HUMAN VOICE

Evening Star, Issue 23372, 15 September 1939, Page 11

HUMAN VOICE

POWER OVER MANKIND Whenever I hear Hitler speak I think of Dick Sheppard, writes Howard Marshall in the ‘ Daily Mail,’ London. No two men could have been more dissimilar. No two men could have seen life and its meaning from such diametrically opposed angles. One evening, though, Dick Sheppard switched on the wireless and heard by chance a German voice. “ There,” he said, “is a tremendous personality. 1 don’t understand German. But that man’s dynamic.” The voice belonged to Hitler, at the beginning of his career.

From that chance twiddling of the knob came an idea. Supposing, by some not impossible invention, we could pick up and rebroadcast voices from the past. The voice of Christ, let ns say, speaking the Sermon on the Mount.

What would ho the effect? A voice speaking in Aramaic, remember. We should not understand it. And yet, don’t you agree that it might shake this tortured world of ours into sanity again? No barrier of language could hide that overwhelming personality. The voice and all that lay behind it would be enough. Voices, indeed, tell us more about our fellow-men than any other characteristic. Your voice. Hitler’s voice. My voice—all of them are coloured by personality. It’s a little disconcerting to realise that we haven't the slightest idea what our own voices sound like unless we hear them played back at us from a record. Do you know your own voice? You think you do, perhaps. But I assure you that you are vastly mistaken. Now and again I have to listen to some broadcast or other in which I have taken part. It’s an unnerving experience. Is this sepulchral fellpw, I think, really the same individual who sings in his bath in such an apparently light and cheerful tenor? It is, perhaps merciful that a trick of Nature hides our own voices from us. Do you want to know how you greet the world, though? Then stand close up*to a pane of glass. Cup your hands over your ears and listen to your voice as it reverberates. But don’t blame mo if you feel compelled to embrace Ihe silence of a Trappist monastery forthwith. - , What other speaking voices from the past would you choose to hear? A game I suggest, for those who cannot sleep. Six voices from the past, let us say, not for the message they have to give us, but for the personality they would assuredly reveal. 1 asked my wife for her list, and she chose Queen Elizabeth, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Paul, Napoleon, Oliver Cromwell, and Nurse Cavell. Rather a highbrow list, I thought. But, perhaps I was unwise to suggest Mrs Beetou instead of Oliver Cromwell. My own six would be Shakespeare, Thomas a Kempis, Isaak Walton, Dr Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, and honest, kindly Tom Cribb, champion of England a hundred years ago. Winch is also a little highbrow, now 1 come to think of it, and doubtless discloses a lamentably narrow mind. What is it, anyhow, which interests us in a voice? Not a singing voice, for that is-an instrument deliberately tuned. No—the ordinary speaking voice, whether it bids us good mornimT or comes booming at us through the loud speaker against a background of frenzied cheers. , . More and more our destinies are shaped by the power of the human voice. The world, no doubt, would he a saner place without speeches of any kind. And, for that matter, without orators. , • For good or ill, however, the microphono has opened the floodgates of speech and given a new force to the human voice and a new shape to oratory. , , , . The effects of broadcasting have been strange. The -demagogue is stripped of his .trappings. I-he fist which hammers the table with such effect during a public oration merely causes a technical hitch in a 8.8. G. studio. MICROPHONE TECHNIQUE, Mass emotion doesn’t carry the broadcast speaker on its wild tides. He must rely on his voice alone. Above all, therefore, lie must be sincere. _ A disembodied voice hides nothing from the listener. And broadcasting may introduce a new honesty into public speech. , „_. , What of Hitler, then? His speeches may be effective rhetoric. But they are bad broadcasting. He sneaks to a crowd and not to the individual. He neglects the microphone. It is strange ■ that neither he nor Mussolini seems to have realised how much more widely effective they would he if they studied the quieter technique of broadcasting. . The script of a good broadcast talk would shock the grammarian and the English stvlist. It would be colloquial and loosely knit. The santences would trail off in the casual manner of ordinary conversation. . For all that, it would he simple and direct. It would make its points. And it would compare ■ most favourably with an extract from ‘ Hansard,’ that mausoleum of parliamentary speeches. Formal oratory, in fact, is dying. But personality remains. And here is another game. Heading character from the voice. You will decide, perhaps, as you listen to him, that Mr Chamberlain is stubborn. In Sir Samuel Hoare you may detect anxiety. Mr Hore-Belisha will show self-confidence. President Roosevelt gives ns a feeling of massive strength. In Mr Eden’s voice there is pugnacity, in Mr Churchill's imagination. _ , So it goes, this broadside of voices, ringing around the world. A more powerful broadside than any number of battleships could produce. If the pen used to he mightier than the sword, the voice has now grown stronger than the pen. I do not suggest that the spoken word has replaced the written word. Wo shall always want to read the stieeclies we have heard. The acid test of cold print is our only safeguard against the distorting effects of personality in the voice. _ A dangerous thing, this personality, A problem for the 8.8. C. announcers when they read the news. They handle it admirably. . though I have hoard it suggested that in these days of crises the news should ho road by Tommy Handley. But don’t pin that suggestion on to mel