THE "MECHANICAL" ENGLISH.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 229, 27 September 1928, Page 6

THE "MECHANICAL" ENGLISH.

To debate with Mr. Mulvihil] might be a dull business, for he shows a disposition to ignore his opponent's points. I said that the Englishman's coldness was often & mask used to hide emotion. Mr. Mulvihill says nothing about this but strings together a number of English comments on the English, with the gist of which I am quite familiar. My points about Mr. Shaw he also ignores. Mr. Shaw devotes his genius to exposing the faults of the English. Why not devote a little of it to calling attention to their virtues! Continued and unrelieved denigration is a poor occupation for anybody. The charge of hypocrisy is old and stale, and it is now coming to be recognised that to brand the Englishman as a hypocrite without important reservations is a shallow estimate. Let me add to Mr. MulvihilPs quotations oue from George Santayana, a philosopher born ©f Sjsmish parents and educated, or educating, in four countries. Mr. Santayana's analysis of the Englishman is too long* to give in full. The Englishman, he maintains, is governed by "his inner atmosphere, the weather in his soul/ , which "broods at a much deeper level than language or even thought." * - He carries hie English weather in his heart wherever he goes, and it becomes a cool spot in the desert; and a steady and sane oracle amongst all the deliriums of mankind. Xever since the heroie days of Greece has the world had such a sweet, just, boyish master. It will be a black day for the human race when scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls and fanatics manage to] supplant him." IRISHMAN, TOO.