WRITING UP THE ENGLISH

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 87, 5 January 1918, Page 8

WRITING UP THE ENGLISH

AMERICAN JOURNALIST'S AMUSING IMPRESSIONS PRESTIGE, EFFICIENCY, AND THE GUNNER 1 feel sorry for the reparter who has to report the English (writes Mr. William Hard, an American corresponden'i who has been visiting the United Kingdom). In particular 1 feel sorry for tho reporter, who has to <ay- how the English arc taking the war— how they are responding personally, as a people, to its heroism and its horrors and its straining efficiencies—how they are facing, in their hearts, the accumulating frightfulnesses of the iuture. I feel sorry for any such reporter. My pity for the English which was strong unon me when I landed among them with my notebook, was soon supplemented by a quite considerable pity for myself. I stood one day on a British battlecruiser in ono of her turrets, in company with various other students of the British soul from tho United States and from Spain and and Australia and France and Brazil. A gunner had been told off to deliver us a lecture on gunnery. He had apparency got it by heart, and he delivered it loudly and earnestly, word for word, each word consuming just above the same amount of space as the next, with no punctuation; and his voice went along at a perfect level, .with no ups or downs in it at all anywhere, and he seemed himself the absolute symbol of the implacable machinery with which ho was working. He flung the breech-block open. Tho compressed air rushed through the gun cleansingly, hissingly, to the outside weather. Up came, on its tray, the shell. Down came from its < npboard the powder.Out camo from behind the long, soiling, snaky metal'drive-arm, which straightened as it came, and drove tho shell, and then the powder, home into the gun. The breech-block snapped shut. Tho fire-signal announced the discharge. The gunner's automatic voice' huiw up the total number of elapsed seconds impersonally on the air as if on a bulletin board. And' the gun recoiled monstrously backward and downward, and then upward and forward again to position with such noiselessncss and suppleness, with such effect as of rippling lnusoles, crouching and threatening, that suddenly, while tho gunner seemed mechanical, tho gun seemed alive.

Gunner's Most Dangerous Moment. AVe burst into applause, which had not been intended, but which wo could not stop. Tho gunner relaxed. Hv became communicative, lie had been in tho Jutland battlo Ho had fought this very gun all through tho Jutland battle. He Then came tho catastrophe. "What was tho most dangerous moment you were ever up against?" Tlio gunner stiffened under the ques* tion. But ho did not hesitate. Here was his chance. Here was his chance to promote tho purposes of the Government at London in its courteous tolerance of processions of journalists through the fleet. Hero was his chaneo to do his bit in tho publicity lino tor the prestige of tho Navy and the Empire. He did it. Ho did it in a way that convinced me, just as a thousand other incidents convinced me, that prestige is the last thing the English care about. Without one moment s hesitation that gunner plunged headlong into the following appalling yarn: It was in South America, and we wero lying in port, and I wasn't thinking of any dangers, of course, and 1 was cleaning my gun in my turret, and 1 opened the breech just like this, and, or course, I didn't know thr.e there was any visitors on board, but there was, because the. President of the country was invited to come aboard and he came and he brought his wife with him, and there they wero on deck, and I suppose sho wanted to see what a gun was like, but how could I, know what she was doing, so _ I opened the breech just like this, and the compressed air went through just like this, like you hear it now, like a storm, and all at once 1 heard a screech', an awful • screech, like a woman, and then I heard men yelling on the deck'and . running around and shouting, and . it was a terrible row, and the chief gunner came running to me, and he said, if the wife of a President wants to look down the rnuzzie of one df His Majesty's guns, why must you go and pick just that minute to do a lot of messy cleaning, and to go and open the. breech, ho said, and so L closed the- breech and they've picked that lady off the deck, ho said, and thev've picked her hair off tho rail" and they've picked her but out of the sea, ho said, and I'm sorry for you, ho said, and he went away, and the captain sent for me, and he said all you've dono this morning, he. said, is to do your best to start a bloody war between this here republic and the British Empire, that's all you've done, ho said. You may go.

He came to the end of this perverse and preposterous banality, and ho looked his questioner straight in tlio e.ve, and "So that, sir," he said, "was the most dangerous moment I ever had 'Now, it is well known that tho English are opposed to recitals of heroisms. But why didn't that gunner, at any rate, tell us a good story of good efficient work (lone by his ship? Because, of course, for the further frustration of reporters, the English arc also opposed to recitals of efficiencies. They will commit efficiencies; but Ihoy seem to hate to divulge thorn. _ _ It is a great mistake to imagine the English people, exulting and revelling in England's new war-time efficiencies. There"aro more efficiency stories, in fact and fiction, in tho American newspapers and magazines every month than come from all tho printing presses in Eii'dand in a whole year at the very time when England is alight from end to end with tho flying sparks of n nciv industrial revolution. Why is this?

The Fetish of Character. I put it down to a fact which has to be understood before anything in English life or in the English view of the war is intelligible. The English, in spite of 311 appearances to the contrary are an utterly subjective and introspective race. They are always looking within. Their whole preoccupation is with character. At the naval schools, where rank-and-file boys aro trained by tho thousand for technical work as seamen and Runners, I noticed that tho pamphlets of instruction beam with a long dissertation on character A boy must havo character. If he hasn't it. he must develop it. Having developed it, he might well have "intelligence." After ''intelligence" ho should havo "health." Finally ho mifht with advantage go on to "education." Character, though, must conio first. It comes first all over England, instinctively—character in the sense of development to the full of one's own subjective strength. Hence, all over England, the development of a multitude of different characters, a different character for evcrylittle section of the country, a different character for every little group of people. Hence the English passion for variety, for individuality, for personality. ' Hence the English passion for

personal liberty. It all goes back to thu cult of character. The person is the tiling. What he does—what ho knows is secondary. British achievements arc nothing. British charade! is everything. When an observer once grasps this fact ho begins to understand many things previously mysterious. He begins to understand, for instance, the contented pose of the English as the world's champion muddlers. Carlyle told the English that thev were stupid. So did Arnold. So does Wells. Almost every English author to whom the English nay" high honour tells the Knglish Unit't'liey aro stupid. The English have produced mors geniuses who have called them fools than any other people in the world. They love it now. They havo adopted it now as a conventional self-depreciation. And it makes not the slightest dent on their actual self-confidence.

An English paper last winter printed an editorial which I clipped, but which 1 unfortunately forgot to mark with the name of the paper. It coolly and casually observed that "of course, brains is not our strong point as a nation," and then happily went on to the terms of peace to be imposed by ft victorious England on a crushed Germany. There von havo it! . An old lady, a very religious old ladv, apparently very much depressed, said to me delightfully one evening at dinner: "I do hope God will help the English: they can never think up tho thinas those'wicked Germans can." "Who will win the war?" T asked. "Why. niv dear boy," she said, ' the Endish will win the war, of course.' There you havo it again!