THE BULLY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4231, 15 January 1940, Page 2

THE BULLY

MET IN EVERY WALK OF LIFE. It matters not one straw that authorities differ as to the origin of the about something, and always will. When we speak about a bully, everyone knows that we meah an overbearing ruffian who likes to terrorise the weak and is himself at heart a coward. The person known, as the average man will quietly assume that we mean a fellow who is universally detested even when he is not feared. On that latter point there is no room for argument. It is equally certain that there are varieties of bullies, different degrees of the vice, and that they are to be found in all places where human beings congregate. There is the bully in the home, the wretched fellow who tyrannises over wife and children, and prides himself on being master in his own hfouse. Golfers have a joke which is frequently quoted. When .asked what their handicap is they reply, “A wife and six children.” Where the head of the house is a bully the position is reversed. He is the handicap. It ought in justice to be remembered that there is such a being as a female bully, and the correct name for her is shrew. Her unfortunate husband has been known at times to exhibit that psychological oddity the character of a man who rules the household. One of the species was holding forth to his friends in his home and pompously declaring he was a perfect Julius Caesar in the domestic realm. While he strutted a shrill voice was heard from upstairs, “Charles, come up here!” And Julius Caesar instantly ascended. What his friends thought need not be recorded. A bully may be of either sex, and whether husband or wife is a creature who may be feared but never can be loved. “For him no minstrel raptures swell.’’ His home may be his kingdom, but never “sweet home” to the family.

The school as well as the home sometimes provides a sphere in which the bully exercises his powers. In the recollection of many adults there were teachers in the bygone generation who were not only tyrants but savages. They seemed to imagine that instruction should be given not by exercising the pupil’s reason and imagination, but through the constant application of cane or tawse. Squeers of Dotheboys Hall is as dead as Queen Anne, and modern enlightenment has set limits to corporal chastisement. In almost every school, however, there may be* found a boy or girl who figures as a bully. Domineering and over-mastering are the terms usually applied to the type. Where the boy is concerned he wins and maintains his unenviable fame by physical build, skill at fisticuffs or games, .and exercises what he deems his proper office in'a fashion which his school mates remember as long as they live. He strides the playground like a king. Probably when he reaches manhood his love of supremacy gets him many enemies and sorrows. He must be Caesar or nothing. In the club, in the political party, in social work, and oven in the church he reigns or, at least, at tempts to be dictator.

It will be remembered that Dr Johnson was given the name of “Ursa Major, ’’the Great Bear, because of his tendency in .argument to overmaster and mercilessly crush his opponent. A critic describes him as “goring” those who dared to engage him in wordy combat. History is crowded with illustrations of the bullying spirit. Charles I is an outstanding specimen. Cursed with that fatal disease, the Stuart passion for absolutism, he set out to tyrannise over Parliament and England. He lost his head metaphorically long before he lost it literally. The ex-Em-peror of Germany was another monarch whose pretensions led to his flight into exile, where he employs himself in chopping wood. His place is flow occupied, temporarily beyond a doubt, by another megalomaniac, which is only another name for a bully.

Bullying is an affront to the universe. It treats a fellow creature as a “thing,” denies every right of the personality, and so doing insults the Maker of mankind. Here stands the everlasting contrast between the bully, whatever his name or social status, and the rest of the human race. Democracy’s grand aim is to make the world a place where the poorest and the weakest shall be treated with justice, consideration and kindness.

Britain’s aim is to make the world safe for democracy; Germany’s aim seems to be to make the world safe for Hitler and his sort. God save us from such a fate! It is not a little remarkable to note that in the seventeenth century the Stuarts had the spirit of Hitler, but the people had a mind for freedom. The German Hit-

ler persuades or forces the Germans to support him; the English people sent the English Hitler to the block. Two things are certain about the bully in whatever period he appears on the stage. He is at heart a coward, and his fate is assured.

Whether by assassination or otherwise dictators are dismissed, and the world breathes freely till the next one appears. It was one of the sayings of Lincoln that no man is good enough to own another man, and it might be added that no man is good enough to bully another man. He who tries it sinks into darker vices. Hitler has drivelled into .an unprincipled trickster, a breaker of solemn promises, a merciless oppressor of the weak, a worshipper of might and a scorner of righteousness. Civilisation has for its present, task not only the punishment of an unmitigated and intolerable bully but also to ensure that the curse of Nazism will perish for ever. There are worse things than war, and one of the worst would be the triumph of the bully.