the little circle of friends or patrons the cash and other pleasures of power.

They do not number more than eight or ten, and from all I can hear none of them, with one possible exception, is more brutal or scoundrelly by nature than ordinary rulers are. Some — like poor distracted Witte, who goes about weeping over the wickedness of the dear children he trusted, and is now compelled to butcher; or like Count Dimitri Tolstoi, the Minister of Education ; or l'ke Schipoff, Minister of E'nance to this penniless State ; or Nemeschaeff, Minister of Communications — once enjoyed a pleasing reputation for liberalism, and now, under the ancient curse of tyrants, they are consumed by the knowledge of the virtue they have left behind

They cannot now turn, back ; they have entered upon a road with iron walls. They are committed to preserve in power that paltry handful of useless human beings who may be called the Czardom, or the Government, or the ruling classes,- the same who brought all that long tale of poverty, ignorance, and bloodshed upon the Russian people. They must go on with it now.

So they give their orders to Diedutin, Durnovo's new assistant as chief of the police, and all the finest and most thoughtful men and women in Russia, all who stand for freedom and would break the long power of an incapable and unscrupulous class, are shot, imprisoned, or driven to Siberia. The Russian people is quiet at last.

I say " driven to Siberia" because it is true. I know that in England there is a pleasant myth among the patrons or hirelings of the Czar that Siberian exile has been abolished. It is as untrue as the similar myth about flogging for taxes.

Only yesterday I met a lady whose brother, a conspicuous barrister in a large city of central Russia, has just been exiled to Siberia for five years because he took part in public meetings, Like so many others he was fool enough to trust to a Czar's manifesto, and now he pays for his simple faith.

The other point of this week has been the meeting of the Constitutional Democrats, a quiet body of delegates from all paits of the empire, including Tartars from Kazan and heathen Mongols from the uttermost parts of the East. They have been debating their tactics with a viewto the possible assembly of the Duma at some date which continually recedes.

Their debates were inevitably a little abstract, but they are practical, as Russian parties go, and at all events they are not hampered, as our Liberals so often have been, by class traditions and social influence. I mean they would never endure anything &o ludicrous as a House of Lords.

Their immediate object is to form a strong block of opposition to the rtrpesentatives of the six little reactionary parties or orders with which the Government is trying to swamp the Duma at the polls. They sat undor a deathbed portrait of Tiubetskoe, the famous rector of Moscow University, who died just when freedom appeared to be rising. That marks their methods and objects fail ly well.

For fuitber evidence I may Eay that their leading men are Struve, long the editor of the Russian paper Emancipation in Pans; Petiunke\ich, the most conspicuous <jf the Moscow Zemstvoists, and Miliukoff, so well known in England and Amenca as the author of the published Chicago lectures on Russia. He, almost alone among th-e Russians T have met this week, is still full o f hope "and enthusiasm.

"The ieaction," he said to me, "cannot last more than a week or two. Why, it is already over. The Government could not have done better for the revolution. They have shown the business people that they, not the revolutionists, are the part,y of destruction and disorder."

But Professor Miliukoff is one of those few and happy people who carry with them the glories of youth into middle age, and there is no glory like that wisdom which, as the preacher said, is the mother of holy hope.