MENTAL GOOSE-STEPPING

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 52, Issue 3750, 1 May 1936, Page 9

MENTAL GOOSE-STEPPING

In a phrase characteristically emphatic, but designed to be affectionate, the late lamented Rudyard Kipling pictures the man who is “ Back tc the Army Again ” as learning the “ old goose step along o’ the new recruits.” Goose-stepping is the process of raising the feet alternately and elaborately while making little appreciable progress. It is ceremonial rather than motional. Within limits and for military drill purposes it may have its uses. In most phases of the community life the need to keep in step is imperative. Goosestepping, however, is a form which is unduly exaggerated, and in countless spheres it is practised by hosts of people who are quite unconscious of doing It.

■Not all goose-steppers are soldiers. Religion, culture, economics, sociology —all have their regiments of goosesteppers; and in times past these have often had a mass weight sufficient to regulate, and even to retard, humanity’s forward march. There must, of course, be a good deal of what might be mistaken for goose-stepping when life’s experiences are beginning. The child’s mind is unformed, the adolescent’s will is overcharged with “ self.” Discipline of some sort must be imposed by the appropriate authorities if the youthful are to march in step with their fellows throughout the future years. As is the case under ■military auspices, goose-stepping may at certain stages serve useful purposes. The danger is that it is apt to be esteemed as an end in itself.

The mania for insisting on all kinds of spiritual and mental goose-step-ping did not originate with modem political dictators. No historical era has ever been entirely free from the evil. There are docile creatures who all their lives are content to perform it; there are arrogant types whose passion is to impose it. In the Middle Ages severe penalties attached to getting out of step with the ecclesiastical authorities. As a consequence Europe for a thousand years made no intellectual or even moral progress. Occasionally some few men dared to break into an independent stride of their own. Their names are now familiar because of the frequency with which successive councils of goose-step instructors gave them a place on the roll of martyrs. Except in certain countries there has been an abandonment of goose-stepping to the accompaniment of violence. But even in our refined civilisation there are many subtle forms of intolerance.

It is freely alleged that in the United States certain university professors have been deposed for teaching doctrine which is freely accepted in the educated world, but which is displeasing to persons who, despite their ignorance, exercise influence. Some people have thought that the spirit behind such incidents has occasionally been discernible in places less remote than the United States. From time to time literature has been disfigured by the bane. For many years English poetry consisted of the stilted effusions of those who found mechanical rhyming easy but who hadnot Alexander Pope’s art. It is not so long since there was in official quarters a tendencv to make British soldiering simply “ look pretty.” Redcoated regiments, with carefully-pol-ished accoutrements, headed by befeathered generals, were much in favour. The South African war came, and it was complained that the Boers did not fight according to text book rules. Their strategy was surprising! v successful, but retired colonels in the London clubs thought it was disgraceful. It departed entirely from traditional goose-step style. There have been periods in New Zealand’s history when certain overseas statesmen would have insisted on “ the colonies ” goose-stepping strictly to British music. To-day it is the desire of all the Dominions to march together, but it is as a Commonwealth of Nations, each moving at the rate which suits it best. The multiplicity and diversity of their problems would make goose-step impossible. Political Conservatism in every country is slow to recognise that the pace must be accelerated in accordance with scientific developments and new conceptions of social justice. Be - tween the Conservative goose-step and the revolutionary stampede safety lies ' in that freedom to regulate movement which is inherent in Liberalism. Modern education has been freely accused of being predominantly a goose-step process. Over a wide area education must .necessarily conform to system, but even with the greater flexibility that has marked it in recent years it is still open to the charge of being to an excessive degree a matter of time-tables, detailed syllabuses, and card indexes. Probably nowhere is adherence to the goosestep more rigidly required than in the social sphere. “It is simply not done.” The phrase is an epitome of certain schools of social philosophy, and is the fluted but firm command to goose-step within that social set in which the victim is or aspires to be. One result is that on all social levels there are to be encountered crowds of individuals whose personality, intellectual vigour, and initiative are utterly blighted because of their slavish adherence to the goose-step of their.class. The experiment was once made of placing a cage containing a rare song bird at a spot where all day long numerous sparrows twittered. Gradually the song bird lost its power to sing; it became a mere

twitterer like unto the others. An analogous fate is the penalty paid for consenting to take a place among the mental goose-steppers.