AFRAID TO SPEAK

Evening Star, Issue 19787, 10 February 1928, Page 8

AFRAID TO SPEAK

“CURIOUS INDISPOSITION ” OF THE ENGLISH. Speaking at the .International Conference on Speech Training at the Royal Society of Arts, London, Prebendary Gough said:— “ English people need an increased power of expression, particularly the mstlictic expression. It is a. matter of extreme difficulty to persuade the cultivated, sensitive, and shy mind of the English to express itself. The world suffers from this curious indisposition. “ Many of the finest children iu our schools arc frightened to open their mouths, except, in the playground. I remembered as a child the lear I had of opening my month in school, and what, strange terrors possessed me when the teacher’s pointer approached me to answer a question with my own lips. That is a tiling we ought to conquer in our educational system. “Many of the best speakers and artists begin life with an overwhelming and crushing burden of sensitiveness, but they’ learn to turn that_ extreme sensitiveness into exceptional sweetness and power of expression. “ Speaking with all diffidence as a minister it would he helpful if we took some of the clergy in hand. The reason, why oratory is nearly dead in England is because there are few men who speak with their minds saturated with the noble rhythmic English of the Revised Version of the Bible. “ People do not know how to open their mouths properly, and hardly ever remember now to shut them.”