LACK OF POETRY

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 54, 1 September 1926, Page 12

LACK OF POETRY

PUBLIC SPEAKING IN

AUSTRAILA

A VISITOR'S REFLECTIONS

APPRECIATION OF MAORI

ORATORY.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, 10th July., ■ The-' editor of "The South. Wales Daily Post" contributes an article to his paper on'some after-thoughta of a world's tour—he was a member of the last Empire Press Delegation..to Australia. His remarks deal with the public '"speaking which he heard in New Zealand and Australia, and ho dwells at length upon the oratorical strength o£ the British delegation because "the speeches we heard, except from members of our own party, were on the whole, most disappointing." In. deinocratie countries like Australia and New Zealand he thinks oratory should have an enormous influence in determining the careers of public mcii. "The best speech, in the opinion of j most, was that given at Melbourne by 'the Hon. Mr. Bruce, the Premier, and this owed its merit not to the graces of deliverance, but the obvious sincerity and earnestness of the man and the lucidity; and quiet force of his language. Kegarded in their entirety, the speeches made to us in. Australia syi'l New Zealand, whether by politicians, members of municipalities, or other local bodies, or by journalists, were so much below the standard of those heard, in Canada, as to suggest that despite the value o£ effective oratory, there could be no organised attempt at'its cultivation. . OPPORTUNITIES IN THE MOTHERLAND. . "In Great Britain, newspapermen are frequently called upon, to speak in publice, and hence they acquire a certain degree of fluency, if nothing more. Our politicians and. scholars master the elements of the art in the schools and colleges, and at the public functions winch they attend. Our working men have their friendly societies; religion provides its facilities for practice. The .friendly society and trades union lodges also serve as schools of oratory. But whatever the cause or causes, it is indisputable that the delegates from the Homeland who were not selected because they could speak, were infinitely more at home on the platform than their Australian, brethren.

NEW ZEALAND'S ORATORS. "That this impression obtained in the course of a long journey flitting from point to point, is not peculiar to me, I gathered from intercourse with newspaper reporters and others, some of whom had long experience of public men elsewhere than, in Australia. One gentleman, who for many years sat in the ; Press Gallery at Wellington, declared that the only eloquent speeches he iad: ever heard there came exclusively from Maori members. The Maoris are natural orators, who, like the .Welsh and Irish, borrow their figures and metaphors chiefly from nature. He said that the three most eloquent members of Parliament in New Zoa'/.nd belonged to this race, and that one of them, whose mother was,a, Maori lady, | was regarded as the most eloquent speaker in New Zealand. "My informant said he was so impressed by. the speech made at Rotorua by Sir Maui Pomare, a Maori, on the I occasion of the yisit of General Sir lan Hamilton that he had preserved the closing passages of it, a copy of which he furnished to me: 'You English! You have crossed the trackless oceans conquering and subduing; you have crossed the burning sands that nave never heard the whisper of water; you have crossed the eternal snows that have never melted. But, unlike the Greeks, unlike the Romans, where you have conquered you have not enslaved.' . . .

The Maoris are a gifted people intellectually- This has a recent demonstration in the fact that although the New Zealand Parliament contained only four Maori members, three of them were members of the Cabinet, and one, a half-caste, was for a time the actingPremier. ANOTHER STANLEY BALDWIN. "It is curious that Australia, almost entirely dominated by the Labo"ur Party, in which leadership is mainly determined by the capacity to speak, does not produce good orators. Before going to Australia I had heard Dick Seddon, for years the foremost statesman in New Zealand, and Sir Robert Reed, who has represented Australia in London, for years, make most telling speeches at public dinners, distinguished as much for the cogency and expressiveness of the.language as by the-easy lapses into the humour which marks the .accomplished after-dinner speaker. Consequently I was prepared to find, in. Australia, the same full supply .of cap able oratoTS aa w« had encountered in Canada, where the inducement to cultivate the ait of pnblie speaking is not nearly so great as in Australia. In the course of our eleven weeks' stay, we heard many of the leading members of the. Labour Party—this could hardly fail to be the case, as five of the six provinces have Labour Governments— but recalling the experiences of last autumn with such aid as a retentive memory affords, I could not, with the exception of the speech of the Premier, Mr. Bruce, who impressed, mn as another Stanley Baldwin in character and temperament, remember any speaker, whatever his politics or position, who by the substance of his speech or the man-ner-of the delivery, stands out clearly from among his follows.

••This is the more astonishing since the newspapers of Australia and the literature dealing with ' the Continent. and its peoples, disclose an'intellectuality as active,, and as high in standard, if not higher,' than that observable in Canada. I have, therefore, to confess that without being able to diagnose |'.io cause or. causes of the phenomenon, Australian, and New Zealand public speaking, if generally fluent, lacked the poetry and the other elements which are the constituents of real oratory."