TELEPHONE BOOST

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3183, 28 May 1932, Page 2

TELEPHONE BOOST

There has never in the history of the world been such a device as the telephone for invading a human being’s privacy (writes “ Y.Y.,” in The New Statesman). People who would feel they were unfairly trespassing on your time by calling on you after breakfast will ring you up after breakfast without a qualm. People who are too lazy to write a postcard will interrupt your most serious work to ring you up and tell you what would have been on the postcard they were too lazy to write. Even people who want to sell you vacuum cleaners will call you to the telephone to explain their wishes. It may be replied that there is no need to go to the telephone onself and that one might give instructions that one was not at home to telephones except at certain hours of the day. But, human nature being what it is, most of us are curious to know what the person at the other end of the line is saying. It might be something important. It seldom is, but we are a hopeful race. Hence, when once the bell has rung, and the message is brought in, “Mr Smith wants to speak to you, sir,” we do not ask “which Mr Smith?” but rise with a groan and go to the instrument for fearof missing the Mr Smith. If the children of this country, however, are taught to use the telephone as part of their ordinary education. I will set my face and refuse to answer any calls whatever. To put such an instrument in the hands of children will be to turn every day of the year into a First of April. It will merely add intolerably to the number of unnecessary bells ringing, and the nuisance may easily end in the total abolition of the telephone by common consent.

At the same time, I am delighted to hear of the success of the Post-master-General’s advertising campaign which is so largely increasing the number of telephonable people. I am delighted at it, not only because it will mean that in future other people will be telephoned to instead of myself, but because it is a proof of the power of advertising—a power which in my opinion,' holds out the greatest hope imaginable for the progress of humanity. It is a great thing to know that you can persuade people to do almost anything by judicious advertising. Have we not seen an entire nation converted in recent years into a nation of mustard-con-sumers by a series of advertisements which invited its all to eat more mustard and even to use it in our bath? Many of us had been indifferent to mustard: some of us had even been hostile; but it was immediately as if a new Nelson had hoisted the signal:

“England expects every man to eat mustard.” We read, and we obeyed. Now it is a very curious thing that nobody whom one met would admit that he himself had been influenced by the advertisements. The mustardmanufacturers were' known to have increased their sales beyond belief, yet not a single Englishman could be found who, on his own confession, had eaten more mustard than before. This proves, I think, not that all men are liars, but that we are all influenced by advertisements without knowing it. We have eaten more fruit, we have eaten more meat, we have drunk more stout and beer because we Were told to do so in the newspapers 2nd on the hoardings. Theoretically, we all know about the use of mustard and fruit and meat and stout before we read the advertisers’ orders to consume them. But it was only when we read these orders that we realised how much we longed for mustard and fruit, meat and stout and indulged in them to our heart’s content.

This being so, we have only to apply the methods of the advertiser to progressive politics in order to establish the new world that everybody would want if he were told to do so in an advertisement. Every hoarding should be covered with huge posters repeating the slogan, “ Peace is good for you.” Every newspaper should tell us from its advertisement columns: “Disarmament Promotes Sound Sleep.” “ Social Reform Makes Bonny Babies,” “ The League of Nations is the Great Rejuvenator,” and so forth. Or the advertisements might simply run: “ Ask for Peace, and Insist on Having It,” “ Avoid War as You Would Influenza,” “Justice Touches the Spot.” If you can popularise mustard in this way,, why not peace? If you can force telephones on people by advertising, why not the League of Nations?