The Telegraph Pole.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 14 April 1910, Page 4

The Telegraph Pole.

(By G. K. Chesterton^ My friend and I were walking" ; one of those wastes of pinawood which make inland seas of solitude in every part of Western Europe, , which have the true terror of a desert, since they are uniform, and so one may lose one's way in tliem. Stiff, straight, and similar, stood tip all round us the pines ol the wood, like the pikes ol a silent mutiny- There is a truth nil talking t.iia.t Nature often shows her chief .strangeness in. her sameness There is a weird rhythm in this very repetition; it is as if the earth were resolved to repeat a single, shape until tho shape shall turn terrible. Have you ever tried the experiment of saving some plain word, such as "dog," thirty times? By the thirtieth time it has become a word like ".mark" or "pobble." It does not become tame, it becomes wild, by repetition. In 'the end a dog walks about as startling a,nd undecipherable as Leviathan or Croquemitaine. It mav be that this explains the repetitions in Nature; it may lie for this reason that there are so many million leaves and pebbles. Perhaps they are not repeated so that thev may grow familial 1 ; perhaps they are repeated only in the hope that they may at last grow unfamiliar. Perhaps i\ man is not startled nit the first pig he sees, but jumps into the air with surprise at the seventv-seve.nth pig. Perhaps lie has to' pass through thousands ol pine trees before he finds the one that is really a pine tree. However this may be, there is something singularly thrilling, even something urgent and intolerant, about the endless forest repetitions; there is 1 the hint of something like madness in that musical monotony of the pines. ... I said something like this to my friend, auul lie answered with sardonic truth, "Ah, you wait till we eome to a telegraph post. Mv friend was right, as he occasionally is in our discussions, especially upon points of fact. \\ e had crossed the pine forest bv one of its paths which happened to follow the wires of the provincial telegraphy; and though the poles occurred at long intervals they mime a difference when thev came. I lie instant we came to the straight pole we could see that the pines were not really straight._ ft was like a hundred straight lines drawn with schoolboy pencils all brought to judgment suddenly by one straight line drawn with a ruler. AH the amateur lines seemed to reel to right and left. A moment before f could have sworn thev stood as straight ns lances: no>w I could see them curve and waver everywhere, like scimitars and vatnghans. Compared with the telegraph post the pines were crooked —■ -nnid alive. That lonely vertical rod at once deformed and enfranchised the forest. Tt tflntried it all together and yet made it free, like any grotesque undergrowth of oak or holly. "Yes." said mv gloomy friei'd. answering my thoughts. on don't know what a wicked, shameful thing straightness is if you think these trees are straight. You never will know till your precious intellectual civilisation builds a forty-mile forest of telegraph poles." We had started walking from our temporary home later in the dnv than we intended, and the long afternoon was already lengthening itself out into a yellow _ evening when we came out of the forest on to the hills above a strange town or village, of which the lights had already begun to glitter in the darkening valley. The change had .already happened which is the test and definition of evening. I mean that while the sky seemed still a.s bright, the earth was growing blacker against it, especially at the edges, the hills and the pine This brought out ye.b more clearly the owlish secrecy of pine woods, and mv friend cast a regretful glance at them as he came out under the skv. Then he turned to the view in front, and, as it happened, one of the telegraph posts stood up hi front of him in the last sunlight. It was no longer crossed and"softened by the more delicate lines of pine wood; it .stood up ugly, arbitrary and angular as any crude figure in geometry. My friend stopped, pointing .his stick at it, and all his anarchic philosophy rushed to his lips. "Demon." lie said to me briefly, "behold your work. That palace of proud trees behind us is what the world was before you civilised men. Christians or democrats or the rest, came to make it dull with youi* dreary rules of morals and equality. In the silent fight of that forest, tree fights speechless against tree, branch against branch. And the upshot of that dumb battle is inequality — and beauty. Now lift up your eyes and look at equality and ugliness. See how regularly the white buttons are arranged on that black stick and defend your dogmas if you dare." "Is that telegraph post so much a symbol of democracy?" I ask. "I fancy that while three men have made the telegraph to get dividends about a thousand men have preserved the forest to cut wood. But if the telegraph pole is hideous (as I admit) it is not due to doctrine, but rather to commercial anarchy. 1 If anyone had a doctrine about a telegraph pole it might, be carved in ivory and decked with gold. Modern things are uglv, because modern men are careless, not because they are careful." "No," answered my friend, with his eye on the end of a splemdid and sprawling sunset, "there is something intrinsically deadening •about the very idea, of a doctrine. A straight line is always ugly. ' Beauty is always crooked. These rigid pests at regular intervals are ugly because they In re carrying across the world of the real message of democracy." "At this moment," I answered, "they are probably carryinig across tho world the message, 'Buy Bulgarian Rails.' They are probably the prompt communication between ' soma two of the 'wealthiest and , wickedest of his children with whom God has ever had patience. No; these telegraph poles are ugly and detestable; they are inhuman a,nd indecent. But their baseness lies in their privacy, not in their publicity. That black stick with white' buttons is not the creation of the soul of a. multitude. It is the mad creation of the souls of two millionaires." "At least you have to explain," answered mv friend gravely, "how it is that the hard democratic, doctrine and the hard telegraphic outline have appeared together; you have but bless my soul! we must bo getting home. I had no idea it was so late. Let me see, I think this is our wav through the wood. Come, let us both curse the telegraph post for entirely different reasons and get home before it is dark." We did not get home before it was dark. Fo.r ome reason or another . we had underestimated the swiftness of twilight and the suddenness of night, especially in the threading of thick woods. When mv friend, after the first five minutes' march, had fallen over a, log. and T, ten minutes after, had, stuck nearly to the knees in mire, we began to have some suspicion of our direction At last my friend said, in a low, husky voice; ]

"I'm afraid we're on the wrong path, tit's pitch dark." "I thought we went the right way," I said tentatively. "Well," ho said, and, then, after a long pause, "I can't see any telegraph poles. I've been looking for thorn," "-ySo have I said. "They're so atajisl't." "Wo gK',l>L' c l away for about two hours of tfen'kness in the tliick of tho fringe olM'' e,JS which seemed to dance round us Here and there, h()wevei\S^"r^'"|"X! k N-ii!)1c" to trace IV' outline of something just too erect and rigid to lie a pine tree. By these wo finally felt, our wav home.