The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. TUESDAY. JUNE 29, 1926.

Hokitika Guardian, 29 June 1926, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. TUESDAY. JUNE 29, 1926.

THE ENGLISHMAN’S CALM. Dciiing the period i.f the great strike at Home at the r immencement of last month, foreign correspondents flocked to England to write up the great revolution which everybody expected. But there was no revolution in sight. There were a few episodes which suggested for tie moment the defeat of law and order and the supremacy of mob law, but they were but passing phases—the Englishmen remained calm and refused to be provoked with stmet brawls or by minor excesses. Many of the correspondents quickly recognised khe mood of John Bull, and chronicling it. sent the news abroad. The Prime Minister himself was the type of the nation practically as a whole—solid and watchful, steadily preparing for possible emergencies. Mr Baldwin hack many thousands of his

like, a very useful leaven, all through the country, and that fact astonishing the world as it did, prompted one newspaper writer to proho tho matter deeper for some explanation. Ho began by asking himself a question, and then proceeding to answer it to his own enlightenment. He asked : Whence comes the astonishing calmness of the English race in times of crisis, that calmness which . enabled a general strike to be lived through without a. shot being fired, and which is. indeed, a puzzle to the wholo world? The average Englishman has in bis veins the blood of many races. He is the combined product, from faroff times, of Colts, Saxons, Scandinavians, and Normans, and that product, moulded over oenturies in the special climate of England, has given him the mingled balance, adventurousness and sense of reality tinged with romance which! .are his fortunath heritage. What Emerson wrote many years ago of the English remains true to-day: “It is in the dec]) trails of race that the fortunes of nations are written; and however derived—whether it was a. more gifted tribe or mixture of tribes, tl<’ air, or wlmt circumstance, that mixed for them the golden mean of temperament—here exists the best stock in tho world. . .best for depth, range, and equability, men of aplomb and reserve, great- range and many moods, strong ■instincts, yet apt for culture.” The calmness of the average Englishman is not the phlegmatic calmness of some northern races, but rather an imaginative calmness which knows that excitability is liable to distort judgment and that nothing is to be gained by violence or exaggeration. The English character is extra- * ordinarily sane. It has developed from various races a blend of qualities that by balancing one another, ns it were, bend to eliminate extremism in any one direction. Compromise has been said to be the basis of our constitutional laws, but it is a compromise founded upon a knowledge of character and not upon a weakness of will. When put to some great test tho English nro extremely determined, as was seen in the war and as has heen seen again in the general strike, but once tho crisis is over and the battle won there is .singularly little bitterness, and the main idea is to “conic together” again for the good of everyone. The Englishman does not lose his calmness or good humour during a crisis, and therefore he does not have to recover them spasmodically after the crisis is over. And having an imaginative, romantic mind—English literature is far the richest in the world in imagination and romance—the Englishman is always able to- see his opponent’s point of view and thus, while not yielding his own ground, to insist on fair play. The qualities that have made us pioneers are the qualities that make ns just in our dealings. And so we have the Englishman's calm and characteristics interestingly accounted for.