PUBLIC SPEECHES

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 33, 7 August 1936, Page 16

PUBLIC SPEECHES

EFFECT OF READING

DISCUSSION IN BRITAIN

ORATORY THEN & NOW

About the middle of June last the Earl of Crawford provoked an interesting debate''in the House of Lords by moving

That, in the opinion of this House, the growing practice of reading speeches is to be deprecated as alien to the custom of this House and injurious to the traditional conduct of its debates.

In the debate that followed there .were numerous references to the practice of distinguished statesmen of the past in both Houses of Parliament. Viscount Halifax, Lord Privy Seal, said that he believed there was no Standing Order dealing with the matter. Most of the classical orators in Great Britain, such as Burke, Sheridan, and Lord Chesterfield, must have read some of their speeches. The late Lord Balfour had given him some advice as to procedure in the House of Commons! "All you have to do," he said, "is to speak as often as you can and as long as you can,'and you will rapidly acquire that contempt for your audience which every bore always has." (Laughter.) -

The Earl of Midleton recalled that I Mr. Gladstone maintained that there were only two ways of meeting an audience fairly. The first was to have the speech absolutely prepared, and the second, was to "eat the very best dinner you can get and trust to luck." (Laughter.) Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's best speeches were those which were so well prepared that he would not allow anything to drive him ,from his points. The Bishop of Norwich (Dr. Pollock) said that the late Lord Rosebery had told him on the eve of one of his important speeches that he had no idea of what he was going to say. "I don't know in the least how to begin," he said. "I need hardly say," added Dr. Pollock, "that when the speech was made, the way he threw himself into the question enchanted his audience, and one heard the greatest approval of the speech." , ' MEMORIES RECALLED. The motion was duly carried by the Lords, but the discussion did not end there; it was continued in the columns of the newspapers. Referring to a leading article on the subject in the "Manchester Guardian," Mr. S. K. Ratcliffe wrote, venturing the opinion that Sir William Harcourt, when Leader of the House, "started the regrettable practice of reading long speeches in debate." Lord Rosebery, he said, learnt his speeches and rehearsed them. Mr. Gladstone, who often used a manuscript in his old age, probably never meraprised a speech" after leaving I Eton: he was the greatest of impro- i visers. John Bright once made the statement that he always knew perfectly his opening and conclusion, and had the essential passages of his speech fixed as islands in the stream. Mr. Asquith, last of the old great line, read closely all the important speeches of his later years, although on occasion he would employ the extempore gift in which he had no superior in Parliament. In recent years, added Mr. Ratcliffe, several Front-benchers have been given to appearing at the bpx with elaborate compositions in type and escaping criticism on account of their skilful delivery.' Mr. David Williamson, a veteran of the Parliamentary Press Gallery, mentions, in a letter, that Sir William Harcourt, at ■ the end of his career, read nearly all his important speeches, "yet how effective he was when .spurred into a spontaneous debating speech!" Of Gladstone, Mr. Williamson says: "I have held in my hands and studied carefully the actual sheets of paper from which the great orator delivered his historic speech on the Home Rule Bill. It was difficult to imagine how he had clothed in majestic language such trite phrases as were the basis of his lengthy oration." Sir Chares Trevelyan, drawing from the memories of a long political career, says of Sir William Harcourt's reading of his speeches:—"But surely his fault, if it be one, was on the right side. For | how many Parliamentary speakers, young and old, detract from the value of their speeches by leaving it to chance what they give the House, rather than preparing at least what their line of argument is going to be. I prefer, indeed, Sir William Harcourt's way to the long, slipshod speeches which we used to get from-Mr. Arthur Balfour when Premier, when it was pure chance whether his mind got upon some cunning and vivid argument which interested the House, or dragged-along-in some rather pointless and subtle argument which interested only himself. "The greatest Parliamentary speakers of my time did not, indeed, read their speeches, but they all knew where they were going, and the House always knew it would get the best they could give. Such were Joseph Chamberlain, Asquith, John Redmond, and Lord Hugh Cecil, in their different, but movingly effective ways." MR. LANSBURY'S FAITH. .. Mr. George Lansbury, the veteran ex-leader of the Labour Party, writes: "I am a Victorian, brought up as a politician from my earliest youth. I have heard, all the great preachers and speakers of the past seventy years. A very few read either speeches or sermons. Those who caught my attention when a boy always spoke extempore—General and Mrs. Booth, Josephine Butler, Annie Besant, Wilfred Lawson, and Cardinal Manning; the whole crowd of Irish members from Parnell to William O'Brien; the greatest of all, Gladstone and John Bright. The wonderful peroration with which Mr. Gladstone, some time in the seventies, closed a speech on the Eastern question with a reference to the gallant people of Montenegro facing their hereditary foes did not seem to me to have been either read or learned. He drew himself up to his full height and with flashing eyes and arms outstretched made the appeal quite spontaneously. I have seen and heard Keir Hardie, H. M. Hyndman, and many another speaker inside and outside the House of Commons do the same thing, and who is there that ever heard Henry George who will deny that he had the gift of making people feel he was in dead earnest and that the cause he pleaded was just and right? "Our day is the day of great material advancement. We are all inclined to weigh things up in a kind of cash balance—will such and such a policy pay? We think in terms of formula, using words which will appear to unite, differing policies. It may be this was always so. I think otherwise. The men and women in the Socialist movement whose memory I revere most are the unknown orators at street corners who, like the early Salvation Army speakers, spoke because they must. They possessed a faith that removed mountains of prejudice. They knew nothing of polished language or flowing periods. They had r message to deliver and delivered it. ... No amount of fine talking or writing will

save the race. We are all hungering after reality. Party politics threaten to smother, individual initiative and almost all intuition. We are regimented, drilled, must all turn or stand still when ordered. Democracy is indeed on trial. We shall be saved when the spirit of truth and right gives us utterance. . . . So I plead not for great word-spinners or mighty writers, but for simplicity and, above all, truth. Let us speak truth as we see it today. Never mind what we thought yesterday; but having seen Truth, follow her wherever she may lead. I believe many men and women it has been my privilege to know have possessed that gift, and because they followed truth, the common people heard them gladly." DOUBT AS TO THE FUTURE. The fervent, faith of Mr. Lansbury contrasts with the doubt of other correspondents as to the future of fine speaking. Mr. Ratcliffe lays it down that "it is not possible to believe that, even in England and America, government can be indefinitely carried on by means of large representative bodies and unlimited speeches; if debating legislatures remain, they will work mainly through memoranda and committee discussion. Radio has already familiarised the public with fresh modes of public speech against which the old oratorical and expository forms cannot stand up. The radio speaker must avoid rhetoric; he has to be at once condensed, conversational, and finished; and this means the cultivation cl a Itchnique wholly unlike that of the platform. ..." .

To this Mr. Thomas Artemus Jones, another correspondent, adds: "In these days of a huge electorate, when hardly 10 per cent, of the electors attend political meetings, the centre of political gravity tends more and more towards t.he family fireside, where the voters Fit listening to all parties. Oratory and rhetoric are no longer the most powerful weapons in our political armoury. . . . Some people hail the influence of the radio as a safeguard against political demagogy. It may also account for the commonplaces and the sloppiness of mind which have marked the speeches of a few men in high places in recent years."